I Know It Sounds Weird, But Just Eat It

Y'all are just gonna have to trust me on this one, okay? So my dad always raves about this pineapple salad that he grew up on — pineapple rings, cheese, salad dressing (like Miracle Whip), and lettuce. Sounds weird, right?

My mom thought so too, until my dad had her try it years ago. Now they both love their pineapple salad. For some reason, my mom never made this dish when I was growing up though. It was only recently that I learned about Papa Crunk's penchant for pineapple. Even though I thought it sounded weird, I set out to veganize it. And you know what? It's freakin' tasty. Cooling, sweet 'n' savory, creamy, perfect for a hot summer day. Here's my vegan Pineapple Salad:

The cheese is my beloved Daiya, but any vegan cheddar would do. The white stuff is my homemade Tofu Mayo, which is way less fat than Vegenaise. Though I love the V-stuff, I'm too calorie-conscious to plop that much over a salad. But the homemade mayo works great for this recipe. I'm including it in the cookbook's salad section. I dare you to try it.

On the side, I noshed on my Dry Rub BBQ Seitan Ribs, also in the cookbook:

I've been tweaking this recipe for awhile, and it's almost there. In Memphis, barbecue people are all serious about the wet ribs (with BBQ sauce) vs. dry ribs (with a spice rub) debate. I wanted to create a dry rib version of vegan ribs since there are already quite a few recipes out there for the wet variety.

In Soap Nuts giveaway news, we have three winners who will receive samples of soap nuts for all their clothes washin' needs. And the winners are .... drumroll please ... Buddy, East Village Vegan, and Tanya! Yea!

Pokeweed Foraging with Granny

Back on Father's Day, my family grilled out at Lake Friarson, just outside Jonesboro, Arkansas. After downing my plate of veggie dogs, veggie burgers, potato salad, and baked beans, my Granny and I left the pack to go foraging for wild pokeweed. The stuff was growing all around the picnic grounds, so we grabbed a few grocery sacks to stuff.

Before that experience, I'd eaten Granny's poke salad before, but I'd never seen the wild weed in its natural habitat. Granny showed me what to look for. You want a young plant with a tender stalk rather than an older one with leaves that are turning red. I didn't get any photos of our foraging fun, but here's a picture of wild poke from Wikipedia:

Don't eat those berries though! Those are poisonous. In fact, the entire plant is poisonous, but folks down South have been eating the plant's leaves for years. According to Southern folk tradition, you have to boil the greens in water three times, pouring off the water each time, in order to cook out the toxins.

I'll admit that I was a little scared I wouldn't cook it right and then I'd end up dying or something. But Granny assured me that I probably wouldn't die. Wikipedia says poke poisoning can result in severe nausea, spasms, tremors, vomiting, and convulsions. Apparently, severe poke poisoning cases can result in coma or death. Eeek!

But I'm a huge supporter of keeping Southern foodways and folk culture alive. So I took one for the team and cooked my poke down three times, just like Granny said. I didn't have any immediate plans for the stuff, so I placed the cooled, cooked greens in a baggie in the freezer. I pulled them out this week to mix in with a tofu scramble. I used my recipe for Cheeze Eggs, the poke, and some Ro-Tel to make this Poke Salad Scramble:

This is the only way I've ever had poke because my Granny recommends cooking it with eggs. Since tofu is my eggs, I tried it this same way in 2008 when I cooked some poke that Granny had given me (after she'd already cooked out the toxins). It tastes very much like spinach, and it was the perfect complement to my yummy tofu scramble. I scooped it all into my mouth with a slice of whole wheat toast spread with Earth Balance and Marmite.

And guess what? I didn't die. I've eaten this breakfast for two mornings in a row with no adverse effects. I'm sure the poisonous claims about poke are true, but generations of Southern cooks (including my Granny) have been cooking out the toxins forever. I think I'll take their word for it and keep the food culture alive.

By the way, I'll be randomly choosing the winner of the Soap Nuts giveaway on Wednesday evening (around 10 p.m. CST). Enter here if you haven't already.

Busty Blackberry BBQ

I subscribe to VegNews and Vegetarian Times, both of which are loaded with delicious-sounding vegan recipes. But sometimes all those recipes in one thin magazine can be overwhelming. I'll dog ear one recipe to make in the future, flip the page, and dog ear another. By the time I'm through with the magazine, I have at least 20 recipes added to my to-make list (which is very, very long already, mind you).

But for some reason, when I come across a vegan recipe in a non-vegan magazine, I get way excited and I have to make it. Especially when that vegan recipe was developed by our own Isa Chandra Moskowitz. The June/July 2010 issue of Bust Magazine featured a Berry Barbacue Sauce recipe by Isa! And I came across the recipe a day after my friend Aaron brought me a big ole' bag of local blackberries.

