Chickpea Cutlets!

Okay, so I'm in with the "in" crowd now. Like so many other vegan food bloggers before, I've finally made the Veganomicon Chickpea Cutlets. And now I understand what all the buzz is about ... these truly are the best things ever. If you haven't already, go buy the Veganomicon, turn to page 133, and make these right away.

Here's a pic of a cutlet with a mess o'collards on the side:



I baked my cutlets rather than frying them. The recipe allows for either preparation method, and while I love me some deep fried foods, I'm reading up on how olive oil forms free radicals when heated to a certain temp. I want to start using coconut oil, which is supposedly safe, but I haven't gotten any yet. Canola oil is supposed to be okay for heating too, and I did have some of that. But baking seems healthier.

The 'Nomicon describes the baked version of these cutlets as "firm" and "toothsome" (btw "toothsome" is my new favorite word). I had to use a knife and fork to eat this. It felt so carnivorous, but yet so tasty and cruelty-free!



I made the 'Nomicon's Mushroom Gravy as a topping. The creaminess was just what the tasty chickpea cutlet needed. Since I baked them, I was afraid they'd be too dry without some kind of gravy.

On the side are collard greens, steamed Southern-style in a big 'ol pot with some sugar, salt, hot sauce, and a little Liquid Smoke for that bacon grease flavor.

Country Potato Soup

It's cold in Memphis. Right now, it's 38 degrees. That may not seem bad if you come from up North. But down here, our blood is thinner. Thirty-eight degrees means heavy winter coats, scarves, and thick, creamy winter soups.



I veganized a version of Country Potato Soup from a cookbook I borrowed from my mom. The creaminess comes from soymilk mixed with whole wheat flour, and of course the cooked potatoes contribute to the creamy factor as well. I fried up some Smart Bacon (veggie bacon) and crumbled it in for an extra zing.

I'm definitely adding this one to my cookbook (I changed the recipe significantly). The focus of my book is "down home vegan cookin'." And it doesn't get much more down-home that potato soup.

Cinnamon Bun Heaven!

I made whole wheat vegan cinnamon buns tonight for the Monday Night Sansoucci Potluck.



Yum!!! My mom gave me some sourdough starter last weekend. It's water, potato flakes, and sugar (I use evaporated cane juice) and you have to feed it more potato flakes and sugar once a week. You also have to bake bread once a week or throw a cup and a half out. Since the potluck was tonight, I whipped up some cinnamon buns. Yum!

My mom told me how to make them — sourdough starter, flour, a little oil. Mix it together and let rise overnight. Then in the morning (I woke up at 5:45 a.m. for this!), you roll the dough into a rectangle and brush with soy marg and a mixture of cinnamon sugar. Then roll it up, cut into rolls, and let rise for 8 more hours (while I was at work). When I got home, I baked them for 25 minutes and glazed with a soymilk/powdered sugar glaze.



But I did one little thing differently from my mom's recipe. I've been reading Skinny Bitch, a pro-vegan healthy eating book that encourages meat-free, dairy-free diets sans white flour, white sugar, white pasta, Diet Coke, and beer (also coffee, but I'm not giving that up....no way). It's all about getting rid of simple carbs and other crap with no nutritional value.

So I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for the white bread flour. They didn't rise as much as my mom's did when she made them. But they were still damn tasty. And except for the powdered sugar, they were guilt-free. Is there a natural powdered sugar substitute?

BTW, expect more posts about Skinny Bitch. I'm totally transforming my diet into a healthy eating for life thing!

Oh yea, there was tons of great food at the potluck tonight: Matt's amazing vegan cheesy sauce pizza, Sarah's Indian-spiced veggies and rice dish, spilt pea soup, apple crisp, and the best strawberries I've ever had in January!

Booze Cupcakes!

My friend Greg turned 28 yesterday! He's a drinker, and he doesn't care for sweets. So I tricked him by spiking his birthday cupcakes with booze!



I got the recipe for Chocolate Cake with Booze Frosting from a vegan blog called Parsnip Parsimony. Her cake recipe came from another blog, run by Kittee Kake. Basically, it was regular vegan chocolate cake, but the frosting consisted of Jello Instant Vanilla Pudding mix (which is accidentally vegan), Earth Balance, soymilk, strawberry jam, and a 1/2 cup of Barcardi 151.

