And just like that, it’s over.

Goodbye Vegan MoFo 2013! You were a load of fun.

I’ll be taking a break for a week or two, but I’ll be back. Until then –

Photos of the Day #25-29

Last week I was up at Camp Kuratli for Restoration International‘s family camp. I went by myself with the girls since Mr Pine Nut had to work. A lot of these aren’t great quality. There was plenty of rain and damp!

GooGoo and Tractor Boy exploring what was probably a trash can holder while the rest of us set up camp. She said it was a chicken coop; he said it was a shed.

Thursday was a very pleasant day. The little ones enjoyed the playground, especially this Giant Pile o’ Tires.

Looking lost in space as we wait for our breakfast at Bob’s Red Mill on Friday morning

The children’s choir singing “Pass It On” on Sabbath

Loaded up to go home this morning in the pouring rain!

 

 

 

 

Caturday Post #4: The Well-Read Cat

Does this really need any caption? No. No, it does not.

Vegan Month of Food, Day 20: Neapolitan Dessert Dip

I wanted to do a dessert dip, but I wasn’t sure what to dip in it, let alone what the flavours should be. So I brainstormed with my friend and she said s’mores flavour, to dip graham crackers in. I also thought “banana split”, but I have zero banana tolerance. Take that idea and fly with it, if you’re not a bananaphobe like I.

So, revert to the pudding recipe I’ve only used 10384343 times this month. Prep that the night before you need it. Right before you assemble your dip, take a handmixer to it as we did for the layered fruit salad, adding the teaspoon of lemon juice and a dash of milk as needed.

Next, make some Chocolate Glazey Stuff:
3 T vegan margarine
3 T cocoa powder
1 c powdered sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla
Enough non-dairy milk to make it soft

Mix the margarine, cocoa powder, and powdered sugar with a handmixer until crumbly. Add vanilla, then the milk. It should be runnier than icing but thicker than sauce.

Then layer the following in a 9×9″ pan:

The pudding
1 c mashed strawberries
the glaze
1/2 c graham cracker crumbs

I made a 9×9 pan of this for our Friday night small group. We had it with graham crackers. It was amazing. I ate way too much of it.

Vegan Month of Food, Day 19: Potato-Rosemary Lasagna

Seriously, people? Pasta, potatoes, and white sauce? INSTANT COMFORT FOOD.

But it’s also got some good nutrition for you, with the beans, onions, and kale.

First, prep your mashed potatoes.
9 c diced potatoes, cooked until tender and drained
2 T vegan margarine or oil of choice
1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/2 c unsweetened soy milk
1 tsp salt

Use a masher or handmixer to blend together.

Then prep your veggies:
1 3/4 c red onion
3 cloves garlic
1 sprig rosemary, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 c bell peppers
2 T oil
2 c finely chopped kale or other leafy greens, packed

Sauté all but the greens until tender; add greens and stir until wilted, then remove from heat.

And finally, combine:
6 c garbanzo, lima, or white beans of choice, not thoroughly drained (I used limas the first try, garbanzos the second. I liked garbanzos better.)
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 c white sauce

You also need:
12 lasagna noodles, uncooked

Now layer it! Thusly:

3 lasagna noodles

Roughly 1/3 of the beans and liquid

Roughly 1/3 the veggies

A few blops of potatoes, scattered

Repeat twice, then completely cover top with a hefty layer of potatoes.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

To be perfectly honest, this was a LOT of work. It was good, but I’m not sure it was good enough to spend a couple hours to prepare. Granted, I was running to and from the garden to pick stuff for it, and I was baking bread at the same time I was trying to make it, but it just still seemed labour-intensive.

Vegan Month of Food, Day 18: Fruit Salad

One of my favourite salads growing up was called Five-Cup Salad. It was something my grandma made a lot and involved sour cream and marshmallows… about as un-vegan as you can get. But oh, was it tasty. So I decided I would make a layered salad in tribute to the original Five-Cup Salad. I knew it wouldn’t be quite the same, but was sure it would still be really good.

I started out by making a batch of this pudding recipe. After sitting to set overnight, it came out rather the texture of congealed beef fat. Just a tad gross. But the flavour was good, so I decided to use it anyway. I took my handmixer to it and mixed it and broke it up until it was about the texture of cottage cheese. I added a teaspoon of lemon juice and a tablespoon-ish of soy milk to help it along. It was still lumpy. But I was okay with that.

So, after you’ve made the pudding and let it set, here is the rest of what you do.

Drain thoroughly:
20oz can pineapple chunks
15oz can mandarin oranges

Once the fruit is drained, spread a bit of the pudding on the bottom of your bowl. Layer pineapple, pudding, oranges, pudding, pineapple, pudding, and garnish the top with the remaining fruit and some cocoanut.

So, here’s the thing. I went to take a bite of the salad and it blew my mind. I had, accidentally, replicated Five-Cup Salad to the T. The lumpy pudding had a distinctly marshmallow-y flavour and texture. I think the only thing I’ll change next time I make it is to double it, because everybody snarfed it down and I didn’t get very much.

Photos of the Day #20, 21, 22, 23, 24

Lou Who enjoyed crawling in the grass watching her daddy turn the compost pile.

I went to church solo-with-baby on Sabbath since GooGoo was still sick. I sneaked a picture of Lou Who in Sabbath school playing with the little plastic fishies in the water.

Three of the ladies at our bi-monthly Sunday morning yarnfest. The one in the middle offered to roll my green yarn into a ball, but by the time she got done with it the other two had stepped in to save it from tangly oblivion.

