Like Jumping Out of the Closet at 3am WITH Choco-Blueberry Muffins

Even though some of you may think it sucks that I've stopped posting regularly (I'm having a bout of lazy, what can I say?), you should actually be excited. 'Cause now when I post, it'll be a surprise, kind of like when your kid brother jumps out of the closet at you at like 3 in the morning when you're groggily going to take a leak and you about have a fucking heart attack. Except better.

So there.

Anyways, since I last posted, I've made quite a few more recipes from Vegan Brunch and concluded that Vegan Brunch is hands down my favorite Isa cookbook. I love Veganomicon and Vegan with a Vengeance too, of course. All three are the cookbooks I use most regularly. But Vegan Brunch: Jesus. It's blowing my fucking MIND with the quality of the recipes. AND the ease. I think that's what I've been digging too. All the ones I've made so far have been SO EASY but taste mind-blowing despite that: particularly the broccoli quiche (stay tuned) and the omelets.

The only thing I've made that I really really didn't like thus far (and I think it might be partially that my oregano was so oregano-y and potent and crunchy) was the Scrambled Tortillas, which I was really surprised about 'cause I thought for SURE I'd love them. But *looking around to make sure no one else is listening* I actually ended up throwing these away. (I know I know--I don't like to waste food at all, but something was so gross about them that I couldn't eat them; truly though, I suspect my oregano):

On the yummy front though, I tried out the coffee chip muffins, but with changes that made them not coffee at all. (I cheated. I wanted to make blueberry chocolate chip muffins for ye lil' intern of mine, so I decided to tweak them to that instead, and they came out really well actually). I've posted a link to a copy of the original recipe that someone posted, but the one below is my tweaked version (with changes from the original asterisked).

I *do* plan to try out the original at some point as well, if I ever have instant coffee on me (which means never--who drinks instant coffee?!?! Blorf).

Choco-Blueberry Chip Muffins



INGREDIENTS:

• 1 c. almond milk (or your favorite nondairy milk)


• 1 T. cocoa powder*


• 1 t. apple cider vinegar


• 2 c. all-purpose flour


• 1/2 c. sugar


• 1 T. baking powder


• 1/2 t. salt


• 1/2 c. canola oil


• 1 t. pure vanilla extract


• 1/2 c. chocolate chips


• 3/4 to 1 c. frozen blueberries*

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375-F. Lightly grease a muffin tin.

In a large measuring cup, measure out 1/2 cup of milk. Stir in the cocoa and mix to dissolve. Stir in the rest of the milk and the vinegar and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center and add the milk mixture, oil, and vanilla. Mix together until the batter is just moistened, being careful not to overmix. Fold in the chocolate chips and blueberries.

Use an ice cream scoop to drop the batter into the muffin tin, filling it about three-quarters full. Bake for 22-26 minutes, until a knife or toothpick inserted through the center of a muffin comes out clean. Let cool a but until you can remove the muffins and transfer them to cooling racks to cool the rest of the way.

(Original coffee chip muffin recipe posted at When in Doubt... Leave it at 350, from Vegan Brunch)

The Time for Vegan Omelettes is NIGH! *jamming out on omelettey air guitar*

Let us flash back for a moment to reminisce about my vegan omelette-making attempts from about a year ago, otherwise known as The Omelette of Ugly Fat Stupidness.

If you'll remember: not once, but TWICE, I attempted to make a vegan omelette with HORRIBLY DISASTROUS RESULTS.

This disaster:



The same disaster, close-up:



Another disaster, unrelated:



(Oh, I kid, JSimps! I love ya!)


Anyways. The problem: Nothing congealed.

So I went into my third attempt, this time using the VEGAN BRUNCH omelet recipe, with some SERIOUS trepidation.

And holy-crap-with-an-8-foot-woody!

Magic:

                          from Vegan Brunch


And not only was it pretty (we all know how that goes: looks pretty on the outside, is an evil, conniving, nasty bitch on the inside) but IT TASTED SO MOTHERF-ING GOOD I CANNOT EVEN TELL YOU.

Seriously.

Omelets were always one of my comfort foods. And not only did this vegan omelet fool me into the old arms of omelet-comfort, it also tasted damn good EVEN WITHOUT CHEESE.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 garlic cloves


• 1 lb. silken tofu, lightly drained (not the vacuum-packed kind) or soft tofu; Nasoya brand is recommended


• 2 T. nutritional yeast


• 2 T. olive oil


• 1/2 t. turmeric


• 1 t. fine black salt, plus extra for sprinkling (optional)


• 1/2 c. chickpea flour


• 1 T. arrowroot or cornstarch

DIRECTIONS

Chop up the garlic, if using, in a food processor (I used a blender). Add the tofu, nutritional yeast, olive oil, turmeric, and salt. Puree until smooth. Add the chickpea flour and arrowroot and puree again for about 10 seconds, until combined. Make sure to scrape down the sides so that everything is well incorporated.

NOTE: The original recipe also has a note in case you use soft tofu (which I did), and it's essentially that you will need to add/adjust water to your mix. Start off with 1/4 cup and test it out by heating up a skillet and cooking up 1-2 T. of it according to the directions below. If it spreads and congeals as it cooks, you can move on to the big versions. If it doesn't spread at all but just sort of sits there and doesn't congeal, then add up to 1/4 cup more water. I think I used nearly 1/2 cup in total to my soft tofu.

OTHER NOTE THAT'S NOT THE NOTE THAT I NOTED IN THE ABOVE NOTE: I forgot what it was dammit. Will add if I think of it. =P Aha! Remembered! I don't know why most tofu recipes call for a stupid pound of tofu since they only ever seem to come in 14 oz or 15 oz packages, but worry not: I used a 14 oz package and kept all other measurements the same, and it still came out delish.

