Chili Cheese Dogs!

YES, chili dogs! I made the buns using the recipe in Vegan Diner. I used active dry yeast and proofed it (put in the warm soymilk and sugar for 10 minutes before adding to the mixture). I don't keep instant yeast in my pantry. This recipe has not failed me and I've made it 3 times now. I used a 50/50 split of whole wheat pastry and all purpose flours for these hot dog buns. I made a simple chili by cutting this recipe in half and cooked the beans and the chili in my little slow cooker. I used Daiya harvati for the cheese and Field Roast Frankfurters for the hot dogs. Yum! Perfect meal for summertime!

March Against Monsanto

Last Saturday, I participated in the global March Against Monsanto. I was surprised to see a couple hundred people at a protest in Houston, but it wasn't as exciting as protests I've attended in other cities. The march route was pretty short and most people weren't even chanting. Oh well. Still a fun experience with my friends. I went with a bunch of vegans, including a law student guy. We had a great conversation on the march. We had lunch at Freshii at the Galleria, a fancy mall in a wealthy area. We went out to the route and got some flyers to hold up. I got a sign from a mother who couldn't hold two signs and push a stroller. I handed the sign off to someone else when we decided to leave. Recycling at its finest! After being out in the sun, I decided to make a simple dinner - basmati rice, frozen veggies, tofu (quickly pressed), and tamari ginger sauce from The 30 Minute Vegan's Taste of the East. Quick & easy!

Chocolate Raspberry Pie

This was supposed to be a tart, but I do not own a tart pan. This came out as a very thin pie in my pie pan. Whoops. The pie crust was a little difficult and stuck to the pan in a few places, even though I sprayed baking flour spray on the pan first. Oh well, the pie was still tasty! I would love to get a copy of the Whole Grain Vegan Baking book that contains this recipe, since it was so highly praised on the Olives for Dinner blog here. Love that blog and all its cool molecular gastronomy posts! This pie was well received at a potluck at my friend's house this past weekend. I joked that all the pies I've brought over look exactly the same - brown.

Vitamins!

I'm a vitamin addict. I found out one of my supposedly vegan vitamins was not actually vegan. They were marked vegetarian, but the WF employee assured me that they were vegan. I didn't look into it and recently discovered they use sheep's wool to make lanolin, which is a precursor to synthetic vitamin D3. The company was feeding the lanolin to algae and calling that vegetarian. Ugh. I'm now taking Mega Food's vegan daily vitamin, a vitamin D2 supplement (D2 is usually the safer vegan option for vitamin D), and an iron/B12 combo. The vegan daily does have iron, but only 75% of the daily recommended amount. I've been keeping my iron in the good range taking 122%, so I'll need to consider if I need the 200% the two supplements provide together.

Eli's Earth Bars

I've seen Eli's Earth Bars several times in the Whole Foods' candy aisle, but the name makes them sound like health food. They're actually candy bars! I learned this on Food Fight's facebook page last week. There are two bars at my store - peanuts/peanut butter/caramel/chocolate and almonds/coconut/caramel/chocolate. The coconut almond bar was my favorite, because it reminded me a lot of a Samoas cookies. The peanut bar reminded me of a Snickers since it had big chunks of nuts in it. I'll buy these again since my WF store no longer carries Go Max Go bars. :)

Beyond Meat Pot Pie

There is a new faux chick'n product out called Beyond Meat. I've read reviews about it that were really positive, but one of my friends gave it an OK review when it was served at a local pizza place. I didn't intend to try it anytime soon, but I saw a $1 off coupon on facebook. When I went to my local Whole Foods to buy a pack, it was marked as a sale item with $1 off. With $2 in savings, I figured I had to buy it for $1.99! That's cheaper than any other fake meat product. Period. Even a bag of Gardein is $5-$7. I recently saw a recipe for potpie on Vegan Heartland that got me considering Beyond Meat as something to buy. Once I picked up the package, I knew I was going to make that potpie! I decided to use solid coconut oil instead of shortening, so I basically had a biscuity crumble topping and a bottom layer pressed into the pan. Not exactly the crust as intended in the recipe, but I couldn't bring myself to use 1 cup of shortening for a dish I would be eating by myself as two dinners. The Beyond Meat strips were tasty, but a little soft. I was expecting a little more texture, even though they are chewy. They do look meaty though. I chopped them into cubes and they almost looked like precooked chicken cubes. Weird! This potpie was tasty! Don't judge that I'm using a square pan, I need my pie pan for tomorrow's dessert. :)

Tamale Casserole

I signed up for VegNews email a while back. A recent email included a recipe for tamale pie by Betsy DiJulio. She wrote several Mexican-themed recipes for the magazine recently. I was able to find a copy of the recipe online here, but it's not easy to read. I soaked one cup of dried black beans and cooked them in my little Crockpot. I also made my own seitan. I used this recipe from FatFreeVegan for the seitan, but used Mexican spices instead of the garlic and ginger listed. I also didn't add nutritional yeast this time because I'm out of it. I like to mix the peanut butter, soy sauce, and sesame oil together first, before adding the water. I find that recipe to be a versatile baked seitan recipe. I used all the black beans (slightly more than 2 cups cooked) and all the seitan to make my filling. There was no way that all that food was going to fit into a little pan, so I used my 9"x13" casserole dish. For the masa harina layer, I used coconut oil instead of canola oil. Gotta love buying a Costco size jar of coconut oil. I served my tamale casserole with avocado cubes. Yum!