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.