Preheat a large, heavy-bottomed, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Lightly grease the pan with cooking spray. (The less oil the better for the nice brown speckles we're going for.) ALso, make sure that you use a large skillet, as you need room to spread out the omelet and to get your spatula under there to flip.

In 1/2 cup increments, pour the omelet batter into the skillet. Use the back of a spoon or a rubber spatula to spread the batter out into about 6-inch circles.

Let the batter cook for about 3 to 5 minutes before flipping. The top of the omelet should dry and become a matte yellow when it's ready to be flipped. If you try and it seems like it might fall apart, give it a little more time. The underside should be flecked light to dark brown. Flip the omelet and cook for about a minute on the other side. Keep warm on a plate covered with tinfoil as you make the remaining omelets.

Fill omelet with the filling of your choice, then fold it. Once the omelet has been filled, sprinkle with a little extra black salt, since some of its flavor disappears when cooked.

Makes 4 omelettes.

(Recipe originally from Vegan Brunch, posted at Jaclyn's Vegan Yumminess)

Bringing Vegan Brunch to You, My Bitches

Oh look at me! Blogging! Try not to wet yourself with delight!

So yes: VEGAN BRUNCH. I gots it.

If you don't, you should.

I must admit, every time Isa has a cookbook come out, I'm all: don't jump on the f-ing crazy-ass bandwagon, dude. But inevitably I end up buying it. ('Cause her cookbooks are my most used cookbooks, dammit. Not cuz it's hipster-cool!)

And here's what I've made so far. Alas: You'll have to purchase the book to get the first two recipes as they don't appear to be on-line yet. INCENTIVE.

1. Potato Spinach Squares: Super easy. And they make for a nice picnic side since they're yummiest at room temp.





2. Pesto Scrambled Tofu with Grape Tomatoes: My friend P and I cooked this on the weekend (along with the yumtastic cream cheezy mashed potatoes she concocted). And this has actually been my favorite so far, which is surprising 'cause I was supremely skeptical. I was all, "How can this be all that tasty when it's essentially just tofu and tomatoes doused in pesto??" But trust me: it is. I suggest tossing in some diced up kalamatas as well, for some extra oomph. You won't regret it.






3. Puttanesca Scramble: This one I was actually kind of meh on. Not that it was bad. But it didn't make my toes curl. Be that as it may, it IS one of the recipes that was actually posted on the PPK, so that must mean SOMETHING (namely that I probably just suck and have no taste in food).

Next in the queue: The elusive vegan omelet. After two failed tries at other vegan omelet recipes, I am DETERMINED to master this, goddammit. STAY TUNED!



PUTTANESCA SCRAMBLE

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 T. olive oil


• 6 - 8 cloves garlic thinly sliced


• 1/2 t. crushed red pepper flakes


• 1 lb. extra firm tofu, diced


• 4 roma tomatoes, diced


• 2 T. fresh thyme


• 2 T. fresh oregano


• 1/2 c. mixed olives, roughly chopped


• 1 T. capers


• 1/4 t. salt, or to taste

DIRECTIONS

Preheat a large heavy bottomed pan over medium heat. Saute the garlic in the olive oil until lightly browned, but be careful not to burn. 3 minutes ought to do it. Add the red pepper flakes and the tofu and saute for about 10 minutes, until tofu is browned. Add a little extra oil if necessary.

Mix in tomatoes, thyme, oregano and oregano and cook for about 5 minute, until tomatoes are a bit broken down but still whole. Add olives, capers and salt to taste. Cook just until heated through.

(Recipe from VEGAN BRUNCH, posted on the ppk)

Asparagus and Sun-dried Tomato Frittata

                          from Vegan with a Vengeance

N/A raved about this frittata so strongly (he said it was up there as one of the best things I've ever made) that I actually was a bit concerned that he was going to shit rainbows. Then again, part of me thinks that he may have just been trying to suck up to make up for a douchey comment he made to me right before we ate dinner. So really: it's hard to say.

But I guess that just means you should probably go ahead and make it yourself and be the judge.

Me, I thought it WAS quite good as well. But I also easily ate half of this and could've eaten more, so take that into consideration if you decide to cook this for company.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 lb. extra-firm tofu, drained


• 1 T. soy sauce


• 1 t. mustard


• 1/4 c. nutritional yeast


• 2 t. olive oil


• 1 onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice [I omitted cuz N/A hates onions]


• 5 stalks asparagus, trimmed and cut into one inch pieces


• 1/4 c. sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped


• 3 cloves garlic, minced


• 1 t. dried thyme


• 1/4 t. turmeric


• Juice of 1/2 lemon


• 1/4 c. fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400-F.

Using your fingers, crumble and squeeze tofu into a bowl until it resembles ricotta cheese. Stir in soy sauce and mustard. Add nutritional yeast and mix well.

In an 8-inch oven-proof skillet, saute onions in olive oil until soft about 2 minutes. Add asparagus and tomatoes and cook for 3 minutes. Add garlic, thyme, and turmeric, saute for one minute. Add lemon juice to deglaze pan and remove from heat. Add contents to tofu mixture and stir to blend. Fold in basil leaves.

Transfer combined mixture to skillet and press firmly into pan. Place skillet in oven and cook for 20 minutes. Transfer to broiler to brown top, about 2 minutes. Watch it closely! You don't want it to burn.

Let frittata sit for 10 minutes prior to serving.

Serves 2-4.


(Recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, reposted at Pink Stripes with a few alterations)

Haute Faux Egg Sandwich

I blame Everybody Likes Sandwiches for my recent infatuation with the cheddar/apple combo. The recipe that turned me on to this love was her recipe for an apple onion cheddar pizza which was beyond yummy.

And then last week I saw this recipe for a fancy egg sandwich. Essentially it was eggs and cheddar cheese with apples and honey drizzled over top and couched in between two slices of hearty wheat bread.

