The Loss of a Good Friend

I've held off writing this post for such a long time.  For some reason I couldn't bring myself to actually write about the last weekend of June, which Josh and I actually spent having lots of fun, but which culminated in a devastating loss for both of us. 

 

We were both off of work for a long weekend and we spent most of it up in Baltimore with Josh's family.  Most of the weekend was spent indulging in our favorite restaurants, including a trip to Cafe Spice for the best Indian food ever, dinner at Addis Ababa once we got back to Silver Spring, and Sunday brunch at Muse Cafe - where some anonymouse (and generous) person paid our bill!  The most hilarious part of the Muse Cafe gesture was that we'd been complaining (to each other) the whole time about how poorly run the place was that morning.  It is set up as a vegan brunch buffet, but the servers weren't replenishing the food quickly enough, so many items were out and every time something was replaced (with invariably an incredibly small quantity) people would lunge at the new item like vultures.  We felt sort of bad and wondered if maybe someone had heard us complaining and thought this would brighten our day.  Little did they know that we're just complainers and we were already in a perfectly good mood :) 

 

Though we were homebodies for most of the weekend, we went on a pretty exciting outing Saturday morning when we attended a vegan wine and cheese tasting and tour and Burleigh Manor Animal Sanctuary.  We had lots of fun touring around to meet the animals and then loading up our plates with delicious vegan cheeses.  Josh opted for the grape juice, rather than the wine (which was smart on his part ... Maryland isn't known for their wines, and for good reason!). 

 

Though we spent a lot of time out and about (mostly eating), we wanted to make sure we spent lots of time with the dogs that weekend.  We took them on a long car trip and a short walk.  Both 14 and in poor health, we knew this would be our last chance to spend a lot of time with them.  Unfortunately, we didn't know just how close to the end it really was.  Just a couple days after I took this picture, the cutey on the left, Jake, passed away. 

Since then we've all been incredibly upset.  Obviously Josh's parents are very broken up, but Josh and I have also been surprised at how difficult it has been for us.  And we aren't even used to having Jake around day-to-day.  We realize that Gus (on the right) also doesn't have much time left.  And even though you can remind yourself that 14 is a very full life for a pet, and that both Jake and Gus are about the most spoiled dogs you'll ever know, it doesn't seem to actually make it any easier.  I'm taking Jake's loss as hard as I would a lot of other good friends.  I will greatly miss having him in my life, but I'm so grateful to have known him. 

Vegan Cotswold from the Non-Dairy Formulary

Since he was just a little boy, Josh's favorite cheese has been Cotswold (I know, what a pretentious little boy!).  Needless to say, I haven't had any since becoming vegan, but I thought it would be a great thing to be able to bring backed into our (shared) lives.  So I decided to try expanding into the more complicated reaches of the Non-Dairy Formulary to give their Cotswold recipe a try (labeled as Gloucester with Onions and Chives).  The recipe is actually somewhat similar to the ones for brie and Camembert, relying on coconut oil, soy milk, kappa carageenan, miso paste, and tapioca flour, amongst a few other ingredients.  The ingredients I didn't already have on hand were easy enough to get - tomato paste for color, plus chives and dried onions for that signature Cotswold flavor.   Though I had some difficulty with tapioca flour in my vegan brie (ultimately deciding both the brie and Camembert are best without it), I decided I should at least start by following the recipe the way it appears in the book before messing with it. 

 

And unfortunately it looks like messing with the recipe is exactly what I'm going to need to do.  My Cotswold never really firmed up all the way - in fact it stuck horribly to the mold and I had to scrape it out and kind of glop it back together.  Not a pretty sight, is it? 

 

Fortunately the taste is better - reminiscent of Cotswold, at least.  But that's really due to the chives and onions.  Even after days of storing it, per the book's instructions, in the fridge wrapped in a paper towel that gets changed once a day and then wrapped in plastic wrap, it's still a very spreadable consistency.  Not exactly Cheez-Whiz texture, but not particularly far off either.  And this clearly isn't what the book's author would have expected, because the instructions say after 24 hours of chilling you should be able to slice or grate it.  But mine definitely wouldn't hold up to a cheese grater. 

 

Since nixing the tapioca flour actually made both my brie and Camembert firmer, I might try this route next time for the Cotswold as well.  It tasted good enough to me that further experimentation seems worth it.  So ... I guess more Cotswold posts coming soon!

