Catching Up

Last week, I did a whole mess of cooking for the holiday of Shavuot (Jewish people celebrate being given the bible. It's customary not to eat meat because supposedly meat wasn't eaten until after we received the rules for kosherness in said bible). I was also commissioned to make my boss' birthday cake. I don't have any pictures of the holiday food, but here's the cake (frankly the best part anyway):



I tried to convince my family to go vegan for the holiday (it's only fifty hours), but it didn't work so well. One of the few things my mother actually cooks is a cheese dish that she only makes this time of year and she insisted on making it. Also, someone gave her a baked ziti, so she wanted to serve that. However, it turned out to be crap, so they stuck with her dish. I made the rest of the food for the holiday and it was all vegan.

Blintzes are traditional, so I made the Veganomicon crepes and made some of them into Potato-Mushroom Blintzes. My brother hates mushrooms, so I halved them and made plain potato blintzes as well. I also stuffed some with the Tofu Ricotta, also from Veganomicon. I made the Cherry Compote from Yellow Rose Recipes for dipping.

I love the Veganomicon crepes. I'd been nervous about making crepes because everyone always talks about how delicate and easy to ruin they are, but I had been practicing making them for something else and these are really easy. At first, I was annoyed that the batter had to be refrigerated for an hour before using it, but now I love that I can make the batter the night before I want to make the crepes and just get right down to the cooking when I'm eager to get down to the eating. I don't even have a crepe pan. I use a regular little non-stick pan and it works quite well.

The potato-mushroom filling is amazing. Everyone (except my brother) loved the blintzes. And he said his plain potato ones were some of the best he'd ever had. The filling couldn't be more simple, but it's one of those things that come out tasting very restauranty and people are impressed.

The Tofu Ricotta has the ricotta texture, but definitely not the taste. Everyone liked them, with the "This tastes nothing like cheese" caveat. To me, they taste strongly of nutritional yeast, so I was surprised my family liked them as much as they did (they liked them enough to honestly say they're enjoyable - they don't spare my feelings - but not enough to take seconds).

Making the blintzes themselves takes a bit of practice. I couldn't get a nice shape going, even at the end (I made about fifteen), but only one lost structural integrity and fell apart, so that's not too bad.

The Cherry Compote is very nice. My father has been putting it on everything. It's a bit more sour than I expected it to be, so I probably just used too much lemon juice. It went quite well with the cheese blintzes. I think I'll make it again next time I have a container of vegan ice cream in the house.

My mother requested something with eggplant in it, so I made the Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream, also from Veganomicon. Dudes, that pine nut cream is so rich and awesome and...creamy. I'm always amazed by the ability of nuts to act like dairy. It's so weird. This cream is double great because it doesn't require overnight soaking or anything like some of the other nut "dairy" recipes I've seen. If you don't like eggplant and zucchini and whatnot, just make the cream and put it on...everything. I also got many compliments on the sauce. The shallots make it stand out a bit from jarred stuff. And, of course, there's nothing to not like about eggplant, zucchini and potatoes, so this recipe is a total winner.

I also made Potato Spinach Wedges, a test recipe for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming brunch book. Isa describes them as knishes without the dough, and that's basically what they are. They're tasty and easy. It's great that you can just throw it in a baking dish and be done, instead of making little, individualized items.

Dessert is the most important part of any holiday and I didn't pull any punches. I made Pain Au Chocolat (another brunch tester), Chocolate Almond Cheezecake with Graham Cracker Crust from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook and Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie from Vegan With a Vengeance.

Everyone went nuts for the Pain Au Chocolat. I stuffed them with raspberries, strawberries and blackberries and served them warm. The chocolate oozed all over everyone's faces and made a wonderful mess. This dessert is wonderful and best eaten 1. warm and 2. with other people. Make them with a few different kinds of fruit, share them around and laugh at the chocolate on each other's faces.

The Chocolate Almond Cheezecake was sort of like a really firm chocolate pudding pie. A really good, a really firm chocolate pudding pie. Serving it with cherries somehow enhanced the almond flavor. It would probably go nicely with a vegan whipped cream, but I haven't mastered one of those yet.

The Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie was amazing. It really hit the spot, serving it on the first hot days of the season. This was my first time having rhubarb and it really heightened all the other flavors. I love this pie. There have been requests to make it again and I will not hesitate to fill them.

