With the 4th of July right around the corner, the summer grilling season’s about to hit its peak. The 4th may very well be the actual peak for lots of people.

For vegans and vegetarians fortunate enough to have a largely veg friend group, or a veg party/event to attend, this is always a great time. For those of us with a more “diverse” social group, this can sometimes be a source of stress or anxiety. Amy and I are lucky enough to have a really supportive group of friends, who not only respect our lifestyle, not only cater to our lifestyle when they have parties, but many of whom are happy to eat vegan themselves some or most of the time.

Still, any time you’re in the minority and your beliefs are openly available to public scrutiny–in this case eating–there’s bound to be some conflict, question, or exchange. Over the years, I’ve noticed one really good way to keep this positive is to bring something homemade to grill. Here’s why:

• People are far less likely to criticize something that you made yourself. They may not agree with your beliefs, but they’re your friends, and it’s a bold move to call bullshit on something someone made. It’s a like a personal attack. Invariably, of course, someone will tell you that your homemade brats look like poop. To which you should reply: “That’s funny. So funny that the first time I heard it, I fell off my dinosaur I laughed so hard.”
• In my experience, folks are more curious about homemade grillables. On many occasions they’re even tried our homemade burgers, brats, and patties.
• If you can name all the ingredients in something, it’s not so mysterious. People often ask, “What’s in that?” If you can tell them, it becomes less foreign, more acceptable.
• If you’ve used local, organic ingredients, it’s almost ethically unassailable. The conversation doesn’t always have to be about animal rights. It can be about supporting the local economy, reducing environmental impact, not eating stuff that’s processed, avoiding packaging, steering clear of hormones, food safety, etc. They’re your friends, right? So they’re probably awesome and smart. They like to talk about these things. Any discussion that raises or brings to focus our awareness of the food that we eat is a good discussion. You’re also bound to pick up a few advocates along the way. There are plenty of meat eaters who support local and organic.
• You can vary how “meaty” your burgers/brats/patties are. This ranges from, say, a black bean burger at one end (most people are omnivores, so they do eat beans)–which makes no pretense of being meat–to a seitan brat or barbecued seitan on the other. In the middle, you’ve got stuff like breaded chick(pea) patties, which have a aspire to something chicken-y, but do so in the form of a pretty familiar bean. Generally, the less your grillable aspires to be meat, the less others are likely to criticize and the more likely they are to try one themselves. Small victories, right?

Of course, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t get pumped about grilling veggies and such (in fact, you probably should have some veggies)–asparagus, squash, zucchini, shish-ka-bobs, portabellas, etc–just that there’s something kind of nostalgic and satisfying about having a “traditional” grillable. So why not kick it the fresh, homemade, vegan way?

Some of our favorites are:

Black Bean Burgers

Chick Patties

Vegan Dad’s version of Isa’s Seitan Brats

Memphis BBQ Seitan

Seitan Chik’n Cutlet

Happy grilling!

Hot on the tail of Mark’s “Cooking For One” post, I wanted to chime in with the perspective of cooking for one in my very particular situation: at an artist residency, in a shared kitchen, in a foreign country, as a vegan.  I been fortunate to have the time and space to reflect and observe my habits a lot in the last couple of weeks. I noticed that when we arrived, and I was somewhat stressed with jet lag and a new situation, my eating habits tended toward satisfying cravings, comfort food, and quick fixes–such as fast pastas and a lot of bread and carbs in general.  As I grew more comfortable in my situation, my attention turned toward my health and I realized I needed to put more care (and fresh fruits and veggies) back into my diet.

Here are a lovely breakfast fruit salad and luncheon sammich chock-full of veggies, herbs and slathered in Dijon mustard with soda water and juice.

We’ve also continued eating meals together in a group.  Often, people happily eat vegan food we prepare together, such as this tom yum soup made from scratch by Julie. She kindly made it with veggie stock and had fish sauce available for the non-vegs and tamari for the veg-heads.  It was delicious and I was fortunate to get to eat it again as leftovers.

