Vegan in Virginia

Hello,

We have been vacationing in Virginia for the past several days and would like to share our eating experiences. Our favorite eatery is one that we just discovered today, and would love to have them relocate to Connecticut. : )

We ate at Yorgo's Bageldashery in Norfolk, VA today. While it isn't completely vegan, there is a great variety of vegan options available. We ordered The Peterman- which includes tofu scramble, hash browns, vegan sausage and onion; a vegan meatball sub special- which included vegan meatballs, sauce, and Daiya cheese; and a chocolate gingerbread cookie.

Our lunch was so amazing that we ordered some more food to go for later. For dinner we ordered the vegan Buffalo Chicken which included chick'n strips, lettuce, tomato, onion, herb veganaise, and buffalo sauce; vegan Pulled BBQ Chicken with Gardein chicken, vegan slaw and BBQ sauce; vegan potato salad; and a soup of the day which was the vegan potato soup with Daiya and tempeh.

I would definitely recommend visiting this bageldashery if you are in this area in Virginia. It was very tasty and the environment was very friendly.

TVP "Sausage" Milk Gravy

I remember in 5^th, before I was a vegetarian, being on vacation with my parents and grand parents in Colorado. For breakfast we had homemade sausage gravy on top of biscuits. There’s not much more exciting in the morning than fresh warm biscuits right out of the oven. To then slather that with creamy sausage deliciousness is then even better. I remember those breakfasts as being some of the most delicious and recreating a vegan version to enjoy with Nicole is even better.

Using her biscuits and some TVP mixed into milk gravy is the makings of a great breakfast on a shared day off. This gravy is a little heartier as the TVP soaks up some of the milk, so if you wish to have creamier runny gravy you could use half as much TVP. This version we found to be nice for a cold winter morning.

• 1 heaping cup textured vegetable protein (TVP)
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
• ½ tablespoon dill
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 tablespoon vegan butter
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 2 cups almond milk

1. Bring water to a boil.
2. In a small bowl combine TVP, Italian seasoning, dill, and black pepper.
3. Add 1 cup of boiling water and stir to combine. Set aside to absorb water.
4. Add butter to a pan or wide pot on medium heat.
5. Once butter is melted, whisk in flour and continue mixing for about one minute letting the flour and butter combination toast.
6. Add milk and continue whisking. Increase the heat to bring the mixture to a boil constantly whisking.
7. Reduce heat to medium and allow to simmer 5 minutes whisking occasionally.
8. Add TVP and mix to combine.

Nutty Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

While shopping at Target recently we noticed in the Christmas section we noticed something amazingly unhealthy. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – in a one-pound package. That’s an eight-ounce cup. Such an unhealthy snack but it sounds so delicious. We love chocolate and peanut butter but seeing such a large chunk of chocolate and peanut butter is a little sickening. But, it is still inspiring. We decided to make these nutty peanut butter bars with chocolate as a viable vegan choice. Yeah, it’s not really that much healthier, but when the mood strikes you just have to go with it sometimes (that happens a lot for us).

• ¾ cup walnuts
• ¾ cup cashews
• ½ cup almonds
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 3 tbs flour
• ¼ cup rolled oats
• 4 tbs vegan butter
• ¾ lb fresh ground peanut butter
• 12 oz vegan chocolate

1. In a food processor add all of the nuts, cinnamon, flour, oats, and 2 tablespoons of vegan butter and pulse until the nuts are chopped.
2. In a microwave safe dish heat the peanut butter so it is a little more workable. Stir the peanut butter every 30 seconds until warm and melted.
3. Add the chopped nut mixture to the peanut butter and stir to combine.
4. Line a square pan with foil and add the peanut butter mixture and smooth out across pan.
5. Melt chocolate with 2 tablespoons of butter. This can be done in a double boiler or in the microwave in a way similar to the peanut butter.
6. Pour the melted chocolate on top of the peanut butter and nut combination.
7. Let the peanut butter and chocolate cool in the refrigerator overnight before cutting into bars (as long as you don’t mind a slightly melted snack you can shorten the time a little bit, we are impatient people).

