Vegan Grilled Brie and Pear Sandwich

I don't shop at Whole Foods very often. Don't get me wrong, I love Whole Foods in a completely non-platonic way. I love the smell of the spicy, handmade soaps and the bountiful produce section. I love that I can grab a juice while perusing the bakery section, seeing a selection of vegan donuts and cookies to obsess about for later. Or right that minute, who am I kidding? If I get there early enough for any of their vegan donuts to be left I snap one of those bitches up.

I sometimes imagine them sitting in there and singing "I Feel Pretty." I'm a weirdo

It's just, well, I'm economically restricted. In lay terms, I'm broke as a joke.

To be fair, I'm being a touch hyperbolic, but the sentiment is honest. I have two kids and work only two days a week currently as the cost of day care would render my job superfluous. My 70-year-old mother in law is kind enough to take up the slack for days when my schedule overlaps with my husband, which means she only usually ever has to watch them once per week. This leaves us doing a bit more coupon clipping and big box grocery shopping these days, but it means that I get to stay mostly home with my goofballs and for that I'm eternally grateful.

So you understand that when we were given a $75 Whole Foods gift certificate I dashed up there with the theme song to Chariot's of Fire running through my head, my imagination producing a movie of me sprinting through the store with a cart in slow motion, throwing all of the delectable shit that I could usually never afford into my cart with reckless abandon.

Those vegan donuts made it in there. I assure you.

Another item that went in was a vegan cheese I'd been eyeballing for about a month.

It looks all gourmet and shit

I normally make my own cheeses using things like cashews, nutritional yeast and other fabulous, umami providing ingredients. I'm totally down with this as I'm torn on Daiya and really dislike the other commercially made alternatives I've tried. But this stuff seemed different. Special. Artisan. It's also $15 a pop. Seeing as how I can make about 4 batches of cashew cheese for that amount, I always stroked it longingly on my rare trips to visit it and walked right on by.

Until I got a gift certificate and saw fit to buy all of the shit I usually can't afford.

I got it home and tore it open, beyond intrigued with what it would look and taste like.

Doctor! We need Triscuits stat!

It looked and felt exactly like brie cheese, which had me immediately deciding that its maiden voyage into my belly would be a grilled brie and pear sandwich.

I'm pretty sure that most of the people reading this will have had some experience with making a grilled cheese sandwich. Grease bread, add middle stuff, cook, flip, cook, TADA! It's the ingredients that make one person's grilled cheese different from the next guy's. For this incarnation, I used some Smart Balance spread on two pieces of Alvarado St. bread and went to work on a preheated cast iron skillet. I added very thin slices of pear to the bread first.

I'm gonna go on record right here and say that doing it this way left the pears warm but still crisp in the finished product, which was nice, but I think that I'll grill the pears up a bit first when I make this again. A softer, sweeter pear layer would probably bring the flavors of the cheese out a bit more and add a more interesting component to the dish. Maybe I'll even pre-soak them in some brandy or Jamison first too. Hmmmm.....

Here's what it looks like sliced.

I wanted to see if the cheese would melt a bit when heated and so I sliced it and left it like this for the cooking process. Once cooked, the cheese was warm and pleasantly mushy but it didn't melt per se. I've since found that if you spread it out a bit before cooking it will yield a more "melted" consistency for your finished product. It spreads very easily as the cheese is quite soft so pre-spreading it really isn't an issue.

Crispy, gooey, sweet and savory.

The finished product was awesome. The cheese is very mild, so mild that if mixed with a lot of ingredients it will easily get lost in the other flavors, so it's best in simpler recipes. Having said that, it is the most realistic non dairy cheese I've ever tasted. It had all of the cheese flavor with no psychologically damaging after taste (Do you remember the pizza night of 2005, Follow Your Heart? Do you??). Seriously, I'm going to put this out with crackers at Christmas and Thanksgiving and I guarantee that no one will know it isn't a real artisan cheese. Yeah, Kite Hill White Alder!

