New blog!

Hey all!

So I decided to start up a new blog!  Head on over to halivegan, yay!

-Ashley

oh heyy

Hello!

It has been hmm…quite some time since I have posted last!  I’m a bit at a loss as to what to do with this ol’ blog.  I’ve contemplated starting fresh, creating a new blog or perhaps I should just keep posting away at this blog pretending as if I have not had an almost over 1 year hiatus.

I think whatever the case, the blog will be a bit different.  I’d like to write about things other than food (but trust me, there will be still lots of food) but maybe have more words on other aspects of a vegan lifestyle.  Maybe book reviews?  Discussions on various ethics?  Pictures of cute puppies?

I’m not sure, but I do know I’ve been itching to blog again so I think I will be back soon!

Ash xo

testing testing

The past few months I have been enjoying a great honour of being a tester for Celine and Joni‘s upcoming cookbook.  The recipes are outstanding and once this book is released you will definitely want a copy in your hands. There will be a lot of gooooood stuff in there…

…like amazing cookies…

Orange Cappuccino Cookies

No-Bake Chocolate Oat Bites

…and delicious drinks…

Pumpkin Spice Coffee

Mexian Hot Cocoa

…and yummy desserts!

Peanut Butter Pudding

(And lots of savoury stuff too, I’m sure you all know this but I have a major sweet tooth)

new year!

Hey all!  I hope you all had enjoyed the holiday season!  Although it went by way too fast, mine was quite lovely. During of which, my mother shared with me a copy of the holiday edition of Canadian Living which did a feature of vegetarian entrees to serve at the holiday dinner table. This is something that I found very interesting as I’m almost always at a loss of what to prepare for my rather picky vegetarian sister and myself, something that would be welcomed by everyone’s palates. In this article, there was a recipe for a vegetarian tourtiere which is, although something that I have never tried before, sounded like it would a perfect addition to New Year’s Day dinner. Tourtiere is a traditional French-Canadian dish served around the holidays and usually isn’t very vegan at all. But the recipe Canadian Living provided was completely animal-free and sounded pretty good.

It turned out amazing and was not only approved by my skeptical sister but by my equally as skeptical non-vegetarian mother!  I wasn’t planning on taking a picture and sharing it with you all (I mean, it’s not very pretty…) but I decided to anyway just because it’s so tasty.  I mostly followed the original recipe, only subbing their TVP for tempeh and using the crust recipe from Veganomicon.  So maybe the holiday season is over and the number of guests at your dinner table is tapering off, this would make an excellent winter meal when you need something warm, hearty and comforting.

Vegan Tourtiere
Makes 8 servings

1 package of tempeh
2 tbsp olive oil
3 ribs of celery, diced
2 onions, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups cubed peeled potatoes
2 tsp tamari
1 1/2 tsp dried savory
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 bay leaves
2 cups vegetable broth

*You will also need a double-pie crust, I used my favourite from ‘Veganomicon’

1. Bring a pot of water to boil, add tempeh, lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain, set tempeh aside to cool.

2. In a large pot (or dutch oven if you have one), heat olive oil over medium-high heat; cook celery, onions and garlic, stirring every so often, until golden, for about 10 minutes.

3. Stir in potatoes, tamari, savory, salt, pepper, allspice, cloves and bay leaves. Crumble in tempeh (hopefully it’s cool enough so you don’t burn your fingers!). Cook, stirring often for about 5 minutes or so.

4. Stir in the vegetable broth and 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until potatoes are tender, 30 to 40 minutes.

5. Smash most of the potatoes with the back of a spoon. Simmer, uncovered, until thickened slightly, 7 to 10 minutes. Let cool.

6. Roll out your pastry. Fit bottom crust into 9-inch pie plate. Spoon in filling. Roll out your top crust and place over filling. Brush the top with water, pierce pastry with fork or cut steam vents.

7. Bake at 400 degrees for about an hour.

Vegan Christmas Cookies 101

Participating in a cookie swap this year?  Giving a tin of freshly baked cookies to your loved ones?  Bringing in a plate of cookies to share at work?  For many vegans, the holidays are our chance to show the world that vegan baked goods are delicious and just as good as their non-vegan counterparts and lucky for us veganizing your favourite family recipes is ridiculously easy.  Here are my top tips for sharing the goodness of vegan holiday cookies.

Sparkled Ginger Cookies from ‘Vegan with a Vengeance’ that were given to my co-workers today.

1.  Inspiration!

Don’t know where to start?  There are tons of sources of inspiration for holiday cookies such as magazines, cookbooks or maybe even your grandmother’s handwritten recipe cards.  Here are my favourite online resources:

Martha Stewart’s Cookie of the Day delivers a recipe for a mouth-watering cookie to your email inbox each day. For the month of December, it will be a Christmas cookie. I get a lot of inspiration from these, this is where I found the recipe for the Linzer Cookies I baked earlier.

Toronto’s The Star is hosting a very special event, A Cookie a Day Until Christmas, with each day featuring an unusual cookie that look amazing such as Pumpkin Ginger Pillows and Sicilian White Cookies.

Joy of Baking’s Christmas Cookie Recipes has a recipe for every one of your holiday cookie needs and then some. They also provide you with a history and origin of the cookie which is always fun to read and allows you to impress people with your ability to whip out an interesting cookie fact like “Did you know that Peanut Butter Cookies were invented in the 1890s by vegetarian Dr. Kellogg who was looking for a substitute for dairy butter?”.

2.  Bake!

Okay, you may have noticed that the links I gave you under resources were not very vegan.  So before you’re all like ‘hey!  what gives?’, I’m going to tell you that veganizing cookies is all kinds of crazy simple. See:

Butter.  I replace butter with Earth Balance Buttery Sticks or Shortening.  Sometimes I’ll use oil, it all depends on the recipe (like if the dough calls to be rolled, I always use EB because I’ve never had any luck rolling out an oil dough).  Just reduce the amount a little bit, Isa wrote in Vegan with a Vengeance that you can replace 1/2 cup butter with 1/3 cup canola oil.

Milk.  A non-dairy milk obviously. 

Eggs.  There are SO many things you can replace eggs with and you’re probably familar with them.  My go-to egg replacer for cookie baking is always 1/4 soy yogurt for one egg, I’m almost always happy with the results.  I’ll also use a flax egg-1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed + 3 tablespoons of water=1 egg (but be careful because in a light coloured cookie, the flax is quite visible). 

Oh and while all this baking goes down, put on the Christmas music!  I happen to be an avid fan of christmas music, here a few of my favourites:

Merry Christmas Baby-The Ramones
Christmas Wrapping-The Waitresses
A Christmas Duel-The Hives & Cyndi Lauper
A Beguiled Christmas Sales-Jason Collett
Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me-Belle and Sebastian
Hey Guys! It’s Christmas Time!-Sufjan Stevens

3.  Wrap!

Ok now that you’ve got your cookies all baked and decorated, it’s time to wrap them up.  I usually use tins because they’re cute, reusable and extemely cheap.  But if you want to get your cookies all fancied up check out Martha’s Cookie packaging ideas.

4.  Give!

So now that all the planning, measuring, mixing, baking and wrapping (and eating lots of dough in the process) has been done, give away your cookies to someone you care about!  Show them how delcicious veganism is!  Maybe if you were really generous, you’ll have included a copy of the recipe with your cookies so that they too can whip up a batch of cookies if ever the need arises.  I hope you have fun and your effort is appreciated, I don’t know about you but I certainly have trouble saying no to a gingerbread man this time of year…