Passing on the Meat

My family recently celebrated Passover and we tried a little experiment: I would cook two vegan Seders (big, traditional dinners) and my family would go vegetarian for the rest of the holiday. Eight days without any meat in the house. My plan was to cook as much as possible, since the more I cooked, the less matzo with cream cheese they ate.

I'm pleased to report that even though the holiday ended a week ago, no meat has been consumed in our house yet and both of my parents are considering going vegetarian on a more permanent basis (they're both totally cool with keeping meat out of the house, but right now, they'd still like to eat it at restaurants on occasion). Also, I think my mother now has a bigger AR soapbox than I do. It's pretty rad.

Here's a small sample of what we ate:

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This is a Post...

...In which I prattle about my Caribbean vacation and what I ate there.
Let's get the obvious out of the way: Barbados is beautiful.

Moving on!

Their system of agriculture is VERY different from that of the US. I had a whole list of fruits I wanted to try, but only got to some because my host's friends and family didn't have any at the time. And we couldn't just go to the store and buy some. According to my friend, if you want breadfruit, soursopp, etc. you don't go to the store. You go to your neighbor, who cuts some off the tree for you. One person seemed offended we went to the coconut guy (below) instead of getting our coconut water from him.

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A Very Dandy Halloween (Part I)

I wasn't raised celebrating Halloween, so I never really worried about it much, but even I can recognize the guiding hand of fate when it brings Dandies to my local supermarket just days before the holiday. We spent Halloween night at home, warm, cozy and out of the rain, indulging in all sorts of sugary sweet treats.

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Month of 1000 Birthdays

Well, just five, really. But they were all mine! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem.

Sorry.

Aaaaanyway...Sunday, May 10, was my birthday, but I've been fortunate enough to have it acknowledged five times this month. All with awesome edibles.

The first time was my office birthday party on the seventh. Since I like baking and finding vegan cake in midtown Manhattan is kind of a pain in the ass, I make my own birthday cake every year and my boss reimburses me $20 for it. This year, I made a giant chocolate mint cupcake (please note the phone in the background for scale):



I tripled the Chocolate Mint Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and covered it with mint icing, Quick Melty Ganache and chocolate mint lentils. It was dangerously good. The mint makes the cake seem lighter than regular chocolate cake, and this cake pan kind of keeps you from going overboard with the icing, so if you're not careful, you can just keep eating this cake until suddenly your platter is empty and you've gained twenty pounds. Twenty tasty, tasty pounds. If you haven't tried this recipe yet (and like mint), please do. But proceed with caution.

The absolute best part of making the chocolate mint cake is...well...did you ever buy the mint Girl Scout cookies? Do you remember the aroma that would waft out and hit you in the face when you opened the box? Well, when you're making this cake, your ENTIRE KITCHEN SMELLS LIKE MINT GIRL SCOUT COOKIE WAFTINGS! It's an amazing thing. If you have a really tiny apartment, you can probably hotbox yourself in minty goodness. Awesome.

In case you're wondering, I made it using this cake pan, which was a gift from the same awesome people who gave me the boat cake pan. I guess they kind of know me pretty well. If you want to see how the cake assembly works, just browse backward from here.

Then, the Tofu Takedown was on my actual birthday. Obviously, I celebrated with lots of cannoli. Then we moved the party to Curly's Lunch, followed by Lula's Sweet Apothecary, where I got carrot cake ice cream (in a sugar cone!!) which tasted like the creamiest pumpkin pie ever. It was difficult to keep my pants on (especially since I was wearing a dress).

May 16 was mostly a celebration for other people, but I received my share of birthday wishes and brought the Raspberry Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance. They're definitely one of my favorite things and only take about an hour to make, which is pretty awesome. I didn't take any pictures this time, but they looked just like the ones I made for Election Day.

My family and I celebrated my birthday, Mother's Day and my mother's birthday (the 8th) on the 17th because I was busy taking down tofu on the 10th. I tried to make a cake out of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but kind of failed:



Pastry creme is just not what to use when trying to stick layers together. I should have known that from my last pastry creme debacle, but no one ever said I was a fast learner. I spent a good part of my afternoon cleaning ganache and pastry creme off the door of my refrigerator. I will not tell you whether or not I licked the fridge.

Lastly, my friends and I celebrated my birthday on the 24th in Philadelphia. Thanks to an awesome friend who did all sorts of veganny research, we ate at Basic Four Vegetarian Snack Bar and New Harmony Vegetarian Restaurant. At Basic Four, I had the best freaking tofu scramble I've ever eaten that I didn't make myself. Their potatoes are really good too. Most importantly, there was vegan Philly cheesesteak. I don't have words for how good this was, so just eat it with your eyes:



Please note that the picture does not do it justice.

