Vegan MoFo 31: Going Forward

A few weeks ago, LA Weekly has declared it The Year of the Vegan Cookbook! Pretty exciting stuff. I don't have any of the books on the list. In fact, I didn't read the list, as I don't want to face temptation.

Awhile back, I was subject to a household-wide cookbook ban as my collection had outgrown its allotted space. That ban is no longer in effect, and I've received a few as gifts, but in my efforts to 1. be happy with less and 2. to use the cookbooks I have more fully, I have resisted buying every beautiful book that has come out. Also, serious budget constraints are the worst.

Rather than coveting though, I am recommitting to rediscovery ... or in some cases discovery. Frankly, some of my books are woefully underused. I cook a lot, and I use cookbooks a lot, but some have become go-tos while others are collecting dust.

It says something about me that my two most-used books are Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Meanwhile Vegan Pie In The Sky is in oddly pristine condition. I've only made one pie from it , despite my grand plans to take advantage of seasonal farmer's market offerings.

Given the number of perfectly clean cookbooks in my kitchen, I've chosen five books that I'm going to explore moving forward. I think I'll do one at a time, so this should extend far past MoFo, but maybe that means that blogging will cease to be an annual thing, and that I'll actually know enough to write a real cookbook review in my life.

Are you ready for my list?

1. 5 Spices, 50 Dishes

Double challenge! This is not a vegan cookbook, so in addition to using it, I'll have to make adaptations. This book promises simple Indian recipes using five common spices. I love Indian food, and I'm always game for simplicity. My mom gave this book to me several holiday seasons ago, and I've done nothing with it. The first few pages are promising, discussing philosophy, spices, techniques, and menu ideas.

2. Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations

This one was a gift from my little sister. I made the Tempeh Cakes with Spicy Remoulade once, and I'm pretty sure they converted an omnivore to veganism. The Game Day Nachos are off the hook too. I know I once planned to make a whole bunch from this book, but I didn't and I don't know why. The food looks so fancy yet simple, and every vegan I know loves Alicia Simpson's recipes. So maybe I'll stop being a curmudgeon and I'll actually celebrate some holidays this year.

3. Vegan Fire and Spice

I love Robin Robertson. I'm sure if she invited me over and cooked a bunch of food for me, the feeling would be mutual, but that hasn't happened yet, so I'll continue to admire from afar. Vegan Planet was my first cookbook, and I've been a fan since then. I actually won Vegan Fire & Spice during a past MoFo give-away, but I've only made about one thing from it. I love spicy food, I love Robertson - why has this been an issue?

4. The Sexy Vegan Cookbook

I got really excited about this book because the food all looked like the stuff you eat while nursing a hangover that you got from the drinks in this book. I'm not a big fan of the whole concept of gendering daily tasks. Everyone needs to eat, and men aren't idiots in the kitchen, so I don't like the manipulations of those things as marketing tools. I didn't realize the extent to which this book did that, but oh well, I have it now. I've made one thing from it and my dog stole most of it off my plate while I was elsewhere.

5. The Voluptuous Vegan

This book was a gift from my little sister, and it had been on my wishlist forever, so I was thrilled to receive it. And it's still brand new. I've never made a thing from it. It's organized to make fancy meal planning easy to do: Soups, Main Course Menus, and Desserts. I've flipped through it plenty of times, ready to have a proper meal, but always opted out for something familiar. I tend towards one-dish meals, so it would be nice to do a serious spread, even if it's only once a week.

BONUS!
Vegan Pie In The Sky

Well most of the books have plenty of dessert offerings, but I already mentioned how little I'd used a book I was so excited to get my hands on. I've made the Grasshopper Pie from it, and to be honest, it wasn't the best I'd ever made. It was good, but I have another recipe that I favor a bit. I won't let that hold me back though. Pie will be lovely as it gets colder, and maybe it'll be healthier because of antioxidants in fruit or something ...

So there it is. I have no excuse to not catalog everything I eat all year round. MoFo is fun for the sense of community, for the giveaways, for the pictures and ideas from bloggers, for the regular exercises in writing, and for the encouragement to be adventurous. I really enjoy it, but I feel a little silly investing so much for just one month a year and then staying quiet the rest of the time. I'd like that to change, and we'll see how that goes.

