Sweet Tater + Almond Butter = Breakfast!

Nora from Pride & Vegudice has been blogging about her love for baked sweet potatoes with nut butter for some time now. I swoon every time she posts one of her gorgeous photos of a soft, orange tuber slathered in almond (or recently coconut) butter. So I finally decided to stop dreaming about the damn thing and eat a Baked Sweet Tater with Raw Almond Butter and Cranberry Sauce for breakfast:

Oh, holy crap! This is such an amazing, wholesome, delectable breakfast. First of all, this was my first experience with "raw" almond butter. I've been too cheap to shell out the $10 for a little jar, so I've stuck with good old-fashioned roasted almond butter for way too long. The Maranatha brand raw butter has a dramatically different (and far improved) taste than its cooked counterpart.

The cranberry sauce was leftover from Thanksgiving. It's a recipe my mom made from a Food Network magazine that includes fresh cranberries, orange pieces and zest, apples, and pecans. I only have a tiny bit left, but I wish I could keep this stuff stocked for baked taters and toast-spreadin' all year round.

My 5th Vegan-iversary

Black Friday isn't just some crazy excuse for mass consumurism. It's also my vegan-iversary! It all started in 1994. I ate turkey on Thanksgiving Day and something just didn't set right in my 14-year-old mind. I'd already gone "semi-vegetarian" by then (eating only poultry and an occasional piece of fried catfish ... never cared for seafood even when I ate meat), and seeing that giant turkey carcass on the kitchen counter really grossed me out that year. So I went vegetarian on Black Friday in 1994.

Fast forward to 2004. In celebration of having 10 years as a vegetarian, I decided to try veganism on the day after Thanksgiving. It was really just a month trial run ... to see if I could do it. Thirty days later in late December 2004, I realized how easy being vegan could be. So I made the decision to be vegan forever.

This year, Black Friday marked my 5th vegan and my 15th vegetarian anniversary! Since my mom and I have started a new tradition (as of last year) of doing our holiday shopping on Black Friday (because we're crazy enough to fight the crowds for a good deal!), I've also began a new tradition of dining with her at my favorite Memphis breakfast joint for a vegan-iversary brunch.

Here I am at Brother Juniper's, about to stuff my face with the most delicious tofu scramble:

And here's a shot of my vegan-iversary brunch plate — the "Fahim's Special" at Brother Juniper's:

Fahim's Special is a crazy-good tofu scramble made with a balsamic vinaigrette, kalamata olives, portabella mushrooms, and other veggies. It's served with tasty garlic home fries and whole wheat toast with all-natural strawberry fruit spread! I couldn't ask for a better post-Thanksgiving, vegan-iversary, Black Friday brunch!

Thanksgiving Redux

Ya'll know I love food ... more than one probably should. But on most days, I carefully watch what I eat. I count calories. I work out. I plan meals by the week, all to ensure that my love of food doesn't turn into a full-on food addiction. But Thanksgiving is one of the few days of the year when gorging oneself is not only accepted ... it's encouraged. So every year on the last Thursday of Novemver, I stuff myself until I can't breathe. Here's a shot of my first plate at my family's Thanksgiving dinner this year:

Top (left to right): Vegan Mac & Cheeze, Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Green Beans, Corn, Vegan Cream Cheeze Mashed Potatoes. Bottom (left to right): Greens & Turnips, Mama's Best-Ever Vegan Cornbread Dressin', Homemade Cranberry Sauce, Slices of Field Roast Celebration Roast, and Marinated Slaw.

Except for the turkey, my mom and Granny make everything vegan. I get my own casserole dish filled with my mom's famous vegan dressin, and my mom uses Earth Balance in all the sides. She even used Tofutti sour cream and cream cheeze in the mashed potatoes, and none of the omnis could tell a difference. I made a small pot of vegan mac & cheeze, so I could eat it while everyone else ate baked mac & cheddar cheese casserole.

I used to cook a Tofurkey, but for the past several years, I've been baking a Field Roast Celebration Roast instead:

I like the texture and taste of the Field Roast better, and it's smaller so that means less leftovers. Nothing against leftovers, of course. I've been eating Thanksgiving plates all weekend! But Tofurkeys are so big that I'd have more leftovers than I could eat in a week.

My second plate was filled with one slice of all three of these delicious vegan pies. Granny brought a Vegan Pineapple Marshmallow Cream Pie:

She used Soy Whip, Dandies vegan marshmallows, and crushed pineapple in a graham cracker crust! I'm definitely stealing this recipe from her for my cookbook.

She also brought over one of her famous Old-Fashioned Coconut Pies, another recipe she developed for my cookbook. This is my favorite pie in the whole world ... ever:

And I made a Smlove Pie from the Veganomicon:

I've made this recipe several times before, and this rich chocolate tofu pie with peanut butter caramel, candied pecans, and chocolate ganache is always a crowd pleaser.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed the gluttony of Thanksgiving Day (and the days of leftover gorging that followed), I'm ready to get back into my old healthy-eating habits.

