Vegan Disasters & Updates

I am still thrilled over Hubby's new camera that he's even let me play with! I have been cooking but the final results have either been disasters or just very basic and bland stuff. I have been spending way too much time on Vegweb and even have a couple of recipes posted there that I need to remember to post here. So here is what I have been up to:

Disaster #1- Vegan Chiffon Cake


This was an interesting experiment, and I honestly expected it to crash and burn into the trash. I very well knew that at the moment there is no such thing as a vegan chiffon/angel food cake because the eggs make up so much of what makes it work.

Original plan: Replace the yolks with Flax seeds and the whites with Ener-G in my favorite (non vegan) chiffon cake recipe. If you don't know what a chiffon cake is, it is half way between an angel food cake and a standard (shortening) cake. You use an angel food cake pan that separates into two pieces for easy removal of the cake, but it also has feet on the top because angel food cakes and chiffon cakes need to be turned upside down for the eggs to keep their structure until cool, otherwise the whole cake would collapse. I was so excited when I pulled the cake out of the oven and it hadn't fallen, so I turned it upside down (like I knew to do). Obviously from the above pictures, that it did not work! The top pic is the thin layer that stuck to the pan, and the 2nd pic is the entire cake after I scooped it off of the counter top and put it on the cooling rack.

On the plus side it tasted great, minus the fact that it was gummy from all the flax seed. By the morning most of it was gone because everyone kept snitching pieces! :D So I'm thinking of altering the recipe to see if I can get it to work as cupcakes because they are good enough to be worth redoing. Overall, this one still makes me laugh.

Disaster #2- Vegan Meringue

This actually worked until I added the sugar to the Ener-G whipped "egg whites" and then it just became soup. I added a few more things (like cooked agar & water) attempting to salvage it, but to no avail. Once it solidified it was a disgusting mess.

I do have one or two ideas on things I could use the successful part of the experiment for, but only more testing will tell.

(Partial) Disaster #3- Agar Jell dessert with Kool-Aid!

This is harder (for me) than it had originally seemed. It went from not working at all because I think the vitamin C in the grape Kool-Aid strangled the agar, to being so rubbery (after more agar) that I had to mash it apart with a potato masher before I could re-melt it and try again. Once I finally got it close and the flavor was really lacking. So back into the pot it went and with more agar and some 100% grape juice added it was finally close enough to be used as jelly. Since I do not have a canner at the moment I opted to put all 8-10 cups of 'agar jelly' into empty jelly jars and keep them in the freezer.

After taking out the first jar and letting it thaw I realized that it was separating, with tiny lakes sitting on top. So I microwaved the jar until it was liquid again and let it firm up in the fridge. It worked alright, but is softer than it was when I had put it into the freezer.

It's been an educational experience with agar, but next time I think I'll just get some pectin and make jelly the traditional way and let someone else figure out agar Jell-oh.

Disaster #4- Baked Yeast Doughnuts

The recipe I had been working from is one I had done once before, but I still used eggs then. I think this time there was a combination between the recipe just using too much salt and I didn't let them raise enough, but they came out like dinner rolls. This is one I will be working on, but I'm frustrated that it was such a dismal failure, although an edible one.
Note to Self: Who Heart Rolls!

Conclusion:

I'm just starting to learn how to make vegan cooking work, but I have a long way to go. I have a lot of fun trying to figure out how all this food science works, what fails and what is worth making again and again.

I love all the other vegan blogs and all the super amazing stuff they have within, but I'm often intimidated but what at least looks like super fancy foods. I'm still a small town girl at heart and I like simple and easy food. And hey, this is only the beginning for me, who knows what might pop up next!

There and Back Again

It should be obvious that life changes, but somehow it seems to catch me somewhat off guard when it does. I can truthfully say that being 30 has not been boring. A month or so before my 30th birthday in October my life started to drastically change, without the courtesy of asking me first.

