The culinary stylings of my friend Jenna

My friend Jenna is a creative and enthusiastic cook who is always willing to "veganize" her creations to accommodate me.

Last weekend she made Ratatouille from the Moosewood Cookbook. It was the recipe from the original Moosewood, but she made some modifications to use the ingredients we had available, and I think it basically made the recipe more like the version in the revised edition of the cookbook (a can of tomatoes instead of some combo of tomatoes, tomato juice, and tomato paste). It turned out delicious.

Here are the before and after pictures. The bread is a yummy olive bread from Tom Cat Bakery, available all over the city.

A couple of weeks ago she made this spaghetti pie. I think it was using this recipe sans cheese. It was very good, although we were both disappointed that the pieces didn't retain their wedge-shape; I think you need cheese to hold them together. But every once in awhile, it's fun to eat spaghetti out of a pie pan. (Yeah, that's tofu in the pie!)

And I leave you with a bonus: a recipe (sort of). I cobbled together a yummy black bean dip from canned black beans, lime juice, garlic, salt, cumin, and a dollop of olive oil. Ideally I would probably run it through a food processor, but in this case I used a pastry blender (!) to mush it. It was good lumpy, but a food processor would probably make it nice and fluffy.

I didn't think to take the picture until we'd already eaten most of it.