No, this is not a hilarious dance performed by the natives to this continent–it’s a tofu scramble made with local ingredients, namely wild rice and acorn squash. I like to imagine this as the Thanksgiving Breakfast, pilgrims and natives alike feasting cruelty-free on tofu and native crops. No one gave anyone smallpox and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. Manifest Destiny only required that the food was delicious.

We made this for a brunch this morning (well, this afternoon). This being the Year of the Brunch, it’s been a real challenge to make a sufficient variety of breakfast foods without (a) repeating ourselves and (b) overlapping with what others are making. Remember that brunch where you all made potatoes?

This was inspired by a scramble we had some time back at Seva, a local vegetarian restaurant. It’s a little labor intensive for your usual breakfast, so it’s more ideal for a brunch-type scenario. Accordingly, this recipe is for a double batch–so be sure to halve everything if you’re only feeding a few people and/or don’t want a ton of leftovers.

Indigenous Scramble

• 2 medium-sized white onions, diced
• 2 lbs of tofu, drained
• 1/2 medium – large acorn squash
• 1 cup (uncooked) wild rice
• 2 cups water
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp herbs d’provence
• salt & pepper, to taste
• high heat cooking oil

Preheat your over to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut the acorn squash in half and place on baking sheet in a small drizzle of high heat cooking oil (like Safflower). Bake for 30 – 40 minutes, until you can remove the skin, but the squash is still solid enough to cut into pieces. Don’t worry too much about overcooking it–it’ll still be awesome, but you’ll lose a little something in texture.

Meanwhile, in a medium-sized saucepan, heat 1 tbsp cooking oil over high heat. Add in the wild rice, tossing, and cook for about 3 minutes. Add in the water, bring to boil, then reduce heat and cover, cooking until the water is gone and the rice is done.

Meanmeanwhile, saute the onion in oil in a large pot over medium heat. Once the onions are soft, add in the tofu, crumbling. Now add in the nu yeast and the turmeric. When the squash is done, peel the skin off and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Add it to the tofu. When the rice is done, add that too, Finally, add in the spices, salt, and pepper. Mix it up. Eat it up.

Okay. I know we assured you previously that the hatches were officially battened, that you could rest easy, tucked in for the winter. But, as Derrida suggests, battening is always deferred. There’re always some loose end to tie up.

Remember those herbs from out garden that we hung up to dry? Well, you eventually have to do something with those. It’s pretty easy, actually. Once they’re dry, take them down, untie them, and try to get the leaves off of the stems. This is pretty easy (if not tedious) with thyme and oregano, and slightly more arduous with sage. Additionally, since thyme and oregano have relatively small leaves, you don’t really have to crumble them any more than the what occurs in the stem removal process. They can go directly into spice jars. The sage will need to be crumbled by hand, or even ground lightly with a mortar and pestle. If you’re wondering about the parsley…instead of drying, ours withered and turned brown. Last year, we potted it and it left it through the winter in our three-season room. So, like the rosemary, you may decide against drying the ol’ parsels and just keeping it fresh on hand.

Since we recently got some new spice containers, we had some of our old ones handy for the dried herbs. Be sure to label them with a date.

I first made a version of this with my excellent pals Nick and Uncle Nathan for Friend Thanksgiving years and years ago. I don’t know where Uncle Nathan found the recipe, but over the years it’s become Amy’s and my staple Spanksgiving centerpiece. What’s great about this (aside from being delicious) is that it doesn’t attempt to mock a turkey; this means that (a) if you’re giving spanks with omnivores, they might enjoy this too (Amy’s dad ate some at Spanksgiving and had some instead of turkey the next day for leftovers), and (b) you can start a new tradition that doesn’t ape one you don’t support.

