Midwest Vegan Radio

So, I thought I'd posted this, but I guess I didn't. Duh.

I'm on a podcast! If you're just DYING to listen to my nasally Midwestern voice drone on about gravy and hotdish (broken up by occasional throat clearing), and learn what Ryan has decided is the past tense of "tweet."

Here it is.

Oh, and here's the recipe for Pumpkin Gravy:

2 tbsp grapeseed oil
2 tbsp cornstarch

Make a roux, and add to it:

2 cups vegetable broth
1 tsp rubbed sage
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
few grinds of fresh black pepper
1 14-oz can pumpkin pureé (NOT pumpkin pie filling)

Whisk until smooth, and stir over medium-low heat until thick and delicious. Taste for salt. Add more herbs and pepper if desired. Great with Thanksgiving Calzones, or seitan cutlets and stuffing. Or just on mashed potatoes, which as an entreé? Fantastic.

Iron Chef Wayfare!

The awesome folks over at Wayfare Foods sponsored our most recent Iron Chef competition at Animal Rights Coalition. I lost my crown to my protegé, Kaylynn, who made a pretty rockin' chili with nacho cheese sauce. However; since this is my blog, this is all about my beer cheese soup recipe.

(We Can’t Say It’s) Beer Cheese Soup

(Makes about 8-10 servings)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp soy margarine
½ tsp salt
1 leek; washed, trimmed, chopped fine
1 large carrot, diced small
3 vegan chicken broth cubes, dissolved in 6-8 cups boiling water
½ cup all purpose flour
½ tsp dry mustard
½ tsp vegan Worcestershire sauce
12 oz. dark German beer
2 containers Wayfare Foods’s “We Can’t Say It’s Cheese” cheddar spread
Salt and white pepper to taste

In a large stock pot, melt the oil and margarine together. On low-medium heat, cook the leek and carrot with the salt until soft and caramelized, but not browned. Lower the heat if needed. In a large measuring cup, whisk the flour, mustard, and Worcestershire with 1 ½ cups of the broth. Use an immersion blender if the flour clumps up. Add to the pot along with the remaining broth. Whisk until well incorporated if you like chunks, but this is a good time to blend the soup with an immersion blender, or by batches in a regular blender. Add beer and cheese. Turn the heat on low and cook, stirring often until the cheese is melted and blended in. Taste for salt and white pepper. Serve with pumpernickel rye bread, and grilled vegan kielbasa.

I'm so not upset that I lost because the new vegan that picked me for the vegan mentor program took home the prize! Also, I have a ton of leftover German beer that I should probably not drink whilst blogging. Urp.

This is why you're [a] fat [vegan].

This has been a rough week. I didn't lose any weight, and I totally deserved not to. My special someone is out of town working until Memorial Day weekend, also. Without going into detail, I've been eating some stuff that I know I shouldn't even have in the house.

But then I saw this, and knew it was my duty to make it vegan. I'd already done the Lasandwich, and also had fun with Lasagna Cupcakes, so I needed this as the final chapter in the lasagna-stunt-food trilogy.

I started with a plain pizza crust from the Wedge. I covered it in Muir Glen pizza sauce. Layered on some whole wheat oven-ready lasagna noodles, tofu ricotta, spinach, Upton's Italian sausage, more sauce, Daiya mozzarella, and some Yves pepperoni. I thought of layering more, but I was working with a pizza stone instead of a dish, and I also wanted it to retain it's handheld-pizza-ness and not have it become a mess. Here's the final result:

Vegan Pizzagna!





Buh. Normally, I can eat an entire pizza without so much as a breath. I had one piece of this and I'm stuffed. Uncomfortably stuffed. I'm scared to find out how many Weight Watchers points this is. It might break the site.

Back from computer limbo.

I'm actually still kind of in it, since the machine I'm working on now is just a temporary one on loan from the guy who has my Dell. A number of things happened in the span of a few weeks: First, my big fancy computer had a small fire and quite dramatically gave up the ghost. I was sitting right here, plugged in my cell phone to charge (this was in the Samsung Behold II days; that phone eats chargers and I was once again relegated to using the USB cord), and I suddenly smelled electrical burning and then *poof*, my computer just blinked off. I set up my old Dell, which isn't big and fancy, but it works (albeit a tad loudly), and gave the dead one to a friend to look at. Sure enough, burned a hole right through the motherboard and took out the memory and processor with it.

Then the Dell woke up one morning with a bad case of Blue Screen of Death.

So, while Matt is trying to recover what I had on it (namely brand new downloads of the Dessa and Adele albums), I will post all the foodie things I've been up to while suffering computer withdrawals.

Filed under "Totally Awesome," I'm testing for Alicia Simpson. Today I finally got some stuff and made her zucchini fritters. No, you can't have the recipe, but you can have a picture.



Last Easter Sunday was the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale. I posted a gazillion pictures on Facebook, but here are a few of the things I brought:



Hannah Kaminsky's Root Beer Float cupcakes from My Sweet Vegan, Isa's Lemon Gem Cupcakes (made to look like little aquariums), and my own orange creamsicle cupcakes.



I think the aquarium ones went a little slower despite the cheap price due to 1. Hello? Blue food. And 2. I had to bring everything in a crazy old lady cart and when said cart fell off the bus, these guys got the worst of it. Note for future bake sales: bring extra frosting for spackling. Anyway, they had Fruit Pebbles in the bottom, so it looked like aquarium gravel! Super cute.

