We cook vegan dinners for about 20 people every Tuesday evening, for the hacklab open house. This page documents the recipes and how they turned out, mostly because we're total geeks, but partly so that if we ever want to repeat something, we can know what we did :-). Most dinners are eaten from bowls, so we do a lot of curries, stews, soups, etc. We've also done a number of pastas, breads, and baked dishes.

Run Sheet

This is Eric's rough run sheet for an open house dinner, to help other people run them:

4:00-4:30 start bread maker, clean kitchen, run dishwasher if necessary
4:30-5:00 recipe is found/chosen and ingredients-to-buy list prepared
5:00-5:30 shopping at FreshCo
5:30-7:00 main cooking activities - chopping, frying, processing, baking, roasting, simmering, etc.etc.
7:00-7:30 finishing touches to meal (salt, acid, spice, temperature, etc), prepare serving area, write on whiteboard, empty dishwasher, say Dinner is Served
8:30-9:00 initial cleanup - gather cooking-related dishes, clean counters, first batch of hand-washing
9:30-10:00 final cleanup - bowl/container remaining food, clean remaining pots and pans, clean remaining surfaces, collect unreturned dishes and start dishwasher

(Generally speaking the most valuable time, when there is the most work, and the most interesting stuff to learn, is 5:30-7pm, though help with cleanup is also always appreciated!)

Favorites

These are some of our favorites from the last two+ years of cooking, if you're looking for an incredible vegan dinner, try these first!

spiced lentil soup
mediterranean baked sweet potatoes
Vietnamese bun cha with sticky spicy tofu
Vegan Red Cabbage Bowl with Tofu and Peanut-Sriracha Sauce
creamy vegan butternut squash linguine with fried sage and add roasted tomatoes (ignore the pasta part of that second recipe] with vegan parmesam cheese
general tso's chickpeas
cauliflower buffalo wings
Gazpacho
Jerk sweet potato & black bean curry
Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce over Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Rice
spicy indian rice an incredible rice dish, 100 fold better than plain white rice :-)

