St. Patrick’s Day

This St. Patrick’s Day I gladly skipped partaking in any sort of debauchery in favor of staying in to make a spread of hearty dishes and yell at kids to get off my lawn. Milwaukee on the night of a holiday that involves partying all day long? That’s scary stuff! I was away in Illinois for the weekend with access to a kitchen greater than my own, so I took the opportunity to cook a nice dinner.

The plate, all did up:

I used Brian P. McCarthy’s Seitan Corned Beef recipe, recommended by Julie Hasson in her book, Vegan Diner. The cabbage part was a mash-up of every other corned beef and cabbage recipe out there.

Roasted potatoes and green beans. I love dill with potatoes, so I did that here.

Gravy made with seitan marinade, the spread.

Caraway raisin soda bread, made from a mix of four or five different recipes that popped up on Google to get everything I wanted in the bread.

Coconut Chocolate Stout S’mores Cupcakes. I featured these cupcakes over on The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur, but there were some leftover on St. Patrick’s day and the flavors were definitely appropriate for the holiday!

In case you were wondering what stout and coconut milk mixed together looks like, here’s what it looks like. The milk curdles instantly and it looks kind of pretty.

There you have it, folks! St. Patrick’s Day done vegan…even if I’m posting this nearly a month later!

Thanksgiving 2011

While my kitchen is quite equipped in terms of gadgets and ingredients, it doesn’t really have space going for it, so I find myself missing cooking large scale dinners for people. When I found out two days before Thanksgiving that a holiday that I could cook for would be hosted at my parent’s house for the first time in quite a while, I jumped on the opportunity to cook. My full day of class on Tuesday was seemingly neverending, but I spent the last couple hours researching menus, reading through books, and deciding on recipes. I was not going to settle for another holiday of bread, salad, and vegetables while staring longingly at all the delicious vegan feasts on the internet. I want to eat more than vegetables and bread, mofos! I don’t care if I have to eat leftovers for three days (actually I do care. very much. yum) or that there’s already two potato dishes planned (that I can’t eat…which is why I’m cooking more, duh!), I’m going all out!

Here is a teaser of the final vegan Thanksgiving feast:

It was too late to buy a pre-made roast or Tofurkey, so I was set on making my own seitan. Which I kind of wanted to do anyway. I’ve never had a not-turkey tofurky roast type thing for Thanksgiving, so I decided to stop being a masochist and make Joni’s Seitan en Croute. It was surprisingly very easy to make. The seitan dough mixed right up in the stand mixer and the puff pastry was ready to go. I’ll admit I had to google a refresher course on lattice pastry crust, but it turned out to be quite straightforward.

The only alteration I made to the recipe was the addition of apples and sage. I steered away from adding large apple slices to the dough or as a filling for the roast, fearful the cooked apple would create a texture akin to apple pie. Instead, I subbed spiced apple cider for some of the vegetable broth and chopped up an apple into very tiny pieces and kneaded them into the dough. Many of the pieces ended up falling out, so I sauteed those with onions and garlic and stuffed them in the center of the roast as a filling. The addition of sage was easy. I just added a few teaspoons into the dough with the other spices. The liquid smoke I used was also apple-flavored.

Verdict? Even with all the apple-y goodness, the other flavors overshadowed it and I didn’t really taste apple. I wasn’t complaining though because everything about this roast was delicious. It was the perfect texture, avoiding both extremities of gummy and dry, and the flaky pastry crust was the greatest. Now I would like to encase everything in pastry.

No plain steamed vegetables allowed. Ever. These are maple mustard potatoes and beans from Vegan with a Vengeance, with the addition of Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes.

I just received a copy of Dynise Balcavage‘s new book, Celebrate Vegan. This book is going to save holidays for me. Every holiday you can think of is represented in this book with a complete menu. I was going to make the Thanksgiving menu, but ended up mixing and matching from different menus of the book, and recipes all over the internet and other books. I’m definitely going to make a complete menu from this book soon though!

These are apple cider cranberry donut holes, a variation on a new recipe of mine, apple cider donuts!

Plated! I didn’t make the mashed potatoes, bread, or cranberry sauce, but they were all vegan-friendly. The gravy is the mushroom gravy from Celebrate Vegan!

