Your Vegan Mom

Baked Tostada Shells

 

We eat tostadas approximately once a week.  They are easy, endlessly varied according to what vegetable odds and ends we have on hand, enjoyed by every member of the family in slightly different forms (Desmond - just beans on tortilla, vegetables on side; Felix - pre-salted beans, plain chunks of avocado; Trina and Paul - everything plus hot sauce), and an excellent use of less than fresh tortillas.  The only down side is the tortilla frying.  So we ditched it.  We now smear the tortillas around in a bit of oil and then bake them in a hot oven until crunchy and browned.  Topped with refried beans and a quick salsa or slaw of whatever you have around, dinner is ready.  Here are some topping options:

• corn, bell pepper, onion, cilantro, lime juice, touch of agave, salt and pepper
• cabbage, onions, cumin, oregano, orange juice, lime juice, salt and pepper
• shredded zucchini and carrot with lemon juice, cumin, minced chile, olive oil, salt and pepper
• sliced avocado, squeeze of lime, dash of salt, shake of hot sauce
• leftover tempeh asado

Baked Tostada Shells

• 6 corn tortillas
• about 2 tablespoons mild cooking oil

Heat oven to 400.  Drizzle oil over cookie sheet.  Smear each tortilla around in the oil to lightly coat each side.  Bake for 15 minutes, flipping tortillas once so that they brown evenly.

Fake Meat (and Side Dish Spaghetti)

 

A couple months ago Desmond brought me an overturned frisbee/platter heaped with plastic farm animals.  "Here Mommy, soy chicken.  Soy piggy."

To my horror, he seems to have a pretty matter-of-fact, three-year-old understanding of what meat is.  He gets it.    

It makes me think of that story in Eating Animals*, where Jonathan Saffron Foer talks about that defining childhood moment when a teenage babysitter asked him, "You know that chicken is chicken, right?" 

I'm not sure how I feel about him having this understanding so early.  It's an interesting side-effect of raising a vegan kid, that he's ironically not-sheltered from the reality of meat.  

He sometimes tests my reaction by adding animal products to his "recipes."  He will slowly list the ingredients in his cake, "sugar...flour... and... cow milk," as he coyly watches my reaction.  I respond, again, "Could you make mine with soy milk, please."  And so soy has become the magic vegan modifier.  When I decline the imaginary animal ingredient, he'll hastily add soy, as if duh, that's what he meant all along.  The word soy turns anything unpalatable into a mouth watering food stuff.  Soy spiders have become a popular ingredient in his cooking.  

And he nows claims that, "Soy chicken is my favorite," despite the fact that this is something that we rarely eat and were making a concerted effort to not even say, with the idea that that sort of terminology would be unnecessarily confusing for a kid that had no experience of chicken as a food.

But as Paul is fond of saying, "Parenthood is where your good intentions go to die."  (Desmond is watching TV while I write this.)  And so when the nice Gardein people offered to send us some of their new fake meat products, I said, heck yeah, my kid will totally eat that.  

 

 And he did, a bit.  I find that these sort of foods are more for the grown-ups with the nostalgic food cravings, than for the nice clean little palates of children.  But we were all fans of the crisp breaded chicken strips ("7 Grain Crispy Tenders" in Gardein parlance) that you bake in the oven.  The thin chick'n scallopini made great sandwiches.  The beefless tips were perfect in a quick beef with broccoli style stir fry one night, and I imagine would be super-satisfying in a hearty winter stew.  The buffalo wings were way too spicy for Desmond, and just not enticing enough for Paul and me.  On the other hand, the grown-ups hogged the marinara and daiya cheese stuffed cutlets to ourselves along with some side dish spaghetti after the kids went to bed.  Ah, tasty, oozy nostalgia.    

And in case you find yourself in possession of some of that fake chicken or just in need of one of those somewhat instant meals that you can pull together when you don't think you have any food in the house, have some -

Side Dish Spaghetti  

This is not the sort of dish that you follow a recipe for.  Let's just talk it through.  

You'll need:

•  spaghetti (This tip recommends a nickel-size serving for your average adult, a dime for a child and a quarter for a big eater.  That's if you're gripping the uncooked spaghetti in the ring formed by your thumb and index finger.  But with practice, you just know.)   
• olive oil or non-dairy butter (About a tablespoon per serving, but just swirl or scoop it in until it looks right.  You can add more or less to your own taste.  Because you're going to add moisture with the starchy pasta water you have wiggle room on how much oil you add.)
• minced garlic (About a clove per serving, more or less depending on how much you like garlic.)
• nutritional yeast (About 2 teaspoons per serving - this will add some body to the sauce as well as a bit of nutritional heft and that mild cheesy flavor.)
• pasta water (about 1/4 cup per serving, but add more if it seems dry.  Conversely, if it's too wet, either add a bit more nutritional yeast, or cook it off.)
• italian parsley (about 2 teaspoons minced per serving - if you don't have this on hand it's not the end of the world.  You can make do without, or maybe you have something else green you can replace it with?  A handful of shredded baby spinach would work.)