It helps that there is another vegetarian in the group.  If the main meal involves meat, then we whip up some sort of veggie something and a veggie salad, which everyone can eat.  Last night Julie made lamb (very prevalent in Iceland) and polenta and sauteed mushrooms.  She saved out some polenta for me (and added cheese to it for everyone else) and made the mushrooms vegan so I could partake.  I made these yummy sauteed veggies (a lot of zucchini, garlic, onion and tomato) with fresh thyme and A LOT of paprika, which I have been putting on everything since returning from Hungary in March.  A splash of red wine in with the olive oil made it really flavorful.

Communal eating with new friends in a foreign country is a wonderful opportunity to get to know some new recipes and share food with fascinating people.  I have found that if I am as considerate as possible concerning my dietary preferences and values, people are generally very respectful and accommodating.  Skál!  (Cheers!)

I’m sure you’ll hear more from Mark in the next few days on how he’s fairing without me (poor guy… *wink*).  Next up from me: more eating out adventures around Iceland- in and outside of Reykjavík.

Holy hell, these things are killer! Here’s the recipe I followed on PPK’s Facebook page. I pretty much followed the directions exactly, but I used a yellow onion, which worked out great. We did use some of the smaller rings in addition to the largest rings (love those little guys!) and also made our own breadcrumbs in a food processor instead of using storebought. Those are the only changes.

I would like to try them sometime with the suggested Videlia onions, we just never seem to have any on hand. One suggestion: be sure to time these so that you can eat them AS SOON AS they come out of the oven.  We waited a bit and some of them got a little flaccid as a result.  We served them with BBQ seitan sammiches with the leftover BBQ sauce from the other night, and grilled spicy asparagus (in season- huzzah local eatin’!). This time to maximize the BBQ deliciocity-to-chik’n ratio, Mark cut the seitan cutlets into strips, coated the outside with the requisite rub and sauce and grilled away.  Once finished, he coated with more sauce.  See?

A yummy mid-sping chilly night of grilling and baking goodness, to be sure!

I’ve never been a huge BBQ fan, but Sunday was a great day for grilling and Amy decided it was high time for me to give BBQ another chance.

So I whipped up another batch of seitan chik’n cutlets and we scoured the internets for BBQ sauce recipes. You know who’s awesome at grilling and BBQing? Vegan Dad! Holy crap is there some BBQ action there. We went with the Memphis BBQ Tofu recipe, subbing seitan for the tofu. It was a little sweeter than I like my BBQ sauce, but was delicious nonetheless–and much better than the sauces of yore. Anything with whiskey in it rates high in my book (you may want to test your whiskey…then test again for good measure…I like to test mine on ice).

Dear Peoples: It’s almost summer! Time to dust off the grill, as well as those grilling recipes. We posted last year about making your own black bean burgers–since then, we’ve gotten a pressure cooker and started cooking our own beans. Man, what a difference! This latest batch of black bean burgers was the best we’ve ever made! I can only guess, but I’d wager that not sitting in a can of liquid for weeks/months/years helps these guys stay way more solid.

Observe–these suckers aren’t even baked yet and they’re almost solid enough for the grill! After baking lightly and then grilling, they were perfect. (We doubled the recipe and froze the rest.)

We ate them with this kale (sans sesame seeds, and with S & P). ’twas a well-rounded, satisfying meal! Huzzah!

It’s funny–those brief moments of cooking genius never occur when you think they will; and they’re never associated with a complicated multi-course meal. It’s always when you’re hungry and improvising.

In southeast Michigan, you can get tempeh everywhere. So it’s no surprise that a few different restaurants have tempeh wraps–the TLT at Seva, the lemon tempeh hummus wrap at Aut Bar, tempeh burgers at just about every bar…. Having made a giant batch of hummus for VeganYumYum’s Avocado Wasabi Salad, I was itching to make something with hummus. About two weeks ago, I made a salad with smokey tempeh, so I got the notion to combine to the two.  This recipe is super simple–make a batch of hummus (or buy it, if you want to kick it really easy), saute a little tempeh, chop some lettuce and/or spinach, and you’re set.

Smokey Tempeh Hummus Wrap

• 1 pkg tempeh. cut into strips
• 1/4 purple onion
• 1/2 bag spinach (1/4 lb?)
• 3 large leaves or 6 small-medium leaves of lettuce, cut into strips
• 3 large whole wheat wraps
• 1/4 batch of hummus
  
• ~ 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 capful Liquid Smoke ™
• ~ 2 tbsp peanut oil
• salt & pepper, to taste

For brevity’s sake, I’ll assume you’ve made/bought the hummus already. This may be foolish. But.

