VeganMoFo: Happy Birthday, Grandma!

I made three batches of my Grandma's Wacky Cake recipe today.  One to take to a work outing, one to take to a meeting, and one for us to keep all to ourselves.  (Two of these were in cupcake form for easy eating.)

Happy birthday, Grandma!

And what a coincidence.  It's my Grandma's birthday today!

An already-vegan recipe, developed as a result of rationing during WWII, Wacky Cake is a chocolate cake made with vinegar (wacky!) and no eggs or milk. This is a great cake to throw together when you don't have a ton of ingredients hanging around and it comes together quickly.

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
6 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
12 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 cups cold water
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions: Mix dry ingredients directly in rectangular cake pan. Create a well in the dry mixture. Add different wet ingredients and combine. Bake at 350* for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

I made a simple ganache icing, mixing cocoa powder, powdered sugar, canola oil, soy creamer, and vanilla.  Nummers.

Vegan MoFo: Homemade Chai

Confession time.  I'm Amanda and I'm a chai-aholic.  I'm also pretty opinionated when it comes to ingredients in my chai.  I like a super peppery and sweet, not too clove-y chai.  And I definitely don't like wintergreen in my chai.

Now that we have that out of the way, would you like to see how I prepare chai at home?  I'm sure it's not traditional, but it's pretty great if the above chai guidelines work for you.

You'll need a smallish saucepan, a mortar and pestle (or something to grind/pummel spices), fine-meshed strainer, and something like a pitcher into which you'll transfer hot liquid.
Makes 7 3/4 cups tea!

Ingredients:
20 green cardamom pods
1 1/2 tsp peppercorns (I usually use black, but today used tri-colored)
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
5 pieces crystalized ginger, ripped into pieces
1 bay leaf
6 cups water
8 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
4 tsp loose black tea (Assam works the best)
sugar to taste (I used 7+ teaspoons)
1 1/2 cups rice milk
1/2 cup soy creamer or soy milk

1.  Beat up the cardamom, peppercorns, and cumin.

Before/ After the spice beating.

2.  Bring water to a boil in the pan, then reduce to a summer.  Add the cardamom, peppercorns, cumin, ginger, and bay leaf.  Simmer for 20 minutes.

Before/ After 20-minute simmer sesh.

3. After 20 minutes, throw in the cloves, cinnamon, and tea.  Let brew for 2 minutes.

4.  Pour liquid through the strainer over a pitcher (make sure the pitcher can handle hot liquids!).  Discard the spices and tea.

5.  Pour the tea back into the pan and add the sugar and milk.  Heat through and serve!

Vegan MoFo: Milkshakes are pretty great

Milkshakes. They're pretty fantastic, amiright?

My faves to find around town include The Chocolate Moca from Back to Eden and the Strawberry shake from Sip.

But you know what the very best milkshakes are?  Those shared with friends.

Tommasina and I made milkshakes today with fresh peaches from the CSA box, a banana, almond milk, and So Delicious vanilla ice cream.

Do you have a favorite milkshake flavor?

Vegan MoFo: Pizza Night

It's pretty sweet having bread master, Julian, staying with us for a bit.

Among other tasty treats, last week he made a batch of pizza dough from The Bread Bakers Apprentice, letting it hang out in the fridge until we were ready to use it. The next day he harvested a ton of basil from the garden and whipped up a healthy amount of pesto, some of which is in the freezer, waiting to be used.

Mighty fine bubbly action.

We had quite the pizza feast.  Toppings included the pesto, tomato sauce, melty gooey Follow Your Heart, black olives, sun dried tomato spread, shaved fennel, mushrooms, arugula, red onion slices, and fresh avocado.  I throw together a salad to go along with our carbfest- arugula, chickpeas, thinly sliced red onion, diced apples, and raw pumpkin seeds, tossed with olive oil, apple cider vinegar, nooch, and salt and pepper.

We were loosing daylight, so sadly four pizzas went unphotographed!

Tonight, Julian is cooking up an Indian feast (which I think you'll be able to read about here tonight).  I'm sitting on my butt, MoFoing while inhaling the aromas coming from the kitchen.  It's pretty nice to have someone else cooking after you've worked all day!

You three, pose awkwardly with your pizzas!

Vegan MoFo: A Quick Weeknight Meal

Quick!  Dinner time is approaching and you haven't planned a meal for your family.  What should you make?  Last night I faced this very dilemma (as I do multiple times a week) and made something that all four of us proclaimed 'downright tasty'!