Out of all the possible catalysts for change in my life, honey would not have been even close to my list of the top 1,000 reasons. By sheer accident I happened to painfully discover that I had suddenly become allergic to honey when I had some with a piece of cornbread. I had eaten honey last about six months before that with no adverse affects. Imagine my shock when I started breaking out in hives, formerly only known to happen if I eat pineapple. Never in my life had I ever heard of anyone being allergic to honey. After the fact my mother said that my grandfather (her dad) became allergic to honey about when he turned thirty as well. My FIL however finds no end to the amusement that honey gives me hives. :/

Hubby and I have still been learning how to work around the diabetes, the strange part to me is that he has developed a major “sugar-free sweet tooth” when before sweets were not a big deal. We were both very lucky to find Honeytree’s Imitation Honey that is malted from corn and is safe for diabetics. See my Amazon review for more info (Wife tested, husband approved!). In short, I love this stuff!

I’ve been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for about three years now and have been very proud that it has been a lasting change. One of the reasons I quit eating meat (other than the fact I don’t like eating something that could have been a pet, I love animals!) was because I was learning to listen to what my body said about what it did and did not like. Within these last few months I’ve been learning to listen again and finally admitted to my self that I’ve been punishing myself. For a LOT of the time that I’ve been vegetarian I have very well been aware of that dairy causes problems to my whole body. Finally I sat down to do some research about dairy allergies because it had gotten to the point with me that I would allow myself dairy, but in very, very small amounts because not only cause very painful reactions to my digestive system, I had known that it plugged up my nose to the point that it seemed I had continual colds. I have known for years that I cannot tolerate hardly any dairy fat, in fact I almost never ate ice cream, butter, and most cheeses because it would always give me problems. I was really floored to discover I didn’t have an issue with dairy, I have two! One is actually being allergic to dairy and my body would try to get rid of it (hence the plugged nose) and the other being that I’m actually lactose intolerant (digestive system totally being out of sorts after eating dairy, definitely not pretty.)

As for the eggs, I’ve honestly had a love-hate relationship with them for a lot of years. Sometimes they didn’t bother me at all. Other times they would gross me out so badly that I wouldn’t use them and would completely avoid them. I used them because that’s honestly the only way I knew how to do a lot of baking. And in an effort to make our home more allergy-free I told Hubby that I will be giving up most of my onions and peppers because of his severe allergy, but they honestly give me stomach aces. The exceptions are things like Salsa and Manwich (mostly things that can be easily left out of foods or done separately and do not need to be cooked fresh).

I never would have guessed that an allergy to honey would be the thing that would make me finally go vegan. I hadn’t realized that it was honestly the only thing in my mind that separated me from vegans as a whole, knowing that honey was off limits. I have been exceedingly lucky to have found my vegan home away from home so early into my vegan adventure. TONS of pictures, recipes sorted into meaningful categories and a lot of very friendly people. I think I have been vegan now for two or so months, although there is still the occasional thing in the cupboards that needs to be used. Not everyone has the luxury of chucking out all the old stuff and starting fresh with something like this.

I’m so excited that Hubby got a new camera that is totally fab! No more shitty food pics for the blog! Hmm, I may need to redo the cupcake pic so it’s not just a pink and brown blur.

And if that wasn’t enough major change, almost on a whim I decided to attend college in the fall. Specifically the Art Institute of Seattle that is half way across the state from where we are now. So far everything has worked out (I’ll be starting part time in October) just as long as we can make the finances work to find somewhere to live. I’ve never been to college in my life, and I honestly never expected to. So now on top of feeling like everything we eat has changed (hubby very graciously keeps the dairy at a minimum at home, and never liked eggs in the first place) I have to sort, pack, and catalog what we plan on keeping from the house we have lived in our entire 10 year marriage.

We have been having a fair amount of fun playing with our new vegan recipes, and hopefully some of them will make it on here once the kinks have been worked out!

p.s. The pic at the top was something I made when I still played the online game Second Life.

For the Love of Cupcakes!

