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Sunday, January 19, 2014
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Vegan Cheese Blinzes with Blueberry Sauce
As promised, my original recipe for vegan cheese blinzes! These take a little bit of time, but it's WELL worth the effort. No photos as of yet, just words...sexy, food-related words. This recipe won over my entire restaurant staff (well, those working that day) and looks beautiful on a plate.
Non Vegan Blinzes, but pretty close to what you're going to get.
Vegan Cheese Blinzes with Blueberry Sauce
Recipe by J. Oder
A recipe in 3 parts, which seems epic, but I promise it will go fast and be awesome.
This recipe starts out with Vegan Yum Yum's basic vegan crepe recipe, a total go to, and super easy:
Mix ingredients well, either by hand or with blender. Let sit for a half an hour. This is important as the gluten strands (protein in the flour) need to settle after you've beaten them up or your crepes will be tough.
Cook on a non stick pan on medium high heat sprayed with cooking spray or lightly brushed with Earth Balance. Here's a quick demo on how to cook a crepe (please ignore ham and cheese):
Make crepes, stacking on a plate as you go. Set aside.
'Cheese' filling
I package firm tofu
3/4 cup daiya mozzarella cheese (optional)
1 package tofutti cream cheese
1 heaping tablespoon nutritional yeast
1/4 cup sweetener (unprocessed white sugar or honey work great)
2 teaspoons of salt
Drain tofu and get as much liquid out as you can. Wrap in a towel or paper towel and drain for a few hours if you can, but if not, just give it a good pat down. Smoosh tofu together with daiya and tofutti, clean hands are your best tool here. Add sweetener, salt, and nutritional yeast to taste. Keep tasting until it tastes like sweet cheese, slightly sweet and a bit salty. Set aside.
Fill the crepes with a few tablespoons of 'cheese' filling roll in a burrito or wrap fashion by folding in the sides and then rolling upwards, tucking in the sides as you go. set blintzes aside. You will likely have left over cheese filling, but there's no reason you can't make this recipe again!
Blueberry sauce:
1 cup frozen or 2 cups fresh blueberries
1/2 cup sweetener
2 limes juiced and their zest
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed well with 5 tablespoons water
Put all ingredients in a saucepan except for cornstarch and water on medium heat. Cook until blueberries, sugar and juice are bubbling. Add cornstarch mixture and mix well. Cook another 10 minutes or so until sauce thickens. Keep on warm on low heat.
Putting it all together:
Take large skillet and heat 3-4 tablespoons of earthbalance on medium high heat. Heat until sizzling, and then gently add finished blinzes. Fry until crispy and brown on one side and then gently use tongs or a spatula to flip and brown on the other side. Plate up 3-4 blintzes, drizzle with Blueberry sauce. Serve with Tofutti sour cream product if you wish. Yum! Serves about 2 hungry folks or 4 modest folks.
Non Vegan Blinzes, but pretty close to what you're going to get.
Vegan Cheese Blinzes with Blueberry Sauce
Recipe by J. Oder
A recipe in 3 parts, which seems epic, but I promise it will go fast and be awesome.
This recipe starts out with Vegan Yum Yum's basic vegan crepe recipe, a total go to, and super easy:
Basic Crêpes
Makes 8-10
1/2 Cup Soymilk
2/3 Cup Water
1/4 Cup Earth Balance, melted
1 Cup Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
1 Tbs Sugar (sweet crepes only, optional)
2 tsp Vanilla Extract (sweet crepes only, optional)
2 Tbs Water, to thin if needed
Mix ingredients well, either by hand or with blender. Let sit for a half an hour. This is important as the gluten strands (protein in the flour) need to settle after you've beaten them up or your crepes will be tough.
Cook on a non stick pan on medium high heat sprayed with cooking spray or lightly brushed with Earth Balance. Here's a quick demo on how to cook a crepe (please ignore ham and cheese):
Make crepes, stacking on a plate as you go. Set aside.
'Cheese' filling
I package firm tofu
3/4 cup daiya mozzarella cheese (optional)
1 package tofutti cream cheese
1 heaping tablespoon nutritional yeast
1/4 cup sweetener (unprocessed white sugar or honey work great)
2 teaspoons of salt
Drain tofu and get as much liquid out as you can. Wrap in a towel or paper towel and drain for a few hours if you can, but if not, just give it a good pat down. Smoosh tofu together with daiya and tofutti, clean hands are your best tool here. Add sweetener, salt, and nutritional yeast to taste. Keep tasting until it tastes like sweet cheese, slightly sweet and a bit salty. Set aside.
Fill the crepes with a few tablespoons of 'cheese' filling roll in a burrito or wrap fashion by folding in the sides and then rolling upwards, tucking in the sides as you go. set blintzes aside. You will likely have left over cheese filling, but there's no reason you can't make this recipe again!
