Back in the day, before I was veg*n, when I was poor and living in my first apartment alone, I used to rely heavily on those giant bags of frozen fish sticks, instant potatoes and frozen peas n corn. Oh yeah, that was also before I really knew how to cook too.
Anyway, every once in a while I think some trashy fish sticks would be good. You know, without the actual fish part. I’ve been eyeballing this recipe in Vegan Lunch Box for years but this is the first time I’ve made it. Of course I whipped up a little tartar sauce to go with it out of veganaise, sweet relish, lemon juice, salt & pepper. Oh wow were these good! Not the bland little fried bits I remember. Heck, not fried at all! On the side, roasted russet potato slices tossed with olive oil, smoked paprika, salt & pepper and Trader Joe’s frozen green beans.
Vegan petit fours? Now that’s a Happy Birthday! I used this recipe as a guide. Except the birthday girl just wanted vanilla, so there was vanilla buttercream between the layers instead of jam. I did try jam in some of my testers and it was yum!
I won’t lie to you, these were kind of a pain in the ass. A digital candy thermometer would make this so much easier. If you want your fondant to be white, get the whitest vegan sugar you can find. The Whole Foods house brand vegan sugar worked well. Also, invest in clear vanilla extract.
For my birthday this year, Kevin took me to Cafe Sunflower. It tends to be the default special occasion restaurant for veg*ns in Atlanta, but really it’s good any time. While not 100% vegan, there are tons of vegan options and the staff can help you figure out what’s what. Also, kind of rarity for Atlanta veg restaurants, Cafe Sunflower serves beer & wine.
We started with fried brussels sprouts in a sweet sauce. They’re fried, so of course they’re tasty. But I really like brussels sprouts so I prefer them steamed or roasted if I’m cooking them at home.
Kevin had one of his regular favorites, the stuffed acorn squash.
And I had the pepper crusted tempeh. Under it that’s romaine lettuce, potatoes and a balsamic reduction sauce, I think. All rockin’.
And I don’t know if they’ve always had this lighting at the tables, but it’s very friendly to food blogging. 
For dessert, I made my own birthday cake. It was a black forest cake and I utterly failed to take any pictures of it.
Okay, so Atlanta participated in the World Wide Vegan Bake Sale way back on May 1st and I’m just now posting pictures. Oh well. Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe organized it and we took over the back of their shop. Who knew so many people would be willing to leave the comfort of I-285 to venture to Marietta for vegan baked goods? We sold out before the sale was over! Leigh has a better here of everything so I’ll focus on what I made.
BBQ Jackfruit and Collard hand pies
Banana Cream Pies
Cookies! Chocolate crinkles, molasses cookies, snickerdoodles
You’ve probably heard by now that the folks at Chicago Soy Dairy have reformulated their Teese vegan cheese. They were kind enough to send me a tube of the mozzarella style to try out. One of the best tests for a vegan cheese is pizza. So that’s what I did with it. And I pretty much dumped a whole tube of shredded Teese on this pizza.
So what’s on it besides Teese? It’s a cheeseburger pizza! So it’s ketchup and mustard all over the dough as the sauce, chopped up veggie burgers and pickles. And the dough is from Trader Joe’s.
The Teese does melt to a better consistency. It has the stretch thing going on and doesn’t totally liquefy like the old formula would. I’m sure it will work better for quesadillas than the old one. One complaint is that it seemed a little bland. I haven’t had the live for prime time version that is selling now so I’m not sure if that has been fixed. Still, it’s pretty awesome and I would never turn my nose up at a Teese pizza.
A gratuitous stretch shot:
I’ve never been to Rosetta’s Kitchen in Asheville, NC but everyone raves about it and especially the Peanut Butter Baked Tofu. [oh man, sorry folks, that link went bad.] The recipe is crazy simple. My only complaint is that it came out pretty salty, even for me, and I like salt. It’s probably because I used tamari instead of regular soy sauce. Next time I’ll try soy sauce and if it’s still too salty cut the soy sauce with stock for the third try. Bonus, the leftovers made a nummy sammich.
