Bon Matin Muffins

Muffins that scream good morning!

Here they are! Screaming at you!

BON MATIN GOOD MORNING GOEDEMORGEN GUTEN MORGEN

Got this recipe from "Vegan With A Vengeance". Changed it up, just a teensy bit!

1/2 cup raisins
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup millet flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 tsp salt
4/5 cup soy milk
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups grated carrot
1/4 cup hemp seed hearts
1/4 cup cocoa nibs

I decided to add the hemp seeds because they're full of good fats, vitamins and minerals. They also add a nice nutty flavor and a little bit of seedy texture.

As for the cocoa nibs, I personally tried them a few months ago when I went to the Theo chocolate factory here in Seattle. They gave us samples of tasty goodness throughout the tour, including these little cocoa nibs. The nibs are just cocoa beans that have been separated from their shell and roasted. They're full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They kind of taste like ground espresso beans; not sweet, but cocoa-y and crunchy. Adds a GREAT texture to baked goods!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Put lil' papers in your muffin tin.

Soak the raisins in a bowl of hot water (so they get all nice and plump) and begin preparing the batter.

In a large mixing bowl, mix flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

Create a well in the center and add the milk, oil, brown rice syrup, and vanilla; mix with a wooden spoon until just combined.

Fold in grated carrots, drained raisins, cocoa nibs, and hemp seed hearts.

Fill muffin tins 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 18 - 22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean. Let cool on a cooling rack.

EAT THEM THANGS

RATINGS:

Deliciousness: 4/5
Variety of textures, just the right amount of sweetness, a nice cakey crumble. It's great! Not life-changing, but delicious enough to be very happy afterwards. :)

Ease of Preparation: 3/5
Grating carrots takes a long time. Other than that, simple.

Prettiness: 4/5 
Look at all them colors and stuff.

Seitan-ic Delightfulness (Piles of Shit)

Seitan!

Now before you whip out your holy water and 3-foot-tall crosses, let me explain myself.

Seitan is a meat substitute made from wheat gluten flour. It's PACKED with protein and tastes eerily like meat. It even has that smokey, earthy flavor that meat has.

Seitan is delicious specifically as a beef substitute, which is probably why I rarely use it (I never particularly loved beef). The other reason I never really used seitan?

Wheat meat is PRICEY, ya'll.

So I conducted an experiment. I invested in a $6 bag of wheat gluten flour and decided to try my hand at making this stuff myself. To see if A) I could do it, and B) if it were cheaper.

I used Isa's recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance!

Homemade Seitan Pg 157

1 cup vital wheat gluten four
3 tbsp noochy (nutritional yeast)
1/2 cup cold veggie broth
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, pressed or grated on a microplane grater
4 more cups veggie broth
4 cups water
1/4 cup soy sauce

So to start, you will be mixing the wheat gluten flour and noochy together. :)

Then you're gonna whisk together your cold veggie broth, soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic.

 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine!

Then comes the fun part. KNEAD THIS CRAP!

When you poke it, it should be a little bouncy because of the gluten. :) Heeheeheehee...it's fun to poke!

I forgot to mention that your four cups of water / four cups of veggie broth / 1/4 cup soy sauce should be getting ready to boil in a huge pot on your stove.

When you've got your dough kneaded and your soy sauce / veggie broth mixture is boiling, cut up your seitan into chunks. It should look disgusting, like piles of shit.

I didn't take any more pictures of the next few steps. Why? Because these little turds are then put into a pot of boiling brown water. Appetizing? If you find a public toilet appetizing, then perhaps.

Regardless, you should know that you're supposed to simmer these bad boys for 45 minutes in a pot with the lid loosely covering it. Then you let them sit for 15 minutes and then chop up your turds; then store them in the poop-water until you're ready to use them. Gross.

HOWEVER.

This really is seitan, and it really does taste like a meat substitute, and it really is EXTREMELY high in protein. It's good stuff, guys. I also learned that it is CHEAPER to make this shit than to buy it; I made a huge amount of seitan for about $3 worth of ingredients.

