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a lesson in veganmofo

October 31, 2011 by vegtasticvoyage

A month later, a post for every weekday (and some extras for Vida Vegan, Vegan Things I Like, and Get Sconed!), so what have I learned?

Have fun with it.

I’d read that people were stressing out, that life got in the way and they were having a hard time posting every day—that’s hardly the point of it! It’s a celebration of vegan food. Celebration’s a good thing. I think folks were intimidated by some of the crazy-pro MoFo’ers, with their amazingly planned menus and themes. There’s something to be said for the blogger who posts a photo of their work lunch every day, be it leftover fried rice, a gorgeous sandwich, or a cup o’ soup.That’s valid.

Sometimes your muffins will be flat, sometimes you’ll get sick and won’t be able to post, sometimes you form your croquettes and ask Tom to put them in the fridge but he puts them in the freezer instead and then they fall apart when you try to fry them. These things will happen. But you suck it up and either post about your failure or come up with something else.

Yup, that’s what I did tonight. I made a cake for Halloween. It is far from perfect, and I am far from caring. It’s 10:30 pm and we just finished frosting it. Now I have to eat a piece…which means I’ll be up for hours! Or maybe I should eat more so I run around and then crash, then Tom can just throw a blanket over me.

Anyway, here’s my John Wayne Gacy cake. (Maybe you grew up in New England and were told tales of the Founding Fathers; I’m from the Midwest—we had serial killers.) Happy Halloween, and Happy VeganMoFo!

Posted in VeganMoFo | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

belated diy donnerstag: bagels

October 29, 2011 by vegtasticvoyage

Bagels!

Yeah, I made bagels. No big deal. Why is this a DIY, as opposed to any other food I made? Because bagels aren’t something you make. Well, at least they’re not something I make. I trust my local professional bageler. I mean, there’s a water bath involved! That’s pro stuff right there.

Or is it?

I just made some of the best bagels ever—and on my first try. After my amateur stunt, I can’t see what excuse grocery-store bakeries could possibly have for their crappy, white-bread-in-a-circle bagel wannabes!

I got this recipe online for my bread machine. It’s bread flour, salt, sugar, water, and yeast (of all things!), and the entire process, from measuring ingredients to beautiful, brown bagels, took around 2½ hours. And honestly, most of that time you’re not doing anything! The machines are doing the work for you.

Between the bread-machine phase and the oven phase, you’re charged with making your bagels bagel-shaped, boiling them in sugary water for a minute, then sprinkling them with whatever you want to sprinkle them with. I stuck with poppy for my first shot, but next time I’m doing an everything mix, dipping the damp bagels into it before placing them on the cookie sheet. It’s your chance to get way fancy! And the more stuff you top them with, the better you’ll be able to hide any imperfections.

And for the love of kittens, please enjoy your bagel in its pure form rather than toasting! Toasting is fine for old or inferior bagels. Your gorgeous, fresh, homemade gem has a chewy, tender texture you do not want to miss.

Posted in general, VeganMoFo | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments »

belated wtf wednesday: asian candy

October 28, 2011 by vegtasticvoyage

I was ill this week, so I’m a bit behind. Even though it’s Friday, I didn’t want to miss my last chance at WTF Wednesday! So here you are. (And yes, tonight or tomorrow I’ll be bringing you a belated DIY Donnerstag.)

Not all Asian candies are WTF—I love Botan rice candy, and I long for a vegan Pocky. But nestled between the squid crackers and crunchy ginger prawns you can find some crazy-ass fruity snacks. Seeing as they’re cheap, I picked up a little assortment to subject myself to.


These are two olive candies. At first I was like, “They can’t really be olives,” but after biting into them, yeah, they’re probably olives. They have the same texture (even soaked through with dried sugar) and pits. The yellow ones are almost vanilla-y and the red ones were cinnamon-y, both super saturated with flavor, so as you chewed your mouth soaked up more and more. After eating them I checked out the ingredient labels, to see exactly what the difference was, but um…they were the same labels. Only then did I notice it listed “main ingredients,” so who knows what the flavors really were.


