Last Sunday (I know, over a week ago) I made lasagna roll ups for dinner.  We had made them before but I hardly remember them and Sat said he thinks that they were not that great.  Well with a new and improved vegan ricotta recipe we tried it again and had GREAT results.  If you are a Flickr stalker (like some of Sat’s female CSE friends, Ms. B, ahem), you have probably already seen the photos.  Our only problem in making them is that we didn’t have, well, half of the ingredients at the start – and were still missing some at the end – but it all turned out well.  To make is super easy – just lay out some cooked lasagna noodles and top with ricotta, faux-beef crumbles, parmesan, mozz, and some sauce and then roooooolll it up!  Unfortunately, we ran out of sauce to top out little rolls with in the pan, but it turned out just fine.  It turned out to be the perfect “wing it” recipe as we didn’t really follow any recipe except when we needed to know the oven temp and time.

It was easy to veganize the recipe just by using margarine for “butter” and Ener-G Egg Replacer for the egg.  The cookie dough was super easy to make but the assembly of the cookie was a little more trying.  If you are feeling froggy and want to try to make them I have a few suggestions.

1. Don’t forget to chill your dough!
2. Work in small batches or a really cold kitchen (walk-in freezer?)
3. If you have a marble counter or cutting board, use it!  If it is a board you might want to chill it with the dough – this will help keep the dough chilled longer and therefore easier to work with.
4. When it says “lightly floured surface” feel free to be liberal, and make sure to flour the rolling pin too!
5. If you are expecting the cookies to bleed on their own, don’t.  Mine didn’t bleed at all – could have been the high quality, chunky jam I used though.

You may want to wait to preheat your oven until you have them made just to help keep the temperature in your kitchen down, but I am not sure how much that will help.  Enjoy baking!  (I’ll post pictures when we get them uploaded!)

~C

Low and behold, or rather, high and behold, on the top shelf was a new brand of fruit snacks, Au’some Fruit Nuggets, made by Florida’s Natural and they are vegan!  They have a really visible list of “frees” – lactose free, gelatin free, gluten free, etc.  And they are also made from 66% real fruit juice.  I know, not 100%, but it is better than the Safeway ones.

When we first opened the box we were really surprised.  The packages were TINY!  We thought we got ripped off – but then you open them and  even more surprizes.  The snacks were tiny – and hard.  They were like the chiclets version of fruit snacks – little, hard, and chewy.  But they are AU’SOME!  It is like the fruit EXPLODES in your mouth – you have got to try them.  And if you don’t like them, send the rest of the box to me. 

We have had better luck finding them at Target than Von’s (Safeway).  The box in the picture above is not the kind that is marketed in the US – I couldn’t find a picture of one and am too lazy to take a picture of ours.

Last night we finally took them out for a spin.   My first impression (as the one preparing them) was that they were pretty big.  Most spring rolls that you get at the store are on the small side.  There were only 4 in the box but I decided that the size made up for the quantity.  The wrap on our rolls was busted up and flaking off but didn’t seem inedible.  After 20 minutes in the oven we finally got to taste them.  I let Sat try them first – I already knew they were going to be heavy on the mushrooms so made sure to give him 3 of the 4.

After Sat’s first bite (and following facial expression) I was a little worried but tried them anyway.  It was the weirdest spring roll I have ever had.  It was oddly sweet and looked really weird on the inside.  We should have taken a picture but totally forgot.  It was chock full of mushrooms – so much that Sat asked if there was meat in it!  After about 1/2 of my roll I decided I didn’t really like it and gave the rest to Sat.  Although Sat wasn’t ga-ga he ate them all and thought they were decent with sweet-n-sour but otherwise not that good.

I think we would give it a 1.5/5.  Not awful, but we won’t be buying them again.