It sounded so good that I decided to try veganizing it.

And as luck would have it, I really dug the results and spent much of the weekend cowing down on these sandwiches.

Changes:

I made them open-faced. I tend to think the flavor of a sandwich's interiors can sometimes get lost in between too much bread.

I subbed in the faux-egg recipe from Vegweb for the egg portion.

And I obviously made substitutions for the cheese and honey.

Enjoy!



INGREDIENTS:

• 1 pound extra firm tofu, pressed & sliced into 4 slices


• 1/4 c. apple cider vinegar


• 1/4 c. olive oil


• salt & pepper to taste


• 4 thin slices vegan cheddar


• 4 slices of sturdy whole grain bread, toasted and buttered (ooh--didn't think to butter them, but that sounds yum!)


• 1 T. agave nectar (or to taste)


• 1-2 tart apple(s), sliced thin

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

On a rimmed baking sheet, pour the apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and salt and mix together. Put the tofu on this mixture and coat both sides.

Bake for 10-15 minutes on one side, then flip and bake for another 10-15 minutes.

In the meantime, toast your bread (and "butter" it if you so choose).

When tofu is done, turn on your broiler, spread the tofu out on a piece of foil and top each piece with a slice of vegan cheddar. Toss into broiler until cheddar is melted and/or bubbly.

Place tofu & cheddar on top of your toast. Top with thinly sliced apples and then drizzle generously with agave nectar.

Num num num.

Makes 4 open-faced sandwiches.

(Original recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches)

Breakfast Burritos & Cock-Potatoes

I have been a blog-slacker this week, so my apologies.

In penance, I offer you a picture of a potato that looks like a mitten and/or a very thick, chode-like cock & balls, depending on how you look at it:

Mitten?

Thick chode-like cock & balls?


Which begs the question: some folks are glass half-full, some folks are glass half-empty, some folks are mitten-potato, some folks are cock-potato. WHICH ONE ARE YOU???

And now: soyrizo. Love it. Want to make sweet love to it. As though it were a cock-like potato.

Here's how I used mine.

Seriously goddamn delish. Reminded me--strikingly and nostalgically--of these freezer b-fast burritos we used to get on special occasions when I was younger. That probably doesn't sound like a rousing recommendation, but it is. I hearted them. And this recipe tastes sort of like them, except 100x more rock-on.


BREAKFAST BURRITOS





INGREDIENTS:

• 1 red bell pepper, diced


• 1 onion, diced


• 4 cloves garlic, minced


• 2 potatoes, diced small


• 1 cube extra-firm tofu, pressed and crumbled


• 1 package soyrizo, crumbled


• 1 small can black beans, drained


• 1 small package sliced fresh mushrooms


• Olive oil


• Cumin


• Season salt


• Garlic powder


• Turmeric


• Salsa


• Tortillas


• Avocado, diced (optional)


• Vegan sour cream (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 450-F. Dice your potatoes, and toss them in a bit of olive oil until coated. Season them to taste. (I just shook some garlic powder and season salt over them.) Toss in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Toss. Bake for 10 more minutes (or until potatoes are tender).

In the meantime, dice up all your other shit. Grab a couple of pans, and heat them on medium on your stove. Spray with a bit of non-stick spray.

In one pan, add your soyrizo. In the other, add your onions, red pepper, and garlic. Cook soyrizo until it's starting to brown. Cook onions et al. until onions are translucent.

In onion pan, add your crumbled tofu and seasonings (I used some cumin, season salt, and turmeric--I would suggest steering clear of spicy spices since the soyrizo has kick). In the soyrizo pan, add your black beans.

Cook tofu until starting to brown, and then add mushrooms. Cook until mushrooms are tender. Cook black beans until heated through.

Remove both from heat. At this point, your potatoes should be done.

In a large bowl, mix together your potatoes and the contents of both your pans.

Heat up tortillas. Serve each tortilla with a generous scoop of your soyrizo mix. Top with salsa (and/or vegan sour cream and avocado--I didn't use the latter two, but I can only imagine they'd be ORGASMIC additions).

Chow down.

Easily makes about... 8 to 12 breakfast burritos.

Peanut Butter Coffee Cake

                                       from Crazy Vegan Mom


My absolute favorite part of this recipe is that there's a banana inexplicably in it. And I don't mean, "Oh, THAT'S kind of a strange idea, using a banana in this recipe." I mean, "There's a banana in this recipe, BUT IT NEVER SAYS WHAT TO DO WITH IT!"

Which of course made me start day-dreaming while I was putting this together. And I thought to myself, Well, maybe Crazy Vegan Mom really IS kind of crazy, and she's decided to be a healthful deviant and start listing out unnecessary fruit in recipes in an attempt to get people eating better--that way they'll BUY the ingredient and, after suddenly realizing that the recipe never explains what to actually DO with it, they'll instead chow down on it so as not to make it go to waste. Which would be really kind of brilliant.

And THEN I was like, Even better: Maybe Crazy Vegan Mom is like this awesome radical sex-promoting feminist, and she was like, I will start putting random bananas in recipes because, well, if you've got a banana in your hand and 30 minutes of baking time to kill, um... you get my drift. And that would be even MORE super-brilliant.

By the time I'd finished crafting all these tales in my head, I gave in to the reality of the situation, which was that the banana probably just got left out of the directions.

Anticlimactic.

But not surprising, seeing as everything in my head seems to be WAY more crazy-ass weird than in the real world.

Needless to say, I've added banana-directions below.

Banana-ramble now complete, let us discuss this recipe:

Holy moly mother of god, this really is a damn good coffee cake recipe. And I was highly highly skeptical. Not for any real reason other than that the batter seriously freaked me out by having a total Blob moment and almost completely swallowing up my electric mixer in a way that seriously had me concerned that this would happen:



That in turn got me humming the theme song of the 1958 Steve McQueen version of The Blob while I used my electric mixer, which seriously is like THE best horror movie theme-song ever.

