Buffalo "Chicken" Dip

Sorry for lack of blogging lately, December always gets so nutty and busy, and truthfully, I was a lil burnt out from Vegan MOFO, but I'm feeling inspired to share my food again, so here goes...

Today we were invited to a New Year's Day party at the hubby's Dad's house. I wanted to share a snacky..

I have never actually eaten Buffalo Chicken dip, but I've seen it brought to many parties, and it sounds like the type of food I'd like, you know.. creamy, spicy, salty. So I decided to attempt to make my own vegan version. Made with processed food, for sure, so not healthy at all.... but I wasn't really going for healthy anyways.

ingredients:
Gardein Frozen Buffalo Wings
Vegenaise
Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
Frank's Red Hot
powdered garlic
powdered onion
Chipotle Parma (vegan parmesan cheese)

-I prepared the buffalo wings, on the stove top, as suggested on the package. I ended up using about 1 and 1/2 packages of wings, as that's what I had in my freezer. Once the wings were all cooked, I added one of the sauce packets that comes with the wings to the pan, then coated the wings. I then put them in the food processor, and pulsed several times, until the "chicken" was shredded.
-I combined the shredded "chicken" with 1 tub of Tofutti, ~1/2 cup of vegenaise, a couple dashes of hot sauce, with garlic, onion and Parma sprinkled in.
-I put this in a baking dish, topped with a lil Parma, and warmed it up in the oven til hot.

So, this was amazing, maybe nothing like other versions of Buffalo Chicken dip, but yum yum yum!

Vegan MOFO day 19- Borscht

The hubby requested soup today. He actually requested a butternut squash soup, but I decided to make borscht because I had some beets and some cabbage that needed to be used up. Borscht has always been one of my favorite foods, I love the deep flavor of the beets and how tangy the soup gets. This soup brings out the Ukranian in me. Soup is pretty foolproof, you just let it all hang out on the stove for a while, then its yummy!

Here's what I did for the soup...

ingredients:
1 large red onion- sliced
1 tsp peanut oil
5 beets- peeled and cut into matchsticks
8 small carrots- peeled and cut into matchsticks
1/4 head cabbage- sliced and cut up into similar sized pieces as other veggies
1 cube veggie bouillon
dill weed (~1 T), salt and pepper
1/2 lemon

-add the onion to a large pot with a lil oil, cook for several minutes until starts to soften. add in all the other veggies. when the veggies start to cook, cover with water and add in the bouillon cube, dill weed, salt and pepper to taste.
-bring pot to low simmer, allow to cook for 30 minutes until veggies are tender and broth is bright red. taste. add salt and pepper as necessary.
-squeeze in lemon juice of the 1/2 lemon. the soup will now be tangy and wonderful
-i liked this with a dollop of vegenaise on top.

Vegan MOFO day 18- Stuffed French Toast

Today I made breakfast for my friend Kaitlin's birthday. She requested French Toast, but I decided to try to make a vegan version of the MAD Irish Toast from the Miss Albany Diner. We used to love to eat there in our pre-vegan days, but haven't been there in a long time... I can't think of anything vegan on the menu. This French Toast at the Ms. Albany comes stuffed with a walnut cream cheese and topped with Maple Syrup, which I remember having Whiskey in it.

So, I made some French Toast from a recipe I found on vegweb.com, and served two slices with some walnut maple "cream cheese." Here's the original recipe --->here. I didn't quite stick to it. Here's what I did..

ingredients for the french toast:
1/3 c. Vegenaise
1/2 c. unsweetened almond milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 T nutritional yeast
cinnamon- a couple dashes
nutmeg- i grated some in, maybe 1/4 tsp
8 big slices nice white bread- i used Heidelberg French Peasant Bread
earth balance for the pan

ingredients for the stuffing:
1 tub Tofutti cream cheese
dash cinnamon
1-2 T maple syrup
3 T - 1/4 c chopped walnuts
(stir this all together, works good with room temperature cream cheese)

for the french toast: combine vegenaise, almond milk, nooch, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg , i find this works best with a fork, it becomes a thick mixture, almost a egg-like consistency

dip the slices of bread in the batter, and fry in a skillet. i fried over med heat. i kept the cooked slices warm in the toaster oven, as i cooked all the slices (on the "keep warm" setting)

i took two slices, and spread some of the cream cheese in the middle. then poured a lil maple syrup on the top. we ate these with some tempeh bacon on the side

Vegan MOFO day 12 - Down-home cookin', y'all!

