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Tofu “fish” sticks

laura — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:10:14 +0000

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.

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Post tags: green beans, potatoes, tofu, vegan, vegan lunch box, vegetarian

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Mmmm cherry juice

laura — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:57:04 +0000

I’ve always loved cherries. My favorite pie is cherry. Love tart cherry jam. If I can get a hold of a vegan chocolate covered cherry, yum! Too bad fresh ones are so expensive even when in season. So when Cheribundi emailed me asking if I wanted to try their cherry juice it wasn’t a hard sell.

Cheribundi has three varieties, Tru, Skinny and Whey. I just asked that they not send me any whey since it’s not vegan. They nicely followed directions and the Tru and Skinny juices arrived. Of the two, I definitely like the Tru Cherry best. While you save 40 calories with the Skinny variety, the Tru Cherry has a more intense cherry flavor.

What great recipes did I make with the cherry juice? Well, I didn’t cook with it at all. I just drank it. Oh, I did make a cocktail. It took a while to find a cocktail that used cherry juice that I had all the other ingredients for. Which cocktail did that turn out to be? Why, the Louisiana Leg Spreader! And it ended up being sweeter than I like. But at least I did something other than guzzle this stuff out of the bottle, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I’m not sure what part of the country you can get this stuff though. According to the find a retailer function of their site, Cheribundi isn’t in any stores within 250 miles of me. As I’ve said before though, I’m more of a fruit eater than drinker.

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Post tags: beverage, cheribundi, cherry, juice, vegan, vegetarian

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Petit Fours

laura — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:20:30 +0000

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.

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Post tags: birthday, cake, dessert, petit fours, vegan, vegetarian

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Awesome birthday dinner

laura — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:08:51 +0000

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.

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Post tags: acorn squash, atlanta, brussels sprouts, cafe sunflower, restaurant, tempeh, vegan, vegetarian

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2010 World Wide Vegan Bake Sale

laura — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:01:33 +0000

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

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Post tags: atlanta, bake sale, baking, cookies, pie, vegan, vegetarian

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New formula Teese

laura — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:13:46 +0000

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:

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Post tags: chicago soy dairy, pizza, teese, vegan, vegetarian

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Time for another Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale!

laura — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:26:52 +0000

Hey kids! You all like tasty vegan baked goods, right? Then you don’t want to miss this year’s Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale! This year, Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe is hosting the sale at their space in Marietta, Georgia Saturday, May 1st noon – 4pm to give those OTP folks a chance to get some tasty vegan baked goods. I’m donating some goodies…of course I can’t remember what I said I was bringing except banana cream pies. Yep, gonna make some mini vegan banana cream pies. You don’t want to miss that, do you? You can also promote and RSVP to the event on Facebook here.

The Metro Atlanta Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale will benefit Ahimsa House. Ahimsa House is dedicated to helping the human and animal victims of domestic violence across Georgia reach safety together.

Thanks Steph Timms for once again creating a super cute flyer for the sale.

The bake sales are being held all over the world, so check here to find out when and where one is being held near you.

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Post tags: ahimsa house, bake sale, baking, charity, dessert, event, georgia, marietta, vegan, vegetarian

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Peanut Butter Baked Tofu

laura — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:20:06 +0000

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.

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Post tags: asheville, collards, peanut butter, potatoes, rosetta's kitchen, tofu, vegan, vegetarian

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Black-eyed Pea Masala

laura — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:17:28 +0000

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.

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Post tags: black-eyed peas, collards, Indian, rice, vegan, vegetarian

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Vegan Breakfast Biscuit

laura — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:18:13 +0000

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.

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Post tags: biscuit, breakfast, cheddar, chicago soy dairy, match vegan meats, sausage, teese, tofu, vegan, vegetarian

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