You MUST listen to it if you've never heard--it will get stuck in your head the rest of the day: CLICK TO DO IT!

I am A.D.D. recipe-style today. My apologies.

Anyways, seriously: despite the banana weirdness, and despite the Blob, this was seriously fantastic coffee cake. Dense, moist, and awesomely peanut-buttery. I really highly recommend this recipe.

Two bananas up to Crazy Vegan Mom!

INGREDIENTS:

Topping:


• 1/2 c. packed light-brown sugar


• 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour


• 1/4 c peanut butter


• 3 T. margarine


Cake:


• 2 1/4 c. unbleached all-purpose flour


• 1 c. packed brown sugar


• 2 t. baking powder


• 1/2 t. baking soda


• 1/4 t. salt


• 1 c. soy milk


• 1/2 c. peanut butter


• 1 ripe banana, mashed


• 1/4 c. (1/2 stick) margarine

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375-F. Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan.

For the topping, mix the brown sugar and flour. With a pastry knife, a fork, or your fingers, cut in the peanut butter and margarine until crumbly; set aside.

For the cake, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the soy milk, banana, peanut butter and margarine. Beat until smooth, about 3 minutes with an electric mixer. Pour into the baking pan and sprinkle with the topping.

Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Makes 12 -16 servings

(Recipe from Crazy Vegan Mom)

The Tale of the Scone-Loving Dame

                                      from VwaV


So last week, I crushed out. I'm on the lam, and I bump into this cat from back in the day. He and I are chinning, and I says, "Don't be a bunny, baby. I'm a (vegan) butter and egg man, you get me? And I'll bop someone if it means staying out of bracelets, hear? So gimme the cabbage or get lost." So he gives me the cush 'cause I've got the heat pointed right at him. And I--of course--fade as fast as possible and skip over to the nearest creep joint. I get inside where there's this real looker, and I take her up to her room, a bit of dough in hand. But the boozehound's smoked and right off throws a joe on her bed. I mutter a Veganmofo or two under my breath, and--to bide my time til the dame's no longer out on the roof--I whip up these scones. They're plump, curvy, and sweet, just like your typical broad, so I wake the mad dame and say, Chew this. And next thing I know, she's got those getaway sticks spread WIDE open for me.

That's a scone-loving dame for you.

And what a scone-loving dame she was...




VwaV's Chocolate-Chip Scones

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 c. all-purpose flour


• 2 T. baking powder


• 6 T. sugar (plus an extra tsp for sprinkling on top)


• 1/4 t. salt


• 1/3 c. vegetable oil


• 1/2 c. soy cream (rice or soy milk is an ok replacement, but the cream really works better)


• 3/4 c. rice or soy milk plus 2 t. apple cider vinegar


• 1 t. vanilla extract


• 1 c. vegan chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Add the oil, soy cream, and milk with vinegar. Mix until just combined; the dough should be clumpy and not sticky. Even if there is still a light dusting of flour, that's okay.

Drop by 1/4 cupfuls onto the greased cookie sheet and pat the tops just a little bit to round them out; sprinkle with a bit of sugar. Bake 12-15 minutes until slightly browned on the bottom and firm on the top.

Chocolate Chip Scones: Add 1 tsp of vanilla extract to the liquid ingredients, add another 2 Tbsp sugar, fold in 1 cup of chocolate chips.

(Recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, posted at Tribe.net)

My LLP and Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Scones

My LLP Peppermint cooked for me last week, because she is awesome like that (and secretly and seductively trying to get into my pants--DON'T DENY IT, PEPPERMINT! I CAN READ YOU LIKE A BOOK!! PARTICULARLY A BOOK TITLED PEPPERMINT IS TRYING TO GET INTO LINDY LOO'S PANTS (WHICH ACTUALLY HAS A KIND OF TWIST ENDING THAT YOU WON'T EVER SEE COMING SO I PROMISE NOT TO GIVE IT AWAY FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVEN'T READ IT)!!!), and this is what she made:




Sadly, I can't remember what they were called, other than "Delish." But they were little potato-pancake-like patties that tasted strangely like potatoes DESPITE THE FACT THAT THERE WERE NO POTATOES IN THEM!! *Cue Twilight Zone music* Apparently rice is a potato-wannabe sometimes. Nonetheless, I dug them and thought they were tasty little buggers. Alas, Peppermint didn't manage to get into my pants THIS time around, but if she continues to cook for me like this (tastily and nekkid), she may very well get lucky in the near future.

On other cooking fronts, I made pumpkin vegan scones last weekend. And before I even accidentally offend the Two Vegan Sisters (which I totally don't mean to do, because they rock, and because I modified a bunch of stuff from their recipe, so any errors in baking-judgment were my own), I've got to explain my love-hate relationship with the scone. The elusive, mysterious scone. I find them very confusing. They typically seem to be rather dry. And they're not sweet enough for my sweet tooth. (This was the case for these pumpkin scones as well--thank god I added the chocolate chips.) The end result usually leaves me going, Um, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL ABOUT YOU, LITTLE SCONEY SCONES, BECAUSE YOU ARE SO VERY STRANGE IN COMPARISON TO THE REST OF YOUR BAKERY-FAMILY. But I *LOVE* how a nice cup o' coffee somehow transforms them into something glorious. End result with THESE scones was that I ate three of them throughout the day, despite being unsure whether I liked them or not. Were it not for the chocolate chips, they would've been horrendously bland. *BUT* the original recipe does call for a glaze on them, so I suspect this probably would've given them a bit more zip. And perhaps if I'd used butter instead of oil, they would've been a bit less dry. Or soy creamer instead of soy milk. Or added the glaze on. Or plain old didn't suck. One never knows.