Dinner History

2019-01-09 general tso's chickpeas a favorite repeat, 4x, which was only about 2/3 of the pot, but it was great as usual and perfect for a quieter night. Also, yaki onigiri rice balls, 3x. There were but plain themselves, but with the Teriyaki sauce, delicious! Super labor intensive though, must be several minutes of work EACH, so it really doesn't scale. The sauce, of course we couldn't get mirin, so we subbed in dry sherry + brown sugar, but didn't have enough sherry either, so subbed red wine vinegar for about 1/2; people tell me the vinegar really gave the teriyaki a sweet & sour flavor which was awesome, so I'd say unintentional genius :-)
2019-01-01 carrot and ginger rice a repeat 3x and simple vegetable dumplings 2x and more dough from baozi recipe from last time. The mushroom dumpling filling was actually great, way better than the lentil thing from last time. The rice, good, but wasn't a great combo with the dumplings, I think some kind of green veggies would have been better. Dumplings are fun, but also so much work, it was good it was a quiet week (new years day!).
2018-12-18 two old standby's this week: parkers split pea soup 3x and golden roasted curry mustard potatoes 2x. Both were great again; the soup, we left it chunky this time instead of immersion blending it. The potatoes, larger chunks than usual, which was interesting - as always, potatoes totally went quickly, I wish we could do more, but this really does fill the oven...
2018-12-11 best vegan borscht tripled with the cashew sour cream from raw vegan tacos doubled, and chocolate cake with buttercream frosting 2/3rds. The borscht, mediocre, we did extensive modifications and then people loved it, but I still feel like it doesn't measure up to our regular borscht recipe. Also triple actually made almost *two* pots worth, so I think the recipe's "6" is rather conservative, it would serve more like 10. Mods: lime juice, dried parsley, tons of salt (way more than you'd think would be required, and I still felt like it was short), and finally, to try to deal with the thin taste, some garam masala, which did fill it in nicely. The cashew sour cream was AWESOME, would make that again for sure. And the cake, gone super fast as expected, very moist, and making 2/3 of the icing was the right call, it had about the perfect amount of icing (my opinion, others disagreed, but it's my birthday!).
2018-12-04 creamy vegan butternut squash with fried sage 3x plus, I added the roasted tomatoes from roasted tomato basil pesto doubled, and vegan parmesan cheese also doubled, though that was extra for sure. Truly excellent, one of the best dinners of 2018. I'm adding to favorites, in fact, since this was the third and best time. Also, not regularly mentioned here, but I almost always make "hack bread" in the bread machine, with a random spice added for fun. Tonight was cumin, which I've done before and is excellent, probably the best spice to add. For reference, the bread maker recipe is: 1.5 cups warm water, 3 cups flour, 2 tsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp yeast. Plus I usually add 1-3 tsp of a spice, tonight it was 1 tsp cumin & 2 tsp cumin seeds.
2018-11-20 butternut squash and roasted red pepper soup a repeat, 4x, with pizza factory breadsticks aka twisty garlic bread, a repeat. Both excellent. The soup, I used 14 small gala apples, since they were on sale, and the soup was super bright, people really liked it. We also added fresh ground pepper at the end, a master stroke. The twisty bread delicious as always - just the right amount of crunch!
2018-11-13 the best vegetable curry ever a repeat 2x, with white rice. Dinner by Rob. I heard it was good.
2018-11-06 vietnamese bun cha a favorite, 3x, five spice garlic roasted potatoes 4x and garlicky green beans 2x. The bun cha, awesome as usual, would make again - the tofu is a lot of work, and people have to assemble themselves at the end, but it's great. Next time, DON'T mix the tofu into the pasta myself, let people do that too - it gets a little lost, which is super sad. The potatoes, mediocre, there are way better roasted potato recipes. The beans, great, we used hoisin sauce (instead of oyster) and it's flavor was perfect! Would make again, too bad good beans are so hard to find and so expensive...
2018-10-28 For Hackloween: pumpkin mac and cheese non-vegan, 2x a repeat and pumpkin bread a repeat and pumpkin cheesecake a repeat and pumpkin smoothie. The mac and cheese, actually does taste a bit better with real cheese, though the difference isn't huge, good overall. The bread, nice, but I think maybe my standards for bread are way up since the last time we made it, since I thought it was just good this time. The cheesecake, amazing again, would make again for sure. The smoothies also delicious, and really the only way to use that much puree - I doubled the pumpkin and halved the almond milk, tastes the same and is cheaper. Also, double the spices ;-)
2018-10-23 red lentil curry 6x with garlic cilantro lime rice a repeat 3x and oatmeal cc cookies. The lentils were nice and filling, and easy & cheap to make. The rice, excellent again, would make again for sure. The cookies were nice too, that recipe is huge, we got 4 trays!
2018-10-16 thai carrot sweet potato soup 5x and maple cinnamon roasted butternut squash a repeat 2x and Galaxy Bark for dessert. The soup was amazing - the red curry paste really spiced it up nice, so much great flavor! Would make again. The squash, once again wonderfully sweet. The galaxy bark, "nailed it", the colored chocolate melts didn't melt very well (the made like a thick goo, rather than a runny liquid like the base dark chocolate). When I tried to get them to spread like in the image, it just wouldn't do that - stuck together and glommed into the darker stuff. Ultimately I ended up just basically dissolving the colors in the dark, which meant it all became dark - no swirling colors on the top. But the edible sparkles and the other decorations made it look sort of OK, and of course it TASTES like chocoate, so it still got eaten (though there was so much, about half of it is left). Anyway, need to figure out how to properly get the colored stuff to melt to a liquid - perhaps using a double-boiler would be a good idea? Going further in the microwave was not workable, it just burns the hot spots in something that thick... maybe we could add something to thin it out, like a milk? Need to talk to a chocolate expert.
2018-10-09 jerk sweet potato and black bean curry a favorite 2x and spicy indian rice a favorite 3x plus amazing chocolate cake for Pari's birthday. The curry & rice, incredible as always, good to know the favorites are still awesome. The chocolate cake, indeed incredible as billed - it's was rich and moist and oh so very sweet and chocolaty. Would make again, though, it's also huge - we had 20 people and couldn't finish it, I took some pieces home. Also, it's not saying here, but I am making "hack bread" in the bread maker basically every week. It's like this: 1.5 cups water, 3 cups flour (one is optionally wholewheat if you want brown bread), 2 tsp granulated sugar, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp yeast, plus the hack: 1 to 2 tsp of a spice, I've tried pretty much all of them as this point, I can recommend cumin (and cumin seed) as being particularly well suited to bread, but lots of them are interesting and good. I tried both adding them at the beginning, and adding them at the mid-beep, and it doesn't seem to make any difference so I've just taken to adding at the beginning since it's easier.
2018-10-02 vegetable vindaloo 2x and carrot-ginger rice 2x a repeat and some carrot cupcakes. The vindaloo was interesting, it wasn't flavorful enough with just the 2x spice mix, so I added another 2x at the end, and that made it awesomely spicy. But probably still not good enough to actually recommend doing again. The rice, excellent as always. And the cupcakes, amazing, and oily :-)
2018-09-25 thai red curry a repeat 10x with pineapple fried rice 2x and lime sugar cookies. The red curry, great as usual; I used cans of red curry paste from the nearby ethnic super market, much cheaper than the jars at FreshCo, but I think there is significant sugar in them, the whole curry ended up much sweeter than I remember it being. Also, 10x, but I only used 8 cans of coconut milk, and even that was too much - I think you could get away with 6. Also, lots of extra veg as always. The pineapple rice, we had to drain extra juice from the pineapple out of the pan in order to begin the caramelizing, but otherwise as written - and it was delicious, would make again. The lime cookies, I made because we had extra lime juice - though you couldn't taste the lime, they were delicious.
2018-09-18 parkers split pea soup 3x a repeat and simple whole wheat bread a repeat and easy classic peach pie. The soup, excellent as always, we added a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice, and a teaspoon of hot paprika, but otherwise as written. The bread, incredible, the honey taste and the sweetness are awesome, and doing it in the cupcake pan is fun and easy to serve, would make again, even though it does take almost 3h. The pie, the peaches were great, but the recipe was underwhelming. I think in particular I agree with other recipes that the oven should be hotter - we had it in for over the maximum 50 minutes it called for and the dough was STILL doughy and undercooked. Ironically I picked the recipe partly for that lower temp, to agree with bread...
2018-09-04 Cauliflower Buffalo Wings 4x a favorite repeat and Vegan Vichyssoise Soup 4x. The "wings", once again absolutely amazing. The transformation is remarkable. As advised below, we used the hot sauce and the "ranch dip" (we actually baked the dip on! it worked well), and didn't use the "salt & vinegar" sauce at all. The soup was simple and delicious, would make again for sure. That's sure one heck of a huge amount of leeks, but the cooked down pretty quickly in two frying pans. Chilling with ice/the fridge got it to just above room temp by the time of a slightly-late dinner, but I actually think it would be fine served hot too.
2018-08-21 smoky black bean soup 3x a repeat and vegan cabbage tofu bowl a favorite repeat 2x, but 4x sauce and 3x tofu, as suggested below. The soup was actually bland and earthy, even with extensive modifications at the end, it only got up to "acceptable"; I'm not sure why it wasn't as good as previous times we've made it. We didn't drain or rinse the beans this time, because the recipe says not to do that, but I'm thinking perhaps on previous attempts, we did anyway? If I made it again I WOULD drain and rinse at least a few of the cans. The red cabbage bowl, amazing as always, there is a reason that one is one the favorites list. Pretty easy to make, and super delicious and crunchy!
2018-08-07 thai red curry 8x a repeat, garlic cilantro lime rice 2x a repeat and fruit crumble made with frozen fruit 3x, we found a HUGE bag of frozen fruit in the freezer. The curry was great again - lots of extra veg. 8x STILL didn't fill the pot. I was glad I put TWO of the little jars of curry paste in, it could have used even more, I need to go to an asian super market again. The rice, no limes at FreshCo, so we used lemons, and it ended up super lemony good! The fruit dessert, despite vast quantities, it vanished while still hot, would make again, I wonder how much a bag of frozen fruit like that costs?
2018-07-31 fresh vegetable crunchy rolls with sriracha soy sauce tofu 8x and easy soft chewy chocolate chip cookies 2x. Rolls were delicious, julienned veggies are lots of work, but since also there is a lack of cooking, and people roll the rolls themselves, this dinner is actually not so bad to make. Would make again - fabulous for a hot summer day! The cookies, interesting - we used honey, and I think it DOES make them chewier, with that honey aftertaste. But I think still not the best chocolate chip cookies we've made...
2018-07-24 cold noodle bowl with sriracha peanut crumble 5x, it was amazing. Somehow 5x made *two* huge pots, not one, so I'd make less next time, but overall this was amazing, tasted great, no "cooking" at all (just a lot of work with the food processor), would make again on another hot summer day!
2018-07-17 jerk sweet potato and black bean curry 2x a favorite repeat with jeweled yellow rice 4x and chocolate-dipped oatmeal peanut butter cookies. The curry, amazing as always. And it went really well with the rice, which was beautiful, though since we used cachews and not pine nuts, I don't now how similar the taste was to the actual recipe, but it was good, just very similar to other rice dishes we have made here. The cookies, a bit disappointing - the base cookie was very plain, the lack of sugar really made it not pop, but the chocolate dipping was fun and delicious!
2018-07-10 Gazpacho a repeat 4x and chocolate chip cookies. Gazpacho wonderful as always, and so easy to make with the food processor!
2018-06-26 wonderful curried sweet potato soup a repeat 5x with korma curry paste 1/3 as like last time. Plus hackbread and a loaf of sourdough turned into garlic bread. The soup is *amazing*, really incredible how sweet and delicious it was. Would make again, it could even be a favorite.
2018-06-19 smoky mac-stuffed sweet potatoes 5x (for a quiet night), this dish was incredible, one of the most delicious things we've made in months, several people suggested that we add it to favorites immediately, but I am going to hold off at least until we make it one more time, you never know what's a fluke and what's just awesome from one try! We also had 5-spice hackbread from the bread maker, and a guest helped us make these awesome toasted-oatmeal balls for dessert (basically combine toasted oatmeal with something sticky, like chocolate or nut butter, add a few nuts, and roll into balls, drizzle more chocolate on top... amazing)
2018-06-12 general tso's chickpeas, a repeat, 4x and spanish rice, a repeat, 4x. Plus an attempt at vegan meringue cookies, and then a franken-version of ultimate chocolate chip cookies. The chickpeas, awesome as always. Really, I'm adding it to favorites. The spanish rice, a more-true attempt this time, we really did attempt to brown the rice and onions, and it turned out OK. I cut the salt by half, but I think that was a mistake, it could have used more salt. Anyway, mediocre, I don't think I'd make it again, though it is unusual. The meringue, we have no idea why, but it basically wouldn't foam/beat. After 10 minutes in the stand mixer, still mostly liquid with a layer of foam. We tried adding more cream of tartar and even some corn starch, but no dice. I think maybe the aquafaba was weird, it wasn't as clear as I remember it being the time it worked (more cloudy, more yellow, perhaps the cans were older?). Anyway then we used the remains of that as an egg substitute in the chocolate chip cookies, which I also didn't work, since they made pancake cookies (lack of binder there too).
2018-06-05 1-hour vegan chili 3x with hackbread and garlic bread. Plus vegan oatmeal cookies. The chili, pretty good, we added extra cumin, a bit of smoked paprika, and extra oregano, plus some lemon juice. The cookies, we lacked butter and eggs, thus this choice, but they are amazing, some of the best oatmeal cookies I've made (I added raisins, and used chocolate milk for the 1tbsp soy milk, otherwise as written).
2018-05-29 malka dal red lentil curry a repeat 4x and rosh hashana carrot raisin rice 3x. The dal once again impressed, would make again for sure, very tasty. It was a bit too liquid-y this time compared to what I like, and Pari added some extra spices at the end (including cloves and more oil-burst-coriander seeds), but I think that was because I didn't let them burst enough at the beginning to get the full taste in. The rice was a bit ordinary - there are better carrot-rice recipes below.
