Chocolate Frogs!

My apologies all around for the lengthy delay in my getting this ready to post, but at last the chocolate frogs have arrived on Dumbledore’s Vegan Army!

I made boxes, chocolate frog cards, and everything. I even renamed the founders of the four houses to jive with the four houses of Dumbledore’s Vegan Army!

Go on over and Check it out!

Pennsylvania Dutch: A Vegan’s Attempt

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to veganize some classic Pennsylvania Dutch food, just because I thought it would be an interesting challenge because of the sheer un-vegan-ness of it. We’re talking scrapple, schnitz un knepp, chicken pot pie, bova shankel, hogmaw (pig’s stomach), lebanon bologna… As well as some easier things such as chow-chow, cole slaw, apple butter, shoofly pie, whoopie pies, funnel cake, fastnachts, and apple dumplings. Lots of very fatty, very unhealthy comfort food, filled to the brim with lard and any animal part conceivable… the PA Dutch hated to waste anything, so they used everything.

Today I decided I would try my hand at veganizing hot bacon dressing, which (like much of the other food listed) I would never touch even before going vegan. I actually got some for free once, in a basket I won in a raffle, and ended up giving it to my mother. So I really can’t judge the authenticity of this, but luckily my mom was feeling brave enough to try some and let me know how authentic it was. Her verdict was that the color was way off (real bacon dressing is white, mine was brown), but the texture was pretty much right on target. The taste was a lot closer than she’d expected, but unfortunately this is where her helpfulness stopped because she couldn’t tell me how it was different and what I might be able to to do make it more authentic. So, I’m just going to keep the recipe as-is. I never planned on fooling anyone, just wanted to see if I could make it and I did… and now I’ll probably never make it again! Mission accomplished, though.

Tempeh Bacon
from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk zine, issue 1

1 package of tempeh
3/4 C orange juice
1/4 C soy sauce
1 TBSP liquid smoke
1/4 C water
3 TBSP maple syrup
2 TBSP ketchup
3 TBSP apple cider vinegar
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed

3+ TBSP shortening (I used Crisco for this, because it’s supposed to be an extremely unhealthy food anyway. I mean hell, authentically it’d be bacon fat cooked in lard).

Slice the block of tempeh in half widthwise, then slice each half into strips, lengthwise.

In a shallow baking dish, combine the rest of the ingredients through the pepper and whick with a fork to combine. Add the crushed garlic and whisk again. Add the tempeh in a single layer. Marinate for at least an hour and up to overnight, turning them over once to make sure both sides of the tempeh get wet.

When the tempeh is done marinating, heat the shortening in the largest skillet you have over medium  heat. Reserve the marinade. You want a single layer so if your pan is small, you can do this in several batches. Using a slotted spatula, transfer the tempeh to the pan and fry until browned on both sides, 2-3 minutes per side. When it’s nice and crispy, add about two tablespoons of the marinade to the pan and gently toss the tempeh to coat. Cook for another minute. Set aside on paper towels to drain.

*I did 2 batches, adding more shortening to the pan in between batches. Since the basis of hot bacon dressing is the bacon fat itself, and tempeh doesn’t really have its own fat, you need to add a lot while cooking… in the form of shortening.

Hot Bacon Dressing

“bacon fat” (just use what’s in the pan when you make your tempeh bacon, maybe adding about another tablespoon or so of shortening)
About 2/3 of the reserved marinade
1 TBSP cornstarch
4 strips tempeh bacon

Turn down the heat on the stove to low, and carefully add the marinade to the pan. Add the cornstarch and mix well, turning the heat back up to a low medium and continuing to mix until mixture starts to thicken. Remove from heat and crumble up strips of tempeh bacon into the dressing.

Serve over dandelion greens or endive.

Batman Apple Pie

Where I work, we often have some sort of fruit crisp for sale in the steam table but it always has butter in it so I won’t eat any. This happened on Saturday, so I decided I would go home and make apple crisp. I bought the apples on Saturday night (as mentioned in yesterday’s post), and changed my mind to making apple pie instead.

I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to do a lattice on top or not, and ended up not doing the lattice but putting a bat cutout on the top crust to make it nice and Halloween-ish (though I think it kinda just looks like a Batman pie).

I used the filling from the gingerbread apple pie recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance, but wanted a traditional frosting so I used the recipe for basic pastry from Veganomicon (doubled, since I had a bottom crust and a top crust). Right after I put the pie in the oven, I realised that I actually had a recipe for regular apple pie in Joy of Vegan Baking, which I couldn’t believe I had forgotten about but it didn’t matter because Isa’s recipes are more awesome anyway!

A-la-mode with turtle trails soy ice cream & chai tea!