And so a creamy (and healthful) pasta dish made its way out of the kitchen and into the tummies of our household.

Remember that delicata squash I received in my CSA this week?

Well, I cubed it and set it steaming for a few minutes while I started on the the rest of the meal.  I based a sauce off of the cheeze sauce in Vegan Diner, working with what I had on hand, adding some silken tofu that was open in the fridge and the delicata squash.  The squash added an even creamier texture to the sauce, packed in some nutrients, and added a greater depth of flavor.  Try it!  (I wouldn't recommend summer squash, though.  I wouldn't recommend summer squash in general- blech!)

I boiled some pasta, throwing in collard ribbons during the last minute of cook time.   Then I tossed the pasta and sauce together, topped the dish with more sauce, then a pile of collard ribbons, and finally some chopped tomatoes from a friend's garden.

Crappy night-time photo.  C'est la vie.

Voila!  A quick, tasty, and healthful weeknight meal, featuring collards from our garden!

Vegan MoFo: Pie!

Have you ever been to a pie potluck?  I had never heard of a pie potluck and thought that I was a genius for coming up with the idea, but apparently they've been done before!  Why a pie potluck you ask?  Well, I LOVE pies, but they take too much time and patience to make for just a regular ole occasion, so I never make them.  Well, it was my six year veganniversary last week, so I decided to throw a pie potluck in celebration.

In addition to a big salad (we needed something green to go with all the pies!), I made a pumpkin pie and the broccoli quiche from Vegan Brunch.

The pumpkin pie recipe is one I've been working on for a while.  I use the Libby's recipe from the can and veganize it.  I've tried different things.  This attempt came out a little too pudding-y, so I'm not going to post the recipe yet.  The flavor was perfect, I just need to tweak the consistency.  Matt made a raw fruit pie with a macadamia/date crust and cashew cream that was pretty wonderful.

Other Portland MoFo bloggers were in attendance.  You can read all about L&J's adventures in pie-making over at Of Capsicum & Things.  Their blackberry/apple and mini pot pies were a wonderful addition to the potluck!  Kittee has been keeping everyone on edge of their seats by releasing the secrets to her mulit-layer mini pies post-by-post.  I wish I could have gone back for seconds, but everyone snatched up their portions and that was that.  Also in attendance were Tommasina and Julian from Kale Them with Kindness.  You can see Tommasina's beautiful blueberry lattice pie in the photos above.  Julian made awesome apple hand pies that were being glazed when I was snapping photos.  Panda With Cookie whipped up some super tasty peanut butter chocolate whoopie pies.

Of course I didn't take photos of everything at the potluck.  Suffice it to say, with 15+ folks in attendance, the potluck was pretty epic.  Will do again!

PS- Go win some beans by entering a giveaway posted  by yours truly.

Vegan MoFo Day One!

Welcome, Mofies, to another year of Vegan MoFo!

My garden blog will be shifting gears for a little while.  During the month of October, you will find a new post about vegan food every day here.  While I have chosen to go theme-less this year, you can expect lots of dishes with ingredients from our garden.

This is my fourth year participating in Vegan MoFo and the third year that I'm lucky enough to be part of the amazing team of volunteer organizers.  This year, I'll be doing the Iron Chef Challenges over at veganmofo.com .  Follow along, won'tchya?

Another exciting feature of MoFo this year is the arrival of my best friend, Tommasina.  She and her partner have decided to make Portland home, at least for a little while.  And they're staying with us as they get settled with jobs and a place to live.  This means lots of yummy homemade food is being created in our house!  Aaaand I persuaded them to blog along over at Kale Them With Kindness.  Go say hello!

Got beet juice?

Tommasina made fresh juice from the leftovers of the previous CSA box.  Cheers!

Emerson waited in vain for juice to spill.

To coincide with the arrival of my CSA box each week, Mondays will feature my fruit and veggie allotment.  So here it is:

The sunflower is actually from our garden, not the CSA.  Isn't it a monster!

Clockwise from the top left: 4 ears of corn, 1 delicata squash, 1 white onion, 2 tomatoes, 3 heads of cabbage, 2 zucchini, 2 apples, 3 purple plums, 7 white peaches, 5 red plums, 8 jalapenos, 2 green bell peppers, and 2 yellow squash.

I can't wait to read and comment along with the Vegan MoFo community!  Happy MoFo!