Blueberry sauce:
1 cup frozen or 2 cups fresh blueberries
1/2 cup sweetener
2 limes juiced and their zest
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed well with 5 tablespoons water
Put all ingredients in a saucepan except for cornstarch and water on medium heat. Cook until blueberries, sugar and juice are bubbling. Add cornstarch mixture and mix well. Cook another 10 minutes or so until sauce thickens. Keep on warm on low heat.
Putting it all together:
Take large skillet and heat 3-4 tablespoons of earthbalance on medium high heat. Heat until sizzling, and then gently add finished blinzes. Fry until crispy and brown on one side and then gently use tongs or a spatula to flip and brown on the other side. Plate up 3-4 blintzes, drizzle with Blueberry sauce. Serve with Tofutti sour cream product if you wish. Yum! Serves about 2 hungry folks or 4 modest folks.
Link Roundup Volume 1.
As I start blogging again, I realize that i'm about halfway through VeganMofo 2010! VeganMofo-Or Vegan Month Of Food, is a project where vegan bloggers all over the world take on the challenge to write 30 entries in 30 days. There's no way 11 entries will birth themselves tonight, or that i'll catch up, but check out Vegan Mofo Headquarters for roundups of great all the great vegan food out there on the web!
Today's blog entry is inspired by just that. I figured a quick and easy way to show you where I get my inspiration is to post some of the vegan and non vegan foodie blogs I read almost every day. Secondarily, i'll throw you a couple of recipe links that I intend on trying out in the next few weeks, though look out for versions of them here with photos and notes as per usual. Also check out the links from last years Vegan MoFo to the right of my blog here. Alright. Enough talk. More rock.
Vegan Dad-currently looks like he's on hiatus, but some of the best kid friendly vegan recipes I've found on the web.
Veganize it...don't Criticize it! I have never been brave enough to try any of her recipes, but super impressive 'special occasion' vegan versions of classic and new favorites!
Raw on 10 dollars a day-I'm no where near raw, and I feel some of these recipes leave me a little high and dry in terms of nutrition, but some of them are quick and easy-not always the case in the raw diet! The breakfasts are some of my favorites, and most recipes are no special equipment (dehydrator and food processor) required!
The James Beard Blog-always impressive, always classy.
Momofuku for 2-Blogging through the momofuku (and some of Keller's Ad Hoc at Home)
And that's it for now!
Today's blog entry is inspired by just that. I figured a quick and easy way to show you where I get my inspiration is to post some of the vegan and non vegan foodie blogs I read almost every day. Secondarily, i'll throw you a couple of recipe links that I intend on trying out in the next few weeks, though look out for versions of them here with photos and notes as per usual. Also check out the links from last years Vegan MoFo to the right of my blog here. Alright. Enough talk. More rock.
Vegan Dad-currently looks like he's on hiatus, but some of the best kid friendly vegan recipes I've found on the web.
Veganize it...don't Criticize it! I have never been brave enough to try any of her recipes, but super impressive 'special occasion' vegan versions of classic and new favorites!
Raw on 10 dollars a day-I'm no where near raw, and I feel some of these recipes leave me a little high and dry in terms of nutrition, but some of them are quick and easy-not always the case in the raw diet! The breakfasts are some of my favorites, and most recipes are no special equipment (dehydrator and food processor) required!
The James Beard Blog-always impressive, always classy.
Momofuku for 2-Blogging through the momofuku (and some of Keller's Ad Hoc at Home)
And that's it for now!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
What does a vegan eat? November 10th edition.
Just fun to list what I had to eat now and again, and yesterday and today are great days to brag. Anyone who says a vegan's diet is boring is misinformed...note that I am also lucky enough to work at a vegetarian cafe with brilliant food available at my fingertips. Also note that i've been trying REALLY HARD...(for the past 2 days?) to up my protien intake as I've found out i should be eating 65-80 grams a day.
Yesterday:
Breakfast:
About 4 ounces of vegan scramble made with Smart Deli veggie ham, tofutti american 'cheeze' slices, tomato, firm tofu. 2 slices of white fortified bread with earth balance.
Spicy Mexican Hot Chocolate made with Soy milk
Lunch:
2 Large pieces of veggie pot pie made with vegan puff pastry, carrots, celery, onion, green beans, broccoli.
Pomegranate and Pear Nantucket Nectars.
Dinner:
Creamy vegetable korma made with green beans, carrot, onion, garlic, ginger, chilis, and cauliflour with cashew cream and coconut milk. Served with cumin rice.