2018-05-22 spicy lemongrass noodle soup 8x and oatmeal raisin cookies 2x. It's hard to scale up a recipe for 2 people to one for 20! Ended up putting too much pasta in (they didn't have glass noodles, so I used vermicelli; put in about 1.5 packages, one would have been sufficient). It was still really great dish though, lots of people asked for the recipe! I think it was the lemongrass that was the magic ingredient. Just that alone on the pot at the beginning was magic. I also used a LOT of extra veggies compared to the recipe. The marinated tofu, I stirred right in rather than have it on top, since they didn't have firm at the store and mine was falling apart anyway. But I think it was also a key part of the taste. Cookies, really great actually, despite having like 60, they were almost all gone before I left.
2018-05-15 creamy vegan mac and cheese 3x and garlicky green bean stirfry 2x, plus molten marshmallow chocolate cakes 2x for dessert. The mac and cheese recipe, despite coming recommended from noisebridge, was well below average - comfort food, yes, but very bland. I added extra nutritional yeast, and extra spices, and got it to "OK" but certainly never making it again. The beans, simple and wonderful. The dessert, positively diabolical, it was like the richest, most sinful super huge brownie I've ever eaten. Nobody went back for a second one, but only because ONE was already far far too much!
2018-05-08 spicy vegan potato curry 2x (with extra veggies) and lemon brown rice 3x plus chocolate chip marshmallow cookies and bread from the bread maker. The curry was spicy for sure, but a bit bland until we added extra cumin, some garam masala and some lemon juice to brighten it up. The cookies, somehow failed to set timer, when we got them out, the marshmallows had actually melted into the dough, I think saving the cookies from burning, but also disappointing us! Delicious anyway. The rice, subtle but excellent, comboed well.
2018-04-10 vegetarian chili 4x but only 3x on the tomatoes and beans plus vegan corn bread, which we made twice. The chili, added mushrooms, and had to sub swiss chard instead of celery, plus we added some apple cider vinegar to brighten it up. After all that, it was actually great - for a chili. Too spicy by half though, 4 jalapeño's was too many, I think 2 would have been sufficient. The corn bread, amazing, incredible, would make again for sure! We also had bread in the bread maker again, great as always.
2018-04-03 Ewans Carrot Soup 1x a repeat and Parker's Split Pea Soup 3x a repeat and simple whole wheat bread except with sugar water instead of honey. The pea soup was great, would make again. The carrot soup was a bit watery (probably my mistake), but tasty enough once we got the sugar in and added some lemon juice. The bread, we couldn't find the loaf tins, so we made it in pots and in cupcake tins, and it was AMAZING, I'd make the "cup breads" or "breadlets" again any time, handy and delicious, plus it reduced the baking time! Also made a loaf of white bread in the bread machine and turned that info garlic rosemark bread, which was delicious as always. Finally, Joseph brought ingredients for smores egg rolls, delicious but oh-so-unhealthy!
2018-03-27 thai green curry 6x a repeat and pineapple fried rice 1.33x. The curry, spicy and great as usual. 6x was totally the right call - just fits, after things boil down, though with that much veggie there sure is a LOT of chopping! The rice also delicious, but we think the extra freezer frost on the frozen peas/etc added moisture, which resulted in it being a bit mushier. I liked it, but other people apparently think it should have been crisper / more "fried".
2018-03-06 cheesy vegan potato broccoli casserole 4x and vegan donuts 2x. Both excellent, would totally make the casserole again, a bit of work but not as bad as you'd think with the food processor to do all the slicing. The donuts were actually easy to make - just get the oil to the right temp. Rolling in the sugar was a bit tricky, injecting the jam surprisingly easy. Caster sugar was just a few dozen seconds in the blender.
2018-02-20 potato mushroom pea pierogies 8x and sweet sauerkraut 2x a repeat with pull-apart herb and cheese bread and dried apples. The pierogies were great, but also huge amounts of work - and, about 2x too much stuffing for the amount of dough. Would make again, if we have lots of labor, but cut the filling in half. The sauerkraut was great, very sweet and mild, as intended, just like last time. The pull-apart bread was AMAZING, would make again for sure. The dried apples, disaster, I think the slices the peeler machine makes are about 2x too thick, so it took forever to dry (at least 4 hours), and honestly were not very good when done either. Plus a lot more work than you'd think, with the manually drying off in paper towels. Not going to try again, even though I really like dried apples...
2018-02-13 roasted red pepper pasta 4x a repeat, and apple pie a repeat, and chocolate chip cookies. The pasta, spicy and great, and easy to make. The apple pie, amazing as usual, and it was super fun using the new peeler/corer machine (medieval torture device for apples). The cookies, tasted great, but came out super pale, not sure what was up with that?
2018-02-06 jerk sweet potato and black bean curry a favorite, 2x and gobi manchurian 2x, and spice-stuffed sandworm bread, as well as some bread-maker bread made into garlic bread again. The curry, awesome as usual, super delicious. We added some cayenne to spice it up a bit. The gobi was awesome, especially the full spice version, but it was also a multi-stage process to make, and hard to scale - 2x was just a side dish, and it's not clear how you would make more easily. The sandworm looked AWESOME, totally worth making, and the bread was delicious too - kind of like a cinnamon bun, but less butter and more interesting spice flavor too. Ours was fatter and shorter, and despite cooking it 10 minutes longer than recipe, we should have cooked it longer than that. Would totally make again.
2018-02-03 Special Saturday Lunch for the Mini Repair Cafe. I made morroccan spiced tomato stew a repeat, 5x and pizza factory breadsticks, also a repeat. Both were great, would make again, and we got lots of praise from the cafe repair volunteers! 5x also didn't quite fill the pot - I feel like you could do 6x, or, I guess, actually add the amount of water they call for...
2018-01-30 creamy eggplant tomato soup 4x and some bread in the bread maker using a recipe from Will (water/sugar/salt/yeast/flour, it was not fancy), and apple cinnamon sugar pull apart bread. The soup was great - not exactly as on the recipe, since I added some lemon juice and 2 tsp of garam masala. People devoured it, but it was also a fair amount of work, so yes, would make again, but it's actual work. The bread-maker bread was good, a kind of tough crust, but wow it was super easy - literally just dump the stuff in and hit go! The apple bread, absolutely incredible, and so convenient to serve as well - everybody get a pull! Need to make again all the darn time. Also, used the fancy new apple peeler/coreer machine, which butchered the apples, but it WAS a lot easier than doing it by hand!
2018-01-23 best vegetable curry ever 2x and pizza factory breadsticks. I don't know about best ever, but the curry was really delicious. We used more veggies (esp tomatoes) than it called for, but, basically, as written. The twisty breadsticks were awesome, just a tiny bit too salty (we used a tsp salt 1 tsp garlic powder it the butter), but amazing in general, and pretty easy to make. Even the crazy "UNGREASED cooking sheet" turned out to be correct - really needed it to be ungreased to hold the twists in place, but the bread did not stick at the end. Would make the bread again for sure, and probably the curry too.
2018-01-16 smoky vegan black bean soup 3x and chewy french bread from scratch, which we made into our usual rosemary garlic bread, of course. The soup was great, lots of people said they loved it. Not exactly according to recipe - I used more celery, carrots, and peas, and less black beans.
2018-01-02 vegan tomato zucchini soup 3x and old reliable french bread which we made into garlic bread, of course. The soup was good - we used only canned tomatoes, so it might conceivably be excellent in season. The bread was in fact simple and reliable - really delicious, and not very much work with the stand mixer. But I need to make a LOT more breads before I can really say if any of them are "above average", let alone excellent... Baking season has begun again!
2017-12-19 vegetarian borscht 3x a repeat and chocolate chip cookies using the new stand mixer! The Borscht was super delicious, just like last time - as with last time, we added some zucs, and an extra splash of apple cider vinegar. And considerable salt. Plus non-vegan sour cream :-)
2017-12-05 thai green curry 4x plus indian yellow rice a repeat 3x. We used extra veggies for the curry (asparagus, broccoli), and 4x still wasn't enough - could have fit 6x in the pot. It was great though, super spicy! The rice was amazing again as well.
2017-11-28 golden roasted curry mustard potatoes 2x and sweet potato leek soup 3x. Both repeats, both great, people gobbled them up. As before, wish we could have made more potatoes, but all 4 trays were already in use...
2017-11-14 creamy vegan butternut squash linguine with fried sage a repeat, 2x and bbq lentil baozi, our first attempt at chinese steamed buns. The pasta, yummi just like last time, and 2x is a little misleading I think - we did two packages of pasta, with 4 acorn squash (that we roasted to avoid having to peel), so it might actually be more like 3x. Anyway, not as good as last time I think, but people still gobbled it up. The baozi, we had considerable trouble with yeast, but the final product was still pretty good - the dough wasn't quite the awesomeness that really good baozi has, but it was a recognizable attempt at it, so we're pretty proud. We learned a lot of lessons - next time, use plastic bowls to keep heat better (and make yeast more active); make the baozi much smaller; get a bamboo steamer; and, although it's obviously sacrilege, probably do actual pork baozi, just to keep our number of variables down.
2017-11-07 mediterranean baked sweet potatoes a favorite repeat, 3x and bulgur salad 2x. The potatoes, great as always. The salad was also good, but not good enough to recommend making again.
2017-10-31 coconut butternut squash 2x and chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies. The soup was good, but the cookies were a disaster, I burned them because they never "melted down", just staying in the lumps I put down...
2017-09-12 coconut red curry with chickpeas 4x with spicy indian rice a repeat, 3x. The curry was great, I had to sub some veggie stock for a bit of the coconut milk, which was in short supply at the store, and added extra too since the curry seemed really thick. We used shepherd peppers, and long beans, but otherwise as written - delicious, and 4x filled the pot actually ABOVE the brim, I had to remove a couple of bowls to fit it all in. The rice, a repeat, was FANTASTIC again, really delicious and fluffy, with a nice texture and crunch as was as flavor, I'm actually going to make it a favorite, since we don't have a favorite rice yet. Roberta also made her Snacklab Seasonal Sidedish Showdown today - a pesto red onion apple pizza. It was amazingly good, really didn't taste like pizza, but was delicious. The pesto really dominated the taste; the dough was wonderful. It's very hard to judge it against the apple rolls, since this is like super savory and that was super sweet, such totally different tastes!
2017-09-05 butternut squash and roasted red pepper soup 4x a repeat and for Eric's Seasonal Snacklab Sidedish Showdown caramel apple sweet rolls, which despite messing up on (the dough needed even more extra flour than I added), were awesome tasting. The soup, we had to adulterate a bit - but basically just some extra curry powder and some garam masala.
2017-08-29 vegan red cabbage bowl a favorite repeat, 2x, but with 4x sauce and 3x tofu, as suggested below - really good advice. and split pea soup also a repeat, 3x, and garlic bread. The red cabbage bowl, amazing, it's the sauce that makes that dish for sure, and damn it is tasty! Stays on the favorite list for sure, though next time, no beans, splitting them length wise was crazy amounts of work. The soup was also quite good, though as before, we had to adulterate it quite a bit at the end - lemon juice, garlic powder, cumin, salt, pepper, and some oregano.
2017-08-15 broccoli and chickpea curry 6x (ish) and soft oatmeal cookies and vegan meringue cookies a repeat. The curry was good, though it did need a surprisingly large amount of salt. We only 6x'ed the veggies, the chickpeas and tomatoes just 3x. The oatmeal cookies, OK, but I've had better. The meringue cookies, just like last time, a miracle! We also tried waffles using the aquafaba, and they sort-of worked: made the right shape, but didn't have the density or texture of usual waffles. Still good but I don't think suitable as actually waffles, they were better as crispy snack food.
2017-08-08 Spicy Lentil Soup 4x a favorite repeat, and Vegan Brownies and garlic bread. The soup was great as always. The brownies, sadly we forgot to put in the baking powder, and so it came out as "Nutty Poop Treats", oddly mishapen and very dark brown. But tasted ok. The garlic bread, made with fresh garlic from my garden, was awesome.
2017-08-01 vegan garlic pasta 6x and curry garlic sweet potato fries with miso gravy 4x. The fries, amazing, quite a bit of work, but super delicious, would make again! The pasta, not bad, but nothing to write home about.
2017-07-25 Bengali Bottle Gourd Curry 4x and Restaurant Style Garlic Naan 2x. Curry, I added long beans, and used half/half spinach and bokchoi. Plus 2 blocks of tofu, pressed and fried till crisp with some improvised sauce. The curry was the blandest, most boring thing I've made in years (but the tofu was good!). Panter and I hacked it for about 10 minutes at the end and managed to bring it up to "good", here's what I remember of that hack: enormous amounts of garlic powder (something like 3 Tbsp), even more of lemon juice (maybe 6 Tbsp?), which I only added after dumping at least 4 cups of water (bland green veggie juice) from the pot; we ground up some cumin (perhaps 1 Tbsp); also perhaps a tsp of our crazy hot ground chillies. We talked a lot about herbs, I think I did end up adding perhaps 1 Tbsp of dried parsley. 2 tsp of ground black pepper. 1 Tbsp of salt. Probably some other things I forgot? Anyway, certainly woulnd't make that again, though quite a few people told me the final product was tasty. The naan was great, would make again, though next time I would splurge for proper vegan butter instead of using the cheap vegan margarine, which has a very strange white colour and is a bit off in taste too. We made it using the oven/broiler technique, which seemed to work really well!
2017-07-18 thai yellow coconut mango curry 6x and Ital Vital’s Ginger-Carrot Rice 3x a repeat and chewy ginger molasses cookies. The mango curry was amazing, super sweet and lots of flavor, would make again. Next time I think I would try to pick riper mangoes in general. 6x filled the pot right to the brim, even though I only used 10 cans of coconut milk - I think actually given how watery it was, 8 cans would be sufficient. Also, I cut the sugar a bit, but I would cut it even more next time - I think half of what they call for would be sufficient. The rice, we made with this crazy "red cargo" rice that I found at a Korean grocery store, but it did not improve the rice - in fact I think it killed the taste a bit, the rice dish was unremarkable, whereas last time we made it it was incredible. The cookies, delicious and incredible but also SUPER RICH, it's actually hard to eat more than one! We made them with demerara sugar, using less molasses, including demerara sugar for the final coating, I think that contributed to the richness.
2017-07-11 gazpacho a favorite repeat, 4x, and Vietnamese Spring Rolls with Crispy Tofu 4x. The gazpacho was *amazing* this time, I think partly thanks to using fresh garlic scapes from my garden. 4x completely filled the largest pot to the brim, it was perfect, and we had enough left over for me to take some. The spring rolls were also delicious, but a lot of work - Roberta did most of the chopping and rolling, while I made the sauces. Was really great to have two cold dishes for such a hot day. We also had a large watermellon which almost entirely vanished as an orderve.