Some of you may remember my birthday cake from last month. If you don't, that's OK because my boss and office manager did. It was Blackout the Forest Cake: a cross between blackout cake and black forest cake. To make it, I adapted parts of Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance. They requested I make the exact same cake for the office celebration of my boss' birthday. Taking advantage of any opportunity to feed people yummy vegan food, I complied. The only change was to the decoration: I halved the cherries and removed the pits so people didn't have to spit while enjoying the cake. I liked how the stems looked like candles on my cake, but I think it was worth sacrificing that for the convenience of a spit-free party. Unfortunately, I made it and carried it to work when the temperature was over eighty degrees. Ganache doesn't like to behave at temperatures like that, so it looked a little funny, but everyone agreed the taste more than made up for it.

Passover, Post the Fifth

It's over! Someone pass me a bagel because Passover is officially over. Let's talk about what I ate for the last two days.



Pictured above is the Broccoli-Potato Soup with Fresh Herbs from Veganomicon. What a nice soup. Someone used the last of my dill, so I used a tablespoon or two of rosemary instead and I couldn't find dried tarragon, so I used fresh, but it was still very nice. The herbs are added at the end, so you can still taste each individual flavor instead of just having a mass of taste. Nice.

I also steamed up some asparagus with some garlic and lemon in the water, then threw it in the oven with some olive oil, salt and minced garlic. As usual, that was inhaled by my family in less than no time. I learned a valuable lesson from this holiday: to get my family to eat vegetables, all I need to do is add oil, garlic and heat. Spiffy.

For lunch today, I heated up some of the leaves left over from my artichoke hearts and made a dipping sauce for them from a bit of softened margarine, one clove minced garlic, the juice of one-quarter lemon and a bit of salt. It was my family's first time eating artichoke leaves and they seemed to like it enough (though it didn't drive them wild or anything).

Remember those Brussels sprouts I thought I'd be able to eat with dinner, just not in large quantities? I was wrong. They were SO bitter that I was only able to eat about two halves, then had to stop. Even with mashed potatoes (which make the whole world better) and the portobello mushrooms from Yellow Rose Recipes. What the hell? I have no idea how that happened and don't even know if it's possible to salvage the things. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thus concludes our five-part series on my first vegan Passover. Thank you and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Passover, Post the First

According to Gothamist, hospitals see "an uptick in total patient volume during Passover...[largely due to] Dizziness from [cleaning] fumes, slips from highly buffed floors or wet bathroom tiles...knife wounds from cutting food, burns from stovetops, and even fingers chopped up in blenders." I only have two cuts and a burn, so I consider myself lucky. Doubly lucky since I did most of my cooking while half asleep.

I'm a sabbath observer, so I had to make sure most of my Passover food was ready by Friday night. I took Friday off from work and started my food prep Wednesday night. And, like all responsible people would, went to see Colin Meloy Thursday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg (side note: he is the cutest thing on two feet. I stood there the whole time wishing I'd baked him cookies). Due to transport issues and my inability to shut up and leave when I'm hanging out with friends, I got home at 2 AM. In case that wasn't bad enough, my mother was still in the kitchen, so I wasn't able to get to work until 3. I ended up not sleeping at all until after dinner Friday night. Oy vey!



Almost every recipe I picked for the holiday used vegetable broth or stock, so the first thing I had to do was make the vegetable broth. Naturally, I made the one from Vegan With a Vengeance. It's such a staple in our house that even my mother made a double batch of it to feed the family and to use in all her cooking (Wednesday night was dedicated to chopping vegetables for all the broth). You'd think after making the broth over a dozen times, I'd be able to make it without screwing it up, right? Wrong. Somehow, I'm unable to tell the difference between parsley and cilantro and ended up accidentally substituting the latter for the former. I didn't even realize it until it was time to use the cilantro in another dish and I didn't have any. D'oh! Thankfully, I like cilantro, and I was just using the broth as an ingredient, not eating it straight, so it didn't make a huge difference when combined with the other ingredients in my dishes.

While that was simmering for 90 minutes, I grabbed Tofu Mom's recipe and made matzo balls. Lots of lots of matzo balls.