Spanksgiving Faux-Turkey

• 2/3 batch (2 packages if store-bought) of seitan
• 1/2 box of Fillo dough
• buttery spread (I like Earth Balance Whipped Buttery Spread)
• ~6 – 8 pieces of bread
• 1 large (but not huge) white onion, diced
• 1 handful fresh sage, diced (or ~3 tbsp dried sage / 1 tbsp if dried and ground)
• salt
• pepper
• 1 cup veggie stock (I like to use the seitan broth)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

This is all about the stuffing, really.  Either by hand or in a food processor, shred the bread into small pieces and crumblins and dump into a large mixing bowl.  Dice the onion and sage and add to the bread.  Mix the dry ingredients together briefly by hand.  Add the veggie stock incrementally in small pours until the mixture is just moist (you may not use all of the veggie stock–this depends largely on how dense your bread is).  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.  Tear the seitan into smaller pieces (it will probably come in pieces) and form a mound of seitan 8 – 10 inches around in the center of the cookie sheet.

Pack the stuffing over the mound of seitan, preserving the roundness and shape of the mound.

One by one (or two by two like a damned ark if your fillo dough sheets won’t cover the whole mound) place the fillo dough sheets on the mound and brush with melted buttery spread.

That’s right.  EACH layer gets brushed with butter.  This ensures that your crust will be flakier than Lindsay Lohan.

Keep applying dough until you can’t see through it anymore and it’s a solid brown-white in color (you may later find that you like thinner or thicker crust).

Bake until crust is golden brown.

Though it’s really good by itself, I recommend a little gravy to go with it.

Let’s just start this with a picture:

Every year when fall blows in and we buy that first jug of cider, a desire for apple cider doughnuts begins worming its insidious way through our brains. This is fueled largely by nostalgia for visits to the apple orchard as kids. Knowing this does not help quell the desire. What does help is making freaking apple cider doughnuts!

And since we rarely bake sweets, I thought it was only right to finish off Vegan MoFo by making something I wouldn’t normally make, challenging myself a little.

As you’ve quite possibly learned by now, we’re not into frying so Amy hunted down this baked apple cider doughnut recipe. I took great pains to veganize it by, well, leaving out the egg. That simple. They were still light and fluffy, so I’m not really sure what the egg was supposed to do in the first place. Maybe in the olden days people had more eggs than they knew what to do with? Like me and zucchini.

It’s been a long time since I had a proper apple cider doughnut, and these weren’t fried, so I can’t compare very well. Amy thought they were delicious, but not a perfect replica of the platonic form of ‘apple cider doughnut’.

I should mention in advance, that you’ll need a doughnut pan for thus. You can get them pretty cheap in the intarwebs–be sure to get a nonstick one.

In any case, here they be:

Baked Apple Cider Doughnuts

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 1½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• ½ cup apple sauce
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/3 cup apple cider
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine all of the dry ingredients, except the brown sugar, in a large mixing bowl. Combine all of the wet ingredients plus the brown sugar in another, mixing thoroughly. Pour the wet mix into the dry and mix until just moistened.  Lightly oil or spray the doughnut pan and pour enough batter in each pocket to fill about half way. I filled them my first time using the pan and the doughnuts were all huge and lopsided. Caution, dear readers, caution. Bake for 15 minutes, or until they spring to the touch. Let them cool for a few minutes, then remove them from the pan using a knife to pop them out. In a small bowl, mix about 2 tsp cinnamon to 1/4 cup sugar (until it tastes sweet and not too sharp). Spray/brush the doughnuts with oil lightly and dunk the doughnut in the dry mix, coating thoroughly. BooYa!

Eat with hot cider. Or else:

Happy Halloween!

Happy Final MoFo!

For me, cooking is largely a creative endeavor, like making art–something steeped in inspiration and which doesn’t like being bossed around. For the first few weeks, the MoFo was just a great way to push myself a little harder, a context for creation. But in the last few days, it’s become harder–for better or worse. Maybe now is the most important time–when it’s no longer easy and I have to start making real decisions, instead of being blown by the winds of whimsy.

