Joining the Vegan MoFo 2015 fun - first 5 days

"Vegan Month of Food" is a sort of "NaNoWriMo" (national novel writing month) for vegan food blogging. This year, there are established daily themes bloggers can follow if they want to, which seems fun to me - so I am jumping on board.

Without further ado - here's what we've got:

Day 1: Vegan breakfast - Okara pancakes!

We saw a package of okara at H-mart a few weeks ago, and without really knowing what it was but assuming it was similar to tofu, we picked it up. We were only halfway right - okara is a byproduct of tofu & soy milk, so it's essentially soy bean pulp. Apparently it can also be used to make tempeh - mmm. 

Anyway - we used the recipe on the package to make okara pancakes (Blogger REALLY wants to correct that to "okra" -- also good, but no). The recipe was super easy, the only hard part might be getting your hands on some okara if you don't have an Asian or international food store nearby; I'm not sure how common it is in supermarkets. The pancakes ended up tasting close to latkes or corn cakes (is that a thing? I swear I've had pancakes made with corn), but without a strong flavor. The green onion adds a savory aspect, although I still enjoyed mine with maple syrup. We used apple sauce as a topping as well, because of the latke similarity.

Recipe for okara pancakes, borrowed from the okara package + veganized:

Makes 9 smallish pancakes (well, small by my standards)

Ingredients:

1 c. flour

2 tsp baking powder 

1 c. okara

2 tsp Vegg powder + 6 tbs water

  (if you don't have Vegg - 2 tbs ground flax seed plus water probably works, or 1/4 c. apple sauce)

1 - 1/3 c. water

1 stalk green onion/scallion, chopped

Mix together the Vegg & water and set aside. Mix flour and baking powder together in a medium bowl. Add the okara - it will be pulpy, like a soft dough; break it into chunks. Add the Vegg mixture or other egg substitute, and add the water. Mix everything together to make a thick batter, and throw in the chopped green onion.

Heat ~2 tbsp canola or safflower oil in a medium pan over medium heat (so medium!). When the oil is hot, spoon out about 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan, and flatten it into a roundish pancake about 1/4 inch thick. Repeat until you have 2-3 pancakes in the pan - try not to overcrowd. Cook on each side for 2-3 minutes and keep warm until you're ready to enjoy.

Top your pancakes with apple sauce, maple syrup, or a savory sauce, depending on your mood. To make a quick hoisin-based sauce for a savory accompaniment, mix 2 tbsp hoisin plus 1/2 tbsp agave and a dash of soy sauce; add more agave or hot sauce to taste. 

Day 2: Recreate a meal from your childhood - Tortellini?

I used to really love tortellini - I think it was my favorite food for a good 5 years. Then I stopped eating cheese, and sort of lost interest before I found vegan tortellini options in stores (I know they exist). BUT, Tal Ronnen's The Conscious Cook has some amazing vegan-cheeze-filled pasta recipes, and tortellini recently made a brief comeback in my life.

Uhh, yeah, this is more gourmet than whatever frozen pasta stuff I remember from my childhood. Those are 4 huge tortellinis in that bowl, covered in a thick white sauce, plus some fresh spinach and an awesome tomato soup. Dan and I took the leftover tortellinis and combined them with the leftover soup for tortellini soup - aaaAAAaaah best leftovers of the year! Also, rolling out pasta is very hard without a pasta roller. Ours is in storage right now due to temporary displacement (these photos are all at my parents' house in Virginia) so I suffered a rolling pin. Gettin' the big muscles, baby.

I wish I could elaborate, but just buy the cookbook if you want more of this experience. Next up...

Day 3: Quick, easy, and delicious

Dang, this could describe so many things.

OK, let's start with a cocktail. Doesn't really count as "food", but um, in its own way...

Yeah, this photo is not #nofilter. I was experimenting, OK?

Spiked raspberry lemonade:

2oz vodka

Ice

Lemonade

4-5 fresh (or frozen, not picky) raspberries

Muddle a few of the raspberries in a glass, add vodka, add ice, fill with lemonade, and add some whole raspberries to top it off. It will be pink and summery and delicious, unless you hate lemonade or raspberries or vodka - in that case, ignore this, but consider making it for someone who likes those things.

And how about more breakfast foods?

