Had a lovely brunch at Counter in the East Village yesterday afternoon. This was the Mean Green Mary. Despite the dandelion greens and other good for you additions, I think I got a little tipsy.We shared the potato latkes. The condiment was a pear compote. Fried potatoes. So scrumptious.

This was the East Side Burger. Seitan and mushroom pate with some soy cheddar on top. Tasty, but kind of fell apart a bit when you took a bite. Eh, who cares, it’s one of the better flavored veggie burgers I’ve had in the city.

Mmmmm biscuits with vegan sausage gravy. This was really yummy. Not too salty and just the perfect amount of sausage gravy. I’ll get this again.

And what’s brunch without a little dessert? This awesome brownie a la mode features a vanilla nut based ice cream. Yum!

I found Volentia through a facebook group and it’s a whole networking site just for vegetarians. You can designate your vegetarian level, join the vegan group, and pimp your veggie blog . Yeah, I know yet another social networking site to keep up with, but hey it’s ALL vegetarians, so it’s pretty freakin’ awesome.

Also there’s vegblogs which searches for the latest in vegan blogs. You’ll recognize some old blogosphere friends and maybe find some new ones.

The Pantry:

So the pantry isn’t really a pantry, it’s a closet next to the kitchen that holds all my tangible vegan resources so I can make chickpea cutlets, chocolate cupcakes, or anything other recipe from my stack of vegan cookbooks without having to make a trip the store.

In case there is ever some world catastrophe that leaves us all living like we’re in The Road, you know where to come. Here’s the pantry in piles on my living room floor. Hey, at least now it’s organized. I’ll be featuring some of these staples more this month. Now let’s see, what to do with barley….

I’ll also be at Vegan Drinks this month making cupcakes for Haiti.

You can’t really see it in the photo, but this awesome vegan hat has HEADPHONES in the ear flaps. Guava makes a rockin hat. Check out her etsy site Late to the Revolution for more earphone hats and headbands.

Mmmmm banana fronch toast (you have to say it in the voice of the mother from Better off Dead for that to be funny.) I picked up a baguette from Hot and Crusty on my way home from work (yes, I was working at my new job on a Saturday. These darn accountants and their year end closing schedules…) and the baguette was a little more crusty than hot. Perfect for French toast! Now I’m twice inspired by the vegan crunk for this recipe because I wanted to make her tester French toast, but I turns out I didn’t have any tofu. So I had to figure out a way to make a nice thick batter for it. Then staring me in the face is one over-ripe banana in my kitchen. Perfect. Now here’s the second crunk reference. Bianca has given up coffee for a cleanse, and well, I couldn’t help putting a tablespoon or two of coffee in with the mashed banana. Coffee and banana just go together in baked things. Also there’s no cinnamon because the Ninja would freak out if he even smells it, so I added some other spices that go with banana breakfast things.

Banana Fronch Toast
-for one really hungry person but normally would serve two

1 ripe banana
2 TBS strong black coffee
1/3 cup soymilk
pinch ground ginger
pinch ground allspice
a few good scrapes of fresh nutmeg
a pinch of black salt (to make it “eggy”- careful, too much will make it salty)

6 i-inch slices of a french baguette – day old is preferred

Heat a cast iron skillet with a nice coating of oil.
Mix batter together. Dunk in bread slices and flip to coat.
Place in skillet. Cook 3-4 minutes then flip and cook another 3 minutes.

Enjoy with some nice maple syrup. Mine came from Black River, NY.

Once again, nothing warms up the house like a 400 degree oven. A pot of broth simmering on the stove can add some much needed humidity to the dry winter air as well. I made some practically freegan broth and roasted some veggies for a light and delightful pureed roasted butternut squash soup.
The roasted veggies are diced butternut squash, carrots, celery, leek, shallot, and garlic. Coated in olive oil and roasted in the oven. I like the small dice because it gets nice and crispy.
The broth is some sweet potato peels that have been frozen since thanksgiving and the rest is from the veggies I’m roasting. Some shallots that were fresh from the farmer’s market last spring and their skins, the peelings from carrots, the tops and bottoms of the celery and leeks, and the peel from the butternut squash. I added some bay leaves and kombu.

Blend the roasted veggies together with the broth and voila, perfect roasted butternut squash soup. I topped it with a little paprika, but other than that I didn’t add any herbs or seasonings (or salt) and it is wonderfully flavorful.

