Oh, to be on 'island time'.....

One of the real indulgences I have come to enjoy in the past couple of years is the annual pilgrimage My Beloved and I have made to commune with the fishes. We're both keen SCUBA divers and - being Brits through and through - love the warm waters of the Caribbean. In past years, we've made aquatic acquaintances, fishy friends and marine mates with turtles, sharks, squid, rays, one now famous and beloved octopus, and sundry other reef dwellers in the waters off Tortola and Cayman Brac.

This year, however, with the state of the economy as it is, we felt it financially 'prudent' to remain home and not commit to such an unnecessary expense.

However, it seems that I may be missing the trip even more than I thought I would. And perhaps this would explain my sudden and overpowering urge to create the perfect vegan Caribbean Ginger Cake. The recipe I had from years ago makes liberal use of animal products in the form of butter and eggs so I decided to do away with all of that and this is the result:




It is super moist and sticky with a dense and chewy crumb that'll have you reaching for a second slice before you know what's hit you. Studded with chopped candied ginger, it packs a little heat and an element of surprise.....

Here's the recipe, if you'd like to give it a try. You will need:

(wet things)
3/4 cup molasses
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup non-dairy butter (I like the Earth Balance Buttery Sticks)
1/2 cup ginger beer (note: not ginger ale - good powerful ginger beer!)
1/4 cup candied ginger, chopped coarsely
2 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1 whole over-ripe banana, mashed
2 tbsp dark rum

(dry things)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Here's what you do:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and grease/line a 9"x 9" baking pan
2. In a large saucepan (actually, I use a saute pan, but who cares?!?!) gently melt the non-dairy butter with the molasses, brown sugar, candied ginger, fresh ginger and the ginger beer. While this is melting, mash your banana and stir the rum into it. Turn off the heat under the saute pan and then add the banana-rum-goo and stir well to combine. (In the original recipe, the molasses mix had to be left to cool as the next stage was to add in some beaten egss...see, veganizing it makes the recipe not only more compassionate but quicker too!)
3) Next onto the dry ingredients: into a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and powdered ginger. Stir with a clean spoon to mix.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mix well and pour the batter into your prepared pan.
5. Bake 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

You could leave it to cool and frost the top thickly with a basic vegan lemon cream cheese frosting or just serve it with a sprinkle of powdered sugar. Which is my preference.

OK, so it's not the same as swimming with the fishes but an afternoon in a sun-splattered garden with a fruity little cocktail in one hand and a slab of this in the other...well, I can always pretend I'm on 'island time', right?

Eat well and stay vegan, friends!

Tofu Omelettes: Part Two

This has to be a first. I don't believe I have ever blogged about the same subject twice. At least not in two consecutive posts anyhow! But I cannot help myself - I am still just totally bowled over by the whole tofu omelette thing and I now have pictures to prove it...erm, I mean 'to share.'

This morning, My Beloved and I made a second attempt at the brunch omelettes, this time stuffing them with leftovers from last night's dinner.

[Sidebar: Since it had been such a wonderful summery day yesterday, we made plans to grill and assembled a motley crew of vegetable victims - a couple of squash (one zucchini, one yellow squash), a gigantic green pepper, a more modest pepper of the orange variety, two portobella mushrooms the size of small dinner plates, cauliflower and broccoli florets and some thick slices of red onion. Having tossed them in a little olive oil, garlic salt and a dash of chipotle pepper, we stepped outside to throw them on the grill only to find that the heavens had opened and it was now pouring with rain.

Undaunted, in that peculiarly British fashion, we grilled in the rain. Well, My Beloved did, and I leant support from the relative safety of the kitchen. Finally, when he considered them done to perfection, My Beloved appeared at the screen-door, bedraggled and dripping wet but proudly bearing a platter of the most intensely delicious-smelling vegetables ever. End sidebar and fast-forward back to this morning's brunch.....]


OK, so the batter looks a little scary, but perservere and you will be rewarded....



Starting to look like the omelettes we all used to know and love...


Drape over a selection of your favourite grilled vegetables....




...fold and we're in business!

And they were 'the business'. Terrific. Tremendous. Delicious and fantastically more-ish. My Beloved, who - to my eternal annoyance - is of a preternatural slenderness, decided that we absolutely had to make the recipe stretch to TWO EACH.

Two.

Each.

I quietly thanked the tofu gods that the batter did not go that far - I would have ended up looking like the Pilsbury Doughboy....Or at least even more so than usual. LOL

Anyways, I have to say - this recipe is no one-hit wonder. It was just as good the second time as the first and got us both thinking about other ways we could use it for weekday dinners. OK, omelettes are great but what about the spanish omelette/tortillas we used to make back in our egg-eating days? I imagine that we could cook up some veg, make a few fried potatoes (homefries-style), fold them all into the batter and pour the whole thing into a somewhat shallow dish to bake until firm. I am poised to experiment. Served with a fresh green salad and a hunk of crusty bread, I can see this going down really rather well as a mid-week dinner treat.

