Vegan MoFo: Tradition versus Values....

...it doesn't have to be one or the other.





Yesterday I went to my friend and co-worker's wedding. The day started out overcast with a brisk wind but lightened to a beautiful autumnal New England day - all bright blue skies and red-orange-lemon foliage. And it finished with a spectacularly dazzling sunset which took our breath away.

The post-ceremony celebrations were held at a local country club and, in classic British guest fashion, My Beloved and I got hopelessly lost on the road between the church and the reception.

Hopelessly.

Lost.

In a city where we were too intimidated to stop and ask for directions, fearing a 'Bonfire of the Vanities' type of scenario. GPS? Nah, we don't have that! A map book?? Nope!! Not even!!! So we drove around endlessly before coming upon a garden center that was probably safe enough to stop and ask for help. Thank heavens. We were set on the right road and finally made it to the reception, a fraction late, more than a tad stressed and desperately in need of a glass of wine and some good food.

Now, this is where - in vegan terms - it gets interesting because wedding receptions do not tend to be associated with great vegan food. Normally, the occasion demands the offering of some kind of roasted animal and, unless the couple themselves are vegan, you are usually out of luck if you don't happen to partake of the traditional feast. Now, I can say with some degree of confidence that I was probably the only vegan guest there. The familes are of Irish and Hawaiian heritage and I don't think of either culture as being particularly averse to eating animals. On the other hand, I knew that my friend, the bride, was concerned about the menu but, honestly, I was more worried that she had more significant things to be juggle than my dinner!

So, to avoid disappointment, I had prepared myself for the inevitable salad. Don't get me wrong - I love a good salad but after the journey into hell and back through the ghettoes of S'field I was ready for something just a bit more substantial! Anyways, for the meat-eating majority, the customary carvery of turkey and beef was available. However, it was a wonderful surprise for me to see that the wedding couple had opted to have a stations arrangement, whereby you'd just select things from different food stations and so could tailor your meal to exactly what you wanted.

It was terrific!

I enjoyed a couple of warm-up salads - opting for the balsamic vinaigrette over the creamy caesar was a no-brainer and hardly a deprivation! Then I moved on to the pasta station, enjoying an individually created dish of rigatoni with mushrooms, artichokes, peppers and olives in a tomato-based sauce. Hold the parmesan - it was a snap! The dessert - the wedding cake - was a chocolate cake with a rich chocolate ganache which I steathily donated to My Beloved so that no-one was offended.



I had a wonderful time, did not go hungry and did not have to compromise my values for the sake of conforming to the 'norm'. My friends had a wonderful day and are now honeymooning in Hawaii: they are two of the nicest people I know and richly deserve all the happiness in the world.

Congratulations Lana and Kevin!

Don't eat blue cake...

Cakes.

Hmm....

Layer cakes, cheesecakes, bundt cakes, coffee cakes, and - let's not overlook cupcakes! Chocolate, lemon, vanilla, blueberry, coffee, key lime, elaborate with frosting, elegantly simple with a modest dusting of powdered sugar. Yep, I loved them all!

So when I first became vegan I was sure that they'd be forever off my plate. No more. A sweet memory only, filled as they are with chickens' eggs and cows' milk. But then I discovered the myriad vegan cookbooks out there with all of their simple cruelty-free substitutions and I quickly came to cherish a few particular favourites.

And during the last year and a half or so, I think I've become a pretty good baker. Good enough to please my family, friends and coworkers anyhow, so generally I am happy with my progress. But the one thing I have never mastered is formal icing. Piping shells, roses, lettering...that kind of thing.

So when a chance remark to a coworker revealed that one of the big box arts/crafts chains offers Wilton cake decorating classes I took the plunge and signed up for Course I. How hard can it be I thought, to learn smooth frosting, piping dots, leaves, stars and the like? And surely I have an advantage in that I already make cakes all the time and have a few things down pat. One thing did concern me: the stipulation that we use all Wilton supplies - some of which are not vegan - and follow prescribed recipes, which of course include butter. However, I remembered that a great blogger, Vegan_Noodle, also completed this course, so I emailed her for advice. Vegan_Noodle set me straight on substitutions - use the VCTOTW buttercream recipe and omit the meringue powder entirely - and I set off happily to the class.

In Week One I discovered that we are expected to bring a full cake to each class. Each week. It should be ready 'torted' and frosted all over. Man, this is more work than I had expected. The class is on Tuesday evenings so it makes for a pretty long day. Oh well..... In preparation for Week Two I made a basic yellow cake - just two layers because there seemed no point in making something extravagant - and followed the directive to frost it with pale blue buttercream.