New Harmony was a vegan Chinese buffet of awesomeness. Even the tea, orange slices and pineapple chunks were better than most. I gave faux shrimp another try (the first time I tried it, it tasted like fish - BLECH!) and even liked that.

Another friend brought Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes from VCTOTW. They're always wonderful and were a great pick-me-up between finding twenty (yes, TWENTY) geocaches and visiting The Mutter Museum, which is more than slightly awesome.

If you're reading this, good job with the vegan food, Philadelphia! I want to walk in your subway tunnels and eat many of your sandwiches!

I Fail, Sorry

Point the first: Sorry I haven't kept up with this blog much this month. I have been cooking (and I've certainly been eating!), I just wasn't feeling very writey. I hope I'll be better now. All apologies.

Point the second: Thank you to those who contacted me to make sure I'm OK. Don't worry, I haven't fallen too hard off the wagon. I'm not smothered in fried foods or cheese or anything like that.

Point the third: I thought I had something else to say here, but I don't remember what it is. Might as well get straight to the catching up, then.

Point the fourth: Before I start talking about everything I've cooked lately, I'd like to briefly mention to things I didn't. The rest of this post will be my two cents on the restaurants I've been to this month.

4 Course Vegan

The food is great, but the atmosphere really makes it. It's like you're going to a secret, professionally catered, dinner party only about two dozen people know about. The atmosphere is so homey you may forget you have to pay at the end. Especially since there's no cashier. We all just walked up and paid the chef as we left.

Despite the name, we actually received five courses:

Cashew cheese and parsnip ravioli with a sweet potato cake topped with a horseradish sauce
Hot-n-Sour Lemongrass Broth with Kabocha Dumpling and Sweet Pea Greens
Rice Flour Crepe with 5-spice Black Beans and Sesame Chile Oil
Masmun Curry with Garnet Yam, Thai Basil and Toasted Cashews
Chocolate Almond Torte with Blood Orange Syrup and Vanilla Cream

All delicious. The portions were small, because it's "gourmet", but five courses of small portions are really enough to fill you up. The main courses seemed quite light, but the dessert was dense, filling up any left over room we may have had. I ended up staying out until after 5 AM that night and didn't stop for any kind of snack.

Very recommended. Would definitely go again, preferably for some sort of occasion.

The V Spot

I've been here a few times and am always pleased with what I order. One word of caution: they really like to slather on the sauce.

Their nachos are amazing. I had them when I still ate dairy and couldn't care less that I wasn't eating the real thing. The chicken parmesean was great and there was SO much of it. I shared it with everyone at the table and everyone left with sauce on their pants. The BBQ seitan wrap is a real treat, sort of maply and all sorts of delicious, but not for eating on the go. After half, my hands looked like the end of the movie Carrie and I needed a bit of assistance getting to a sink to wash up without making a mess. The meatball parmesean hero was great. It's all flattened out, so it's not difficult to handle (naturally, I ate the neat sandwich sitting there and took the messy wrap to go) and it's very, very tasty. The cheese was borderline melty, too.

Wheeler's Frozen Desserts

They had another NYC event last week. They brought ginger, margarita and what I think was mango ice creams, all of which were delightful. Hannah Kaminsky of My Sweet Vegan brought a crumble, bundt cake, cookies, brownies and I'm not even sure what else. The crumble and bundt cake were divine. I brought an enormous batch 5-Spice Almond Cookies from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, which seemed to be pretty well received (more on that later because that counts as something I made).

'SNice

If you're in the NYC area, do yourself a favor and visit 'SNice at least once. When I saw the menu, I really wanted to try the Chicken Pot Pie Wrap, but several people suggested the Vegan Panini, so I went with that and was not disappointed. It was heavenly. I don't know who the genius is who thought of smoking the tofu, but I'd like to give him or her a great big kiss. Also, the sandwich is huge. Each half should really be a serving, but I ate the whole thing. And a dessert. I got the Apricot Square and it was all sorts of goodness. It's always exciting to be able to eat sweets I didn't make myself.

Also, I am currently battling an addiction to Caramel Brownie Luna Bars. It's been about a week since my last one. Luna, Lara, Cliff and Odwalla bars are all vegan, but Luna Bars have a crunchy thing going on that I find far too exciting.

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.

Shells & Chreese

As of last Tuesday, my friend with the busted paw was still in the hospital. She'd undergone surgery, was well on her way to recovery and even had her appetite back. The problem was the hospital's food sucked. Before her surgery, I'd noticed my friend ogling the macaroni and cheese another friend had brought her mother, but she hadn't been digesting dairy very well since returning from a trip to Asia, so I decided it was vegan mac and cheese time.

I got home from the hospital at roughly ass o'clock, which was no time to be playing with Mac Daddy or some other vegan-macaroni-and-cheese-from-scratch recipe, but I had a box of Road's End Organics Shells & Chreese in the cabinet, so I decided to make that (I'd never had it before).