Nekked cupcakes

For my birthday in October my hubby gave me a lot of kitchen equipment and some new cookbooks, all of which were vegan. (YAY!) As part of a bridal shower gift for my sister-in-law we gave her Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World that I flipped through before wrapping it up. Needless to say I wanted to keep it! I have been baking and decorating cakes since I was in middle school, and its a hobby I enjoy quite a bit as long as I don't have to do it too often. (Hey family, do you hear that? I LIKE to do cakes, just not with 2 days notice!!) Birthday cakes are fun to do because they have the most personality, LOTS of color, and perfection is not such a pass or fail thing like professional cake decorating is. Last night I got either an hankering for sugar or my PMS decided that I NEEDED some chocolate (I'm not normally a big chocolate fan, at all) and realized that I hadn't used my new cupcake book! I'm so used to doing full cakes that I honestly don't remember the last time I made cupcakes (my guess is 5-6 years or more). I giggled to myself when I was putting them in the oven, feeling like a goofy teenager again. I make muffins frequently, but I can't recall making cupcakes more than about 7 or so times in my life.

There is no point to cake, and cupcakes even more so. But that's one reason that having cake decorating as a hobby is so fun. It's totally pointless, but it makes everyone so happy (except the two people that I know of who don't like cake). Cakes are fun to make, especially chiffon cakes (half way between regular cake and angel food cake) even though they are very touchy and full of eggs. I really liked how the pictures looked in the Vegan Cupcake book, but I was honestly skeptical about how they would turn out in MY oven and without the eggs, or that the baking soda would stand out too much. It seems the older I get the more sensitive my whole body gets, most especially my stomach.

Well, it was lucky that I took the above pic when I did because two of the chocolate comrades went MIA shortly after. Their ranks were quickly divided and conquered. Only two remaining cupcakes are left to stand watch in the arctic of our freezer. The family thought they were definitely A+

I made the Basic Chocolate Cupcakes with vegan Buttercream Frosting, replacing 1 tsp. of peppermint and 1/2 tsp. vanilla for all the vanilla, and added a drop of red food coloring. Peppermint hard candy was crushed and sprinkled on top. Doing cakes as much as I have I could tell that they were just a little bit 'tougher' than regular cakes made with cake flour (that has some milk something in it) but in reality there was hardly any difference. They did not raise like non-vegan ones do, but to me that's a plus. I'm so tired of the 'McDonald's philosophy' of supersized everything. I really think I'm going to like this book. Next time I will add chopped walnuts and maybe top it with more walnuts and the Brown Rice Caramel Glaze.

All dressed up and somewhere to go... my mouth!

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Vegan Lunch Box, Veganomicon (Vegancon for short), and The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook are all my new books to play with.

My general thoughts of each-

Vegan Cupcakes: LOTS of possibilities and a very fun book. An easy one to test on my non-vegan family, all I have to say is Cake!

Vegan Lunch Box: Haven't done many from here but most of the recipes have a lack of peppers and onions (great for hubby!) The first 1/3 of the book is just meal plans that I'm honestly not sure how much attention I'll pay to that. The Lentil Rice Balls still need some work (the outsides are dry and stabby and scrape up my mouth) or I'm not doing something right. Hopefully in the next couple of days I'll get around to the Wheat Gluten Pot Roast.

Veganomicon: Wow. There is SO much info in here and the recipies really are great. I adore the Garbazo Cutlets, so yummy and chewy and versitile, we have used black beans and adzuki beans in them with really good results!

The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook: I was very afraid of 'fake' cheese recipes. The first time I tried a homemade vegan cheese sauce (LONG before I got this book) I ended up with B12 sauce with sauteed onions, and it was hardly edible. First thing to keep in mind with this book, Nutritional yeast powder is twice as strong as nutritional yeast flakes! The more I use this book, the more excited I get. The Cheese Please Soup is WONDERFUL even though I had to alter it because of the onions. And last night I made the Parmezano Sprinkles and they are PERFECT. I'll deffinately be stocking up on almonds now! I have been waiting to get some agar-agar powder so I can try the block uncheeses. This is an amazing book.

Cornbread- Ain't nothin' wrong with it NOW!

