"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...
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| 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.
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