Alphabetots!

My friend Jen and I love going grocery shopping together. More specifically, grocery shopping in the middle of the night. On Saturday night, we left a Halloween costume party to go grocery shopping around midnight, dressed as Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and Lola Luftnagle (Hannah Montana).

Whenever we go grocery shopping together, we always end up walking around sounding like a couple of stoners with a really bad case of the munchies (but we round it out in the end by getting some healthy produce, too… usually avocados). On the night in question, Jen mentioned curly fries and suddenly I had an intense craving for curly fries. But wait… then I remembered TOTS! Suddenly I couldn’t decide between zesty curly fries or yummy tater tots.

Then I saw these alphabet-shaped tater tots and HAD to get them.

So, over the course of 2 days grocery shopping with Jen, I got tots, pink lemonade (a vital nutrient), soy ice cream, tostitos… and avocados, apples (to make pie!), and a toothbrush (see, I can be responsible!).

Grandmother’s Applesauce Cake

I’ve never met my grandmother on my mother’s side, but from what I’ve heard I think we would get along very well. She loved to cook, unlike my mother… which must be where I get it from. This recipe for applesauce cake is her own, and my mom realised a few years back that it’s vegan, except for the icing… which is very easily veganised, as it’s just a simple buttercream frosting!

[Magically Vegan] Applesauce Cake

1 C sugar
1/2 C shortening
1 C applesauce
1 tsp baking soda
1 2/3 C flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt

Cream sugar and shortening, add applesauce in which soda has been dissolved. Add flour, spices & salt. Bake in greased loaf tin 325F for about 45 minutes (although it always takes longer… mine took about an hour).

Buttercream Frosting

1/4 C shortening
1/4 C Earth Balance margarine
2 C powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 TBSP soymilk

Beat together shortening & margarine. Add sugar, vanilla, & soymilk and beat until fluffy.

I wasn’t really hungry, but I wanted to take a picture of a slice of the cake so for photography’s sake I cut myself a thin slice and I enjoyed it, damnit!

Kick-Ass Vegan Nachos

(that my family has no faith in)

According to Carrie, today was International Day of the Nacho. I didn’t bother looking it up to see if it was true or not, because either way it gave me an excuse to make nachos, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while but never got around to… until now!

I made refried beans (black and pinto) from a recipe posted on The Post Punk Kitchen forums from way back when we teens were going to get our act together and publish a teen vegan zine. Zine never came together, but I did get this recipe that I use occassionaly!

Then I made guacamole from my good friend Sarah’s family recipe, which she was kind enough to share with me… although I’ll never be able to make it as good as she does.

I used the recipe for the filling in Kittee’s no-queso quesadillas (about which I’ve previously posted) as a cheesy sauce for my nachos. I topped it all off with some sliced jalapeno, black olives, and corn.

To my family members on Facebook who don’t think my nachos can be kick-ass because they lack dairy, well… MORE FOR ME! (oh, and my awesome vegan friends… yeah, you.)

Leftovers Redefined

Since I’m the only vegan in my house, I’m almost always cooking only for myself. This means I have lots of leftovers, and am constantly trying to find ways to make them new & exciting (hence yesterday’s curry tofu salad… result of leftover curried tofu!). Today I had leftover toppings from when I made pizza, so I decided to do pasta!

I marinated & baked my leftover tofu using the Italian Marinated Tofu recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance, then made rotini and tossed it with the rest of my pizza sauce and some nutritional yeast. I topped it all off with chopped roasted red pepper and black olives. Mmm, Italian.

Curried Tofu & Zucchini Salad

A few weeks ago, I made the Curried Tofu recipe from Veganomicon. I ate it on sandwiches with curried Veganaise, and it was… ehh… okay. But then I had a little bit left over, and decided to cube it and make this salad with it, and it was awesome!

When I originally made the salad, it was sans zucchini, but I thought it looked like it needed some sort of green vegetable in it and had some extra zucchinis from when I made my pizza on Friday. I thought about putting green beans in instead, and bet that would be really good, but zucchini is what I had and it was good, too!

Curried Tofu
from Veganomicon

1 pound extra firm tofu, pressed and cubed

For the marinade:
1/2 C vegetable broth
3 TBSP rice vinegar
2 TBSP olive oil
2 TBSP soy sauce
1/4 C curry powder
1 tsp cumin seeds

In a large mixing bowl, combine all marinade ingredients and wisk together. Marinade tofu for about an hour (or up to overnight), flipping about halfway through.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Place tofu on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Flip over and bake for another 10 minutes. Place in the broiler for about 3 more minutes for extra chewiness.