Now, where's my whiskey...

Portobacon.

Most people, when faced with the exciting prospect of having a sleeve of portobello mushrooms all to themselves, will ponder the endless ways they could be put to use.

 I heart you Costco.

You see, you can marinate and grill them or chop them up to eat them raw or saute them to make Seitan Portobello Stroganoff. The healthy, hearty uses for these fungi fun guys (I'm not even gonna apologize for that one. That was hilarious.) are endless. They're nutritional powerhouses with their richness in selenium, copper and niacin all while being low calorie and fat free.

Naturally, I chose to make bacon out of them.

In re-reading my bacon post from a few days ago I realized that a lot of my bacon alternatives have soy in them. Couple that with the fact that I use soy in other places throughout the day and you've got, well, a lot of soy. I'm kind of a fan of the "everything in moderation" approach, and so I don't demonize soy but I also think that if you start the day with tempeh bacon and a tofu omelet, hit up some Chipotle sofritos for lunch and then heap a dollop of Tofutti sour cream on your dinner you may be overdoing it. These are NOT soy free either in that there is some soy sauce in the marinade, but in an effort to start leaning away from a dependence on everything soy for my day to day dining decisions I think they're a good start.

So, Portobello Bacon came to be the topper of choice on my baked potato.

The key to making these super yummy is to slice the mushroom cap into the thinnest possible slices. I mean, I want Calista Flockheart width slices here. The thicker the slice, the meatier the result will be, which isn't unpleasant by any means, but it isn't as bacon reminiscent as you're going to desire.

Once sliced, I placed the mushrooms in a Ziplock baggy with a marinade, flipping the bag from time to time in my refrigerator to make sure all of the mushroom slices had equal bathing time.

Portobello Mushroom Bacon

Ingredients
1 portobello mushroom cap
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp vegan worcestershire sauce
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 tsp ketchup
1 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder

Directions

Slice mushroom into the thinnest possible slices.

Place all ingredients into a small bowl and cover or a Ziplock sandwich bag and seal.

Place in refrigerator and allow mushroom to marinate for at least an hour, stirring carefully or flipping the bag a time or too take make sure mushrooms get evenly marinated.

Heat a very thin coating of oil over medium low heat in a cast iron or nonstick skillet. (I used about a tsp of coconut oil).

Add marinated mushrooms, being careful not to crowd them in the pan. Allow them to cook for a couple of minutes and then flip. Continue this until mushrooms achieve the desired level of crispiness, adding a little marinade as you go if they appear to be sticking to the pan.

Portobacon. It's sweeping the nation.

The whole point of making these was because I was craving a loaded baked potato and I didn't want it to be a soy bomb. Using the pub cheese that I made the other day, I topped a baked russet potato with steamed broccoli florets, pub cheese, Toffuti sour cream and my freshly browned up portobacon.

Get. In. My. Face.

You know how, like, you get all excited about something and then you take pictures of it from multiple angles like a tourist in your own kitchen?

This angle has a better view of the happiness in a jar. Oh, sorry, I mean the pub cheese.

I am obsessed with this and had it for dinner the next night as well. It was creamy, crispy, cheesy and broccoli-y. 

What? That is too a word.

Shit

We were on vacation for the last few days up in beautiful Show Low, Arizona and so I didn't have much of a chance to blog anything. I have some good recipes and fabulous insights coming your way once unpacking, laundry doing and the much needed vacation from my vacation takes place. I love my kids, but traveling with them makes me need a deep tissue massage.

Some whiskey wouldn't suck either.

My husband was on the same level of mental and physical exhaustion upon our arrival home and kindly set out to make us some green smoothies while I got the kids bathed and put to bed. I was almost done dressing them in their pjs when I heard the blender make a super weird noise, followed by silence, followed by him very calmly call my name.

I walked into the kitchen to see this.