And started the crust and the filling for my Raw Apple Pie. I don't have a Passover blender or food processor, just a Smart Chopper, and trying to do all those dates in there nearly made me want to stick my head in next. I hate that thing. Definitely getting something better for next year. But I got it done and had plenty of time to let the filling soak and the crust firm up in the fridge. I tried to get all decorative with a flower in the middle and some golden raisins to garnish, but I don't think it worked so well. It didn't really matter since it completely fell apart when we cut into it, but it was still tasty, which is the most important part.



And I prepped my portobello mushrooms, prepared my marinade and put everything together for Yellow Rose Recipes' grilled portobellos. It was so easy to put together that I forgot I don't have a grill pan for Passover. I decided to roast them instead, after they marinated for 24 hours.



While I'm on the subject of Yellow Rose Recipes, I need to talk about the Braised Cauliflower. I know I say this about everything, but it's really the easiest recipe ever. The aroma when the cauliflower was cooking in the margarine was amazing. My mother kept asking what was in the pan and refused to believe it was just cauliflower and margarine. I was almost disappointed when I added the broth and everything started smelling like it instead of yummy, popcorny, cauliflower. As the broth cooked off, the fragrance came back, better than ever, and joy was had. My family really enjoyed this. It's a side dish that's so simple it compliments everything. Even my grandmother ate one floret and deemed it good. She never eats vegetables, so that's high praise indeed.



I wanted to make the Indian variation of the Yellow Rose Recipes Green-Wa, but couldn't find kosher for Passover curry powder. Instead, I found this handy guide to making your own spice blend that could be deemed "close enough" by some people. Those people don't include me. Not because I'm so discerning, but because I only had red pepper flakes and no matter how much grinding I did with my new mortar and pestle, I just couldn't powder them.



I used that "curry powder", substituted the coconut milk for the soy yogurt and was about to start chopping my herbs for the Green-Wa, when lo and behold! I didn't have any cilantro! Oh yeah, it was all in the soup. So I chopped up the parsley and stuck that in the quinoa instead. And I completely forgot to even add the curry powder until the very last step. I made numerous mistakes with this recipe, but it's very forgiving. The current dish is somehow almost bland, in a good way, but still burns my tongue. My brother ate loads of it; he especially liked putting it on chicken. I can't say I love the recipe as I made it, but it gave me an idea of how it would taste if I didn't completely screw it up. Will definitely try again when I'm not completely out of it.



The last thing I made before the sun set on me was Herb Roasted Potatoes from Vegan With a Vengeance. Holy crap, those are good! I took the time to chop my herbs up nice and fine and got them really well done and my family went crazy for them. Even my grandmother ate a significant portion of them, and usually just looking at spices gives her "agita", and my brother didn't even pick out the onions. Victory!



A couple more pictures from Day One:






Stay tuned for Passover Cooking: Day Two!

How the Blog Saved Passover

Passover, the traditional holiday for matzo balls, is next week. Unfortunately, it's traditional to make matzo balls with eggs. Also unfortunately, it's traditional for vegans to replace the eggs with tofu (e.g.: the Vegan With a Vengeance recipe), one of the many foods forbidden on Passover (according to my family's tradition). I was ready to spend my first matzo ball free Passover when someone showed me Tofu Mom's recipe. I just tried it tonight and I think it made the best vegan matzo balls I've had yet.



As I'm sure I've mentioned in all my other matzo ball related posts, my family likes their matzo balls very firm and we've always found the vegan tofu-based ones to be softer than our preference, but good enough. They don't turn into a huge glob of mush in the soup (the first batch I made did!), but they don't really have any bite to them either.

Until now. This whole baking soda/potato starch thing is brilliant. As you can see in the picture above, the balls can actually be picked up and held between the fingers without oozing or denting or falling apart. Amazing. My family is thrilled. We're so pleased with the consistency, I think we may stick with these even when it's not Passover. Wooha!

Speaking of Passover, I don't know how much activity this blog will see over the next couple of weeks. I've cleaned out the fridge and probably won't be cooking again until the holiday. I've already got my menu planned and will be cooking up a storm (think roasted portobellos, stuffed eggplant, matzo ball soup, braised cauliflower, green-wa, diner home fries, broccoli potato soup, herb-roasted potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts with toasted garlic, roasted garlic artichoke spread, beginners curry, broccoli vinaigrette, baked apples, tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce, and raw apple pie), but photography will be limited since I'm not allowed to use a camera (or a computer) for about half the holiday. I'll be sure to review all the recipes when I'm done, though (and since most are from Veganomicon and Yellow Rose Recipes, I'm prepared for loads of positive reviews).

