Low-Cal Comfort Food

I had the pleasure of meeting fellow Southern vegan cookbook author Alicia Simpson at Atlanta VegFest. Alicia gave a talk about how to make comfort food low-cal, which is pretty much my life goal. I count calories. And I only really eat comfort fare.

Alicia's latest book, Quick & East Low-Cal Vegan Comfort Food, is perfect for me! Every recipe has fewer than 350 calories! I had to grab a copy at VegFest and have it signed by Ms. Alicia herself.

Flipping through the book, I found so many dishes that I couldn't wait to try. But for some reason, I was drawn to these Gyros with Tzatziki Sauce:

The seitan steaks are homemade using Alicia's Savory Seitan recipe. It's made using the boiling method, which is my personal fave. And the broth is super savory and very flavorful.

Now let's talk about that tzatziki sauce. I've only made tzatziki a few times and always on the fly without a recipe. So what I've had hasn't been that great, but Alicia's recipe will now be my go-to tzatziki sauce. It's made with grated cucumbers and plain vegan yogurt, as would be expected, but it also has fun additions such as flax oil and oregano. So delicious! And the whole sandwich — seitan, sauce, and all — was only 288 calories.

Now that I've tried Alicia's seitan, I can't wait to make her Seitan Cheesesteak (pictured on the book's cover), her BBQ Popcorn (what? what?!), Meatball Soup, Chili Cheese Fries (low-cal!!), and her Ballpark Hot Dogs (made from scratch). I'm ever-so-curious about the Wet Burritos because that sounds kinda gross, but the ingredients look delicious (TVP, onion, peppers, refried beans, and enchilada sauce).

As for desserts, well, lemme just tell you that she has a recipe for low-cal Glazed Donuts and Butter Pecan Ice Cream, so ....

Vegan Corn Dog Machine!

Okay, so my friend Cassi might get the distinction of "most blogged about three days in a row," but this Cassi-related post is actually an old one that I've been sitting on. Way back in October, Cassi bought me a Handy Gourmet Samba Snack Maker for my birthday.

The Samba Snack Maker can be used for anything from sweet dessert-filled crepes to corn dogs, and Cassi fully intended for me to use this for desserts. But I saw the word "corn dog" on the box, and I knew what would be happening with this machine. I LOVE corn dogs!

Now, I actually made my first batch of corn dogs in the Samba shortly after I got it, but I was thinking about making other stuff and doing a big ole post. So I've been sitting on it. But this has been a busy week, and cooking is mostly out of the question. I've decided to go ahead and show you what I have, and when I use it for dessert, I'll just do another post.

Anyway, here's the Samba in action:

I used the corn dog batter in the included recipe book, but I made it vegan by using Ener-G egg replacer to sub out the eggs called for. The wells are quite small, so I chopped the Lightlife Smart Dogs in half for mini-corn dogs!

Delicious! The thin batter makes these almost like hot dog-filled cornmeal crepes. I dipped these in maple mustard and served with slaw.

Okie Dokie, Artichokey!

Last night, I blogged about my friend Cassi's Christmas Cookie Club party. Well, in addition to requiring all 12 ladies who attended to bring 13 dozen cookies, Cassi also asked us to either bring wine or a dish to share.

I figured there would be plenty of wine, but I was worried about vegan food options since only one other girl was vegan (and I knew she was bringing wine because she said she didn't have time to make anything). And by the way, in case you're wondering, I only buy vegan wines when I'm buying, but I won't turn down a glass of any wine unless I'm certain it's not vegan. Probably not the best policy, but it's what I do. Sorry, vegan police.

So anyway, I whipped up a quick Spinach Artichoke Dip, which I'll be using for the 1970s chapter of my new cookbook project:

It was my first stab at spinach artichoke dip, but I think it was pretty damn good. All the omnis at the party loved it, and Cassi's nine-year-old kid (who has decided recently that he's a vegetarian) loved the leftovers. Score.

I'm trying to eat as much junk food as possible over the next few weeks (although this is KINDA healthy because it's loaded with spinach and artichokes), because I always do a rigorous cleanse in January. This year, I'm embarking on Brendan Brazier's (you know, the Vega guy) Thrive Forward plan. It's free, and it's personalized to your needs, whether that's weight loss, more energy, more sleep, or just adopting healthier eating habits. If you want to Thrive with me, you should check out the Thrive Forward website, watch the intro video, and sign up! It starts on January 3rd.