RATINGS:

Deliciousness: 4/5 
It tastes like seitan, which is excellent! It's just as legit as the store-bought stuff. Next time I'll spice it up, maybe throw in some more noochy and a little basil.

Ease of Preparation: 3/5
Kinda messy, kinda time-consuming. But not easy to mess up.

Prettiness: 1/5
IT LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE PILES OF SHIT. PILES OF SHIT SITTING IN A TOILET.

Open Sesame

My obsession with Isa has gone overboard. <3

The other day, a friend of mine invite me over for some delicious vegan pizza from Cafe Flora. Yum! So I decided to bring a side dish of some sort as a way to feel less mooch-y. :-]

So I decided to go with Isa's Vegan With A Vengeance again. My crush on Isa has taken over my life, and now I need to constantly cook her delicious recipes as a way to cope with it.

Sesame Asparagus Pg 124

So to make this deliciously simple asparagus, you need only have asparagus (duh), sesame oil, 2 garlic cloves, some red pepper flakes, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame seeds.

I didn't have straight up sesame seeds, so I used this black sesame seed furikake I had lying around.

Also, I like to play with my food.

 
So anyways, you sautee some minced garlic in some sesame oil....

Then you throw in some soy sauce and rice vinegar...

Then you throw in the 'sparagus! And sesame seeds!

THEN YOU FIERCELY COOK THAT SHIT!

THEN IT SHOULD BE DONE IN ABOUT 2.4 MINUTES BECAUSE DAMN DO THOSE LITTLE TREE SHAPED VEGGIES COOK FAST!

 
This made my whole apartment floor smell like sesame oil deliciousness for about 3 hours, by the way. If you ever want to make your  neighbors your friends, this is a good way to do it. Cook this shit, then invite them over to eat it.

Alternatively, if you want to piss them off, cook this shit then stand in your doorway and point and laugh at them and tell them you're not letting them eat you're delicious asparagus because they aren't worthy.

So anyways, there you go. Enjoy your veggies.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 5/5
Took approximately 10 minutes. I like that.

Deliciousness: 4/5
A simple side dish, not overpowering and not bland. Would go well with many things.

Prettiness: 4/5
Cute little asparagus polka-dotted with sesame seeds! <3

Seaweed In The Sky With Diamonds

Vegan With A Vengeance is cool.

So I decided to make...

Hajiki-Chickpea Salad Sammiches Pg 106

I FREAKING MISS TUNA FISH SANDWICHES. I WANT SOME TUNA FISH SANDWICH DELICIOUSNESS RIGHT NOW. LUCKILY, I STILL HAVE A FUCKTON IN THE FRIDGE AS LEFTOVERS FROM MY RECIPE CONCOCTION.

So how in the hell do you make tuna fish sandwiches vegan? Well. For the tuna-y texture, you're going to use....

MASHED UP CHICKPEAS!

And then for the fishy flavor, you're going to use...

HAJIKI SEAWEED!

I would consider myself a seaweed freak. I even have giant chunks of seaweed in my vegan shampoo bar (it's called Seanik, I got it from Lush, GO GET SOME NOW).

So when I opened this baggie and was like WHAT THE FUCK!? You know this seaweed is some weird shit.

I guess I'm used to sheets of shiny seaweed that have a mild flavor and a slight crunch. These weird little things looked like dried up, burnt worms. They were super hard. They smelled like a fish's ASS.

I was displeased.

So being who I am, (aka: a person who eats grass on occasion because I'm a fucking weirdo), I decided to just go ahead and try it. Even though it made me want to barf all over myself.

So here's what you do with this shit: You pour a little hot boiling water over it. Then you cover it and let it sit for 15 minutes. To fucking rehydrate the dead worms after their dehydrating session inside a fish's ass.

So while you wait for fish-ass-worms to do their thing, you mash up the chickpeas and throw in some diced onions and a little vegenaise and some apple cider vinegar and salt/ pepper.

I was actually pretty well pleased with this by itself. I tried it, becasue even though I'm a weirdo and I sometimes eat stupid shit, I was kind of scared of the fish-ass-worms. So I was hoping it would be delicious enough that I could skip that step.

Delicious, but alas, I wanted that fishy taste. So I threw the now-rehydrated shit in there.