A million ounces of Newman's own Virgin Pomegranate Lemonade
Movie snacks:
Homemade popcorn with salt, black pepper, earth balance, and nutritional yeast
Vegan hazelnut cream wafer cookies
Today:
Breakfast:
Carrot apple and ginger juice with ginseng and vitamin C
Steel Cut oats with half a banana 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts and a drizzle of honey (yes I'm a honey vegan).
8 ounces of fortified soy milk
Lunch:
A cup of Indonesian squash soup made with coconut milk and garnished with spinach
Quinoa salad with currents, red onion, baked eggplant, mint, pine nuts, parsley, olive oil and a couple tablespoons of hummus on top.
(Both of these available at my workplace)
A million more ounces of Pomegranate lemonade
A few sips of chamomile tea
Dinner:
So far? 3 vegan compost cookies. On my way to warming up creamy vegetable korma with cumin-basmati rice!
More of these updates in the future. Look out for more recipes more fun more awesome soon!
Yesterday:
Breakfast:
About 4 ounces of vegan scramble made with Smart Deli veggie ham, tofutti american 'cheeze' slices, tomato, firm tofu. 2 slices of white fortified bread with earth balance.
Spicy Mexican Hot Chocolate made with Soy milk
Lunch:
2 Large pieces of veggie pot pie made with vegan puff pastry, carrots, celery, onion, green beans, broccoli.
Pomegranate and Pear Nantucket Nectars.
Dinner:
Creamy vegetable korma made with green beans, carrot, onion, garlic, ginger, chilis, and cauliflour with cashew cream and coconut milk. Served with cumin rice.
A million ounces of Newman's own Virgin Pomegranate Lemonade
Movie snacks:
Homemade popcorn with salt, black pepper, earth balance, and nutritional yeast
Vegan hazelnut cream wafer cookies
Today:
Breakfast:
Carrot apple and ginger juice with ginseng and vitamin C
Steel Cut oats with half a banana 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts and a drizzle of honey (yes I'm a honey vegan).
8 ounces of fortified soy milk
Lunch:
A cup of Indonesian squash soup made with coconut milk and garnished with spinach
Quinoa salad with currents, red onion, baked eggplant, mint, pine nuts, parsley, olive oil and a couple tablespoons of hummus on top.
(Both of these available at my workplace)
A million more ounces of Pomegranate lemonade
A few sips of chamomile tea
Dinner:
So far? 3 vegan compost cookies. On my way to warming up creamy vegetable korma with cumin-basmati rice!
More of these updates in the future. Look out for more recipes more fun more awesome soon!
Vegan Compost Cookies
Might as well start things off on a sweet note...with vegan baking!
Lately I've become lazy obsessed (ie internet obsessed) with Christina Tosi, baker at David Chang's offshoot from Momofuku-Milk Bar in NYC. I love Christina's bizarre non intuitive/intuitive baking style adding pre baked goods into baked goods recipes and taking flavors from the customer's (and her) childhood and melding them together in simple, yet elegant and fun ways. Now Milk Bar, as amazing and clever as their menu is ,(check out crack pie and cereal milk probably quite easy to veganize...hmmm...) is not the most vegan of places, as you might imagine.
Cookies stacked at Milk Bar.Luckily, the plethora of vegan bloggers is a clever crew, and it's pretty easy to Google your way to a vegan version of almost anything you could dream of. So as my obsession with the idea of Christina's compost cookies grew, and my push back into veganism came closer, all coniciding with a trip to Vermont that would definitly merit snacks, I knew the time had come to rock the vegan compost cookie.
Sometimes I think I have typing fingers of gold when it comes to recipe searches. Seriously. Almost every time I Google an idea for a recipe, I always find a brilliant (if not brilliant with a few tweaks) recipe from someone out there on the internet. Readers who food blog, you are a brilliant lot. This specific recipe for the Vegan Compost Cookie comes from the blog The Runner's Kitchen, a non vegan who generally is working towards building a body for marathon-ing through nutrition and training, from what I can discern. She writes a cute little tale about how she had the Compost Cookies at Milk Bar, and swore she'd create a dairy-free version for a friend of her's. What she came up with was brilliant. I haven't changed it much except for my notes (in parentheses). You can find the orginial blog entry here.
Vegan Compost Cookies (adapted from Christina Tosi of MilkBar and Momofuku, adapted from the Runners Kitchen)
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup packed earth balance (not the same as smart balance, FYI)
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp instant coffee powder (I left this out and it survived, Christina Tosi suggests coffee GROUNDS, you know, compost? Get it?)
- 1 Tbs ground flax (A big bag of ground flax is amazing and will last you forever. Put it on cereal, popcorn, sneak it in pasta sauces, bread, etc. Also you can buy it whole and grind it yourself in a coffee grinder).
