Vegan BBQ Survival Kit

I am going to my first BBQ of the summer and it is sure to be filled with Carnivores or what they lovingly call themselves: meatatarians. my vegan BBQ survival kit. Basically, it is a cool I pack for these sorts of occasions. I am not the type of person to put everyone out and cook special meals for me. I enjoy cooking, so it is no trouble for me at all. I have learned though that it is smart to plan for picnics and BBQs so I don't end up chewing on carrots and pouting because I can't eat anything.

This BBQ would have been very unfriendly for vegans without my vegan survivor kit!

My BBQ survival kit varies depending on what I have in stock, but base on the following:

1. Salad and/or salad dressing
2. Veganaise
3. Salsa or Guacamole
4. Veggie burgers or some marinated seitan or tofu
5. Dessert
6. Coconut Bliss Ice cream (Yes, I consider this separate from dessert)
7. Wine

I don't always bring all of these items, but usually most of it is there. My friends are not always so vegan-friendly. I always bring enough to share and I try to pack things that won't scare off the meatatarians.

Because it is Canada Day, I thought I would try to pack some red and white foods to theme it a bit. Unfortunately I did not get to making the salad... I did pack a vinaigrette in case there is salad there. I made some delicious beet burgers that I adapted from Colour me Vegan, packed tomato, mango avocado and lime to make a salsa to go with it. Hazelnut fudge Coconut bliss and Canada Day Surprise Cookies! I adapted my lemon sugar cookies and there were some mistake that I think I recovered from to make a wonderful, light and fresh cookie.

Canada Day Surprise Cookies

• 1/4 margarine
• 2/3 cup of sugar
• 2 Tbsp lime juice
• 1 chia egg (1tsp ground chia seeds and 2 Tbsp water, whisked)
• 1-2 Tbsp Milk (I didn't measure it)
• Zest of two limes
• 1 1/4 cup white flour
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder (could omit, I didn't mean to add this!)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt

Pre-heat the oven to 350F. First beat the margarine and sugar together until fluffy. Add the lime juice the egg and the milk and mix again for 2 minutes. Combine the dry ingredients (Flours, zest, baking powder and soda, salt) in a separate bowl. Pour the dry into the wet and mix until it is well combined/

Take about a tablespoon of dough and roll it into a ball and place on a baking sheet. using a fork, press down on the balls to form cookies. Top with raw coconut and some sugar (I used a red sugar to get into my theme). Bake for about 10 minutes and then let sit on the cookie sheet for 5 more and then transfer to a plate.

Pretty easy and they are pretty tasty. Originally I was not planning to add the baking powder (I thought it was the baking soda!) and I think it dried out the dough so I added the milk at the end. I think you could omit both of these ingredient and get a nice cookie from it, but the addition of these ingredients didn't wreck anything. In fact, I think it made the cookies a bit more cakey.

Why are these Canada day surprise cookies? Well, I think the finished product looks like a basic sugar cookie with red sugar on top, but when you bite into them, they have a yummy tropical surprise with the lime and the coconut. You cannot go wrong with that!

Try something new and make these into a ice cream sandwich: Get your favourite ice cream (I used coconut bliss, coconut flavour). Take two cookies and put a good sized scoop on top of the first cookie, top it with the second cookie, sugar side down to trap in that coconut and sugar topping. Serve. All I can say is... YUMMM!!

Late Night Chocolate Pecan Muffins and Coconut Butter

I didn't go grocery shopping today like I normally do and I really wanted to make some muffins for breakfast... and a late night snack. So I found a really tasty looking recipe that I thought I could pull off (Found Here at the Baking Sheet).

Unfortunately, I was out of the following: whole wheat flour,vanilla, vanilla soy milk and walnuts! It is really hard to make decent baked goods without vanilla and the whole point of these muffins were that they had walnuts in it! Dammit! I decided that I didn't want to wait until tomorrow and went ahead with the recipe anyways. I had to modify it though to incorporate the fact that I lacked a couple key ingredients. Here is what I did:

Late Night Chocolate Pecan Muffins
Makes 8

• 3/4 cup of stone flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 3/4 cup of soy milk
• 2 Tbsp canola oil
• 1 Tbsp coconut flakes
• 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts and 8 more for the garnish

Line or grease a muffin tin and preheat the oven to 350 F. Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix. Combine the Maple syrup, milk, and oil in a small bowl and mix. now pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined. Add the chopped pecans and the coconut and stir again. Fill the muffin tins about 3/4 of the way and bake for 18 - 20 minutes.

Learned this trick to cooling muffins without a rask from theppk.com

I served these up with some homemade coconut butter. How do you make this? Take a couple cups of unsweetened coconut (DO NOT use sweetened, I tried and it didn't work. Then I found this warning while searching online to figure out why) and put it in your food processor.

This is about 5 minutes into processing

and... 10 min later - Buttah!

Processor for 10 - 15 minutes, scarping down the bowl once in a while. The coconut will first shred and then will start to clump up and when you think you can't bear the sound of your food processor anymore, voila! It will be pretty soft at first, but will harden if you leave it at room temperature. I was shocked at how easy this was..If you like coconut, give it a try!

So the question - did these work without the vanilla? Every time I forget or omit the vanilla I regret it, but I didn't notice it so much in these. They were light and chocolaty and the pecans were a great added crunch. I still stand by the rule, never omit the vanilla, but these do not feel like they are lacking in anything.

