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.

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.

Japanese comfort food and my awesome Halloween costume

Stewed daikon radish in a sweet miso sauce with a side of inari wrapped sushi rice. The thick daikon really needs to cook for awhile (like 1-2 hours) to get soft throughout, but it's worth the wait. The texture is strangely like pineapple, but not stringy or sweet. The sauce is miso, sake, mirin and kombu dashi.

Sushi rice stuffed into inari wrappers which are thin fried tofu pockets. They are a bit sweet and pair well with the sour vinegar of the sushi rice. I'm a vegan post punk rocker chick. I really just wanted to wear tatoo sleeves, a purple wig, and the magnetic face stud. The Praise Seitan t-shirt was just a bonus.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Health food vs. Junk food

This lovely rice bowl comes from The Pump Energy Food which has a bunch of locations in NYC. I'll post anything where you can get tofu as a regular option. The supercharged plate is brown rice with baked tofu, spinach, tomatoes, guacamole and a "cool green" sauce which is cucumber, mint, parsley, and lime sauce.Oh, yes and the Doritos. Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos are vegan and they sell them in the bodega in the basement of my building. Danger. These bad boys are really good.

Seitan buffalo fingers with blue cheese dressing

Hot wings, vegan style.

The buffalo chicken fingers are from a tester recipe. I froze them and they reheated nicely in the toaster oven. Tami's awesome book American Vegan Kitchen will be out in February, but you can pre-order it now!


The blue cheese dip is some Blue Style Scheese mixed with veganaise. The hot sauce is Frank's Red Hot which is my favorite wing sauce. The celery is just to make it feel like I'm having something healthy.

Peanut butter and jelly oatmeal

Here's another quickie...

I usually make oatmeal at work for breakfast with some rolled oats and raisins, but I ate all the raisins yesterday and forgot to bring more in. I did have some peanut butter left at the bottom of the jar and I had some Crofter's superfruit spread in the fridge. It's the Europe blend with black currants, pomegranates, morello cherries and red grapes.I tried to make the PB & jelly all in a yin and yang formation, because I thought it would look cool, but I gave up because I was hungry. I don't bother to microwave the oats. When I have it boils over into a big mess and I hate to wait around to stop and stir every 30 seconds. I don't like microwaves anyway. Even though it's not instant, just cover rolled oats in hot water and let it sit for a few minutes. By the time it's softened it's a good temperature to eat and you won't burn your tongue first thing in the morning.

Invasion of the Vegan Cookies!

Isa & Terry's new book is almost here! I preordered from Amazon and got shipping notice that it should arrive by Saturday. Woo-hoo!

Vegan Marshmallows

Vegan junk food rules. Sweet & Sara smores are awesome. This is the peanut butter flavor.I came across the sweet & sara marshmallows and smores in the grocery store near my work. Gotta support vegan companies when you see their products right? Perfect afternoon snack.

I also really like Suzanne's Specilaties ricemellow creme. You probably need to schlep to a health food store for this or grab it when you're shopping online. It's available from the usual vegan retailers, food fight, cosmos, and pangea. I'm sure ricemellow is great in frosting, fluffernutters, and rice crispy treats, but honestly, I ate most of it with a spoon. Don't worry, it wasn't all in one sitting or anything.

Green bean fries with ranch dressing

I got some giant end of the season green beans from my CSA. So I oven fried them with a good bit of olive oil and ate them with a side of ranch dressing.
I mixed some Penzeys Buttermilk Ranch Dressing mix with some tofutti sour cream for the dip. Although the name says buttermilk, the mix ingredients are all vegan: salt, bell peppers, garlic, onion, sugar, black pepper, parsley, thyme, basil.

Woo-hoo, I made the MoFo round-up!

Whew, I made the Tuesday MoFo round-up with my gnocchi and cilantro pesto. Rock on.

If you haven't been keeping up with Vegan MoFo HQ, now is the time to check in on it!

How else would you know about the vegan Doritos? Huzzah! I found them in the convenience store in my office building, but if you don't see them at a store near you, you can order them at Vegan Essentials.

or all the vegan Halloween candies?

Meatless Monday Gnocchi with cilantro pesto

This dish just sort of happened. I wanted gnocchi, but I kind of wanted something Mexican and needed to use up some cooked pinto beans and some cilantro that was threatening to wilt. Voila gnocchi with cilantro pesto.

Prepackaged gnocchi (I'll save homemade gnocchi for anther time)


1TBS olive oil

1/2 cup quick sofrito
1 cup cooked pinto beans
1 cup cooked leafy greens
1 cup canned tomatoes with juice

Quick sofrito:
2 cloves garlic
1/2 onion
1/2 green pepper
1 small bunch cilantro

Topping:
1/4 cup almonds
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

Boil water for gnocchi. Blend together almonds and nutritional yeast and set aside. Blend together sofrito ingredients. Add olive oil and 1/2 cup sofrito to pan and saute a few minutes to soften. Blend together pinto beans, greens (I used kale) and tomatoes. Add blended ingredients to saute pan with sofrito and heat thoroughly. Cook gnocchi and add to sauce pot to coat. Top with almond/nooch topping.

Slower Delaware style "chicken" and dumplings

Today's dish was inspired by two other bloggers. Matt at My Veggie Kitchen created the ultimate chicken flavored broth. Jeni at Heathen Vegan had some stew with dumplings and was discussing what the British and Americans call dumplings vs. biscuits.

Inspiration hits.