Meal Fit For a King

Damn. I can't believe I've been keeping this blog for so long and still haven't fixed the layout. It's so ugly. I swear I'll get around to it one day. Really. Honest.

Thankfully, none of you are here for my graphic design skills (or the lack thereof), you're here for food.

Have I mentioned how great Yellow Rose Recipes is? Not today? Well, it's great. Even today. Every day. The last day I used it, I made the Pasta E Fagioli and White Beans and Kale. It was a meal fit for a king...or at least a Soprano.



The Pasta Fazool was great. I had a load of fusilli on hand, so I didn't bother buying the recommended twisty pasta. I guess we can call it Fusilli Fazool. Fazooli? Whatever. Unfortunately, my local Whole Foods didn't have the dry beans needed, so I went with canned. I didn't add any salt, though, so it was still good. I topped it with some of the vegan parm from the same book, and it was delightful.

Remember my spinach confusion and the suggestion I try kale instead? I did. I LOVE it. I bought more than needed to make the White Beans and Kale and have been using it as a base for salads ever since. Hooray for kale!

Also, hooray for this recipe. The white beans really complement the kale, which is even tastier than usual after marinating in lemon juice for hours. It also takes about ten seconds to put together (kale doesn't cook that long), so it's a great side to make after work or on a busy day. Please to be eating this. You will thank me (but really, thank Joanna. She made a wonderful book full of awesomeness).

My First Lasagna

I love Italian food. Baked ziti. Eggplant parmesean. Ravioli. Penne pesto. Fettuccine alfredo. Stuffed shells. Pasta covered and filled with gooey, creamy, cheesy goodness.

Wait. That doesn't work when you're vegan, does it?

Enter FatFreeVegan's Easy Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna. The coolest thing about this is there's no fake cheese in it. I'm sure there are great recipes for that stuff, but right now, I just want my food to be what it is, not an imitation of something else. There's tofu in the spinach layer, which thickens it up much like ricotta would, but it's not "fake ricotta".

Wait, I lied. The actual coolest thing about this lasagna is that it tastes awesome. The runner up is the lack of faux cheese.



Hold everything! I'm living a lie! This is not really my first lasagna. I made my first lasagna EVER in October, for my friends as part of their raw wedding present. But I didn't get to taste it (it was for them and I was on the Master Cleanse) and it was raw, so I've decided not to count it.

Back to this lasagna.

It is SO good. My mother tried a bite, then went to a wedding. She came back from the wedding and said they had veggie lasagna there too, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as mine. Win!

I enhanced the recipe a bit. It calls for jarred sauce, but I made the tomato sauce from More Than Twigs & Berries instead (I recommend both the sauce and zine. It's basically vegan Canadian cooking. I've never been to Canada, so it's all new and exciting to me). I topped it with sliced black olives and the vegan parmesean from Yellow Rose Recipes (do I need to mention the fabulousness of this book again?). I know I said no fake cheese, but really, the parm doesn't taste like parm. It tastes like love. I hate parmesean cheese. The smell is enough to make me flee the room. But I put this stuff on everything. There has been a container in my fridge at all times since I got the book.

The most exciting thing about this was cutting into the lasagna, lifting out a piece and watching it NOT fall apart. I was actually able to see the layers! Whenever I've bought a tray of lasagna from a pizzeria, cutting it was the hugest mess ever. This was amazingly tidy. It's probably partially because of the lack of gooey cheese, but I also think it's because of Susan's trick of putting the noodles in the lasagna raw. They aren't pre-boiled. This makes it way easier to spread the spinach and sauce on them and keeps them from getting soggy while they cook. Genius!

Layers!



I ate it with edamame because I happened to have a bag in the freezer. I always associate edamame with Japanese food, so having it with Italian was weird for my brain but happiness for my mouth and tummy.