2017-07-04 Mujaddara a repeat, 4x and vegan carrot cake with macadamia frosting doubled. The Mujaddara, great again - and 4x was a HUGE amount, basically two pots worth, we had some left overs, and it tasted great, especially with the yogurt (I couldn't find vegan yogurt so we used the real stuff, with TRIPLE garlic, of course). The carrot cake itself was good, but the icing wasn't wonderful - though to be fair, I wasn't able to buy macadamia's, so I just doubled the amount of cashews, that might have had some effect.
2017-06-20 roasted tomato basil pesto pasta 3x and vegan tomato and garlic foccacia also 3x. The pesto pasta was super popular and gone like immediately, would make again - we should have made more, or at least diluted it more (I only used 2 bags of pasta, but tripled the recipe - next time I'd just make 3!). The almonds especially add a perfect crunchy note. The foccacia, also amazing, would make again, though the recipe is more than a little confusing / problematic. In particular, it says to use a cup of water with the flaxseed, but the ingredients lists says to use only 6 Tbsp - the latter is correct, it doesn't work with a cup; it also helps to grind the flax a bit to open them up, to get the gel it mentions. The saran wrap step is also super annoying, but not sure how to fix it. And we had to add more flour, almost a half a cup more, to get a non-super-liquid dough - so next time I would reduce the amount of water with the yeast, 2 cups is too much for sure. Anyway, it was excellent!
2017-06-13 sweet potato falafel burgers x3 and simply healthy coleslaw x a lot. The burgers were good but not great - they held together and tasted good, but didn't pop like a nice meat burger can. People still gobbled them down though, don't get me wrong! The coleslaw was amazing, would make again, it's so simple and so delicious, we used entire cabbages and served in rounds and it all got eaten in the end.
2017-06-06 split pea soup 3x, a repeat and one hour bread 2x. The pea soup, as before, needed a bit of adjustment at the end (we added 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, a couple of teaspoons of oregano and 1/2 teaspoon of ground chilis, as well as salt), but it turned out excellent, would make again. The bread was highly experimental, but turned out GREAT, super yummi, it vanished quickly. I don't know how good it would be after it cools, but it was amazing warm & fresh.
2017-05-31 jerk sweet potato and black bean curry a favourite repeat 2x, rice and peas 3x. Plus ultimate chocolate chip cookies 2x for dessert (made 77!). The black bean dish, may be the best version of it we've ever made, it was amazing. The rice and peas, is actually rice and beans, it's recommended in the black bean recipe as a companion dish, and it was good for that, but it wasn't anything to write home about on it's own (needed more salt at the very least). The cookies were amazing warm, but I think would be a bit crumbly and dry if any were actually left long enough to stop being warm... still super delicious, would make and consume again!
2017-05-23 spicy roasted ratatouille with spaghetti a repeat 4x with garlic bread and chewy brownies doubled. The ratatouille was good, not great - I made a special tomatoe sauce extra since the previous attempt said it would benefit from it, but it wasn't enough. 4x is also a lot for the oven - I did two batches of 4 trays each and still had an extra tray to do later with the garlic bread. Anyway, it was good, but I don't think I'd make it again - and we were short food since I only made the one big dish this time. The brownies were great.
2017-05-16 thai green curry 8x and roasted curry mustard potatoes a repeat 2x with vegan fried rice 4x. The curry was great, though we were pretty far off recipe, almost all different veggies, no potatoes, and probably double the curry paste (made it super super spicy!!). The potatoes, good again, though not great - I remember them being sweeter last time, maybe we used sweet potatoes or something? Still yummi of course! The vegan fried rice, I actually was looking at recipes for pineapple fried rice, and thought this was one of them - so much so that I bought a pineapple even though it wasn't on the ingredients list. Anyway, worked out great, this is a good recipe, very tasty and 4x actually made more than one pot's worth! Though I have to say, the tofu prep was bizarre - baking them, then a marinade, then frying them too? And in the end I didn't think for all that effort that the tofu was anything to write home about - pretty much unnoticeable itself in the mix, though of course it's marinade sauce was fundamental to the taste. So I wouldn't do the tofu that way again.
2017-05-09 Potato Rendang w/ Green Beans a repeat 8x and Caribbean Rice Beans 2x and ooey-gooey cinnamon buns (without nuts) with white icing. The rendang, good, and huge - it actually didn't fit in one pot, it was more like 1.5 pots total. The rice, super easy to make and yummi, but I think not quite good enough to recommend. The cinammon buns, absolutely incredible, best baked dish of the season! Will totally be making them again, even though they take 3 hours! I also want to try a vegan version of them though, since that was the inspiration for making them, and I know it can be as good. Also, we made it in metal bread dishes, which caused them to "explode upwards" a little bit, I think next time we should try the glass baking dishes, even though they have curved bottoms.
2017-05-02 general tso's chickpeas a repeat 3x and kung pao chickpeas 3x with easy spanish rice 4x plus Roberta made some "ice banana" (like ice cream but with bananas). The General Tso's, great again, love the broccoli and the crunchy chickpeas. The kung-pao also good, quite spicy and the peanuts are great. The spanish rice, very unusual to make (I burned quite a bit of the rice in the first part), but delicious! Not sure if I would make it again, but it is almost that good, and really was the base for todays meals in an awesome way. Roberta dessert great too, totally NOT ice-cream, but it is really good, and simple to make - just combine frozen black banana's with regular ripe banana's one to one in a blender, with whatever other flavours you want. Then chill in the freezer for whoever long you need till you serve.
2017-04-25 vegan butternut squash soup 3x and garlic bread and date banana cookies. The soup needed a bit of help (we added some nutmeg, extra maple syrup, some pepper, and some lemon juice), but ended up excellent, would make again. 3x actually only made about half a pot, which turned out OK since it's one of the quietest nights in memory. The cookies, decent, but not anything to write home about, would not make again.
2017-04-18 creamy vegan garlic pasta with roasted tomatoes 4x and a szechuan-style Asparagus dish by Panter, and garlic bread, and vegan banana bread. The pasta was delicious, would make again. Only mod was I added a good portion of nutritional yeast to add some flavor/creaminess. Panter's dish was great, really not sure whether it was better than Sonya's, or not, but it certainly beat the guac and Robert'a mushroom and lemon dish. The garlic bread tonight was especially awesome, we had bread from Maybels and extra vegan butter and it was just superb.
2017-04-11 curried sweet potato soup 4x and an asparagus pasta dish by Sonya, and peanut butter cookies. The soup was great, just the right hint of spice, super delicious, would make again. I made the curry paste myself (1/3 of that recipe). Sonya's asparagus dish was improvised from about 3 different recipes, but it was delicious, she's in the lead for the Snacklab Seasonal Sidedish Showdown. The cookies, made 6 dozen! and were good.
2017-04-04 spicy indian rice a repeat 3x with spicy thai peanut sauce over roasted sweet potatoes a favorite repeat, also 3x. And Eric made guacamole with asparagus 3x for the Snacklab Seasonal Sidedish Showdown. I added tomatoes and red peppers, and some extra lemon juice and water to make the blender go, but otherwise as written. Both repeats excellent! The guac was good, but interestingly you couldn't really taste the asparagus! I think it was better than Roberta's dish, but honestly still not great, perhaps a B+?
2017-03-28 Indian Curry Quinoa 4x and asian cashew quinoa salad 4x and for our first week of Snacklab Seasonal Sidedish Showdown, Roberta made asparagus mushrooms in creamy roaster garlic lemon sauce and we had fudge sandwiches for dessert. The salad was excellent, would make again. The curry, OK. The asparagus, also OK, I asked a few people and in general I think it's a "B", good but nothing to write home about. We have left over food today since there is so many dishes!
2017-03-21 thai red curry with asparagus and tofu 4x and mint biryani with peas 4x. Plus an improvised dessert from some squash. Best dinner in awhile, would do both again! Both the curry and the biryani were both great. The biryani we didn't have a slow cooker so had to adapt that. The curry, we added some fried onions and garlic, didn't feel right without that at the start. Also, the curry, was more liquid than we liked, I think next time I would NOT add the stock/water that it called for, it's unnecessary. The dessert: basically, roasted squash + maple syrup + cinnamon + ground cloves + nutmeg. Blend, put in glass baking dish, sprinkle some brown sugar, and broil. Yummi!
2017-03-14 sweet potato ginger and carrot soup 3x with garlic bread. Plus apple pie and strawberry pie for Pi Day! The soup was good, even great actually, but we think it could have been made better with some lemon juice to brighten it up. The apple pie we've made before and is good. The strawberry pie was out of this world, incredible, would totally make again. We added 4 cloves (ground) and 1/4 tsp. nutmug to the recipe, and made two open-top pies rather than one closed pie, but otherwise, as written.
2017-03-07 roasted red pepper pasta 8x with garlic bread, and chewy oatmeal raisin cookies. The pasta was good - spicy! We added extra nutritional yeast, since it needed something. Not as good as the previous red pepper pasta, I think. The cookies are excellent, nice and chewy!
2017-02-28 roasted red pepper chickpea and spinach curry 4x and indian yellow rice pilaf 4x (without the saffron). Both repeats, both awesome, very tasty. And panters Date squares for dessert - totally amazing, we should make these again, best dessert in a long time! We slightly burned the rice. We also tried for aquafaba-based (chickpea water) meringues again, but they didn't turn out so well - edible but not incredible. Apparently recipes vary a LOT for that stuff, and it really matter!
2017-02-21 baked leek and sweet potato gratin doubled and rutabaga chipotle soup doubled and Chocolate Meringue Cookies with Peanut Butter Cream Centers. The gratin was great - a little light on the leek (would make twice as many leeks for same scale next time), but super tasty - also, we used about 4x the breadcrumbs it calls for as well, anyway, would make again, not as much work as you'd think, and turned out well. The soup: worst thing I have ever made at hacklab. Had a very nasty bitter taste, which we attempted to fix using olive oil, sugar and salt (all three of which helped), but it wasn't sufficient to get it to even "OK", it was still basically inedible IMO - we ended up tossing 2/3 of it, though a few people did say they liked it. Not sure what the problem was, really, but perhaps subbing tofu for cream isn't a great idea? Or maybe we just got unlucky with the celery, which can sometimes be pretty bitter? The cookies, excellent, but crazy fattening. Gone in 60 seconds :-). But, lots of left over peanut butter cream, about 2x as much as a recipe actually needs - and I'm pretty sure that Panter actually doubled the cookie recipe itself, so that means the peanut butter is actually 4x what you need, which is crazy... 2 cups DID seem like a lot, and it was...
two missed weeks, Eric was sick. Panter and Roberta did made something in the second week, I think it was a curry? I don't think anything was made in the first week.
2017-01-31 Malka Dal Red Lentil Curry 6x and Garlic Cilantro Lime Rice 2x (a repeat) and carrot cake muffins with cinnamon glaze. The Dal was awesome, would make again, 6x was a but much - only 4x would fit in one pot, so we ended up with two pots 2/3 full or so. The rice, excellent as always - really strong on the lime this time, it was great! The muffins, incredible, would make again, 1x was enough for about 30 or so (but we made some larger square ones so got less).
2017-01-24 Majaddara 2x a repeat, and vegan apple pie bars 2x for dessert. The mujaddara was excellent like last time, but we should have made way more, it was gone 30 minutes after we served! The dessert is still cooling, but smells incredible. 4 part recipe is a bit extreme though, way way more work than the dinner!
2017-01-17 coconut red curry with chickpeas 3x and spicy indian rice a repeat 3x and chocolate chip banana bread. The curry was great, would make again - the chickpeas really bulk it up in a nice way! Would add more veggies next time, e.g. some broccoli or something like that; does not need tofu thanks to the chickpeas. I added some extra (dried) black mushrooms that we had around, and perhaps some extra red paste - was very spicy! The rice, excellent as usual. The bread, wonderful, a large loaf, but it vanished immediately :-). It's prime baking season now so I plan to make something for every open house!
2017-01-10 roasted eggplant and white bean soup 8x a repeat and cocoa date pie, which we have made before, but I think this is slightly different recipe. The soup, two pots, I wanted some leftovers since the freezer is empty. Soup is excellent, as before, would make again. The pie, super rich, and not as sweet as you might expect, it's good but you can only take a little bit of it, kind of like cheesecake.
2017-01-03 an old favorite jerk sweet potato and black bean curry doubled, with garlic bread. And ginger cookies doubled for desert. Both amazing! The cookies turned out a little thick - stayed closer to balls rather than flattening out, so we had to cook them longer, but still taste great.
2016-12-20 vegetarian borscht 3x and garlic bread. Excellent, lots of people said it was delicious and the best borscht they've ever had, would make again. We added 4 zucs, garlic, a couple splashes of apple cider vinegar, and we used the immersion blender a few seconds to thicken up the broth, but otherwise as written.
2016-12-17 For hackmas: haystack cookies and a merger between triple chocolate cookies and Sextuple chocolate cookies, specifically, the dough of the first, but the dipping of the second, with six kinds of chocolate :-)
2016-12-13 split pea soup, doubled and butternut squash linguini doubled, both repeats. Both were great - but especially the pasta, which again is real winner, would make again. The soup we had to adulterate a tiny bit - some extra oregano, some garlic powder. We made less than usual tonight since it being near Christmas, things are quiet.
2016-12-06 Maple Cinnamon Roasted Butternut Squash 2x and Homemade Vegetarian Chili 2x, plus 3 loaves of garlic bread. The squash is AMAZING, would make again, it smells so wonderful, and tastes just as good - but would be hard to feed a lot of people with it, it's more of a side-dish due to the room it takes on the cookie trays. The chili was good, just a regular chili - we added 4 jalepeno's to spice it up, but it still wasn't very spicy.
2016-11-29 baked leek and sweet potato gratin 3x and carrot apple ginger soup 4x with garlic bread (3 loaves). The soup is good, but we had to add a bunch of extra salt, garlic powder and basil to get it there. The gratin, we messed up a bit and forgot the salt when assembling, then we added extra salt to the oil/breadcrumb mixture, and stirred that into the dish, added extra plain breadcrumbs to the top. Worked out well, many people told me they loved it, but I found it a bit too salty.