I followed the instructions on the box and nothing stuck to the pot, which was awesome (I've never been able to make macaroni and cheese from the box without losing half of it), but it didn't look very tempting, so I added a bit more soy milk. That made it look a bit better, so I decided it was done. Then I tasted it.

It tasted kind of like a cross between dirt and nothing. Seriously. It was so bad. I had been discussing the product with my lactose-intolerant friends a few weeks earlier and the first thing I did was email them all saying "DO NOT BUY! NOT RECOMMENDED! YUCK!"

After that, I checked The PPK boards and saw that people suggested adding things like oil and garlic to it to get it to taste good. That's too much like cooking for instant food, IMO. If I'm going to start chopping things, I want the sense of pride I get from making a dish from scratch, not boxed macaroni and cheese.

Thankfully, my friend was released from the hospital on Wednesday and her mother took her directly upstate, so I was spared the embarrassment of either giving her the Shells & Chreese or explaining why I could not. I attempted to eat it myself because I hate to waste food, but over half of it went in the trash. Ugh.

Tofurky!

I made a Tofurky Roast (mine came stuffed but gravyless and was meant to serve four) on Sunday. I also made a bunch of other things, but this post is dedicated to the Tofurky.



That there is really what you see when you take it out of the box. Looks kind of like a football, kind of like a ham, and just kind of funny, doesn't it?

It doesn't look much more appetizing unwrapped, though:



The box tells you to surround the roast with one quartered onion, two quartered potatoes and two carrots. That leaves you with really enormous potato pieces, so I halved some of mine again.



Then comes the "baste": one tablespoon olive oil, three tablespoons soy sauce (I use nama shoyu, even on this) and some dried sage. Mmmm.



Then you cover it up and throw it in the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes. When it comes out, it looks something like this:



Add more baste, put it back in the oven for ten minutes, uncovered, and (if one is to believe the packaging) it's done:



It kinda looked done and felt done when I stuck a fork in it (not that I really knew what "done" would look and feel like), but the vegetables were nowhere near cooked, so I wrapped the Tofurky in foil and left it on the stove top to be warmed by the heat of the oven and the pots on it while the vegetables cooked.

I make fun of Tofurky and similar mass-produced synthetic meats a lot. I call them science experiments, Igor food and other insulting things. But look at the Tofurky's ingredients. I can pronounce everything on that list. They even go the extra mile to let you know their stuff isn't genetically engineered. Pretty responsible, I think.

I served the Roast as part of a family dinner of sorts on Sunday night (more on that later). My brother was first to try it and exclaimed "Wow! It's turkey!" I was shocked! "Really?!?" "No, but it still tastes good," he laughed, finished off his portion and asked for more. My mother actually liked the included stuffing better than what we had at Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it too. So much that I spent all of Monday looking forward to eating the leftovers when I got home from work (with a biscuit, not in a sandwich). It was still tasty after two minutes in the microwave. I don't think the texture changed much either.

Carving the Roast (which kept rolling away until my brother held on to it while I cut):



Sliced. Mmmm....stuffing.



Looks kind of like a hard-boiled egg, doesn't it?



Thus concludes our photo essay on the Tofurky Roast. Have a good night, get home safe and don't forget to tip your bartender.

Sunac Sushi

This isn't really related to the point of this post, but I'd like to share an observation: around Thanksgiving, soft tofu is the first thing to sell out in this town. During the past two weeks or so, I went to Pathmark, Stop N Shop, Cross Island Fruit (Long Island), Sunac (Brooklyn), Klein's, Whole Foods Chelsea, Whole Foods Union Square, Trader Joe's and some other grocery store (Manhattan) before finding it in the Union Square Food Emporium. If you want soft tofu this week, get there by noon.

Anyway, I've obviously been cooking for myself lately and haven't really been eating much preprepared or restaurant food. However, when I went to Sunac for the tofu on Monday, I saw this sushi and it called me.



Please allow me to elaborate on the awesomeness of this sushi.

I was probably the only barbarian left who'd never had brown rice sushi before. It was SO GOOD. Despite being in the fridge case (probably all day), the rice was still fairly tender...or they put enough sesame seeds on it to hide what wasn't.

I love inari so much. The bigger the inari, the happier I am. Look at how big and puffy those things are! And they were full of brown rice too! I was ever so much the happy camper.

I adore asparagus in sushi (and other things, but especially in sushi). After avocado, it's probably my favorite sushi filling, so consider me joyed. I'd never had sprouts or broccoli in it before either. The sprouts were a nice touch, but the broccoli was a little dry (and I don't use soy sauce on sushi. I'm considering trying Nama Shoyu on it one day, but really, I like it as is, so why add the salt?).

Two points for cheap, tasty, healthy, fast convenient vegan food.