Simple Butternut Squash Soup

During the fall and winter nothing is better than a nice warm cup of soup; except maybe soup with seitan that has melted cheese all over it. We love this recipe because it is super simple and quick to make. Recently butternut squash was on sale for $0.49 per pound, so it was also really inexpensive to make.

• One medium sized butternut squash
• 6 cups of vegetable broth (ours was the leftover broth from a batch of seitan)
• 5 leaves of kale
• 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes

1. Peel the butternut squash. We found the best method to be cutting off the top and bottom of the squash. Then you stand the squash up on a cutting board and just use a knife to cut away the skin. We don’t have any peelers that seem strong enough to take on a squash.
2. Cube the butternut squash and boil in a pot with the vegetable broth until fork tender.
3. Remove the butternut squash from pot and add to a food processor and pulse until pureed.
4. Add kale and pulse until mostly combined (we like big chunks of kale, if you don’t you could substitute for spinach, collards, chard, or just omit the greens altogether but they add a great flavor).
5. Add mixture back to the broth.
6. The soup should still be warm, but you can continue to warm the soup on medium heat.
7. Mix in nutritional yeast flakes and serve.

Vegan Bacon and Havarti Stuffed Seitan

What’s better than seitan? Stuffed Seitan! This recipe uses our Super Big Batch of Garlicky Seitan or you can use your favorite seitan recipe. Sometimes you can get away with just using nutritional yeast flakes for some cheesy flavor in recipes like soups and sauces. For this kind of recipe you need something that melts into a gooey cheesy mess. And for that we have only one choice; Daiya.

We love the melted goodness of Daiya cheese on almost anything – as you could probably tell from our pancake recipe. Unlike some other cheeses Daiya actually melts instead of staying in little cubes of cheese-ish flavored sponges.


• 1 Batch of seitan
• 4 – 5 slices of Lightlife Smart Bacon
• 3 ounces of Daiya wedge style Havarti Cheese

1. Slice all of the seitan pieces in half – originally we tried to only slice ¾ of the way through so the seitan would be sort of like a sub so it would have a hinge but they just fell apart for the most part.
2. Arrange all of the seitan pieces in a baking dish. Place half of a slice of bacon on one half of each seitan.
3. Slice the Diaya and place a slice on each piece of seitan opposite the bacon.
4. Broil in the oven until the Daiya begins to melt and is golden brown.

We served these with our butternut squash soup – there may have been some dipping of the seitan into the butternut squash soup which only added more flavor.

Super Big Batch of Garlicky Seitan

You will need a VERY large pot for this recipe, as it will make a very big batch of seitan. 

• 3 ½ cups of vital wheat gluten
• 2 ½ cups of vegetable broth (cold or warm, not boiling)
• 1 teaspoon of dried dill weed
• 1 cup of nutritional yeast flakes
• 10 cloves of garlic
• ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup of olive oil

For the broth:

10-12 cups of water

Vegan vegetable broth mix or bouillon cube (I used about a tablespoon and a half of a jarred kind, but you can add according to how much flavor you want.)

1. Mix the wheat gluten, yeast flakes, and spices in a large bowl.

2. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a smaller bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine with a wooden spoon or spatula for about a minute. Now knead the dough for several minutes. You can add a little more broth if there is extra dry ingredients that did not combine yet.

3. Once the dough is kneaded, separate into smaller clumps, about the size of your fist or a little smaller than that. The important thing to note is that the seitan dough expands a lot while cooking. I ended up with 8 or 9 clumps of seitan.

4. Bring about 10-12 cups of water to a boil in a large pot. Add in some vegetable broth mix or bouillon cubes and stir until combined. Add the seitan and then lower the heat to a simmer (I usually use medium heat, where it’s just barely bubbling) and then add a cover, yet make sure that there is room for steam to come out.

5. Cook the seitan over medium heat for about 1 hour. If you cut into it and the inside seems dry then you can cook it for some more time.