Imagine eating a shot of liquor. That's what the cupcakes tasted like. They really needed a chaser. If you had 3 or 4, you could actually get a little buzz.

On a completely different note, I made Brown Sugar Baked Tofu Ham with Red-Eye Gravy for breakfast today. I marinated the tofu slices in a mixture of things that make it taste like ham (it's going in the cookbook, but I can tell you that brown sugar is involved). Then I baked them for 45 minutes.



Red-Eye Gravy is a Southern thing. It's traditionally made with the fat left in the pan after frying ham, black coffee, oil, and salt. I used a little tofu ham marinade, black coffee, olive oil, and salt. It's not a thick gravy, more like an au jus sauce. You just spoon it over the ham for extra flavor. It's called Red-Eye Gravy because the separation of the oil and coffee make little circles, like eyes.

Praise Seitan!

All hail the holy wheat meat! I love chewy, meaty chunks of homemade seitan. I usually use the old-fashioned wheat flour and water, knead for a million hours method. But I finally decided to check out vital gluten flour. I figure if I'm writing a cookbook, I should make things a little easier on people.

I made Seitan "Beef" using a secret recipe broth (to be printed in my cookbook), and then I veganized a recipe for Beef Tips and Rice from one of my mom's Southern cookbooks.



It's beef-flavored seitan, red bell pepper, mushrooms, cooking sherry, and brown rice. Super good. The sherry really brought out an amazing flavor. I'll be including this dish in the cookbook as well.

I really enjoyed the texture of the vital gluten seitan. And it was so easy to make — only 5 minutes of kneading and none of that running water until all the starch is out stuff that you get with whole wheat flour seitan. Although, I gotta say I think I'm partial to the texture of the whole wheat flour version. It's a little more tender. Either way though, seitan is god!

How to make seitan:

The Easy Way:

1 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
1 cup water

Mix wheat gluten and water in a large bowl until it becomes doughy. Knead for about five minutes and allow to rest for five more minutes.

Tear seitan into small chunks and simmer in a broth (see other recipes in this section for ideas) for one hour or until absorbed.

Note: Seitan expands as it cooks, so start with very small chunks if you desire medium-sized pieces. Or if you’d rather have seitan cutlets, use medium-sized chunks.

The Cheaper, Time-Consuming Method:

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 3/4 cup water


Mix flours and water well and knead for about one minute. Then cover with a cloth and let it sit in a warm place for 30 minutes. 

Next, put the dough in a bowl and cover with warm water. Knead it under water. The water will turn white and milky. Pour it out, and run more water. Then repeat. Do this until the water becomes clear.

You'll have to run about 10 to 15 bowls of warm water, and in the middle of doing all this, your dough ball will look like it's falling apart. Never fear. Just try and hold it together. Eventually, it will become cohesive again and kind of stretchy. It might look a little like brains. The water will become less and less milky with every bowl.

Once you have the water starts to get pretty clear, run a bowl of cold water and another time. Pour that out and run warm water. Knead a final time, and dump all the water out.

Tear seitan into small chunks and simmer in a broth (see other recipes in this section for ideas) for one hour or until absorbed.

You Scream, I Scream!

So my best friend Sheridan spent the weekend with me. She just moved back to Jonesboro, Arkansas (our hometown). We've been best friends since 8th grade, but in recent years, Sher's been touring the country with various theater troupes. Now, she's got a teaching job at our old college, Arkansas State. And Jonesboro's only an hour from Memphis.

Sheridan went veg two years ago after reading Skinny Bitch. She called me crying after reading the chapter about factory farming. The next day, she was a vegetarian.

Sher spent the night on Saturday. We made soy cream sundaes with hot chocolate syrup, soy whip, and sprinkles!!



Then we met some friends at Raiford's Hollywood Disco and spent the night dancing to ABBA, the Bee Gees, and Michael Jackson.



Today, we met up with my veggie society, Food Awareness, for Sunday Buffet at India Palace, my favorite Indian restaurant.