2016-11-22 Roberta made veggie rolls and a lentil soup - sorry no links. Both were great.
2016-11-15 spicy lentil soup 3x a repeat and chocolate chili / Chili sin Carne al Mol 2x, with garlic bread. Both excellent. The chili is quite unique, and excellent with some bread to sop up the delicious chocolate sauce. The lentil soup amazing as always, really does benefit from having a lot of fresh lemon juice in it to bring out the flavors.
2016-11-08 spicy cabbage rice 3x and bengali cabbage and potato curry 3x. Both were good, not great. We had a lot of left over food since it was a super quiet night, I think everyone stayed home to watch election results.
2016-11-01 moroccan spiced tomato chickpea and zucchini stew a repeat, 5x and zucchini tater-tots 4x and (of course) garlic bread. The stew was only OK this time, not sure why it was so disappointing this time. The tater-tots, we were very excited for them, and then they were *enormous* amounts of work, and just not that good when they were done. It IS very important to flip them and make them crispy - this takes much longer than the quoted 30 minutes, but is worth it. Even so they are underwhelming. Also did a survey this week, about the two dishes - only three votes each: stew good/good/good, tots great/good/average.
2016-10-25 my favorite vegan chili a repeat, 3x and sweet potato leek soup 3x and garlic-rosemary bread, as usual. The chili was great, nice level of spice, but just not quite good enough to recommend doing again. The soup is amazing, super rich and tasty, would make again. Our new immersion blender is super awesome, did this down with a lot less trouble than the regular blender would have been.
2016-10-18 pumpkin mac and cheese 3x and spicy coconut noodles 4x and vegan pumpkin bread 2x. The mac and cheese was hearty and good, also HUGE, 3x made the 2 13x9 dishes and 2 of the 9x9, all quite deep. The coconut noodles were excellent, would make again. The bread, I made 3 subs, the most important was oats instead of the whole-wheat flour, then also sunflower seeds and cashews instead of walnuts. Given that, it was delicious and perfect texture, best bread I've ever made here actually, obviously would make again, though it seems like it might be partially miraculous that it turned out so good.
2016-10-11 For Thanksgiving: Butternut Squash With Whole Wheat, Wild Rice, & Onion Stuffing 2x and Red Quinoa Pilaf with Kale and Corn 2x and Vegan Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes 3x with deep dish apple crumble pie and apple pie by grandma ople (a repeat) for dessert. The squash was good, not great, but very hard to make (scooping half cooked squash while it's hot? Are they insane?), and took forever, I would not make it again. Also, we couldn't even FIND wild rice, so we subbed some awesome black rice that we found. The pilaf was excellent and much easier to make; 2x made less than half a pot so if I do make it again I'd scale it up more than that - 5x would probably fill the pot. Both pies were good and lasted about 3 minutes :-). The mashed potatoes we served because you can't have thanksgiving without mashed potatoes, but actually we didn't roast the garlic, just put it in with the potatoes while boiling, which was not as good for sure. Next time I'd do it proper...
2016-10-04 Ewans Carrot Soup (a repeat) 2x and Butternut Mac 2x and garlic bread. Both good, though we had to adulterate the carrot soup quite a bit - not sure why it wasn't as good straight up as last time. 10 lbs bag of carrots was $2, so this was a super cheap recipe! The Butternut Mac was easy and flavorful, but missing something, I just have no idea what - not quite as creamy as real cheese, but that wasn't the problem.
2016-09-27 Butternut Squash and Roasted Red Pepper Soup 3x and Golden Roasted Curry Mustard Potatoes 2x, with garlic bread for the soup. Both dishes were *excellent*, would make again. The soup, should have made 4x, it would have fit, and we needed the extra - all the food gone today at 8:15! The potatoes, 2x already filled all four trays in the oven, so not really possible to make more easily. The potatoes, we used way more mustard than they called for - perhaps double, otherwise as in recipe. The soup, we fried the onions and added garlic too, I can't imagine why the recipe doesn't fry the onions!
2016-09-20 mediterranean baked sweet potatoes doubled, a repeat and kale and apple salad also doubled. The potatoes awesome as always (and as always, we used at least 3x the sauce, just double the potatoes). The salad was good, but not as good as the previous kale salad (IMO, other people loved the apple in it).
2016-09-13 Roasted Red Pepper Chickpea and Spinach Curry 4x and Spicy Indian Rice a repeat, 6x. Both dishes excellent, would make again! The curry is very unusual, you bake it at the end rather than simmering it; it left the tomatoes in this super delicious flavor-explosion state! The rice was excellent as usual - once again we ignored the flooding instruction and did it our way.
2016-09-06 Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie 4x plus corn on the cob! 4x made more than we thought it would - 2 large and 2 small glass dishes; we had about 1.5 small ones left over since it was another quiet night (as expected). The shepherd's pie was good - much better with some hot sauce on top, of course :-).
2016-08-30 Kale and Kohlrabi salad 2x and vegan tomato cabbage stew 4x. The salad used all fresh ingredients from Eric's community garden plot, and was super delicious. The stew was also super yummi, 4x was just perfect - the cabbage took awile to stew down to fit, but in the end the pot was perfectly full.
three week's Eric was gone on vacation - apparently dinners *did* happen, Panter made a chili, and Pari did two meals, I'll try to get some details and recipes to add here
2016-08-02 sausage with potatoes and sauerkraut 4x and jerk sweet potato and black bean curry a repeat, 2x, plus rice and bread. We of course used vegan sausage for the sauerkraut recipe; which turned out delicious in the end, but we actually had to adulterate it a bit. We added garlic powder (a mistake I think?), some dried dill, and a surprisingly large amount of salt. Next time, I'd do some to the potatoes while they are cooking - perhaps a bit of sauce or herbs or something, I think they were the source of the bland. The jerk dish, excellent as always, but we used too much jerk (we used an entire jar PLUS some dried powder), the dish ended up ATOMIC in spice level, but still got totally eaten up in the end - lots of our members love very high levels of spice, apparently :-)
2016-07-28 Thai Red Curry 6x and garlic cilantro lime rice (a repeat) 4x with thai mango salad (not really this recipe, Pari improvised it), and a Spicy Napa Cabbage Slaw with Cilantro Dressing which Matt had a recipe for. The red curry was the best such curry we have made here; it was really delicious, would make again, but even with extra fluids and veggies (we added broccoli, beans from my garden, and carrots), 6x only made about 2/3 of the pot, so the recipe needs to be like 10x+ next time for sure; maybe TWO bottles of the curry paste. Also, we pressed and fried the tofu, which the recipe doesn't call for, but made a huge difference in the awesomeness I think. The rice we messed up a bit - very slow getting the water in, and then too much water later, so it ended up a big sticky, but still delicious like last time. The mango salad was the BEST; not sure how different it was from the linked recipe, but Pari hit that one out of the park! And the fruit store where we got the mangos (three blocks west of hacklab) also had amazing thai basil for cheap, we need to go there a lot more often! The cabbage slaw was SPICY! Overall one of the best dinners in awhile, we got a lot of compliments.
2016-07-19 Gazpacho a repeat, 4x and Cauliflower Buffalo Wings, 3x. The wings were amazing, would make again, in fact I think it's a new favorite! Thanks to Matt for the recipe. The franks hot sauce ones are better than the vinegar ones. The ranch dip recipe on the same link is also amazing. We could have used WAY more than 3x, but didn't really have oven space for more anyway... The gazpacho was also delicious as always, really does benefit from extra time to sit - totally worth making it an hour or more early. We also made vegan banana bread, but like last time, it came out more like a pudding. Still tastes delicious, but you need a spoon to eat it...
2016-07-12 Vietnamese bun cha with sticky spicy tofu a repeat, 3x and vegetarian stuffed cabbage rolls 2x. The bun-cha was excellent, as before, though somehow I ended up putting all the dressing on the pasta and none on the salad - the recipe isn't clear about where the dressing actually goes, and the pasta needed it... I did follow the instructions below re pressing the tofu, helped a LOT, but also should have recommended making WAY MORE than the recipe calls for - with recipe quantities, everyone only gets like 4 1-inch cubes, which isn't very much compared to the pasta or salad. Maybe double the tofu next time? The cabbage rolls, we added sauerkraut and Pari basically winged it, and it ended up way too strong on the herbs - especially the parsley, and too much pepper (spice) overall. Still good but a lot of work, I think next time I'd try a recipe which had more stuffing (e.g. potato or whatever).
2016-07-05 Cheesy Vegan Potato & Broccoli Casserole 4x and Zucchini Noodle Cashew Stir Fry 3x with a watermelon jello for desert. The casserole was subtle but excellent and pretty easy to make (thanks to food processor) - would make again. Does take a long time in the oven though. The stir fry, we don't have a spiralizer so it wasn't really "noodle" but it was really good - the sauce was great. A lot of chopping but otherwise super fast. Roberta's watermelon jello (using agar agar) was amazing!
2016-06-28 Roasted Eggplant and White Bean Soup 4x and Kuchumber Salad (a repeat) 4x and Baba Ganoush 2x, with an attempt at Vegan version of Chocolate Meringue Cooking with Peanut Butter Cream Centers for dessert. Plus garlic/rosemary/pepper bread. The soup was subtle but excellent and easy to make - would make again. Kuchumber salad awesome as usual - though you can't make friends with salad. The Baba Ganoush, Pari went totally nuts and WAY off that recipe, made a version she has done many times before, where you don't even blend it, and it was *amazing*, but that recipe link won't help at all to re-achieve it. I'll see if I can get her to write the recipe down. The attempt at vegan chocolate merangue cookies was bizarre - the coco caused the whipped aqua-faba to deflate, so we had very flat cookies. Still tasted incredible with the peanut butter though. We have this idea that it's the preservative in our cheap coco that caused the problem, plus the chemistry needs to be more acidic, and/or maybe we need to mix the coco in before beating the aqua-faba... we're going to try again soon...
2016-06-21 Vegan "Butter" "Chicken" 4x and Roasted Veggies 2x with Saffron Yellow Rice Pilaf 3x. The butter chicken was good but not great - Pari spent ages trying to fix it, but I thought it was fine. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be - only about half the pot for 4x. The rice was *awesome*, would make again, though really I don't think the saffron made much difference. The veggies were good, but no thanks to the recipe, you could have roasted them in olive oil for all the difference the recipe made. No leftovers, food was gone at about 9pm - though interestingly, we also ran out of bowls, we're somehow down a bunch, we need to buy more.
2016-06-14 Roaster Red Pepper Pasta 4x and Spicy Lentil Soup (a repeat) 4x. The red pepper pasta was surprisingly good, would make again. Rich and creamy and nutty. The soup was always was excellent. We also had garlic bread. Some left-over soup because it was a slow night - still only a few servings, but didn't have any thing to put it in since they are all still full from last week!
2016-06-07 vegetarian sweet potato chili 4x with spicy indian rice and carrot zucchini chickpea fritters plus a "broccoli surprise" by Matt. The chili was HUGE, 4x actually made two big pots, not one. It was also well below average, kind of plain and sweet in a bad way (we think it was the creamed corn); we extensively altered it at the end (more garlic, some fermented bean paste, and huge amounts of lemon juice) and that made it OK. We have a lot left over (10+ servings). The rice dish was amazing, would make again - though we just used enough water, not the overdose they call for, and forgot the peanuts. The fritters are also yummi, less spicy than I expected, really good with a bit of sriracha. Matt's Broccoli Surprise was also great, it used the same fermented bean paste, called "doubanjiang", and some tofu & garlic, all roasted in various stages, simple and delicious.
2016-06-01 General Tso's Chickpeas a repeat, 4x and a curry by Pari, both with garlic cilantro line rice 2x, and for dessert: Vegan Meringue Cookies. The General Tso, awesome as usual. Pari's curry (with potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cilantro and coconut milk) was great too. The lime rice, *great*, but also quite subtle - was a little overpowered by the two dishes tonight, I would do it again, but pair it with something a little less intense, like maybe a thai curry or something. The dessert, using "aquafaba" (bean water, literally the water from a can of chickpeas, usually wasted!) was incredible!!! Going to make again for sure. I can't believe how well it worked, and how easy it was too with the stand mixer :-)
2016-05-24 Potato Rendang with Green Beans a repeat, 8x, Japanese-Style Sesame Green Beans 4x and 6 cups of carrot rice (9 carrots). The rendang is great, would make again; it's a repeat from the very bottom with no comments so I wasn't sure. The beans are incredible, and so simple too, totally make them again! The carrot rice is an improv based on last weeks - lots of people told me it was good but they didn't like the onions in it, so no onions this time! We also made a rosemary lemonade by boiling some (dried) rosemary and squeezing all the zested lemons & limes from the rendang, it was really excellent as well!
2016-05-17 Golden Thai Curry with Green Beans 4x and Vegan Mashed Potatoes doubled and Ital Vital’s Ginger-Carrot Rice 3x. The carrot rice was great, should make again; triple was a big pot, it lasted longer than the curry, so double might be enough next time. We also failed to use the coconut oil, and added the cloves (1/3 of what it called for, next time I would try 2/3rds) late, so might get better. The curry was ordinary - too many potatoes watered down the taste and texture. We also subbed bok-choi and broccali for the carrots, since the rice had carrots already... The mashed potatoes on the other hand were *amazing*, we should do that again on a regular basis! The stand mixer made it easy to do as well, just boil and mix!
2016-05-10 Vegan Red Cabbage Bowl with Tofu and Peanut-Sriracha Sauce a repeat, doubled but with tripled tofu and quad dressing, as recommended below, and vegan mac and cheese, 6x. The cabbage was great, you can't usually make friends with salad, but I feel like this one might be an exception! The mac and cheese was good, not great - creamy, and filling, but not incredible. 6x was perfect, 2 big glass dishes and 2 small ones, last bowl was 10:30 or so. The search continues for a really awesome vegan mac and cheese...
2016-05-03 Spiced Vegan Lentil Soup, a repeat, 4x, and Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce over Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Rice 4x. The soup was great as always (I think this was the 3rd time we've made it?), and the roasted sweet potatoes were also excellent, A++, would make again. Not quite as good as the other two favorite sweet potatoes dishes I think, but truly great, I'm adding it to the favorites as well. We actually added some sweet potatoes to the soup as well, which added substance to it, and didn't ruin it (but I don't think it made it better either - the sweet element doesn't exactly fit). Panter also made Torta tat-Tamal, a Maltese dessert pie with dates and chocolate which was great (so sweet!), albeit a little runny.
