Its been quite a while since I’ve made a post since as some of you already know I just made a big move from Up-state New York to the San Francisco Bay Area. We are still in temporary housing but have recently signed a lease for a house which we will be moving into the middle of February. Once we move in and are all settled I will have my kitchen again and the test kitchen will be back in business. In my new house we have a large garage where I will be building a larger tofu press, and cheese press with a mini cheese cave. Also a lot of the recipes will involve year round BBQ since I won’t have a nice gas stove in the new kitchen (I will give up gas for the opportunity to BBQ outside year round). This year I might also dive into wine & beer making since I now have the space to do this.  I’m really excited about the new recipes I can come up with this year having my own lemon tree, and with so many fresh produce markets nearby the possibilities are endless. Most likely I will not have any new recipes to post until late february to early march since it will take me a while to get settled in the new place. During this time I might be posting some rambles about my food related experiences here in the Bay Area.
As for the contest, I forgot to post the winner although they did already get there prize. The winner of the Pillsbury prize pack was Cdog who runs http://www.clementschow.wordpress.com.

Finally its a new year, with a new kitchen, and a completely new culinary experience for me so be sure to check back near the end of February and hopefully I will get back to cooking in time

Cmac.

Some friends who follow this blog have been asking lately what I’ve been eating because I haven’t been posting much in a while. To easily answer that question, I have been spread between eating leftovers from the freezer, quick and easy meals, and restaurants and friends houses. With the upcoming move in January I have been swamped with a logistical nightmare of trying to get 2 adults, 2 cats, a toddler, a car and all of our stuff to the Bay Area by January 8th. To make it even more complicated we will be spending just shy of 3 weeks in Canada visiting family and friends, then flying from there to the Bay Area into temporary housing for a month or two. I promise once I get settled in our new home I will be back to posting new recipes.

This weekend  I will be hosting an hor d’oeuvre party for some of my daughters therapists as a thank you, Coincidentally I just received some platters, and coupons for free Pillsburry crescent rolls, all they ask in return is that I try and come up with 3 different hor d’oeuvre using them. So here is the menu I am going to try (all parts are original recipes, in fact I’m not sure how i’m doing them yet).

Asparagus Pear Puffs

Vegan Spanish Meatballs in a blanket, with an almond sauce.

Caper, Sweet pepper Bruschetta spirals

My wife will be making a bunt cake for the dessert and a punch to go along.

These recipes should either be up within a week or thrown in the trash as failures. We can only wait and see

I’ve moved servers to a new more reliable (I Hope) green host. I am currently working on migrating the site to be as it was on the old host so there may be a few hiccups in the meantime but hopefully it will be all worked out by the end of this week and I can get back to posting recipes.

I’m a little late on announcing the winners of the Yo-plait packages so here they are. Comment #5 by JC is the first number drawn by random.org, and the second winner is Comment #2 Lethea Benson. I will be sending out the Prizes as soon as I receive mailing addresses for the winner.

In the meantime things are a little crazy here in the Test Kitchen, between my school, being a stay at home dad and the upcoming January move to San Francisco, cooking and recipe making have been the last things on my mind. I do have a few recipes I’m working on that will be posted soon but at this point its looking like I’ll be struggling to make two new posts per week.

On another note early this month the blog hit 10,000 visits that was quite exciting. If anyone would be interested in doing a guest post occasionally just shoot me an email cmac (at) cmacskitchen.com the only requirements I have are that the recipes are from a real home cook, good picture, vegetarian or vegan, and somewhat original or a nice take on an old classic.

Well that’s all my blabbering for now, this week I’m hoping to post my homemade pasta sauce recipe, and vegan banana nut bran muffins.

I will be away till the middle of next week therefore in the preparation for the trip and school work I have been too busy to post much this week. Once I come back I have quite a few posts I’ve been working on for a while that I will hopefully finish up and put online. They are listed below.

• Pickled Beets
• Vegan Gyro Wraps
• Cmac’s Homemade pasta sauce
• Vegan Sweet and spicy TVP noodle casserole
• A 3 course meal all based around pomegranate juice

Check back next week for new posts, and in the mean time feel free to comment on older posts, ask questions, or just browse. I really like readers comments, they help guide the direction of my recipes and improve on them, so keep them coming.

And finally, you may notice I have a little bit of advertising scattered around the site, the reason behind this is because being a stay at home dad on a single income doesn’t allow for much extra spending in the kitchen, if you see an add of interest and click on it this helps stock my pantry with new interesting ingredients. Another way you can help is if you plan on doing any Amazon spending you can click through the shop amazon link on the sidebar of any page and I will get a small piece of what you buy.

Thank You,

Cmac.

It appears real bacon took the prize in Ruhlman’s BLT From Scratch challenge on Monday, in fact due to there only being 3 vegan/vegetarian submissions the whole vegan/vegetarian category was removed from the challenge in the end.  Winning or not winning it was a great challenge to be a part of on the other hand I feel the people that took the challenge knowing the odds were against them with non  bacon submissions deserve some mention. So here I will mention them, I have no prize to give except the mere mention of there fantastic sandwiches.

The first vegetarian submission I heard about while I was scoping out the competition this one comes from Bok Choy Bohemia. Her BLT uses Marinated Tempeh sliced and fried like bacon. Then slapped between two pieces of focaccia with vegan mayonnaise and tomato and basil grown in her own garden.

This blogger features mostly vegetarian and kosher recipes on her blog its definitely worth checking out Bok Choy Bohemia

let’s give a round of applause for Bok Choy Bohemia and her Tempeh BLT.

The second vegetarian submission was by La Fuji Mama, she did a vegetarian and carnivore submission for her BLT dinner party. For the vegetarian version she made her own tofu seasoned and fried like bacon, then slapped it between two pieces of home made bread coated with home made mayonnaise and of course tomato and basil (instead of lettuce) from her garden.

I don’t know what I like better about this submission, the sandwich or flexible tofu and bacon characters she garnished it with.

Again lets give a round of applause for La Fuji Mama for her Vegetarian BLT.

And then there was my submission made with home made smoked tofu, stuffed in a sour dough pita with home grown lettuce, and tomatoes, and of course a vegan mayonnaise. You can reach it here if you don’t remember what it looked like.

Maybe if there is another challenge like this next year we can get enough vegetarians to submit recipes to make our own category. The reason I like cooking vegetarian and vegan the most are not only the health benefits but meat is really easy to make taste good. Its hard to go wrong cooking and seasoning meat whereas tofu, tempeh, and so forth takes a lot of thinking, planning, and experimentation to make it edible. So I have to say a big congratulations to the winners of the challenge, and another congratulations to the people that went against the odds and submitted non carnivorous BLT’s to the challenge.