Veggie Goes Vegan

The Vegan Table: Magical Miso Soup with Shitake Mushrooms

As part of the Veg Cookbook Club we are cooking recipes from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's The Vegan Table this month. [affiliate links, FYI]

Two nights ago I made the Magical Miso Soup with Shitake Mushrooms from page 116.

As I mentioned before: I'm a careless cook. So this time the problem was that Whole Foods didn't acutally have any shitake mushroom in stock! I KNOW!! So I bought Portabello mushrooms and made it with those instead. Verdict: It totally works.

Thoughts on this recipe:

-It is hard to imagine a simpler recipe. There are two ingredients besides water: Miso paste and Mushrooms. 

-Per a suggestion in the book, I did also add cubed tofu to give the soup some protein and heartiness, because I was basically having the soup as a meal.

Should you make this dish? If you're a mushroom fanatic like me it's a NO-brainer. My S.O. also really liked it and had two bowls, one after the other.

Next time I will actually try it with shitake mushrooms to see if there's any difference.

The Vegan Table: Dark Leafy Greens with Sesame Miso Dressing

As part of the Veg Cookbook Club we are cooking recipes from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's The Vegan Table this month. [affiliate links, FYI]

Colleen is the author of The Joy of Vegan Baking, which is one of my go-to vegan cookbooks, so I tend to buy her subsequent books as a no-brainer.

Two nights ago I made a quick Dark Leafy Greens with Sesame Miso Dressing from page 37.

Now, I should warn you: I'm a careless cook. I try. I pick recipes I'm going to make; I go grocery shopping; I plan. And yet somehow I always end up throwing in substitutions or otherwise screwing things up because i'm lazy. Although I prefer to call it free-spirited.

So, forgive me when I say that my measuring spoons were in the dishwasher, so I did all the teaspoon and tablespoon measuring by eye. And when I say that the on thing I didn't remember to check and make sure I had enough of was the raw sesame seeds...so I had ot supplement the sesame seeds I had with some pine nuts. (I loves me some pine nuts, so I didn't have a problem at all with the outcome of that substitution.)

All that being said: This was a quick, tasty meal, which I'm sure I'll make again. 

Other thoughts on this recipe:

-I just used a bunch of collard greens, I did not mix it up and add any other greens to the mix. That worked fine for me, but I might mix it up next time

-The recipe says ot use one large bunch of greens. Well, as you probably know, greens steam down. This recipe is supposed to serve 2 people, but I ate the whole thing. Of course it was my main dish, not a side dish, but still. 

-This was the first time I finally cooked myself with miso paste. (I used it again the next night for some soup, but that's another post.) I did not realize iso paste is pretty calorie dense...50 calories a teaspoon, can that be right???

-So, speaking of that: This dish feels really virtuous, but when I looked at the nutritional info I was a littl bit surprised. One serving has 257 calories, of which about 100 are fat calories, or 39%. It's the oil and the nuts/seeds. So, since I ate the whole thing, I got over 500 calories, 200 of which were fat. That's a lot.

I don't really know how you make it lower fat, and I know it's good fats. But it did give me pause, while I sat there thinking I was eating my uber-healthy dark leafy greens!

Should you make this dish? It's quick. It's easy. It's very savory and tasty. It gets you the very healthy dark leafy greens. I say Yes!!

Vegan Burger Cook-off: Quorn vs. Gardein

Recently I was sent a free box of the new Quorn Vegan Burgers. The Quorn burger is a big deal because Quorn is an extremely popular vegetarian foods producer, but up until now wasn't really focused on making the foods vegan. (Egg whites being the main non-vegan ingredient that got in between me and some yummy chik'n cutlet goodness.)

I also had recently bought the new, vegan Gardein Beefless Burgers and decided a little cook-off was in order.

I kept doing that cook-off, pretty much on a daily basis until both boxes were empty, because I loved both products so much!

Now, they are different.

The Gardein burger tries really really hard to emulate a real burger. It looks, smells, tastes the most like one of any veg burger I've tried. But I've been with a fine group of vegans who actually found this to be a big drawback. I mean the thing even oozes juices a bit while cooking, and for these vegans it was a bit *too* realistic, and grossed them out. I don't have this particular sensitivity, so I'm perfectly fine with it as is.

The Quorn burger has one thing that makes it stand out from the pack: The outside gets a little bit crispy. I love that. I like that in a lot of foods...I like my french fries crispy on the outside, for example. I like that little "crust". I mean if you're going to go to the trouble of pan-frying something instead of microwaving, you should get that crispy otuside, right?

The bottom line is this: I'm a fan of the meat substitutes. From plain old seitan (my #1 favorite) to more processed foods like these, they serve me well. After all these years real meat still looks and smells good to me, so I think I'm doing pretty well to continue to avoid it, and if vegan burgers, meatless meatballs and chik'n patties, help me do that, I'm happy. Not every vegan feels this way, but I do.

I recommend both these products, and I think they'd be tasty to serve to even your non-veg friends and family.

And I bet they'd even BBQ up well!

One thing: I have yet to see the Quorn burgers show up in my local Whole Foods. I'm waaaiiiting.

Have you tried these new products...do you have a preference?

Martha Stewart on Factory Farms

Marths Stewart is not a vegan, but her daughter is, and she has incerasingly found ways to spotlight vegan and vegetarian food and issues. Last year she had an entire vegan episode, which I've saved on my TiVo.