It was in this state that I approached last night’s meal: Seitan Bread Bake, Roasted Acorn Squash Soup, and Scalloped Potatoes. With the additional caveat: I must not produce any more leftovers that Amy won’t eat (it gets a little old eating pot pie for lunch every day for a week). So, I wanted to craft a meal that catered to all of Amy’s cravings.

(I’m feeling a bit loquacious today–feel free to skip to THE ACTION)

Mulling over how to put all of this together without creating a hodgepodge of crap, I took inspiration from this really attractive meal at The Airy Way. It reminded me of two things that I often really like in a meal: lots of different, small portions and a nice mix of complex recipes with simple ones.

We usually approach a soup as a meal, but every once in a while I get a wild hare to do an appetizer-type soup. We had a few acorn squash to use up, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity for Roasted Acorn (and Garlic!) Soup. Riding out the Autumn trend (which happened to be saddled to the Amy’s-Craving trend), it seemed like a good night to take another stab at Faux Gratin Potatoes. We’ve been a little nooched out of late, so we decided that a simpler, cleaner Scalloped Potato might be a nice change.

The surprise champeen of the dinner, to my surprise, was the Seitan Bread Bake. We had tomatoes and bread to use up and Amy mentioned this sort of tomato and bread bake that a friend’s dad used to make. My interest was piqued. Of course, we also nad seitan to use up (there’s a theme here). The original recipe used basil, but we have a mess of pesto in the freezer right now–this, I firmly believe, was the crucial element. I don’t have words for how awesome this stuff tastes. You could prepare it faster than I could describe it.

In any case, here’s THE ACTION:

Roasted Acorn Squash (and Garlic!) Soup

• 2 small acorn squash, cut in half and degutted
• 1 HEAD of garlic
• 1/2 medium-sized yellow onion, diced
• 3 cups veggie stock
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice the acorn squash in half, remove the guts, then place on an oiled cooking sheet. Slice off the top of the head of garlic, place in foil, and douse with olive oil. Bake the squash for 45 minutes and the garlic for 30 minutes (i.e. just put garlic in 15 minutes after the squash).

Meanwhile, sautee the onion in oil or Earth Balance in a medium-sized pot over medium heat, untill soft. When the squash and garlic are done, remove them from the oven and give them at least 10 minutes to cool. Spoon and knife the squash and garlic, respectively, into the pot with the onion. Add in the stock, stir well, then blend with an immersion blender. If you’re using a standard blender, you can put all the ingredients directly in the blender, then transfer to the pot. Blend until very smooth. Add the cumin, then salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with a swirl of Rooster Sauce.

Scalloped Potatoes

• 4 medium – large potatoes, cut into thin disks (peel, if using brown taters)
• 1/2 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1/2 cup cooked white beans, drained
• 1/2 cup ground cashews
• 1/2 cup milk-like product
• tsp ground mustard seed
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp Earth Balance
• salt and pepper, to taste
• bread crumbs (optional)

This is very much like the Al-Faux-Do sauce, but with white beans and a bit more lemon. It’s a bit thicker and, despite the lemon, a tinch less sharp (and even less so after baking).

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare the potatoes. Sautee the onion and garlic in the Earth Balance over medium heat. Once they’re soft, add them to the blender along with the other ingredients (except the potatoes) and blend until smooth.

Put the potatoes in an oven-safe casserole dish and pour the the sauce over them, mixing very thoroughly. The more shallow you stack the potatoes, the faster they’ll and the more bread crumbs you can fit on top. Your call.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and add bread crumbs (if you’re using them). Bake for an additional 15 minutes. Check the potatoes with a fork–if they’re nice and soft, you’re done. Otherwise, cook for an additional 5 minutes and check again. Repeat as necessary.