Here's some of Isa's berry sauce atop a Savory Seitan Steak from American Vegan Kitchen: Check out that big ass slice of heirloom Cherokee Purple tomato!

This tasty lunch was actually my way using some of the leftover BBQ sauce after I brushed most of it over tofu and veggie kabobs that my friends and I ate at a Pat Benatar outdoor show a couple of weeks ago. It was rainy outside and I was scared to take my camera, so no kabob pics. Sorry!

But more about the sauce — this smoky-sweet 'cue sauce is quite different from vinegar-heavy sauces folks eat here in Memphis. But it's oh-so-good! Onion, garlic, ginger, fresh berries, molasses, and smoked paprika all come together to create a sauce with rich, complex flavor.

If you happen to own the June/July issue of Bust, the recipe is featured in the "Life's a Picnic" spread. It's the only one submitted by Isa, but the feature also contains a bread and butter pickle recipe that I must try!

Don't forget to enter the soap nuts giveaway. Click here for more info.

A Few Things I've Made

Last week, I took more food photos than I had days to post them so I have a little surplus. Since I didn't cook this weekend (except for a coconut icebox cake that I neglected to photograph!), I thought I'd share a couple of last week's meals. Both are testers for my Southern vegan cookbook. Here's my Fried Green Tomato & Tofu Sandwich:

Mmm-mmm. I wish had the fixin's to make this sandwich again right now. I love the way the savory flavor of the baked tofu compliments the tangy fried green tomato. The homemade Dijon-maple sauce really ties it all together.

My breakfast several days last week was this Sorghum Molasses French Toast with Local Blueberries:

The toast is prepared using my vegan French toast recipe, but the sorghum syrup (subbed for the traditional maple) is what really makes this dish shine. Down South, we love our sorghum syrup. If you've never had it, it tastes a little like molasses but much milder. A lot of folks call the syrup sorghum molasses, but there's really no molasses in sorghum. They're similar, yet completely different products — sort of like the sweet potato and the yam. In a pinch, you can certainly sub out blackstrap molasses for the sorghum in this recipe though.

Don't forget to enter the soap nuts giveaway! Click here for details.

Soap Nuts Giveaway!

When I was contacted by Maggie's Pure Land Products about trying free samples of Soap Nuts Laundry Soap, I didn't really understand what I was signing up for. The nice person who contacted me tried to explain that this eco-friendly alternative to traditional laundry soap involved washing my clothes with dried fruit. But maybe I wasn't really paying attention. Then two generous packages of these little round dried nuts came in the mail:

You actually wash your clothes with these! They're totally vegan, hypoallergenic, low-sudsing, and super eco-friendly. The nuts come with a cute little reusable cotton sack:

Stuff the sack with 2 to 5 nuts (depending on whether or not you have an HE washer), tie it up, and toss it in the machine with your dirty skivvies. About a half an hour later, you've got clean underoos.

Afraid that these strange dried fruits would stain my clothes, I first tested the soap nuts on dirty sheets. The sheets came out of the wash clean and fresh-smelling. The Soap Nuts company also sent me a bottle of their laundry liquid (made from soap nut extract, lavendar, lemongrass, and tea tree oils), so I tested it on my delicates with perfect results. I went back to the whole nuts for my tough jeans and towels, all of which came out of the wash clean as hell (and I let my jeans get pretty funky before I finally wash them).

According to Maggie's Pure Land Products, soap nuts are the dried fruit of the Chinese soapbery tree, which is related to the lychee and rambutan. They're harvested in Indian and Indonesian jungles. Apparently, the locals there have been using these nuts as soap for ages. Here's a photo Maggie's sent me of soap nuts drying in the sun:

Maggie's Pure Land wants to give away a sample of soap nuts to three lucky readers! Leave a comment about your favorite article of clothing, and I'll use a random number generator to choose the three winners next Wednesday (July 21st). Tweet about the giveaway with a link back to my blog and then leave an additional comment for an extra entry. You can also mention the contest (with a link) on Facebook and leave another comment to let me know you did. If you have a blog, link back to this contest on your blog and leave me yet another comment.

That's an opportunity for four entries per person! But please, please, please leave an email address if you don't have a blog so I have a way to contact you. The winners will be able to choose between an 8-load liquid sample and a 5-load raw soap nut sample. Good luck!

UPDATE: A few commenters have expressed concerns about the mass marketing of soap nuts and how it might affect the prices of these natural cleansers for the indigenous people who've used them for years. I don't have enough information to speak to that point exactly, but I did find this link to information about the company's sustainable forest harvest (and paying living wages to workers who gather nuts) on their webpage. From a quick Google search, I can see that Maggie's isn't the only company selling soap nuts, and I'm not sure how their practices compare to the other companies. But I've emailed the company for more information. Until then, comment on! And good luck!

