Caribbean Vegan

Good news! We are done testing for Caribbean Vegan! I got to taste so many delicious new dishes and I can't wait for the book to come out and try the rest. Here's a quick preview of what to expect (NOTE: For pretty pictures of the food that will make you drool, check out the author's blog, linked above. For pictures that prove you can make these yummy foods with almost no hand-eye coordination, keep reading):

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Pack it Up, Pack it In

Of all the food I ate in Barbados, I think my favorite (non-homemade) things were conkies and doubles. So I was super excited when T posted her conkies recipe and I got to test it for her upcoming cookbook, Vegan in the Sun.

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A Very Dandy Halloween (Part III)

I may have gone a little overboard with the sweets over the holiday weekend. After the Dandies and the cookies, I thought "Gee, I really ought to make a pie," so I poked around the kitchen and ended up with a Gingerbread Pumpkin Apple Cranberry Pie (which is clearly in need of some kind of clever name, since it's almost too long to Tweet.

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Im a Bad, Bad Girl

Or maybe just a terrible blogger. Christmas is over (happy holidays, everyone) and I haven't even discussed Thanksgiving yet. I suck. I also suck for not getting a shot of my whole Thanksgiving table. Lacking that, I'll open this post with our centerpiece:



That there is the Edible Mayflower (higher res on Flickr).

You may ask yourself "Where is that large automobile?" "Why the crap would anyone make an edible Mayflower?!" I don't have a good answer to that question. But I do have a story.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (i.e. about a year ago, on the Internet), my friend found the Meat Ship (insert rather obvious Gross Out Warning here). I was struck by both its grossness and it's awesomeness (hello there, edible BOAT) and decided I had to make a vegan one. My friends were kind enough to gift me a pirate ship cake pan to aid me in my quest, and the rest is history (or dinner).

Once I decided to make the ship itself from cornbread, I took to the Internet to find out what people enjoyed most with the stuff. After polling the constituents, I ended up with sails made from Veganomicon style sauteed collard greens, Pilgrims made from mini Spicy Pinto Sausages wearing sauteed mushroom hats, sailing the seven seas of Yellow Rose Recipes Better Than Basic Chili. Perhaps not the most traditional of Thanksgiving foods, but damn tasty just the same.

Here's my first plate of the night. Yes, we went classy and ate Thanksgiving dinner on disposable plates. Don't judge me!



Clockwise from that poppy-seed covered ball of awesome, we have:

Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls (Vegan Brunch). Harvest Vegetable Medley (Vegetarian Times). Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans and Raisins (Veganomicon). Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes (Yellow Rose Recipes). Thanksgiving style polenta seitan (Parsnip Parsimony, The I-40 Kitchen). Gravy (my friend Sarah). Grilled Asparagus (Veganomicon).

I had another plate after that with chili, collards, stuffing, cranberry crumble and I don't even know what else. My foodbaby was enormous.

I made the Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times for Thanksgiving dinner, substituting Isa's Spicy Pinto Sausages from the upcoming Vegan Brunch for the store bought ones. Everyone loved it. My mother has some sort of sausage aversion and asked me not to put sausage in the stuffing, so I only put in two and she really liked it. Yet again, vegan food has proven her wrong!

That was my first time eating chestnuts. I don't think I'm a fan. I won't pick them out of anything, but I won't go hunting down chestnut-based recipes either.



I enjoyed the Harvest Vegetable Medley from the same magazine a lot more. Everyone loved it, even my vegetable-phobic grandmother. This was surprising because it's really just plain, old roasted vegetables. Then again, it's not so suprprising because it has almost thirty cloves of garlic in it and who doesn't love metric assloads of garlic? Please note that if you make the recipe as written, you will be able to feed at least a dozen people for two days. I suggest halving it unless you're having a platoon over for dinner and/or really love leftovers.



Thanks to Parsnip Parsimony, I now know about the joy that is polenta seitan. This is not something that would have occurred to me to make, so I'm really glad she thought of it. It's got great bite and I can easily eat a whole batch of it at once if I don't stop myself. Sadly, it's not very photogenic.



Don't let that put you off, though. It's still awesome.

Let the record show I don't like sweet potato. And I don't like tzimmes. I like my vegetables savory, my fruit sweet and never the twains shall meet. My family, however, loves both, so I made them the Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon. Since I made it, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and take a taste and actually liked it. Holy crap. That's the sort of word eating I can get behind. I think the pecans may have been what converted me. I love me some pecans.



The Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes are pretty amazing. How amazing? Amazing enough to get my little brother to eat mushrooms. That's borderline miraculous. These potatoes are stuffed with broccoli and mushrooms and win. Mine don't look so great because they're a bit over baked, but that's how we like them.



Here's a shot of the full pan of Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming Vegan Brunch. They're good for brunch or any damn time. I obviously thought they'd make good dinner rolls and I was right. However, they are crazy with the poppy seeds. Be prepared to make a mess with these babies.



No SSD family dinner is complete without grilled asparagus. Is that weird?



For dessert, we have leftover birthday cake, my friend Sarah's Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Not the prettiest desserts ever (I ran out of decorating time), but they more than made up for it in tastiness. Especially the cake. I can't get enough of it and neither can anyone I've ever made it for.





And that's a wrap. Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe. See you back here in 2009.

Holiday Cupcakes

This blog is significantly behind my bloggable life, and for that, I apologize.

Let's rewind to Saturday, December eighth, shall we?

I spent the evening baking two dozen of the Veganomicon's Jelly Donut Cupcakes for my family's Channukkah party Sunday.



These cupcakes are SO easy to make. And so unique! Also, they don't use a mixer, so you can make them at 3 AM without waking anyone. And they're so fast to make that you can bake them at 3 AM without killing a whole night's sleep. Most of my cupcakes were left with holes in the top, but most jelly donuts have holes in the side, so people actually preferred them that way. The texture and flavor were very different from the previous cupcakes I'd made (all from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World). They were a bit more dense, and definitely donuty.

When I finished making the cupcakes, I met up with some friends to go to Strawberry Fields. On my way to see them, I got the idea to add a butternut squash to my vegetable menorah, but didn't think anything would come of it because I was out. When we got together, we realized we hadn't brought anything for John, so we stopped at Whole Foods for onions. I also bought a ten-pound butternut squash. And carried it around ALL NIGHT. I think it enjoyed Barcade.

I also brought the Veganomicon Spiced Yogurt Sauce to the party as an alternative dip for the veggies (someone else brought one with a sour cream base).

Cupcakes: ready for the jelly



Jellied



Baked



The Cavern O' Jelly



Powdered



From the inside



My date for the evening: the butternut squash

I Has a Secret

And when one has a secret, what better thing is there to do with it than tell it to the entire Internet?

My secret: I've been a vegetarian for roughly fourteen years and there are still vegetables and other vegetarian staples I don't like. Major ones.

I can't stand cooked peppers. I'd marry them raw, but I won't go near a dish that contains cooked peppers and eat around them or pick them out because their oils seem to permeate the entire thing.

Beets freak me out. I can't say I don't like beets because I don't think I've ever actually eaten one, so I'll say they freak me out. This is weird for me because I would usually try anything my parents ate and my mother is quite fond of the beet. Now it's built into my head that beets must be pretty bad if I wasn't even willing to taste them. I know that's illogical, and plan to try beets sooner or later, but here we are for now.

I don't like sweet vegetable salads. Fruit is great in fruit salads. Vegetables are great in salady salads, but I refuse to desegregate my appetizers. For me, few things ruin vegetables more than the addition of craisins and mandarin orange sections.

I refused to eat squash and gourds (except zucchini and pumpkin pie) for about ten years. This, however, was completely "reasonable". When I was a teenager, I spent the weekend at a friend's house. Her entire family was omni, but her mother knew I was a vegetarian and went through loads of trouble to make special food just for me, including a pumpkin-gourd-squash-thingy that had to have been the most disgusting thing I'd ever tasted. Her mother had gone through so much trouble and seemed so proud of it (it was presented very well, just tasted like shit) that I had to eat the whole thing. Since then, I hadn't been able to even look at squash until I recently made myself do the Herbed Winter Vegetable Roast. Thankfully, I picked the right dish to reintroduce myself to squash because now I'm hooked.

I don't like most beans, but I'm getting better about them. They just have to be seriously firm, or really mushed up. If it looks like a real bean but turns to mush in my mouth, eurgh.

I don't like most melons either. Watermelon wins but cantaloupe, honeydew and all things cantaloupe and honeydewesque kind of make me flee the area. That includes a cantaloupe and honeydewesque fragrance.

I don't like hummus. Or tahini. I love babaganoush, falafel, whole chick peas and sesame seeds, so I don't quite get it.

I know VeganMoFo is supposed to be all about the love of veganism and vegetables (and their related products), but maybe this will help me purge my demons and learn to embrace some of the vegetables I've been hating on for so long.

What about you? What vegetable aversions do you have that you'd like to overcome? Will you give one of them a shot this month? My goal this month is to make at least one thing containing beets in some capacity (and eat it, not just give it away!).