However for now, I thought you might like to see the 'proof positive' of the true magnificence of this recipe from Isa's Vegan Brunch. And, if you are teetering on the verge of trying once again to satisfy your post-egg omelette cravings, to nudge you over the edge into trying out this dish. Believe me....it's well worth it!

Let me know how it goes and stay vegan, friends!

Whether for breakfast, dinner or brunch...

Last night, I experienced a true breakthrough moment. You know how there are always things that you miss from the pre-vegan days? Milk chocolate....sharp cheddar cheese...BLTs??? Fill in your own non-vegan favourite here...

Well, one of mine is the humble omelette. Which, as the saying goes, you can't make without breaking eggs. Right?

Wrong!

Last night My Beloved and I attempted Isa's Tofu Omelette from the Vegan Brunch. And I have only one thing to say:


PHENOMENAL!!!


OK, I have no picture for you as My Beloved and I fell upon and devoured them as if we'd not eaten in years. Which, I suppose in terms specifically of omelettes, we had not. However, this is the official image, courtesy of the PPK:





I'm usually skeptical of official foodie photos as I'm sure they are all styled and doctored - at least that's what I tell myself when my own attempts turn out to be less than perfect. However, this image truly does the omelette justice - mine turned out an equally delightful eggy-yellow shade with a nice browning on the underside. Stuffed with a mix of onions, peppers, mushrooms and great northern beans with a little fennel seed and garlic and served with a simple green salad, it made for a really great dinner on a busy week-night.

Yes, I have to admit that the process is a bit more complex than cracking a few eggs into a bowl but I think the extra - perhaps - 5 minutes it took me to make the batter is insignificant against the 30 tortured hours it takes a battery hen to produce one egg. And the result was fabulously fluffy, light, moist in the center and delightfully cheesy, due to the chickpea flour and the nutritional yeast.

Never ever again will I be intimidated by the thought of omelettes...and I simply cannot wait now for the weekend when we'll be making them again as Isa intended...for brunch!

Buy this book, try this recipe and stay vegan, friends! :)

Cold Comfort Farm

As a vegan, I am often asked about my diet and although most people can grasp the idea of not eating the bodies of animals - aka 'meat' - many have a harder time conceptualising a diet free of eggs and milk...oh, and especially cheese. Thanks to extremely successful marketing, eggs and milk are seen as healthful, desirable, 'perfect' foods despite the fact that the exact opposite is, in fact, true.

Similarly, most people do not want to know where their milk and eggs come from, the process which brings them from an animal's body to their plate. The perceived innocuousness of the humble egg is an especially tough one to crack, as it were. The ubiquity of eggs in even apparently unrelated products, combined with the erroneous perception that the 'cage free' label on a carton actually means something in respect of the conditions of production, combined with intrinsic self-centeredness, add up to a situation wherein people succeed in brushing aside the misery and suffering inherent and inevitable in mass egg production. And it is comforting to those fortunate enough to live in rural areas to argue the 'small, family farms, humane conditions' angle, so beloved of my New England neighbours.

However it is a false comfort. A cold comfort. Because it seeks to deny the common-sensical truth that these local farms, family farms, simply cannot provide eggs, cost effectively, on the scale currently demanded. It is logically impossible.

And this is why the majority - the vast majority - of eggs come from massive industrialised battery operations, where tens of thousands of hens are packed into sheds and each one lives out her miserable, foreshortened life in a barren wire cage along with perhaps 7 or 8 cage mates.

That's eight or nine souls in a cage roughly the size of a file cabinet drawer. Eight or nine pairs of eyes looking out into the ammonia-sodden darkness. In fear and panic. Eight or nine bodies with skin rubbed raw from the wire, beaks seared off, sharing space with the dead or dying around them. Until their time for release comes and each cage is finally opened and each spent, broken hen is shipped to slaughter, since her egg production has declined.

Until now, it's been possible to imagine this only from our human perspective. From watching brutal and devastating video of these confined feed operations. Always looking in with the freedom of an external position. But, thanks to web developer and activist Mark Middleton, new perspective is available which puts the viewer squarely in the center of the action - in the place of the hen.

I came across this project - The Virtual Battery Cage - via Animal Voices and recommend it to anyone who has even the slightest interest in knowing where the eggs for their weekend brunch omelette come from. It's a powerful tool in helping us to see life from the perspective of the others. Those who are unfortunate enough to call a battery cage their home. Whose lives and cries are unheeded and whose deaths are mandated by pure economics.

Please check out The Virtual Battery Cage and then decide if that omelette truly is worth it to you.

Stay Vegan, Friends.

The Incredible Edible Egg?

Omelette?

Fried egg?

Scrambled egg?

Soft boiled egg with toast soldiers?

Or perhaps tofu and the right to a clear conscience?



