Cupcakes for Haiti - Bake sale at Vegan Drinks NYC tonight

Golden cupcakes and chocolate buttercream frosting from duh, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I'll be at Vegan Drinks in NYC tonight where we're having a bake sale to help the relief effort in Haiti.

Veganism is the new tastes like chicken

Veganism is the new tastes like chicken was in the vanity card from an episode of the Big Bang Theory earlier this season. I still think it's funny...and totally appropriate for tonight's dinner.

I know there are two camps of vegans. The ones who are grossed out by the mere mention of fake meat and the others who wish everything tasted like bacon. I think you know what brand of vegan I am. So, if you're tired of eggplant Parmesan and want some chicken Parmesan that tastes like chicken parm I highly recommend trying some Gardein Tuscan breasts. No joke. Tastes like chicken. I assure you, no chickens were harmed in the making of this dinner.

I topped my Tuscan breast with some cheezly mozzarella that I had shredded and frozen for just such a needs-to-be-topped-with-cheese occasion. You can't really tell from the photo, but the cheezly isn't exactly "melted" but it is soft and melty. This was good since it stayed on top of the Tuscan breast and even got a little browned on top. The pasta is a nice dried Italian pasta. Worth the extra few bucks. Homemade sauce and the topping on the spaghetti is a mix of pine nuts and nutritional yeast. It's really quite yummy.

Freakin' awesome brunch at Counter NYC

Had a lovely brunch at Counter in the East Village yesterday afternoon. This was the Mean Green Mary. Despite the dandelion greens and other good for you additions, I think I got a little tipsy.We shared the potato latkes. The condiment was a pear compote. Fried potatoes. So scrumptious.

This was the East Side Burger. Seitan and mushroom pate with some soy cheddar on top. Tasty, but kind of fell apart a bit when you took a bite. Eh, who cares, it's one of the better flavored veggie burgers I've had in the city.

Mmmmm biscuits with vegan sausage gravy. This was really yummy. Not too salty and just the perfect amount of sausage gravy. I'll get this again.

And what's brunch without a little dessert? This awesome brownie a la mode features a vanilla nut based ice cream. Yum!

Some new(ly discovered by me) vegan resources and cleaning out my closet

I found Volentia through a facebook group and it's a whole networking site just for vegetarians. You can designate your vegetarian level, join the vegan group, and pimp your veggie blog . Yeah, I know yet another social networking site to keep up with, but hey it's ALL vegetarians, so it's pretty freakin' awesome.

Also there's vegblogs which searches for the latest in vegan blogs. You'll recognize some old blogosphere friends and maybe find some new ones.

The Pantry:

So the pantry isn't really a pantry, it's a closet next to the kitchen that holds all my tangible vegan resources so I can make chickpea cutlets, chocolate cupcakes, or anything other recipe from my stack of vegan cookbooks without having to make a trip the store.

In case there is ever some world catastrophe that leaves us all living like we're in The Road, you know where to come. Here's the pantry in piles on my living room floor. Hey, at least now it's organized. I'll be featuring some of these staples more this month. Now let's see, what to do with barley....

I'll also be at Vegan Drinks this month making cupcakes for Haiti.

The awesome panda hat

You can't really see it in the photo, but this awesome vegan hat has HEADPHONES in the ear flaps. Guava makes a rockin hat. Check out her etsy site Late to the Revolution for more earphone hats and headbands.

Super easy banana french toast

Mmmmm banana fronch toast (you have to say it in the voice of the mother from Better off Dead for that to be funny.) I picked up a baguette from Hot and Crusty on my way home from work (yes, I was working at my new job on a Saturday. These darn accountants and their year end closing schedules...) and the baguette was a little more crusty than hot. Perfect for French toast! Now I'm twice inspired by the vegan crunk for this recipe because I wanted to make her tester French toast, but I turns out I didn't have any tofu. So I had to figure out a way to make a nice thick batter for it. Then staring me in the face is one over-ripe banana in my kitchen. Perfect. Now here's the second crunk reference. Bianca has given up coffee for a cleanse, and well, I couldn't help putting a tablespoon or two of coffee in with the mashed banana. Coffee and banana just go together in baked things. Also there's no cinnamon because the Ninja would freak out if he even smells it, so I added some other spices that go with banana breakfast things.