Until then, let's eat vegan junk food! Here's the recipe!

Vegan Spinach-Artichoke Dip

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1 12-ounce bag frozen chopped spinach, thawed and water squeezed out

1 14-ounce artichokes (not in oil), drained and chopped

1 clove minced garlic

1 cup vegan mayo

1 cup shredded vegan mozzarella (I used Daiya)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray an 8x8 inch casserole dish with cooking spray.

Mix everything together in a large bowl. Transfer to the casserole dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve with tortilla chips or crackers.

The Christmas Cookie Club

Earlier this year, my chick lit-loving friend Cassi read a book called The Christmas Cookie Club and got a wild hair up her ass. You see, the book centers on a group of women who get together once a year for a Christmas cookie swap. Well, Cassi decided to start a real Christmas Cookie Club and invite 12 of her lady friends to swap cookies. Sounds nice, right?

Cassi sent out invites in November, and without really paying much attention to the rules, I eagerly RSVP-ed. Well, let me share with you the rules of Christmas Cookie Club, which Cassi took straight from the book:

Yes, you read that right. Every attendee must make 13 dozen cookies. That's 156 cookies. And she actually asked for a baker's dozen, but we all kinda said, "To hell with that." I honestly didn't think about how many cookies were in 13 dozen until a few days before the event. That's when I realized my Friday night was going to be devoted to baking and baking and baking and baking and more baking.

I decided on the Cool Lemon Cookies from Vegan Food Gifts by Joni Newman. The cookies are supposed to describe your year, and my year was all about the summer. I bought my first house and published my first cookbook this summer. And nothing says summer like lemon. Plus, I knew these cookies would be fairly inexpensive to make in a large quantity since they're free of nuts and other pricey ingredients:

These are amazing! The cookies are soft but substantial. They don't crumble or break. There's lemon extract in the batter, and they're rolled in a mixture of powdered sugar and unsweetened powdered lemonade mix. Yes, friends, the cookies are rolled in Kool-Aid. Does it get any better than that?

Here they are all packaged up and ready to gift:

The party was Saturday night. We had lots of wine and plenty of snacks. I brought a Spinach Artichoke Dip that I'll blog about tomorrow night.

Now, Cassi is not vegan. And only one other vegan lady was invited. But so many people brought vegan cookies, just so Stephanie and I could eat them too! Each lady went home with 12 dozen cookies, and the 13th dozen is going to a charity.

While some of the cookies were not vegan, look at all that were!

There's Cassi's vegan Coconut Macaroons, Nicole's vegan Sweet Potato Spice Cookies, Kristen's Oreo "Poop" Truffles (she had a bad year, so she shaped her truffles like poop), Stephanie's German Spice Cookies, and Karen even veganized her grandma's Tea Cake recipe (those are sugar cookie-like cutouts!).

Now I have a bajillion cookies, so I'll be sharing plenty with my co-workers tomorrow. They can have all the non-vegan ones, but I'll be hoarding a few of the vegan ones for myself.

Bluff City Vegan Eats: Arepa & Salsa

There's a new Venezuelan restaurant in town called Arepa & Salsa. My friend Leslie asked if I wanted to join her there for lunch yesterday, and to be honest, I had no idea what Venezuelan food was. So I googled the place and found a picture of their menu on Urban Spoon.

At first glance, the place seemed very un-vegan friendly. Every dish on their two-page menu contained meat. Leslie's vegetarian too, so I sent her this frantic text message:

But as you can see, our vegan friend Nick had already eaten there and had determined that it was "awesome and shit." So I texted Nick to ask what we could eat at Arepa & Salsa. He suggested we tell our server we're vegan (Leslie is technically vegetarian, but she eats vegan most of the time) and that we ask for the "plantain sandwich." Now as a lover of all thing plantain, I was convinced.

Once seated inside the small diner, we informed our server that we were vegan. She was very helpful and suggested the De Pabellon without meat or cheese. That's a sandwich made arepa (a corn dough bread) stuffed with black beans and plantain. Leslie asked if we could add avocado. Here's what we were served:

OMG! This was my dream sandwich! Plantains, black beans, avocado, tomato, lettuce!! And the arepa ... oh my! It's like a pita pocket made from a thick tamale-like bread. Genius. I'll be coming back here often for this sandwich. I can't even describe how amazing it was. I ate every last bite even though the thing weighed a couple of pounds. I was way too stuffed when I returned to work, but it was so worth it.

