Connecticut Vegfest May 1, 2012

I was recently visiting my mom in Connecticut and saw that I was the same weekend as the first annual vegfest. I called up the dreamgeek to see if he’d go with me, but in typical fashion he forgot about it and made plans to visit friends in the big apple. So, I suckered my mom into going and taking the babies.

There was a ton of people. I was impressed. I remember people thinking I was weird for not eating meat when I lived there, now there’s a vegfest? Wow.

Anyway, they had a ton of booths set up with samples. I was happy that a fair amount of the samples were gluten free. My favorites were the tofulettes and the hummus bar – or that’s what I called it there was a spread of like ten different hummuses!

I also need to point out that my favorite Scranton shop ladies from the Fanciful Fox were there – and they recognized me and Bea. I’m well on my way to making them my friends…

I also met Chef AJ. I saw her when I first walked it in and it was driving me bananas the whole time that I couldn’t place her then I did – she had been on Cupcake Wars! So I wen up to her and asked of she’d been on Cupcake Wars and she was like yes. And that was it. I was so excited and I think my excitement level was a bit much for her.

Anyway, when we got home we checked out our booty and my mom and the babies shared the Cedar’s hummus sample we got:

Bea just liked feeding it to my mom but as you can guess, Lucien loved it:

So, I also want to share my favorite line of the day – see, I’ve mentioned that the babies are vegetarians but I don’t think I’ve mentioned that my mom gives me a really hard time about it. She does. When we were at the vegfest, we were looking at some vegan tshirts and she says to me, like it was her idea, “vegan is a good way to be you know.” I just rolled my eyes…what else can you do at that point?

Gluten issues April 17, 2012

I don’t think I mentioned on here or not but I’ve been having, to be polite, tummy issues lately. When I told my doctor about it – you know, months after it started because I finally remembered and because I thought I was being paranoid…my doctor told me I had classic Celiac symptoms. She also insisted I get blood work done right away.

We also talked about my options.

Basically, if my blood work comes back normal I could keep eating wheat and gluten and what not and feeling icky, or I could just not eat it and feel good. Not a hard choice is it?

In theory I thought it wouldn’t be too hard, I don’t eat a lot of bread or pasta. I didn’t think of veggie burgers or Gimme Lean sausages or seitan or soy sauce or pretzels…

Yeah.

And guess what’s in super sale this week at my grocery store? All my favorites. Assholes.

Anyway, we have a Wegman’s with a pretty decent gluten free and vegan section. And in Scranton, we have a store called Alternative Eating, that is literally only gluten free foods. I checked it out the other day. I bought some quinoa pasta but haven’t tried it yet. I’m really, really, really looking forward to the reopening of the farmers market this summer. And, on the bright side – I can still have Indian and Ethiopian foods…and coffee.

Anyone got any good recipe or cookbook recommendations?

I’m a winner! April 16, 2012

So, the other day I entered a giveaway on Happy Herbivore and won! The prize was a copy of each of Lindsay’s books and a super cute elephant necklace. Here’s what happened to my necklace:

This little peanut stole it!

Anyway, J and I have been cooking like mad out of the cookbooks – shiny and new and all… We made this first:

It’s supposed to be a chickpea Ethiopian stew, but after we started making it we realized we had no chickpeas…so, we used navy beans and it was pretty good. We actually made this dish three times already – twice with navy beans and once with chickpeas. It’s really good, even the babies liked it – it’s supposed to be fairly spicy but we toned it down a lot.

I went and picked up some yellow split peas at my local Indian grocery last night for a different recipe I wanted to try and in typical fashion bought the wrong stuff. I’ll be posting more recipes as we cook more from these cookbooks.

Inspiration for dinner March 27, 2012

One of my favorite vegan blogs is vegan crunk. I pretty much want to try everything she posts about.

Last night she posted about a cheeze sauce using a bit of liquid smoke. Tonight when trying to figure out what to what to make for dinner, I thought about the liquid smoke added to cheeze sauce. So…

I made a nutritional yeast sauce and added a bit of liquid smoke and vegan bbq sauce (which my husband suggested). Then I mixed in some steamed kale.

That’s it cooking. It was so good! Now that I’m on a kale kick, I’m going to make this again.

How do you like kale?

Quick & Easy: mashed sweet potato & apple March 13, 2012

I bought Isa Chandra’s Appetite for Reduction book back when it came out. I’ve made a couple recipes – the babies, J and I love the mango BBQ beans recipe. I pulled it out this week when I was doing our meal plan for the week. The babies love sweet potatoes and they love apples, so I thought I’d try this recipe.

Here’s how I made it, I changed a few things from the recipe – of course.

Ingredients:
2 apples, peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes. I used the cheapest ones that my grocery store had.
2 sweet potatoes, also peeled and in 1/2″ cubes
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp salt

note: this is literally all I use in my recipe. Isa Chandra’s recipe also called for agave, ginger and cinnamon.