Seitan Bread Bake

• 2 thick pieces of bread, cut into large cubes (we used our homemade bread; use 3 pieces if using sandwich bread)
• 1 large seitan cutlet (or two smaller ones), cut into large cubes
• 3 small tomatoes (or 1 large tomato–use your judgment), cut into pieces
• 3 cubes frozen pesto (~1/2 cup) OR fresh garlic and basil, minced
• olive oil

Preheat oven to 425. Place the bread, seitan, and tomatoes in an oiled oven-safe casserole dish or cooking sheet with a little depth (there will be a fair amount of oil and tomato juice–so you don’t want a totally flat sheet). Mix them up, so everything is fairly evenly distributed. Douse generously with olive oil, then spread pesto on top (if you’re thawing, you’ll probably need a little olive oil to the pest when warming). Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Remove foil, stir everything thoroughly, and bake for another 15 minutes, until bread and seitan are somewhat firm. Prepare your tastebuds. Fantastic!

It’s that time of year. Well…for us, it’s always that time of year. You have a bunch of veggies in the fridge on the verge of going bad, so you have to take drastic measures and forge a soup from a dearth of disparate ingredients. Some folks loathe this; we  love it. It’s the free jazz of cooking. Maybe. We don’t really listen to free jazz, but it’s what I imagine free jazz to be.

This soup features the last of lots of fall veggies from both our garden and the farmer’s market: eggplant, butternut squash, potatoes, onions, leeks, garlic, carrots, and green bell peppers. It’s rich and savory–perfect for a warm fall day as much as a cold fall day.

Fall Everything Soup

• 1 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 1 medium-sized green bell pepper, diced
• 2 smallish eggplants, cubed
• 2 medium-sized potatoes, cubed (peel ‘em if they’re brown–we used purple)
• 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into half-disks
• 1 very small purple cabbage or 1/3 of a regular purple cabbage
• 3 large leeks (or a handful of small leeks–this is what we got from the farmer’s market)
• 1 regulation-size butternut squash
• 1 head of garlic
• 10 cups of veggie stock
• 1 handful of fresh chives, diced
• 6 fresh sage leaves (or 1 tbsp dried sage), diced
• 1 tbsp herbs d’provence
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 cup of wild rice, cooked in 2 cups of water

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice the butternut squash in half lengthwise and place on a lightly oiled cooking sheet. When the oven is done preheating, pop it in the oven and set the timer for 45 minutes. Sautee the onions, peppers, eggplant, carrots, and potatoes in oil in a large pot over medium heat. When the onions are soft, add in the veggie stock and the herbs. When this comes to a boil, cover and reduce heat, simmering.

Bring the rice and 2 cups of water to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer.

Slice off the top of  a head of garlic. Place on a sheet of aluminum foil, douse generously with olive oil, and wrap tightly. After the squash has been cooking for 15 minutes, pop this in the oven with the squash.

When the squash is done, remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Spoon out the seedy part. Spoon the rest into a blender, along with the garlic (you should spoon out each clove with a knife). Add in enough stock to blend easily and blend. Blend it up! When it’s smooth, add it to the soup.

Stir everything well, and add salt and pepper to taste. You’re almost done. You just need the rice. Once it’s done, add it to the soup and cook for an additional 10 -15 minutes.

You’re done! Huzzah!

Serve with a crusty loaf.

In the IV kitchen, we find that we like cooking lots lots more if everything we need is clean, easy to find, and even…dare I say…pretty.  My friend Lauren cooks in such an attractive way.  She puts her veggies in containers as she chops them, cooking-show style.  I told her I observed her doing this and she denies it, but I saw it!  Mark and I have taken to doing the same thing.  A bowl for the compost stuff and a bowl for each veggie.

As you saw in Mark’s post on containers and bulk food, we have a lot of schtuff to keep organized.  We pick up most of our containers for bulk stuff at thrift stores and I found some lovely packaging labels at an office supply store.  We take the empty containers into the local coop and weigh them before filling them with their requisite contents and write the weight on the back of the tag for future reference.  This keeps us from using as many bags and disposable containers.  If the labels get a little mussed, you can tell that particular ingredient is well-loved (can you tell how much we like salt around these parts?).