Eight Ingredients = Two Yummy Vegan Dishes

Y'all know I love to cook, and I don't typically shy away from time-consuming dishes. I'd say I probably spend about one-third of my time piddlin' in the kitchen. But I do have a social life. I work out at the gym five days a week. I go out with friends for drinks, movies, live theater, concerts, and weird costume parties. Some nights, I need to get dinner on the table with a quickness. But rather than turn to takeout, I typically opt for an easy-peasy recipe.

Enter The 4-Ingredient Vegan, a new book by Meribeth Abrams and Anne Dinshah. It's pubished by the Book Publishing Company in Summertown, Tennessee, and though I just began cooking from the book, I have a feeling it's about to make my life a little easier.

As the title implies, every recipe in this 150-page cookbook has only four ingredients. That makes for a cheaper meal with less prep. Last night, I whipped up these Stuffed Bell Peppers in no time:

These colorful bells are stuffed with brown rice, canned vegan chili (I used the Whole Foods generic chili), and salsa. Although it's technically five ingredients here due to my use of the optional nutritional yeast topping, this recipe shines with simplicity. Of course, I also used salt, pepper, and hot sauce, but those don't really count as ingredients.

On the side, I couldn't resist trying the Asparagus in Corn Sauce:

Asparagus is baked with a sauce of pureed corn, celery, and cumin. That's it. Doesn't sound like much, but the cumin really pumps up the flavor in this dish. And the baked corn sauce gets all crusty and delicious in the oven. Here's what the spears looked like on my plate:

Though I've only tried these two recipes, I've dog-eared many more recipes in the book like Seitan with Tomatoes and Sauerkraut, Pumpkin-Bean Soup, Baked Bean and Tater Casserole, Crispy Artichoke Hearts, Vegan Fudge, and Banana, Chocolate, and Ginger Pastry. Can you believe all of those recipes only contain four ingredients?! It's crazy, but it's true.

Granted, a few recipes call for hard to find convenience foods, like the Ravioli with Broccoli in Coconut Sauce. Though it sounds divine, I'm not sure where I'd ever find the frozen butternut squash ravioli called for in the recipe. Another recipe calls for vegan pierogies, which I've never seen in a store ... though I'm sure that might be available in a place with more selection than Memphis.

Luckily, about 99 percent of the recipes call for whole foods or easy to find convenience foods, like canned chili, canned beans, pre-made hummus, tator tots, or tomato soup. I have a feeling The 4-Ingredient Vegan will become an essential guide for busy (and cheap) vegans. It certainly will be essential for me.

UPDATE: Several commenters have mentioned that Rising Moon Organics makes a vegan butternut squash ravioli that's available at Whole Foods. After checking out their website, I do recall seeing that packaging in my Whole Foods' frozen food aisle. Maybe b-nut squash ravioli is available in Memphis after all!

Butter Tarts & Apple Hearts

Can somebody say "cuteness"? Because this post is full of all things tiny and adorable. Like these Better Than Butter Tarts:

This is the July recipe in Sarah Kramer's 2010 Go Vegan wall calendar, so I whipped up a batch for the bitches at O.C. Night (that's when a bunch of girls get together and watch The O.C. on DVD).

These cutesy little pastries are filled with an Earth Balance-y raisin/walnut filling. The tart shells were made using my own recipe for whole wheat pie crust. According to Kramer (a native Canadian), butter tarts are all the rage in Canada. The O.C. ladies couldn't even tell these were vegan, and I'm sure they'd be perfect to serve at your next Newport cotillion (that's some nerdy O.C. humor for ya).

On to other cuteness ... check out this ADORABLE Happy Apple change purse that River made for me!

In case you don't know, River is an old-skool blogger of the awesomest order. She's pretty much the Martha Stewart of the blog world. But I'm sure River is way cooler than Martha Stewart. River used to maintain the blog Wing It Vegan, where she displayed crafty vegan treats like veggie meatloaf coffins and mashed potato ghosts for Halloween (or Halloweegan as she called it). That blog is no longer active, but it remains online. You must check out her sweet vegan holiday treat ideas!

These days, River blogs at The Crafty Kook, a melting pot of her mouth-watering vegan eats and fun crafty projects. A few months ago, River showed a few of her latest coin purse creations including one like the happy green apple one shown above. She mentioned in the post that she might be giving away a few, and she was soooooo sweet to include me in the lucky bunch!

Right now, my happy apple is hanging out in my kitchen window next to a tiny pirate monster sewn by the PPK's Panda Cookie.

Thanks River!!!