Vegan Camembert from the Non-Dairy Formulary

Since getting the Non-Dairy Formulary for Christmas, I've made a couple of attempts at making vegan brie, including coming to the very important realization that failing to follow the recipe on my first go was crucial to making it actually seem somewhat like cheese (by accidentally omitting the mixing in of tapioca flour, but instead only using it to dust the outside).  I decided I should move on from the brie recipe for a while and try something new ... like Camembert! 

 

Fortunately, the book's recipe for Camembert is actually just the recipe for brie but with a teaspoon of truffle oil mixed in.  Which is quite handy.  I knew I had all the ingredients, and this also gave me a chance to go back to my flour-less recipe to see if my mistake would really yield a better vegan cheese result. 

 

And the results?  Love it!  Nixing the flour is definitely the best bet (in my opinion).  The truffle oil gives the cheese a lovely flavor, though it means it's not ideal for sweet uses (like topping with honey or on my beloved apple and brie sandwiches).  But it certainly made a tasty open-faced mushroom sandwich.  I just lightly sauteed some sliced baby bellas with seasoning, then served them on toasted bread topped with the Camembert.  Kind of like a cheapo version of mushroom pizza.  I'm probably the first person to ever refer to something with Camembert as "cheapo" ...

Return of Vegan Brie and the Chicken Ring

Two weekends ago saw the return of a couple of old favorites - vegan brie and the chicken ring.  Unfortunately, neither of these old goodies turned out quite the way I was hoping.

 

My vegan brie recipe comes from the Non-Dairy Formulary (in fact, it's still the only recipe I've actually made from the book yet), and I loved the way it came out last time.   But when I went to make it again, I realized that I had misread the recipe and completely omitted an ingredient.  The recipe reads "1/4 cup tapioca flour plus more for dusting" and then the text of the directions say "add remaining ingredients".  So somehow I read this and interpreted it as "no tapioca in the mix, just use it for dusting".  Obviously I realized this was a mistake and proceeded to add it on my second go.  Since I'd still liked it the first time, I fully expecting it to work brie miracles this round.  No such luck.  The texture of my tapioca floured brie was way too sticky and off.  Of course I have no clue why this would be - you would think adding a dry ingredient would do just the opposite.  But I'm definitely not going to make it per the books instructions again.  I'll stick with my mess-up version, thank you very much. 

 

Fortunately it was still more than tasty enough for delicious brie and apple sandwiches!  Yeah, I ate these for dinners three nights in a row.  Yum!

Meanwhile, right when my vegan brie was starting to run out I decided that the best way to make up for a weekend full of carbalicious sandwiches was to make another carb-heavy treat - the chicken ring.  Yes, that ring of Pillsbury goodness reared its delicious head again!  I mean, seriously ... what's not to love?!  Crescent rolls, broccoli, red bell pepper, gardein chicken, mayo, and cheese! 

 

But when I went to pull out my trusty Daiya, I found that alas I had inadvertently started on a homemade vegan blue cheese project.  Yup, it was completely covered in mold.  As exciting as it might have been to see where this vegan blue would take me, I decided to play it safe and toss it out.  Without a cheese component for the ring that was already underway, I fell back on the only thing I had in the fridge - parmesan.  Turns out I probably should have just run my lazy butt to the store.  I added the same amount of parmesan that the recipe called for of regular cheese, and it was too salty.  In fact, I realized after the fact that I had actually forgotten to add salt, though the recipe called for it, and it was still too salty.  Whomp whomp.  Not so salty of course that I didn't devour the whole ring in just a few days.  But enough that I'll be sure that next time I actually look at my Daiya before I start laying out my crescent roll triangles.  And yes, there will definitely be a next time.  Long live the chicken ring!

My New Addiction - Cheesy Quinoa

I know it's been a while now since I said I would post on my favorite new food - cheesy quinoa.  But better late than never, right? 

 

I didn't really think it was possible to improve on my cashew cream sauce. But then I added miso and truffle oil ...  What a difference! The miso, in particular, really adds a sharp, "cheesy" flavor to the sauce.  It just goes to show, even your staple recipes can always be revisited and maybe improved.  I don't even think I'll  ever go back to the old recipe.  And I definitely wouldn't have thought I would ever say that a month ago. 