Hey testers! I FINALLY posted another recipe on the tester site — my Choco-Choco Praline Pecan Cookies. Check it out when you get a chance!

Happy Tofurkey Day!

Hey guys! Just wanted to make a quick post to wish all of ya'll a Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your Tofurkeys and Field Roasts. Stuff your bellies with cornbread dressin' (if you're from down here) or stuffing (for those up north). And whatever you do, eat lots and lots of delicious vegan pie.

I'll leave ya'll with this photo of a new cookbook creation — Vanilla Spice Cupcakes with Pumpkin Pie Buttercream:

Thai Meets Indian

Several weeks ago, I received a bundle of books to review from the Book Publishing Company in Summertown, Tennessee (an awesome publisher of vegan and vegetarian cookbooks). One of those books was Buddha's Table: Thai Feasting Vegetarian Style by Chat Mingkwan.

Chat's book features all sorts of classic Thai dishes sans the meat or fish sauce. Some are things I've never heard of like Pandan Sweet Jelly or Galangal Coconut Soup. Others are more common in Americanized Thai cuisine, like stir-fries, hot 'n' sour lemongrass soup, cucumber salad, and lots of curries.

The first recipe I chose to try was the Yellow Curry, a coconut curry influenced by traditional Indian fare:

Though you can't really tell from this picture, the curry contains soft white potatoes, kobocha squash, red bell pepper, coconut milk, and cubes of frozen (and then thawed) tofu. The recipe didn't actually call for tofu, but I need my protein ... and tofu is delicious in a curry. It did call for taro, but I couldn't find any at my neighborhood Asian market.

Also, the dish called for both coconut milk and coconut cream. However, the only thing resembling coconut cream I could find was Cream of Coconut ... and seeing as how that contains a ton of sugar, I knew that wasn't right. So I subbed the rest of my MimicCreme (a delicious vegan alternative to heavy cream) instead. The result was delicious, and the non-coconut flavored heavy cream didn't take away from the rich flavor of the coconut milk.

Expect more tasty dishes from Buddha's Table in the very near future! Some of the recipes call for really strange, new (at least to me) ingredients like lily buds and lotus seeds, and I'm anxious to seek those things out at Asian markets around town.

Sunny Side Up!

I used to love fried eggs, and just before going vegan in 2004, I was starting to enjoy them prepared sunny side up. Before I'd always preferred the yolk cooked all the way through. So you can imagine my excitement when a blog reader named Rocky (who runs this Shepheard Illustration art website) mailed me his vegan Sunny Side Up Tofu Egg recipe.

The recipe involves carving tofu into a fried-egg shape, and I didn't do the best job there, but I assure my ugly little fried tofu "egg" was delicious:

Isn't it cute? The yolk, a gelantinous substance made with carrot juice and arrowroot (though I used cornstarch), was delicious mushed up with the pan-fried tofu. After shooting this photo, I used my fork to mix the yolk with the "egg," just like people do with real eggs. And I seasoned it liberally with black salt for an eggy taste.

Rocky gave me permission to post his recipe (with what he says is an improved yolk recipe from the one he sent me several weeks ago). So here goes.

Rocky's Sunny Side Up Tofu "Egg"
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Cut tofu (I used one pound of firm tofu to make three thick tofu eggs) into the shape of a fried egg, thin at the periphery and thick in the middle. Insert broad bladed knife horizontally through the tofu near the bottom. Where the yolk should be, cookie-cut out a yolk hole with a shot glass all the way down to the blade. Remove blade. Fry in vegan margarine-both sides until golden brown. Set aside.

Now make yolk:
(note: lt stands for what looks to be larger than a tablespoon but looks like a tablespoon. Not sure what it's called).

2 large tablespoons (lt) flax seed oil
1 lt melted vegan margarine
1/2 lt arrowroot (more later) dissolved in teaspoon hot water
1/4 lt carrot juice
1/4 lt vegan mayo
some salt, pepper and garlic salt

Mix well, microwave 25 seconds.

Add 1/4 more arrowroot to 1 lt hot water.
Stir in to prior mix.

Stir well until very thick so it doesn't run way too fast.

Add to egg hole and spread liberally over top of tofu.

Put in microwave another 10 - 15 sec.

Pepper and salt again.

Serve hot. Dip egg with toast if you like.

Know Your Roots

Long, long ago back in May 2008, I blogged about a new creation for my cookbook — Seitan Root Veggie Pot Pie:

It was everything I love — hearty winter root veggies and tender morsels of "chicken-ish" seitan — stuffed between two flaky whole wheat crusts. The perfect comfort food.

But that original recipe needed a few improvements, namely I'd made way too much filling for one pie. In in an effort to perfect the measurements in the recipe, I finally tried it again last night. The result was a perfect pie, filled with just right amount of sweet potatoes, white potatoes, turnips, carrots, and seitan.