My wife Peggy is something else, if you didn't already know. She makes a one-time vegan nay-sayer say "DAY-UM! THAT WAS SCRUMPTIOUS!" That's right, I say scrumptious. Tonight's dish: down-home cookin' a la Peggy. BBQ "chicken", cole slaw, and baked sweet potatoes.

-"Chicken": Gardein 7-grain nuggets tossed in bbq sauce and baked at 400F for 17 minutes

-Sweet potatoes: baked for about an hour, also at 400F (Convenient, no?) and topped with a little EB and cinnamon

-Cole slaw: food processor-sliced cabbage with red onion, then some Vegenaise, apple-cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and a tiny bit o' sugar.

I usually blog right after eating, to get the mood just right. And the mood is: stuffed and happy. Happy Friday!

roasted golden beets and fingerling potatoes with spicy tempeh

Well.. I bought some golden beets at the Greenmarket last sunday. Years ago, I ate some dish made with golden beets when my brother was a student at the Culinary Institute of America. (I got to eat lots of yummy vegetarian food in their restaurants while he went to school there yum yum!) Now.. I've always loved beets, but damn golden beets are amazing!!

I have never spotted golden beets at the Greenmarket or at Hannaford before. So when I saw these beauties at the market, I had to grab them up! We also bought some amazing fingerling potatoes from an adorable little girl. Her family has a little stand, and they sell no-spray heirloom beans, potatoes, and garlic. We bought a bunch of varieties of cute lil potatoes, some red ones, some yellow ones, even some blue ones.

For dinner tonight, the hubby and I used some teamwork. He cut up the potatoes and the beets, and tossed them with some olive oil, salt, pepper, crushed fresh garlic, thyme and a lil Spike seasoning. We baked them for about an hour at 400. I added some red onion to the pan about half way through.

We also made some baked tempeh. We cut the block of tempeh up into triangles, steamed them for like 10 minutes. Then I coated them thoroughly with Frank's RedHot and a lil peanut oil. They needed to bake for about 2o minutes.

This dinner came out really yummy, and was totally satisfying. I love tempeh, it's so hearty. I like dinners when I have an excuse to use a steak knife (I could definitely have just cut the tempeh with the side of my fork, but I used a steak knife anyway!)

ps mustard and horseradish sauce added to the yum yum! WHAM-A-JAMA!

corn dip RECIPE :)

This is one my most requested recipes. So, I guess I'll share ;) I believe I copied down the general idea from an old issue of Vegetarian Times, but I'm not really sure. I've changed the ingredients a bit to suite my taste anyways...

ingredients:
2 ears corn -cut off cob (you could use like 2 cups frozen, wouldn't be nearly as good though)
2 Tb vegan butter
salt/pepper
1 small red onion -diced
1 jalapeno pepper- seeded and diced
1/2 red bell pepper- diced
2-3 scallions- sliced
2 cloves garlic- crushed
1/4 Vegenaise or other vegan mayo
dash cayenne pepper
optional:
1/4-1/2 cup vegan cheese

-heat butter in skillet over med-high heat, add corn and cook for several minutes. season liberally with salt and pepper. when the corn starts to get golden, transfer to a bowl
-in the same skillet, add onion, jalapeno and red pepper, cook for several minutes until everything starts to soften. add the scallions and garlic and cook for a few more minutes.
-combine all the cooked vegetables together, season with a lil cayenne pepper, add the Vegenaise and "cheese" if you are going to use it. then transfer to oven safe bowl
-bake for 20-30 minutes, at 350, until its all hot and bothered

-i always feel weird about serving corn dip with corn chips. so i usually buy kettle cooked potato chips or flour tortilla chips. enjoy!

corn dip and mexican millet

It has been a lovely long weekend spent with my wonderful husband and lil puppy dog. We've been running around, seeing friends, and family and eating lots of good food! We originally had plans to have a 'Mexican night' with my brother and sister-in-law's family tonight. But the whole family isn't feeling well :(

We decided to cook the dishes we were planning on contributing at our house and enjoy a quiet night at home.

For an appetizer, I made my corn dip :) This stuff is super addicting! All the produce (for the whole dinner) was fresh from the Greenmarket yesterday, so the flavor of the fresh corn, and peppers were amazing in this dip! We gobbled it up with some tortilla chips.
For dinner, I was planning on making Mexican millet as a side for tacos. Since we didn't end up having the ingredients for tacos, we ate the millet, with some canned re-fried beans and some more corn chips. And we both added a lil dollop of Vegenaise, cause we can't resist the stuff!
I've made this Mexican millet recipe (from the Veganomicon) many many times, but it definitely turned on the best tonight. The secret? I followed the recipe exactly, for once :) I even topped it was some fresh lime juice. yum-my! I think I could eat this stuff every day.