Easy Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna

1/2 lb fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 tsp. chopped garlic
2 tbsp. water
2 26-oz jars of spaghetti sauce (one batch of the MTTB sauce was perfect)
9 lasagna noodles
Soy Parmesan
Sliced black olives

Filling:

10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1 lb firm tofu
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. nutritional yeast
1 1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. basil
1/2 tsp. rosemary, crushed
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

Sauté the mushrooms and garlic over medium heat in the 2 tbsp. water until tender; cover between stirring to keep them from drying out. Remove from heat and add the spaghetti sauce.

Place the tofu and thawed spinach in the food processor and process briefly. Add the remaining filling ingredients to the processor and blend until smooth. (You may do this without a food processor by using a potato masher on the tofu.)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Spread half of the sauce in the bottom of a 9x12-inch pan. Place a layer of noodles over the sauce, using three dry noodles and leaving a little space in between them. Spread half of the tofu mixture on the noodles (I drop it by spoonfuls and then spread it). Cover with another layer of 3 noodles and then spread the remaining tofu mixture over them. Top with a final layer of noodles, and pour the remaining sauce over this. Cover the dish tightly with foil, and bake for 30 minutes. Then, remove the foil and bake for another 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with soy Parmesan and sliced black olives if you want. The lasagna will cut better if you allow it to cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Yellow Rose Ridiculousness

Ridiculously delicious, that is.

All my cooking was from Yellow Rose Recipes this week. I made the Asparagus with Spinach and Artichoke Cream Sauce, Kasha Varnishkes and Mushroom Gravy (to top the kasha). NOM!



That up there may not look like much, but it's the Asparagus with Spinach and Artichoke Cream Sauce and it is DIVINE! I didn't really expect to like the sauce much because it has quite a bit of nutritional yeast in it, but you don't taste the nutritional yeast in this at all. It's just creamy goodness. I think this is my favorite use of nutritional yeast to date. I was home alone when I made this, plated it, photographed it and ate it. Since I was alone and this sauce was SO good, I did something I've never done before: I licked the plate clean. I've had this as part of my lunch every day since and it takes every bit of willpower I have to refrain from licking the container I bring it to work in.

This is another dish that looks and tastes impressive but is super easy and pretty fast to make. Also, it makes a lot. The recipe calls for two pounds of asparagus. Well, I've eaten all my asparagus and still have about a third of the sauce left. So I'm picking up more asparagus tomorrow. I'm always pleased when I can stretch out my sauces more than expected. It makes me feel virtuous for not abusing the added fat, calories, etc.

For those not in the know, kasha varnishkes is a pretty standard Jewish dish. It's basically farfalle with buckwheat. Kasha is another word for buckwheat. Varnishkes is another word for damn tasty*. The recipe adds cumin to the mix, which is not standard, but it adds a nice kick to it. I've always loved kasha varnishkes and was sad when my mother pointed out that all the store-bought ones are made with egg noodles. Now I can make it better than the appetizing section of any kosher supermarket. Score for the vegans!

(random fact: another popular Jewish dish that is often eaten side-by-side with kasha varnishkes is egg barley. Egg barley does not actually contain eggs and the store-bought type is usually vegan. Go figure!)

Another way Joanna de-traditionalized the dish (which is great. I've been eating the same damn thing for 27 years!) was the addition of mushroom gravy. In all my years of eating this stuff, I'd never had it with gravy. This was a great idea. And her gravy takes about five seconds to make and tastes spectacular. I don't know if this is always the case, but for me, it tasted even better the second day. I think I added too much lemon juice, but by the next day, all the flavors merged together into a pool of awesome. I also kept my mushroom pieces pretty big (I used a pre-sliced mushroom blend), so it's more like a sauteed mushroom topping than a gravy, but that's how I like it. The book suggests doubling the gravy recipe to go with this, but I've been getting by just fine with the single recipe.



Detail of the buckwheat and bow ties:



All together now:




* Kidding!

Happy New Year!

I know I've already posted this year, but this is my first entry about something I actually cooked in 2008, so I thought I'd wish everyone well here.

Personally, I'm not doing so great. I almost died on New Year's Eve, botched both things I prepared yesterday and have a cold. The worst thing about this cold is that my friends and I are finally having our holiday gathering this coming weekend and about half the gifts I plan on giving are baked. So unless I can shake this thing by Saturday night, I'll be baking in gloves and a face mask. Tips (like advice, not money) greatly appreciated.