Vegan MoFo 30: MoFo Ideas I Want to Try

I wrote a post for every day of the month, and my post for the 31st is already written! I saw a lot of great ideas over the course of Vegan MoFo, and I added too many cook books to my wish list. Even better, I added a bunch of lovely new blogs to my reading list.

I still want to make an effort to comment on blogs every day. The reading and writing are a lot more fun when they are part of a conversation. I think nearly every comment I made was to exclaim over beautiful things, or to try to win cookbooks, but there were a a lot of entries that made me want to try new things.

There's no way I could write a comprehensive list. In fact, I read only a few blogs regularly because I had to keep it under control somehow. It did occur to me, however, that I should have kept a running list of the things I really wanted to try, but wouldn't get around to during MoFo.

So here's a partial list. If you have suggestion, especially if it's from your own blog, please let me know! I've already thought about how to keep the MoFo spirit going, and this is one way that I can do it.

So here's my make soon list in no particular order. I'm going to print it, and stick it to the fridge so that I don't forget.

National Coming Out Day Treats

Whiskey and Ginger Truffles

Cheese Danish

Black Forest Shakes

Tofu Katsu Musubi

The Beast

Black and White Cookies

Sweet Potato w/ Apple Corn Salsa

A Vegan Meringue Topping/Hot Chocolate with Flax Meringue

Loaded Sweet Potato Fries

Treacle Tart (she uses this as her source)

Pennsylvania Shoo-Fly Pie

Dirt Cake

Cake Balls!

Cheezy Apple Roll-ups

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 28: Getting Down to the Wire

I have to say that today is the first day that I'm actively searching for post topics. I really only need two more - since I know what's happening on the 30th and 31st. With everyone in Baltimore kinda squirrely about Hurricane Sandy, I definitely don't want to venture to the store again, so I can't be too adventurous.

I'm sort of ruing not owning Vegan Unplugged: A Pantry Cuisine Cookbook and Survival Guide. It's not that I don't feel like I can deal with the incoming storm - between my parents and my boyfriend, I know that not having emergency supplies on hand is not worth the talkings-to. (My mom called today to be sure I had batteries). However, I like to read themed food books, and now would be a particularly good time for a review. Looking at reviews now, I see that a lot of people talk about its utilities in day-to-day emergencies, which is appealing.

Incidentally, when I was searching for the link for the book, I found these emergency food kits that are vegan friendly. Plus they're Coastguard-approved, which is one of the few endorsements I find exciting enough to pay attention to.

One thing the Coastguard should endorse are these Brussels sprouts from 500 Vegan Recipes. They're crazy easy to make, and the perfect solution when you've bought 2 lbs. of the damned things at the farmers' market with no real plans on what to do with them. I was out of agave, so I used barley malt, and I think I'll stick with that. It really worked and kept the sweetness subtle. I also opted for hot horseradish mustard over Dijon. That was also awesome.

If I've learned anything from MoFo this year, it's that I need to use 500 Vegan Recipes more often.

Vegan MoFo 27: Cake

One thing that just grinds my gears is when someone decides to write a review to publish on Amazon of a vegan dessert book, and complains that there's sugar, oil, or flour being used. They always say the same things about being vegan for health and looking for healthy desserts.

If you want a healthy dessert, eat some fruit. Cake, cookies, pies, candies, ice creams - these things are not healthy by definition. Listen, my sister is a total health nut, and she's always making lovely healthy desserts out of sweet plants. I'm less motivated to eat by health, so I just eat my 22.2 tsp. of sugar each day and mind my own business.

What really bothers me about these reviews though is that it perpetuates the myth that vegan=healthy. I eat a lot of healthy food, but the first week or two of MoFo was nothing but grief eating for this blog.



Whiskey and ice cream for breakfast, pizza from down the street, and lots of brownies composed the bulk of my intake. All were vegan, all were distinctly not healthy.

Even when I righted things by eating foods that were light and nutritionally dense, I kept eating my desserts. I always reduce the amount of sugar that I use in recipes, but even still I know what I'm getting into.

Even when I make something in the fruit crisp/crumble/cobbler spectrum, and even when I reduce the amount of sugar, and EVEN when I add oats, I know that the word "healthy" has no business lurking around my post-entree ritual. In fact, I don't even want to get close to it by claiming that any of my desserts are "healthier" than the non-vegan versions. Mine are better for other living creatures, but I'm not about to be a guest of Dr. Oz for my groundbreaking work in diets.