Are these the most beautiful pancakes I've ever made? Nobody knows. (Except for me, and the answer is yes, they are.) My go-to pancake recipe is from One Ingredient Chef, and while they don't always come out like this (I mean - I don't even know what I did here), they always taste good, and they're really easy. It's more than one ingredient, by the way, I don't really know about the blog's name, but it's catchy. These pancakes are from 2014, but one day I will make beautiful perfect pancakes again. As soon as we get our griddle out of storage. (Seriously, appliances are the one arena where I have outdone my parents. They have like 10x more furniture, but we have twice the kitchen appliances.)

Day 4: A weird food combo that I love

What IS weird, anyway? It's all relative... but even I think that canned pears, mayonnaise, and cheese sounds weird. This is another childhood food thing, handed down from my mother. I used to really like it, and then it was like there was a major change in our household's recipe regimen and suddenly pears with mayonnaise were no longer a thing. (Probably because my mom stopped using mayonnaise, for very good reasons.) But what the heck? Why was it so good? What would it taste like with vegenaise and Daiya? What the fudge is up with the FDA going after Just Mayo, anyway? I think that stuff would be freaking good on a canned pear. 

No photos, because - seriously, you want a photo of canned pears with mayonnaise and cheese? No photos.

Day 5: Best sandwich ever

I stand firmly by the assertion that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the best ever. I don't really love sandwiches in general, other than those. Here's a sandwich type thing I ate tonight, and while it was pretty good & I almost ate all of it, it wasn't the best ever:

That's a Gardein chickn patty with a béchamel sauce (I added a tsp of miso to the recipe in the link) and some grilled tomatoes. The béchamel was really for the grilled gnocchi, also pictured. As I said, it was good, but I'd rather eat my weight in okra (alllllso pictured.)

Here's a list of other non-PBJ sandwiches that I have really liked:

• Peanut butter and tofu "egg" salad wrap from the UMD co-op - why is this so good?!? Should this be under weird food combos? Next time you make tofu scramble, put it in a wrap with some peanut butter and tell me if I'm ridiculous.
• Chaco Canyon Scramble Sandwich - Dan and I ordered sandwiches to go from here during a trip to Seattle, and ate them on a train to Portland. This was in 2012, right after we started dating.
• OK, wait. I'm recalling another childhood food memory involving mayonnaise. I used to eat scrambled eggs with mayonnaise on toast and thought it was the best sh*t ever. Is this why all these sandwiches have tofu scramble?

I just remembered that my other favorite sandwich is vegan egg salad sandwich. It just takes more than 3 minutes to make, which is apparently longer than my memory span. 

I know that's not the best photo because a) two hot dog buns and b) it's really hard to get a good photo of egg salad, even eggless egg salad. Here's the recipe, from Mouthwatering Vegan. I remember I had to cut down on the water-to-potato-flakes ratio - all potato flakes are special and unique, so some require different water quantities.

That's all for now.  Thank you so much for staying with me until now.

Vegan Party Favors

Posting this one from my parents' house, which they just moved into nearby us -- we just ate a great meal of quinoa, kale, Tofurkey sausage, and white beans with squash... yum. But that's not what I'm here to talk about! What do two vegans give away as party favors at their reception? Umm... vegan chocolate, duh. This is a non-recipe but very party-related post (we'll get some recipes to you soon!) -- these were a big crafts project for me and my assistant Dan. Here's the final result:

Vegan Wedding Party: Appetizers part 1

Dan and I had our vegan "wedding" (really reception) last weekend, with a welcome party on Friday night and the real deal on Saturday. We pulled off Friday night with some major successes and one minor failure... I forgot to take any photos of the food! I sent a photo of the wine to my friends, which happens to have food in the background, though, check it out:

Appetizer table --
The dishes of this post are in that blue/white dish and the out-of-sight dish on its left,

Vegan MoFo - First Post Fajitas!

I'm planning to use Vegan MoFo as a motivator to get back into posting often -- but for this first week of September, we're up in Wisconsin with not much internet services, so posts will be sparse until we're home. BUT, the reason we're up here is related to our MoFo theme -- we're holding our vegan wedding reception up here!

We arrived on Saturday equipped with photos from cookbook pages, Vegusto and Just Mayo packed in ice, & ingredients lists for everything else we need... and that's just the cooking part. Lots of other prep work to be done (and I had initially imagined this as a low key event.....)

Anyway, as a kickoff post, a pre-wedding-reception meal -- easy to make, healthy (ish?) and delicious. We had some fajitas with onions, peppers, vegan chicken, and homemade tortillas, as well as the summer tomato salad from Cookin' Crunk.  