I attempted to make Fat Free Vegan's Garden Vegetable and Bean Soup and the Buttermilk Biscuits from Yellow Rose Recipes. Fail.



Please look at the recipe on fatfreevegan.com. Could that be any easier to make? No. Is it impossible to fuck up? Yes. Unless you're me. I was supremely lazy and decided to use the food processor for everything, so instead of pieces of onion, my soup's base was a sort of onion puree. I also used red cabbage instead of green. And too small of a pot, so it nearly boiled over. See?



Please look at the picture on fatfreevegan.com. Now look at this:



Do they look anything alike? No. And the disparity is getting greater with time, as the broth darkens and the zucchini and beans turn purple.

That said, it's still tasty. It's not the sort of thing where I flip out with the tasty goodness at every spoonful, but it's satisfying.

The biscuits should have been a cinch, since I just made them, but no. See the picture at the top of this post? I call it breadscuit.

I doubled the biscuit recipe, so I needed five teaspoons of baking powder. I put in five tablespoons. Of course, I realized what I'd done right when I finished dumping the last one in, so I tried to scrape off as much baking powder as I could and leave in approximately five teaspoons. Perhaps that's why the dough was incredibly sticky, no matter how much flour I added to it. The dough was so stuck to my hands that I had to call my brother in to add the flour while I kneaded it. After adding what felt like ten cups of flour, I gave up, scraped as much of the dough off my hands as I could and threw it in the oven. A few minutes later, I remembered I had poppy seeds, so I pulled it out, dumped them on and put it back in (in retrospect, I also have flax seeds, which have been a way better idea. Pity I forgot).

Oddly enough, my mother and brother liked the breadscuit. I didn't think it was half bad either. Then again, maybe it's not so odd. Baked dough is almost always a good thing.

Chili Wili

It currently feels like 7 degrees in NYC. I'm fucking cold. Obviously, the only things to be eaten in this weather are soups, stews and (now) chilis. My copy of Yellow Rose Recipes came a couple of weeks ago and the first recipes I tried were the Better Than Basic Chili and Buttermilk Biscuits.



I know the proper accompaniment for chili is cornbread, but biscuits are like gold in my house, so as soon as I saw the recipe, I knew I had to try it.

Before this, I don't think I'd ever really had chili. I stopped eating meat when I was around 13 and was a fan of neither beans nor spicy food before then. I wasn't even much of a fan of them after I stopped eating meat. I didn't really get into beans until a few years ago, and even then, if they looked funny, I wouldn't go near them. I made this chili because my mother asked me too. Yes, my omni mother asked me to make vegan chili.

This recipe couldn't be easier to make. It has a jalapeño pepper in it, so I thought it was going to be too spicy and I was going to cry, but it had just enough bite for me to call it "hot", without actually being uncomfortable. The onions are added in two parts: one in the beginning, to flavor everything, and one at the end to add crunch. The crunchy onions rule.

Yellow Rose Recipes has two chili recipes in it. This one, and one that calls for TVP. I was out in the suburbs when I decided to make the chili, so TVP was out of the question, hence I went with this chili. But I know my mother likes her chili meaty and "gets a kick out of" the meat substitutes, so I kind of cheated and pinched in a package of Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style. And I really did feel like a cheater. I had to tell every person that tasted it that the "meat" was store bought and ask if it seemed too "fake", like it was trying too hard because of the meat. What have I become?!

I LOVED the chili, but here's the big test: What did the omnis think?

Dad: Took one bite (was going out to dinner), grinned and exclaimed "Meat is overrated. This is damn good chili!"
Mom: Took one bite (was going out to dinner). "This is damn good chili!"
Brother: Ate a giant bowl of it. "I don't need Dougies anymore! If you learn to make Fire Slammers, I'll pay you!"
Three friends: All ate hearty portions and said it was good. One thought it should be spicier, but I made it and I'm a wuss.

There you have it. Not a single complaint about the lack of meat.

The biscuits went over really well too. I think I like them even better than the Baking Powder Biscuits from VWAV. These are butterier, more flavorful and also a bit more moist, I think. But that's kind of to be expected when they're called "Buttermilk," not "Baking Powder." Right? Right.