I was asked if I would give up the recipe for the orange cupcakes. Here you go:

Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes
Makes 12-14

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
2 Tbsp cornstarch
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup orange juice
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 stick vegan margarine
1 cup sugar
1 tsp orange extract
1 1/2 tsp bourbon vanilla extract (Trader Joe's has this)

Muffin pan, cupcake liners. 350° oven. You know the drill.

Sift together in a medium bowl all the dry ingredients. In a mixer, beat the margarine and sugar until soft and creamy and not melty. Quickly add the OJ, vinegar, and extracts. Beat until blended. Add dry mixture, and mix until moistened but don't overmix. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full. If you go over (I did), either eat it raw or make additional ones in another pan. Be sure to fill any empty spaces in your muffin pan with water so your cuppers bake evenly.

Cool in pan for ten minutes, move to rack to cool completely. Frost with your favorite vegan buttercream frosting, but make it extra vanilla-y. Lazy vegans: Pillsbury Buttercream Frosting may be vegan. I am waiting for them to return my email about where the mono- and diglycerides are sourced. In the meantime, just whip up some Earth Balance with powdered sugar and vanilla. Frost. Decorate with candy orange slices and popsicle sticks.

Christmas 2009, my job clearanced out a bunch of crappy little appliances to 90% off, and I scored an omelet maker for $1. This thing makes bitchen vegan omelets. You can use the recipe in Vegan Brunch, or just experiment like I did with lite silken tofu, cornstarch, besan flour, kala namak (black salt) turmeric, and whatever else you like. I have found that my perfect omelet has fresh spinach blended in, mushrooms, green onions, and Daiya cheddar.



Here's one with some sweet potato frites (that got a little...brown...in the oven).



This is something I threw together because I love Ethiopian food, and had all this stuff in the house. Also, everything came from the corner store a block away! Those "vegan-meal-from-convenience-store-ingredients" challenges would be unfair if I participated. Anyway, It's a bag of yellow split peas (soaked, drained, rinsed)slow cooked all day on low with about six cups of water. Then add onion, green pepper, lots of grated fresh ginger, salt, cumin, turmeric, crushed dried red pepper, chopped carrots, a small chopped up head of cabbage, two minced cloves of garlic, and a bay leaf. Slow cook another hour or so, or until you can't stand it anymore and have to eat. No rules, no measuring. Just put in the stuff you like.



Now, filed under "Stunt Food," but not nearly as awful for you as say, a Luther or a Cherpumple...Lasagna Cupcakes!



Now, if you've made it through all that, I just want to remind everyone to subscribe to Midwest Vegan Radio on iTunes. Like it on Facebook. Bring it up on your pages, blogs, and in awkward silences in work meetings. Become a mentor, or, if you're a new vegan, find out more about getting a mentor!

Okay, kids. Hoping that isn't all for a while. I'm still testing, baking, and got a lot of irons in my vegan fire right now. I've also got a Big Birthday coming up, a possible trip...and all the while, trying to drop some weight. Look forward to some lowfat recipes!

It's that time again!

Twin Cities: Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale
317 West 48th Street (48th & Grand)
Easter Sunday, April 24, 1pm-5pm or until everything's gone, so GET THERE EARLY!

I'm making at least two kinds of cupcakes. I hear there will be vegan Cadbury eggs. As always, there will be lots of yummies, friendly faces, and no tables full of dead pig or baskets full of chicken periods dyed festive colors. Where would you rather spend Easter? I think Jesus would be much more down with a cruelty free holiday, don't you think?



Oh, and another thing. I bought these at Marshall's because I thought, "Whoa, no pan needed? I have a cookie sheet that could hold way more than 12 cupcakes!" No no no no no. Maybe three cupcakes came out looking normal. The rest either got HUGE, or baked around another cupcake. It's hard to describe. Just know this: When making cupcakes, use a muffin pan. That is all.

Saturday! Come stuff your face (and your fridge)!

You Twin Cities folks with a little space to fill in your refrigerator need to come down to the Gourmet Vegan Heat and Eat Smorgasbord at Ethique Nouveau this Saturday, March 5.

Come down with your reusable shopping bags, and stock up on all sorts of vegan goodies as if you lived in a real city where you had a deli counter that contained ONLY vegan entrées, salads, soups, and baked goods. Sounds awesome, right? I know! So get down to 317 West 48th Street Saturday between noon and 3:00pm. But come early to get the best selection!

Psst...I'm making sweet potato chili.

Admonished by Weight Watchers

I was not so much congratulated on my recent weight loss (17 lbs in two weeks), as I was yelled at for losing too fast. I'm trying to limit sugar as much as possible, and increase healthier choices, and it's just falling off. They told me to slow it down or I might DIE. Okay, they didn't say that, but they listed a bunch of ailments/disorders that could result from that.

So, I'm trying to use up points eating more things that I'd banished for being too point-y: nut butters, bread, pasta, and rice. Now I feel stuffed to the gills when I go to bed, and yet wake up starving. I only buy whole grains, and white flour is no longer welcome in my house, so what gives? I think I'm going to start making more low-carb, high protein dinners with chickpea cutlets, tempeh, etc. and use my carbs for earlier in the day.

This is so exciting, isn't it? I'll start taking pictures again, soon.