2016-04-26 Vegetarian Borscht, a repeat, doubled and Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Soup 4x and rosemary garlic pepper bread as usual. Both soups OK, not great. Very quiet night, we might actually have left-overs!
2016-04-19 Roasted Root Vegetables with Rosemary doubled and Rutabaga Masala 8x, also tomato rice, 8 cups of basmati. Both dishes were good, but the roasted veggies did steal the show as expected. Even doubled was HUGE, we did 3 cookie trays and 2 glass baking dishes, and served in stages. We added extra herbs (dried basil and thyme) but otherwise basically as written. 8x masala wasn't quite enough, but we also didn't put all the tomatoes in, and could probably have put more of the rutabaga from the other dish in too, to fill the pot. I'd do the roasted veggies recipe again, though as with all of that kind of dish, sure is a LOT of chopping!
2016-04-12 California Avocado Cucumber Cups 6x and Moroccan Spiced Tomato, Chickpea and Zucchini Stew 4x, a repeat, and garlic/rosemary/pepper bread. The stew was great (would make again, as before), but at 4x (instead of 3x) still didn't fill the biggest pot, maybe 5x would do it; although we did not add 7 of the 9 cups of water it calls for (that would have made it a soup!). The cucumbers were AWESOME, but also a huge amount of work, and of course the Avocados came from Kensington Market - odds of being able to buy huge perfectly ripe ones like that at FreshCo are basically zero. Great dinner overall, but it didn't last - food was gone in like an hour, and then tons of people had to order in stuff...
2016-04-05 Homemade Vegetarian Chili, tripled and Vegan Cream of Broccoli Soup also tripled. The chili was good, I only doubled the beans (not tripled) but otherwise made as is. Decent but not worth making again. The soup was quite bland as is, we extensively adulterated it, but then it was excellent. What we did (this is to tripled, if you're making single, divide by three): added 3 tbsp of lemon juice, 6 tbsp of nutritional yeast flakes, 2 tbsp vegan butter, we had extra cashews already (maybe 1/4 cup extra, would add more next time for sure), a tbsp of thyme, and a tsp of garlic powder. Basic idea was: let's make it more creamy and savory, and it seemed to work. I would make the soup again, with these changes - it was really excellent.
2016-03-29 Ethopian Cabbage Dish, a repeat, doubled, Ingudai Tibs, and Spicy Ethiopian Beets all with Injera bread from Kensington Market. The cabbage was excellent, as always. The beet dish was spicy but otherwise a bit boring. The mushroom tibs were great, would make again. It's nice to get more elaborate on occasion, I think this may be the first time ever with 3 main dishes?
2016-03-22 10 spice vegetable soup, tripled. It made a *huge* amount of food, two nearly-full pots! It was OK, actually it got better over time, I think after sitting an hour it became great; but I still wouldn't make again. We used some fresh tomatoes, and bought a little too much cashews, but otherwise we pretty close to the recipe. We also made garlic-pepper-rosemary-olive oil bread, which was great, would do the pepper again!
2016-03-16 Jerk Sweet Potato and Black Bean Curry, a repeat, doubled. Amazing as always, but I think our Jerk spice is getting a bit old - still lots of flavor, but no kick. Should buy some new stuff next time I make this. The juice of one lemon was also added, and really balanced the sweetness of the yams with the earthy jerk spice mix well. Also, for dessert, vegan banana bread, 1.5x, but I think I added too much oil and too little flour in my informal 1.5x-ing, it ended up dense and kind of pudding like even after extra 15 minutes in oven...
2016-03-11 For Pie Day / 100 member party: Apply Pie by Grandma Ople, Chocolate Chip Pie I and Hershies Gone to Heaven Chocolate Pie. The apple pie was simple and incredible, just like the 6800 reviews(!) claimed. I think I would try adding cinnamon/nutmeg next time. The two chocolate pies were sweet as expected but unexceptional.
2016-03-08 spicy roasted ratatouille doubled, a repeat from a few months ago, plus garlic bread. Wasn't as good this time, I think last time we used more tomatoes and added some tomatoe paste as well, it was a bit more watery this time. Also, I learned that apparently you don't have to peal acorn squash, which is awesome since it's so much work and so wasteful to do so. Eats fine, though it does change the taste in a slightly negative way, I think. Finally, double wasn't nearly enough tonight - could have done quadruple, though it would not have all fit in the pot. Food was totally gone at like 8pm, even though we served late at 7:30!
2016-03-01 Parker's Split Pea Soup doubled, and Vegan Banana Bread for dessert. The pea soup is surprisingly great, would make again! Should triple for a regular night - only doubled tonight since it was stormy, that worked out well.
2016-02-23 Thai Squash Curry 6x with 4 cups rice and using vegetarian red curry paste (though we used green chilis). Good, not great. Should have made 8x with 6 cups, the pot was only about 3/4 full and it all went fast.
2016-02-16 Spices Vegetable Balti, quadrupled, with rice and naan. Biggest pot was MORE than full, but there were only 4 servings left at the end (I froze them), so we served a LOT of people. Comes out a little bit liquid-y, we actually blended up two loads to try to make the broth a little less watery. Tastes good overall, but I don't think I would make it again.
2016-02-09 Minestrone Soup. As usual, this recipe turned out well.
2016-02-02 Roasted Geek Potatoes with Mixed Veg. Definitely experimental, but highly promising. Suggestions for improvement have been appended to the recipe, but more experimental data is always welcome!
2016-01-30 Spicy Roasted Ratatouille with Spaghetti, doubled for the Saturday open house. Also, garlic bread with farmer's market butter. We used double the pasta (a whole package), so it was more pasta-y, also added two cans of tomato paste for more tomato taste. It's good and quick to make, would make again sometime.
2016-01-26 Mujaddara doubled. Really good, not spicy at all. Doubled made the whole pot, a lot of food for only $20! Really simple to make other than the caramelized onions, which as always are a lot of work.
2016-01-12 Vegan Chili tripled. Used only three small jalapeños but it still came out super spicy! Overall I'd say it's mediocre, the carrots are a nice touch but it's a bit lacking in flavor.
2015-12-22 Mediterranean Baked Sweet Potatoes doubled, a repeat and a favorite plus Sandy's Sweet Slow Cooker Sauerkraut also doubled, only without the slow cooker. The sweet potatoes were amazing as always, it's an easy recipe and so delicious! The sauerkraut was also delicious, though since we couldn't purchase any caraway seeds, it was missing an element that I consider essential to a sauerkraut experience. Anyway good intro to sauerkraut for people who don't normally eat it - the sugar and apple really take the kraut edge off it nicely, making it almost dessert like. Would make again, we made it this time because I discovered two mostly full jars of it in the fridge when I cleaned it out...
2015-12-15 Creamy Butternut Squash Linguine with Fried Sage tripled with vegan parmesan cheese. Tripled was *a lot*, doubled would have been enough, as of 9pm there is a little bit less than a third of it left. It's good, in fact lots of people told me it's really good, but I actually thought it was kind of mediocre - I think I'm just not hot on pasta dishes in general. Anyway, the fried sage thing was really interesting, and with the pepper added a couple of nice tasting accents to the pasta. I added some halved cherry tomatoes to the recipe for color - very nice touch to an otherwise all orange meal.
2015-12-12 Sauerkraut Chocolate Cake for the DIYbio Science Collider Party. Doubled, the second one was mini-cakes :-). One batch of icing was enough for both, as suggested in the recipe.
2015-12-08 Sweet and Sour Eggplant, a repeat from 2015-06-09. 8x this time, as suggested, and it's a pretty slow night so it's lasting well (still ~6 servings left at 9pm). I was also more careful with the pan heat / portion / pat drying, so I actually managed to brown those eggplant chunks this time, and it tasted really good! With brown rice this time, first time we've made that here, it adds a nice extra taste & texture.
2015-12-01 Eric was sick and Pari couldn't make it so no dinner this week! I heard that hacklab ordered pizza in our absence.
2015-11-24 spicy vegan potato curry 4x and Jerra Rice also 4x. Pari blended the onion stuff, and then later the curry was a bit bland so she added a lot of extra spices (garlic powder, garam masala, cumin, etc). Turned out great, but I don't think I would make again unmodified. 4x was also A LOT, probably 3x would have been sufficient.
2015-11-17 Noodles in a creamy coconut peanut sauce, 6x we used both the crazy Japanese noodles and much more regular spaghetti. And kachumber indian salad 4x, which is spicy. Both dishes are good, the pasta especially, but it was also a lot of chopping. And half a jar of peanut butter!
2015-11-10 Butternut Squash and sweet potato soup, 2.5x, a repeat (from a long time ago), and Spiced Lentil Soup, 3x. The lentil soup is AMAZING, should make again. The butternut soup is great, nice and creamy but man all that chopping is a lot of work! Pari also made coconut bread pudding for dessert using the left over bread and coconut milk, it's great too, best left over dessert ever :-)
2015-11-03 Ethopian Cabbage Dish doubled, a repeat, excellent as always, with Injera from Kensington Market. Pari also made a tomato-lentil soup which was super yummi. And for dessert we made Cinnamon & Sugar Roasted Chickpeas, which were only OK, I wouldn't make them again. Plus we had random acts of pizza too, so lots of food, and still everything but 2 pizzas got eaten by the end. Makes me think we must usually be well under how much food *could* be eaten by people...
2015-10-27 Chickpeas and butternut curry with green peas rice, improvised by Pari, apparently very good. Also made a huge salsa.
2015-10-20 Vegan Mac & Cheese, improvised by Pari, and a kale-pomegranate salad. Plus Scrumptious Apple Pie and apple cider (both from apple trees in the neighborhood).
2015-10-13 Vegetarian Borscht doubled and Havard Beets, 6x. The havard beets were amazing, should make again! The Borscht was also quite good, especially with sour cream. We made both from a $0.99 10lb bag of beets (how can it be that cheap!), so even with three loaves of bread, this was still the cheapest dinner in ages. Pari also made a carrot & almond dessert with honey that was really good.
2015-10-06 from a $3 10+lb pumpkin: old fashioned pumpkin pie, made 2 pies, spiced pumpkin seeds, super delicious!, pumpkin gingerbread, made 4 loaves, double layer pumpkin cheesecake, wow!, pumpkin smoothie 4x, made 12 glasses. Huge amounts of fun and comboed well with the random acts of pizza. The bread was great, but the real hit was the cheesecake, amazing, probably can't go back to regular pumpkin pie! The smoothie is also amazing, would make again for sure.
2015-09-29 split-pea soup, doubled and creamy thai carrot soup with basil. FreshCo didn't actually have parsnips, so I subbed Sweet Potatoes in the split-pea soup. We also added extra garlic powder and onion powder. The thai carrot, we added keffir lime leaves, which made it super delicious, but we should have removed them before blending, since they failed to blend correctly, and then we had to manually sieve them out. Also, for dessert: marbled chocolate banana bread, which we made in cupcake shapes since we didn't have a loaf tin, they were delicious but a little bit dry.
2015-09-26 The keyboard waffles again, plus apple pie oatmeal cookies, which were good, actually more like muffins than cookies thanks to how moist they are!
2015-09-22 Dal Fry and Rice with Peas, both from Eric's cooking class recipes again, both 6x. We added green beans and carrots to the Dal, plus two jalapeno's, and Pari did some magic with coriander seeds as well. We also added some caramelized onions to the top of both dishes. Best dishes in awhile, both were super delicious! Should make again. Also, keyboard waffles, that's right our kickstarted iron finally arrived, and it was glorious!
2015-09-15 Aloo Gobi and Spinach Rice and Mango Lassi (not vegan), all from Eric's cooking class again. Pari helped and it all tasted awesome!
2015-09-12 Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies for the Saturday open house. Made 36 cookies, very delicious.
2015-09-08 Channa Masala & Jeera Rice, both from recipes from a vegetarian cooking class Eric took years ago (finally dug up the recipes). Basically doubled the spices in the channa, it tastes good now. Also used more tomatoes and less onions than it called for. The rice is great, I've wanted to do non-white rice for awhile and this one worked well. Plus watermelon for desert.
2015-08-25 Contest Winning Vegetarian Chilli, doubled. Recipe says it makes 16, but actually it's more like half that, even doubled it didn't fill the big pot. Had some trouble with the pinto beans, FreshCo doesn't sell them in cans, only dried, so I tried it that way, but they really needed to soak for a lot longer than I had. They were *mostly* cooked by the time dinner was actually served, buy only because I had them soaking by about 4:30. Anyway, good recipe, tasted good, though I don't know if it would win any contests. The zucchini is the best part, and I also disagree with comments saying it has too much tomato - tomato content was totally fine! Also, very little spice, could use more. Great color though, very good looking recipe!
2015-08-18 General Tao's Chickpeas, quadrupled, with 4 cups rice (actually needed 6) (also, this recipe didn't say how many servings it would be, but for reference 4x made about 20 servings - a little bit of room left in the biggest pot). Great, would make again A++. Very quick to make - once you've got it chopped, it's hardly anytime at all, which is why we only did 4 cups rice - rice was late late late! Lots of flavor, but hardly any spice, would add more spice next time.
2015-08-11 Gazpacho, a repeat from last summer, quadrupled. Delicious as before, it's amazing how great it is for how simple it is! No pots or pans at all, and minimal chopping, which is awesome! Also cooked up two packages of vegetable samosas from the freezer, with some awesome dips.
2015-08-04 Golden Thai Curry with Green Beans quadrupled, with 8 cups rice, since we expected a lot of extra people for the open house after maker festival. Turns out the storm kept most people away, so we actually had a small amount left over! It's a good looking dish and tastes good too, but it's not really exceptional - just good solid food.
2015-07-28 Cauliflower with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce doubled and a repeat of Jerk sweet potato & black bean curry also doubled. Maker Festival open house, so we are expecting 44 extra people, so we made a bit extra. The cauliflower dish was OK, but not great. The jerk dish as always is awesome.
2015-07-24 Juiciest Hamburgers Ever tripled for the hacklab 7th birthday party. Plus 16 veggies burgers of assorted types, and about 10 different toppings including bacon & caramelized onions. Great burgers.
2015-07-21 The Best Vegetarian Chili in the World. Doubled, with bread from Mabels. Easy to make, and smelled really good. It was good, but hardly best in the world. Although we DID forget to put the corn in, so maybe that was the finishing touch?
2015-07-14 Vietnamese bun cha with sticky spicy tofu and Cucumber Avocado Rolls, the vietnamese dish tripled, the cucumbers doubled. Both are delicious, especially the vietnamese bun cha, would make again for sure! Served a lot of people, 2 packages of vermicelli noodles is a lot! Next time, press and dry the tofu, since it takes forever to brown while wet - I made in three batches, took more than 10 minutes each. I chopped the mint (rather than leaving leaves), which worked great.