This is my second plate. It's filled with basmati rice, veggie samosa, dhal soup, and some kind of chili vegetable dish. I had chana masala on the first trip to the buffet. Yum!!!

Hail Caesar!

Another yummy dinner courtesy of the Veganomicon. This is Creamy Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons:



I haven't had a caesar salad since, well, I can't even remember. When I discovered the dressing contained anchovies, I was already well into my vegetarianism. Probably some time around age 17 or 18 (I went veg at age 14). Now I'm 27, so it's definately been a good while since I've tasted lettuce slathered in that creamy kinda ranch-y, tangy dressing. When I noticed a recipe for vegan caesar in the Nomicon, I was thrilled.

The dressing uses soft tofu, olive oil, lemon juice, and the key ingredient — capers. Interestingly, this was my first experience with capers. I've always been afraid of them. But I learned while prepping the dressing for tonight's salad that capers are surprisingly olive-like. And I do love me some olives!

I used romaine lettuce mixed with a little spring mix for the salad. But my fave were the croutons, baked fresh using stale French bread, roasted garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice!



Though it was probably loaded with fat, it was the good kind — unsaturated fats from oils. Which made me feel better about pigging out at lunch today at Pho Hoa Binh, Midtown's only Vietnamese tofu buffet. For $5.19, one can easily gorge down a pound or more of fried tofu. So much for watching portion sizes.

Pa-sketti!

I used to call spaghetti pa-sketti. I think every kid calls it some variation of that. Now I call it whole grain tomato protein-y goodness.



I whipped this up tonight because a) it was fast, b) I had everything in my pantry to make it (well, almost everything), and c) it was grocery night so the fresh veggies were slim pickins. I used whole grain pasta, and in keeping with my New Year's resolution to control portion sizes, I ate half as much as I usually would. I typically eat two servings of noodles, but this time, I had a side salad to make up for the lost noodles. When I was in high school, my fave vintage thrift store tee said, "I Run on Pasta Power."

The sauce is Isa's Pizza Sauce from Vegan with a Vengeance. It's a simple mix of fresh canned tomatoes (ones my granny canned this summer), Italian seasonings, olive oil, and garlic. The only thing missing was the tomato paste. I was out, so I just used a slotted spoon to drain off some of the juiciness.

The "meat" is my recipe for Ground TVP Beef. Very tasty. Very easy. It will be in my cookbook.

'Nomicon Latkes

Okay, so it's way past Hanukkah, but I'm not Jewish. So I can make latkes whenever I want. Actually, I'm sure Jewish people can make latkes whenever they want as well. I just know these fried potato pancakes are typical Hanukkah fare.



These are the Autumn Latkes from the Veganomicon. Basically, it's shredded beets, sweet potatoes, and carrots mixed with a little flour, water, and cornstarch and fried in olive oil. The book reccommends serving these tasty pancakes with Horseradish Dill Dipping Sauce or the more traditional apple sauce. I had applesauce in my pantry, but no horseradish to make the dill sauce ... so applesauce it was.

I gotta say, these were amazingly good. And I don't even like beets. I've been trying to learn to like them though, and this recipe may have done it for me. It called for 2 cups of beets and 1 cup of sweet potato, but I flipped it with 2 cups of sweet potato and only 1 cup of beets. I was scared to overdo the beets. But surprisingly, beets taste lovely fried up in this way.



This was my first selection from the 'Nomicon. All the other food bloggers have been oohing and aahing over the Chickpea Cutlets. And I intend on trying them ... very soon. But I've been craving latkes for some reason. These were definately the best ones I've had.

If you haven't purchased the 'Nomicon yet, you must. I've been drooling over it since Christmas. I even made a 'Nomicon wish list of everything I'd like to make. Next up from the book: Creamy Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons. Expect that later this week.

Taking a few days off

Sorry for the lack of pics today, but I ate out for lunch at R.P. Tracks with some co-workers. I had leftover biscuits and gravy last night and again for breakfast today. And I'm going out of town tonight to visit my boyfriend in Nashville.

But I'll be back with pics of the Veganomican Autumn Latkes (even though it's no longer autumn) next week. Either Sunday night or Monday night. Unless I decide to go to the Sanssouci potluck on Monday. Then I'll have a pic of something else, but there will be more pics soon. Promise.

