Homemade BBQ Sauce

November 11, 2014
by Stephanie Pellett
2 min read
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Vegan BBQ Sauce >> Life In Limbo

I’m over at Guinea Pigging Green today sharing photos and thoughts on a new recipe for homemade vegan BBQ sauce I made this week. It’s seriously yum.

As with most of my recipes these days, the original recipe is from Oh She Glows. At this point I’m not totally sure what I’ll use it on, but it’s fun to have an extra sauce in the house. I’m sure it’ll come in handy for all kinds of different recipes – right now I have it in mind for these tacos, trying to recreate this flatbread in a skillet, something like these sliders, and maybe the old classic of easy BBQ tofu. I’m not too worried about using it all up! That said, it made a ton of sauce, so I might consider freezing part of it, as the original recipe recommended.

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I love making condiments – it’s so much fun and they always come out a hundred times tastier than their bottled counterparts. Plus, my apartment always ends up smelling absolutely amazing. It’s a win-win!

You can find the recipe and more photos over on Guinea Pigging Green right here.

PS. This is one of the 24 new recipes I’m trying to make before I turn 24 next April. It’s #15! See all the others here.

Fresh Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce

June 30, 2014
by Stephanie Pellett
2 min read
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Summer Rolls

I posted a “recipe” for summer rolls – aka non-deep-fried spring rolls – a few years ago, but I recently developed a new favourite ingredient combo (this time fully vegan) so I thought they’d be worth posting about again. I’ve been taking these into work with me lately and even though they often fall apart by dinnertime, they’re so tasty that I usually don’t even mind. It’s like mini packages of salad! So fresh and so clean.

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My current favourite mix of ingredients is tofu, leeks (or green onions), peanuts, red pepper, tofu and sweet chili sauce. I don’t need to handhold you here – just chop them all up! It’s all raw, so this is a very easy meal to prepare. Soak your rice paper wraps in warm water for around ten seconds, then spread them out on a flat surface and pile everything on! Like so:

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Then you want to tuck up the bottom, fold in the sides, and roll it all up like a burrito. It gets easier and tidier with practice, but sometimes I still end up with a floppy mess. One time, I just wrapped the whole mess in another rice paper, which was surprisingly an excellent fix!

DSC_3431I’ve been eating these with a homemade peanut sauce, which really makes them that much better. I usually half this recipe and season it to taste (since I don’t have sesame oil at the moment). It has good proportions though, and the resulting sauce has a great texture.

DSC_3532Yummy, right? This is exactly the kind of food I want to eat when it’s really hot outside. No standing over a hot stove please! My apartment doesn’t need to be stuffier than it already is.

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You could definitely customize this “recipe” in any way you want to! Different vegetables, maybe even some fruit like pineapple or mango, and fresh herbs would of course be wonderful. I’m sure I’ll be mixing it up quite a bit as the summer progresses. Happy eating!

Vegan Cashew Cheese

June 17, 2014
by Stephanie Pellett
3 min read
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Vegan Cashew CheeseHoly yummy, batman! Even though it’s true that I can eat the same thing over and over, lately I’ve been getting bored with what I’ve been eating. That’s part of why I love that I made this resolution to try new recipes: it breaks me out of food ruts and keeps my mind open to different meal ideas. The other part of why I love it, of course, is because the results so far have been very tasty. There’s also a third reason, and that is that I really love cooking and puttering around in the kitchen. It makes me feel industrious and healthier. I love that sentiment from Michael Pollan: “Eat anything you want, just cook it yourself.” I’ve been trying to embrace that more lately.

Oh Dear Drea is a blog that makes vegan living look easy. I was opening browser tabs like crazy yesterday, getting so much inspiration for delicious, easy vegan food. I had a huge bag of cashews in my kitchen, so I decided that this cashew cheese recipe would be the first one I’d try. Despite making a few changes to her original recipe, it still turned out great.

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Adapted from Oh Dear Drea

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup of raw cashews, soaked in a bowl of water for 1+ hours
  • 1-2 cloves garlic
  • 1-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice)
  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 tsp salt (to taste)
  • Herbs

Soak the cashews for an hour or more. Drain them but save the water. Blend together all your ingredients, adding spoonfuls of cashew water until you reach your desired consistency (like a queso sauce). I forgot to pick up lemons so I substituted apple cider vinegar for the lemon juice the original recipe called for. Next time I’ll try with lemons and nutritional yeast because I know that would make it that much more delicious.

20140617-152044.jpgI’d treated myself to a garlic baguette (my first baguette since arriving in Korea!) after my run this morning, and loved eating some pieces of it with this yummy sauce. I think this would be great on a vegan pizza, like it was suggested in the original post. I’m excited to use it in veggie wraps and tacos too! Really it seems like you could just throw it on just about anything. The recipe makes a lot, almost a cup full, so I’m looking forward to discovering all the possibilities.

Yum! Dig in, friends.

Classic Hummus

May 27, 2014
by Stephanie Pellett
3 min read
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HummusWould you believe me if I told you I’ve never made my own hummus before? It’s true. There’s a small chance I’ve been present in the kitchen when my mother or one of my sisters made it, but I’ve never done it myself.

Hummus is one of those things that is very hard to come by in Korea. Even chickpeas, that typical pantry mainstay, aren’t really floating around any grocery stores. I heard a rumour that they sell the precious garbanzo beans in the basement of the biggest department store in the entire world, which is located about twenty minutes by metro from my apartment, but I haven’t ventured there yet to find out. Suffice it to say, they are rare here. Fortunately they’re not rare on iHerb, and I have eagerly awaited my order full of chickpeas, quinoa, and eco-friendly beauty products so that I could whip up a batch of hummus. My carrot sticks were getting lonely.

What took me so long!? Homemade hummus takes approximately 5 minutes (45 if you need to cook your chickpeas yourself, as I did) and is utterly delicious. I’ll have you know that I am very happily munching on it as I write this. You’re probably not jealous though because hummus is everywhere in North America, lucky ducks. When I lived in Canada, it wasn’t rare for me to have 2 containers of it languishing in my fridge at any given time. But if you live in Korea or somewhere else on earth where hummus is scarce, you’ll understand my quiet joy.

Hummus2This is how we make hummus in Korea. In a saucepan, with lots of freshly squeezed lemon juice and a hand blender. (PS. I’d like to kiss whoever invented hand blenders. It’s such a great kitchen tool for those of us with tiny kitchens.) I sometimes make a mess, but it’s okay.

Hummus1I used a recipe from Oh She Glows for classic hummus. Angela has never once steered me wrong with her recipes, they are all excellent and always work out perfectly. This hummus is no exception.

I mean, just look at that beautiful pile of mashed up yumminess! Gorgeous. Flawless. Ready to be scooped up in obscene quantities.

Hummus3Case in point! In this photo, I’m double-dipping like it’s my job. Not even a little sorry about it.

I’m excited to put this stuff on everything. I can sense that there are homemade tortillas with hummus in my very near future. Go make some of your own! Enjoy.