Banana Fronch Toast
-for one really hungry person but normally would serve two

1 ripe banana
2 TBS strong black coffee
1/3 cup soymilk
pinch ground ginger
pinch ground allspice
a few good scrapes of fresh nutmeg
a pinch of black salt (to make it "eggy"- careful, too much will make it salty)

6 i-inch slices of a french baguette - day old is preferred

Heat a cast iron skillet with a nice coating of oil.
Mix batter together. Dunk in bread slices and flip to coat.
Place in skillet. Cook 3-4 minutes then flip and cook another 3 minutes.

Enjoy with some nice maple syrup. Mine came from Black River, NY.

Roasted butternut squash soup

Once again, nothing warms up the house like a 400 degree oven. A pot of broth simmering on the stove can add some much needed humidity to the dry winter air as well. I made some practically freegan broth and roasted some veggies for a light and delightful pureed roasted butternut squash soup.
The roasted veggies are diced butternut squash, carrots, celery, leek, shallot, and garlic. Coated in olive oil and roasted in the oven. I like the small dice because it gets nice and crispy.
The broth is some sweet potato peels that have been frozen since thanksgiving and the rest is from the veggies I'm roasting. Some shallots that were fresh from the farmer's market last spring and their skins, the peelings from carrots, the tops and bottoms of the celery and leeks, and the peel from the butternut squash. I added some bay leaves and kombu.

Blend the roasted veggies together with the broth and voila, perfect roasted butternut squash soup. I topped it with a little paprika, but other than that I didn't add any herbs or seasonings (or salt) and it is wonderfully flavorful.

Black eyed peas and collard greens for the new year

OK, this is no traditional recipe, but every year I come up with some excuse not to make black eyed peas on New Year's Day. This year I dug through the pantry and came up with both a can of black eyed peas and a can of collard greens. Sure fresh would be better, but hey sometimes you've got to improvise.
Here's my quick and easy black eyed peas and collard greens with brown rice.


1 cup brown rice
1/4 cup sofrito*


1 can black eyed peas drained and rinsed
1/2 can collard greens
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 Tbs vegan worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp hot sauce like tobasco


Cook brown rice according to package directions adding sofrito or onion.*

Heat black eyed peas and collard greens with liquid smoke, worcestershire sauce, and tobasco .

Make a pile of rice and serve with beans and greens on top.

Lots of luck for a happy new year!



*I use a fancy rice cooker which I love even more than my vita-mix. I know you can cook rice for free with a pot on the stove, but with the rice cooker all you do is put in rice and water and turn it on. It beeps when it's done. You can even leave it on for hours after it's done and the rice stays warm and perfect. I also don't have a microwave, so it warms up rice that's been in the fridge to perfection.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

My neighbors made this awesome vegan bundt cake for their new year's party. I'll have to to get the recipe. I'm eating it for breakfast...

Christmas Pizza

Christmas pizza. Well it's red and green, right? Sauce and oregano. I got a new camera for Christmas, so hopefully I'll be creating some more artful photos in the future. Currently I'm practicing on the pizza. Light life pepperoni, canned mushrooms (yessss, canned mushrooms, they're awesome on pizza) and the breakfast sausage browned with some Penzeys Italian sausage seasoning and follow your heart mozzarella.


And since I'm obsessed with British period pieces, I might as well watch one about cooking. I'm watching the Duchess of Duke Street from 1976 starring Gemma Jones (the mother in Bridget Jones.)