First off I'd like to apologize to Domestic Spaz for not posting this months ago as a response to her Chili & Cornbread recipe as an alternative to the Jiffy mix cornbread. Shortly after her post, I threw my back out and then came the five-tier cake of Doooom. I hope that this would be similar to the Jiffy mix (I'm not sure because I don't remember the last time I ate it) but its about as easy, especially when time runs short.

This is from Make-A-Mix Cookbook my mom gave me years ago after she had received it as a gift, and had no use for it. This is not a vegan cookbook, however there are a lot of recipes that vegans can still use but alterations are required. It has saved me time, money, and helps me keep my cupboards full of homemade foods with the convenience of the prepackaged products.
~~~
This recipe comes in two parts:

Cornbread Mix

4 cup all purpose Flour
4 cup yellow Cornmeal
2 cup instant Soy Milk Powder
2/3 cup granulated Sugar
4 tablespoons Baking Powder
1 tablespoon Salt
1 tablespoon Baking Soda

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Stir with a wire whisk until evenly distributed. Pour into a 10-cup container with a tight fitting lid. Seal container. Label with date and contents. Store in a cool, dry place. Use within 10 to 12 weeks. Makes about 10 cups Cornbread Mix.

Cornbread

Egg Replacer equaling 1 Egg (we use Ener-G)
1/2 to 3/4 cup Water (for pourable consistancy)
2 tablespoons Canola Oil
1-1/4 cups Cornbread Mix

Preheat oven to 425F (220 C). Grease a 5" x 3" loaf pan. In a bowl beat together egg, water, and oil. Stir in Cornbread Mix until moistened. Batter will be lumpy. Pour into prepared pan. Bake 25 to 30 minutes. makes 1 loaf.

Variations:

Add 1/2 cup of frozen corn to the batter

Mix in salsa or chili before cooking

I like to double the cornbread recipe and bake it in a glass 11" x 7" pan so I can freeze the leftovers.

It would be fun to make up a batch of the mix with blue cornmeal, mix up a double batch (one yellow, one blue) and marble it in the pan. Or similarly, mix up two batches of batter, adding food coloring to the water of one of them, again marbling it in the pan.

To use as a substitute for Jiffy cornbread mix- Weight of the Jiffy mix (dry) is 8.5 oz and the amount of the MAM dry cornbread mix for a single recipe is 6-1/4 oz. My assumption is that they could possibly be used interchangeably, but I haven't tested it (I have leftover lemon or white cake mix but not yellow, Lemon cornbread doesn't sound good.)

Now if only I had some of that chili... :D

Headline: Cake narrowly misses causing a labor strike

On July 26, 2008 My sister-in-law (my husband's only sibling) was married in a nearby town. Everything looked wonderful and went as smoothly as weddings can go, not too many things went wrong. They had a five tier fondant covered cake, complete with a handmade cake topper. There were the standard oohs and ahhs over the cake, and the guests seemed to enjoy it once the eating commenced.

Personally, I thought it stunk. Or more accurately, I was tired of smelling it, since I was the one who was asked to make it.

Even sitting here thinking about ALL the work that went into that cake still terrifies me. I had never made a stacked cake more than 8" and two layers that used more than one cake mix at a time. The top two tiers are 'fake cakes' (Styrofoam instead of cake). I had six months to learn EVERYTHING I needed to know to have it even vaguely like something I'd call a wedding cake. I have done cakes before, I usually have fun doing them, but as I found out, wedding cakes are a whole other beast than 'simple' Birthday cakes.

I had never before:
Made the correct consistency of Royal Icing to make flowers
Made icing flowers most especially roses
Baked a 10", 12", 14", or sheet cake (11"x15") all in 3" pans
Split each cake in half to add the filling
Made frosting that spread onto the cake smoothly
Frosted a cake with exceedingly smooth edges
Used fondant in anything
Made full figurines
Rolled out fondant
Colored fondant
Created fondant clothes

...And yet I did all of this and more. I am still surprised at what I accomplished, and the sheer amount of stuff I learned in 6 months. Towards the end it was 16+ hour days (for two weeks) of what felt like constant Finals. But I do have to say, I'm not going to do it again anytime soon.






This is the frosting on the cake before I had to add the fondant.

Humble Oatmeal