Leftovers lasted forever and ever. I brought a bag of Dandie’s with me, so I made some marshmallow sweet potatoes because I was feeling gross and nostalgic for the non-vegan version from the previous day.

Vegan Pizza Day, Snow Day, Vegan Food Truck Day, and Birthday

The collection of food photos I took recently are all incredibly random and I like to OCD categorize things, so realizing most of them were all for some sort of special day came easy.
I swear I will edit and upload the photos from, and blog about my San Francisco trip one of these days!

First up is in celebration of January 29th, which is Vegan Pizza Day. Vegans worldwide celebrated this day by dining at pizzerias, ordering out, or making their own pies. Vegan Milwaukee had a dinner meetup at Transfer Pizzeria. I ordered a personal pie with garlic, artichokes, fresh basil, olives, and cheese (they use Teese).
An off-topic note: I was just thinking about how very few restaurants in Milwaukee use vegan cheese and those that do are all pizzerias (and the Riverwest Co-op), and none use Daiya cheese. I think Comet Cafe would be the perfect candidate for adding vegan cheese to the menu, given they serve decadent comfort food and have a large vegan menu.

A few days later, the “Snowpocalypse” descended upon the nation, and Milwaukee was no exception. I got out of school halfway through my day on Tuesday, and the entire city appeared to shut down on Wednesday. I have Wednesdays off anyway, so there was not much to be gained out of a snow day. Anyway, I was scrolling through my facebook news feed on Tuesday and saw Casablanca was offering their lunch buffet for half off for the snow day! $4 for all you can eat vegan Middle Eastern food. The only non-vegan items were a couple of the desserts. How can you go wrong?!
This was plate number one.

I hadn’t legitimately gone grocery shopping in weeks when Wednesday rolled around, so for breakfast, I made a tofu scramble using everything I could scrape together from the fridge. Luckily I finally went shopping yesterday.

If you’re familiar with the Chicago vegan scene, you probably know of the Ste Martaen vegan food truck. They travel around the city selling vegan soul food to hungry herbivores. They decided to start coming up to Milwaukee once in a while and after a few weeks, they decided to come up EVERY Saturday. How cool! I feel like a child running after the ice cream truck whenever Ste Martaen is in town.
This is from the first week: maple bbq drumsticks! Yum. I couldn’t wait to devour, so the picture is a little hazy.

Always end with cupcakes! I decided to make the hugest cupcake ever for my friend Ryan’s birthday last month. It is two mini cake pan’s worth of chocolate cake, and that mound on top is 100% frosting! It’s a little bit ridiculous, but that’s how we roll.

MoFo #16: Thanksgiving, Smoky Foodz, and Caramel Sauce

I came across my bottle of liquid smoke and have been so into putting it in everything I’ve been making this week and calling it Smoky _____. Smoky Chocolate Pie, anyone? Well, not really. But I did use it in my Thanksgiving entree.

My Thanksgiving dinner was a frantic last minute thing. I was spending all morning on Thursday, and the night before, baking cookies until I realized, ohshit, I don’t have anything made for dinner yet.

This is creeping me out because the tofu really looks like meat in this picture. It is SMOKED cranberry and kale stuffed tofu atop a bed of roasted yellow squash, onions, sweet potato, and spinach.

I don’t have a recipe, but it kind of went like this: the tofu and kale were marinated in a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, sage, rosemary, black pepper, soy sauce, liquid smoke, hot sauce, and salt. I cut a slit in the side of each piece of tofu and stuffed it with kale and dried cranberries. Cooked fresh cranberries or cranberry sauce would be really good too! I ended up topping this with cranberry sauce at dinner. Baked the tofu at 450F for 15-20minutes, flipped them, and baked for another 15 minutes. Finally, broiled for 5-10 minutes to brown them and make the kale crispy.

The veggies were just roasted in the oven til nice and golden, in a mixture of the same ingredients as the tofu, minus the smoke, plus balsamic vinegar and a drizzle of agave.

When both trays were out of the oven, the tofu went on top of the pan of veggies. I dressed it with a little more balsamic, black pepper, and hot sauce. MMM.

Dessert was Rum Balls from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur and Oreo Caramel Pudding Pie.

The pie was kind of an experiment. It was really good, but I wasn’t entirely happy with how it turned out. It was basically a cookie crust, a layer of oreo vanilla pudding (then baked), a layer of cream cheese frosting, then topped with caramel sauce and cookies.

