Vegan MoFo

Last year Isa Chandra Moskowitz, of the Veganomicon, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook trifecta, started the Vegan Month of Food blog challenge. It's not really a challenge per se....but for me it definitely will be. I have been a terrible blogger and have only been posting once a month. With Vegan MoFo the guidelines this year are for the blogger to post every weekday during October. I'll most likely do the weekend as part of that and take off 2 weekdays.

"Join us for VeganMofo - the Vegan Month Of Food. The idea is to write as much as you can for the month of October about vegan food. The blog entries can be about anything food related - your love of tongs, your top secret tofu pressing techniques, the first time your mom cooked vegan for you, vegan options in Timbuktu - you get the idea."

For more info and the list of participants: http://theppk.com/blog/2008/09/16/veganmofo-is-upon-us/

So make sure you check all the blogs out, it's going to be fun to see what everyone talks about and what ideas they come up with to talk about....Let me know if you have any splendid ideas or anything you wish for me to talk about.

Sauerkraut...not just for Bavarians anymore

Yeah, this is kind of a lame post. I haven't been eating very many new things lately. I've just been very blah when it comes to food. If y'all have any food suggestions, please let me know!

So, did you grow up eating sauerkraut? i did not. Or, at least, i don't remember eating it. Perhaps my mother tried feeding it to me and i recoiled in disgust. But the first time i remember eating it was when i was about 13 and i was in ohio at my aunt's house and my sister was just eating it out of a cup with a fork. i think i tasted it and was just not impressed.

A few years later, my sister, her husband, and i were living next door to my parents in their rental house. We had a New Years meal (which we now have every year) of kale with black eyed peas (a Nava Atlas recipe that is totally delicious), mashed potatoes and sauerkraut with vegan bratwursts. I became enamored with sauerkraut after that. When i lived in Germany for a year i became acquainted with red(rote) sauerkraut, which is sweeter, usually made with cloves, and is very delicious with mixed in with mashed taters. (isn't everything good with mashed potatoes?)

I moved in with my current roommate in February and that's when i found out we have a common love: sauerkraut. Although her love definitely surpasses mine, no question. We always keep some kraut in the fridge and when our friend Redhead Anna comes over we bond over our sauerkraut love.

We find that we like the nonraw kind. Like, there's this brand called Bubbies and we found that it's too crunchy for our liking. i don't know if it's usually cooked, but this kind keeps it's cabbage crunch. We normally get Eden's(above....obviously), but really any will do. This past weekend i made BeerBQ (from Let's Get Sconed....see links) sandwiches and i ate one with sauerkraut on it and it was delicious!

And, oh my goodness, i was looking through Flickr for sauerkraut picture and i came across Potato, Sauerkraut and Soy Cheese Casserole....that sounds so damn good! see it for yourself: http://www.vegalicious.org/2006/11/30/potato-sauerkraut-and-soy-cheese-casserole/

Spicy Hummus

ok, so i feel i kinda talk about the same things over and over again on here. ice cream and sausage and trader joe's all get mentioned pretty frequently....i just can't help it, i suppose.
i discovered TJ's Spicy Hummus a couple months ago when my roommate and i were doing some shopping and i was wanting something to snack on right away. i also picked up some of the multi-colored tortilla chips (that are great) to dip with. after about 3 chips, i was in love. it's got just enough kick to it and great texture. it's not one of those dense hummus's, like Emerald Valley. you know, the kind that breaks your chips when you dip them in? my only problem with it is that it comes in such a damn small container. it usually only lasts me 2 snacktimes....really more like 1 1/2 snack times. it seems wasteful to go through those little containers all the time. maybe we should all write TJ's and let them know how we/i feel about that...at least twice the size would be nice!
of course, because it's a TJ's product, there are no pictures to be found. i'll try to remember to take some and post an update.....

Cake, cake and more cake! and cupcakes!

So i haven't been eating much lately....well, new stuff anyways. I've been eating a shitload of Tofurkey Sausages (which, by the way, are currently buy one, get one at Fred Meyers here). But i've also been baking cakes. Three in the last 3 weeks. It's birthday season here, apparently....First, was my friend Corinn's:

swear cakes are all the rage right now, in case you didn't know. because they're funny. or at least, i think so...
This was my first cake ever. Like, from scratch and layered, nothing from a box. I had a lot of icing help from my wonderful friend Katie, who's Cake Bitch at Sweetpea Baking Co here in portland. She had me do some of the frosting, but i made her do the pretty stuff. I used the Super Moist Chocolate Cake recipe off of vegweb.com and the "buttercream" icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (VCTOTW)
The next week was my roommate Missy's birthday. I was dogsitting at Joshivore's (herbivoreclothing.com) house so i was working with unfamiliar space and mixers. It turned out pretty well though. Oh, except for the one layer, which i figured out wasn't at all done baking, and was put back into the oven after cooling a bit, so it was kinda dense....

the donut is from VooDoo and not a vegan kind...Same cake and frosting, just decorated with chocolate chips...
So next was my friend Jessica's birthday last weekend. This time I used the Basic Chocolate Cupcake recipe from VCTOTW (i didn't use it before because i wasn't sure what one recipe equaled, layerwise...I used the "buttercream" frosting again, because you can't go wrong with that stuff. It's delicious! I liked this chocolate cake recipe better than the first one i used. I used the leftover icing from the wording on corinn's cake for the middle and also put sliced strawberries in there. I then decorated with strawberries on the outside. I really disliked the red frosting's taste. Not sure if it was because it was a bit aged, but all i could taste was "food coloring" and that freaked me out...