In case you can't see it, yes it is INSIDE my cabinets.

I have to say, I wasn't even upset. This has to be one of the most impressive disasters I've ever seen.

As it turns out, if you feel that the lid to the blender is on tight enough and you walk away from it while it's on the smoothie cycle, you could find yourself across the room just in time to witness a fireworks display of semi blended liquid geysering from the top of your appliance once the lid shoots off like Augustus Gloop when he gets jammed into the chocolate tube in Willy Wonka and then blasted to the fudge room once the pressure building up beneath him reaches critical mass.

It looks like a Jackson Pollack painting

Ingredients
1 cup almond/coconut milk blend
2 apples
1/2 pineapple
1 cucumber
2 cups power greens
1 cup ice

Directions

Cut all items into chunks and place in blender, ice on top.

Place lid on blender in a half assed fashion and press smoothie button.

Wander away.

Look on in horror as the smoothie cycle starts and the lid shoots off.

Clean kitchen for 45 minutes.

Make another batch of smoothies and enjoy those.

Serves 1 kitchen wall, four cupboard doors, all of the plates and bowls in bottom shelf of nearest cabinet, kitchen ceiling, two sets of plantations shutters, kitchen window and front of dishwasher.

For The Love of God, Why?

Today at Sprout's I was lured in by the siren song of 60 calories for an entire package of supposed deliciousness for the price of $.99 and I found myself crashing into the rocks of awfulness that are the seaweed snacks I just attempted to consume.

Roasted. Seaweed. Teriyaki. Snack... all great words. How could it go so wrong?

Let me just say something about me for a second here. I love stuffing large quantities of food into my face with minimal calorie repercussions. Don't get me wrong, there have definitely been times when I've found myself scrapping the bottom of the coconut ice cream pint, my stomach already starting to hurt, as I ponder what angle I should tip the spoon to get into the crease of the container for that last little bit of melted wonderfulness.

It will happen again, too.

I do try, however, to limit those occasions as much as I humanly can and thusly I end up purchasing snack items that are low enough in calories for one serving so that when I inevitably run a train on 3 or 4 servings I don't have to feel so bad about it.

Looks promising. LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING!

Enter Sprout's Farmers Market Teriyaki Roasted Seaweed Snack Pack. Each serving was 30 calories and 2 grams of fat, which meant that if I ate the entire package comprising of 2 servings, it would only be a grand total of 60 calories and 4 grams of fat. That's great! The promise on the back of the package helped finalize the deal:

"Go ahead and enjoy as many as you want-

they deliver all the crunch without

the guilt." 

I didn't know it at the time, but the marketing team in charge of that little gem sat on a throne of lies.

I can still taste them...

I rushed home with my purchase and tore into it like Dudley Dursely with a Christmas Present. The snacks themselves were paper thin sheets of nori that had been roasted and seasoned. So far so good. I love veggie sushi and have even made wraps with nori using an idea I picked up from Alicia Silverstone in her book The Kind Diet. Nori and I are friends. We go way back.

So when I tell you that the flavor upon hitting my mouth was nothing short of hellacious, understand that half of the misery I was experiencing was utter shock at being so highly offended by something I was supposed to like. What the fuck had they done to this seaweed to make it so horrifying? It was so unbelievably fishy, while being extremely salty with a little after kick of cloyingly sweet that it was as if a sea serpent had done a salt scrub and then dipped its whole body in honey and then I came along and licked it. I licked the serpent.

 The bad combo punched me in the taste buds before grabbing me by the uvula as the texture went from the advertised crispy to a slimy goopiness that threatened not to be swallowable. I'm not kidding, I almost spit it out. There was no crunch. Only goo. 

An entire package of snacks at my disposal and I choked down one. Along with my tears. 

I would recommend that you don't buy these. Don't even look at them. They may have the power to melt your face like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc. 