2015-07-07 Moroccan Spiced Tomato, Chickpea and Zucchini Stew (tripled) and falafel from Roberta's Fresh Cookbook (doubled). Plus bread from Mabels, rice and couscous. Both dishes were *excellent*, would make again - fairly easy, quick, cheap and delicious. The stew pot was not full, you could quad that recipe for a bit more. We also simmered a lot of extra time (maybe 30 more min than recipe calls for) to improve taste/texture. Double of falafel was LOT more than the 2*12 they claim, I think we made about 100 on four trays!
2015-06-30 really good tomato soup and Vegan Lasagna with Basil Cashew Cheeze, both doubled, both excellent! We served the maker festival team (~12 people) tonight so we had a bigger budget and went in for more expensive recipes. The soup took a lot of work - that's a LOT of tomatoes to roast! But it is super delicious as promised. Roberta made the lasagna and it's even more work but amazing, we had two big trays and they went fast, I saw a lot of people (including myself) going back for seconds and then eating until they were too full :-). I'd make either dish again, but they do take a long time (we started at 4pm today rather than 5pm as usual, and served a little after 7pm.
2015-06-23 mediterranean baked sweet potatoes (a repeat from a few months ago), tripled, absolutely GREAT as before, tips from last time worked out really well. It served a LOT of people, probably only need to double it really since it's SO filling. Used 9 huge sweet potatoes, each ends up as 4 servings, so that's 36 servings total, we had 8 left over at 11pm.
2015-06-16 south indian style vegetable curry, 3x, which made a HUGE amount the pot was complete full. With rice. Good but not great.
2015-06-09 Sweet and Sour Eggplant, 6x with 6 cups rice, and we should have made more! It was great, but we did a lot of alteration, including adding some caramelized onions (prepared while the eggplant was sweating, one gigantic spanish onion), button mushrooms, and green peppers. Plus oregano, since I thought it needed some herbs. Due do the scale we made it (and our small-ish pots and minimal heat), we really weren't able to brown the eggplant cubes, it took much longer and we basically cooked it, but it was still delicious.
2015-06-02 repeat of Spiced Vegetable Biryani, again without tinfoil. Also left over Sweet Potato and Black Bean Curry from Eric's houseboat adventure. Plus watermelon. A repeat night, it's super delicious!
2015-05-26 Pari's Vegan Shepherds Pie, and Spicy Mushroom Tacos, tacos tripled, shepherds pie doubled. The pie recipe came out of a "Vegan Cooking for Carnivores" book. Both owe thanks to a donation of 5 lbs of specialty mushrooms (king oyster, oyster and shiitake) by Eric's dad (these would otherwise have been really unaffordable). The tacos were *awesome*, best thing we've made since the jerk sweet potato dish in march. Note the taco pictures show orange bell peppers, but the recipe doesn't have them - we added them anyway, in with the mushroom saute at the end. The guac also ended up being more of a salsa since the only avocados we could find were super hard, still great and totally went well with the mushroom bit. The Shepherds pie was also good, and far more plentiful as well, which is good, everything got eaten... probably can't ever make either again since the mushrooms would be way too expensive, but it was a great meal while it lasted :-)
2015-05-19 Roast Summer Vegetables and Chickpeas, tripled with bread. We made the two parts separately and only combined them at the end, rather than adding the second to the first and simmering. This left the potatoes a little undercooked, but was great for all the other veggies, which had a great crunch and taste. I'd do the same again next time, except I'd microwave the potatoes after I chopped them to pre-cook them a bit. We made it in three batches, which came out of the oven over time, that worked awesome. We also added a lot of extra spices to the tomatoes part, including curry powder and ground cloves, which tasted awesome, if I made it again I'd make MORE of the second part, it was a little bit spare (so say 4x that part, or maybe even 5x). Bread: Daria made a great olive oil and rosemary spread, then baked, to give it extra flavor. Great dish overall and with triple we had a LOT but it still went quickly (gone by 10pm or so).
2015-05-12 Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea Stew, doubled with Rice. Roberta took the lead after Eric left at 5:30, apparently it turned out well and people absolutely gobbled it down, there was nothing left at 8:30 when Eric got back.
2015-05-05 Spicy Peanut Noodle Salad (doubled) and a *repeat dish (we hardly ever do that!) Minestrone Soup. Both excellent. There was an enormous amount of chopping for the noodle salad, and it *was* pretty spicy, but it was great, we doubled and actually served the second half later, to avoid the sauce making the other things all limp, worked out really well.
2015-04-28 Thai Veg Green Curry, tripled, with rice. Tastes great. We had extra beans, and we did boil the potatoes and carrots. The recipe is actually frustratingly vague and incomplete, so we had to make a lot of steps up, but it turned out really well, tripled left our largest pot basically full, only an inch from the brim!
2015-04-21 lemony cabbage and pasta and Vegan Red Cabbage Bowl with Tofu and Peanut-Sriracha Sauce, both doubled. The pasta was a bit bland, but the red cabbage bowl was delicious and fresh! We subbed (briefly boiled) beans for the snap peas, and I'd recommend making extra sauce. The tofu was also great, and again I'd recommend more. Also turns out red cabbage can be boiled to make an awesome pH indicator, red in acid, purple when neutral, green ultimately going blue in bases, very very pretty!
2015-04-14 Lemony Couscous with Broccoli (doubled) and Broccoli Gazpacho (tripled) with unfrozen bread from last week. The couscous was great initially, but it didn't have staying power - we didn't serve it for about 45 minutes, and during that time the couscous and the broccoli both went soft and the dish wasn't nearly as good. So this is a great dish if you eat it quickly, but perhaps not such a great dish for hacklab, where things often stay out for 2+h. The Gazpacho was a bit bland, the broccoli totally overpowered the tomato. So we added some tomato paste, which fixed it up a bit, but it was still only good.
2015-04-11 Spiced Vegetable Biryani for the Saturday open house. It was delicious, and surprisingly easy to make - everything in one dish in the oven, no frying at all! Doubled actually, so two dishes really. Open house was super super popular with readers from Metro coming by (apparently 70 or so, according to Alex), but most didn't partake, so we had leftovers. I also forgot to cover the dishes with foil, so I think it ended up a little drier than it would have otherwise been.
2015-04-07 Sweet potato and red pepper soup and Smoky Tomato Lentil Soup With Spinach & Olives with crusty bread. Both soups ended up good, not great. The sweet potato one we had to extensively adulterate to get it to good (basically added salt, herbs and olive oil, plus some spice). The Spinach one was pretty good straight up. The bread was *awesome*, thank you Sacha! (Bread note: Doubled the recipe and split the dough into our two largest bowls, and that still nearly overflowed in the two hours I left it to rise. Also, used all-purpose flour instead of whole wheat since I didn't have any on hand. There was enough bread to freeze, so maybe next time a single recipe is enough. For easiest steaming, pre-heat with the boiler pan, then put the bread in the oven and use a short drinking glass or mug to dump water into the broiler pan before closing the oven door.)
2015-03-31 Jerk sweet potato & black bean curry and Spicy Vegan Potato Curry, we doubled the latter. The Jerk recipe was *amazing*, probably the most tasty thing we've ever made, would make again A+++. We roasted the peppers ourselves (and have extras to make soup next time). The potato recipe was a bit lacking, and then Pari did some magic with onions and tumeric and oil and others things, and it turned out awesome as well, but we won't be able to duplicate that. Sacha also made vegan naan, 6x, which was a bit much. And tapioca, yummy.
2015-03-24 Quadrupled the mushroom stroganoff recipe, garnished it with flat Italian parsley, and served it with mixed greens dressed with a strawberry vinaigrette and toasted sliced almonds, accompanied by a quadruple batch of dinner rolls. Made vegetable stock from scratch by sweating chopped onions, carrots, and celery, then simmering it with saved-up vegetable scraps. One ~900g package of rotini is not enough; may want one and a half next time. Not the cheapest of meals, but very yummy. Demolished by OCAD students, Hacklab members, and other visitors. A relaxing afternoon of cooking.
2015-03-17 Moroccan Style Vegan Vegetable Chickpea Stew, very good! We added mushrooms, used regular potatoes instead of sweet potatoes, and added some extra herbs (oregano, thyme, bay leaf). Double recipe made lots, as expected. Bread from Mabels. This was also a remarkably cheap dish to make for it's volume ($25), should make again.
2015-03-15 For Pie Day we made 5 pies: Peanut Butter Pie w/ Pretzel Crust good, the peanut butter is more subtle than you would expect.
Chocolate Coconut French Silk Banoffee Tart exceptionally awesome so sweet, it vanished almost immediately!
Sundried Tomato Tart w/ Zucchini-Hummus savory, the crust is amazing, but the zucchini filling was a little bit disappointing.
Cinnamon-Crumble Apple Pie and Mixed Berry Pie both part of the Venn-Pieagram, which turned out super great, it was also very popular and delicious. Thanks to Michael, Michael, Joseph and Eric.
2015-03-10 Sweet potato carrot soup with chapati, to use up the sweet potatoes. Tripled. Quite good, and we didn't put any paprika in.
2015-03-03 mediterranean baked sweet potatoes, it tastes so great! Best dish in the last several months. We tripled the recipe, using 12 larger sweet potatoes - this was way too many potatoes, four dishes, and we just left an entire dish for next week to make soup with. We also should have had way more tomatoes (we had 6 roma), and more sauce as well (we started with 300ml hummus) - the sauce is delicious! When we do it again, I'd say: 9 large sweet potatoes, 9 tomatoes, and 600ml of hummus.
2015-02-17 Tibetan Lentil Soup (green, spicy) & Curried Lentil Soup (red) with bagels from Mabels. Both recipes from Roberta's FRESH restaurant cookbook, single each, but we should have made more. The red was awesome, the green was good. Bagels actually worked well, but we needed way more than 8. Green took much longer than the claimed 15 minutes - more like the same 30 minutes as the red, so wish we'd started them at the same time. Somebody brought a gigantic apple pie from costco to end the dinner.
2015-02-10 Veggie Pho, claims 30 minutes but with our slow stove, took about an hour. We tripled, and used two pots. Ended up with far too much pasta (we used three packages of thicker rice vermicelli), and far too little bean sprouts and broth. Overall it's only OK, not great. The expensive shiitake mushrooms are almost lost in the pasta (maybe next time just use regular mushrooms to save money?), and it's not got any visual pop. Next time, maybe make the stock ourselves? Totally DO add broccoli and bok choy. Maybe extra firm tofu? Anyway, edible but not incredible, but there is promise...
2015-01-27 Cheesy Vegan Alfredo with Peas and Kale, really good! Quadrupled, which resulted in LOTS, next time use two pots to make mixing easier. Next time blend the cashews more, we added mushrooms and broccoli, which was good, in fact next time even more of all veggies.
2015-01-20 Japanese curry. Doubled. Roux recipe, and a large pot with three onions, leftover potatoes (2.5lbs?), leftover carrots (half a bag?), two packages of tofu, and other veg.
2015-01-13 Sweet Potato Fenugreek Saute and Vegan Veggie Curry (ours actually with TVP instead of Seitan). Both basically tripled. 18 bowls used.
2015-01-06 Misir Alicha & Tikil Gomen Both doubled, with double order of Injera (from Kensington Market). Both great, but I think the Tikil is the better of the two. It's also a lot more volume - despite the recipe claiming they make equal quantities, the Tikil is about 3x as large! And also, for dessert, a rice-apricot-cashew treat from Roberta's "Baking with Agave Nectar" cookbook (now donated to hacklab).
2014-12-30 Miso Winter Squash without sesame, sadly. Doubled. Very delicious. We A/B tested with baking vs. stir-frying for the second step - baking was more delicious, but stir-frying looked way better and the tofu was better tasting. Extra baked squash. Note: should in future read entire recipe rather than just looking at pictures before buying extra ingredients! Plus carrot cookies later (also vegan thanks to vegan butter + egg substitute, tasted great but a little bit crumbly.
2014-12-23 My Favorite Vegan Chili AND Amazing Roast Veg, both great! Doubled the chili, had trouble finding chili powder. Took forever to peel the beets! Also, gingerbread millenium falcon with Structural Gingerbread and Royal Icing, not edible, but awesome :-)
2014-12-16 Vegan Pad Thai Tripled. Very good. Cooked the tofu and broccoli in small batches. Two packages of noodles was supposed to be too much but worked out great. Cut the soy-sauce by 1/3, was fine. Used 4 scoops of "korean paste" instead of 6 of "mellow white miso". Juiced 8 limes, needed more!
2014-12-09 Aloo Matar Quadrupled. Pretty good, would make again. Tried to use the new wok with wok ring, but not enough heat - ultimately had to do the onions in the frying pan and the mix in a large pot, as usual. The potatoes, even though we pre-cooked them in the microwave, ended up undercooked - a little firm, but still good. Would pre-cook them a little more next time (7 min x 2 instead of 5 min x2?, maybe with stirring half-way through). Halved the paprika, as recommended in a comment - great idea, still fairly spicy!
2014-12-02 Vegan Japanese Curry Tripled. Good. A lot of extra fluid (6 cups!!), which we just bailed out before serving.
2014-11-25 Pea Soup and Carrot Soup by Ewan and Eric. Huge quantities of soup, but almost all of it was eaten anyway. Carrot was awesome, pea was merely great. With bread from Mabel's.
2014-11-18 Panang Cucumber Curry Spicy Cucumber Soup - curry is great, the soup is *super spicy*. Tripled both. Used 7 large english cucumbers total :-)
2014-11-04 Korma, hot and sour soup, naan bread, coconut barfi, homemade peasant bread, store-bought cupcakes - Chris, Alaina, Eric, Sacha, Max, Gabriel, Will
2014-10-28 Veggie Thai Red Curry. Tripled, served ~15. Substituted green beans for snap peas. Very good. Also made coconut tapioca pudding. Notes
2014-10-24 Hacklab relaunch party. Lots of cupcakes. Notes
2014-10-21 Vegan Mac & Cheese. Quadrupled, served ~25. Takes a LONG time to make (dinner was served at about 8pm), but it's pretty good. Homemade bread.
2014-10-14 Long Beans w/ Potatoes & Peppers on rice. Quadrupled, served ~15. Good, but not great - we added a lot of extra (knock-off) sriracha and soysauce, but it still wasn't incredible.
2014-10-07 Butternut squash and sweet potato soup Tripled recipe which served a LOT of people - we had food available till about 11pm, very unusual. Added curry powder to our pantry. Also served two pies (apple and pumpkin) and crusty bread from Mabel's Bakery (1156 Queen West) - happy Thanksgiving!
2014-09-30 Vegan Indian Butter Cauliflower Triple the recipe, getting two cauliflowers, one head of garlic, 3kg tomatoes, and one carton of coconut milk, a lemon, 1" ginger, three onions
2014-09-23 Minestrone Soup and Peach Cobbler. Delicious, should make again.
2014-09-09 Yemisir Wot (Ethopian Red Lentil Stew) & YEKIK ALICHA (Ethiopian Split Peas) with Injera flatbread.
2014-08-26 Gazpacho - delicious! And so much veggies!
2014-07-29 ethiopian cabbage dish with injera bread. Doubled, to use an entire head of cabbage. HUGE cabbage. We need bigger pots!
2014-07-22 corn on the cob and Gazpacho
2014-06-17 potato rendang w/ green beans
many many before this, but we were not keeping good records :-(

