Vegan cheese grits

Despite growing up in the South, I never ate grits growing up. It was mostly a texture thing. I didn’t like anything mushy like that. Mashed potatoes don’t count.

Once I started making vegan cheese grits I felt stupid for not making them before. They’re so easy, cheap and delicious! So here’s my basic recipe. I use Daiya in these because the flavor is stronger than most of the other vegan cheeses.

Vegan Cheese Grits

Ingredients

5 1/3 cups water or unsweetened non-dairy milk
1 1/3 cups white corn grits
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 cup Daiya mozzarella or cheddar shreds

white corn grits

Bring the water or non-dairy milk to boil. Slowly stir in grits then add salt and pepper. Cook on medium until it starts to thicken. Stir in Daiya. Continue to cook a minute or two more until it’s the thickness you want. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Makes about 6 servings.

cooking vegan cheese grits

These particular vegan cheese grits ended up with sausage gravy on top. Perfect for a Breakfast for Dinner situation.

vegan cheese grits and gravy

Lazy vegan pizza

vegan pizza

Lazy is probably going to work its way into many of my post titles this month. Since I’ve spent the better part of the last 2 or so years working in a kitchen long hours, cooking when I get home has to be fast and easy.

As I said in an earlier post, Trader Joe’s is great for lazy food. That includes lazy pizza. In the refrigerated section, by the cheese in our location, they’ve got vegan pizza dough balls. Just let it sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes, spread out on a pizza pan, throw on sauce and toppings, bake and eat.

Feeling extra lazy? Why yes, yes I am. Then they also have vegan pizza sauce. Your only challenge is to have some vegan cheese on hand. Which I did this time, some Daiya mozzarella.

And I thought about grabbing some sliced pepperoni from work, but instead tried to be a little less lazy and made the TVP Pepperoni from Hearty Vegan Meals For Monster Appetites. This stuff is so easy to make that it’s lazy. Seasonings, TVP, boiling water, soak, it’s pepperoni! And it’s delicious! One recipe made enough to generously top two 16″ pizzas with a little extra left over. I’ll probably throw it in a pasta sauce.

Birthday pizza

For Kevin’s birthday, we staged a (mostly) vegan invasion of Uncle Maddio’s Pizza Joint. If you don’t know, Maddio’s carries Daiya, had tofu as a topping and the whole wheat crust is vegan. It’s also inexpensive. This pizza, a beer and a soda was around $22.

Alison brought this old pic of John & Kevin. WTH, who is that guy?

After pizza, we headed to NOT secret bowling at Suburban Lanes. And we closed the place down getting our money’s worth for the all you can bowl for $5.99 special.

Christmas Eve pizza party

If you get a pizza craving on Christmas Eve, you might just be shit out of luck. Pizza places around here closed early, and I don’t blame them. But back to that pizza craving. Throw your own pizza party! Which is what we did. We bought a bunch of dough balls and had people bring toppings. Then made up a bunch of pizzas.

First out, pepperoni!

How about spinach, sausage and onion?

And a … crap, I don’t remember what this was. Update! Kevin tells me this was the baked potato pizza.

The Mexican deep dish pizza.

And a cheezeburger pizza topped with onion rings. Epic, right?

Looks like I failed to get pictures of the baked potato pizza and the chili dog pizza. Dang it.