Bacon, Egg and Cheese Breakfast Sandwich

I wanted to round out the breakfast series today with my take on a diner breakfast sandwich. I thought this would be a good one to finish things off with partly because I do occasionally miss a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on the run and partly because I have a ton of leftovers from this series of breakfast posts cluttering up my fridge and I need to make room for the amazing amount of impulse purchases I just made at Costco. Don't shop hungry, kids.

If you're the sole vegan in the house, you are probably like me and have food for the week in your fridge after making one recipe. Earlier in the week I made tempeh bacon and tofu omelets, which both make about 4 servings apiece. Between trying to plan my son's 3rd birthday party, taking care of two preschoolers by myself while the hubby was on shift and some general insanity in the day-to-day life of me, by the time dinner rolled around I was completely spent. Basically, it was the perfect night for leftovers.

Cashews, how I love thee

The first thing I grabbed was some Spreadable Cashew Cheddar I made a few days ago. I like having this recipe on hand for smearing on veggie burgers and sandwiches, but it's really good on chips for nachos too. I also add a tsp or so of Earth Balance along with a couple tablespoons of this stuff to some noodles and make a quick mac and cheese. It really is a good staple. 

Spreadable Cashew Cheddar Cheese (Pub Cheese)

Makes about 1 1/2 cups

3/4 cup cashews (soaked 2-24 hours)

1/3 cup water

3 Tbsp tahini

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp yellow or dijon mustard

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

Drain cashews and place in blender or food processor along with other ingredients. Blend until smooth. 

(Blendtec users: Use Twister Jar if you have it and use the dips and batters mode. If you don't have the twister jar, the other jars will work perfectly fine, you'll just have to scrape the sides a time or two.)

Moons Over My Hammy should be ashamed of its inferiority

I spread a layer of cashew cheese on the inside of a pita and then sprinkled a little bit of the bacon salt that I mentioned in my previous post over it. Then, I layered a leftover tofu omelet, some sliced roma tomatoes and some leftover tempeh bacon that I reheated in a pan with a drizzle of maple syrup (see this post for the technique on this. It's really easy).

In the words of Turk from Scrubs, Brinner is served

I washed the whole thing down with this lovely Califia Farms Salted Caramel Iced Coffee that I found at Sprouts. It was salty, caramely, cold brewed coffee-tacular and made with almond milk. I actually run for one of these instead of going for a Starbucks fix these days. Of course it was a bit of a tragic misstep that I drank this for breakfast at dinnertime because the little bugger packed quite the caffeine punch and I was up until one o'clock in the morning watching a McDougall seminar on youtube. I wish I could tell you I was making this up. I truly do.

This was my kind of comfort food. Is the nutritional content of this meal a stand out? No. You are not going to impress Michelle Obama with this meal, or Dr. McDougall for that matter. You will, however, satisfy that craving you've been having since the last time your brother-in-law insisted that you go to Wildflower Bread Co. for breakfast and you had a bagel with peanut butter, which was perfectly enjoyable don't get me wrong, but you watched as everyone else got ooey gooey breakfast sandwiches and you couldn't help but feel a little hosed even though you were glad that you went with the bagel instead. Remember that time? 

Fake Bacon is What I'm Makin

Happy Fathers Day!

In honor of dad and his hearty appetite while continuing on with our breakfast series, I thought that today would be a good day to discuss faux pork products.

I hear the question time and time again, "If you're going to such lengths to eat things that taste like (insert animal food here), why don't you just eat the real thing?"

It's a valid question, the answer to which truly highlights the fact that not all people go vegan for the same reasons. For a great many it's a question of animal rights, while for others it's to be as ecologically sound as possible. Some do it because they dislike the taste of meat and dairy and still others do it because they dislike the way eating animal products makes them feel.