 

New-and-Improved Cashew Cream (Cheese) Sauce:

 

(ingredient amounts are all estimated and can be adjusted to taste)

 

1/3 cup cashews, soaked overnight

1 1/2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

1 1/2 tablespoons miso

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 teaspoon truffle oil (optional)

soy or almond milk to reach desired consistency

 

I blend everything together in a cuisinart and then taste to adjust flavors. 

 

Then the real fun begins.  The sauce can be used on just about anything - pasta, plain broccoli, or even as pizza sauce.  But my new (and healthy!) favorite way to use it is to make cheesy quinoa.  Just mix cheese sauce with cooked quinoa, then dress up with your favorite add-ins.  Several times now I've opted to mix my cheesy quinoa with cooked broccoli (I lightly sauteed mine for a few minutes).  But you could use just about any vegetable under the sun.  I've also mixed mine with black beans (white would also be tasty!) and chopped and sauteed bell pepper.  I can't wait to try cheesy quinoa with mushrooms!  The possibilities are definitely endless.  But I intend to try as many as I can ...

Vegan Brie!

The only thing I asked Santa Clause for for this past Christmas was a copy of the Non-Dairy Formulary.  I'd read about it online last year, and heard how great all the vegan cheese recipes were, so I knew I wanted to try it.  But of course Mr. C wasn't so obliging.  So I went ahead and bought the book for myself right after Christmas.  I flipped through it right away, but promptly shelved it when I started to see the days-long process for making rejuvelac, and ingredients for other cheeses like kappa carrageenan and tapioca flour.  These didn't seem easy to find, and with session ramping up I didn't have a lot of spare time for involved cheese-making. 

 

But I still flipped through the book from time to time and also got around to looking for some of those trickier ingredients - buying tapioca flour at Wegmans and kappa carrageenan on Amazon.  It may still take me a while before I actually make rejuvelac, but once I had these other ingredients on hand it turns out the recipe for brie was pretty simple.  So last weekend I got to work ... and it was so worth it! 

 

You definitely need to have some time on your hands for the brie recipe, but most of the time involved is down time, so it's not exactly labor intensive.  I mixed up just a bit more than would fit in my little mold, so I ended up making one larger wheel of brie and a little mini-wheel as well.  The mixing up took all of about fifteen minutes, then I had to let them cool at room temperature for twenty minutes, sit in the fridge for six hours, take them out and dust with tapioca flour, then sit overnight before finally getting to try my little masterpieces. 

 

I won't try to claim they really tasted like brie.  The texture was pretty close, but the flavor still just doesn't have the bite of real cheese - alas, maybe no one will ever be able to accomplish a real "cheesy" vegan cheese.  But if you go into it not expecting cheese, then what you get is really quite good!  I ate my mini wheel of brie for breakfast Sunday morning with crackers and a berry banana protein shake.  Delicious! 

 

That afternoon Josh's parents came to visit for a pizza lunch at Pacci's and to take the dogs for a walk in Rock Creek Park.  I actually convinced them to try a slice of the larger wheel on crackers, and they both said it was actually pretty good (again, if you don't expect actual brie).  But the real fans of the vegan cheese were the dogs.  They're big cheese fans, but the fat in real cheese isn't exactly good for them.  But there are no such issues with vegan cheese!  They gobbled up the little tastes I offered them and begged for more :)  Even Panda loved it! 

 

So I happily devoured my vegan brie over the past week, finally finishing the last of it over this past weekend.  Some fun variations on the standard cheese and crackers that I tried this week:

 

Slices of brie on crackers drizzled with honey (shown at left) - for a nice desserty treat (yes, I still eat honey, so I realize I'm not really vegan)

 

Honey, almond, and brie sandwich - so good (but not quite as good as ...)

 

Brie and apple sandwich - this was the big winner of the week.  I'll definitely be making this brie again soon, if only to have more of these sandwiches!  They were something I'd enjoyed with real brie in the past, but frankly thought I would just be without forever now. 

