Celebrate Vegan!

I had the pleasure of meeting long-time blogger crush, Dynise Balcavage, at Vida Vegan Con this year, and I must admit, I was a little giddy to meet someone whose blog I've been drooling over for years. Dynise led a workshop on how to spice up our food writing by using more descriptive terms for food, rather than easy fallbacks like "yummy" or "delicious." And even though I'm a news writer by day, I still have problems over-using those generic terms. Although I'm still guilty, at least now I always hear a tiny Dynise voice encouraging me to be more descriptive every time I post.

I bought her first cookbook, Urban Vegan (which shares a title with her blog), as soon as it came out, and I've been eagerly awaiting her second book, Celebrate Vegan: 200 Life-Affirming Recipes for Occasions Big and Small. When she offered me a copy for review, I jumped at the chance. I love seasonal cookbooks, especially ones that focus on holidays. I'm a bit of a holiday whore, who puts way too much emphasis on celebrating every little special day.

This book features recipes for, not just the big holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, but all the tiny ones in between. There's recipes to make on World Vegetarian Day, Memorial Day, MLK Day, as well international days, like the Buddhist holiday Vesak, the Ethiopian celebration of Timkat (mini injeras!!!), and the Hindu Diwali. There's even recipes for generic occasions like grown-up birthdays, funerals, and girl's nights in.

I hosted a holiday potluck at my house on Saturday, and I chose three dishes from the section on winter religious holidays. I made the Brown Rice Christmas Maki from the Christmas Eve chapter:

This sushi is made with green avocado and red sun-dried tomatoes for that special Christmas effect, but my tomatoes looked a little more brown than red. All of Dynise's Christmas Eve entree recipes are grain-based as a vegan-friendly spin on the European Christmas tradition of the "feast of the seven fishes." Rather than serving seven fish-based meals, Dynise suggests serving seven grain-based ones. This sushi was one of the seven.

I also made some Peppermint Bark, using vegan white and dark chocolate:

This was also in the Christmas Eve chapter, and it was so easy! I just melted chocolate, stirred in a little peppermint extract, spread it onto a cookie sheet, and sprinkled on crushed candy canes. The result was a melt-in-your-mouth minty fresh sweet treat.

Since it was a holiday potluck, I also wanted to make something from Jewish tradition. So I chose this Rue des Rosiers Pain D'Epices from the Hanukkah section:

This spiced gingerbread is traditionally sold in bakeries throughout France during the holiday season, and Dynise said it's especially popular in Paris's Jewish neighborhoods. I served this with homemade orange marmalade (a gift from my friend Stephanie) and Earth Balance. The bread was moist and perfectly spiced with hints of ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.

I'll post pictures from the rest of the potluck tomorrow. We had quite a spread! But I wanted to focus solely on the dishes from Dynise's book in this review.

I'll certainly be referring to Celebrate Vegan for every tiny holiday that comes around. The Chilled Pea Soup with Mint and Garlic Scapes will be the perfect way to celebrate Earth Day. Cinco de Mayo won't be complete without one of Dynise's Easy Watermelon Daiquiris, and before this holiday season is over, I might just make Prismatic Wild Rice Salad and Noochy Broccoli for Festivus, the anti-consumerist holiday celebration invented on Seinfeld.

DIY Vegan Mozzarella

Yesterday's pumpkin soup called for MimicCream, so I opened the one carton I'd been hoarding for months. But the soup only called for 3/4 of a cup, so there was plenty of leftover. Not one to waste a hard-to-find vegan commodity, I decided to use another cup of the nut-based heavy cream to make the DIY Vegan Mozzarella That Melts from Veganize This!

Many of Jenn Shagrin's recipes call for MimicCream, so I knew I'd find something in her book to put my extra cream to good use. Since it's not widely available across the country, she also provides suggestions for making MimicCream alternatives at home.

But I used the real stuff to make her creamy mozzarella. This silken tofu and MimicCream-based cheese firms up like a block cheese, thanks to agar powder. It's similar in texture to many of the cheeses in The Uncheese Cookbook. And the stuff actually tastes very much like Follow Your Heart Mozzarella! Plus, it actually melts! I grated some onto my Personal Pan Pizza with Mushrooms and Olives:

I used a fourth of the cheese on this little single-serving pizza, and since the cheese recipe doesn't call for any added fat, I didn't feel guilty about piling it on. Look how melty!