 I fall partly into the last two categories. I have some health concerns that caused me to take dairy out of my diet and my dislike for certain meats made it a no brainer just to go vegan. I can assure you that I'm not sitting around saying, "Fuck animals and, while we're at it, the environment can kiss my ass too." I care about those aspects of veganism a great deal. But if I'm being honest, which I try to be, I feel that my individual biochemistry functions best on a plant based diet and so the primary motivation I have is my health.

Which means there are things that I chose to stop eating for their ill effects on me, not because I didn't find them god damned delicious. So to answer the question, I go to great lengths to find vegan analogues for foods I previously enjoyed so that I can have some of the same types of foods that I used to before Ulcerative Colitis and my desire to be overall healthier booted them from my fridge.

This loops us back to bacon. There are a few vegan bacon, or as my husband likes to call them "fakon", products out there but I have to say that my feelings on them are a mixed bag. On one hand, they can be fun to throw in during breakfast or as a flavor agent sometimes but on the other hand, some of them taste like you're consuming a physical manifestation of sadness, unrealized dreams and pain.

Looking right at you Smart Bacon

It isn't that they aren't fine for satisfying a craving, they are. It's just that they don't give you that smoky, crispy, greasy mouth feel that the real thing does. They don't give you the feeling that you're actually eating bacon. Sometimes they don't even give you the feeling that you're actually eating food.

This is merely science pretending to be food...I sprinkle it on shit though, I'm not gonna lie.

However, I still think that when the choice is to eat a nugget of bacon flavored mystery substance or eat Wilbur I'll take the mystery substance. I eat this shit pretty infrequently and if I can suffer radiation exposure merely by going outside or consume trace amounts of arsenic in applesauce without dropping dead, I don't think that a tablespoon of Bac'n Pieces a couple times a month is going to drive the nails into my coffin any quicker. 

Sprinkled into a salad with tomatoes, lettuce and a little light dressing for a deconstructed "BLT" salad, on a baked potato or in a tofu omelet or scramble, Bac'n Pieces can be a fun little addition. They're crunchy, they're bacon reminiscent, they're accidentally vegan, which is kinda fun and they're probably going to survive along with cockroaches, Twinkies and Cher when the sun turns into a red dwarf and other forms of life and matter as we know it cease to be. Neat.

J&D's Bacon Salt is another fun product, though this one is going to be something you'll want to use based on your own judgement. I bought this item on Amazon while searching for vegan bacon products one fine day. I got the product and was super pissed when I glanced at the label to see a list of completely vegan ingredients, but the allergy section showed milk. Wtf? Not a single ingredient listed was from dairy so I wrote the company to ask for clarification. They responded within a couple of hours.

o

I'm not overly concerned by this and thusly have chosen to use the product. Again, if this seems too risky for you I can completely see your point. I just choose to try and not freak out too much about things like possible cross contamination or, personally, I'll lose my marbles. If you have a dairy allergy though, I'd probably not chance it.

 So far, I've enjoyed it on baked potatoes and sprinkled on tofu omelets, though I've seen several reviewers online using it in everything from green bean casserole to veggie burgers. Anywhere that you'd like to add a bacon kick.

At the end of the day though, in my opinion, there's nothing better than homemade. If I'm really feeling like I want a couple strips of a bacon-like substance, I go with the Tempeh Bacon recipe from Vegan Brunch or this recipe from Vegetarian Times. There isn't a recipe posted on the ppk website for Isa's Vegan Brunch tempeh bacon recipe so I'd prefer not to rip her off and post it here. Seriously, you won't be sorry, just buy the damn book already.

Typically, I'll combine the two recipes by using the marinade ingredients from the Vegan Brunch recipe but I'll bake the tempeh according to the VT directions instead of pan frying them like Isa does. Then, I'll add one extra step all my own that I feel takes the bacon slices to the next level.

After baking the tempeh strips (or if reheating the leftovers) lightly spray a cast iron or nonstick pan with a little cooking spray and warm each side.

