These are The Great Chickpea Cutlets from, you guessed it, Veganomicon!

You have bought your copy by now, haven’t you??

These are a staple in my diet.  They are perfect smothered with vegan gravy,* slathered with buffalo wing-style sauce, or sandwiched with toasted bread.

They are also delicious cold out of the refrigerator.

Not that I’d know.

They are a great way to eat all that protein that every omnivore is sure you’re not eating enough of.  (Don’t get me started on that one…)  And they are a pretty painless way to introduce yourself or someone you love to seitan.

They are a brilliant mixture of mashed chickpeas (from a can-easy!), vital wheat gluten (the stuff that makes seitan, you can find it in the flour/baking section of nearly any grocery store), breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

For VeganMoFo, Isa, the author of Veganomicon posted the recipe for a double batch of chickpea cutlets on her blog.  The recipe as written in the book makes 4 smallish cutlets, which I can fly though in a day or two, so I’ve always doubled the recipe.  The leftovers are great, and they freeze well either before or after cooking them.

To go along with the cutlets, I made mashed potatoes and gravy.  MMMMM.  Mashed potatoes are my favorite food, and if I had to pick my favorite food group I’d have to go with gravy.

I found organic fresh rosemary at the grocery store on clearance for $0.25 so I had to have it.  It paired perfectly with the thyme in the cutlets.  The combination of flavors reminded me a lot of thanksgiving, and I bet you couldn’t lose serving the cutlets with gravy for your thanksgiving feast.

I made a really basic vegan gravy.  I started by mincing that gigantic garlic clove you see above, and sauteing it with a bit of olive oil.  Then I made a roux by adding more olive oil and some flour, and cooked it just until it started to brown a bit.  Then I whisked in mushroom broth and whisked like crazy until it looked like gravy.  I added tons of black pepper and a chopped sprig of rosemary.

Don’t let the photo fool you, I doused those mashed ‘taters with plenty of gravy after I snapped this picture.

Oh, and we had salad too.  It wasn’t anything special.  I ate it first to get it out of the way so that I could focus on the good stuff.

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* FYI- Tofu Mom, a blog that I LOVE, is writing all about vegan gravy for VeganMoFo.  You should check out her gravy recipes.  I definitely want to make the vegan hollandaise!

I am finally settled in to my new home in Southern California.  It’s beautiful here.  The sun shines everyday, there are gorgeous mountains to look at (and hike up), and the pace here is just a bit slower than in New York.  I’ve made a couple of weekend trips already (Los Angeles, Las Vegas) and for someone like me who loves to take get-away trips, it seems California is going to suit me just fine.

I’m still searching for a job (and anxiously awaiting the results of the CA Bar Exam in November) so I currently find myself with far too much free time on my hands.  This of course is not a bad thing, it’s just a huge change for me.  You see, studying for the Bar is like having 3 full time jobs for 2 months.  It’s brutal, it’s exhausting, and it’s completely overwhelming.  And that’s just studying for it!   Then you have to take a 3 day, 18 hour exam.  Oh, and did I mention that law school really doesn’t prepare you for the subject matter on the exam?  Yeah, it’s not a pleasant experience.

So now that I have 3 (three!) months to wait for my results, I’m finding myself slowly returning to normal.  There are far less headaches, cups of coffee, take out containers, and flash cards in my life these days.

What does this mean for the blog?

Well, it means that I’ll actually be blogging more frequently again!

Starting now, with this Hearty Brown Rice Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette and Toasted Pecans.

You see, it’s really freaking hot in Southern California right now.

108*?!  Not something I’ve ever experienced before.  Not something I really enjoy either.  It’s unseasonably hot here, and even though I live in a gorgeously air conditioned house, I can’t bear to cook or eat hot foods.  So, I made a big pot of rice the other night, and made this salad with it.  It’s cool and light while still being hearty.

You can use any type of rice you want in this recipe.  Even leftover chinese take out rice is fine.  Here, I used a Brown Rice Medley that a friend introduced me to.  It’s fairly quick cooking for brown rice and I love the variation in textures.  If you have a Trader Joe’s near you, I recommend picking up a bag.

So here we go with the recipe!