While your spaghetti boils, gently heat a swirl of olive oil or a pat or two of butter in a big skillet (or a small one if this is just for you).  Add your garlic and stir it around until it smells delicious.  Don't let it brown.  Use tongs or one of those big claw-like spaghetti spoons to fish the pasta out of the pot and into the garlicky oil. (If your pasta isn't just al dente at the moment that your garlic is fragrant, take the skillet off the stove and wait for the pasta to catch up.)  Scoop some pasta water onto the pasta.  (Add a little bit more than you want in the end because the pasta is still going to absorb a bit of water and some will cook off.)  Add some nutritional yeast and minced Italian parsley and stir it around.  Let the whole thing simmer for a minute until the pasta is toothsome-tender and the flavor bits are clinging to the pasta.  

 

*Did you read it?  I really don't like reading about sad animals, but I really do like good writing and Jonathan Saffron Foer, and I think this book is shockingly good.  He coaxes you in with warm writing and funny stories and then sneaks in all sorts of important information.  It's so well done.  What did you think?    

Mac 'n Cheese Bites

When we last spoke, I was making dinner.  I had seitan, potatoes, and kale to turn into some sort of meal for the family.  Remember?  It was Friday.  It had been a pretty ho-hum dining week in our house, and I was feeling ready to turn it around with a solid end-of-a-crazy-week meal.

And I did.  Friday night's dinner was so freakin' delicious.  I ditched the potatoes, and boiled some spaghetti.  I tossed it with some butter (Earth Balance), minced garlic, nutritional yeast, a bit of the pasta water, some finely chopped italian parsley, and salt.  Tasty and simple.  I sauteed the kale in olive oil with more garlic and salt, and squeezed in a wedge of lemon at the end.  I browned the seitan cutlets in a bit of olive oil, and heated up the leftover spaghetti sauce.

I served the cutlets drizzled with tomato sauce, next to the simple, cheesy spaghetti, and the garlicky greens.  It was a perfect Friday night meal.

But, in no way related to mac 'n cheese?  I'm getting there.

The next morning, we needed a restorative weekend breakfast to continue cleansing our palates of the preceding five days.  We had odds and ends of the previous night's dinner leftover, and we decided to put them into a frittata.  I whipped up an eggy mixture (inspired, as always when breakfast calls for some sort of structured egg-type dish, by Susan Voisin's mini quiche recipe) and stirred in the leftover pasta and the finely chopped sauteed kale.  I poured this mixture into a well-greased and parchment-lined cake pan and baked it at 375 for about 45 minutes, until it was firm in the middle and browned on top.  

We ate wedges of the frittata drizzled with that never-ending tomato sauce and thick slices of whole grain toast.  Good, good breakfast.

And do you know what it reminded me of?  The baked mac 'n cheese that my dad made when I was a kid.

You know those chewy end bits?  

So the next day we put that action to work on some mac n' cheese, in bite-size form.  You could, and in the future I intend to, add some shredded greens or whatnot, to turn these into little complete meal nuggets.

Not fine dining, but incredibly practical when you have a toddler in the house, or I suppose when you have some sort of big sporting event to watch on the T.V.

And so, so delicious.  

Mac 'n Cheese Bites
I don't use fake cheese a lot, but it's pretty essential here.  I tried to use a nutritional yeast based cheese sauce, but they turned out too creamy, not enough chewy. 

1 1/2 c. elbow macaroni, boiled in salted water, and drained
1 1/2 c. grated cheddar (I used Follow Your Heart)
2 T. minced green onion (yellow onion works too)

eggy mixture:

1 package firm silken tofu
1/4 c. soy milk
2 T. nutritional yeast
1 T. corn starch
1 T. butter (I used Smart Balance Light)
1/2 t. salt

Heat the oven to 375.  Grease two muffin pans with cooking spray.  

Whir all the ingredients for the eggy mixture in the blender or food processor until smooth. 

In a large bowl stir together the macaroni, the grated cheese, the minced onion, and the eggy mixture.  Spoon into the prepared muffin pans.  

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes or until the edges are nicely browned and the middle is firm.  

Cool in pan for a few minutes before you gently dump them out.  

Makes 18 smallish muffin-size macaroni bites or 48 tiny mini-muffin bites.  