Anyways, there are also many good reasons to check and make sure that you have all the ingredients before you start measuring stuff out; the biggest of reasons is, well, if you don't do that, you may suddenly realize you don't HAVE several of the ingredients. In my case, I realized I was out of vegan margarine. I also realized I was out of powdered sugar for any sort of glaze (vegan powdered sugar seems to be even more elusive in my area than vegan chocolate chips). I also don't ever have soy creamer handy (I'm a black-coffee gal--I like my coffee like I like my men: all up in my lap and burning my loins while I drive to work in the mornings), so I subbed in soy milk: again, perhaps this holds some of the blame for the dryness.

Anyways, aim for the original recipe and see how they turn out for you. Perhaps you won't suck quite so much as me.



PUMPKIN-CHOCOLATE CHIP SCONES

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 c. whole wheat flour (or 2 of all-purpose, 2 of wheat)


• 1/2 c. sugar


• 2 T. baking powder


• 1 t. ground cinnamon


• 1 t. ground nutmeg


• 1/2 t. ground ginger


• 1/2 t. salt


• 1/2 c. Earth Balance margarine (I used 1/2 c. vegetable oil)


• 1 c. pumpkin purée


• 1/4 to 1/2 c. soy creamer (use less if using fresh pumpkin purée, add more if using canned pumpkin)


• 1 c. vegan chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, spices and salt. If using Earth Balance, use a pastry blender to add in Earth Balance until thoroughly mixed. If using vegetable oil, whisk together with pumpkin and soy creamer/milk in another large bowl.

Add combined dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture. Mix, then divvy out into 12 lumpy masses and arrange on two baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake until golden for 15 minutes. Transfer baked scones to a wire rack to cool, with parchment or wax paper underneath to catch drips.

(Original recipe from Two Vegan Sisters)

Mock Meat Alert!

WOOO WOOO WOOO!!!! <----That's the mock-meat siren, alerting you to the fact that you're about to be hit by a F-5 mock-meat recipe!

IF YOU ARE CAUGHT OUTSIDE...SEEK SHELTER IN A NEARBY REINFORCED BUILDING. AS A LAST RESORT...SEEK SHELTER IN A CULVERT...DITCH OR LOW SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS.

THE SAFEST PLACE TO BE DURING A F-5 MOCK-MEAT RECIPE IS IN A BASEMENT. GET UNDER A WORKBENCH OR OTHER PIECE OF STURDY FURNITURE. IF NO BASEMENT IS AVAILABLE...SEEK SHELTER ON THE LOWEST FLOOR OF THE BUILDING IN AN INTERIOR HALLWAY OR ROOM SUCH AS A CLOSET. USE BLANKETS OR PILLOWS TO COVER YOUR BODY AND ALWAYS STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS.

IF IN MOBILE HOMES OR VEHICLES...EVACUATE THEM AND GET INSIDE A SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER. IF NO SHELTER IS AVAILABLE...LIE FLAT IN THE NEAREST DITCH OR OTHER LOW SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS.

Oh yeah, and somewhere in there, bust out a pan and spatula, and get to cooking!

LINDY LOO's BREAKFAST SCRAMBLE

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cube of extra-firm tofu, drained and crumbled


• 1/2 tube of fake-sausage, crumbled (I used GIMME LEAN)


• One small onion, diced


• 1/2 green pepper, diced


• 1 to 1.5 c. cooked/canned black beans, drained


• 1/2 packet of taco seasoning


• 1 T. vegetable oil


• Salsa (preferably Newman's Own Black Bean & Corn Salsa)


• Optional: tortillas or some sort of cooked, diced breakfast potatoes*

DIRECTIONS

In a large pan or skillet, heat your oil. When hot, add your onion, green pepper, and fake-sausage. Cook until the sausage is brown and the onions are either browned or translucent. Add your tofu and 1/2 packet of taco seasoning, mixing everything until the seasonings are evenly distributed. Add your black beans. Cook until tofu is heated through and/or beginning to brown (depending on how you like your tofu).

Serve in warm tortillas or over breakfast-potatoes with a generous helping of salsa. (I prefer the one listed above, simply because it makes the breakfast scramble taste kind of old-school and McDonald's-y for some reason.)

Makes 4-6 servings.

----------
* The first day, I served these in tortillas. With leftovers, I whipped up a batch of breakfast potatoes and served it over them. To make the potatoes, I simply diced up about 6 or 7 small red potatoes. I tossed them with some olive oil, garlic powder, and seasoned salt, and then I threw them in the oven for about 1/2 an hour at 450 or so, or until cooked through.

1/3 Cup Finally Gets Some Action, and Mystery Cup Gets a Bit Too Oversexed

So yesterday, right before leaving work, I happened upon this scone-recipe over at Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and as soon as I saw that it called for turbinado sugar, I knew I was baking these scones as soon as I got home. Why, you ask? Because I've had this fricking bag of turbinado sugar sitting in my cupboard for like MONTHS because the crystals are SO DAMN BIG that I can never find recipes to use them in where it won't feel like you're biting into tiny Volkswagon Beetles everytime you take a bite of said recipe.

My 1/3 cup was super-fricking pleased as well, since he rarely gets used. For most every recipe, I reach around in my cupboard trying to find the correct measuring cups, and I inevitably pick up the 1/3 cup, and then he gets all geeked out and excited, thinking he's gonna get used finally, only to hang his head with disappointment when I return him to the cupboard because I was actually searching for 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup. Poor little 1/3 cup, rarely used in recipes, full of pent-up aggression and sexual desires. Poor poor little 1/3 cup. So imagine how happy he was yesterday when he finally got some action (the first time in months). Oh was he giddy. Giddy and joyous and giddily joyous. So 1/3 cup thanks you, oh Isa.

