easy crockpot corned seitan "beef"

So.. In the spirit of St. Patty's day, I spent some time perusing vegan blogs looking for cooking inspiration.

I seem to eb and flow with my interest in looking at blogs, and paying attention to my own. Apparently I was even the winner of a cookbook on Vegan Appetite, and didn't check blogger quick enough and it was re-gifted (re-won?) boo! So is this a guilt-post?

So... I found this recipe for Corned Seitan on Vegan Planet  here is the--> recipe. It looked like a fairly simple recipe for making seitan using the crockpot. I really have absolutely no memory of ever eating corned beef before I was a veggie person, but the thought of making seitan in a crockpot sounded mighty tempting. (I have definitely not had good seitan-making luck in the past)

seitan before cooking

 
The recipe calls for making the seitan in a big crockpot, and adding lots of veggies: potatoes, cabbage, carrots, etc.. Well, I didn't have any of those veggies, AND I only have a small 4 qt crockpot. So I used the basic seitan recipe, and added saurkraut under and along the sides of the seitan dough. The dough came together really easy, then I was able to put it in the crockpot, and walk away! How wonderful!

after 5 hours in the crockpot

The recipe said to cook for 7-8 hours on low. I put my crockpot on high for 4 hours, then on low for about 1 more hour.  It felt firm and smelled awesome... so we decided to eat then!

Didn't it come out pretty? Looked so yum!
We ate this with some mashed potatoes, and some steamed broccoli and cauliflower.

We ate this on saturday... and we're thinking tonight its reubens for dinner with the leftovers!

pizza night!!!

It's been so nice to be cooking again :) Tonight we had a pizza night.. although it was definitely too hot and humid to have the oven on, we braved it and enjoyed some yummy pizza with family. This first pizza was a "german pizza," I got the idea from a recipe on vegweb.com (I love that website!), I followed the recipe pretty closely. I used my regular pizza dough recipe, topped it with some mashed potatoes (yukon gold+vegenaise+salt+pepper), sliced homemade sausages (pretty close to this recipe.. I love these sausages, but have added my own flare, of course), sauerkraut and cheddar daiya cheese.
This is a great idea for a pizza, so hearty and yummy. The hubby LOVED and we'll definitely make it again.

This pizza is topped with basil, red onion, garlic, tomato slices and daiya mozzerella. Pretty yummy, but not as good as the german guy :)

family party time!

I hosted my first ever family party this weekend. I was quite nervous about cooking up a vegan feast, for my non-vegan/gigantic family. I put a lot of work into a family friendly menu and the whole party went off without a hitch.

Vegweb.com is such an amazing resource and I found some great recipes on there for the party. As usual when there are too many people around, I forget to take pictures of food... but I do think I documented the dishes that came out the best :) I've made vegandad's sausages before, and they do NOT disappoint. They got gobbled up, along with lots of other goodies, that I made and were contributed :)

On the menu:
-Potato angels (pictured below).. these came out so yummy and the "deviled egg" job amazingly. The whole platter was cleared within minutes
-Red cabbage asian coleslaw.. I made this with cabbage, carrots, slivered almonds, ramen noodles and a sesame dressing
-Marinated chickpea and artichoke salad
-Spicy sausages
-Grilled veggies (eggplant, red, orange and yellow peppers, and porcini mushrooms)
-Pineapple Upside-down Cake (super easy recipe, SUPER delicious cake, i highly recommend!)
-homebrewed iced tea

i made some cheez!

Last weekend, I decided to make some firm cheez, from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, I've seen other bloggers rave about the Colby Cheez, a firm cheez, good for crackers and grilled cheez sandwiches. I gathered all the necessary groceries for the recipe, the only weird one was agar powder. I've never used agar before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I followed the "Chedda" suggestion, at the bottom of the Colby recipe. The recipe was pretty simple to follow, and didn't take very long. I decided to throw some chopped walnuts in the bottom of the dish, to make the cheez look a bit fancier :) And, it sure looked fancy!

So I brought this cheez to a family party, and served it with some crackers. The flavor was really quite nice and cheezy. The flavor was perfect with crackers, my only complaint was the texture, it wasn't perfect to me, a bit... gelatinous... I'm not sure if this is because I boiled the agar for too long. The directions said cook until completely dissolved, I didn't really see a change in the mixture that would be undissolved/dissolved. Alot of the cheez got eaten (by a bunch of non-vegans for the record). I think I'll attempt another cheez with agar, and see if I like the texture any better.

With the leftover cheez, we decided to make some cheezy-broccoli rice. I made a sauce with some plain almond milk, a splash of bragg's, a squirt of mustard, a lil sriracha and the rest of the cheez, all shredded up. I let the mixture come to a bubble, the cheez melted in completely. Then we added in some chopped frozen broccoli, and leftover white rice from Chinese delivery. This mixture came out GREAT! We definitely preferred the cheez this way :) We served it with some hot sauce glazed tempeh courtesy of The Veganomicon, and some steamed cabbage.

Vegan MOFO day 15- Sloppy Joes

Tonight's dinner is one that I wouldn't normally blog about, but it's MOFO and I am trying to blog everyday. I made sloppy joes and I'm not particularly convinced that I like what I did. I used reconstituted TVP and a bunch of other ingredients... they were definitely edible, but I wouldn't go out of my way to make them again. The hubby liked dinner and said that I'm too harsh of a critic. I think I don't love the taste of TVP, and since it is highly processed, I doubt I'll be running out to buy any more when this bag is used up.

I started with cooking up a lil onion and garlic, then I added canned tomatoes, Bragg's liquid aminos, bbq sauce, ground black pepper, chili powder, hot sauce, some spicy mustard.... and the TVP. We ate it on some bread.

If anyone has a good vegan sloppy joe recipe, please pass it along to me....

I also made coleslaw, that came out super yummy! (shredded cabbage, salt, pepper, sugar, apple cider vinegar and vegenaise, I didn't measure anything but wish I had, because this was tangy and yum yum yum!)

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!