Having the choice: priceless.

Stay Vegan, Friends!

An Afterthought...

...Oh, and if you'd like to know more on the subject - written by someone infinitely more eloquent than I - visit Peaceful Prairie's website to read the 'Letter from a Vegan World'.

And meet production units #6, #36 and #67,595 - the faces of the 'organic dairy', 'humane veal' and 'cage-free eggs' we are so encouraged to consume.

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Gemperle Enterprises- Supplier to NuCal Foods Inc.

When you buy those cheap eggs in the grocery store...this is what your dollars pay for:



Every day, in every way, tofu tastes better and better.

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!

Humphrey's First Birthday Cake - Not Before Time!

And now for something completely different!

Fans of this blog (yes, I know you are legion!) are accustomed to my ramblings about food I'm preparing for My Beloved and I, potlucks, various friends' dinners etc etc. But here is a first!

Deep breath!

The promised vegan doggie birthday cake!!!

I have adapted a recipe found in The Everything Cooking for Dogs - a nice little publication, but one which is not overtly animal-friendly if you don't happen to be canine, calling as it does for ground up turkeys and chickens' eggs. Not to worry, I thought, this can be veganized! And so I went to work....

Step 1:





Pour yourself a nice glass of wine! It's Sunday afternoon (in this case) and you are baking a cake for your canine companion - you deserve a nice glass of something!!

Step 2:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and then assemble the ingredients. You will need the following:

1 cup canned beets
2 bananas
1 cup canola oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup carrots, shredded
1/4 cup of soy crumbles (cooked)
1/4 cup non-dairy milk

In this recipe, the bananas replace the 4 eggs you would have used and the soy crumbles replace the ground up turkey flesh of the original recipe. Think of it this way: no cholesterol for your beloved pooch and no-one - not man or beast - gets hurt in the creation of that special little gift for your beloved four-legged friend.  

Step 3:

In a food processor, blitz the beets thus:




Then add the oil and bananas and blitz until smooth, thus:




The mixture is now thick and creamy, mainly due to the mashing of the bananas.

Step 4:

In a large bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together and form a well in the center.



Pour in the pink beet mix and stir until combined.




Step 5:

Stir in the grated carrots and the cooked soy crumbles. If you are unsure about the soy crumbles, this is what I used:




And it looked like this:







Step 6: 

The mixture is likely to be very thick, so now is the moment to thin it down a little with a scant 1/4 cup of non-dairy milk. I used soymilk, but ricemilk is equally good!

Step 7:

Lightly oil 2 8-inch pans and coat with flour and divide the mix between the pans.



Bake for approx. 30 minutes, or until a toothpicks comes out clean.


Turn out onto a cooling rack and leave until completely cool.





To finish the job, I creamed together some vegan cream cheese, a little powdered sugar, some additional grated carrots and a hint of non-dairy milk, sandwiching the cakes together like this:




And here is the almost finished result:



A close-up of that yummy beety-fake sausage-y mix...




I must say, it was a particularly odd thing to bake insofar as the kitchen smelled disturbingly like roasting pork. I have no idea to what I can attribute this happening - no pigs were involved directly or indirectly in the creation of this celebration. My Beloved was dog-proofing our last floor-level cupboard when he noticed it, and dragged me in to confirm he was not, in fact, completely losing his marbles. No, I verified, that really smells like pork crackling...

So if anyone out there in Blogland can explain this phenomenon to me, I would be especially grateful!

Humphrey and his brother Darwin are currently eating their dinner, after which they'll have a slice of cake. I'll document that as it happens, but for now...

Stay vegan, Friends!

 

Super-Shrove-Tuesday

While the rest of the country spent the evening in a fever of excitement about the Super-Tuesday primaries, My Beloved and I spent our time flipping pancakes and swigging Cointreau. The reason? Well, Super-Tuesday here also happens to coincide with Shrove Tuesday, which is a tradition where we're from. And Shrove Tuesday is colloquially known as 'Pancake Day'.

Preceding Ash Wednesday - today in fact - which is the first day of Lent, Shrove Tuesday is the day to use up all perishables such as eggs and milk ahead of the 'fasting time'. Of course, in our house, the question of using up the milk and eggs is somewhat moot as we don't have any, but we got in the spirit of it anyhow. We made a double batch of the silky, thin wrappers known here by their more exotic, continental moniker of 'crepes' and enjoyed the first lot stuffed with sweetcorn, black beans, onions and red peppers all in a thyme-scented mushroom sauce. A heaping spoonful of softly simmered mixed rice made for a chewy side dish which was as wholesome as it was toothsome!

See here:



And then, just to be truly decadent, we folded the remaining pancakes into small parcels of orange-infused vegan cream cheese and mandarins, baked them gently in a simple Cointreau syrup, and served them dusted with icing sugar and topped with 'cream'.





My Beloved was almost licking the plate!

Stay Vegan, Friends!