 

It definitely seems like the longer I'm vegan, the more I find I can adapt all sorts of my old favorites.  Next on the agenda from the Non-Dairy Formulary?  I'm thinking a nice Stilton :)   

Highlights From the Past Month

I can't believe it's been more than a month since my last post!  Bad bad bad.  But rest assured, I've still been taking plenty of pictures of my daily eats, just not managing to actually sit down and write about them.  Which means I've got plenty to catch up on.  Obviously I've been super busy over the past month with the start of the legislative session, and I pretty much have no hope of catching up by actually writing all the blog posts I should have written all this time.  So instead I'm just going to go with an old fashioned photo dump to get it all out there.  And then maybe I'll get back on a normal blogging schedule soon. 

 

So here ya go ...

 

Pasta packets a la Vegetarian Times Magazine:

 

Mmmm ... peanut butter pie from Chocolate Covered Katie:

Dinner at Pizza CS:

Yep, I made my own cheese ... and it came out green.  I guess I should have mixed the chives in by hand rather than tossing them in the blender with everything else.  But it was still tasty :) 

 

 

Mexican dinners rock ... especially chipotle adobo black beans with fried plantains and vegan sour cream!

Chicken Picatta using the recipe from the back of the Gardein package.  (We've made this a few times ... it's delicious!)  Plus asparagus and roasted potatoes.  Would you guess this is vegan?!

Chocolate cake to live for :)  Yum yum yum. 

Dessert again ...  Vegan cheesecake from Capital City Cheesecake.  Unfortunately, neither of these really tasted like cheesecake and at least one of these beauties made both Josh and I incredibly ill.  Never again, CCC. 

 

And ... Valentine's Day dinner!  I made a super simple beer bread and served vegan black pepper steaks and roasted Brussels sprouts with pomegranate glaze on the side.  Josh wasn't a fan of the black pepper steaks, but he loved everything else.  So much for that secret ingredient - love!  I guess two out of three isn't bad. 

Vegan Alfredo and (Successful?) Vegan Cheese

Friday I was still incredibly sore in my right elbow from all those pushups at my first crossfit class ...  I pretty much spent the whole day moping and complaining.  I still got down to the workout room, but all I did was use the exercise bike while reading.  Not exactly the most challenging of workouts.  Fortunately, Fran didn't leave me any worse for wear than if I hadn't done anything at all, so I'm glad I sucked it up and actually went to crossfit on Thursday. 

 

Fortunately, I had all sorts of delicious new vegan foods purchased from Pangea Vegan Products that I was eager to dig into, and I finally took the opportunity on Friday to try two of them.  First, Josh and I tried the Victoria Vegan roasted pepper alfredo sauce for dinner. 

 

I boiled some pasta and mixed it with the pasta sauce and some chopped fresh basil.  Easy peasy ... And really delicious.  The sauce had a great, creamy consistency, and really tasted like alfredo!  The only problem was that the roasted pepper flavor was a little bland.  But it was promising enough that I definitely want to try one of their other alfredo flavors soon! 

 

After dinner we were both still a little hungry, so we decided to sample a second Pangea purchase, aged cashew nut cheese from Dr. Cow.  Fake cheese has been one of the trickier aspects of becoming vegan, because most of it is just soooo horrible.  Most of the time I'd rather go without anything that eat vegan cheese.  But lots of reviews online have said the trick is to go with vegan cheese that has actually been aged, just like real cheese.  So we decided to give this brand a try.  We paired it with some simple cracked pepper water crackers so that we could really taste the flavor of the vegan cheese. 

 

As soon as we unwrapped the cashew cheese it was clear that this wasn't really cheese.  But then again, we knew that it wasn't supposed to be.  The color was off.  The consistency was a little soft and crumbly.  When we started to eat some, we both tried to keep in mind that this wasn't cheese ... it was aged cashew goop.  And it had to be evaluated that way. 

 

And as far as aged cashew goop is concerned, it was pretty good!  It doesn't quite taste like cheese, but it definitely has more of a cheesy flavor than anything else I've tried so far.  It also has a bit of a nutty taste, but not in a bad way.  And the consistency proved to be something a little shy of cheddar, but close.  It still sliced well to put on crackers. 

 

Realistically, if I hadn't known what it was and someone had told me it was Wildebeest cheese or something like that, I probably would have believed them.  It wasn't so far from cheese that I couldn't believe it was the real thing. 



After dinner (and our post-dinner snack), I still wanted a little something sweet, so I snacked on some black pepper and sea salt dark chocolate.  Very unique, but very tasty.  Of course Josh won't touch it because he hates sweet and salty together ... but that just means more for me!