Jamaican Feast! Vegan Style

I recently made some homemade seitan (Recipe here) and had no idea what to do with. I decided that I would make some more recipes out of the book I have been reviewing.. (which I can now actually write about, stay tuned for that!) Vegan with a Vengeance. I decided to make Jerk Seitan. Jerk really is a Jamaican style of cooking with a spice run or marinade that normally is used on meat. Traditional jerk contains allspice, hot, hot peppers, cloves, cinnamon, thyme, pepper. These days, people put their own spin on the classic jerk and Vegan with a Vengeance does just that.

Jerk Seitan
From Vegan with a Vengeance

The marinade:

• 1/2 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 1/2 Tbsp ginger, chopped
• 3 Tbsp of fresh lime juice (about 2 limes)
• 3 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp thyme, chopped or dried
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 1 tsp of fresh nutmeg grated

For the seitan:

• 1 lbs of seitan, sliced thick into strips
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 green pepper, sliced (I used red)

Prepare the marinade in a food processor or blender. Combine all the ingredients and process until it is smooth, although some chunkiness is fine. Put the seitan into a shallow bowl or dish and pour the marinade on top. Cover and let it sit for at least an hour.

Prep - don't forget!

Now, once the seitan is marinaded, heat a large pan on medium heat and add the oil. Next add the onion and the pepper and cook for 5-7 minutes or until it is starting to brown. Add the seitan (reserve the marinade) cook for about 10 - 15 minutes. Then add the remaining marinade and heat it through.

With this I decided to make some coconut rice and although I have a good recipe, I decided to try Isa Chandra Moskowitz's version. The major difference in the two is that my recipe has raisins in it and hers has toasted coconut. Isa, you win. This was my first time eating toasted coconut and oh my, why did I wait this long?! Anyways, here is the recipe, cut in half because that was how I made it.

Coconut Rice

• 1 cup of rice
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1/2 a can of coconut milk
• cinnamon stick
• pinch of salt
• lime zest of one lime
• toasted coconut flakes

Take the rice, water, milk, cinnamon and salt in a pot and bring it to a boil. Stir cover and turn down to low and simmer for 20 minutes. After this give it a stir, add the lime zest, cover and let it sit off the heat for 10 more minutes. While it sits, toast the rice in a dry pan over medium heat for about 3-5 minutes. Remove the cinnamon stick and serve topping the rice with the coconut.

The last thing I made to make this meal complete was some collard greens. I sauteed them on medium heat with a little bit of oil and a splash of white balsamic vinegar.

OK, my review of this meal.. I will start with the seitan. Overall, this was really good. It has sweet, spicy, salty and sour elements to it and the seitan cooked up so much better than the store bought. My only criticism is that the jerk is really not traditional. I found it was really lacking in spice. If I made it again, I would up the spice big time because that is what I think of first when I have jerk. Spicy! I have to say though Isa is a master at combining spice.

The rice - simple, easy and tasty. I will make this again. I also will never forget to use a little toasted coconut on my rice when I want to sweeten it up a bit.

And, the collards... well I make these at least 2-3 times a week or some variation of it. I like them, they take 10 minutes from start to finish and it is a tasty way to get a serving of veggies. Oh and one last thing. It is a must to serve this meal with some Jamaican beer and preferably on the beach if you happen to be lucky enough to live on one.

Creamy Coconut Carrot Soup

OK, so this post is... two weeks late? I don't know why it is difficult to stay on an easy blogging schedule. I haven't been cooking much this past week so I guess I figured I could take some time off from he blog too. Shame, shame :)

So, here we are in the dead of winter and I was really wanting a rich, warm soup. I didn't want to go to the grocery store (It was -20 C out!!). I went through my fridge and thought I could maybe come up with a carrot soup recipe.

First, I was just going to find a recipe and do things the easy way, but nothing that I could find felt right. In the end, I made my own recipe and it was amazing! I based it off of a Carrot Ginger soup from the Everything Vegan Cookbook, but I changed so much, you'd barely know that I used it as a guide.

Here it is:

Creamy Coconut Carrot Soup 

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp olive Oil
• 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 Sweet Potato, peeled and chopped
• 1 inch piece of ginger, minced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 red lentils
• 1 small green apple, peeled and chopped
• 4-5 cups of vegetable broth (Four for a thick soup, five if you like it a bit thinner)
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 3/4 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt

 

 

First step is to prep all the ingredients. Get everything peels and chopped and ready to go in the pot. Heat a large soup pot over medium heat and add the olive oil. Next add the onion, garlic and ginger and heat until the onions become soft and translucent. 

 

Next add in the carrots,potato and apple and stir and heat for another minute or so. Add in the Cinnamon, Thyme and bay leaf then the lentils and broth.

 

Bring the soup to a boil and then lower to the heat and let the soup simmer for about 15 - 20 minutes, until the lentils are cooked and the vegetables are soft.

 

 

 Once cooked either transfer the soup in batches to a blend, or use an immersion blender (that's what I used) to combine all the vegetables. Once smooth stir in the coconut milk and salt. Put the soup back on the stove and heat through.

 



Although my finished pic is not great, I swear this soup is amazing. It is best served hot, but I also tried it cold and it was pretty good that way too. I think you could even add a bit more carrot and a bit less sweet potato (the one I had was really big) if you want a super carrot-y taste. However, I think the ingredients really complimented each other well.

If you want to find something that will warm up a sub zero day, give this one a try.

I am now searching and trying to figure out what I should make next... Cookies, maybe? If anyone is reading, please send me some suggestions!