Saute the tempeh strips in peanut oil, soy sauce, and Liquid Smoke ™ in a large-ish frying pan over medium heat. Don’t use all of the liquids right away; start with a little peanut oil, then douse the tempeh with about half the soy sauce and Liquid Smoke ™. Once the tempeh is nicely browned on one side, flip and pour in a little more peanut oil and the rest of the soy sauce and Liquid Smoke ™. Salt and pepper to taste.

When the tempeh is browned on several sides, remove from heat.

Slather hummus on one half of a wrap. Place a row of spinach down the center, then a row of lettuce on top of that. Run a row of tempeh down the the center, then garnish with onions and salt/pepper.

Roll the dry half tightly into the hummus-slathered half. Cut the wrap in half on a diagonal.

Wrap extra wraps in plastic wrap for lunches!

I’ve been salivating internally ever since I saw Lisa’s Chik’n Club Sammich during Vegan MoFo. Wait. That seems kind of gross. I wasn’t literally salivating nonstop for three months. I would need an IV to maintain that level of salivation. And you might too.

As you’ve probably learned by now, we’re not super into processed stuff, so I’d really been meaning to make a version using all fresh, homemade ingredients. We used our famous chik’n almond bake breaded tofu (thought this would have been superb with breaded seitan strips too). It was after 9pm when we started, so homemade bread wasn’t in the cards for this incarnation, but also would have been awesome (we just toasted some sandwhich bread). What’s worse, I totally forgot Lisa’s coup d’grace: fakin. Fakin’s a little labor intensive, so the fresh homemade route won’t yield a quick sammich in a pinch. We did, however, make homemade baked fries (we cut these into fry shapes and left out the cayenne) to round this out as one of those perfect healthy “unhealthy” meals that we often crave.

Chik’n Tofu Strip Club Sammich

• 1 lb of extra firm tofu, frozen then thawed
• bread
• lettuce
• purple onion
• tomato
• fakin (optional)
• chik’n almond bake
• safflower oil
• Earth Balance ™ or Vegenaise ™

You’ll want to freeze then thaw a pound of extra firm tofu. This makes it a little spongy and more firm–a better texture for chik’n and also nice in some stir fries. We try to keep tofu in both states on hand. It’ll keep for a very long time in the freezer.

Preheat the oven 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Thaw your tofu. When it’s thawed, squeeze all the water out and cut into strips–you’ll probably want them to be about 2″ x 1/2″ x 1/4″. The strip size is really a matter of preference though. Coat each strip in safflower oil then in the chik’n almond bake. Place on a baking sheet  and cook for about 15 minutes on one side, flip, then cook for about another 10 minutes–until brown and crispy, but not burnt. They will crisp up a scosh upon cooling.

Toast some bread (or pull some fresh bread from the oven). Slather the sammich spread of your choice on said bread. Place as many tofu strips as will cover a piece of bread on once piece. Then add the fakin (if using), lettuce, tomato, and onion, in that order. Cut in half if it strikes your fancy. Serve with fries. Or not. It’s your meal.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to move away from buying a lot of pre-made food is to bake your own bread. For some reason, we struggled against this for years, but our friend Jen recently turned us on to this recipe. The genius of it is upkeep. Make more dough when you run out so you always have it on hand. Then you can always have a loaf in the oven while you’re preparing the rest of the meal. Also, you can make the loaves any size you want (though the recommended size seems to work perfectly for two people) so you don’t end up with more bread than you really want. You can use it for pizza crust, naan, sammiches, croutons, bludgeons, etc.

Super Simple Homemade Bread

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1 1⁄2 tbsp granulated yeast (1 1⁄2 packets)
• 1 1⁄2 tbsp coarse kosher or sea salt
• 6 1⁄2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
• Cornmeal
• (baking/pizza stone)

What’s awesome about this bread is that, if executed properly, it’s a never-ending well of awesomeness. The key here is to always have more dough on hand. Each batch makes 4 medium-sizes loaves. So, when you make your last loaf–make more dough. Don’t wait. Unless you want to wait later. The real key here is discipline. You can use the dough-scrapins from bowl as a starter for your next batch, for added power/glory/flavour.

