I got a free sample of Dandies vegan marshmallows in the mail last week - Thanks Chicago Soy Dairy!!!! To show off the meltability and brownability (is that a word) of the marshmallows, I made smores bars. These are super easy. They took about 10 minutes to put together and throw in the oven. The recipe is from All Recipes. Some changes to the recipe: I didn’t use quite as much margarine as called for. I baked the bottom layer for 5 minutes before adding the chocolate and marshmallows. I also threw some extra graham cracker crumbles on the top. I hit them with the broiler for about 2 minutes at the end of the cooking time.

The marshmallows were crispy and brown and tasted great the next day too.

I only made a 1/2 batch so I only used half the bag. I have the other half for campfire smores this weekend while camping!

Dandies Marshmallows are great! Run out and get some. They might be the best tasting marshmallows I have ever had (vegan or not).

If you are in the process of learning about veganism or you’ve heard the term “abolitionist” and don’t quite understand what it means in relation to veganism, you should go and read Gary Francione’s new pamphlet. It is a short easy read packed with tons of information. It is a tri-fold pamplet so reading order is top right panel, bottom page, top left 2 panels.

This is also a good read if you happen to be one of my friends (or my mom) who doesn’t quite understand why I am vegan.

If after reading the pamplet, you still want more to read, check out Gary’s FAQs.

I got the Vegan Brunch cookbook last week and I want to make everything in it. Here are a couple of things I’ve made so far.

Tonight’s dinner was Banana Rabanada which is a Brazilian French Toast (which happens to be banana french toast topped with cocoa powder and cinnamon). I was either half asleep when I made this and didn’t realize that the cocoa powder was for dusting after they cook, or the recipe was written in such a way that it made me want to throw the cocoa powder in the blender for the batter. So, we had chocolate banana french toast. The batter looked a bit like chocolate pudding. It tasted great in any case. I went ahead and added a 1/2 tsp of cinnamon to the blender as well so I wouldn’t have to sprinkle with cinnamon when done.

On Saturday morning, we made the Perfect Pancakes (with added Banana slices). The batter was a little runny for me and I had to add another 1/4 cup flour. I also reduced the cinnamon by half (1/2 tsp total). I don’t like my pancakes with a lot of cinnamon.

So far, 2 for 2. Both recipes tasted great. Tomorrow night I’ll be trying out the Tofu Benedict with vegan holandaise sauce. I can’t wait to try that!

Tomorrow (Weds) is Mike’s birthday! He wasn’t home tonight so I spent the evening making his cake. I like the way it came out this year. Once I get the color frosting mixed up and in piping bags I have a hard time stopping! I think I stopped just in time this year. Here is the recipe for the cake.

Dinner a few nights ago was BBQ Black Eye Peas with Cheesy Grits and some baked sweet potato. I used some cheddar cheesly in the grits. The beans had a ton of Fakin Bacon in them and my house smelled great for hours and hours after we made this… like bbq and fakin’ bacon. These recipes are from Nava Altas’s book Vegan Express.

Lightlife put out a new product recently called Tempehtations. It is pre-marinated cubes of tempeh in three different flavors: ginger teriyaki, zesty lemon, and classic bbq. I wanted this be really great and to be the end to pre-steaming tempeh before cooking it.

I got the ginger teriyaki flavor and added it to a stir fry; served over mixed red and white quinoa. We browned the tempeh, removed it from the pan, stir fried vegetables and then added the tempeh back in near the end along with some sauce.

These tempeh cubes were just ok for me. If you don’t want to chop up the tempeh and steam it and possibly marinate it, then this will work ok for you. It tastes alright. I’ll just take the plain old plain tempeh. I like the plain because I can get it crispier when I brown it. I also had originally bought these to skewer and grill but the cubes were too small to grill.