Now, just to preserve my self-respect/ego, let us - before we go any further - review some of my past works:



















And just for kicks, here's a couple of arty close-ups:





And what about a slice of Humphrey Hound's carrot and beet birthday cake:



So bearing all of the above in mind what, I ask you, what is this heap o'crap????



I despair.

Stay vegan, friends, and don't eat blue cake! :(

Rhubarb Rhubarb.....

I have enjoyed the best weekend! Yesterday morning, My Beloved and I managed to rouse ourselves from bed early enough to get to the local farmers' market from which we succeeded in purchasing a whole host of lovelies. Among them was a bunch of fresh rhubarb. OK, so those who know me probably know that I am not exactly gifted in the 'what to do with rhubarb' department but, on this one occasion, I had the perfect recipe.

I recently came into possession of a copy of Sarah Kramer's 'How It All Vegan' and on page 127 I stumbed across a recipe for rhubarb bread which goes like this.

You will need:

2.5 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp baking soda
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp powdered ginger
egg replacer equal to one egg (I used 0.25 cup of silken tofu)
0.5 cup of sugar
0.5 cup canola oil
0.5 cup orange juice
1.5 cups fresh rhubarb, finely chopped

And here is how it all goes together:

~ Preheat oven to 350 (more on this later!) and lightly oil a loaf pan.
~ Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and ginger.
~ Stir in the egg replacer (in this case tofu, but I think applesauce would work really well too), sugar, oil and rhubarb. Mix until combined - note that the mix will be really thick and heavy and you'll be tempted to add more liquid, but you must resist! :)
~ Plop the mix into the oiled loaf pan and bake for approximately 40 minutes. I needed to leave mine in for an extra 10 mins, but that is due to the fact that my oven door doesn't close properly (again, more on that later!)
~ Cool at least 10 minutes before setting onto a wire rack for full cooling.

And this is what it looked like.....


The inspiration:



The raw materials:



....which became....



And yes, the mix does look thick and stodgy in the pan:



....but look what it turns into.....



The 'bread' itself is very moist and cakey with a dense crumb. It pairs very nicely with a cup of tea and I think it's one of the finest things I have yet done with rhubarb. I encourage you all to try it! Oh, and if you *do* try it and love it, buy the book!

Now, back to the issue of the oven. Here in Taxachusetts - er, sorry Massachusetts - we are gearing up for a once-per-year-mega-event: the 'sales tax holiday'. For just one short weekend, sales tax on items less than $2500 (I believe) is suspended, in order to bolster wilting mid-August sales. And so, My Beloved and I - having endured 6 years frustration with the 30-year old stove which came with the house - have decided to spring for a new oven. Hurrah! One that has more than one shelf inside and a door that closes properly will be a real blessing! Given that we don't exactly live on takeout but actually cook and/or bake every evening, it seems like we have done our time with the old Kenmore. Oh, the luxury of a door that closes - I can scarcely believe it!

Now, if we were planning on staying in this house, we would buy the 'range' that we so badly want....something with 2 ovens and 6 burners, from Viking perhaps? But as it is, we are hoping to trade up at some stage, so buying that sort of 'dream range' is out of range really. So we made a quick circuit of the big box stores and have decided - somewhat tentatively - upon this one:



I can barely wait!

Other news from this weekend related to jam thumbprint cookies. Yes, I can almost *hear* you wondering what could possibly be newsworthy about this, but here's the deal. My Beloved and I - having shopped til we dropped at the farmers' market - decided to indulge ourselves in a large cafe au lait (soy, in my case) in the sunshine in Pulaski Park. It was a wondererful sunny day and we stretched out on the grass and watched the world go by, as we sipped our coffees. My Beloved was feeling nibbly so bought a jam thumbprint cookie from the coffee shop but, since they had no vegan ones, I refrained. And oddly (I am known as a bit of a greedy guts, it has to be admitted) I felt no compunction whatsoever to even *try* this thing: it just was no longer food to me.

Fast forward to when it was time to bestir ourselves and get moving....My Beloved crumpled up the bag and declared that the cookie was overall 'a bit dry' and not as good as I make at home.
Now, given that my decision to go vegan was initially met with naked fear and desperate whimpering 'But, what am I going to eat????' on the part of My Beloved, this was validation in itself. In less than a year (my vegan-versary is Sept. 9th) my cooking has changed so much that he prefers my vegan baked goods to those of the non-vegan pros!