Or maybe I will be ...

Well until then, I'll continue doing my current job, which requires me to bake a cake for a celebration for the students. I love making cake, and I have the library to do it well. But to be honest, I don't want to be bothered. I don't want to mix all of the ingredients and do all the fancy groundwork for a cake that will be won and eaten (probably in a few messy bites) by a school age kid.

And so for the first time in years, I bought a box of cake mix and a can of frosting. I never realized that some varieties from Duncan Hines were accidentally vegan. On top of it, I don't even have to do much more, since soda replaces all of the other ingredients.

I can't help but think this is a little gross. I try to avoid soda as a rule. I once had a serious Dr. Pepper problem, and having a soda kicks off a lot of cravings and sugar intake. These cake mixes can't exactly be low in sugar either. So while this kind of cake won't become my regular Saturday night thing, it'll do its job for an event like this.

I did learn that with this method, you have to bake it significantly longer than the box times, and that the toothpick test seems a little less reliable.

Obviously, I couldn't resist the urge to at least zhuzh it up a little, so I added a little orange food coloring to the can of frosting and a handful of chocolate chips. I wanted to do some Quick Melty Ganache from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but I ran out of time. I had to run the the grocery and everyone in Baltimore is doing the same for hurricane preparedness, so lines were long. Additionally, there wasn't good light for the picture.

Today, I'm going to health it up with an apple crumble.

Vegan MoFo 26: A Reason to Pay What I Did for Those Mushrooms

Once you've reached the point that you'll pay $11 for mushrooms, you may as well pay $14. Or so I've been told.

At the Baltimore Farmers' Market there is a really nice group of mushroom farmers that bring a nice variety every week. I've bought exciting new kinds of mushrooms there before, but never felt justified buying one of the mix trays.

That changed when I chose Mushroom Hash from How to Pick a Peach as one of my fall recipes to try. The recipe calls for a pound and a half of mixed mushrooms, and I figured I may as well go balls to the wall. Incidentally, that phrase is about airplane acceleration, so let's keep this clean, yeah?

I was looking over the $11 trays, but my companion pointed out that I may as well throw down the extra $3 dollars and experience the taste of "deluxe."

So I did.

Then I made Mushroom Hash for breakfast one day. The only changes I made were to substitute ingredients that I didn't have on hand. I used apple juice with a bit of vinegar to stand in for white wine, and almond milk instead of cream.

I was almost late to work because I was having seconds. This is a decadent breakfast option, and I won't hesitate to buy exotic mushrooms again if I'm entertaining and need to impress. It was an easy dish to make, and took under 45 minutes to do, start to finish. All of the ingredients seemed to work to bring out the flavor of the mushrooms, and then that was imparted to the potatoes.

I know I said that I'd wait to try recipes from all the seasons before reviewing the book, but I don't think I need to. I will, but really, just check out the book already.

Vegan MoFo 25: Barley Chili

I've enjoyed my recipes from How to Pick a Peach, but I haven't forgotten my decision to work through the soups chapter of 500 Vegan Recipes either. I was on my own for dinner tonight, so I decided to take it easy.

I thought I'd finally gathered all of the ingredients for the Smokey Black Bean Soup, but I had already cooked my black beans, which the recipe does not want, and I had a 30 oz. can of diced tomatoes, but not any 15 oz. cans. None of that bothered me, but I realized that it might be easier to make the Barley Chili, and to use up my yellow squash from the farmers' market.

The other major change I made was to use up a half red onion that had been in my fridge for a few days and been browned a bit by a misguided attempt at iced coffee. I recommend it. It might have been the coffee, but I think the red onion really added something. In addition to that flavor, it was pretty spicy. I had to use two kinds of chili powder to make up the required 2 tablespoons, but I think that also worked in my favor.

However, one thing that did not work in my favor was the barley. I managed, despite 3 cups of broth and 15 oz of tomato sauce, to burn the barley. I'm no stranger to this when I'm cooking straight up grains, but this is an entire chili. There was still liquid in the pot ... how does the grain burn? No one knows.

I was too lazy to make corn bread, so I ate some day-old baguette on the side. I also added some fresh cilantro before digging in. Definitely a repeater! This chili was hot, rich, and chewy. The cilantro should be a requirement, and the baguette did a lot to mitigate the spice. I'll probably go crock pot next time though.