Adapted from a King Arthur Flour recipe http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/RecipeDisplay?RID=1190045888980

Outside In Pumpkin Muffins

Wet
1 Cup Pumpkin (yeah, I used canned)
2 TBS flax seeds blended with 6 TBS water
1/2 Brown Sugar (I used sugar in the raw)
1/4 cup Boiled Cider
1/3 cup applesauce
1 TBS Canola oil

Dry
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp Pumpkin pie spice or combination of ginger, cloves, allspice, cinnamon
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup nut/soy/rice milk
1 1/2 cups flour (any combo white or whole wheat pastry flour)

Filling
1 8 oz package Tofutti cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp orange or lemon extract optional

Preheat oven 400 degrees
Line or grease 12 muffin tins
Mix together filling ingredients
Sift together dry ingredients
Mix together wet ingredients

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet in 3 batches.
Put about 1 TBS batter in each muffin tin and spread it to the sides so the bottom is covered, but there is a little well for the filling. Put about 1 TBS filling in the well you just made. Then fill with remaining batter and bake 18-20 min. Pop them out of the muffin tin onto a cooling rack after about a minute or they’ll start to get soggy as they cool.

I always have seem to have extra muffin batter so this made about 12 extra small mini-muffins, too. I put some candied ginger in these instead of the filling. They are pretty gingery, but not bad. You may end up with extra filling. You can spread some on top of cooled muffins for outside inside out muffins.

Katie from Don’t eat off the Sidewalk has posted this weeks Iron Chef Challenge for the Day of the Dead. http://donteatoffthesidewalk.com/?p=241 November 1 is also All Saint’s Day and more excitingly World Vegan Day!

I’ve been meaning to try out the Chicken-Style Seitan Cutlets from Joanna at the Yellow Rose Recipes. Man I really need to get this cookbook! http://www.yellowroserecipes.com/

Joanna’s cutlet recipe is awesome and the dough was easy to roll out thin without ripping and stayed whole through the boiling. I used a silpat mat and a silicone rolling pin, instead of the parchment. I also used vegetable broth in the cutlet recipe instead of the water, but I used plain water with the bouquet garni for the cooking broth.

Chicken with red sauce was one of my Dad’s favorite dishes. My Dad passed away 4 years ago after a 12 year battle with cancer. So here’s my veganized tribute on the day of the dead.

Red Sauce covers 4-6 cutlets with some extra to pour over a side of rice
1 Cup Ketchup
2 TBS blackstrap molasses
2 TBS agave nectar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup soy sauce

I lightly pan fried the cutlets in a little olive oil, then poured the sauce + added some broth (you could use water-the sauce is pretty thick and pungent) and simmered for about 20 min.

It turned out surprisingly authentic. Mom always makes rice as a side with this and Dad loved lots of extra sauce on the rice. I used a mix of brown & wild rice.

Extra bonus is the cutlet cooking broth is amazing. In the boquet garni, I used bay leaves, sage, thyme, rosemary, dried onion, and dried chives. I have these great Japanese tea bags that I just filled with the herbs. The final broth needs a little salt or kombu, but this is the best unchickeniest chicken broth I’ve ever made. With the little bits of seitan floating around, if I didn’t know this was vegan, I wouldn’t believe it.

It’s a beautiful day here in NYC, and I clearly don’t get enough exercise. So tonight I decided to walk from work on Wall St. to Grand Central on 42nd St. If I wasn’t hungry, I would have made it the whole way. Instead I stopped in the Whole Foods in Union Square to grab a Larabar, but ended up buying a shopping bag full of groceries. I needed veganaise and nutritional yeast anyway and I wanted to try the Vega stuff since I just read the Thrive Diet by the vegan triathlete.
So with my now heavy bag of groceries, I took the subway the remaining 28 blocks. Then in Grand Central I remember I need olive oil, too, so I went O & Co (pricey, but awesome) and got a nice grassy bottle of olive oil and some balsamic vinegar.

All in all not a bad decision, but my adventure emphasizes 2 things. I need to exercise more(I pay for a gym) and I really need to spend less money on groceries since I have a pantry full of things to eat.

So I’m making November, the month of the pantry. Let’s see how long I can make it without going to the grocery store.

Just pimping the supervegan. If you’re in living in NYC or just headed in for a visit, http://www.supervegan.com/ is a great resource.

Even better if you’re in NYC on the last Thursday of most months, there’s Vegan Drinks. http://www.vegandrinks.org/

I don’t totally know why, but every time I make my husband eggplant he swears it tastes like it’s got ground beef in it. So if that’s the kind of heartiness you’re going for, throw in some eggplant. It’s ugly rainy here in NYC-apparently it’s supposed to snow- so this fit the bill.

I have the plague, so I’m staying home from work today, playing on the interwebs.
When you’re not buying local, check out the awesome stuff at Food Fight. I’ve not made the pilgrimage to Portland, but shipping is about the same environmental impact as driving to the grocery store to buy their shipped products. I just got my first order and can’t wait to chow down on some tofu jerkey and test out the blue cheez.
Also they post current issues, like how after getting 12,000 e-mails, Zappos has decided to stop selling fur! Now it’s time to get Amazon to on board. I already sent them my anti-fur e-mail. Didn’t we do this already in the 80’s?

Yes, it’s the book that turned me vegan. They tricked me. I had no idea what it was about. I bought it in Grand Central thinking it was some mindless chick lit and read most of it on the way home. I promptly threw out all the cheese in my refrigerator.
I shouldn’t be surprised at the one star reviews on Amazon, but I am. It’s like the brainwashed leading the brainwashed. I updated my review and I’m going to put out more good reviews of vegan stuff I have read.

Does this make me a freegan?And more chickpea cutlet sushi…ok, I was trying to replicate a philadelphia roll, so I added some tofutti cream cheese. Non-traditional on so many levels, but really freakin’ good.

First up is a steamy brown rice miso in a kombu dashi with wakame.

Sushi roll 1 is a pickled burdock(kind of like a carrot) and kaiware(daikon radish sprouts) roll. Sushi roll 2 is a chickpea cutlet(Veganomicon), gourd strip, and kaiware roll. And the cutest chickpea cutlet sushi.

And I just wouldn’t be me if there wasn’t a drink. There’s no way to make this look pretty, but it tastes great. Rice milk, mango and spirulina. I put it last because it is sweet, but I think this would be a good cocktail with sake added.