When I do make the Autumn Latkes, it will be my first recipe from the brand new but already renowned 'Nomicon. Got it for Christmas, but I haven't made anything from it yet. I can't wait!!

Breakfast for Supper

When I was kid, every once in a great while, my mom would break the rules and fix breakfast foods at dinnertime. Somehow traditional morning fare tasted better in the p.m. Maybe I'd had more time to wake up and appreciate the taste of those scrambled eggs (was vegetarian back then, not vegan), biscuits, and hash browns.

Tonight, I made a Southern breakfast delicacy — Chocolate Gravy & Biscuits:



It was so delish, I couldn't stop licking the empty pan or the spoons I'd used to stir the stuff. I only allowed myself one biscuit, split in two, and a small serving of scrambled tofu. I'm watching portion sizes as a New Year's resolution. But I could have eaten the whole pot of gravy in one sitting.

I made scrambled tofu with mushrooms, carrots, and red onion. I prepared it in my new cast iron skillet, and it really made a difference in the taste. It had more of a "grandma homemade" taste. Seriously. I'm loving this cast iron thing!



BTW, the biscuits are my own special recipe Butter Soymilk Biscuits. They're also going in my cookbook. The gravy's going in too. But I'll share that recipe. It's quite simple really.

Chocolate Gravy

1 Tbsp. soy margarine
1 cup soy milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. unbleached, all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder

Pour soy milk and vanilla in a medium-sized mixing bowl. In another bowl, combine sugar, flour, and cocoa. Mix well. Combine wet and dry ingredients and stir until cocoa lumps are dissolved.

Melt margarine in a small saucepan on medium heat. Pour in cocoa milk mixture and stir continuously until sauce begins to thicken. When the mixture has reached a gravy-like consistency, turn off heat.

Chipotle Chickpea Chili

Tonight was the perfect night for a hearty bowl of chili. It was tornado-y and stormy outside. It was FREEZING when I left yoga class in my flip-flops and shorts around 7 p.m. When I went to class at 6 p.m., it was nearly 70 degrees (yep, in January). Lucky for me, I had a fresh pot of Chipotle Chickpea Chili waiting on me at home.

I whipped this up in the time between work and yoga (roughly an hour), so it'd be ready when I needed it:



Cubed tofu, chickpeas, and kidney beans mean plenty of protein, and the chopped chipotle peppers gave it a nice smoky flavor. I will also include this in my cookbook.

I usually only eat chili if there's melted vegan cheese on top, though. Faux cheddar is best, but all I had was Follow Your Heart mozzerella. It all kind of tastes the same anyway. I took this pic for anyone out there who doesn't believe vegan cheese will melt. Here is proof:



The trick is covering the dish while it's cooking. For example, I tossed a little shredded FYH on top of my chili. Then I placed a heavy glass plate upside down over the bowl before zapping it in the microwave for about 1 1/2 minutes. Ta-da! I've found the same trick works in the oven if you place a baking sheet over your baking dish. But it seems to work best in the microwave.

Today's Food Diary:
Breakfast- Sweet Potato Hash, Whole Grain Toast with Strawberry Jam and Earth Balance
Lunch- Vegan Chicken Salad Sandwich, kettle-cooked salt & vinegar chips,
Snacks- Diana's chocolate cookie (stolen from the potluck), Half a pita with tomato basil hummus
Dinner- Chipotle Chickpea Chili

'Twas the Night Before...

I do a lot of cooking (and prepping for meals) the night before I actually plan to eat a dish. For instance, last night, I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen working on Sweet Potato Hash for the next day's breakfast, as well as Vegan Chicken Salad for tonight's potluck.

I was able to throw a bit of this creamy Sweet Potato Hash in the microwave this morning:



It's a recipe I developed to use in my cookbook. I can't give it all away, but basically, it's shredded sweet potatoes with veggie burger, onion, parsley, and some other stuff (secret ingredients until my book gets published). I had a ton of sweet potatoes my dad gave me a couple weeks ago. This was a great way to use them, and now I've got breakfast for the next couple days since I made a big batch. I served the hash alongside whole grain toast with the homemade organic strawberry jam that I canned last spring. I hand-picked the strawberries on a farm out in Millington, a small town north of Memphis.