~Colleen

Apple Crisp

Today we honor the humble Apple Crisp.  Why it is humble, I don’t know, because it FREAKING ROCKS!  Simple ingredients, easy to make and nearly fool proof.  This is one of the few times I will post a recipe (from memory).  And no, it is not my recipe, it is from my favoritest cookbook ever – the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book (that for some reason Sat and I call the “Betty”)

Apple Crisp With Ice Cream

Humble Apple Crisp
Lots of apples, peeled, seeded, and sliced thin
2-4 tablespoons of granulated sugar
Some lemon juice to prevent discoloration (I dilute with water to make it go farther)

1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c rolled oats
1/2 c flour
some cinnamon (teaspoon-ish?)
1/4 c. softened margarine

Prepare apples and put in lemon juice water mixture until completed.  Rinse apples and place in baking dish of choice (I used a glass pie pan).  Stir in granulated sugar.  Combine the rest of the “dry” ingredients in a medium bowl.  Cut in butter until mixture is “crumbly”.  Spread mixture over top of apples.  Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes.  Serve with really good ice cream.

Well, first I’ll mention that I had used the last bit of butter for the no-bake cookies.  Instant potatoes minus the butter totally suck.  Don’t make the same mistake we did.  And we were also out of the brown gravy mix – you know, that packet you get from Vegan Essentials?  I decided I was feeling froggy and was going to make brown gravy compliments of an internet recipe.  It was super easy, super quick, and seemed to have the perfect gravy consistency.  We definitely didn’t fall in love, but it is nice to know that there are some options for us.  Next time we are going to have to really tweak the recipe so that it doesn’t taste quite so “yeasty”.  I thought adding Kitchen Bouquet would help – but it didn’t help enough.  Better luck next time!

~C

P.S. The Target near us re-opened today!!!  YAY!!!  And a Happy Birthday shout-out to Ashley!!

I love cookies.  I love them so much that we had cookies instead of cake at our wedding.  This past Friday I was suddenly taken with a craving for No-Bake Cookies, one of my favorite cookies from my childhood.  I remember making them with my mom and then following her as she dropped them to pick up all the little “bits” left on the wax paper.  Fortunately, this recipe is SUPER easy to veganize and doesn’t change the cookie at all.  Make them – I promise you will love them too!  Just make sure that you heed the timing advice – boil it too long and they will be chocolate-peanut-buttery chalk.  I think next time I won’t veganize them so that I can eat them all and don’t have to share with Sat.

~C

Sloppy Joe and Homemade Potato Chips

Some lessons learned:

• Lawry’s is not so great on the chips
• Pepper is awesome and all, but don’t overdo it!
• Thinner slices cook a lot faster
• Put the potato on the mandoline holder thingy horizontally – it falls off if on vertically.

Thanks for the great recipe, Susan V!!

So, what yummy vegan food shall we talk about today? For lunch I had myself a yummy “mock tuna” salad sandwhich on some whole wheat bread. In my last blog post I talked about getting down and dirty with some homemade bread. Well, this past weekend I decided to have another go at it? This time I used 50% whole wheat bread to make things a little healthier than before. Once again, it turned out very well. For the visual learners, the photo below below shows the fruits of my labor.

Being totally bread crazy, I couldn’t just stop there. I had some very ripe bananas, a bag of dates, and some chocolate chips, which all rendevoused to form a nice little loaf of banana bread (the recipe was from “How it All Vegan”). I knew it wouldn’t last long so I snapped the photo seen below to remind myself of the power of bananas.

Unfortunately, as someone once said (at least I think someone said this): “Man cannot survive on bread alone.” As a result, I had to come up with something to pair with my bread. During my last trip to OB People’s, I saw they had kelp powdered in the bulk bins so I had to pick it up. I didn’t have to think long about how to employee the kelp: mock tuna salad was it. I also have designs on some mock fishsticks, most likely this recipe from Shmooed Food.

Today was another long day on campus for me but luckily Colleen was on the ball with some yummy chickpea cutlets and purple green beans for dinner. It was about a bajillion degrees outside today and it was sweltering in our apartment so I was very grateful that Colleen battled the heat for a wondeful dinner. Too bad I forgot to take photos before we started.

Well, I guess that’s about it for this edition of Vegan MoFo on our blog. Come on back tomorrow when we (hopefully) have another post.

- Sat