(Upton’s) Seitan Beats Your Meat: Chicago Vegan Chef Showdown

I participated in this great event in Chicago last month, so this post is just a little bit late! I met the very wonderful people behind Upton’s Naturals at Mad City Vegan Fest back in June and they told me about this fundraising collaboration with Mercy for Animals taking place this summer. I heard about it on Facebook recently and planned on participating: a Chicago vegan cooking competition using Upton’s seitan where all the proceeds benefit Mercy for Animals. What’s not to love? There’s a very thorough write up on Quarrygirl to check out, and here is my take. I hadn’t been to Chicago in FOREVER so this was a fun trip. I also stopped at my friend Natalie‘s Bake (and Destroy…cupcakes in my mouth!) sale on the way and scored a french toast cupcake.

My friend Gopal and I decided to team up and cook Grilled Chipotle Seitan and Black Bean Tacos with Mango Jicama Lime Salsa and Smoky Avocado Sauce, loosely based on my chipotle black bean taco recipe.

The venue was the Funky Buddha Lounge. There was mood lighting and dance music the whole time! It was a really great atmosphere filled with nice people and delicious food.

All hail Upton’s seitan!

A few dishes I got to try.

Deep dish pizza by Vegan Miss, savory muffins by Canary Confectionery, and curry by Arathi and Elizabeth

Ravioli by Megan and Blythe (one of the winning dishes!)

As always, I got to see some great friends and meet inspiring new ones! Chicago vegans and their events better stop being so awesome, or they’re going to convince me to move there one of these days!
Thanks to Upton’s and Mercy for Animals for putting together this event!

Vegan Week: The Ultimate

Note: I will be posting all about Chicago VeganMania and the Milwaukee events on Vegan Cookie Connoisseur soon! There’s so much to blog about from last week! This post is about what we did and the places we ate at before, in-between, and after the major events!

Isa Chandra Moskowitz flew into Milwaukee on Tuesday and the week started off with dinner at Comet Cafe with Isa, Lindsay, Ellie, Elena, Mandi, Amy, Tanya, and Kat!

(L to R: Amy, Mandi, Isa, Ellie)

We started out with Comet’s vegan deep fried ribs (“the best things ever”) that come with 3 dipping sauces, and some hummus.

I got the open-faced meatloaf sandwich. I’ve blogged about this monster of a sandwich before, and here it is again in all its glory:

Lemon poppyseed cupcake, one of the three desserts we all shared:

Isa and me at the end of the night:

Wednesday was devoted to school and preparing for Thursday, when Louzilla would arrive in Milwaukee and Isa’s demos at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee would take place.
I got to the airport to pick up Louzilla and we had a bus adventure back to my apartment where we dropped our stuff off, had a breather for a moment over a container of hummus, then headed over to the university.

Isa’s first cooking demo was about root veggie chili. She demonstrated chopping vegetables, talked about the different root vegetables, and made some kickass chili.

The lovely Isa chopping an onion:

Talking about root veggies:

Isa is FIERCE:

Sample of chili nomnomz:

A video where she demonstrates how to hold a knife properly and chop vegetables:

After this demo, I had class at the art museum, so Louzilla and I headed over there, just made it, then we headed back to the university after my class for Isa’s second presentation about Baketivism. I made Chocolate Peppermint Cream Bars, Ginger Cookies, and Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies for that presentation…but more about cookies on the cookie blog soon!

That night we all piled in Lindsay’s car and went out for pizza at Classic Slice, made a list of all the establishments that have nooch shakers, and came to the conclusion that cool people sit with crossed legs.

(L to R: Christine, Ellie, John, Isa, me, Louzilla. not pictured: Lindsay and Erik)

Mediterranean pizza

Cheesy breadsticks and Veggie Lover’s pizza

Isa wrote me a haiku in my nearly destroyed copy of VwaV

Then preparation for VeganMania began!
Here’s some quesadillas Louzilla and Corey made amongst the mass cookie baking.

~VeganMania lalalala awesome super fun blog post about it coming soon on VCC!~

The day after VeganMania, Louzilla and I got food from the Riverwest Co-op for brunch.
My breakfast burrito:

Louzilla’s Rancheros plate:

Vegans doing what we do. Eating and taking pictures of what we eat.

That night, Lou and I went to Comet Cafe for dinner.
More ribs and tofu sammich.

Ribzzzz

Louzilla trying Comet ribs for the very first time.

We did it!

Then there was this apple pie we conquered.