Chicken and Dumpling dinners are the annual fundraiser of many a Delaware organization. My church had one, I think the other was the Lions Club or something. So this usually is made to serve a crowd in a church basement or a school cafeteria. What makes these dumplings special is that they are slippery dumplings. Another colorful name for this dish is "yardbird and slicks." Honestly the chicken was never my favorite part anyway, so I'm just making the broth and dumplings, but this would be great with some chicken style seitan thrown in. Really the best time to make this would be after you've made some chicken style seitan by using the cooking broth. I wanted this NOW, so I took the shortcut. I had to cut my mom's secret family recipe by 1/3 or I'll be eating this until Halloween, but this can easily be multiplied for a crowd.

"Chicken" and Slippery Dumplings

4 cups chicken flavored broth

1 cup all purpose flour (plus about 1/2 cup more for keeping dough from sticking)

1 tsp salt

2 rounded TBS shortening

1/3 cup warm water

Boil broth. I heated up last weeks freegan broth with some chickpeas, celery, carrot, and 1 TBS poultry seasoning and 1 TBS Herbes de Provence, then strained it before adding the dumplings. Add salt to taste.

Mix together flour and salt in a medium bowl. Cut in shortening. Add water a little at a time to form a dough ball. Break off 1/3 cup sized pieces and roll out paper thin with lots of flour to keep from sticking. Cut into small rectangles about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. They don't have to be perfect, in fact a few trapezoids and squares make it interesting. Make sure each dumpling is well coated in flour. This helps thicken the broth as well.

Drop the dumplings in the hot broth and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Serve in shallow bowls. The dumplings stay rocket hot for awhile, so resist the temptation so start slurping them down right away.

Any leftovers will suck up lots of the broth so it won't be quite as gravyey, but I actually enjoy it the next day (or several days) as well. This is some serious rainy day comfort food!

Blossom NYC vegan meet up for Farm Sanctuary

I tell people I write a vegan cooking blog. Vegan eating blog would be more accurate.

Last night I went to a NYC vegan eat-up event at Blossom to support the Farm Sanctuary. Both Blossom locations were donating 10% of each bill to the sanctuary.

Thanks to all the eat-uppers for snapping shots of their food. I really didn't eat all this...

Appetizers!I had the black-eyed pea cake. Crispy cake of yukon gold potatoes and black eyed peas, served with chipotle aioli. Yum! This might have been a special, I don't know what it's called, but I had a bite and it was tasty. The base was a light pastry and it was topped with mushrooms. Potato leek soup. Wish I got that! It was a cold and stormy night... Cape Cod Cakes. A blend of hiziki seaweed, tofu, potato, herbs and spices, served with a vegan tartar sauce. These are also super yummy, I had them the last time I was here.

Ravioli with Cashew Cream. Spinach, mushroom, and pine nut filling. This is good, too. There's not a whole lot in the filling, so it's a good appetizer size.

Entrees! Seitan Scaloppini. Seitan cutlets in a white wine, lemon and caper sauce, served with mashed potatoes and sautéed kale. This is one of Blossom's signature dishes. I got the Port Wine Seitan. Seitan cutlets pan-seared in a sauce of port wine and mushrooms, accompanied by creamy mashed potatoes, tempura onion and sautéed garlic spinach. This was the perfect warming comfort meal for a fall evening that felt like winter! Vegetable Mezze Plate. Our Chef’s preparation of fresh vegetables accompanied by spiced quinoa. You really can't beat piles of perfectly roasted vegetables.
Hickory basted tempeh. Looks good! A couple people got this and really enjoyed it.

Fun evening with excellent food and great company to support the farm animals.

Cheers!

Birthday Dinner at Dirt Candy NYC

I had a lovely birthday dinner last night at Dirt Candy. It's vegetarian, but they'll make all the dishes vegan. They even ask if you're vegan when they seat you!

We started with the Jalapeno Hush Puppies with maple butter. YUM!

Kimchi Doughnuts with watermelon radishes, cilantro and wild arugula

Asparagus Paella with artichokes, morels, saffron tomato broth. The top of the rice was crispy like a rice crispies cake, and when you break it off and it goes snap crackle and pop in the broth!

The ninja had Onion Soup which had cheese, and Crispy Tofu and Broccolini with orange beurre blanc. Yes, the ninja actually chose tofu and he really liked it. The vegetables are great, but the sauces really shine.

Although the desserts at Dirt Candy looked good, there were people waiting for tables and it was super rainy and cold out, so we opted to walk down a few blocks to Lula's Sweet Apothecary.

I had the cookies & cream.

The ninja had the strawberry cheesecake on a sugar cone.

All in all a very good vegan b'day. Cheers!

Copycat gift cookies...

So I'm off to visit my 84 year old first cousin once removed* and her 92 year old husband. What to bring for the oldies but goodies...hhmmm...this is tough...cookies! Yes, everyone likes cookies, so let's go with an everything cookie adapted from the recipe from the canister of walmart oatmeal. I was too lazy to look this up before making them, but here's the original everything cookie recipe. The everything cookie II

1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup applesauce
2 TBS soy milk (not sure this is necessary, but I used it anyway)
2 tsp vanilla

4 cups rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts (ground to a powder)
1 cup raisins
1 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

In a separate large bowl mix together the oil, sugars, applesauce, soymilk, and vanilla. When well blended add the flour mixture and blend together. Add the oats, and mix, add the choc chips, walnuts, raisins, and cranberries, and mix together after each addition.

Drop by tablespoonfull onto ungreased cookie sheets. They don't spread much so leave about an inch of space. Bake 13-15 min. Let cook on cookie sheet for about a minute, then transfer to a cooling rack.

I totally stole the tea box from Isa, but the ancient ones don't have the interwebs, so they'll think I'm a total genius that I invented this myself.

*Just in case anyone is wondering, my first cousin once removed is my mom's first cousin. The once removed is the generation skip. Her kids are my second cousins, etc.