I made too much frosting every time so I made cupcakes to use up the extra. I made the Basic Golden Vanilla cupcakes from VCTOTW and they freakin' rocked my world. I never realized that i liked vanilla cake. They were perfectly moist and delicious. I made them for my neighbor's game night and they were loved whole-heartedly. i made another batch last night but i ran out of unbleached all purpose flour and had to use my roommate's whole wheat flour. They were still good, but they tasted healthy, or "bran-y" as my friend matthew mentioned. Cupcakes aren't supposed to be healthy, kids, make sure you're using unbleached!

sausages....get in my mouth!

Now, y'all, don't let your minds go in the gutter. Too late, right?
Well, fine....I went to VegFest a couple weekends ago and sampled quite a bit of stuff, but my favorite item is always the fake meat stuff. Tofurkey and Field Roast are always there, which fills my heart (and stomach) and makes me happy. My birthday was the following Monday and my friends and i got together and made pizza. Well, what goes better on pizza then faux sausage, right? Right! We had Tofurkey Sweet Italian with Tomato and Basil and we cut them up and sauteed them a bit before putting it on our pizzas and cooking them.
This is what my pizza looked like:

Good, right? It looks like it's missing cheese, but it was still killer, i swear. I put some tomato sauce, sauteed mushrooms, onions, and spinach, a few blanched broccoli florets, and the tofurkey sausage. After it was baked i put some pepper rings on it. With added nooch, it was just some of the best pizza ever! I just wish Hot Lips would carry some of the Tofurkey sausages to put on their vegan pies. I think i would go there a lot more. They don't really cater to the vegan crowd though. I used to work there and i would mention and hint to them to get some kind of protein topping for their vegan slices, but they would just say "yeah, we're working on it. we tried something with tofu but it didn't work, blah, blah, blah..." If you hadn't had their crust before, you should try it. They sell the dough so you can make your own pies at home.

Also, I would like to note that the girls of StumptownVegans invited me to be a guest on their podcasts that they do and i did it and it's now up to listen. It's all about the VegFest, so check it out. www.stumptownveganspodcast.com.

such a slacker...

Apologies to the onlookers of my blog. I could try to make up some good excuse for my absence, but i don't have one and i don't like lying. I have been thinking about posting and it's the thought that counts, right? oh! i just did have my birthday, that's a good excuse, yeah?
I did go to the VegFest last weekend and got to do a little sampling. Not a lot of new things though. I got to try some tasty chocolates, the much talked about Temptation Ice Cream from Chicago, hazelnut hemp butter, hemp crackers, Wildwood burgers, and some other various things.
ProBar was there. They have some new ProBar flavors that i'll be trying out soon. They've got a new line of flavors called Sweet & Savory and so far i've had Kettle Corn and the Cherry Pretzel. So far, so good. I'm a fan of kettle corn in general so i was excited to try that one. (by the way, for those don't know kettle corn is just popcorn that has been sweetened. it's what you get over in Germany at movie theaters. They apparently don't like salty popcorn...)
The lovely girls of StumptownVegans.com invited me to do a podcast with them discussing VegFest and that should be up on their site soon. The podcast was fun to do but it's like i got all verklempt as soon Jess's Tommy started recording us. I mainly let Webly and Jess do the talking. Good times, good coffee (made by Tommy, lover of coffee).

Hopefully, i'll be posting something real soon...until then enjoy this picture of the cake my friends made me. carrot cake with vanilla "pudding", and carob chips.

Galaxy Brand Hummus

My good friend Jess (letsgetsconed blog, see links on right) gave me the Spicy Chipotle Hummus as a housewarming present. i was kinda worried that it would be too spicy for my taste buds. I have been trying to create a higher tolerance for spicy and i feel like i've improved, but i still feel like a wuss. Especially compared to my roommate Missy and our friend Matthew. They are spicy freaks!

So the other night I finally found the courage to open it up and taste it. It was delicious! I almost ate the whole container in one go. But i controlled myself and stopped. There was just something about the taste that i found very enjoyable. The first bite, honestly, left a weird taste in my mouth, but after that second bite I was smitten. It was just the right amount of spice. Any spicier and I think it would've kicked my ass.

I'm not sure how much this stuff costs, but since it seems to be mainly sold in grocery stores such as Albertsons (in Florida) and Safeway (Northern California) I have hope that it's affordable. I also don't know where it's sold here in Portland since there's no mention on the website. I look forward to tasting the Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic kinds as well. I do love flavored hummus!