Nice.

So to celebrate I made him a batch of chocolate-rapsberry thumbprint cookies, as pictured here:



No chicken's eggs, no cow's milk...just delicious!

And now I'm off to nibble one so Stay Vegan, Friends!

Gingercake Giggles

I have taken soooo many food pix recently. Many. Many more than you'd believe. Especially as they've been staying in the camera and not actually seeing the light of day...

Too sad.....

So tonight I hope to remedy that a little - here's one of my newest creations:



Well, you didn't think you'd get the whole thing, did ya?!?!

I am still getting the hang of my new camera, so this is perhaps not the best gingercake photo of all time. But rest assured: it is the best **gingercake** you'll ever taste! And the recipe is mine, all mine, veganized by Yours Truly for your munching pleasure!

So here, without further ado, is the recipe....

You will need:

3/4 cup molasses
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
2tbsp fresh ginger, minced
2 tbsp crystallised ginger, also minced
1/2 cup ginger beer (the dark, caribbean type one - not gingerale!)
1/2 cup applesauce
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup silken tofu
2 tbsp dark rum

Here's what you do:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a 9x9 cake pan
2. In a large saucepan over a low to moderate heat, mix together the molasses, sugar, ginger beer, fresh ginger, crystallised ginger and applesauce. When the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

**********
Vegan tip: in this recipe, the applesauce takes the place of the stick of butter you would otherwise have used and thus renders this cake ***fat-free***! So it's kind to your heart and kindhearted...at the same time! Imagine that! :)
**********

3. In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, ground ginger, salt and other spices.
4. In a small bowl, mash up the silken tofu with a fork or hand whisk and combine with the rum.

**********
Vegan tip #2: the tofu replaces the 2 beaten eggs from the beaten bodies of the 'layer chickens' who would have suffered and labored for 30 hours apiece in the living hell that is their existence on a factory farm to produce those easily replaceable eggs for you.

Eggs vs tofu: it's a complete no-brainer!!
**********

5. Add the tofu/rum mix to the cooled mixture in the saucepan. Combine well.
6. Add the flour mix to the saucepan too and mix until all the dry ingredients are well mixed in.
7. Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake for 30-40 mins, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
8. Leave to cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then turn out onto a rack.
9. Place well away from small children, hungry husbands and acrobatic doggies....the smell as the cake cools may just prove toooooo tempting!

I frosted a slice or two with vegan cream cheese frosting, but didn't do the entire cake as I knew I'd be utterly powerless to resist locking myself in my room and eating the entire thing in one sitting.

You may chose to do otherwise!

And if you do, remember: it's fat-free!

So enjoy....

...and Stay Vegan, Friends!

One Chapter Ends and Another Begins...

Today was my final day at work. On Thursday I start my new job, so today entailed a lot of leaving. It took me pretty much the entire morning to do so in fact. And some of yesterday too.

There is always a get-together. A small celebration of someone's time with the organization, so I half-expected a few words and a glass of something slightly less caffeinated than my usual beverage of choice at work....

....a full-blown vegan extravaganza, however, I did **not** see coming.

Yes, you read that right!

The folks at my (now former) company catered a full vegan meal and it was lovely. Just lovely.

I hope they won't mind me sharing some of the pix....

This is my former boss, smiling so happily. I miss you already, Tom!



And see how wide people grin when there's great cruelty-free food on the table!



This is some of the spread, sadly I didn't get any close-ups as I was in a state of overwhelmed confusion at the whole thing and not quite in my right mind.





It's an odd fact that you really only learn how truly good people can be at certain, defining moments. Yesterday was one of those moments. Everyone at my organization is busy and overstretched, but still they took time to do something for me. Some people cooked at home and brought food in, others special-ordered 2 vegan cakes (I am usually the baker, and I would have made my own cake if I'd thought about it!!!), and still others brought a heart appetite and made it a really fun and relaxing lunch. And I am feeling humbled and grateful and sad to be leaving and excited to begin the next chapter of my life....all at once.

And perhaps becoming vegan has helped me in that regard too. I feel it's made me humbler, more open to seeing the compassion in others, quicker to offer kindness and more able to accept it from others.

And I really like that.

Tom, Rachel, Suzette, Chris, Jennifer, Tim, Humera, Katie, Angela, Bhavin...everyone...I will miss you all!