Roasted vegetables and super cool Japanese rice

Nothing warms up the house on a cold winter's day like a 400 degree oven. I roasted some beets and butternut squash. I like to peel and dice the veggies before roasting, so each piece gets coated and crispy.
Here's the rice mix. It's Kagayaki brand premium short 6 grain rice. I got it at the Japanese grocery on 41st in NYC. It's a mixture of black rice, hulless barley, red rice, purple barley, rye berries and short grain brown rice. Let me say, this rice blend will force you to chew your food! It's very hearty and filling and is quite flavorful even just plain.

Breakfast Sausage

This is my first go at the seitan-in-foil sausage technique. The recipe is from Alicia Simpson's Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food. You know how I love the field roast and tofurky sausages, but this is so easy I might just have to start making my own more often. Not sure these will fool the ninja, but I'll have to try it out in something. They are decidedly breakfast sausage flavored, but would go well as an appetiser with mustard sauce. This is how I ate them for actual breakfast (it's 10AM) because I didn't have any tofu to make a scramble to go with them. Anyway they were really good this way. Eating with toothpicks is so sophisticated. I sliced the steamed sausages and then pan fried them in a little oil. The mustard sauce is just some whole grain mustard and vegenaise. Here's the sausages after they have steamed in foil.

This is a great technique. The finished seitan has a nice texture that isn't the sometimes rubbery of boiled seitan or dried out of baked seitan. Because you also know I love Penzeys, I'll have to try this with one of their sausage seasonings. The Italian and breakfast sausage seasonings are great. I use them in pasta sauce and in scrambles to get sausage flavor without the meat. Sausage is one of those great vegan items that is so much more about the seasoning than the meat that it's really satisfying veganized.

There are a lot of great recipes in Alicia's book that I'll have to try as well. Spicy buffalo bites, sweet potato waffles, "egg" macguffin, tahini coffee?!?, peach cobbler and tortilla soup are the ones I'm lookin' at right now. Alicia also has a bunch of product reviews on her blog vegan guinea pig. I really need to get me a tofu xpress.

As a side note I like Deathcab for Cutie and all, but seriously Pandora, does every other song need to be DCFC or the Postal Service? Really. OK, now they're playing Lost in the Supermarket by the Clash just to make me happy. I've got the roku which plays the streaming netflix on the TV and now hooks into pandora, too. So I've got Deathcab in surround sound. Awesome.

If you're wondering what I'm doing not at work making sausage, complaining about the otherwise awesome pandora, and blogging on a Tuesday morning, my last day at my old job was yesterday and I start a new job on Monday. OK, so the office buildings are across the street from each other in downtown NYC, but still change is good. I'm excited about the new job. Can't wait to sneak some vegan treats on the unsuspecting office workers.

Snow days are for vegan waffles and British period pieces

It is indeed snowing in New York. Hiding out from work and armed with the roku remote, I have camped myself on the couch. I'm watching all the streaming netflix British period pieces that I haven't seen before.

Here are the Old-Fashioned Chelsea Waffles from Vegan Brunch. I like the bit of cornmeal in them. It adds a nice dimension. Topped with a little Earth Balance and some New York maple syrup. Yum. This is the only thing that got me off the couch all day.
Now on to the movies...

Starting with a 2009 version of Wuthering Heights that I quite enjoyed. Ah, the Bronte's. Not as light and fluffy as the Jane Austen collection. I always want to hate Heathcliff, but I never really do. I don't even hate Cathy in this one. This version retains the passion, but isn't quite as gritty as some of the other versions. I give it two thumbs up.

Next on to Under the Greenwood Tree. I've never read any Thomas Hardy and this was very cute. Love triumphs through the classes. Starring Keeley Hawes from MI-5. Actually you could do a whole period piece feature with the cast of "Spooks", but I'll save that for another day.

On to Where Angel's Fear to Tread. I've never read any E.M. Forester either, but you can bet the movie has got Helena Bonham Carter in it. So far it's good. There's always some twist though. I usually like the E.M. Forester shows better after I've seen them again. There's a newish Room with a View that I like a lot, too.

Back to the couch...Ciao!

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.