Steamed Dumplings.

Steamed dumpling for dinner tonight! Filled with tofu, kale, cabbage, carrots, spinach and garlic. Yummy!


For dipping sauces we used:
mushroom soy sauce + dark sweet soy + scallions
sweet chili sauce
chinese mustard + soy sauce

Want Some Dim Sum?

Dim sum is like the greatest thing ever. It's like a chinese version of tapas, an array of light dishes which can make an excellent dinner. Dim sum may include something like what I made tonight: yummy dumplings of steamed dough with a tasty filling and dipping sauce. One year on my birthday back in my omni days, my friend and cousins took me to a local dim sum restaurant. It was so fun getting to choose which dishes we wanted from shu mai to steamed buns and dumplings of all kinds. Unfortunately a veggie dim sum place is nowhere to be found here in Los Angeles, at least not to my knowledge. Tonight's dinner featured only one dish of tofu and veggie potstickers with a homemade sweet and sour sauce served with coleslaw. If it was the weekend, I would have made a few more dishes to heighten the dim sum experience. But just having these and salad was completely satisfying.

Recipe for potstickers here. (This time I steamed them in a steamer basket instead of pan frying first!)

Potstickers And Another Smoothie.

Another favorite at our house. Tofu and Veg potstickers. Yum yum gimme some!




The filling was tofu, collard greens, cabbage, carrot, garlic and onions. Served with sweet chili sauce and soy sauce/chinese mustard.

For lunch I had this light green smoothie that had banana, strawberry and collard greens! Good way to get some green leafies into the diet. It was so sweet and so good. Couldn't taste the greens at all!

Vegan MoFo: Tofu-Veg Potstickers and Butternut Squash-Persimmon Pie!

Dinner was our old standby: tofu and veggie potstickers. We like to dip these into soy sauce mixed with chinese mustard, sweet hot chili sauce or yummy spicy peanut sauce.

1 14 oz. package of firm tofu, drained and crumbled/smooshed
2 cloves garlic minced
2-3 scallions, minced
1 carrot, shredded or chopped very finely
2 ribs celery, chopped very finely
1/2 cup finely chopped spinach or zucchini or both
2 TB mushroom soy sauce or 1 TB regular soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste
gyoza or wonton wrappers (read the ingredients to make sure they don't contain egg.)
small dish of water

Combine all ingredients and set aside. Take a gyoza wrappers and place on a plate or cutting board. Fill with 1 heaping tsp. of filling. Dip your finger into the water and wet the edges all the way around. Fold one side over and crimp to close. Keep doing this will all the wrappers until you have used up all the filling.

Heat a large pan (with lid) over medium high heat. Add 2 TB of canola oil to the pan. Place 4-6 gyoza in the pan to brown on side about 2-4 minutes. Flip over and add 1/4 cup water to pan and close the lid. Let steam for another 2-4 minutes or until the gyoza is transparent and cooked through. Use more oil as you continue to cook them. Serve hot with dipping sauce of your choice.



I have a bunch of persimmons that I picked from my tree in the backyard and been wanting to make persimmon pie. The thing is there are only 2 out of the bunch that I picked that are very soft and ripe. The rest are still unripe and very firm. I was so anxious to make this pie and I knew that only 2 persimmons couldn't make a pie so I combined them with mashed butternut squash. The persimmon flavor is kind of lost in all the squashness but hey, I got to have my pie! I adapted this pumpkin pie recipe by Bryanna Clark Grogan. (Ps. The best pumpkin pie recipe I've ever tried!)