I used Isa's recipe for Pizza Dough from Vegan with a Vengeance for the crust, but I divided the recipe into fourths so I'd have enough for four tiny pizzas. I baked one pizza and froze the other three balls of dough for use later in the week. Yum!

I've Gone Pumpkin Crazy

I'm always a few weeks behind whatever's cool. You can blame Memphis for that. They (whoever "they" is) say this city is about 10 years behind. So don't hold it against me that I'm just now eating lots and lots of pumpkin. I meant to get into pumpkin before Thanksgiving this year, but it didn't happen. Now it's coming on with a vengeance.

After yesterday's pumpkin cookie teff porridge, I was still hungry for the mushy orange stuff. So I made this Pumpkin Soup with Tarragon & Sherry from Veganize This!

I love this book because Jenn Shagrin is one of the funniest people on Earth. But she's also a gourmet chef, and many of her recipes initimidate me because they have long, fancy-sounding names. You know the recipe names that list off most of the recipe's ingredients? Upon reading them, some are genuinely difficult or time-consuming. But most are actually pretty easy and quite innovative. Jenn's a genius, for reals.

She's been going through some really hard times lately after having her identity stolen. She wrote about it on her blog Veganize It ... Don't Criticize It, but there's been no update since August. I hope she's doing okay. Jenn's an awesome lady and one of my favorite bloggers.

This recipe was one of the simpler ones in the book, and I even cheated on it. I used canned pumpkin instead of fresh. I skipped the toasted pumpkin seed garnish (because I didn't have any) and I used dried tarragon instead of fresh herbs because I'm cheap. But this soup was still amazing, even without the fancy flair. It's made with MimicCream, but you could substitute almond milk. I just happened to have a carton of MimicCream I'd been hoarding for the right recipe.

How have you been eating pumpkin this fall (and yes, it's technically still fall even though it FREAKIN' snowed here in Memphis today)?

Pumpkin Cookie Teff Porridge

Not to bore y'all with more breakfast bowls, but I'm really loving teff right now. A few weeks ago, I posted my recipe for Holiday Teff Porridge, a steamy oat-like bowl of cooked teff, vegan nog, cinnamon, and dried cranberries.

But this morning, I came up with another yummy way to use this ancient grain as a hot breakfast cereal — Pumpkin Cookie Teff Porridge!

That's a scoop of sweetened pumpkin and a scoop of Biscoff cookie spread on top of my bowl. Biscoff is the secret to making anything taste like cookies. It's a spread made from ground up Biscoff (also called Speculoos) cookies, and it's probably the best tasting stuff on earth. We go through a jar every few weeks in my house, mostly because my boyfriend eats it straight from the jar with a spoon.

Here's the recipe. Note: I used pumpkin pie filling, which is already sweetened, because I had some that I accidentally bought, thinking it was plain pumpkin. But you can use unsweetened pumpkin puree and maple syrup instead, if you'd rather.

Pumpkin Cookie Teff Porridge
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1 cup water
1/4 cup teff grains
2 Tbsp. Silk pumpkin spice milk (or vanilla soymilk)
1/3 cup pumpkin pie filling (the kind that's already sweetened)
1 Tbsp. Biscoff cookie spread

Bring the water to a boil in a small saucepan over high heat. Whisk in dry teff to ensure no lumps form. Lower heat to a simmer and cover. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until porridge is thick and teff is soft.

Stir in the milk and pumpkin, and remove from heat. Top with a dollop of Biscoff spread.

Twice Baked Sweet Taters

I know I've said it before, but I'm saying it again. If you haven't downloaded the free Vegan Cuts Holiday Gift Guide, you need to fix that, stat. This zine-like coupon guide is too cool for school, y'all. There's discounts on all sorts of vegan goodies, plus ideas for homemade gifts and holiday recipes submitted by awesome vegan companies, like Earth Balance, Uncle Eddie's, and Mary's Gone Crackers! Click here to download your copy.

Last night, I cracked open my gift guide to make the Earth Balance-submitted recipe for Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes with Ginger-Lime Peanut Sauce:

Dude. These taters rule. They're stuffed with mashed sweet potato mixed with sauteed kale and shiitake mushrooms and a sauce made of peanut butter, coconut aminos (or tamari), lime juice, and fresh ginger. I managed to slice off a giant chunk of skin while grating the ginger on my microplane, but these potatoes are so good, I don't even care that I'm missing part of my pinky finger.