Curried Tofu & Zucchini Salad:

1 recipe Curried Tofu
1/3 C carrot, shredded
2 TBSP vegan mayo
1 large or 2 small zucchini (or green beans, or both!)

Once the tofu is finished and cooled, mix all ingredients together. Refrigerate for about an hour before eating (unless you’re really hungry, in which case by all means go ahead and eat it right away!).

This is a good recipe for those of you who like me are only cooking for one person, as it does not make a whole shitload of food that you need to figure out how to gobble up before it goes bad.

The Great Pizza Disaster of 2009

My parents are away for the weekend, so like any teenage girl would, I decide to bust out the cooking skills and blast my (classic rock) music.

Okay, maybe that’s not what your typical 18-year old girl would do when left with the house all to herself for the weekend, but that’s what I did anyway. My friend Mary came back from college this weekend, so I decided to have some friends over and make pizza. I had a really awesome idea for buffalo pizza, for which I had specifically bought Teese when I was in DC, and was excited to make it.

Everything was going very well. I made the dough, made the buffalo tofu (somewhat similar to what I posted a few days ago) and sauce, and assembled the pizza. I put it in the oven for the specified time, and was trying to figure out how I was going to make two different pizzas when I only had one pizza pan (I had enough dough for 2 pizzas, and wanted to make a more standard pizza for those who might not like the buffalo tofu).

When the pizza was ready to come out of the oven, I tried to maneuver it out with hot pads but was not used to a) it being on the bottom rack or b) a 500-degree oven. I almost got it out, and then… the tipping point. The whole damn pizza, pan and all, flipped over and landed upside down on the rack, spilling all of its toppings onto the bottom & door of the oven as well as between the hinges of where the oven opens.

Cue me screaming expletives at the top of my lungs.
Cue me starting to bawl hysterically, frightening my poor kitten half to death.

This is what I spent all day on, using the vegan cheese I can’t (to my knowledge) get anywhere around here, trying to make something nice for my friends, myself, and my blog; ruined. A huge mess that I had no idea how to clean up. I’m not going to lie, my first thought was “how can I salvage this??” But it soon became apparent that salvaging was not an option.

Of course I knew I needed to take a picture of the disaster so I could document it here, but couldn’t remember how to work my camera, I was so hysterical. Ruining food is one of the things I hate the most… Wasting my time, wasting my energy, and most of all wasting the food itself. I had been really excited to see how the pizza would turn out, since it was something new and fun.

40 minutes later, my friends started arriving and, being the most awesome friends in the world that they are, calmed me down and even cleaned my oven (…and floor…) for me. I had put the ruined pizza on a cookie sheet, and was just throwing the tofu on top as I pulled it out of the depths of my oven. We joked that we would feed it to Mike, as he was the last person to arrive.

Mike arrived and we offered the pizza to him, but did not actually feed it to him. We all enjoyed leftover gaycake, and as they were finishing it off I made a second pizza (thankfully I was planning on making two anyway), topped with the rest of the Teese, zucchini, roasted red pepper, and black olives.

This time, I had Mike remove it from the oven for me because I did not trust myself, and it got out of the oven and onto our plates (and into our bellies!) safely and deliciously.

By the end of the night I found myself laughing as hysterically as I had previously been bawling. But damn, I really want to know how my buffalo tofu would’ve turned out… I guess I just need to buy some more Teese.

Trick Or Treat

October is half over, meaning Halloween is coming quickly (who’s excited?? I am!!). This means lots and lots of candy, whether you’re trick-or-treating, handing out candy, or just partying. So I’m going to devote this post to my favorite “mainstream” vegan candies (meaning hard-to-find and more expensive things such as Go Max Go bars or Endangered Species bars are excluded).

Peanut Chews are probably my favorite popular vegan candy. Peanut butter & chocolate, what could be better? (ooh, sidenote: Hot Tamales, also made by JustBorn, are also vegan & not bad either)

Image from bulkcandystore.com

Sour Patch Kids are a close second, though. Sour = love.

Image from westernconcession.com

Skittles. Of course I love Skittles. Taste the rainbow! These have just recently become vegan, they used to have gelatin in them.

Image from sodahead.com

Rainbow Twizzlers. Again, rainbow. Of course. I was never a fan of regular Twizzlers, but the rainbow ones are pretty good. And no, I’m not biased because they’re rainbow.

Image from deviantart.com

Smarties. What can I say? A classic. Also a favorite at my hippie parties.

Image from insidesocal.com

Swedish Fish. While not as good as the Canadian Swedish Berries (even though they’re the same exact thing, just in a different shape), I’m putting them on my list anyway.

Image from westernconcession.com

Don’t worry, I’ve got something a bit more exciting for tomorrow’s post. This has just been an off week for me.