- 3 Tbs water
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup oats
- 1 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 BIG handful of chips, roughly crushed (Just keep it salted or flavor free. This could be tortilla, potato, etc, etc...a small 'to go' bag works great. I've used both sea salt kettle chips and Cape Cod chips with excellent results).
- 2 oz. pretzels, roughly crushed (I used 2 large pretzel rods)
- 1/2 cup hazelnuts, chopped (nut of your choice, or leave it out. The second time I made these I used rice krispies and it was brilliant)
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (or 8 oz chopped vegan chocolate of your choice. Remember, Ghiradelli semi sweet chocolate chips are VEGAN and available at most major supermarkets if you can't find sunspire brand or 365 brand (available at Whole Foods Markets).
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat (Not needed, you can earthbalance or cook spray the sheets).
- With a mixer, cream together the earthbalance, sugar, and instant coffee powder
- In a small bowl, whisk together the ground flax and the water until smooth, add the vanilla extract
- Fold the flax mixture into the earth balance & sugar
- In a large bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients (oats through chocolate chips)
- Slowly add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until incorporated
- If the batter isn’t holding together well, try chilling the batter for about 20 minutes
- Scoop rounded Tablespoons of batter on to the cookie sheet and bake for about 10-13 minutes or until golden brown (make sure you watch these, they go fast! Remove when cookies are golden but still a little 'raw' looking in the very center).
- Cool on the baking sheet for a minute or so and then transfer to a wire cooling rack
Cool and eat! More to come this week, hope yours is going great!
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Back like a heart attack!
This blog has been defunct for awhile, between job changes, life changes, 4 months of falling of the vegan wagon (gasp!). But as of yesterday I'm back on the vegan wagon (with an unnamed partner in crime along for the ride), and as of today I'm back on the blogging wagon!
Things I learned while on the omnivorous ride of the past 4 months:
-French cheese is still good, artisinal blues are better. All cheese makes me poofy and ill.
-Local seafood and sushi are still really good. I'm sorry, but they are. But i'm happy to give the sea creatures a break and eat for the earth instead of my own hedonism.
-Apparently I eat smoked meats when really drunk? Then regret it later.
-My sugar and cheese addictions were on super high alert when I didn't have veganism to control what I put in my body.
-I was more tired
-B vitamins are magic.
-The reason I had fallen off the wagon was because I was asking too much of myself and I was bored with the food I was cooking. VEGAN PLATEAU! I'm really happy I'm going to be giving more of a shit about what's going into my body, how it's affecting the earth, and the level of compassion that something as simple as changing my diet can exude.
Alright, enough blabbing, I've got some great recipes ahead including some of my own originals like: Buffalo tofu tacos with local veggie magic slaw, and Vegan cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce!! As well as a few cookbook recipes that I'm trying over the next few nights from this magical book here:
Keep reading and I'll keep writing! Remember you can comment here or reach me at GoddessVT@gmail.com with questions, suggestions, and recipes!
Glad to be back!
Things I learned while on the omnivorous ride of the past 4 months:
-French cheese is still good, artisinal blues are better. All cheese makes me poofy and ill.
-Local seafood and sushi are still really good. I'm sorry, but they are. But i'm happy to give the sea creatures a break and eat for the earth instead of my own hedonism.
-Apparently I eat smoked meats when really drunk? Then regret it later.
-My sugar and cheese addictions were on super high alert when I didn't have veganism to control what I put in my body.
-I was more tired
-B vitamins are magic.
-The reason I had fallen off the wagon was because I was asking too much of myself and I was bored with the food I was cooking. VEGAN PLATEAU! I'm really happy I'm going to be giving more of a shit about what's going into my body, how it's affecting the earth, and the level of compassion that something as simple as changing my diet can exude.
Alright, enough blabbing, I've got some great recipes ahead including some of my own originals like: Buffalo tofu tacos with local veggie magic slaw, and Vegan cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce!! As well as a few cookbook recipes that I'm trying over the next few nights from this magical book here:
Keep reading and I'll keep writing! Remember you can comment here or reach me at GoddessVT@gmail.com with questions, suggestions, and recipes!
Glad to be back!
Monday, January 04, 2010
Quick "Green" Tempeh Salad.
Here's a quick recipe for an easy delicious lunch. Eat with crackers or put on whole grain bread.
Green Tempeh Salad
1 ripe avocado diced
1 package tempeh, cold, crumbled
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 cup vegenase
onion flakes
Mix until combined. Eat!
More entries soon, I have a new camera with a 'food' setting!!!
Green Tempeh Salad
1 ripe avocado diced
1 package tempeh, cold, crumbled
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 cup vegenase
onion flakes
Mix until combined. Eat!
More entries soon, I have a new camera with a 'food' setting!!!
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