I figured this meal needed some protein, so I also made the Broiled Blackened Tofu from Appetite for Reduction:

I pressed the tofu overnight in my Tofu Xpress, so it got super-firm. The tofu is rubbed with a mixture of smoked paprika and other spices and herbs. Then it's broiled until blacked. For the photo, I cut the tofu into strips so you could see the white inside contrasting with the dark outside. I really don't understand why people eat meat when they could eat like this instead.

What to Do with 10 Pounds of Green Tomatoes

This past spring, my boyfriend and I planted a tomato plant in the front yard. We don't know the first thing about gardening. The plant was so small and adorable when we bought it at Home Depot, so we just planted it in a landscaped area in our front yard next to a few patches of monkey grass and some sticker bushes.

I was amazed this summer when the plant started to grow. It produced three whole red tomatoes! That's more produce than I've ever grown before. But then the plant turned kinda yellow, and I was pretty sure it was dying. I never water my plants. It's just not a priority for me, and when they die, I just shrug it off. But for some reason, I didn't want to see this tomato plant die, so I started watering it regularly, along with the habanero plant we planted beside it.

By September, the tomato plant still wasn't doing anything. No more tomatoes. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, it just started growing. It got so big that it outgrew it's stake and turned into a giant tentacled tomato monster, producing green tomatoes like crazy. But as the weather turned colder in early November, I knew the green tomatoes didn't stand a chance at turning red. So I harvested them, all 10 pounds of 'em.

Now, I love me some fried green tomatoes, but 10 pounds?! That's too many tomatoes to fry. So I decided to make Green Tomato Chutney!

I used this recipe from Shockingly Delicious. Diced green tomatoes are cooked down with golden raisins, brown sugar, allspice, ginger, onion, black pepper, and apple cider vinegar. I canned nine jars of this stuff! A few of my friends will definitely be getting jars for Christmas, but I'm keeping a few for myself.

I cracked open my first jar last week for an unconventional Indian breakfast — Onion Paranthas with Green Tomato Chutney:

The onion parantha recipe came from Happy Face Vegan. I've made them before, so I knew these onion-stuffed flatbreads would be perfect for topping with the savory-sweet chutney. Each day last week at breakfast, I had a couple of paranthas with chutney and a slice of veggie bacon.

Sure, it would have been nice to get more red tomatoes from the plant. But I'm really just happy I managed to grow anything at all. Maybe I'll even try again next year.

Good Belly

Probiotics are pretty awesome. These little living micro-organisms are good bacteria, and they balance out the body. They can help improve core digestive health, and they're believed to support the immune system.

I eat vegan yogurts on occasion, but probably not often enough to really get the benefits of probiotics. I used to take a daily probiotic supplement, but it got a little pricey. But when Good Belly, the vegan probiotic juice company, offered to send me coupons for their products to review, I knew that was an offer I couldn't refuse. I'd seen the stuff in stores, but I was always too cheap to buy it. The $3 to $4 price tag seemed a little steep on my shoestring budget.

But now that I've tried them, I'll certainly be buying more. Good Belly's fruit juices are packed with probiotics, as well as the usual vitamins you get with real fruit juice. And since I'd much rather drink fruit than eat it (I'm not a huge fruit fan), these juices were a great way for me to squeeze in my much-neglected fruit group.

First I tried the Good Belly Blueberry Acai juice:

Wow! Out of all three Good Belly products I tried, this was my favorite. The blueberry flavor was so natural-tasting. And it had a fancy exotic kick from the acai berries. Since the juice is filled with probiotics, it's much creamier than regular fruit juice. Almost like yogurt you can drink.

I also loved the Good Belly Cranberry Watermelon juice:

I expected more of a watermelon flavor, but the cranberry juice overpowered that. Of course, that's totally fine. Cranberry juice is awesome.

Good Belly also comes in tiny portable shots, like this Strawberry Good Belly Plus:

These little juice cups are only 50 calories per serving rather than the 100 or so calories for a cup of the juice. But they're still packed with probiotics. These would be best taken as a supplement rather than a juicy treat since there's only a swallow in there. But how cute are those happy face holes?!

Now that I know how delicious and healthy this stuff is, I don't think I'll have an issue shelling out the cash for these juices on occasion. They cost about the same as a pint of vegan ice cream, and I certainly don't feel nearly as good about myself after eating ice cream.