Chew on This: Vegan Brunch!

I'm back in action! I've recovered from last week's wisdom tooth extraction for the most part, and I ate my first solid food meal on Saturday morning. For about seven days I stuck to a liquid and soft food diet, which forced me to get quite creative towards the end of the week:

• I made mashed sweet potatoes by roasting 4-6 sweet potatoes until tender in a 450 degree oven, then removing the skins and blending them with 1 tbs. mellow white miso, 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar, and 2 tsp. cinnamon. This mash makes up the top layer to NYC Candle Cafe's Paradise Casserole, but it is delicious on its own! I also sauteed ripened plantains in coconut oil and mashed those for another sweet, yet healthy sidedish.
• I turned this black bean hummus recipe into a black bean mash by cutting the amount of lemon juice and cumin in half to make it less pungeant and more appropriate as a sidedish.
• I adapted this recipe for So Healthy Chocolate Mousse by using 3 tbs. unsweetened cocoa powder, 3 tbs. agave nectar, omitting the orange zest, and including 2 soaked medjool dates and 1 tsp. raw coconut oil combined with about half of a dark chocolate bar, melted. I used Green & Black's Espresso dark chocolate, which gave the mousse a nice depth of flavor.

To celebrate my transition to solid foods on Saturday, I cooked up a vegan brunch with Danny. We attempted our first tofu scramble by following the recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance, adding spinach at the end. It was not nearly as delicious as the tofu scramble I tasted at 3 Brothers Pizza, but it was worth repeating. Next time I would add extra onion and reduce the amount of cumin and nutritional yeast (I have an aversion to cumin and cilantro, but I'm trying to develop a taste for both). I also baked skillet corn bread from Veganomicon in my cast-iron skillet. I added sweet corn kernels and used spelt flour in place of all-purpose flour. The corn bread had a subtle sweetness and held together nicely. (It's seriously adddictive...I ate most of the loaf myself in 2 days!) I served the cornbread with Earth Balance and a drizzle of pure maple syrup. Lastly, I prepared some sweet-and-sour aduki beans, which I had made once before by following this  recipe for black eyed peas. I considered including tempeh bacon and hash-brown potatoes in my brunch, but I didn't have the ingredients on hand and I try to avoid using too much soy in one meal.

                                        

A year or two ago, I would have spent most of my recovery glued to the Food Network. However, I recently discovered that vegan cooking is developing a strong representation in online videos. Since subscribing to Spork Online, I have found several other similar projects:

• Vegucating Robin - chef Gavan Murphy, aka "Healthy Irishman," teaches Robin Quivers about vegan cooking in short online episodes
• I'm Vegan - a series of short documentary profiles that feature vegans from all walks of life
• The Post Punk Kitchen - Isa Chandra Moskowitz taped this cooking show in her small Brooklyn aparment prior to the release of her now-famous cookbooks
• Heavy Metal Vegan Cooking - the male version of the Post-Punk Kitchen
• Everyday Dish - I found these free vegan cooking videos on YouTube, but the website offers a subscription service similar to Spork Online.
• Vegucated - "a guerrilla-style documentary that follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks and learn what it’s all about"; due to premiere in spring 2011...look for screenings near you!
• You can find a ton of other vegan cooking shows by doing a Google or YouTube search!

Organizing My Ever-Expanding Cookbook Library

As soon as you go vegan, every family member and friend will shower you with vegan cookbooks and cooking equipment on holidays. Hey I'm not complaining! It was these books that have helped me understand vegan nutrition and cooking techniques. My mom works at a library, so she brings home even more vegan and vegetarian books that are donated or no longer in circulation. I have browsed through most of my cookbooks at least once, but when I'm looking for a particular recipe or ingredient, I have to search through the index of each book until I find the perfect recipe. This is the same dilemma that originally influenced me to launch this blog (in that case it was streamlining the online vegan recipe search). Thanks to Google Books, I have discovered a way to organize my personal cookbook library and search through all of them at once. Here is my small yet solid library of vegan cookbooks. If you type an ingredient or recipe name into the text box at left and click "search," you will get results from my cookbook library only. Of course there are limitations to this method. Google Books allows you to preview a large percentage of the pages in most books. So for some of your search results, you can view the complete recipe, but for others you might only be given the page number.

While I'm on the topic of kitchen essentials, I recently purchased a few items on Amazon. A few weeks ago I realized that my old blender couldn't even process a banana, so it was time to get a new one. If I had a lot of money to spend and more counter space in my kitchen, I would totally get a powerful and versatile Vitamix blender. However, I was looking for something smaller that was easy to clean and could also grind things like seeds and nuts. I settled on the Tribest Personal Blender, and I'm glad I made the choice. I haven't used it too much, but it's certainly easy to clean, BPA free, and comes with mix and match travel cups and lids. It has a blending blade, which is great for smoothies, and a grinding blade, which literally pulverized my cashews into a flour. Today I also ordered a Lodge Logic 5Qt. Dutch Oven, which has a lid that doubles as a skillet! I bought the Lodge Logic 10" Cast Iron Skillet a few months ago and absolutely love it. It comes pre-seasoned, so after each use you just scrub with hot water (no soap!) and a scouring pad and lightly oil it before storing it. Cast iron is naturally nonstick, adds a significant amount of iron to your food, and lasts a lifetime or more! I can't wait to get the dutch oven, because I want to try a recipe for "no-knead bread." The other item I purchased today was a Silpat, a naturally nonstick, nontoxic, baking mat that is always featured on Spork Foods.


I won't be posting any recipes too soon, because I had to get all four wisdom teeth removed yesterday. The nurse instructed my mom to feed me soft foods like "scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, soup, yogurt, pudding, ice cream, and Jello." Since I can't eat half of those things, my mom made a trip to the natural section of our local chain grocery store to pick up organic vegan items like applesauce, Imagine Foods potato and leek soup, So Delicious soy ice cream, and sweet potatoes (which she roasted and mashed in my favorite way with mellow white miso, apple cider vinegar, and cinnamon). I also made a quick orange-pineapple juice and banana smoothie in my blender this morning. As soon as I can eat whole foods again, I want to try this recipe for Irish Soda Bread, which calls for soft silken tofu (I've had a box in pantry that is nearing expiration, and I never knew what to do with the soft variety). I'm not Irish, but I do enjoy a good soda bread with a pat of Earth Balance spread around the St. Patrick's Day holiday.