Hearty Brown Rice Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette and Toasted Pecans

• 1 1/4 cup rice, cooked and cooled
• 1/2 cup chickpeas, drained
• 1 cup baby spinach, packed tightly, julienned*

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp dried basil
• salt
• pepper

• 2 tbsp raisins (optional)
• 2 tbsp chopped pecans

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the rice and the chickpeas.  Add the spinach.  Set aside.

For the Vinaigrette:  In a small bowl, combine the olive oil, red wine vinegar, and basil.  Whisk to combine and season with salt and pepper to taste.  Stir in the raisins so they start to soak up the dressing.

For the Toasted Pecans**: In a small dish, microwave the pecans on high for 20 seconds at a time, until they smell fragrant.  It usually takes 45 seconds or so.

Assembling the Salad: Add the vinaigrette and the toasted pecans to the rice and chickpea mixture.  Toss to coat. Cover tightly and let chill in the fridge for at least an hour before serving, so they flavors can combine.

Notes:

* To julienne the spinach, gather it into a fairly neat pile, with most of the leaves facing the same direction.  Then just thinly slice it lengthwise.  You can also just roughly chop it- it will work just fine.

** This is how I “toast” small amounts of nuts.  It works great and doesn’t heat up the kitchen.  It’s also harder to burn them!

By the time I get home from work and go for a run, I’m usually ready to eat anything that looks even remotely edible that is put in front of me.  Thankfully, I’ve started making individual components during the weekend that I use to throw dinner together quickly during the week.

Those chickpea cutlets from the last post are awesome when warmed in the toaster oven and tossed with Frank’s Red hot on top of a spinach salad with zucchini and random farmer’s market vegetables.  I also threw some leftover baked sweet potato slices on top.

The Buffalo chickpea cutlets are also a good example of my theory that a lot of meat-based dishes taste good because of the sauce they are served with.

Another super easy week night dinner is homemade vegetable pizza.  I make this individual pizza in less than 10 minutes with the help of pre-made mini pizza shells that I find in the bread section of the grocery store near the pitas.

I top with sauce (I usually have homemade on hand, but use jarred by all means), vegetables, olives, and cheese if you feel like it.

One last quick meal: Pasta with bean balls and raw vegetables.  I made a full batch of bean balls (posted here) from Veganomicon, on the weekend, so for this meal I really just boiled some pasta, and topped it with the pre-made sauce and balls (tee hee), sliced some raw zucchini and threw some spinach on top. 

Excuse the crummy photo, smudged camera lens!

There’s no excuse to hit the drive thru when you can make tasty and healthy (not to mention much cheaper) meals like this in as little as 10 minutes!

Since I’m still new at this blogging thing, I thought I’d try a different approach to posting.   Here is a fairly random sampling of food that I’ve made and eaten over the past couple of weeks!

First up: A Green Smoothie

Green Smoothie

I bought a bunch of spinach at the farmers market (an entire plastic grocery bag full!) and decided to use some up in smoothies before it went bad.  Green smoothies are great, just add everything you usually like in a smoothie and chuck in a handful of spinach!  You can’t taste the spinach at all.  This one had banana, yogurt, soymilk, and some blueberries.

Next up is a typical breakfast.

Oatmeal with half a banana mashed in and homemade granola, yogurt, blueberries and flax seeds on top.  It’s getting a bit hot out for oatmeal these days though.  More recently I’ve been having cereal or yogurt.

Some weekends I really make an effort to make a bunch of food to take for lunches during the week.  Here’s photo documentation of it   First I made Spaghetti and Bean Balls from the vegan bible cookbook Veganomicon.

I topped the bean balls with some shredded vegan mozzarella cheese.  I’ve tried a bunch of vegan cheeses, and I have to say that I’d rather just go without rather than eat “fake” cheese.  The texture and the flavor are just not satisfying at all.  I thought I’d swoon over Teese and I was disappointed, and FYH was a little bit worse.  Bummer.

I’d show you the final product, but the pictures came out pretty bad.  Basically I cooked some whole wheat pasta, topped it with some of the red sauce, some of the bean balls, and a bit of sauteed zucchini.

I also took advantage of my oven space, since it was already on and made some Chickpea Cutlets, also from Veganomicon.

Chickpea Cutlets

These are awesome to make in advance, and are great on top of salads, pasta, or in sandwiches during the week.  My favorite way to have them is to reheat them in the toaster oven, slather them with Franks Red Hot, and chow down with some yogurty dipping sauce.  Who needs chicken wings??