The caramel sauce is fucking awesome though, so here’s the recipe!

Cream Cheese Caramel Sauce

1/3 cup soy milk
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cream cheese
3 tablespoons agave nectar
2 teaspoons cornstarch and 1 tablespoon soy milk
1 tablespoon margarine
¾ teaspoon vanilla

Combine the soy milk, brown sugar, cream cheese, and agave nectar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook the mixture, stirring frequently, until the sugar dissolves, 3-5 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, dissolve the cornstarch in the soy milk. Add it to the sauce, and stir until it thickens up. Remove from heat and stir in the margarine and vanilla.
Serve immediately, then store any remaining sauce in the fridge, and reheat when using again.

What do you like to use liquid smoke for?

MoFo #3: Pumpkins!

My Halloween weekend was pretty low-key what with work and errands to take care of, and the lack of celebrating made me kind of sad, so I’m living vicariously through pumpkin-themed things.
You could imagine my excitement when I saw Beans and Barley had vegan pumpkin pie in their bakery case earlier this week, so with MoFo in mind, I grabbed a slice to go.

I’ve made vegan pumpkin pie for Halloween and Thanksgiving in the past using agar to set up the filling, but pie making just didn’t happen this Halloween, so I’m glad I got a slice to showcase and devour. This crust was flaky and lightly flavored, and the pumpkin pie was absolutely creamy and flavorful. I’m not sure what they used as a base for the pie, but it was good!

My grandma brought me that pumpkin hiding in the back of the photo when she visited back in September. I’ve been trying to plan a carving date with a few friends, but it wasn’t happening, so fuck, I decided to scoop out all the goop tonight, make toasty seeds, and carve the pumpkin while the seeds were in the oven.

Jack o’ Lantern!

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds!

I made some jasmine rice, caramelized an onion, drizzled pomegranate balsamic, and garnished with pumpkin seeds.

And that concludes my pumpkin-themed post! Today I woke up at 4am and am going to my friend’s school in Indiana to talk to the kids about baking, my cookbook, and art! I’m actually en routw right now and this post is coming from my phone. If I wake up mentally soon, I’ll be selling some books and doing a cookie baking workshop with them. I’ll report back on that day, probably via video blog, for my next MoFo post and a blog about that day will be on The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur!

Pride Month, Gay Cakes, Pride Pillows on Etsy, and Zines

Louzilla made a comprehensive blog post about vegan gay cakes last year. I don’t have quite that complete of a rainbow cake history, so check that out because Louzilla is THE gay caker.

This is probably the gayest cake I partook in making so it’s worth reblogging. The Hannah Montana toppers were from my job last summer. Now I’m an ex-non-vegan cake decorator!

It’s pride month, yay! You want this pillow? Help out a funemployed vegbian and start sleeping with 14 square inches of gay pillowness at a discounted price. It’s available on my Etsy. CLICK HERE.

There are a few copies of Vegan Candyland currently up for sale on Etsy as well. I’ll probably put a few more up once those sell because I’m making more copies next week to bring over to the zine library at Brewing Grounds, Milwaukee’s volunteer-run, 100% fair-trade coffee shop!

Nowadays when I’m in the kitchen, I’m paying attention to what I’m making and typing up some recipes! Seitan Beats Your Meat issue #1 is in the works. Not sure exactly what it’ll be yet…an all-encompassing zine (Seitan Beats Your Meat: Quick and Easy?) or maybe just everything about pancakes (Seitan Beats Your Meat and Griddles Your Cakes?). I don’t know yet! What do you think?

Zombie Jesus and more Milwaukee eats

Last year, I made a three dimensional lamb cake for easter, so this year I think a bunny was in order. They’re all over the place when it comes to easter. And I love bunnies, so why not? In fact, this is my current desktop.

It started out wonderfully. I had this great bunny form carved out.
(Why yes, I am watching the Tegan and Sara concert that I went to in March on youtube while carving cake…)

I was doing my thing, had part of the frosting piped on. I let it be for a few hours, come back, and find the bunny head ON THE GROUND. I just stood there and stared, mouth agape, for a good couple minutes. The weight of the frosting on the head was just too much.

