My name is Kim and I am addicted to biscotti. The Veganomicon recipe is so easy and simple. I made a small switcheroo in the almond anise recipe and it is impossible to stop eating them. Sealed up tight, packaged with some organic fair trade coffee, they should make a great gift this year.
MMM!
My Dad and Dr. Mercola are on a tear about how dangerous it is to eat large amounts of unfermented soy products such as tofu. I agree and tend to cook from whole food and use rice milks and ice creams instead of soy, but sometimes tofu or other soy products are just such a fantastic shortcut you just can’t do without it.
This week, per my meat-eater husband’s request, I made homemade tomato pasta sauce with fresh herbs and poured it over shells filled with Vegan with a Vengeance Tofu-Basil Ricotta. Even my picky kids had seconds. Delish.
The good thing about Tofu-Basil Ricotta (besides being soooo tasty smothered in homemade tomato sauce) is the nutritional yeast. Let’s be honest– the vegan diet can be dangerously short on B12. Long term effects of B12 deficiency can be very scary. Nutritional yeast helps right that imbalance. And it is tasty, tasty, tasty, too.
To go with, I served a salad based on a Nicola Graimes recipe– slivered blanched almonds, golden raisins, oranges. I added a few perfect mint leaves, citrus champagne vinegar, a little sugar, a pinch of sea salt. I sneaked in a huge nutrition punch with Udo’s 3-6-9 Flax, Sesame and Sunflower oil. You couldn’t even taste it, or its odd flavor simply complimented the mixture, one or the other. I served it on spinach leaves– c in the oranges makes the iron in the spinach available to your body– and it was so delicious, like a dessert. The kids even ate it, always the hallmark of vegan food success.
Finally… my stepson loves Pie. Any Pie. He is too big for me to pick up and throw on the bed or throw myself on him and tickle him like I could do when he was small, so I do a lot of communicating through food.
He requested sweet potato pie. I once claimed to make the best sweet potato pie in Alabama and perhaps throughout the southland. It involved eggs, butter, sweetened condensed milk, and resembled butterscotch pie rather than sweet potato. So good! What to do now that I am vegan? I hadn’t as yet found a good enough substitude.
But Albertson’s had organic yams, and I resolved to be brave and try.
I was dismayed to find that any recipe called for egg replacer or tofu. How could I thicken without those? Egg replacer often has a ‘taste’ and I honestly am trying to get away from the tofu.
So I decided to experiment. I mashed together 1 stick Earth Balance nonhydrogenated vegan margarine, 1 HUGE sweet potato baked in the microwave, a cup of organic sugar more or less, a half teaspoon of allspice, a half teaspoon of salt (go easy on the salt, it is WAY too easy to oversalt!) and a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice. I heated this to melt the margarine, and then mixed 1/2 cup of flour with water to make 1 cup to thicken, and continued adding rice milk (1/2 cup or a bit more, maybe?) and cooking til it was pudding consistency.
You have to cook flour puddings to a boil, stirring constantly to avoid scorching, to get rid of the floury taste. Once it boiled and cooled a bit I added a full big dessert spoon of bourbon vanilla from Trader Joe’s and poured it into a storebought shortbread crust and chilled. Nutrition + pie – tofu or egg replacer = …
My son had two slices for breakfast. Ahh… he knows the way to my heart.
PETA’s Proggy Awards are a resource to help me vote with my pocketbook and be more comfortable with my choices.
Today I was shopping on drugstore.com– that’s the only place I can find my Peaceful Patchouli shave cream and Liquid Rock deodorant (don’t bother with the enzyme deodorant, it’s worse than nothing!! I need my money back!).
I need more shampoo, and Beauty without Cruelty and Juice Organics are both pricey. I don’t have time to research other brands right now (but if I did I would use Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetic safety database, it RAWKS).
I googled cruelty free vegan shampoo and lo and behold! White Rain uses no animal products, does no animal testing, and as I remember well from high school their products are about a buck a bottle.
Woo hoo! That little gem alone will save me hundreds in hair care products! See what information goodies you can harvest here!
http://www.peta.org/feat/proggy/2008/
Remember when I said you didn’t have to give up having fun looking pretty when you go vegan?
I found some beautiful colors and an owner/colormixologist who gave me awesome customer service at PinkQuartzMinerals.
Doree really set me up.
I found her on the Etsy site– pinkquartzminerals.etsy.com.
I wrote her a question via Etsy and she responded nearly instantaneously. She answered my many additional questions quickly and courteously.
She mixed me up something custom but did not raise her extremely reasonable price. Her prices are great, she shipped very promptly, she offers samples, and her colors are GORGEOUS.
And I was very, very satisfied with my little custom color. It was for a costume, and I felt as gorgeous as one can feel when one’s skin is, well, it’s not easy being green, but she made it easy, I felt so pretty and the makeup was so light I hated to take it off. And I was GREEN.
I am also very satisfied with the lovely colors of eyeshadow and the bronzer color I chose. She suggested some foundations and I can’t wait to try those out.
Doree, you are the best.