And if you would like to turn this into a whole big trashy finger food buffet, you might add:

onion dip

meatballs

tater tots

What the Jaconi Bierys Ate for Dinner

besides chocolate chip cookies

I do not write about everything we eat.  The mundane, the emergency sustenance, the unattractive* do not generally get photographed.  And that is really for the best.  You do not need to know how many tofurkey sandwiches and tangerines we eat in a week, but the thing is, maybe every once in awhile there is value in jotting down just exactly what a normal vegan family eats in a normal harried week.  Not the pretty ideal.  No complicated recipes to follow.  Here is simply what we had for dinner - 

Saturday: This pasta, but cleaning-out-the-kitchen style with the dregs of a bag of frozen spinach and the same of corn in place of the swiss chard.  Also, I skipped the garlic, and added about 2 - 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast at the end to help bring it all together.  

Sunday: BBQ seitan and fried potatoes (but there was Italian parsley in the aioli dipping sauce I made - does that count as a green vegetable?) 

Monday: stir-fried chickeny seitan with thai basil from Hot Sour Salty Sweet and brown rice (This was really good and simple, and used a whole cup of thai basil, and a ton of garlic.  Yum.  Also, this book is just a pleasure to visit.)

(The boy had brown rice balls, plain seitan, and frozen berries.)

Tuesday: Take-out burritos at my mom's house

Wednesday: Rigatoni with jarred sauce, I threw in about a 1/4 cup nutritional yeast to make myself feel a tiny bit better about the near absence of nutritional value in this "meal"

Thursday: Burgers (Amy's Bistro  - I don't like these.) with grilled onions, barbecue sauce, and avocado on toasted sourdough

(The boy had chunks of burger with sauce to dip, chunks of avocado, and a piece of wheat toast.)

Friday: Well, that's today.  As you can see, this has not been a super exciting or incredibly nutritious week on the dinner front.  So who know, maybe I'll make up for it tonight?  I have red potatoes, russian kale, and seitan cutlets, so we'll be cooking that up in some fashion.  

Let's share.  What was the tastiest real-live, un-photographed dinner you ate this week?   

*Yes, I do realize that the last thing I wrote about was a slab of oatmeal.  I said generally.

Vegan Cheese Sauce Mix

As I told you yesterday, I love to have this easy cheese mix from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Cooking on hand for emergency last minute meals.  It's as simple as the Kraft of your youth with less orange flavor and cardboard packaging.  Here is the recipe, just as it appears in the book, reproduced with the permission of the very nice authors.  We have made it three times, so clearly we like it, but next time I'm going to cut back on the garlic and onion a tiny bit.     

3/4 cup raw cashews or almonds
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds 
1 cup nutritional yeast
2 TB. arrowroot 
2 tsp. dry mustard
2 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. onion powder
2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. paprika 

1. Place cashews, oats, and sunflower seeds in a food processor fitted with an S blade, and process for 2 or 3 minutes until finely ground.  Scrape down the sides of the container with a rubber spatula.  Add nutritional yeast flakes, arrowroot, dry mustard, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and paprika, and process for 1 minute longer.

2. Transfer mixture to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for up to 2 months.

3. To prepare cheese sauce from mix, whisk together 1/2 cup vegan cheese sauce mix and 1 cup water or soy milk in a small saucepan, and cook over medium heat, whisking often, for 2 or 3 minutes or until thickened.  This makes 1 cup vegan cheese sauce.  Serve as a sauce with raw or steamed vegetables, baked potatoes, pasta, or other dishes, or use dry mix to season and flavor sauces, soups, vegetables, or popcorn.  

Variation: For a nut-free version, use an additional 1 cup rolled oats to replace the cashews and sunflower seeds.  For a quick and easy preparation, replace cashews, rolled oats, and sunflower seeds with 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour or other flour of choice, and simply stir together with the remaining ingredients in a medium bowl.

Thyme-ly Tip: (It took me about 100 pages to stop expecting herbs in these sidebar tips.  This book is rife with those characteristic Complete Idiot puns.  After I got over my own idiotic herb confusion, I was really surprised at how many of these tips I had marked as quite useful bits of information.) To make vegan fondue, cook together 2/3 cup Vegan Cheese Sauce Mix, 1 1/4 cups soy milk, 1 1/2 teaspoons light miso or tamari, and a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg or black pepper.  If you're in a festive mood, add a little red or white wine.  Or use 2/3 cup Vegan Cheese Sauce Mix, a bottle of your favorite beer, and a little chili powder or hot pepper sauce.  (Clearly, I want beer cheese.)

The book is filled with those variations and tips - I like that - it means that there are about three times as many recipes as it appears at first glance.  

And finally, thank you so much for all of your thoughtful comments yesterday.  What a treasure trove of easy meal ideas, and just all sorts of nice sharing.  Man, I love the Internet and all you people.