It was salvageable, though. The result was a little fat lump of bunny, so I made a party hat for it so it didn’t feel inadequate.
He was delicious.

I love Drake. I don’t get to see him all the time anymore.

Every time I volunteer at the co-op, I think, today I’m going to leave with something slightly healthy. But that doesn’t happen. It’s always slathered in EB and Vegenaise. But most of the sandwiches there are and they’re super delicious, so that’s the way it goes. This is (a decent photo of, for once) the Tempeh Reuben.

And holy fucking shit. A couple good friends and myself went to Comet Cafe last weekend for brunch. I had been there once previously and got an amazing BBQ sandwich. Just check out the vegan section on their online menu. I get a Chicago Diner vibe when I’m there, so it makes me love it even more. However, Comet is not all vegetarian, unfortunately. They’re all about slow food, vegan food, fucking crazy omni food (their special that morning was pulled pork with apples and bacon stuffed in a giant pancake), bacon (oh god, so much bacon. gross), and alcohol (bloody marys to nurse hangovers), so it yields a strange mix of people. The whole time, my friends and I were observing this really odd couple with a baby sitting at the table across from us. The woman had a bloody mary (with bacon, no less), a couple tall glasses of beer, and this baby with an alien head. She and the dude were interacting so awkwardly and, like, passing the baby back and forth across the table. At this point they were a little tipsy, almost dropping the baby in the plate of pancakes a few times there. Entertainment!

Anyway, they have a brunch dish called Kelly’s Vegan Scramble. My name’s Kelly and I’m vegan, so this was a no-brainer. Yum.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day and new camera

I waited around all day Wednesday for the UPS truck to come to the door so I could sign for the package containing my new Canon EOS 7D and Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lens!!! I’m going to art school for a photography major, so it was time to upgrade my camera body…super excited! While waiting, it seemed more than appropriate to make cupcakes to occupy my time. As I was digging around for my pastry bag, the doorbell rang. I tore into the package and got everything set up, but had to charge the battery, so that was adequate time to finish making the cupcakes.

First food porn testing out the new camera and lens.

For breakfast this morning I made grilled Teese with Upton’s seitan sausage and tomatoes

More posts to come as I make more food and work with the camera more (unfortunately this will be cut short when I have to go back to the icky windowless dorm room)!

Milwaukee food and some other pretty food

For New Year’s Day 2010, I baked some of RRF’s notorious Cinnamon Rollz. Perfect.

This is General Tao’s Tofu and Shao Bing sesame buns from Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Authentic Chinese Cuisine.

I had an avocado that needed to be used up and instead of going the well-traveled guacamole route, I decided to make a dessert this time. I recalled reading about chocolate avocado pudding and decided to do something similar, but more like a thick cream. It was an avocado, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and vanilla. I wrote down the exact measurements, but left the paper back in Illinois.

I’ve been in Milwaukee for a few weeks now and have been living out of a mini fridge and storage bin, with a microwave for good measure. Needless to say, my food has been less than gourmet and I live in a room without a window, so it’s a mite inconvenient to photograph it. But, I have compensated for all of this by getting food from local veggie-friendly establishments around town.

This is the Phamous Philly made with homemade seitan from Riverwest Co-op, of which I am I member now and can’t wait to start volunteering. This is also where the bake sale for Haiti was held, where over $1600 was made after our donations were matched!

And horrible, horrible cell phone pictures.
This is the Tempeh Reuben from Riverwest Co-op.

The Milwaukee Public Market is a few blocks away from where I live, so every once in a while I get this beastly falafel takeout box for $5.

Not pictured, but last night I attended the Vive meetup at UWM. We talked and ate a lot of cookies and peanut butter balls. And some food from Beans and Barley last week that didn’t get a photo.

How to Communicate with Douchenozzles who Question Your Veganism this Holiday Season

Ah, winter. Sparkly snow, break from school/college, singing merry christmas carols, cozying up by the fire knitting stockings, baking sugar cookies in your ruffly apron, wrapping presents in shiny paper, family gatherings, and the one we all look forward to whether it be a tradition or a new experience this year-being bombarded at said gatherings with questions of how on earth you survive subsisting solely on rabbit food. Be prepared, sassy grasshopper! I’ve compiled this little list of snarky crude comebacks for your disposal and/or entertainment.