This little monkey’s new favourite thing to do is climb up onto this bench.

The girls in a laundrybasket. GooGoo was “reading” to her sister from her beloved American Girl catalogue.

Vegan Month of Food, Day 17: Sham Ham and Cheese Sandwich

So, Maggie’s Brown Bag Lunch Series, and particulary this Cream Cheese Bagel Sandwich, gave me an idea for another sandwich. I had been a little stumped what to do for this last sandwich Tuesday. I mean, a sandwich is a sandwich, and Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day has pretty much covered the vegan sandwich base, right?

Well, Maggie’s bagel reminded me of something I used to eat a lot when I was young: egg sandwich on a buttered  bagel with ham and cheddar cheese. How un-vegan is that? I haven’t had it in a Very Very Very Long Time, because even if I still ate eggs and cheese, you couldn’t pay me to eat ham.

But, maybe there is a vegan solution, thought I. And here’s what I came up with.

I bought my bagels at the Corvallis WinCo. They have several choices there that are vegan and tasty, if not particularly healthy.

Then I had to decide how to make my egg. I thought of marinating tofu, but then I thought, “Why not use the eggy-flavoured tohu, thinly sliced and fried?” The tohu recipe makes more than enough for one quiche. So that’s the egg.

For the ham, I used this recipe, using 1 T brown sugar instead of maple syrup, and leaving out the food colouring.

I used my cheezy sauce from Sunday’s post and spread that on both halves of the toasted bagel, then slapped on some sham ham and the fried wedge o’ tohu.

I wasn’t sure at first bite what I thought. But by the time I had finished the sandwich, I was very much in love with it. It’s very reminiscent of the sandwich of my past.

Vegan Month of Food, Day 16: Nutty Cheezy Bacun Quiche

First of all, my friends, It’s not a kwish. It’s a KEESH.

Second of all, I’ve never made a quiche, vegan or non-vegan. (At least not that I recall.) But I have eaten them, and this is what I’ve come up with today. You’ll use the tempeh bacon, the eggy tohu, and the cheezy sauce from yesterday’s post.

Heat your oven to 350 and prepare your crust.

In a food processor, process until crumbly:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 c walnuts
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 c oats

Add:
1/4 c water

Spray an 8.5″ springform pan, bottom and sides, and press in the crust mixture evenly on the bottom. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside while preparing quiche filling. Leave the oven on!

In the food processor, process until smooth:
24 oz eggy tohu
3/4 c plain soy milk
1/2 c garbanzo flour
1/4 c nooch
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black salt

In a pan, sautee:
1/2 c chopped red onion
1 packed cup chopped greens (kale, spinach, whatever – and by packed, I mean overflowing)

Stir sauteed greens and onions into the “egg” mixture and spread in the pan.

Next, layer on the tempeh bacon crumbles and press them lightly into the top.

Lastly, drizzle on the cheezy sauce. Alternatively, you could wait until the end of baking and sprinkle on some Daiya for the last 10 minutes or so.

You’ll bake this 45-60 minutes. I did mine about 50 and it was still quite soft inside. Or maybe use a larger springform so that the quiche layer is not as thick? I’m not sure. At any rate, it did taste really good even if it was on the squooshy side. I also let it sit for 5 minutes or maybe a little longer after I took it out before I released the spring.

But, reheating slices after it had been in the fridge overnight worked really well. I just plopped a wedge in a non-stick saucepan and heated it over low heat on the stovetop until it was warmed through. It wasn’t squooshy any more and I think it tasted even better than fresh!

Bonus MoFo Post! Tempeh Bacon, Cheezy Sauce, and Eggy Tohu

This coming week, we’re doing a couple recipes that call for the same base ingredients, and rather than clutter up those posts with a bunch of extra recipes, I’m doing a bonus post with THREE recipes that we can just refer back to.

And yes, it’s lame that I have no photos, but my laptop is STILL having issues, and I only have the bacon on hand to photograph anyway. I’ll try to add a picture of that in later.

Let’s start with BACON.

In a shallow dish, combine:
3 T soy sauce
1 T liquid smoke
1 T brown sugar
1 T oil
1 T tomato paste
3/4 c veggie broth
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Add 8 oz thinly sliced tempeh to the marinade and allow to sit overnight.

When ready to cook, dump marinade and tempeh into a non-stick skillet. You can either leave it in strips or crumble it. Cook it at a fairly high temperature, stirring often. It will absorb the marinade and get nice and browned. If you don’t eat it all straight out of the pan, keep whatever’s left in the fridge. Obvs.

Now, on to the cheezy sauce.

In a blender, blend together:
1/4 c water
1/4 c cashews
1 1/2 T roasted red peppers from a jar
1 1/2 tsp nooch
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp onion powder

Blend until completely smooth. This can easily be doubled, tripled, whatever.

And now: EGGY TOHU.

You might wonder what on earth tohu even is. Well, it’s like tofu, but made with garbanzo flour. Plain, it’s an awesome replacement for silken tofu for people who can’t have soy. And it’s super easy to prepare. Thanks to Vegan Mommy Chef for sharing her recipe with us! This is my adaptation from her plain version to have an eggy flavour.

In a bowl, mix together:
1/2 tsp black salt
1/4 tsp regular salt
1 1/2 T nooch
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1 1/2 c garbanzo flour
1 1/2 tsp agar powder

Gradually stir in:
5 c water

Pour into a saucepan. Stirring constantly over medium heat, bring to a boil and then reduce heat. Continue to stir for about 10 minutes. Pour into a sprayed loaf pan and put into the fridge to set.