SURPRISINGLY, THE FISH-ASS-WORMS WERE LEGIT. They made my tuna fish sandwich taste (almost) like a legit tuna fish sandwich.

YUM.

Healthier for me AND the environment than a regular ol' tuna fish sandwich.

MAKE THIS SHIT, FOOLS.

WHY?

BECAUSE I FUCKING SAID SO.

THEN MAIL ME SOME BECAUSE I'M A FAT BITCH AND I CAN'T GET ENOUGH. <3

LOVE,

SEAWEED FREAK

RATINGS:

Ease of Preparation: 5/5
Literally just mashed a bunch of shit together. No cooking involved. Awesome!

Deliciousness: 4/5
Tastes delicious! But alas, if you're looking for something that can replace your old tuna fish sandwich, you will likely be disappointed. It's delicious in its own right, and it's definitely COMPARABLE to a tuna fish sandwich, but it's not the same.

Prettiness: 3/5
Ummm.....it's a sandwich. <3

Leeky Cauldron-iflower

I think every vegan has a special friendship with Miss Isa. There's a reason Vegan With A Vengeance and Veganomicon are among the most recognizable vegan cookbook titles!

So here I go again. Another Vegan With A Vengeance recipe!

 
The recipe?


Cauliflower-Leek Kugel With Almond-Herb Crust Pg. 94

I decided to make this kugel for multiple reasons. 1) I am obsessed with cauliflower. 2) It's Jewish food! And therefore probably delicious and will bring me good feelings of nostalgia for a lot of my Florida friends! (Shaina, Jenjen, Megan, Ashley, and Brenda). They always went home for Passover and came back with stories of delicious foods they ate. I always got so jealous. 3) It seemed easy (I was wrong).

So the first thing I did was chop up the cauliflower heads and throw the florets into boiling water. I wanted my cauliflower to get nice and mush-able, because I was going to crush up the florets when they were done cooking.

After that, I crushed up two sheets of matzoh and used my hands to mash that in with some silken tofu. I read the recipe wrong, because you're actually not required to mash them together, but I did anyways. They would go together in a bigger mix later, so no harm no foul. :-D I also ate a sheet of matzoh while I was doing this...Shaina said it best when she said "It's so deliciously bland!" I've never liked something so much that had so little flavor.

After this loveliness, I was told I needed to dice up some onions and chop up some leeks.

I don't know about you, but I'd never seen a raw leek before. So I had no fucking clue how to cut these little bastards up. Do you keep the leaves? Do you chop off the root? Do you slice it from the middle? HOW DO YOU CLEAN SO MANY LAYERS?!

Apparently what you're supposed to do is chop it in half vertically and clean it that way. (Makes so much sense, now I feel stupid). Then you chop it however the hell you want, because you can use ALL of the leek. So I basically just took a knife and chopped the poor leeks into oblivion.

THEN YOU SAUTEE THE ONIONS AND LEEKS IN OLIVE OIL. Delicious-smelling. :-]

AFTER THAT, YOU PUT THE LEEKS/ONIONS INTO THE MASHED CAULIFLOWER, MIX IN THE TOFU AND MATZOH, THROW IN SOME SALT AND PEPPER, AND SOME CHOPPED FRESH DILL (FAVE) AND FRESH PARSLEY!

Looks a lot less appetizing in pictures than it was in real life.

This big pile of deliciousness is then thrown into an oiled-up casserole dish.

On top of this scrumptious mess goes a delicious herby-almond crust. How do you make it? Well, you chop up an assload of fresh dill and fresh parsley....

Then you throw in some crumbled matzoh, chopped almonds, and some olive oil. It looks like this:

THEN YOU SPRINKLE THIS SHIT ON THE CAULIFLOWER FIESTA.

After it's done cooking, your whole apartment (or house, or dorm, or cardboard box) will smell like leeky cauliflowerness. I nicknamed my apartment the Leeky Cauldron-iflower for the afternoon, because I'm a nerd and sometimes I like to think I'm clever.

Anyways. When it's done, you cut out a chunk of kugel-casserole-ness and eat it. Duh.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 2/5 
So much chopping, so many different steps. Took for-freaking-EVER. But at least the baking bit was easy. Throw it all together and stick it in the oven.

