Coleslaw and Bagels

Week Three: Coleslaw
Week Four: Bagels

COLESLAW!

I really like coleslaw, I think it’s my southern upbringing and the fact that my grandparents used to own and manage various KFC restaurants.  I have lots of memories of myself eating biscuits with honey and coleslaw from KFC. Seems gross now but my 7 year old self totally loved it at the time. I never really thought of coleslaw as something I could ever make and achieve greatness with… but I surprised myself! This recipe I put together was simply wonderful.

Vegan Slaw

Ingredients:
1 medium cabbage (or a bag of coleslaw mix if you’re lazy or have crappy knives like I do)
1 red pepper
1-2 carrots
3 green onions

Dressing mix:
1/4 cup vegan sour cream
1/2 cup veganaise
1/4 cup soymilk
1/3 (or less depending on how sweet you like your slaw) cup sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1 T rice vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp celery seed

Combine all dressing ingredients in a blender and blend.
Shred your cabbage or dump your bag of coleslaw mix into a large bowl. Cut up red pepper and onion, slice carrots into small pieces, and combine in bowl with cabbage.  Pour dressing over the veggies and mix well. Cover and refrigerate.
This tastes best the second day but if you can’t stop yourself (I couldn’t) then it will still taste pretty darn good a few hours after you put it all together.

Serve with veggie bbq sandwiches or with anything else you can think of!

BAGELSsssss

I basically followed this recipe step by step and then created my own toppings.
Unfortunately, I totally forgot to add the oil (eeek!) and so they came out super dry. Also, my oven sucks a lot and can’t ever stay on a steady temp. so my bagels got burned. BUT I really loved making them and want to try again and cook them in my toaster oven 2 at a time. Here are some pictures from the process… I am determined to get good at this.

Notice me boiling the bagels! I had no idea this was required in making them. Super entertaining.

More notes: caraway seeds are the bessst. My sweetheart helped me make these and we did a few poppy, sesame, caraway, and everything bagels.  Next time I’ll have to experiment with sweet toppings.

Mango Soda

Last week… which I guess is really more than a week ago at this point but oh well… I tried making my own soda from home. I got inspired by this recipe on veganmania.com, an awesome site with wonderful recipes, among them directions to make the perfect pie crust, and it really is always perfect.

Mangos went on sale everywhere so I picked up a few thinking it would be neat to try making mango soda. I think I got a little too ambitious. I altered the recipe by cutting up the mangos into small pieces and combining them with agave nectar, some sugar, and water in pot and heating it all up for a while until it got kind of syrupy. And I should mention that I just found out, right after making this soda of course, that agave nectar is not all it’s cracked up to be.
I thought the mango chunks would get a bit smaller once heated up, really I was just lazy and should have used my juicer first. I ended up blending it all together once it heated through and added a few heaping spoonfuls into a cup along with some mineral water. I can’t say that I hated it, but it definitely could have been better. I’m planning to try this all again but next time I will definitely juice whatever fruit I’m using first and probably just use sugar and water to make the syrup.

This is me heating up the syrup on my amazingly tiny stove/oven. My sweetheart and I still have not found baking sheets that are small enough to fit inside. We pretty much bake everything in our toaster oven now. Sad, but true.

Look out for the next post coming soon: coleslaw!
hmmm… I’m seeing a southern theme arising.

Vegan Chix & Dumplings

Dear hungry bellies,
This blog is to keep track of all the new recipes I’m going to try in 2010. I really love to cook (and eat) and am hoping to try out a new recipe once a week for the whole year. I like to think I am adventurous in the kitchen but I often find myself making the same old things and forgetting recipes that I actually liked. Hopefully this will help me build my growing list of food favorites and remember what I should (and should not!) make again. I’ll post everything, even if it turns out bad, so I guess I will just warn everyone now to make sure & read the whole entry before trying anything.
Everything made will be vegetarian, most of it will be vegan! And so with that, I hope whoever ends up reading this enjoys the food. Onward with recipe #1 of 2010!

Vegan Chix & Dumplings (makes 3 servings, or 2 if you really love dumplings)

For my first attempt I decided to go with the ever delicious and soul warming, chicken and dumplings. I really have no memory of eating this as a home cooked meal growing up, but I did find it quite wonderful and perplexing when it was offered to me as a child. What is a dumpling? I pondered the possibilities. In all honesty, I would eat anything you put in front of me so dumplings, while mysterious in their plump gooey-ness, were questioned only momentarily before reaching the bottom of my stomach.

I now know what a dumpling is, and damn is it good.  Here is my version, vegan-ized and tweaked from a few I found online. This is surely something to keep anyone warm during these cold (and wet, here in the Northwest) winter days.

Dumpling Ingredients
1 cup flour (cake flour is best)
1t baking powder
1/2t salt
1T earth balance (EB)
6T soy milk (or whatever milk substitute you want)

Chix Stew Ingredients
2 1/2 cups “No Chicken Broth” or “Veggie Stock”
1 cup water
2T olive oil
1 onion
2 large cloves of garlic
2 celery stalks
1/2t thyme
1t parsley
2-3 carrots
1/4 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup frozen corn
1/2 bag of Quorn Chicken
3T earth balance (EB)
3T flour
salt & pepper to taste

Dumpling Mixture
In a bowl sift flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside. In a small pan heat up the EB until melted and add it to the flour mixture. Add soy milk 2 T at a time until the dough sticks together. Don’t mush it too much or it will get tough!

Chix Stew
Pour olive oil into a large pot on medium high heat. Chop onions and celery, mince the garlic, and add it all to the hot oil. Stir for a few minutes until the onions become translucent. Add broth, water, thyme and parsley. Cover and let simmer for 5-10 minutes.
In a separate pot (probably the one you just heated the EB up in for the dumplings) melt your 3T of EB. Whisk in flour 1T at a time and let it bubble. Uncover your broth and use a ladle or measuring cup with a long end and add small amounts (1/4 cup at a time) to the flour and EB mixture, whisking until blended after each addition. When the mixture becomes slightly soupy (probably after 1-1 1/2 cups is added), mix it into your stew.
Now you are ready for the veggies!
Add chopped carrots, peas, corn, and quorn to the stew and mix well so everything is covered. Add salt and pepper to taste and let the soup return to a boil. Return to your dumpling dough and separate it into 12 small balls. Place the dumplings into the stew gently, giving them as much space apart as possible. Turn down your stove so the stew gets to a simmer and cover the pot for 15 minutes. No peeking is allowed once you cover the pot, as it can mess up the texture of the dumplings.
Uncover the pot after 15 minutes and check to make sure the dumplings are cooked through, allow more time if they are still sticky on the inside. Once dumplings are fully cooked… dish up and EAT!