Now she has recorded a video message on behalf of Farm Sanctuary, deploring the conditions for millions of factory farmed animals.

It's a simple powerful message: We should say "no" to cruelty, no matter what we eat.

Sure, I could be a purist and say that any animal you eat eventually experienced some cruelty. That being vegan is the only way to eschew cruelty, but I would rather every meat eater *care* about the conditions the animals they eat are raised in, and that they'd change their purchasing habits based on caring. 

Some change is better than no change. 'Cause the animals in this Martha Stewart video need a lot of change.

Today at the Farmer's Market: Beautiful Radichio

I didn't buy any produce this weekend at the market, because I'm traveling this coming week, and I still have some beautiful greens to try to use up tonight and tomorrow before I leave.

But Icouldn't resist taking this shot of beautiful radichio. It seemed darker than typical, and I think Project Runway should do a challenge to make me a dress out of this gorgeous stuff:

Did you buy any beautiful food this weekend?

Something New To Try: A Veg Cookbook Club

Britt Bravo, a BlogHer friend and the organizer of what started out as a BlogHer editor book club, has started another book club. I am going to at least follow along with her Veg Cookbook Club. Since my New Year's Resolution was to leave work at 5PM, this is very aligned with that goal. (OK, that's kind of a joke. My resolution is to eat healthier, but as I determined in this post that that really meant leaving work at 5.)

I already own the first book, Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Appetitie for Reduction. [Disclosre: That's an affilite link for Britt, who deserves it because she is awesome at running book clubs!!]

So, anybody else in? I htink it's a GREAT idea and hope I can participate not just by following along, but by healthy cooking.

 

 

Quick Link: The Post Punk Kitchen 100

A list from the venerable Post Punk Kitchen of the 100 food-related items that made being a vegan so awesome in 2011.

It is going to take me some time to go through this list, but I can tell you right now that I agree with #3: Pinterest. I think I've finally found a better solution than Delicious for not only saving my own list of vegan recipes I find online, but for finding other people's. Pinterest is on the PPK 100, and I agree completey.

Here's my Vegan Recipes list on Delicious

My Vegan Recipes board on Pinterest

And Britt Bravo's Vegan Aspiration board on Pinterest

The Pinterest boards are obviously more fun to browse through, what with the heavy emphasis on images, eh?

The above three links are great resources, images or not, for amazing vegan recipes.

What's your favorite item on the PPK100 list?

QuarryGirl is now Twitter-only :(

Just found out via SuperVegan that QuarryGirl, an L.A.-based vegan blog, has stopped posting. Now this isn't like Erik Marcus over at Vegan.com, who merely stopped posting daily on his blog, but still posts regularly (far more regularly than I, I should point out). No, QuarryGirl is now only Twittering.

QuarryGirl is probably most famous for doing the in-depth analysis of local vegan restaurant food and revealing that many items that were prupotedly "vegan" were anything but. That was called Operation Pancake. I think QuarryGirl also broke the story about VegNews using stockphotography of real meat dishes to accompany vegan recipes.

But mostly she created the ultimte guide to being a Los Angeles vegan, and traveled quite a bit too.

Hers was a strong, determined blogging voice that definitely went above and beyond the usual vegan blogger's approach.

Twitter is not, in my opinion, the same kind of venue, and her move to Twitter indicates she won't be doing the same kind of substantive original content she was doing. And that's a shame.

Thanks for all your work, QuarryGirl, you'll be missed. 

Vegan Black Metal Chef, um OK.

I've been seeing the Vegan Black Metal Chef name bandied about for a while and just never checked it out. Today Alicia Sliverstone linked to this video of him making a Yule Log cake, so I clicked on over obediently.

And um, OK. Yeah. That is all I really have to say. I did laugh a couple of times. The concept is amusing, but I guess I'll have to watch a few more. I mean he uses a cake mix for the cake, so he's not exactly spreading the gospel of amazing vegan cooking, is he?

To give it a fair shake I also watched this video, since it featured seitan, my favorite thing (Hail Seitan!!!!!)

Three quick and easy ideas for what to do with seitan.

I went ahead and subscribed to see new videos as he posts them, but honestly I might not stick it out very long, given I'm no fan of that style of music. A few more jokes tossed in with the pretty elementary cooking instruction might keep me around longer, though.

The thing I most like about it is that it shows that vegans are a diverse bunch with a sense of humor, and not just hippy dippy refugees from an ashram in the 70s.

So, are you familiar with the Vegan Black Metal Chef? What do you think of him?

Happy Vegan Holidays!

Here is what I'm bringing to my mom's house tonight for family dinner:

 

This is my go-to dish all autumn and winter long. It is:

Yukon Gold potatoes
Yams
Golden Beets
Turnips
Brussels Sprouts
Butternut Squash
Cauliflower

Cut all of the above into similar sized chunks and pieces. Slather on olive oil, sea salt, fresh ground pepper, garlic powder and cinnamon.

I get in there with my hands and make sure every piece is coated. The cinnamon is the KEY ingredient.

Roast in a 375-400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes. It's ready when you can pierce the pieces with a fork and everything is bubbly and seems almost caramelized.

Happy Everything to Everybody. Enjoy your day! I'll be digging into the above and quite happy, I can assure you :)