Wishlist (future potential dinners / desserts / etc!)

easy cajun jambalaya with vegan sausages
creamy pumpkin risotto with sweet and spicy pepitas they say to make it for thanksgiving, it certainly looks rich!
crazy gourmet twinkies - should be hilariously fun to follow her recipes...
honey wheat bread
vegan zucchini pizza from scratch (cheese and bread)
cauliflower soup with carrots, apples and pistachio cream
tempeh meatballs and spagetti
mexican quinoa stew
all-dressed kale chips
baked beet chips
pumpkin gingerbread with spiced buttercream
baked leek and sweet potato gratin
roasted beet hummus
Cheesy Vegan Potato & Broccoli Casserole
Lemon and Walnut Linguine With Roasted Broccoli
west african peanut soup
Carrot and Beet Slaw with Pistachios and Raisins - once we have a machine to julienne veggies!
soymilk from scratch
Stuffed Miso Eggplant
falafel with a twist
homemade ramen

Kitchen Robots

Stand Mixer
- pasta making attachment
Blender
Food Processor
Bread Maker
Immersion Blender
Apple peeler and corer

Spices

allspice
berbere spice mix (ethopian)
cardamom pods
cayenne, hot
chili flakes
chili powder
chilis, powdered (NOT the same as chili powder!)
cinnamon, sticks
cinnamon, ground
cloves
cloves, ground
coriander, ground
coriander, whole
cumin, ground
cumin, seeds
curry powder
garam masala
garlic, powder
jerk seasoning
mustard, seeds, yellow
nutmeg, ground
nutritional yeast flakes
onion powder
paprika, sweet
paprika (normal/spicy)
paprika, smoked
pepper, corns
pepper, ground
pepper, white
poultry seasoning
sesame, seeds
turmeric

herbs (dried)

basil
bay leaves
thyme
oregano
rosemary
parsley

kitchen equipment wishlist

stainless steel drink mix set
microplane grater
scale & thermometer (both liquid and oven). We borrow them from DIYbio right now, so not urgent.
spiralizer, like this one

Cooking

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Run Sheet

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Dinner History

Wishlist (future potential dinners / desserts / etc!)

Kitchen Robots

Spices

herbs (dried)

kitchen equipment wishlist

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Run Sheet

Favorites

Dinner History

Wishlist (future potential dinners / desserts / etc!)

Kitchen Robots

Spices

herbs (dried)

kitchen equipment wishlist

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