Hope you enjoy : )

Pancakes Topped with Bacon and Daiya Cheese

One of our favorite vegan cookbook authors is Isa Chandra Moskowitz. For our breakfast this morning we used her pancake recipe from Vegan Brunch as the starting point. If you have your own favorite pancake recipe you can certainly use that instead (but why not just use this delicious recipe).

Sweet pancakes are tasty. We enjoy chocolate chip pancakes just as much as the next person. We especially enjoy pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes or waffles. Sometimes breakfast just needs to be a little more flavorful and a little less sweet.

We were in the mood for something cheesy this morning. Usually when that mood strikes we will make a tofu scramble or mixed veggie wrap. Today we decided savory pancakes were the way to go. We still had some vegan bacon left from our seitan last night, so why not have some of that too. On the side? Not this time; this time we made cheesy bacon pancakes. And they were great! To make them, you'll need:

• One completed pancake recipe in a mixing bowl
• 8 slices of vegan bacon
• 1/4 package of Daiya wedge style Havarti cheese
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic

1. Put together your pancake recipe of choice and leave in the mixing bowl. Add the 2 tablespoons of minced garlic and stir to combine.
2. Heat up a skillet on medium heat.
3. Dice up bacon slices and cheese. Portion into eight pancake applications (a little more or less depending on how many pancakes your recipe makes, we made eight pancakes).
4. Spray skillet with cooking spray or rub with oil/butter.
5. Spoon pancake mix into skillet and sprinkle bacon and Havarti on top of the pancake.
6. Flip the pancake over when you start to see bubbles forming in the center of the pancake.
7. Cook on the second side for about 2 minutes until golden brown.
8. Serve and enjoy delightful savory pancakes.


If you make these, we hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Let us know if you make something different And deliciously tasty, because we'd love to try it.

Crunchy Chia Cole Slaw

Cole slaw is a great dish that works well as a side for many meals. The way we make ours, it's nice and crunchy and is tasty enough for more than just burgers and hot dogs. Sometimes it is the main dish (or only dish) for a quick and light dinner. Far too many times people will deliver a cole slaw that is so laden with mayonnaise that its soggy and literally dripping. Instead we use a small amount of vegannaise an some vegan cream cheese to keep the mix crunchy and yet coated.

- 1 tablespoon vegannaise
- 2 tablespoons vegan cream cheese
- 2 tablespoons Daiya Havarti Wedge Style Cheese
- 1 tablespoon unsweetened almond milk
- 4 cups of cole slaw mix (or mixed shredded cabbage and carrots)
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes (or more)

1. Add the Daiya cheese and cream cheese to a small bowl and mash together with a fork.
2. Add vegannaise and mix together.
3. Add almond milk and stir to combine all ingredients. Some lumps are fine (who doesn't like chunks of Daiya cheese?).
4. In a mixing bowl add 2 cups of cole slaw mix. Add the Daiya-milk-vegannaise mixture to the cole slaw and mix together.
5. Add the chia seeds and mix together again.
6. Add the rest of the cole slaw mix and fold everything together.
7. Serve immediately or store in fridge for the opportune time. Sprinkle the nutritional on top of the bowl, or individual bowls (if you're like Nicole you can sprinkle them directly onto each serving and in your mouth).

Easy Vegan Chicken Wraps

And our final throwback to last June for the evening. A quick chicken wrap great for lunch.

"Easy vegan chicken wraps

• 1 serving of Vegan frozen chicken
• handful of cole slaw mix
• Handful of organic spring mix
• Veganaise
• Hot sauce
• BBQ sauce
• Earth Balance coconut spread(or margarine/oil of your choice)
• 1 wrap

1. Add about two teaspoons of EB spread or oil to a frying pan or small pot. Turn the stove top to medium-high heat.

2. After two-three minutes, add the vegan chicken. Cook for two minutes and then add your desired amount of hot sauce and BBQ sauce. Stir the chicken around a bit while it cooks so it does not stick to the bottom to much.

3. Cook the chicken for about five more minutes and then add the colslaw mix and spring mix to the pan/pot. Let these cook with the chicken for about two minutes while still stirring. Turn the stove top off. Add a small amount of Veganaise to the mixture and stir so that everything is coated evenly.

