Sunday, November 15, 2009

Veggie Challenge III Cranberry Battle

This veggie challenge secret ingredient is cranberries! Cranberries are featured in a dessert dish for this challenge.
Six challengers, all with unique and delicious creations, form the backbone of night of vegan cranberry dessert awesomeness. The discerning brute Joshua Katcher expertly emcees the event. A panel of three baking experts, Fran Costigan, Mattie Hagedorn, and Sharon Valencik judge the dishes on taste, appearance, and creativity.
Up first-and third place winner-is a double cranberry cinnamon oatmeal nut bar.Then an almond crusted chocolate cranberry mousse. Then comes my cran-velvet cake with cranberry buttercream frosting and a tart cranberry sauce. The drink is a cran-tini punch of cranberry twist vodka, orange liqueur, unsweetened cranberry juice, tangerine juice, and seltzer.Up next from Michael at heebnvegan is a Swedish-style Charoset. Michael did a funny Swedish Chef impersonation with his presentation. Bork, bork, bork! Then Mike of Simply Raw Recipes wows us with a raw cranbanapple parfait with an awesome raw cranberry juice drink. This is the second place winner. The plastic cups are made from corn and he recycles them in his compost. Up last bus definitely not least is the winning dish. This is a rice crepe with a cran-ginger sauce. Sweet and savory, this is a really unique dessert. The sweet prize is a tofu Xpress!My honorable mention prizes are some Chicago Soy Dairy marshmallows and some vegan mac & cheese from Cosmo's vegan shoppe. I can't wait to try these!

The non-competitive main courses were made by the volunteers and features Match Meats the latest in faux meat. My favorite of which was a sweet & sour "pork" dish. The lasagna was also lovely. It was nice to have some savory food after snacking on cake all day and then having dessert first!

Another fun evening full of vegan superstars.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Holiday Vegan Sample bags available now

Check out the holiday sample bags! Each home made bag is stuffed with awesome handmade samples of vegan products. Order from Holistically Heather at Vegan Craft Samples. There is the normal bag for $25 and the small bag for $15. All profits go to the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary. These make great holiday gifts!Here's my post from the first bag. I got the second one, too but didn't post. Lots of goodies including homemade soap, jewelry, play dough, cat toys (my mom's cats freaked out for them,) lip balm, magnets, buttons, and other stuff I can't remember right now.