I love Indian food. Asafetida seems to be the magical ingredient that pushes a dish from close to spot on. If you like to cook Indian, do yourself a favor and secure some. One jar will last you forever.
This recipe is one I saved in my RSS reader to try some time. I have tons and tons of stuff waiting to be tried. This one worked nicely because I was also trying to clean out my freezer a bit and had a bag of frozen black-eyed peas to use. If you use those instead of the dried called for, you can skip the soaking step. You could also used canned and it might cook a little faster. Just for fun and added nutritional value, I tossed in some chopped fresh collards. I mean, they go with black-eyed peas, right? Right! It was perfect. We ate this over brown basmati.
One of the things that’s not really available around here is a good vegan breakfast sandwich. At least, not yet. But you can make your own. And it’s not all that hard, either. Especially with all the great products that are on the market now. I already had a package of Match Vegan Meats Breakfast Sausage left over from the batch they sent me to make holiday loafs. And Chicago Soy Dairy sent me some Teese to play with for their blogger challenge.
So here was my plan. Tall fluffy biscuits. This recipe made the fluffy awesomeness you see in the photo. For the “egg”, I started with Susan’s crustless tofu quiche recipe. I omitted the bell pepper, mushrooms, chives and rosemary and replaced the fresh garlic with a 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder since I wasn’t going to fry it up. Then, instead of baking them in a muffin pan, I spread it out in a rectangular baking pan then cut into squares to go on the muffin. The Match was just formed into patties, fried in a pan with only salt and pepper as seasoning. To assemble, the biscuit was split, a couple of thin slices of the Teese creamy cheddar was put on the top half and then I slid it under to broiler to melt. Sausage and tofu egg was placed on the bottom half then everything was put together once the Teese was melty.
These were amazing! I do have a couple of changes I’d make though. I made 3 oz. sausage patties which were a little too much. 2 oz. might be thin enough. I’d try to make the tofu egg a little dryer. Maybe half the soy milk and cook it a little longer. And I’d probably switch to regular cheddar Teese so it would contain a little less moisture.
Since we got back from our gorgefest in NYC in November, I switched to a smoothie for breakfast instead of cereal. And I guess it’s a habit now because I’m still doing it. That’s a couple more fruit servings a day than I was getting before. Yay me!
The folks at POM Wonderful offered to send me some more pomegranate juice. Thinking of my morning smoothies I said “hell yeah, gimme!” Or something similar. I may have tried one smoothie when they sent a past batch of juice, but now I have that whole thing down and can get into it more.
POM Smoothie
1 banana
1/4 cup frozen blueberries or strawberries
1/2 tsp chia seeds
1 scoop Sun Warrior rice protein powder, natural
1 tsp agave nectar
1/2 cup POM 100% pomegranate juice
3/4 cup unsweetened vanilla rice milk
Throw into a blender. Blend. Drink.
The blueberry variation was the first I tried. Mainly because I’m lazy. This is my normal go to smoothie with some pomegranate juice subbed for some of the rice milk. The chia seeds are a fairly recent addition. They seem to give it that little extra needed to carry me through to lunch without wanting to attack snacks. Too much. While this version was perfectly tasty, trading the blueberries for strawberries was even better. The pomegranate and strawberries seem to boost the flavor of each. Gives you an extra fruity punch.
Since I haven’t been cooking much lately, the rest of the juice will probably end up in smoothies. I’m considering substituting pineapple for the berries. Hopefully that won’t be gross.
We know Match Vegan Meats gives you a bunch of recipes to try on their website. But Match is also good for substituting in meaty recipes. If you happen to have some old family favorite you haven’t made since you turned vegan, try it with Match. It works best in recipes that bring flavor and don’t rely on the meat for the flavor.
This past week I did a little experimentation for a new sort-of-secret-but-not-really venture. The Australians seem to have down the idea of a meal wrapped up in easy to carry around pastry. The centerpiece seems to be the meat pie. So that’s the first thing I tackled. And I’m so happy with the result that I don’t think I’ll change a thing.
Sorry, I won’t be giving up a recipe on this one. But there are plenty of recipes out there to veganize. Have at it!
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