Breakfast. That thing you're supposed to eat before you run out the door on a frantic dash that doesn't stop until sometime after you fall asleep watching a late movie. As a Stay-at-home-Wife I'm exceedingly lucky to not have to deal with all that chaos, however Hubby still needs to eat before waltzing out the door in his way to work. Well, to be more accurate, crashes out the door like a tornado, banging the metal screen door shut as my ears protest.

There are the mornings where 'happy accidents' stride into the kitchen and take over a boring meal. Oatmeal is my favorite hot cereal, hot & thick. One morning the raisins were mad. Tired of being dumped in second rate foods, especially just oatmeal. Raisins loved being the star with oatmeal as long as Cookies was attached to the title, but that one thing lacking made the raisins cringe. "Don't you dare put us in that mush!" they wailed, looking down their noses at the humble oats. It's Christmas that did it I think. They had reached their hight of fame as one of the lead roles in my first fruitcake. My mother and sister (who both live with us at the moment) just raved over the cake, both of which previously had thought I was bonkers for wanting to make fruitcake. Rummaging through the kitchen I came across some bits and pieces to toss in with the lowly oatmeal. Much to my surprise (and hubby's delight) oatmeal became interesting again.

Autumn's Oatmeal

1/4 c. Raisins
1/4 c. Coconut
2 c. Water
1 small to medium Carrot, grated
3/4 c. Oatmeal
Sugar-free Maple Syrup, to taste
Cinnamon, to taste
Nutmeg, to taste

Microwave raisins & coconut in 1/2 c. water on High for 2 minutes, let stand 5-10 minutes. Grate carrot into small pan, adding remaining 1 1/2 c. water. Add raisin mixture to carrots and bring to a boil. Add oatmeal, cooking to desired consistency. Season with syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

I do have to point out that the oatmeal pic doesn't have any coconut in it (hubby prefers it that way), but to me it tastes a lot better with it. 3/4 c. of oatmeal is the 'heart healthy' serving recommendation on the back of the Quaker Oats box.

Snookered Fruit Oatmeal

1/2 c. Dried Cranberries
1/2 c. Golden Raisins
3/4 c. Peach Schnapps
1 1/2 c. Water
3/4 c. Oatmeal
Sugar-free Maple Syrup

Combine cranberries, raisins, and schnapps in air tight container, shake well and let sit 12-24 hours to rehydrate. Boil water, adding oatmeal according to package directions. Top oatmeal with desired amount of fruit, schnapps, and syrup.

Any dried fruit can be used, its just what I had leftover from a second fruitcake I didn't make. Personally I think the schnapps is perfect with dried apricots, candied ginger, and orange zest. I would assume that this could be made with cream of rice, cream of wheat or other hot cereal that strikes your fancy. I do have to point out that the pic is a double serving, otherwise it wouldn't fit in the dish. :)

Good Food

One reason it took me so many years to finally become a vegetarian was the misconception that they only eat weird food, laking in any real taste, and textures that resembled regurgitated food. Eating piles of beans with a side of green muck, either in a glass or on a plate, and somehow LIKED it. I have to admit, I'm not a bean fan, vegetarian refried beans are alright, once some ketchup is added to make it not so pasty, but even then definitely has to be added to something.

If I was going to be a vegetarian it wasn't to pretend I was a rabbit and eat green salads all the time (I'm not too fond of them, perhaps I just need to rethink them). I wanted good food. Like the kind you'd eat instead of a bag of chips, or bread and butter, or Mac & Cheese. For quite some time I didn't think food like that honestly existed, well, not after you left the meat out of it.

In an attempt to eat more veggies I bought a couple of vegetarian cookbooks. My first one I found at Walden Books was Vegetarian: The Greatest Ever Vegetarian Cookbook for about $20. This is still my favorite reference, if nothing else than for the food encyclopedia that's in the front. This is a big book at nearly 2 inches thick and 512 pages long, full of BEAUTIFUL photography. I have a paperback copy that came with a sturdy plastic jacket that makes it nice if you need to wipe it down after experimenting. :D

For quite some time I would simply look through the book, seeing the huge variety of things available, and realized that there was a significant number of things I was eating that were already vegetarian, or at least nearly.