Stay Vegan, Friends!

Happy Birthday, Humphrey!

This weekend marks the anniversary (aka 'birthday') of Humphrey, the Min-Pin/Dachshund doglet, coming to live with us - My Beloved, Darwin the Beagle - his older brother - and myself. Rescued from a kill shelter in Tennessee and brought up north by the incredible volunteers who make up the FACES network, 'Gus' as he was called then was always a happy-go-lucky little guy. No-one is too sure about his real background, but the official story was that a woman turned him in to the shelter after seeing him hanging around her apartment for a week. He is now a whole 15lbs - and that's after 3 years with us - so you can imagine what kind of shape he was in after living alone on the unforgiving Tennessee streets...

These days, however, he is a very contented and loving little guy and this year - although he does not yet know it - he is going to have a birthday cake. And a vegan doggie cake at that! I have a recipe that I'm going to have a crack at veganizing tomorrow, using mainly a base carrot cake with Gimme Lean 'sausage-style meat'. The original calls for ground up turkeys - and that ain't going to happen! - so let's see how the soy-meat performs....

I'll definitely post some pix and the recipe (in the 'Eat Me!' section) but in the meantime why not try out the Pumpkin Spice Dog Cookies...for your own four-legged bundle of love!

Stay vegan, Friends! :)

On Being The Vegan in the Room

You may, or may not, know that I am a member of Curves. Well, our club recently changed ownership and the new owner, Bonnie, held a potluck today as a way of getting the members together and celebrating our new start. So, accompanied by My Beloved (yes, spouses were specifically invited), I went armed with some great vegan offerings. The general theme, being so close to Valentine's Day, was Romance - with a capital 'R'!

So, having taken this to heart - ho ho! , we sped up to Northampton with a vegan heart-shaped pizza, topped with heart-shaped peppers of various colours, egglant, tomoatoes ('love apples'!) and no cheese...well, that's heart-healthy! And three trays of quinoa with eggplant, peppers, onions, green and yellow squash, corn and edamame. OK, I'll hold my hand up and admit that I somewhat overdid it on the amount of quinoa, but I hate worrying about there not being enough. Especially when I'm being 'the vegan in the room' if you know what I mean! Oh, the pressure to perform....!

Anyway, to finish it all off, there was also a blueberry and orange bundt cake - the second one I've made this week, as it happens and it met the self-same fate as its predecessor. Of course, this was from The Joy of Vegan Baking and was - without any shadow of a doubt - the very highlight of the potluck. If I was asked once, I was asked a couple of dozen times what was in it and how the heck it could be so good if it was 'vee-gun'.

I just smiled and explained how the silken tofu took the place of the eggs, bypassing all of the cholesterol and battery chicken hell. The sweetly seductive scent of freshly squeezed oranges, 
the still warm pop of the whole blueberries, the lightly moist crumb, the fine dusting of powdered sugar....Suffice to say, not a single slice came home with us! 

Naturally, having spent so much time baking and cooking (I was at it at 08:30 this morning, and as you know I am not a 'morning person' - especially not at the weekend!!!!), no photos exist of this bacchanalia. I left My Beloved in charge of the camera and he was waaaaay more interested in slicing the pizza than in performing his 'documentary' duties. So I guess you'll simply have to take my word that these wonderous things happened.

But they did. Oh yes, indeedy!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Cel-e-brate Good Times...Come On!

Once upon a time there was a cake:



It was a cake I made for my friend Rachel and her husband Robert who have graciously asked My Beloved and I over for dinner tonight. And - despite being meat-eaters - they're going to cook vegan for us! They are truly nice people! And so to honour that, and to celebrate the fact that they are 'expecting', I made a vegan chocolate-spice cake with vanilla 'buttercream' and fresh blueberries.

I figure that the antioxidant health benefits of the blueberries coupled with the vitamins in the prunes (used instead of eggs) will offset the whole 'oooohhh, I shouldn't be eating chocolate!' thing.....OK, so pregnancy is a time for watching what goes into the mouth, but the lack of eggs and cows' milk makes this treat sooooooooo much better for all concerned!

Anyways, I am also celebrating.

I

Have

A

New

Job.

:-D

HURRAH!!!!!

More on that later, but for now, some more food porn!

Cake:



and



and also some homemade vegan doggie cookies (pumpkin pie) for the 'mountain curr', Bert, who lives with our hosts!


Bone appetit!

(OK, it's an oldie but goldie!!)