Once warm, drizzle a teeny tiny (about a quarter teaspoon at most) amount of maple syrup on top of the bacon strips

Spread it around until the entire surface of the bacon strip is coated with a thin layer and then flip, repeating the process on the other side. The bacon strips will start to sizzle in the pan a bit, which is satisfying. Flip again after about 10-20 seconds. You don't want the maple syrup to burn, but merely to caramelize onto the surface of the bacon.

I took a little nibble before I snapped the pic. I do that a lot. I regret nothing.

This gives the recipe that little extra texture and maple finish, making it seem just that much more like bacon. It's not greasy like bacon but the slick coating the syrup lends to the crispy strips mimics actual bacon more than the previous dry texture did while the maple flavor adds a layer that helps achieve a closer resemblance to bacon's complexity. 

Let's just say, this stuff doesn't last long around me. My inability to take a photo of the finished product with out going full fat kid on it first was probably a good indicator of that statement's veracity. 

Fig Newton Oatmeal

I suck hard at baking.

I'm like the kid in gym who gets picked last for dodgeball and I'm all pissed about it because I like dodgeball and I totally wanna play but once I finally get settled onto a team and the coach blows the whistle I get all ramped up and flail around like a spaz, which gets me nailed in the head immediately by that sporty girl I kinda hate and completely reinforces to everyone why I was picked last in the first place. Like,I  really suck at it.

Me.

I genuinely have no idea what my problem is but my bread comes out flat, my cookies come out kinda hard and really cakey and my cakes come out crumbly. My husband has resigned himself to the fact that anything I bake will be a Shakespearean tragedy and gamely chokes down my attempts, but it verges on assault to make him do this very often. I plan on dedicating time at some point to attempt an improvement of my baking skills, but until then I rely on buying mostly ready made things from the store and satisfying my sweet tooth in other ways.

Enter Trader Joe's Fig Butter.

During a recent shopping trip to my local mecca of all things delicious and random, I came across an item that caught my eye. It was in the jelly section and so I think its intended use is for sandwiches, which is going to happen I assure you, but my brain immediately went to other applications. Breakfast applications.

The idea of Fig Newton Oatmeal was born. I used to love me some fig newtons back in the day. Since I'm too unskilled to bake some vegan ones, I figured this would be a fun homage to those doughy little squares of fabulous without attempting to produce a version that would inevitably be a rock hard while simultaneously undercooked mess, producing not happiness but instead the tears of children.

I prefer to cook oats on the stove due to my blinding rage at having to clean up the over spill when then microwave makes the oatmeal boil so rapidly that it grows into a swamp monster in there and tries to escape the bowl. I'll take the extra five minutes to boil some water in order to avoid the extra five minutes it takes to scrape scalding hot oatmeal goo from the microwave turntable. You may not have this issue, but you can probably bake a peanut butter cookie that wouldn't be able to double as a bludgeon so stop looking down your nose at me, okay?

For this recipe, I put some vanilla extract and the zest of about half of an orange into the water and brought it to a boil. It smelled like Christmas in my kitchen as it started to heat up.

I cooked the oats according to package directions and then mixed about a tsp of Earth Balance and a tsp of brown sugar in so they would get melty and awesome. I then stirred in a Tbsp of Fig Butter. This yielded a very mild fig taste in the finished product so if you want it to be really figgy you can always add in more. Go ahead. Get figgy with it.

(I'm so sorry.)

The finished product sports some walnut pieces and a little almond/coconut milk blend. You could top this with some cut up strawberries if you wanted to go for a bit of a Strawberry Fig Newton flair or maybe some agave if you wanted it a bit sweeter.

Fig Newton Oatmeal
makes 1 serving

Ingredients
1/3 cup oats (or however much your brand calls for in one serving)
1 cup water ( or the amount needed to make one serving of your oatmeal brand)
zest of 1/2 orange
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp vegan buttery spread (ie. Earth Balance or Smart Balance)
1-2 tsp brown sugar
1-2 Tbsp Fig Butter
walnuts and non dairy milk to taste (optional)

Directions

If preparing your oatmeal on a stove top, add water, vanilla and orange zest to a pot and bring to a boil. Add oats and reduce to medium boil, stirring often until desired thickness. (Duration will vary depending on the type of oats you are using. Refer to the package.)