Have you heard about Daiya cheese yet? It is not yet for sale at almost any retailers because they are only selling food service sized bags. However, Pangea is taking those bags and breaking them up into smaller bags and selling them to us!! It winds up being expensive with the 2 day shipping and cold pack, so order a bunch of stuff and at least try to make those shipping costs worth it.

I got 2 packages of the cheddar. They were out of the Italian variety. I’ve been trying to remember what I used to use all that cheddar cheese for before I went vegan and I seriously can’t remember. I only remember using it for Mexican food, although I know that can’t be right. So, I made mexican food. I made some really simple casseroles just to test the cheese. The casseroles themselves weren’t anything you’d want me to share the recipes for.

Meltability: Daiya melts like you wouldn’t believe. It melts on top of the casserole in about 5 minutes (so add it at the end) and melts in the middle with no problem at all.

Taste: While it still has a slightly funny vegan cheese flavor, it is much better than most. That flavor seemed to go away when I reheated leftovers.

Texture: awesome. Slight stringiness and a lot of creaminess. When we tasted the taco casserole and the enchiladas we were both shocked to find that what we’d been missing was an element of creaminess. This cheese fixed that.

Overall: B++. If they could get rid of that slight vegan cheese flavor that they all seem to have, I’ll up my grade to an A+. And yes, I will be ordering lots more of this.

I’ll probably make some quesadillas with the remainder of the cheese. That feels like an ultimate test. Any other ideas you want to see tested instead?

Here are pics of the taco casserole:

Here are pics of the enchiladas:

I recently volunteered to be a Veggie Thing Dictator. Veggie Thing is a website about beautiful tasty vegan food sponsored by CitySearch. I didn’t see any Utah entries, so I knew I had to represent. We aren’t bursting at the seams with vegan food here in the Salt Lake City area but we do have some good vegan food if you know where to find it. Here is my first Veggie Thing post about Vertical Diner’s Fried Chikin and Mashed Potatoes.

If you haven’t seen Veggie Thing!, you should go and take a look at all the lovely pictures of vegan food.

Mike and I went for a hike today down in Salt Lake (still too much snow up here for hiking). We hit Liberty Heights Fresh on the way home and I picked up this cute little head of yellow cauliflower. I wish I’d thought to take a picture of it. I didn’t feel like going to to store today so I started rummaging around to see what odds and ends were in the kitchen. I found onions, 4 red potatoes, 3 carrots, and some broccoli that I’d already cut up along with 3 cups of no-chicken stock. Sounds like soup to me. We had this soup for dinner along with some rolls that I made last week, that were in the freezer, and we had the last of this weeks salad. Here is a pic of the soup:

I don’t really have a recipe, but I’ll tell you what I did. It is so easy.

I cooked some diced onions in olive oil till they started to brown and then added a couple cloves of minced garlic. After the garlic cooked for about a minute I added the stock.

I then threw in 4 peeled and diced red potatoes, 3 chopped carrots, about 3/4 tsp dried thyme, about 1/4 tsp dried basil, about 1/4 tsp dried tarragon, and some salt and pepper.

I cooked that till tender and then threw in about a cup and a half of broccoli florets and a small head of cauliflower (chopped up of course) and added some more water. I cooked that for about 10-15 min till tender.

Then I used my immersion blender to blend it up well. I added 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast (probably would have added more if I’d had more), salt and pepper to taste.

Then, it seemed like it was missing something so I threw in about 2 Tbsp earth balance on a whim, along with a dash of shoyu.

After a week of cooking Mexican food I need to (a) not cook much this week (b) cook really easy things and (c) make something besides Mexican food.  I went with all my cravings for vegetables and pasta tonight.  This is a recipe from Jack Bishop’s cookbook, A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.  It is Emerald Peanut Sesame Noodles (the emerald is from spinach in the sauce) served with roasted yellow beets and asparagus.  For the noodles I used Whole Wheat Spaghetti.  And you can’t see it in this picture, but one of the best parts of this dish is the fried scallions that go on top of the noodles.