For dinner, I went to a vegan potluck at the Sanssouci Collective. It's a co-op of vegan kids here in Memphis. They have potlucks every Monday but I'd never been until tonight. Mostly because the potlucks start at like 8 p.m., which is way past my usual dinnertime. I'm like an old lady on a feeding schedule. At 6 p.m., my stomach starts growling and I get really grouchy. But I snacked until dinnertime tonight, so I was okay.

I brought my own recipe Vegan "Chicken" Salad finger sandwiches:



I used these bean curd knots from the Midtown Asian market, but I'm going to try the recipe again with seitan. The bean curd knots were great, but I also want to include this recipe in my cookbook. And I'm pretty sure bean curd knots aren't widely available everywhere.

Other dishes at the potluck: Black beans and rice with tater tots (this was sooo delish!), spinach phyllo cups, pita with sesame avocado dip, and chocolate cookies.

More pressure cooker woes

I had a ton of produce left over from my failed juice fast, so I made a pledge to use some of it this weekend, lest it go bad. In my world, letting produce go bad is a sin.

Last night, I used the extra spinach to make a Sweet Chili Tofu Spinach Stir-fry:



I based it on a recipe my friend emailed me. It's basically just firm tofu, fresh spinach, garlic, and ginger sauteed in soy sauce mixed with agave nectar and chili-garlic sauce. The original recipe called for honey, but I subbed the agave nectar. And it called for red chilis, but I didn't have any of those, so I used a teaspoon of chili-garlic sauce (a staple every Asian food lover should keep in the fridge).

I wanted to serve it over brown rice, so I tried cooking some in my pressure cooker. But no luck. It didn't even begin to cook in the 12 minutes the pressure cooker booklet (that came with the cooker) promised. I placed the rice and water in a glass oven-safe bowl, covered with aluminum foil (according to the instructions for how to cook grains). Then I poured two cups of water in the cooker around the outside of the bowl.

While it was "cooking," the kitchen smelled horrible — like burning alumnium foil. So I took the pot off the heat after 12 minutes. When the pressure came down, I opened the lid and poked into the alumnum foil, and the rice was still hard. So I cooked some rice noodles really quick since my tofu stir-fry was already done. I'll have to try again with the rice, I guess.

Then, for lunch today, I decided to use the rest of the broccoli from my fast, as well as some of the carrots.



When I tasted the veggies Jill Nussinow "The Veggie Queen" made in a recent pressure cooker cooking demo, they were the PERFECT texture. Not too firm. Not too tender. I wanted to re-create that, so I placed the veggies in the cooker with 1 1/2 cups water. Veggies cook fast, and the book said not to cook the broccoli more than 2 minutes or the carrots more than 4. Since I was cooking the two together, I decided to cook for the full four minutes so the carrots would be done. Unfortunately, that meant my broccoli was so mushy, it would barely hold shape on a fork. The carrots were also cooked too long. I think the book was wrong about the 4 minutes. Next time, I'll try two minutes on the carrots and maybe one minute on the broccoli.

I will figure this pressure cooker thing out, though.

Vegan Mac & Cheeze!

Don't hate me, but I don't have a pic for this one. Silly me forgot to bring my camera to the cooking demo at my animal rights meeting. For the past 4 years, I've been involved with Memphis' only vegetarian/animal rights group, Food Awareness (also known as Memphis Area Animal Rights Acitivists). I'm actually one of the founding members. We meet monthly at Wild Oats (1st Thursday of each month) to plan social outings and AR actions.

Last month, someone suggested reserving some space at the end of the monthly meeting for a vegan cooking demo. Of course I volunteered! I wanted to choose something easy that resembled a common comfort food. So vegan mac & cheese seemed perfect!

Here's my recipe (kind of adapted from "The Garden of Vegan"):

1 lb. macaroni or rotini
3/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup unbleached flour
1 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
2 cups water
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated soy margerine
1 tsp. Dijon mustard

Boil pasta according to package directions. In the meantime, combine yeast, flour, salt, and garlic powder in a saucepan. Whisk in 2 cups water, and turn heat on to medium. Stir continuously until sauce thickens and begins to bubble a little (like making gravy). Remove from heat and stir in margerine and mustard. Drain water from pasta and stir in cheese sauce.