If preparing in a microwave, add water, vanilla, orange zest and oatmeal to a microwave safe bowl and cook according to package directions.

Transfer cooked oatmeal to a bowl and stir brown sugar and buttery spread into the oats until well incorporated. 

Add fig butter and stir until well incorporated.

Add toppings of your choice.

Enjoy

Breakfast Part Deux: Tofu Omelets

A true mainstay of the vegan breakfast catalog is the tofu scramble. Versatile, healthy, yummy and egg-like, it's a dish that can be dressed up to remind you of your favorite greasy spoon breakfast from days of yore or dressed down for days when you just want something simple. But, just as eggs don't only come in scrambled form, tofu doesn't have to either.

Enter the Tofu Omelet.

As I mentioned yesterday, my go-to book for all things vegan breakfast is Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Because I intend on doing a series of breakfast posts, there are going to be several recipes from this book but don't fear, I do intend on using recipes from a variety of places including the ones the voices in my head whisper to me on a semi-regular basis. 

(So soothing. So hungry.)

 

If there was one thing that I was worried about being able to give up when I transitioned to veganism, it was eggs. Usually I hear people lament their love of cheese as if they're in a co-dependent, mildly emotionally abusive relationship with it so I feel as though I may be in a small minority here but cheese wasn't the hard part.

It's amazing what you find if you google "evil cheese."

Which is why I was so excited to try this recipe once I got a blender that actually blended food as opposed to merely slapping it around for awhile before giving up.

She's so pretty. 

The recipe calls for silken tofu, garbanzo bean flour, nutritional yeast, garlic, olive oil, turmeric, arrowroot and the black salt that I mentioned yesterday. Measure them all out, dump them into your blender and mix until smooth. Seriously, that's it. I used the batter mode on my blender but any medium speed setting would work fine. 

It smells at this point. Don't be scared

Once the ingredients are blended, you're going to lift the lid off of the blender and the smell of fart is going to waft terrifyingly through your kitchen like the stink waves that emanate from Pig Pen in the Peanuts cartoons. Unless you're into that kind of thing, you may be frightened. I know I was. It's the black salt, which gives the mix an eggy, albeit sulfuric, sort of smell. This WILL mellow out substantially once the omelet is cooked, to the point that you should use a little sprinkle on the end product for maximum omelet taste. If you aren't as big of an egg fan as I am, you can use less of this stuff or you can omit it entirely but I highly recommend that you give it a chance. It really does add an extra layer of flavor that is missing from more traditional egg substitute recipes.

Starting to look omelet-y

Pour about 1/4 to 1/3 cup batter onto a skillet, preheated cast iron or nonstick pan that you've sprayed with a light misting of cooking spray and spread it around until it's thin and round. The process is not unlike making pancakes at this point. Watch the top of the omelet as it will start to go from a light, shiny yellow to a darker, more matte yellow (you can see it around the edges in the picture). Once the top is the dry, matte finish it's time to flip it.

I'm gonna dress you up and put you inside me...wow, that escalated quickly

The finished product is a bit of a cross between an omelet, a pancake and a crepe. Perfect for folding over whatever delicious fillings your heart desires.

Can't you just smell it?

I sauteed some onions, bell pepper and mushrooms in the already hot pan. It was at this moment that I kinda wished I had a little vegan Canadian bacon around so I could go Denver omelet style. Guess I'll have to pick some up for tomorrow as this recipe makes 4 large omelets or 6 smaller ones so if you're the only vegan in your household, like me, you'll have some leftovers. Not to worry though, these reheat really nicely in a microwave for 30 seconds wrapped in a damp paper towel.

