Vegan "steaks" with gravy & potatoes

I used to hate the smell of nutritional yeast as a teenager, whenever my mom cooked with it. But after having these veggie-crumble steaks with gravy, I started craving nutritional yeast gravy all the time. We re-created this recipe from my mom using Trader Joe's beefless ground beef. The steaks were really delicious--and even better as leftovers (as many things are!) I guess they're more like burger patties than actual "steaks", but that doesn't make them any less awesome to eat with potatoes and gravy...

The gravy might be the best part!

These are really easy. We also happened to make the most perfect mashed potatoes, that might have been the 2 tbs of Earth Balance I stirred into them... the original recipe is here--note that it is from over 8 years ago! So, consider my version the "updated" recipe... though it's not really that updated.

Crêpes!

When my sister and I were younger, my sister's favorite breakfast food was crêpes. My favorite breakfast food was also secretly crêpes, but I never admitted it because I wanted to like different things than my sister. My dad would make them with raspberry syrup and cream cheese with walnuts, and it was pretty much dessert for breakfast--as it should be on the weekends!

Last weekend, Dan pulled up this recipe from The Everyday Vegetarian and started making these while I was in the shower--a nice surprise! We didn't have any vegan cream cheese or raspberries, but we filled them with homemade cherry jam from Dan's mom, applesauce, and chocolate peanut butter.

Crepes with jam and applesauce

These were probably a little healthier than my childhood favorite, since they are sans cream cheese frosting, but they were awesome! A word of caution: the crepes were not very hard to make, but that is probably in part because we used a non-stick griddle whose non-stick feature is very, very useful in this recipe. I'd recommend using your most frictionless pan for these.

This morning, we did happen to have cream cheese and walnuts in stock... so, we made these again, the "proper" way (with the cherry jam subbed for raspberry syrup.) They were perfect -- and eaten too fast to snag a photo! I used half a tub of Tofutti vegan cream cheese with some powdered sugar (probably about half a cup, but I just added until it was sweet enough), a squeeze of lemon juice, and about 1/2 tsp vanilla, mixed with a handful of almonds.

Anyway, if you have a good non-stick pan, make these for sure--you don't have to go the sweet & fattening route like we did, these would be good as savory crépes as well, and they're great with just applesauce or jam, as we discovered!

Imagine Vegan Cafe, Memphis

While we really regret missing DC VegFest this year, I'm glad we got to go to middle Tennessee to see family, and we did try to make up for it with our own vegan goodies on the trip. One of the best parts was visiting Imagine Vegan Cafe after we flew into Memphis. It was my second time to Imagine, and Dan's first. We really loved it! The atmosphere is similar to my favorite vegan cafe in Florence, MA (Cafe Evolution), and the food options are pretty much perfect.

The outside of Imagine Vegan Cafe

An apology! And the last week of MoFo, condensed.

So, I do sort of have of an excuse for the 2 weeks of no posts. We had some unexpected family news last week and had to make a last-minute trip down south, and this past week, Dan's parents have been visiting, so we have been hanging out with them instead of blogging! Forgive us?

Our sudden change of plans meant we missed out on DC's VegFest this year. VegFest is like Christmas  (or pick your holiday) for me -- free samples, coupons, deals, vegan food from PA, VA, and MD that we don't get to eat usually, and talks and demos throughout the day... we will have to wait until next year, though.

We DID get to go to Imagine Vegan Cafe in Memphis, though, which will get its own post later!

Anyway, here are some photos I had been planning to post for the last week of MoFo:

Red beans and rice with vegan sausage

We made red beans and rice from my mom's recipe, using some multigrain rice (it had seeds and stuff in it, it was good) and leftover seitan sausage from a while ago. I love red beans and rice. I think it is one of the meals I'd be OK living off of--maybe because we used to have it almost every week when I was little, and I never got tired of it.