We have a pantry with a little broom closet adjacent to it.  We didn’t find ourselves using the closet for much, and were running low on pantry space, so Mark put shelves in the broom closet and voila: more room!  We also mounted some handy shelves onto the wall for more storage.

For awhile there, we had a pretty messy spice situation.  They were in bags, different containers, and were generally mis-matchy and unattractive.  We decided to invest in what I dubbed a spice-lution.  We ordered these containers from a store called Raindogs.  Ordering 30 of them was a bit pricey, which is why we think of it as an investment.  After all, spices are one of the most important aspects of cooking, so they need to be kept in quality containers, away from humidity, excess light and other contaminants.

We were lucky to find room for ours on the side of our fridge since they’re magnetic.  We also liked these jars from Etsy, which are customizable and very attractive, but in the end, went with the ones with optional shake and pour openings.

In terms of fresh food, of course we keep most of it in the fridge like anyone else, but we also like to keep a lot of fruits and veggies that prefer room temperatures close at hand.  We have a little set-up for potatoes, onions, garlic, etc. that we quite like.

The herbs that needed to be brought in for the winter in pots are ready to be clipped for soups, stews and other wint’ry goodness in the greenhouse window over our sink.  Among all of their cactus and succulent friends, we have a healthy rosemary bush, lavendar and thyme.  We dried the rest of the herbs, as mentioned in a previous post.  There are also some dinosaurs, fish, and owls in there for good measure.

Okay now!  What have we learned today?  That’s right: get busy and keep it pretty, people!  Break!

Our neighbor sent us an omni version of this recipe (thanks Adrienne!) for a fall-time powerhouse of a soup. We veganized by subbing in soyrizo for chorizo and veggie stock for chicken stock. Just looking at the ingredients, I think Amy and I were expecting something more like a Zuppa Toscana–a brothy soup with potato chunks and a smidgen of kale. The resulting soup was…unexpected, but delicious–smooth and spicy, with a strange, subtle sweetness from the massive amount of kale. This soup would be a perfect balm for a winter cold or flu.

Spicy Potato & Kale Soup

• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 – 6 cloves of garlic
• 8 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1/2 lb (~ one bag) of kale
• 1/2 lb soyrizo, (it’s really easy to make your own)
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro (optional–this will cool the spiciness a bit and add a little tang)
• 9 cups veggie stock
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
• salt and pepper, to taste

In a large pot, sautee the onions and garlic over medium heat until they begin to brown/become translucent. Add in the veggie stock, crushed red pepper, and 5 or 6 of the potatoes (you’re going to blend this later, so you want to save out as many potatoes as you’d like to chew with your teeth later), bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered. Let the taters cook down for about 30 minutes, then blend–either by pouring everything in the blender in batches (boring) or using your handy-dandy immersion blender (less boring). Add in the soyrizo, raise heat to medium, and cook for another 15 minutes. Lower the heat again, add in the kale and remaining potatoes, and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes, until the kale and potatoes are soft, but not drained of all life. Add in the parsley, cilantro (if you’re using it), and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with crusty bread. I’m serious–the original recipe mandated that this must be eaten with crusty bread. I take these types of orders very seriously.

Just to be thorough, we served ours with crusty bread and croutons made out of crusty bread.

It seems like a lot of us MoFos are on the same page; winter’s setting in and it’s time for soups and taters. We made Chik’n Breaded Seitan Steaks, boiled potatoes (fresh from our garden!), and steamed and lightly sauteed brussel sprouts. ’twas a downhome meal that Jennifer would have been proud of.

We’ve already posted the Seitan Steaks, so I’ll just leave you with a few notes on the potatoes and brussel sprouts.

Boiling potatoes is awesome/easy. Larger potatoes take longer to cook, as do brown potatoes. So. Bring water to boiling and pop in the largest brown potatoes. Add the largest red potatoes shortly thereafter. The largest brown potatoes pictured above required about 15 minutes. The smallest, probably only 6 or 7.

