THE PHILLIES WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!

This is the first time that my favorite baseball team has won the world series. The Indians broke my heart when they lost the World Series in 1995 (not really close) and 1997 (they should have won!) but this makes up for it. They really had a great team this year and it showed. I can now die a happy man (assuming I die before the next World Series, that is ).

Now, on to our regularly scheduled vegan mofo post…

For Colleen’s birthday last year, I made her a peanut butter chocolate silk pie. She had been asking for one so I thought she would be excited to have it. Somehow our signals must have gotten crossed because she was pretty mad that I didn’t make something else for her. To add insult to injury, I didn’t think the pie was that good so I figured the recipe would be tossed aside and never see the light of day again. Fast forward a year or so and it was Colleen’s birthday again and, almost miraculously, she was asking me to make the pie again.

Being the loving husband that I am, I agreed, although I was not all the excited to do so since my recipe notes indicated that I only gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars. (Colleen’s review was missing from the notes.) However, I got a bit distracted by all sorts of other yummy vegan recipes and didn’t end up fixing the pie until this past weekend. The recipe is very simple, with most of the magic happening inside of a blender. Unfortunately the picture on the recipe’s site looks elegant but the instructions for making it look that way are poor. When I made it last year, it looked particularly dump as the peanut butter mixture that went on top looked like a baby spit up on it. I decided not to worry about it this time so I just poured the stuff on there in the form of a lattice and was done with it. The pics are below.

The result wasn’t elegant and the pie was, for the most part, just as I remembered it: good but not great. Colleen agreed, saying it was a 3.5 (or 4 if she was generous) star recipe. I think my head is going to explode if she requests it again next year. Hopefully I’ll have the fortitude to say no and fix a cheesecake instead

- Sat

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.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post…

I’m not sure what it was but for some reason I got in the mood for some seafood. Granted, I was never a big seafood person back when I ate it but I couldn’t resist the urge to try something new and exciting. I’m signed up for the Meatless Monday newsletters—which are decent, outside of their occasional obsession with “healthy” dairy/egg recipes—and a while back they featured a recipe for mock crab cakes. I don’t ever remember eating crab cakes but they sounded pretty good and the recipe proclaimed them to be extremely easy (and quick) to make, so I went for it. Big mistake!

As you undoubtedly know (if you are a regular reader of our blog), I’ve had more than my fair share of recipe mishaps. Usually they revolve around me just not being able to follow a recipe correctly but occasionally it is not really my fault. Enter “Rick’s Mock Crab Cakes” recipe. I didn’t thoroughly read through the recipe before diving in and several times I was left scratching my head wondering what the hell was supposed to happen when. Steps were obviously left out in several places (e.g. dividing the bread crumbs and what temperature to preheat the oven to). Normally I can improvise enough when I screw things up or if the recipe screws me up but this time I was completely flabbergasted (yes, I did just used that word). Colleen picked up on my increasing level of anger and quickly searched the internet for the place where “Rick” stole the recipe from.

In the end, I had a semi-working recipe but the recipe was so crumbly that it should have been called “Rick’s Mock Crab Dust.” To add insult to injury, this “quick” recipe ended up taking me 1+ hour to make. The picture below shows the still in-tact patties after they emerged from the oven. Overall, it was not a pleasant night for me. Amazingly enough, the leftovers I had for lunch the next day were actually quite tasty. If only it wasn’t for the cooking-induced rage, they might have been worth it.

After a couple weeks passed, thoughts of seafood started dancing in my head again. Crab cakes were out of the picture but I did stumble upon a recipe for Tofu Fish Sticks from Shmooed Food. I’ve used recipes from this particular author before and the comments were glowing so I felt confident going in. Big mistake! Ha, just kidding! Making the tofu fish sticks was everything that the crab cake experience wasn’t: quick and easy! They were also quite delicious; so much so that they might make it into our regular meal rotation (when we aren’t feeling like tofu nuggets). I made some tartar sauce to go along with the fish sticks and all was well in our somewhat-near-the-sea abodes. Don’t you love fairy tale endings?

- Sat

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