4. You are now ready to scoop this mixture onto your wrap. Fold the wrap and enjoy!"

Cheesy Kale Spring Rolls

Here is another amazingly delicious dish from last May. Daiya cheese wrapped up with kale, how could that possibly be bad?

"The following recipe is for some delicious baked spring rolls we made just last night. They were cheesy and warm and delicious. Though they were slightly messy as the vegan cheese oozed out during the cooking process.

Here is what you will need for ingredients:

• 14 spring roll wrappers (rice paper wrappers)
• 5 kale leaves
• 2 cups of spring mix salad
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce
• 1 package of Daiya wedge style jack cheese (or your favorite flavor)
• About 1 tablespoon of oil

Here are the tools you'll need:

• A cookie sheet
• A rack that fits on the cookie sheet
• A plate or wooden cutting board for wrapping your tasty treats
• A food processor (we used Ninja)
• A large bowl of hot water to soften the wrappers.
• A brush to spread the oil

1. First thing you need to do is break your kale up into manageable chunks for your food processor or blender so it is easier for it to rip your tasty greens to shreds. We used curly green kale, but any style you choose will be delicious. Chop that up for a few seconds.
2. Next, douse your chopped up kale with the hot sauce (if you're like us you'll add even more, smoked chipotle powder would also be a great addition here). And stuff the spring mix in next. Give this a couple pulses to break down the greens and mix in the hot sauce.
3. Now the good part: cut up the wedge style Daiya. We used an entire container of the delicious cheese, but you could use half of the container and still have the same effect. This is a super cheesy recipe though, so you're going to toss all of those cut up wedges into your food processor and give it a few more whirls until everything is incorporated together.
4. Now you're going to assemble everything. At this point you should set your oven at 350 degrees, put the rack on the cookie sheet and use your brush to oil up the rack so nothing sticks. Fill your bowl with hot water (we just used tap water that was as hot as possible) and get ready.
5. The wrappers just need to soak for a minute or less depending on how hot your water is. Going one at a time just take your wrapper and soak it in water holding it submerged until it becomes translucent and hydrated. After being "cooked" by the warm water, spread the wrapper out on your plate or wooden cutting board. Take one spoon (probably about a tablespoon) of your filling and put it just off center in the wrapper.
6. Now proceed by rolling these like a burrito (well, at least how we roll a burrito). Fold the closest edge over the filling. Then fold the left side over, followed by the right side and then roll. *At this point it is probably important to tell you not to wrap them too tight, if you do some cheese will explode out during the baking process. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you should leave a little room for expansion.*
7. After you finish wrapping your rolls you should place them on the rack. We were able to get 14 rolls out of our filling which filled up our rack as well. Next, lightly brush each roll with the oil and set in the middle of the oven. The only thing that stands between you and those deliciously cheesy kale rolls now is ten minutes. Let these little guys bake for ten minutes, remove them and let them cool for a few seconds before you eat them.

We hope you will enjoy these tasty treats as much as we did, and hope that you experiment with some more fillings. We normally add garlic, I just forgot this time. Let us know what other delicious variations you try. And expect some more tasty recipes soon."

Fiddleheads with Vegan Pepper Steak

Here is a delicious meal we made this past June, wish we could still get fiddleheads at this time in CT.

There's been one produce item that I've seen on occasion recently that we have never tried before that I've been curious about. Fiddleheads, I've never know what they were and until this year I've never heard of them before. The spiraled green items seemed to be intriguing.

I've talked to many customers that have come through my line and everyone always said they were delicious and amazing. The most common way that I was told to prepare them was a simple wash, boil and sauté. That's exactly what we did.

To start, we rinsed the fiddleheads repeatedly in some cold water changing out the water a few times. And from there simply boiled them for about ten minutes in an inch of water and then straining them. To sauté them I used just a little bit of Earth Balance's coconut spread on a medium heat and added a little bit of minced garlic. After the garlic was nice and toasty I tossed the fiddleheads right on in.