One thing to note: My sandwich arrived with a creamy sauce on it. I asked the server if it was dairy-based, and she confirmed that it was. So even though I didn't know to ask for that to be left off, they made me a new one! Great service. I'll be sure and ask them to leave that off next time.

Nick says the tostones cups with plantain are also vegan. And the server informed us that they can also add eggplant to an arepa by request.

Arepa & Salsa is located at 662 Madison. Call 901-949-8537.

Homemade Whole Wheat Vegan Pop-Tarts!

As I've mentioned a few times before, I'm currently working on a cookbook of veganized trendy foods from the decades of the past century. Some decades are easy: The 1950s are a wealth of culinary awesomeness. But what did people eat in the 1980s?

I don't know about you, but I ate a lot of meals from boxes and bags. My mom is an excellent cook, and she made plenty from scratch. But like so many kids of the 80s, I still wanted the frozen pizzas, TV dinners, and Hamburger Helper. While the 1980s chapter will include some vegan versions of from-scratch dishes, it'll also include some vegan versions of those ubiquitous convenience foods. Like Pop-Tarts! Who didn't worship Pop-Tarts in the 1980s?

This weekend, I came up with a vegan version of this popular recipe that I found online. Mine is made with vegan butter, of course. And I use whole wheat pastry flour instead of white flour, so despite the cup of butter (non-hydrogenated, of course!), maybe they're kinda healthy-ish ... okay, maybe not:

The recipe still needs a little tweaking, and I plan to experiment with fillings. These were filled with blackberry jam, but I know I want to try a chocolate filling and maybe a brown sugar and cinnamon one too:

Superfood Supper

I don't know that I really buy into the superfood hype, but I do know that some foods are pretty darn healthy. To balance out my junk food/ramen noodle/beer habit, I try to squeeze in as many of these so-called "superfoods" whenever I can. You know, stuff like quinoa, sprouts, miso paste, and cacao.

Julie Morris' Superfood Kitchen is making sneaking in my superfoods a little bit easier. This new all-vegan, hardback, full-color tome is filled with nutritious recipes that don't seem too hippie-fied or too bland. If Asian Tempeh Lettuce Cups and BBQ Sweet Potato Fries are superfoods, count me in. Each recipe is made with uber-healthy ingredients, and at least one ingredient is from the superfood club. For example, the sweet potato fries contain maca powder, from a radish-like root that contains around 60 phytonutrients.

Everything sounds so amazing that I had a really hard time narrowing down a couple recipes to try for this review. But I finally settled on this Tofu-Broccoli Quiche with Quinoa Crust:

Wow! I've had vegan quiche a few times, but this one really takes the cake, er, quiche. The tofu is seasoned with sauteed onion and broccoli, nooch, tahini, and ume plum vinegar (another superfood). It's super firm and almost egg-like after its baked. And the crust! Oh the crust! It's made from cooked quinoa held together with flax eggs (that's two superfoods!). I thought the crust might fall apart, but no way. It was as firm or firmer than any pastry crust I've ever made. Check it out:

For my side, I made the Goddess Kale Salad:

This creamy, tangy salad is made from raw kale massaged with a mixture of tahini, olive oil, hemp seeds, spices, vinegars, and spirulina. It also calls for optional kelp powder, but I left that out because I think kelp powder is nasty.

Now that I've made two amazing recipes from Superfood Kitchen, I'm making my list of what to try next. The Tater(-Like) Tots sounds really different and delicious. Instead of using potatoes, you use Great Northern beans, flaxseed, quinoa, miso, and brown rice flour to create something resembling a tot.

Other dishes I'm excited to try: Olive Caviar (kalamata olive dip), Black Bean-Hemp Protein Patties, Kabocha-Quinoa Risotto with Sage Cream & Sun-dried Yacon Root (fancy!), and Zucchini Fettucine with Mega Marinara (raw pasta with a tomato-goji berry sauce). The desserts, a mix of raw and baked treats, look equally delicious. Raw Caramel Apple Cobbler? Yes, please. Chocolate Goji Granola? I'll have that too. And Lucuma Ice Cream Cupcakes? OMG!