I took a bite before I took the picture. I'm selfish like that.

A little avocado accompanied my fillings while some fresh blueberries and my ever present coffee rounded everything out. These are so easy and yummy, I make them a couple of times per month. It's nice to have them in the fridge for busy mornings or for a portable lunch. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish what I've started with that first bite and put some serious harm on my fancy breakfast.

Oh Breakfast, My Breakfast

In the words of that visionary man who paved the way for millions of children to sing triumphantly that that the cold never bothered them anyway:

Welcome to my vegan blog! Why another vegan blog when there are already a million stellar ones out there? 

Why the hell not? 

I don't know about you, but I can honestly say that when I'm in bed, scrolling through Pinterest on my phone in the wee small hours of the night while I'm supposed to be trying to sleep, I never get pissed by yet another picture of fantastic vegan food. I've seen more smoothies than you can count, more salad combinations than you can imagine and more step-by-step pictorials of how to build a vegan enchilada than you can shake a maraca at and I never get tired of it. I love me some food porn.

Especially when it's sexy, smokin' hot vegan food porn.

So, I decided to combine my love of writing and my love of seitan into a blog that will, hopefully, entertain both you and me while adding to the incredible wealth of other vegan blogs out there and I've decided to start with my favorite meal of the day.

Breakfast.

Maybe it's because I've been asleep all night long and so I wake up starving, my taste buds screaming for tastiness. Maybe it's because I prefer the flavor combinations that breakfast foods offer. Maybe it's because that first cup of coffee produces a euphoria that would make eating a shoe a transcendent experience. Who knows? I'd love to have some sort of eloquent explanation for why I love breakfast above other meals, but the best I can come up with is that it's just super fucking good. From scrambles, to oatmeal, to smoothies and tofu omelets, I can't get enough of breakfast. Hell, I even like eating breakfast for dinner (in which case I call it "brinner" as an homage to Mr. Christopher Turk, M.D. from Scrubs.)

Eat your heart out Denny's

Today's plate of awesome was made possible by the one and only Isa Chandra Moskowitz of The Post Punk Kitchen. Seriously, I have every book she's done and refer to all of them incessantly. My copy of Veganomicon is so well loved the pages are sticking together....that sounded unintentionally dirty. I'm sorry I said that.

(No I'm not.)

I used her book Vegan Brunch to make a perfect tofu scramble topped with mushrooms, bell pepper and power greens along with some truly delicious tempeh bacon. I honestly had no idea, until I used this recipe, that I had been making tofu scrambles all wrong. They always came out too dry and kind of flavorless. This recipe not only listed a perfect blend of spices, but I had no idea before I tried it that I should sprinkle the spices on and then mix a little water in so that the flavors could absorb into the tofu. The end result was light, fluffy and flavorful, especially after the addition of another ingredient that I learned about in the tofu omelet recipe from the same book.

Smells like farts, tastes like eggs. How's that for a slogan?

Black salt, or kala namak, is just table salt that has been heated along with other spices until it is pink and fairly sulfuric smelling. I picked this up at a specialty Indian market down the street, but you can find it in larger Asian grocery stores too. I first used it to make tofu omelets from Vegan Brunch and the smell that filled my kitchen imbued me with such dread that I almost couldn't bring myself to try the finished product. I'm gonna be blunt as we're all friends here, it smelled like a frat guy's nuclear beer farts. Once cooked though, the flavor mellows out a lot and you're left with a pleasant hint of eggy-ness that takes all egg inspired dishes to the next level. I sprinkle it in all of my scrambles now as well as tofu omelets. I'm a little obsessed with it actually.

A little coffee with french vanilla coconut creamer and slice of cinnamon raisin toast rounded everything out and left me wondering if I would suffer some sort of massive nutritional deficiency if I just went ahead and ate the exact same thing again for dinner. Don't worry, I probably won't.

Probably.