Vegan MoFo 29: Apple Crisp and Waiting for the Storm

We're all waiting for the storm now.

As part of my disaster preparedness plan, I used up my 4 lbs of apple to make the crisp recipe from Vegan Pie in the Sky. Despite having had this book for about a year now, this is only the second recipe I've made from it.

To be honest, I'm not in love. I've made simpler crisps with more flavor. I'm not going to give up on the book though, I'll try a bunch of pies before I make my decision.

The major obstacle in this was that I didn't have any ground cinnamon. I did, however, have cinnamon sticks, a magic bullet, and a coffee grinder.

We went back to the farmers' market this morning, and it was a bit of a ghost town. On the plus side, we got two deluxe trays of mushrooms again because they were on sale! Also, the line at the pickle stand was finally not some twisted waiting game, so we got wasabi pickles!

Vegan MoFo 23: Pasta with Broccoli and (Tofurky) Sausage

So as promised, we did the big farmers' market shop this weekend. We got there a little earlier than usual, which is nice because the market gets uncomfortably crowded by mid-morning.

I had already chosen three fall recipes from How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons, so we set out to find our ingredients. Surprisingly, broccoli for the Pasta with Broccoli and Sausage was the biggest challenge. There was plenty of broccoli, but a lot of it looked like it was harvested too late into its growing cycle.

I should mention that reading that book reminded me to support my local farmers, but I think it also has influenced me to be a dick about produce. In fact, I had a giggle fit as I watched a shopper direct her friend to smell "that sweet broccoli aroma" on a particularly yellowed and crumbly head of broccoli.

"That is exactly what you should be looking for," she explained and looked happy when her friend bought the most pathetic stalk of the bunch.

I did find broccoli that was in good shape though, so I was able to move on. The broccoli was huge, and I could have multiplied the recipe by 6 from this one head. We made the dish that night, replacing the sausage with Tofurky Italian Sausages. We went ahead and used the whole package, and added a little more broccoli than called for. I was feeling lazy, so rather than making some proper Parmesan substitute, we just dumped a bunch of nutritional yeast in the pot.

At the first bite, we decided that the dish needed some heat, and we added some red pepper flakes. Perfect! We couldn't stop eating it, which is normally fine, but we had cocktail plans with people who had made an effort to provide vegan snacks, so we wanted to go with our appetites intact.

This dish will be in the regular rotation, I'm sure. I really want to try it with some crumbled tempeh in the future, and red pepper flakes will always be added with the nutritional yeast.

This dish went so well that I have high hopes for the Mushroom Hash that I'll be making next.

Vegan MoFo 21: A Bit Rambly

I very suddenly got calls to do a lot of work over very few days, but I think I've done well by MoFo. I tried to line up MoFo posts, and keep them a bit simple too. I'm out of material that I can preload, so this is a little disjointed. I'll come back next week though with all kinds of great foods that I ate over the weekend!

One thing I mentioned the other day was Rutabaga Fries, which my sister turned me onto a few years back. I've never had them any other way though, now that I think about it. Anyway, I sliced them up and tossed them with olive oil, nutritional yeast, and salmon seasoning. Then I baked them for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees. I would like to work on getting them crispier, to be better stand-ins for French fries. I don't know if they're better for you than French fries, but I'm going to go with yes.

These are really great, if a little unusual tasting. I ate them with left over collards for one breakfast, and felt very full.

In other attempts at easy, I stumbled upon what is now one of my favorite meals ever. I had some leftover chickpeas and roasted sweet potatoes. I cooked up some barley, and added it to those two. I topped with coconut oil, powdered garlic, nutritional yeast, and hot sauce. I'm not kidding, this is a top 10 dish right here.

I had no plans to mention this post-work snack here, so I took the picture after I'd already started eating.

One other byproduct of the crazy work week was some excellent staging. I am no stranger to multiple job sites and functions in one day, so I'm good at planning and packing, but one day this week was a 14 hour one between three sites. So i had to come up with and pack a day's worth of food one evening. Granted, for most of the day I was working near One World Cafe, which has awesome vegan options, but I'm trying to save money. Besides, I had supplies from the farmer's market, either in raw or leftover form.

So this is what I came up with: rutabaga fries and collards for breakfast, green smoothie for snack one, Sweet Potato, Roasted Red Pepper, and Corn Bisque with corn bread for lunch, Brazil nuts with dried figs for snack two, and a dragon bowl for dinner. Naturally, I packed it all into my Ask Me Why I'm Vegan bag so that I could grab it and go in the morning.

I'm really quite good at packing lunches. I do recognize that this is pure boasting, but marathon I thought I'd be completing turned into a train-wreck and all of my staging was for naught, so give me this one at least.

Mushrooms That Look Like Creepy Biscuits, and Scones

Back to the Baltimore Farmer's Market!

Since it's Easter Sunday, not all of the vendors showed up, but I still got some fun stuff.

This is one of the pictures painted on the pillars there. It says "It's what you focus on that grows." I don't mind telling you that I need that reminder A LOT. My negativity can be overwhelming at times. I need to learn to cultivate more compassion towards human animals.

Right now I'm a little unsure what to do with the Lion's Mane/Pom Pom Mushrooms I got, but we'll see what happens. They're a little creepy looking! I also got spinach, squash, and beets, but photography is not top priority today. By photography, I mean snapping pictures on my phone. Also, those other things are not so creepy as to deserve a picture.


I learned today that a 5 year old may weep at the sight of tofu scramble, but will devour blueberry lavender scones. After watching her physically reject blueberry scones from Whole Foods, I was sure there was no chance, but I guess if it tastes like soap, kids are all in?

Here's a scone reference picture that I took a few days ago.

Baltimore

I live here now - in a smaller apartment, with a smaller kitchen, and way less money. That's what happens when you have no job! Well no full time job. I'm a substitute teacher at a school that's way too far away from me, and way too stressful.

I was about to say it's easy to be vegan under these circumstances, but then I took a sip of coffee from a mug that's been on the desk for a few days ... arguably this isn't a strictly vegan problem though. And frankly, I'm not in the mood to write about how cheap and awesome beans are right now.

I'm off to the Baltimore Farmer's Market tomorrow morning. It opens at 7 am! It's beneath an overpass! How very urban. I was there last week and bought some amazing stuff, including beautiful mushrooms.