Directions:

While you’re cutting the sweet potatoes and apples, put a 4 quart pan on the stove to preheat in low. Right before you put in the sweet potatoes, apples, and water, spray the pan with cooking spray. Then put in the sweet potatoes, apples and water. Cover and cook for 20 minutes on low, stirring often.

After the 20 minutes, increase the heat to med-low and recover and stir often for another 20 minutes (you might also want to add more water at this point, I didn’t).

Now, check and see how the sweet potatoes are cooking. I found that they weren’t cooking enough so I turned up the heat to medium, and cooked it covered for another 20 minutes, stirring often.

After the 20 minute round on medium everything was cooked. I then used my potato masher and mashed it together. I couldn’t find the cinnamon or the ginger. I thought about adding some maple syrup, but didn’t.

The verdict:

I didn’t actually try it as I don’t like sweet potatoes (gasp! Weird, I know. While I’m admitting things, I absolutely hate tomatoes). The babies however, they would’ve eaten all of it if I hadn’t cut them off. They loved it! So, this recipe is a keeper. I’m going to have my husband taste it when he gets home tonight. I’ll update with what he thinks of it.

Recipe: peppery fake ricotta March 11, 2012

So, a while back I saw a recipe for fake ricotta cheese that involved raw cashews and tofu. I tried it and wrote about it back in september.

Tonight I made pretty much the same recipe, but changed one thing. I used about three quarters of a container of salt & pepper cashews instead of raw.

Holy cow! It was so good!! It had a kick of pepper, but the tofu cooled it so it wasn’t so spicy. But, wow, both my husband and I loved it!!

We had it with pasta for dinner, but I think it would make a good dip or sandwich spread. I’m so happy we have some leftovers.

Review: blueberry o’soy yogurt March 2, 2012

I picked up a bunch of these the other day, blueberry and vanilla. I got really lucky in that they were on clearance at my local price chopper, but not near their expiration dates. I’ve had the vanilla before and really liked it. I’m not a huge blueberry fan, but J and the babies love them.

Side note: I also need to point out that “o’soy” makes me laugh. Like its fancy Irish or something.

I tried this one tonight, sharing it with Miss Bea. I thought it was pretty good. Bea said “mmm” and “more!” after I gave her a bite. Here’s a picture I snapped of her enjoying the soy yogurt:

She loved it and actually begged for more. I may or may not have given her another one because her brother wasn’t home…

Anyway, we’re huge yogurt fans at my house. I’d totally buy this kind again. I’m actually hoping they have some left when we do our groceries this weekend.

What’s your favorite vegan yogurt?

Review: vegan queso February 28, 2012

I found this vegan queso at my local Wegman’s recently and had to try it.

My husband and I first tried with some pretzels. I thought it was way too spicy, but I’m a spice wimp. J really liked it but agreed that it was spicy.

We tried it again a few nights later when J mixed it in with some spinach. I liked it better that way. We also tried it mixed in with some vegan mac & cheese and it was tasty that way, too.

I like it mixed into things, mostly because it cuts down on the spicy. J liked it both mixed with something and plain. I probably wouldn’t buy it again though, unless it was on sale. As far as vegan quesos go, I prefer Teese cheeze.

Frosting: a recipe February 14, 2012

I recently read on the Internet that you could use vegetable shortening in place of butter to make buttercream frosting. I thought about it for a while and came up with this coffee flavored frosting.

ingredients:
- 1 cup vegetable shortening, I used crisco brand I don’t know if brands make a difference
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 bag of confectioners sugar, I used about half the bag as I didn’t want tons of frosting left over.
- about a 1/2 of coffee, cooled
- about 1-2 tsp of instant coffee flakes

notes:
I didn’t use all that coffee or coffee flakes, nor did I use the whole bag of sugar. I’m just giving these amounts as you shouldn’t need more than these amounts for a couple dozen cupcakes.

directions:

Cream together the shortening and vanilla for about 3 minutes until its fluffy.

Add in the sugar 1 cup at a time. I it gets too thick for your mixer add a few tablespoons of the cooled coffee. I also added a bit of the coffee flakes at this point.

After adding at least 4 cups of the sugar, taste it to see if it is coffee flavored enough for you – at this point it wasn’t for me, so I added an extra shake of coffee flakes out of the container directly into the mixing bowl and I also added more cooled coffee. Did I mention that I love coffee?

Basically you want to have a thick and smooth frosting. This frosting was perfect for my piping bag. And formed a nice buttercream crust when it dried a bit.

And, my husband said (and I agree) that the frosting was so good that there was no need for cake.*

* I’m not giving the cake recipe because it isn’t vegan. But if you have a good vegan cake recipe you’d like to share, I’m listening.

New favorite food January 17, 2012

I picked up some of this coconut creamed kale a Wegman’s the other day. I didn’t get a lot because I didn’t know if I’d like it. Well, it was so good, I forced my husband into going back for more – twice!! I know how to have an obsession.

Anyone know how I could go about making this at home?

updated to add:
I just called my friend google and asked about coconut creamed kale and check out the first recipe that popped up. I think we all know where I will be going tomorrow and what I will be buying.

I suppose there are worse foods to be obsessed with…