The second book I bought was The Clueless Vegetarian, a cookbook aimed at beginners full of great recipes in a very non-intimidating format. My mother and sisters loved the Fancy French Potato Salad, not what I'd think of a traditional potato salad, but I liked it even better.

Between these two books I began to see that it was not only possible to have vegetarian food that was not only good food but better than what I had been eating before. Realizing that I had finally found some of the information I was casually looking for over many years.

Thanksgiving and Christmas had come and gone and the lights from New Year's were just fading, the time of year when there seems to be a constant overflow of good food, or at least comfort foods. 'Tis the season to eat without thinking, right? After growing so tired of doing things the same way that I always did, I was finally ready for a change.

I always thought it would be hard to finally take the last few steps into vegetarianism, but all it took was a change in thinking, helpful cookbooks for encouragement, and some good food.

Scribblings from the human vegetarian.

I want there to be no misconceptions: I am not some food guru, health nut, gourmet chef, or any other silly notion of that sort. I'm just someone beginning (again) to work my way towards altering my eating habits towards more healthy options. I may not be a lone vegetarian in a family of meat-eaters (my MIL and SIL are both vegetarians) although I often feel as if I'm the weirdo in the family because of my choice.

I really don't like cooking for myself at all, perhaps I don't feel like I'm worth it, although DH would tell me differently. I think that's one thing I find very difficult, I've been married 8 1/2 years, 3 years ago I became vegetarian, Hubby is deathly allergic to onions & any peppers (and most related foods with some tiny exceptions), and very much a meat fiend. Last year we found out my Hubby is type 2 diabetic. I have done some personal research into the Blood Type Diet and found that I mostly agree with it. For those who know what it means, Hubby is a type O, and I'm a type A (who grew up with a mother and 3 type O siblings), further complicating the issue. For those who don't know, in short Hubby has a predisposition as a meat eater and my body functions better on a purely vegetarian diet.

Hubby has said that he would be a vegetarian except that we know for a fact that when he doesn’t eat meat he gets very lethargic and has difficulty functioning. Even at that, there hardly seems to be many vegetarian foods that don’t contain onions, black pepper, white pepper, bell peppers, fresh/whole tomatoes, eggplant, paprika, chili powder, etc. all of which trigger his allergy and his throat swells shut. There are a few exceptions like ketchup, tomato sauce, and the juice from mild salsa (I still don’t understand how he can eat that other than he does it in very small amounts).

Me on the other hand, I don’t want to eat dead animals, although I like veggie ‘meat’ alternatives (compared to my MIL who doesn’t even like the taste of meat), I'm allergic to pineapple, have a relatively low tolerance for greasy foods/too much oil, I like dairy but more than just a little of it will put me in a lot of pain so I try to limit my intake (mostly it’s dairy fat that’s the worst, I can have fat free milk without much notice). Hubby has been commenting recently on how sensitive my stomach is, I can’t eat a lot of overly spicy foods, vinegar even if its in mustard or ketchup), onion or bell peppers (these need to be eaten with some form of bread, rice, or light yogurt), baking soda, all of this as well as salt give me very bad stomach aches. I don’t drink pop very much because even the carbonation feels like it’s burning my throat!

Despite what the current trend is (on the Net at least), I'm not attempting to be a martyr for vegetarianism, only to spout how perfect I am in everything I consume. If I could do that I’d be a complete vegan. I'm human, I don’t eat perfectly, and god forbid I even eat marshmallows on occasion! I simply do my best, some days I fail miserably, and often feel miserable because of it, but at least I'm trying.

Perhaps this is just a silly attempt (yet again) to connect in my own way with the world at large, maybe find some encouragement, but if nothing else hopefully it will help me track back to being a healthier vegetarian.