Juice Fast Disaster!

Here's a picture of what should have gone into my dinner juice tonight ... if I'd have made it that far.



I began what should have been a three-day juice fast this morning by drinking 4 cups of water mixed with lime juice (something about alkalizing and hydrating). Then, I had fresh juice prepared in my trusty Jack Lalanne juicer.

I used 2 heads of broccoli, 1 large cucumber, 1 very large carrot, 8 ounces of spinich, 4 ounces of alfalfa sprouts, 6 stalks of celery, and a slice of fresh ginger. It made about 4 cups of juice and I drank them all before going to work at 9 a.m. By 10:30, my tummy was growling. I was allowed to have a 4 cup "snack" of lime water, so I drank that. But my tummy was still hungry.

At noon, I went home and made the same juice. By 1:30, I was so hungry I thought I was going to die. I started to get dizzy and my fingers felt numb (although that could have been due to the fact that the heat in my office was not working). I tried the lime water snack again, but it just tasted gross. I had unsalted trail mix on my desk and someone had brought in some Mrs. May's Naturals Cashew Strawberry Crunch. After consulting with a co-worker, I decided to say screw it. I ate the cashew crunch, and it was soooo good.

Then, I had the trail mix and finally, I gorged on granola. Since I'd messed up my fast, I decided to go to the gym instead. So that made me feel better about eating all those nuts. After all, I'd need some energy even if I was only taking a 30-minute weight and ab class.

When I got home from the gym, I heated up some cabbage soup, black-eyed peas, and made some more garlic bread. I swear it was the best meal of my life. If anything, the juice fast made me appreciate solid foods. It also helped me to realize that I can make it an entire day without caffeine. I still haven't had any Diet Coke, tea, or coffee. I usually have a Diet Coke and two cups of coffee before 10 a.m.

Not that I'm giving up caffeine or anything. That's crazy talk. But you know, if I had to for health reasons some day, I know I could. I'm not even sure why I wanted to juice fast in the first place. It's not like I planned on giving up anything when I was through. I like caffeine, alcohol, and sugar. I have no intention of going 100% raw. And I think that's okay. I eat pretty well as it is.

Happy New Year!!!

Okay, first I must apologize for the lack of posts over the past few days. After cooking big batches of beans and butter pecan tofu, I was stuck eating leftovers for several days. Then, I went out of town for New Year's Eve. But I'm back and in the kitchen!! I always, always, always eat traditional New Year's food on the first day of the year — black-eyed peas for good luck and cabbage for good fortune. I fear not eating these things will lead to a horrible year.

Several months ago, while perusing Veg Times, I came across a recipe for Arborio Rice and Savoy Cabbage soup. It sounded like a gourmet twist on a humble old favorite, cabbage soup. So I dog-eared the page to save for my New Year's Day meal.



Arborio rice, the rice used for making risotto, lends a certain creaminess to this light broth-y soup. And savoy cabbage is just really pretty! It's a very simple recipe: cabbage, rice, veggie broth, and olive oil.

Of course, no New Year's meal is complete without black-eyed peas, but since the cabbage soup was the star of the menu, I opted for canned peas rather than home-cooked. I opened a can of Glory Foods "Sensibly Seasoned" black-eyed peas and without adding any extra flavoring, these were the best damn black-eyed peas I've ever had!! Glory Foods usually adds meat flavoring, but the "Sensibly Seasoned" line is low-fat, so they used smoke flavoring and some veggie seasonings.



Finally, I prepared pumpernickel garlic bread to dip into my soup. The meal was totally refreshing and light enough to start the year off right.

Tomorrow, I will begin my juice fast. It's a three week detox diet that begins with one day of drinking nothing but vegetable juices (made in a juicer, not like V8). The second week, you drink juices for two days in a row. And the final week, you drink juice for three days in a row. I'm excited, but a little nervous about getting hungry. I'll post juice pics tomorrow and let you know how it's going. Wish me luck!!!