While 1/3 cup was getting some well-deserved action, one of my other cups was getting overly-sexed. The recipe says to scoop out your scones with 1/4 cup scoop-measurer, which (in the world of Lindy Loo) I thought I was doing. But once they were in the oven and I realized that they were the size of small children, it dawned on me that perhaps I hadn't grabbed the 1/4 cup to scoop with after all. What cup I grabbed will forever remain a mystery, but they yielded scones the size of someone's head (and the shape of Sloth's head from Goonies):



But man if they ain't tasty little giant-headed scones. (The only thing I substituted was semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of chocolate chunks, because I didn't have chocolate chunkiness on hand.) Yesterday, when I ate one hot from the oven, I was a bit disappointed because they didn't taste sweet enough for my sweet-tooth. But having sat overnight, their little flavors all a-mingling, they're FAN-FRICKING-TASTIC this morning, especially coupled with coffee--the perfect consistency, and the perfect delicate flavor. Rock on.


GINGER CHOCOLATE CHUNK SCONES

INGREDIENTS:

Dry

• 3 c. flour


• 2 T. baking powder


• 1.5 T. ground ginger


• 1/4 t. cinnamon


• pinch allspice

Wet

• 1/2 c. turbinado sugar, plus extra for sprinkling


• 1/2 t. salt


• 1/3 c. vegetable oil


• 1 1/4 c. non-dairy milk


• 1 t. pure vanilla extract



• About 5 ounces chocolate (or 1/2+ c. semi-sweet chocolate chips)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 450.

Mix together your dry ingredients.

Mix together your wet ingredients (minus the chocolate).

Add wet to dry and mix well. Fold in chocolate chips or chocolate chunks.

Line a cookie-sheet with parchment paper. Using a 1/4 c. (or a mystery-cup) scoop, scoop out a clump of dough and drop it on the sheet. Do so until you're out of dough. Sprinkle the scones with extra sugar.

Bake in oven for 15 minutes.

Remove. Let cool on pan for 5-10 minutes.

Remove and place on cooling rack.

(Makes about a dozen if you accidentally use the wrong-size scoop)

(Original recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)

E's Tofu Breakfast Wraps & Breakfast Potatoes

On my birthday, E was kind enough not only to hook me up with a vegan ice cream cake but to also cook me one of the best breakfasts I've had in a long long time.

After much hemming and hawwing over what I wanted him to make, I settled on breakfast burritos. I've been a long-time breakfast-burrito whore (I used to get them at McD's all the time in high school--yes, back in the day, I worked for and ate at my arch-enemy's; thank god the times have changed), and we have pancakes fairly frequently, so I was, needless to say, all over that idea.

I gave him the following demanding guidelines for said breakfast burritos: they needed to have tofu, mushrooms, and fake-sausage. Other than that, he could experiment as much as he liked. And experiment he did, toying with a recipe from Vegan Faminly Favorites and coming up with this gloriously delicious recipe.

Hot damn if they weren't the best damn breakfast burritos I've had. Hands down. I'd like to say it was because I knew that there was a bit of love baked in, but shit--I think it was just the mad skillz of the cook.

So yeah, if you eat no other breakfast this year, let it be this one.

E's Tofu Breakfast Wraps

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 T. olive oil


• 1 lb firm tofu, drained, patted dry and mashed


• 1 small yellow onion, diced


• 1/2 green bell pepper diced


• 1/2 red bell pepper diced


• 1 jalapeno diced


• 1/2 tube Gimme Lean sausage style


• 2 fresh garlic cloves, minced


• 1/4 t. turmeric


• 1/2 t. salt


• 1 package whole wheat tortillas


• Black-bean salsa (or any other type you prefer)

DIRECTIONS

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet until hot. Add mashed tofu and allow to cook for about three minutes (or until lightly browned). Meanwhile, place the Gimme Lean in another frying pan as you would cook veggie crumbles, etc., until lightly browned. Add all peppers, onion, garlic, turmeric, salt, and sausage to the tofu. Stir together then cook for 8 minutes on low-medium heat until vegetables are cooked. Spoon mixture into warm tortillas, add some salsa, and serve!

E's Breakfast Potatoes

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 large potatoes, diced


• 1/4 onion, diced


• 1 T. olive oil


• generous portion of freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil in large frying pan until quite hot (over medium-high flame). Add potatoes, grind lots of fresh pepper over the potatoes, and cook for awhile, turning them from time to time, until they are brown on all sides. Once all potatoes are browned, add the onions. Continue to cook until the potatoes are cooked through (this could take 15 minutes). Don't worry if they turn dark brown. They are best that way. Once the potatoes are cooked through (i.e., soft enough to eat), remove from flame, scoop onto dish, and enjoy!

Happy Happy Che Che Pancakes

I made pancakes on Sunday. The recipe wasn't anything terrifically original or anything, but the site where I got it from cracked my shit up and won me over into trying them out. I don't know what's funnier--the idea of Commie vegans or vegan Commies. Actually, neither are all that funny (or surprising even, perhaps), but I just got sucked in by the site name: Pancakes for Pinkos (tee hee).

The web site offers pancakes recipes because they're working under the assumption that...

• A - Your average pinko commie doesn't have time for a healthy breakfast as he is too busy inciting revolution.


• B - The proletariat is too listless and unmotivated to make breakfast.


• C - The bourgeoisie would rather suck on tepid duck fat and dull, lifeless rubles than eat a healthy meal.

Check it out. They have a whole buncha different vegan pancake recipes on there too.

Next time, I want to try the Commie Apple Oatmeal ones.

Mine ended up being a variation on the Proletariat Fluffy Vegan Pancakes.