Brussel sprouts are slightly less easy–but totally worth it. Cut off the hard base, like you would a mushroom. Remove any loose leaves. Anything an inch or larger, we usually cut in half–but it’s your call. You’re going to sautee these, so the more surface area, the more buttery deliciousness. Steam these for 5 -8 minutes (depends on how much you’re making), until they’re brighter green and easily pierced with a fork (but not mushy!). When they’re done, sautee them in ~2tbsp Earth Balance(tm) in a frying pan over medium heat. Add salt, pepper, and garlic to taste. Don’t overcook–you’re just adding a little flavor.

The moment you’ve been waiting for is finally here!

Well.

The moment I’ve been waiting for, at least–cooking! All this work putting the gardens to bed, canning tomatoes, drying herbs, and freezing veggies and pesto, and nary a recipe, nary a meal.

As the final chapter in putting our veggies to bed, we needed to use up those last few tomatoes–the green ones on the verge of going bad. I think a lot of people just give up on these guys, but after all that work growing them, I wanted to use ours, come hell or highwater, devil be damned, and any number of other sundry euphemisms. So the logical answer was Fried Green Tomatoes. We rarely deign to fry at home–not because frying isn’t delicious, but because it makes the whole house smell and is better left to the infrequent bar meal–so I thought, why not bake these bastages? It turns out that VeganYumYum was actually using FatFreeVeganKitchen’s recipe for Oven-fried Green Tomatoes to begin with!

Neither Amy nor I had ever actually had fried green tomatoes, though I did see the movie for the first time last year. I don’t think I fully got the significance of the title until making them–taking something that isn’t ripe yet, on one hand, yet also on the verge of spoiling, on the other–and turning it into something amazing. Transforming waste into a delicacy.

I made a few adjustments to Susan’s recipe–essentially merging it with my Chik’n Almond Bake recipe. Additionally, our friend Ryan recently had the genius idea of dipping squash in soda water before battering–this works like a charm for getting batter to stick to slippery veggies.

The tomatoes wouldn’t be enough alone, so we paired this with a pesto pasta–using pesto made this last weekend. F. Yes. Feel the power.

Baked Green Tomatoes

• 4 large green tomatoes, cut into slices
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1/4 cup quinoa flour
• 2 tbsp almond meal
• 1.5 tbsp nu yeast
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp salt, more to taste
• ~1/2 cup soda water

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Slice up the maters. Dunk each tomato in soda water then dunk in the batter, coating thoroughly. Place on an oiled baking sheet. Douse lightly with olive oil and make 15 minutes to a side. You may need to bake an additional 5 minutes to a side, depending on your oven. You want each side to be brown and crispy.

Pesto Pasta

• Pesto
• Pasta

Cook and eat!

I jest. But it is almost that easy. Make as much pasta as you want–hopefully you’ll have made more than enough pesto. About 3:1 dry pasta to pesto is a reasonable rule of thumb. For the pesto, I want to avoid a strict recipe–you often don’t control how much basil you have, so any exact recipe can only lead you astray.

You’ll need:

• basil
• pine nuts
• OR walnuts
• OR both
• olive oil
• garlic
• salt

In a food processor, grind the basil in enough olive oil to keep things moist. Add in nuts and garlic a little at a time–you can’t really over-process this, so better not to overdo it. Pine nuts produce more oil than walnuts and have a stronger taste; keep this in mind as you mix. When the pesto is nice and creamy, add salt to taste.

If you made a lot, you can freeze it in ice cube trays. We used half fresh/half frozen in the pesto pasta and it worked like a champ.

When you’re satisfied with your pesto, toss it with the noodles in a frying pan over medium heat. Add in a few fresh, ripe tomatoes for color and a touch of zang.

Now relax. You’ve done what needed doing. You, my friend, are a true champeen.

Hatches = Battened