Mad Momo's

I realize this is the first post in a few months -- I'll pretend we have a valid excuse, planning a wedding reception takes energy! And a reception weekend where we plan on cooking for everything but the main event requires devoted recipe searching/testing energy, thus a diversion from posting. But - it will pay off next month, we will post about the reception for Vegan Mofo in September!

In the meantime -- I felt compelled to sing the praises of a great restaurant near our place, Mad Momo's. (It has a beer deck too - we haven't gone specifically for the beer deck, but how awesome does that sound right now, what with the mild weather this August?)

Dan and I have gone here four times by now - and every time I order the same thing, the vegan thukpa noodle bowl. We also have had the vegan momos, which I don't have a photo of, but they're amazing - not to be missed. 

Vegan tofu thukpa noodle bowl

There's a reason I order the thukpa bowl every time - it's really good. It has tofu, kale, carrots, lettuce, and some herby stuff that dissolves into the broth (sorry for my lack of adequate descriptors.) The tofu is crispy - I'm not sure how they fry it, but I want to learn! The broth has kind of changed each time I've been, from more on the green side to more dark brown colored, but it's always good.

Last time we went, Dan had the vegan naan-mi (there's a cultural mash-up for you...), which has tofu with a bit of slaw inside of a naan bread. With... tater tots? (It works...)

It's not as good as my thukpa bowl, but if I was going to cheat on the thukpa, it would be with this. And hey, the tots are pretty good...

Mad Momo's also has some good cocktails (I like the Get On the Floor) and beer/wine selections. They do half-price bottles of wine on Saturday, which is a great deal.

The restaurant is located on 14th street & Perry Place, about a 7-10 minute walk north of the Columbia Heights metro station. I recommend heading over to Lyman's Tavern afterwards & enjoying another round of drinks with some pinball. Enjoy it while the weather is nice!

Vegan party!

About a month ago, Dan and I hosted a party in DC for our JASC friends to come and eat/drink/be merry & "celebrate togetherness", i.e. our engagement. We had planned for a picnic outside and ordered food and cake in advance, so when it rained that weekend, we had to go to plan B -- which happened to be our favorite sports bar, Rocket Bar. Rocket Bar doesn't have its own food, so it allows you to bring in outside food. This was perfect for us, since we'd already arranged our vegan catering for pick-up!

We had five people staying over at our apartment that weekend, so I tried to start the morning off nice with some vegan cinnamon rolls - a nearly disastrous endeavor, since our oven started smoking, and not in a glamorous 60s kind of way (OK, smoking was never that glamorous.) There was some crud at the bottom of the oven making a terrible smoke, which miraculously didn't leave its mark on the cinnamon rolls. They came out fine - more undercooked than usual, because we were so eager to stop the smoke!

Luckily, the food only got better from that point on. Woodland's Vegan Bistro supplied us with fried "chicken" and macaroni & cheese to feed 15 (and then some), along with barbecue sauce and hot sauce. Dan made some pasta salad, and a friend brought chips and hummus. I LOVE Woodland's vegan chicken, and though it's always better fresh out of the frier, the leftovers kept Dan and I happy for days. And, the macaroni and "cheese" is one of the best dishes in DC, and I'm not the only one who says so.

Our friend Diane got a photo of the plated food -- I was too busy running around ordering champagne and trying to get the jukebox to play good music to remember to take a photo!

We also ordered a cake for the occasion, from Sweet Themez Bakery. They made us a "Cherry Blossom" cake, which was cherry-flavored cake and cherry jam in the middle - we loved it! Again, borrowing a photo from another friend, Yuri.

Sometimes it's not that exciting to have a lot of food and cake left over after a party, but we were grateful for it - with guests staying over the next day, it helped feed us all for lunch and sustained my lunches for a few days afterward. And I could eat that cake for days if I had to!

So, lesson learned - vegan parties in DC are a piece of cake, even when it rains. I won't pretend I wasn't nervous about the logistics of getting us all together & well fed, but it all came out perfectly, and we had a great time hanging out with our close friends.

Homemade vegan ravioli

Last weekend we made vegan ravioli with cashew "ricotta" filling. The pasta dough worked out superbly. I'll share the recipe below so others can partake in the ravioli fun -- it is a bit of work without a pasta roller, but they cook really quickly, and what's better than homemade pasta?

I'll give the recipe, then a few photos of the process, rather than interrupting the instructions with photos - that gets really confusing to follow, I know. So look to the end for photos, and enjoy!

Homemade ravioli! With kalamata olives and spinach over tomato sauce