We had a little bit of whole wheat rotini pasta left over from the previous night so that went in with the fiddleheads. After this warmed up a little bit the time came for some Daiya Cheese to make its way into the mix. The havarti style wedge has quickly become our favorite and is a staple in many of our "cheesy" dishes. On the side we had some vegan pepper steak from May Wah with some barbecue sauce. To top off the entire dish we threw some shredded cabbage and carrot on top of the plate. This was a delicious meal and was relatively light because we kept is simple.

Cran-Apple Quinoa Salad

Cran-Apple Quinoa Salad

What do you do when you need to make lunch for the following day but there isn't really anything in the house that is easy to make? You just throw a whole bunch of things together and hope that what comes out at the end is edible... And maybe even a little tasty. Tonight we decided to make quinoa, with a few additions.

1 tsp olive oil
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1 tbs nutritional yeast flakes
2 tbs maple syrup
1 cup fresh halved cranberries
1 diced apple
2 tbs apple jalapeño jelly
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raw shelled unsalted pumpkin seeds

Add olive oil to pot and warm on medium heat. Add quinoa and toast for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Add water and bring to a boil.
Reduce to medium heat and let simmer for about 10 minutes (until all water has been absorbed).
Add maple syrup and cranberries to a pan on medium heat. Stir often and let the cranberries soften and breakdown.
Add apples to pan and continue to cook for about 4 minutes.
Stir in apple jalapeño jelly (hot pepper jelly or cranberry pepper jelly would be equally as good)
Add walnuts and pumpkin seeds.
Combine quinoa and cran-apple mixture.
Transfer to a bowl and let cool in the fridge before serving.

Prep time: About 10 minutes
Cook time: About 15-20 minutes
Serves: About 3-4 servings

A Very Vegan Thanksgiving

For almost every year of the past 24 years that I have been celebrating Thanksgiving my family has made ravioli. When I was younger my great grandmother would actually keep me home from school in order to help her make them. For the past decade or so though I have been a vegetarian, so I’ve only been able to share in the cheese ravioli. And for the past four years I’ve been enjoying a vegan Thanksgiving meal with my girlfriend, which is even more delicious because we make it together.

 

This year my family decided to take the easy round and order a complete cooked dinner from the store that I work at. My girlfriend and myself are the only two vegetarians of the bunch so we make our own separate meal. Normally this would begin with a trip to the store to buy a frozen Tofurkey ball. In past years this was great; earlier in the year however we started attempting to make our own seitan (the top left and top right in the picture) and we love it. So this year we decided to make our main dish instead of letting someone else.

The deliciousness that was this year’s meal began with homemade stuffing (bottome left of picture) made with hearty flax bread, celery, carrots, and shallots as well as diced apple. Making stuffing from a mix is just never the same as using bread that you’ve toasted yourself and then added freshly cooked veggies and stock. Adding diced apple is something that we tried a few months ago that we really enjoyed. After we added the broth and let the bread soak up all of the tastiness we sprinkled some Cheddar Daiya Cheese all over the top and baked it in the oven.

This stuffing was also the amazing interior of our main course – seitan wrapped in filo dough. We laid out a piece of filo dough and placed our seitan pieces that had been sliced in half and then filled with stuffing. These wrapped pieces of warm deliciousness were then baked until golden brown. When we cut into these on Thanksgiving Day there were amazing. Not exactly the same as having Tofurkey as a turkey substitute but that didn’t make them any less delicious.

Mashed potatoes (bottom right of picture) are always a given when it comes to this meal. We tried something new this year for our mashed potatoes. Generally we begin by boiling the potatoes and then adding vegan butter and almond milk until creamy and smooth. This time however, we decided to bake the potatoes instead of boiling them. This kept the entire dish a little bit lighter than usual which was a good change. And the final piece that made this meal complete was the roasted Brussels sprouts and kale. The crunchy pieces of kale tossed with quartered Brussels sprouts that were in no way soggy were a perfect side.

Dessert is something different all together and was an amazing combination of pumpkin and chocolate in the form of a muffin. This is our go-to recipe for dessert greatness and comes from one of our favorite vegan cookbook writers: Isa Chandra Moskowitz. If you haven't made anything that she's written about then you are truly missing out.