Omnivore in question: “Where do you get your protein? And your calcium without REAL milk?”

Ah, the classic inquiry. Don’t bother explaining about your varied diet that includes
beans, whole grains, nuts, legumes, soy products, tofu, seitan, tempeh, etc, all excellent sources of protein, nor how soy/almond/rice/hazelnut/oat/hemp milk contain the same amount of calcium as cow milk or how the average omnivore’s excessive consumption of animal protein actually leaches calcium from the body, contributing to osteoporosis. No, that will not satisfy their query. Your answer is the following:

“From the humans in my freezer. The babies are especially tasty.”

Omnivore: “But cows like to get milked! What else would happen to the milk?”

You could calmly and composedly explain that cows are actually artificially impregnated and the calves, whom the milk was produced for, are taken away to be slaughtered and made into veal. But why educate them on the cruelty of the dairy industry when you could simply say:

“I know, right? We should just cut out the middleman and go drink directly from the cow tits!”

Omnivore: “Plants have feelings too! You’re hurting them!”

This answer is clear as daylight. Plants don’t have a nervous system and thusly don’t feel pain. But that seems too easy, right? Sass it up with this response:

“Were you asleep during your biology unit in kindergarten? That’s absurd, you chowderheaded simpleton.”

Omnivore: “What do you eat?”

Tell your omnivore all about the Chickpea Cutlets you made last night from Veganomicon, the Radical Reuben you had over the weekend at the Chicago Diner, or the Mucho Margarita Cupcakes from
Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. And direct them to the myriad of vegan food blogs found all over the internet. Or, make it short and sweet:

“Braaaaaaiinnnnssss. Occasionally dressed with an emulsion of fetus juice and the blood of people who ask foolish questions.”

Omnivore: “I don’t eat that much meat, so I think I’m doing enough. Only chicken, turkey, and beef occasionally. I’m practically vegetarian!”

Direct your omnivore to the wikipedia pages for chicken, turkey, and beef. Then to the page for vegetarianism, and point out how a vegetarian lifestyle does not include the consumption of any meat. If they bring up that the article directs you to a page about “semi-vegetarianism”, a diet that includes the occasional juicy sausage or chicken tit, reply:

“If I separate your head from your body, then you’ll only be a semi-douchebag!”

Omnivore: “Do you eat chicken? Fish?”

Similar to the question above, explain to your omnivore that chicken and fish are not included in a vegan or vegetarian diet. Also, make note that pescetarians, not to be confused with vegetarians, eat fish. Or play along:

“Wait, chicken and fish are VEGETABLES?? OH MY GOD! Thank you so much for educating me! Where are these fish trees?”

Omnivore: “You’ref missfffing ouwtt on dis deliffus animull in mah mouf. And no dijjessert for you!”

Your omnivore seems to have forgotten your explanation of all the delicious entrees you consume in response to the “what do you eat?” question so fill them in on some more dishes you’ve recently made or ate. And then whip out your chocolate peppermint cream bars, vegan cupcakes, or S’mlove Pie if you really feel like showing them up. Let the “wow’s!” commence, then top it off with:

“If I wanted to shove my mouth full of dead things, I’d start with you. After I finish this cupcake.”

Omnivore: “But I could never give up cheese!”

Explain that there have been a breakthrough of delicious vegan alternatives over the past few years such as Teese, Daiya, and Follow Your Heart. And give your personal story on how there are so many other foods out there to try and you didn’t even miss cheese after a while. Or, go for the gold:

“A few years ago I thought I could never give up cannibalism, but it got easier as time went by and I eat Hufu when I get those cravings.”

Frazzled omnivore: “But…why?”

At this point, your omnivore has run out of appropriate, well-thought out questions about your chosen lifestyle. You could tell them about the ethical, health, and environmental reasons that led you to become vegan, but it’s probably best to just put the conversation out of its misery:

“Just so you would ask that question. I’m going to go nosh on a big juicy steak now.” And thank them profusely for opening your eyes to the wonders of meat.

Well done!

Pictured above are chocolates made from leftover frosting that I added peppermint extract to, froze dollops of, dipped in melted chocolate, and sprinkled with crushed candy canes. Give one to the omnivores in your life as a consolation prize.

Happy Holidays! Knock ‘em dead!