Remix Primavera

I was quite the busy bee last Sunday. After I finished making the Herbed Winter Vegetable Roast, I "invented" my first recipe ever. I call it Remix Primavera.

Remix Primavera is spaghetti squash topped with left over vegetables from VWAV's awesome vegetable broth.

I used these instructions to prepare the spaghetti squash, halving it lengthwise, sticking it in the microwave then scraping the crap out of it with a fork. I heated my portion of leftover vegetables for two minutes, also in the microwave, before throwing them on top of the squash.

Total prep time: 20ish minutes



Outcome: Light taste but filling. The vegetables absorb the wonderful flavor of the broth and release some of the liquid when heated up. The squash absorbs the broth, turning the whole thing into a giant pile of yum. I ate it at room temperature because I took it with me to see Across the Universe (I liked some parts, hated others, didn't make me run screaming from the theater, so that's something, isn't it?) and ended up engaged in conversation with the man next to me about the merits of my meal versus his M&M Peanuts. He wanted my Remix. About a cup and a half of the Remix (one whole spaghetti squash + vegetables) was enough to keep me full through the movie, wandering about town with my friends and a concert (The Go! Team, who were awesome, but their openers sucked).

I also roasted the seeds from the spaghetti squash with the butternut and acorn squash seeds (I can't tell the difference between them. Can you?).

Welcome to Winter

It's frickin' cold outside!

It's officially scarf and gloves season. At times like these, half of me wants to move to California and half is just glad I knit. The other half is excited about winter vegetables, so it's no surprise that this weekend was all about the squash, i.e. Vegetarian Times' Herbed Winter Vegetable Roast.



I doubled the recipe, and as you can see, it made a hell of a lot of winter vegetables! That's absolutely thrilling because it tastes amazing. It was really difficult for me to pack it away in containers instead of my belly (I ended up eating some, of course) and I've spent all day today looking forward to having it for dinner (I had the last of the Byzantine Vegetable Stew for lunch. Yummy even three weeks old!)

This is another amazingly easy dish to make. Cutting up all the squash is the most time-consuming part, since you can just throw your herbs in the blender and hit the Chop button (or a food processor, or whatever). The recipe is very clear on the size of the pieces that should be cut, but I think I'll go smaller than instructed next time. I'd much rather have bite-sized pieces than need to cut up slices the diameter of the actual squash while eating. The roast probably took closer to an hour and a half to cook than 45 minutes, but that makes sense since there was twice as much food cooking.

When I was done cooking all the squash, I roasted the seeds. I don't know what kind of seeds would be done in 3-5 minutes; mine took close to an hour to be dry and golden-brown.

I've been rethinking a bit of how I do this blog. The Internet is very fluid. What's here today may be gone tomorrow, so going forward, I will not only link to recipes but include them in my posts as well. The only recipes I won't include are ones I get from current, easy to find cookbooks, since I'd rather not steal the authors' thunder. Pictures will follow recipes.

Herbed Winter Vegetable Roast
Serves 6 - Vegan

Thin-skinned delicata and butternut squash can be roasted without peeling. Serve this satisfying vegetable roast with brown rice, steamed bulgur, or polenta. Sprinkle leftovers with grated cheese, and broil until bubbly for a delicious next-day dinner.

2 Tbs. olive oil, plus more for greasing pan
1 Tbs. chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbs. chopped fresh basil
1 Tbs. chopped fresh thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced (2 tsp.)
2 delicata or 1 large butternut squash, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick rounds (2 1/2 lb.)
1 acorn squash, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (1 lb.)
2 medium carrots, cut on the diagonal into 1/2-inch thick slices (1 cup)
2 medium parsnips, cut on the diagonal into 1/2-inch thick slices (1 cup)
1 medium onion, cut into 1-inch-thick wedges

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly oil rimmed baking sheet or roasting pan.
2. Whisk together olive oil, rosemary, basil, thyme, and garlic in large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Add delicata or butternut squash, acorn squash, carrots, parsnips, and onion; toss to coat. Spread in single layer on prepared baking sheet. Roast 45 minutes, or until vegetables are tender and beginning to brown, stirring every 15 minutes.

Per Serving: 190 Calories; 4g protein; 6g total fat (1g saturated fat); 34g carbohydrates; 0mg cholesterol; 408mg sodium; 7g fiber; 10g sugars



Butternut squash with guts:



Butternut squash cleaned out:



Acorn squash. How floral:



Butternut squash seed:



Acorn squash seed. Can you tell the difference?