I've reprinted the recipe below, with my alterations. Given that I souped them up a bit, I thought they were deserving of a new name. But I did try to keep in spirit with the web page.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 c. whole wheat flour


• 1 c. unbleached white flour


• 1 T. baking powder


• 1 T. sugar


• 1 3/4 c. soy milk


• 1 T. oil


• A handful of vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:
Stir the flours and the baking powder together in a large bowl. In a seperate bowl, combine the soy milk and oil and whip for about one minute. Pour the soy mixture into the flour mixture. Stir just to combine. Don't worry about the lumps. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Lightly oil a medium nonstick skillet (no-fat spray oil, preferably). Heat over medium heat. When a few drops of water sprinkled on the skillet sizzle or bead up, the pan is ready.

Pour 3/4 cup of the batter at a time onto the skillet. Cook until the pancakes begin to bubble, about 3 minutes. Turn with a spatula, and cook until the second side is lightly browned. Serve topped with sliced bananas in the shape of the face of a happy Commie. 'Cause if you're gonna be a Commie, you're gonna wanna be a happy one (and a full one too). And of course, don't forget the maple syrup.

"Well, Orange You Chipper This Morning" Pancakes

(Get it? Get it? Orange=Aren't. Chipper=Chocolate chips. Stupid name for pancakes=my incredible lack of sleep last night.)

These panckaes were yumtastic and gave me a long overdue orange-chocolate fix on Sunday morning. They turned out with a nice light citrusy flavor which very suavely and discretely tempered the rich chocolatey gooeyness, keeping the pancakes from feeling too heavy.

E said that, out of all the pancakes I've cooked for him, they were definitely his favorite. So there.

INGREDIENTS:

Dry ingredients:

3/4 c. white flour
1/2 c. wheat flour
2 t. baking powder
1/8 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon

Wet ingredients:

2 T canola oil
1/3 c. water
1 c. soy milk
1 t. vanilla
2 T. maple syrup
2 t. orange zest

Vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips (a handful or two)

DIRECTIONS:

Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl. Mix all the wet in another. Add the wet to the dry. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Cook in a nice hot pan like you do with pancakes. If you need me to explain how to cook a pancake, I may have to hit you over the head with the aforementioned pan (though I'll be nice and wait until it cools off first).

Makes 4 large pancakes or 8 small (I'd suggest doubling the recipe if you're trying to feed two people, but that's mainly just because I am a pancake ho.)

The pancakes in this picture are naked--they've not yet been dressed up with syrup. So try not to give them a complex about their body image, will ya?

Cornmeal and "Ham" Griddlecakes with a Side of "Better than Bacon"

I wrote a big, long, laugh-your-ass off brilliant, amazing write-up on the cornmeal and "ham" griddlecakes and "Better than Bacon" I made on Sunday, but then the damn computer here crashed on my last sentence, and I lost it all. Why, God, why?!?!

So use your imagination today, and picture this as the funniest, wittiest, most brilliant thing you've ever read, even though it probably will not be.

And in case your imagination sucks, continue reading, and I will instead attempt to hypnotize you into thinking it.


When I snap my fingers, you will think that
this is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!

Uh, yeah.

So back to the food. I hadn't cooked breakfast for me or the feller in a while, so when I stumbled across both these recipes and realized I had all the ingredients at home already (except for the "ham"), I figured why the hell not.

At first I was suspicious of the Better than Bacon. I mean, how can tofu taste like bacon really? But I sliced it as thin as I could--I tried the cheese-slicer idea first which would've been brilliant if it had taken into account that most tofu is super-pock-marked and lumpy and bumpy so it's damn near impossible to get one continuous thin slice off the side without it falling apart, so eventually I gave up and just used a knife--and then dumped it into the fridge to marinate for a couple of days. When I removed it, it didn't look much different than when I put it in--it still looked pretty much as pasty-ass as a white-boy with a farmer's tan. But then I fried the shit out of it (and with fat-free oil-spray!!) and holy mother of god! We were both amazed at how much it tasted like bacon (god bless you, hickory smoke liquid!).

Seriously, if you can figure out a way to cut that tofu up into paper-thin slices, it actually fries up ridiculously crisp and crunchy. The few pieces that we thinned down enough were startlingly comparable with bacon in both their consistency and crunchiness. (And with only a smidgen of the calories!) Even the thicker slices (while not crunchifying quite so well) were really damn yummy. I was very-much impressed, especially given the simplicity of ingredients in the recipe.

"Better than Bacon": RECIPE

As for the cornmeal and "ham" griddlecakes, I decided from the get-go that I wasn't gonna use silken tofu for the recipe because I had no clue what I'd end up using the excess for, so I figured there was a pretty good chance it'd end up going to waste. So instead I substituted in Ener-G Egg Replacer for one egg. I also had my doubts about these pancakes as well, given that the batter was super-fricking thin, even after I let it sit for 10 minutes. But lo and behold, this was probably the easiest batter I've cooked with, when it came to flipping and cooking evenly and all that. And they were pretty damn hearty--the end result tasted like what you'd get if cornbread and a fake-pig were walking jollily down the road together when *slam* they got run over by a big ol' semi and were squashed into flattened mock-roadkill pancakes. Cornbready goodness in the shape of pancakes with little itty bitty fake hammy-goodness thrown in--that be my point. Again: simple and tasty.

Cornmeal and "Ham" Griddlecakes: RECIPE

All in all, both recipes are pretty damn easy, and I definitely recommend them both, particularly the "Better than Bacon" seeing as we both couldn't stop oohing and aahing over it all breakfast. Ever so pretty!


You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.

Nannery-Almond French Toast

Having seen a recipe for some tasty-looking nutty french toast in the current issue of VegNews, I decided to experiment with some as well Sunday morning. I have no specific measurements, but to make the batter, I used the following:

Almonds
Soy milk
1 banana
Vanilla

I pulsed the blanched almond slivers in my food processer until they were pulverized into a sort of powder. Then I added in the banana. Once that was a pasty mushy gook, I added in a tiny bit of vanilla and gradually started adding in soy milk until it got to a consistency I liked.