OK, this is no traditional recipe, but every year I come up with some excuse not to make black eyed peas on New Year’s Day. This year I dug through the pantry and came up with both a can of black eyed peas and a can of collard greens. Sure fresh would be better, but hey sometimes you’ve got to improvise.
Here’s my quick and easy black eyed peas and collard greens with brown rice.

1 cup brown rice
1/4 cup sofrito*

1 can black eyed peas drained and rinsed
1/2 can collard greens
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 Tbs vegan worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp hot sauce like tobasco

Cook brown rice according to package directions adding sofrito or onion.*

Heat black eyed peas and collard greens with liquid smoke, worcestershire sauce, and tobasco .

Make a pile of rice and serve with beans and greens on top.

Lots of luck for a happy new year!

*I use a fancy rice cooker which I love even more than my vita-mix. I know you can cook rice for free with a pot on the stove, but with the rice cooker all you do is put in rice and water and turn it on. It beeps when it’s done. You can even leave it on for hours after it’s done and the rice stays warm and perfect. I also don’t have a microwave, so it warms up rice that’s been in the fridge to perfection.

Happy New Year!

My neighbors made this awesome vegan bundt cake for their new year’s party. I’ll have to to get the recipe. I’m eating it for breakfast…

Christmas pizza. Well it’s red and green, right? Sauce and oregano. I got a new camera for Christmas, so hopefully I’ll be creating some more artful photos in the future. Currently I’m practicing on the pizza. Light life pepperoni, canned mushrooms (yessss, canned mushrooms, they’re awesome on pizza) and the breakfast sausage browned with some Penzeys Italian sausage seasoning and follow your heart mozzarella.


And since I’m obsessed with British period pieces, I might as well watch one about cooking. I’m watching the Duchess of Duke Street from 1976 starring Gemma Jones (the mother in Bridget Jones.)

Nothing warms up the house on a cold winter’s day like a 400 degree oven. I roasted some beets and butternut squash. I like to peel and dice the veggies before roasting, so each piece gets coated and crispy.
Here’s the rice mix. It’s Kagayaki brand premium short 6 grain rice. I got it at the Japanese grocery on 41st in NYC. It’s a mixture of black rice, hulless barley, red rice, purple barley, rye berries and short grain brown rice. Let me say, this rice blend will force you to chew your food! It’s very hearty and filling and is quite flavorful even just plain.

This is my first go at the seitan-in-foil sausage technique. The recipe is from Alicia Simpson’s Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food. You know how I love the field roast and tofurky sausages, but this is so easy I might just have to start making my own more often. Not sure these will fool the ninja, but I’ll have to try it out in something. They are decidedly breakfast sausage flavored, but would go well as an appetiser with mustard sauce. This is how I ate them for actual breakfast (it’s 10AM) because I didn’t have any tofu to make a scramble to go with them. Anyway they were really good this way. Eating with toothpicks is so sophisticated. I sliced the steamed sausages and then pan fried them in a little oil. The mustard sauce is just some whole grain mustard and vegenaise. Here’s the sausages after they have steamed in foil.

This is a great technique. The finished seitan has a nice texture that isn’t the sometimes rubbery of boiled seitan or dried out of baked seitan. Because you also know I love Penzeys, I’ll have to try this with one of their sausage seasonings. The Italian and breakfast sausage seasonings are great. I use them in pasta sauce and in scrambles to get sausage flavor without the meat. Sausage is one of those great vegan items that is so much more about the seasoning than the meat that it’s really satisfying veganized.

There are a lot of great recipes in Alicia’s book that I’ll have to try as well. Spicy buffalo bites, sweet potato waffles, “egg” macguffin, tahini coffee?!?, peach cobbler and tortilla soup are the ones I’m lookin’ at right now. Alicia also has a bunch of product reviews on her blog vegan guinea pig. I really need to get me a tofu xpress.

As a side note I like Deathcab for Cutie and all, but seriously Pandora, does every other song need to be DCFC or the Postal Service? Really. OK, now they’re playing Lost in the Supermarket by the Clash just to make me happy. I’ve got the roku which plays the streaming netflix on the TV and now hooks into pandora, too. So I’ve got Deathcab in surround sound. Awesome.

If you’re wondering what I’m doing not at work making sausage, complaining about the otherwise awesome pandora, and blogging on a Tuesday morning, my last day at my old job was yesterday and I start a new job on Monday. OK, so the office buildings are across the street from each other in downtown NYC, but still change is good. I’m excited about the new job. Can’t wait to sneak some vegan treats on the unsuspecting office workers.