Deliciousness: 3/5 
Smelled really good, but...it was really bland. I almost gave it only 2 stars, but I feel like it could be easily improved with some nutrtional yeast and maybe celery salt or paprika. It didn't taste BAD, don't get me wrong, it just wasnt anything to write home about.

Prettiness: 3/5 
In the casserole dish, it looks pretty. Especially if it's a glass one, so you can see the layers. But I mean, it's a casserole- it gets messy once you slap it on a plate.

Scone Glory!

This recipe is from none other than…

Vegan With a Vengeance by the beloved Isa Chandra Moskowitz. 

I chose to make:

SCONES pg 42

So, I work at Starbucks. And oftentimes, I can eat a free pastry here or there because it is expired. Unfortunately, the blueberry scones are basically my favorite things on the planet and they’re definitely not vegan. So I decided to make some scones of my own to bring into work. TAKE THAT, NON-VEGAN BLUEBERRY ASSHOLE SCONES!

Isa’s scones seemed easy enough to make, and I had most of the ingredients already.

So first, I made the ‘vegan buttermilk.’ Basically you mix ¾ cup of the milk of your choice (I chose soy milk because it was on sale at Uwajimaya this week! Eeee!) and 2 tsp apple cider vinegar.

It was really weird, because when you mix in the vinegar, the milk seems to like….get chunky and thick. I guess that’s good? It all worked out in the end, so I HOPE it’s good. Either way, I threw it in the fridge to use later in the recipe.

Then, you mix up 3 cups of flour, 2 tbsp baking powder, ¼ cup sugar, and ¼ tsp salt in a big ol’ bowl.

So after you get your hands all flour-y, Isa tells you to mix in 1/3 cup of vegetable oil (I used canola because it’s all I had and I’m a broke ho)…

And then ½ cup of soy cream…

And then the vegan buttermilk chunky crap!

At this point, you’re allowed to throw this glorious dough into piles on a baking sheet and bake the scone-babies in a  preheated 400 degree oven. But my love affair is with BLUEBERRY scones. So alas, I need some freaking blueberries in my scones.

Unfortunately, being a broke ho means making compromises here and there. So. The packet of blueberries I wanted was $5.39!!!!! WHAT?! But sitting next to it was a packet of blackberries for $3.29…. Guess which berry packet came home with me that night?

That’s right. The blackberries seduced me with their plump, fragrant beads of juice and their smaller price tag. What can I say? I’m a sucker for cheapness and juiciness.

So, since blackberries are FUCKING HUGE, I chopped them up into smaller pieces.

It looked like blood splatters all over the walls behind the chopping board (oh, blackberries, how juicy you are!)

MURDER OF THE BLACKBERRIES.

So after getting blackberry blood all over myself, I threw the dead blackberries into the dough.  YUMTASTIC.

Then I put spoonfuls of dough on parchment paper on a baking sheet and I flattened the tops out a bit. I sprinkled sugar on the tops of the scone-dough-piles.

Then I baked them for 12 minutes!

THEN I TOOK A STAGED PHOTO OF A BREAKFAST I MIGHT ENJOY INCLUDING MY BLACKBERRY SCONE DELIGHTFULNESS.

JEALOUS?! YOU SHOULD BE. THAT BANANA IS ORGANIC, AND THAT TEA IS PASSION-GREEN TEA MADE WITH STEVIA. I AM ONE PRETENTIOUS NATURAL-FOODS BITCH.

The scone looked so cute sitting on my plate that I decided to take a close-up picture of it.

ISN’T HE CUTE?!

CAN’T. DEAL.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 4/5

Super easy to prepare, one of the most simple baking recipes ever. I did get creeped out by the buttermilk thing, and the dough was a sticky mess, so I knocked it down a star.

Deliciousness: 5/5

IT’S A SCONE THAT TASTES LIKE IT LEGIT CAME FROM A VEGAN BAKERY. YUM.

Prettiness: 4/5

Blobs of dough, yes. But blobs of dough TIE-DYED with blue and pink because that’s what juicy blackberries do to your scones.