The batter was a bit of a pain to deal with upon frying--the first batch I suspect was a bit too thick and, since it was more pancake-batterish than soupy, it was not sticking to the bread but peeling off when it hit the hot hot heat. So I kept adding soy milk until finally (on the last batch) it was doing a bit better.

I tend to make french toast with hearty grain breads (because I like them to be a bit more nutty and rich-tasting) but in the future, I'ma try a simple french bread of some sort--sometimes the heartiness of the grain bread overpowers the flavor of the batter on these things.

Despite all that, I really quite liked the results--the french toast was very almondy and banana-ish, and I thought it was very flavorful and yummy (though perhaps a bit too soggy). My feller seemed to like them too, though he did comment about how "it's difficult to duplicate the taste of eggs in a non-egg french toast." True, but nanners ain't EVER gonna duplicate eggs anyways, so only aim to make these if you're a big fan of nannery-goodness.

VERDICT: A-

Gone Bananas Pancakes

Sunday morning, it was all about the pancakes again. Given that I'd nabbed like 1500 bananas at work on Thursday (apparently anything involving vast amounts of fat goes like hotcakes at work, but healthy food sits around for days), I decided to try out the Gone Bananas Pancakes recipe from Vegan Family Favorites. Basically, it is a fairly standard pancakes recipe, except that you slice up bananas into 1/2 inch slices and, after you throw the batter for a pancake on top of the griddle, you cover the exposed pancake batter with a ton of these banana slices.

For banana-lovers, this recipe is for you. However, I do give words of warning: no matter how hard you try and how well-cooked your pancakes are with this recipe, they will inevitably *seem* doughy--the bananas add moisture to the surrounding pancakes (and are a bit mushy themselves), so the pancakes themselves will unavoidably end up seeming a bit mushy. Also, the heaviness of the banana-coated side makes the pancakes kind of difficult to flip without bananas ending up falling out of the pancake and onto your goddamn kitchen floor.

Overall though, I kinda liked this recipe. The actual pancake recipe itself was nice and hearty tasting (yet again). And I threw some chocolate chips into the last batch, and the chocolate banana combination was most certainly yum. I'd just recommend cutting your banana slices as thin as possible--aim for 1/4 inch or something like that.

Verdict: B+

Recipe: HERE (you can also substitute out 2 T. of the white flour and substitute in 2 T. of flax meal instead, like I did, if you so choose)

Vegan French Toast with Strawberries

On Friday, I bought some bread and strawberries at the WSM to whip up some french toast for my sleep-over buddy Sunday morning, but alas, she was trying to avoid yeast this weekend, so I ended up having to feast alone.

I've long wanted to attempt making vegan french toast, but I hate that almost every recipe calls for tofu. NOT EVERYONE HAS TOFU HANDY ALL THE TIME, PEOPLES! So I was joyous when I stumbled across a vegan french toast recipe that was tofu-free and instead relied on nutritional yeast for its oomph. I was a bit suspicious that it might taste weirdly cheesy, given the nutritional yeast, but it didn't really--instead, it just added a bit of salty flavorfulness to the fairly-simple recipe.

I used a loaf of fresh 7-grain bread from the WSM to grill this shit up, and it was quite good. Initially, I thought it might end up a bit soggy since the recipe's heavy on the milk (and the bread is heavy on the sponginess), but I cooked it long enough that it was crunchy on the outside and not-too-gooey on the inside.

For the topping, I just blended up a bunch of fresh strawberries with my handheld blender-thingie.

When I realized this was not sweet enough to satisfy my mammoth sweet-tooth, I just poured a bit of sugar on top and mmmm mmm mm was it tasty.

I can't 100% verify how much the vegan french toast tasted like regular french toast, simply because I tend to douse things like pancakes and french toast with as much toppings as humanly possible, but from what I could tell, it was a very tasty variation on a standard family breakfast. Plus, it's damn simply, so I'd definitely recommend trying it out sometime.

RECIPE: Here

VERDICT: A

Whole-Wheat Pancakes and Fake Sausage Hash

I've had 1/2 cup of wheat germ sitting in my fridge for over a month (courtesy of the lovely Ms. Lantz), so I finally got my ass in gear and tracked down a recipe so that I could use it already. It was a toss-up between some peanut-butter wheat germ cookies and the wheat germ pancakes I finally settled on. (I like hearty breakfasts on Sunday lately.)

WHOLE-WHEAT PANCAKES:

Anyways, I whipped these up using vegan substitutes, and despite my worries about them being too doughy, they turned out quite tasty and hearty. As I've said before, I like my pancakes girthy, and they definitely had that going for them. And they were a tad bit salty which I like as well. I also whipped together a blueberry-maple syrup that was mmm mm good: just use one part maple syrup to 2 parts blueberries, boil over low heat, and once boiled, blend them up (I left a little bit of the blueberries chunky because I likes them like that).

RECIPE: Here (you can use regular wheat flour instead of the pastry flour, and find your vegan buttermilk substitute HERE)

VERDICT: A

FAKE SAUSAGE HASH:

On the side, I whipped up some of my very own sausage hash. I fried up half of a diced onion, a diced red pepper, and some rosemary with a bit of olive oil. Then I tossed (or maybe more aptly SMOOSHED) in some Gimme Lean fake-sausage). The fake-sausage is a bit messy to handle if you're aiming for crumbles--it seems a bit more geared towards making sausage patties due to its stickiness--but just toss it in and break it up some with a fork as it cooks and starts to harden. This was *damn* good, especially with the fresh rosemary from Rosie my rosemary plant. *And* it's not too bad for you, especially compared to regular sausage.

VERDICT: A

So despite my later frustrating escapades with baking, this ended up being a damn tasty breakfast.