Spicy sweet prunes are just that. Individually wrapped, so you can give them away for Halloween (How badly do you want to get TP’d?), they’re just little pieces of chili- and sugar-soaked dried plums. They’re really soft, and while not offensive, I didn’t see the point in the flavor. It was bland, not fun. I guess I probably just resented that they didn’t look anything like the photo on the bag, plus the brand is Ego.


And finally, the one I had to Google before I bought them: Jujube Hawthorn Hamburger. Of the many, many haw and hawthorn candies in the aisle, I chose these because they’re called hamburgers, of course. Hawthorn is a red fruit from the tree of the same name. I just needed to make sure it wasn’t a nut, so my boy-in-the-bubble companion wouldn’t die. The texture on these was interesting. I think I was expecting Neco wafers with Sour Patch layers, but it was all-over soft and grainy. The taste was pleasant enough, not overly sweet, but they smelled awful.

So I didn’t spit any of them out, but I don’t need to try any of them again. I’m done. Again, I’ll just hold out for my vegan Pocky.

Posted in VeganMoFo | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

me and garlic bread, we go way back

October 25, 2011 by vegtasticvoyage

I was born an Alliumphile. Some people say we choose to love garlic and onion and all those things you’re not supposed to eat on dates, but I say I just never had a choice; it’s how I was made. As a toddler, my mom would catch me in the kitchen cupboard, eating an onion as if it were an apple. No, Michele wasn’t like the other girls.

I especially cannot think of a time when I was not super best friends with garlic bread. Garlic knots, smashed cloves of roasted garlic with olive oil on a crusty nub, even biscuits baked in sea of garlic butter (so they soak it up as they bake)—it kinda doesn’t matter, as long as it’s garlic and oil and bread.

Back in the omni days, I ate a lot of sad frozen garlic breads. Most of them were more oily than garlicky, but I ate them until I was on the brink of puking. Then I would put them in the fridge and eat them cold! So wrong. I don’t know of any vegan frozen garlic bread, but I’m old enough to make my own. And thanks to nutritional yeast, my garlic bread is fuller and richer than anything I ever ate as a kid.

My mixture is about half Earth Balance, half olive oil, plus minced garlic and (horror of horrors) garlic powder, a little salt, chopped parsley, and nutritional yeast. And I love it. I love it so much.

When I reeeally need comfort food, and nobody’s looking, I’ll sprinkle some Daiya on the top before baking it, and then I’ll dip it in pizza sauce. Please don’t judge me.

Posted in recipes, VeganMoFo | Tagged , , | 11 Comments »

spaghetti squash experiment: pancakes!

October 24, 2011 by vegtasticvoyage

I’m always amazed at how much squash string comes out of even a smallish spaghetti squash. unless you’re cooking for a giant family, you’re lookin’ at squash for days. (Not that I’m complaining.) But what can be done with this marvelous vegetable?

Of the recipes I found online for spaghetti squash pancakes, they pretty much all involved eggs and cheese…so those wouldn’t work. But why would I need a recipe? I make potato pancakes all the time. Sure, squash and potatoes have little in common, but why not give it a whirl, just replacing the potato with squash?

That’s just what I did. Keeping it super simple, I mixed together the cold squash strands, minced onion, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper. There wasn’t much moisture at all so I dripped in just a little water, then I squished in enough flour to form a patty. Five minutes in a thin layer of oil and it was time for a taste test!

Well, whaddaya know, it worked. The sweetness of the onion and squash were pleasant but not annoying. This would be super easy to bend to your favorite spices. It could go Indian or TexMex or Italian. It could serve as a bed for a seitan fillet or a saucy veg-thing. Or, if you’re like me, you could just eat a plate full of these plain as can be.

And I still got a mess o’ squash left…so what’s next?

 

Posted in recipes, VeganMoFo | Tagged , | 4 Comments »

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