So, to make the dough:

In a large mixing bowl (resealable/lidded is ideal), combine the yeast and salt with lukewarm water (in theory, 100 degrees Fahrenheit). We usually just use warm-hot tap filtered tap water.

Mix in the flour both gently and gradually, in that order, with a wooden spoon. If necessary, you can use your hands to mix this but don’t knead it. Though dough should still be a little wet.

Now comes that dread beast, the waiting game: cover the bowl with a towel and leave out at room temperature for 2 – 5 hours.

Your dough is now ready for use and/or storage! In theory, you want to refrigerate the dough for 3 hours or more before using; it makes the dough easier to work with. In a pinch though, we’ve used it immediately after two hours. The remaining dough can stay in the refrigerator for up to two weeks (in fact, the flavor “matures” over that time). Leave the lid to the container loose. You can double/triple/quintriple/etc this recipe with no adverse effects. Huzzah!

Time to bake it up!

Sprinkle cornmeal on a working surface (or pizza peal, if you have one). Cut off a grapefruit-sized piece of dough and sprinkle it with flour, stretching the dough out, but keeping it in its ball shape–sort of tucking the dough into the bottom of itself. Like an Escher drawing. This bread should look impossible. Place the ball on the working surface/peal and let sit for 40 minutes. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees and set your timer.

After 20 minutes, put your baking stone and empty broiler/cake pan on the middle rack. Sprinkle flour on top of the loaf and slash 1/4 inch deep with a knife. You can do diagonal lines, little Xs, a hand making the metal sign \M/…

When you reach the final countdown, carefully slide the bread into the oven–you want this to happen in one motion, so you’ll need to perform some sort of zombie-jerk-motion.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown. After a loaf or two, you’ll have a good sense of exactly how much time your particular oven requires. And don’t be too hasty here. I know it looks delicious, but let the bread cool down at least a little so it firms up and you can cut it.

Variations

You can use this dough for pizza crust, naan bread, dinner rolls, etc–merely by shaping it differently. Naan and pizza involve rolling the dough out. Dinner rolls involve making small oblong balls. Experiment here–it’s hard to produce something that isn’t good. After a few days (if by some miracle you fail to eat it–usually the result of making too many loaves at once) you can cut the bread into small pieces; brush/douse with olive oil, garlic powder, and herbs; and toast/bake on high for about 5 minutes to make croutons.

On a cold rainy day, there’s not much better than tomato soup and a grilled cheese sammich. Well, a flying motorcycle, of course. And talking cats. But those things are awesome any day. I’m talking about a specific kind of day, a specific kind of need.

I know there’s a lot of debate about which vegan cheese is the best–but we can circumnavigate that discussion with the help of our friend, the avocado. Somehow, the combination of avocado and tomato perfectly scratches the cheese (and strangely, fried egg) itch. This is something Amy and I have been really into lately: the scratching of the itch. You don’t need a cheese analog, you just need to scratch the cheese itch. You don’t need your MarkMuffin to taste like a real McMuffin(tm), you just want to satisfy that craving. Check it. Seriously.

Grilled Avocado & Tomato Sammich

• 2 slices of bread (ideally homemade)
• 1/2 avocado, sliced thinly
• 2 – 3 THIN slices of red onion
• 3 thin slices of tomato
• Earth Balance ™
• (seasoned) salt, to taste.

This is almost as simple as a traditional grilled cheese. Butter one side of each piece of bread. Fire up a nonstick (or well-seasoned) pan over medium heat. Toss one piece of bread in the pan, buttered side down. Pile on the avocado, then the tomato, then the onion. Salt it. Place the other slice of bread on top, butter side up.

When the bottom piece of bread is golden brown, you’ll want to flip this sumbitch. This is the singular tricky part. You might want two spatulas–one underneath, and one to hold the top piece of bread on. Once it’s flipped, continue cooking until the now-bottom piece is golden brown.

Obviously, you can eat this with whatever you want, but you’ll get maximum enjoyment out of having this with tomato soup. In fact, this is a great way to stretch out a tomato soup. We had it with fresh bread the first night, croutons the second night, and with this sammich the third night. Huzzah!