Vegan for a week and the eating is good

Well, it was a weeklong foray into eating vegan and I must say that I don't think it would be that hard switch over except for eating out and prepared food because they are awfully sneaky about using animal products. I actually think that I might have just kept with it but I have some eggs and cheese in the fridge and I would feel bad about wasting them.

So here is the exciting food that was consumed:
The first day I made eggplant parmesan, good but not all that photogenic, so no picture of that one. You can see a picture of it and the recipe here though.
I also realized that the Haagen Dazs Raspberry Sorbet I had just procured qualified, so twas demolished aussi.

Then I decided to try some baked goods since they generally involve eggs and milk. Poked about to find some recipes that I had the ingredients for. So I made up these biscuits as per this recipe:

Drop Scones or Biscuits

1 cup white flour
1cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 1/4 cups soymilk mixed with 1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Preheat oven to 400⁰F.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Stir in soymilk mixture with a fork. Stir quickly to moisten the dry ingredients. Drop the mixture by large spoonfuls onto lightly greased or non-stick cookie sheets, far enough apart so they don't touch.

Bake in a 400⁰F oven for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown on the bottom and beginning to color on the top.

Biscuits were not too fancy looking either so no pictures, they weren't bad but definitely just a plain biscuit, kind of like bread, good with the eggplant dish.

Next up was blueberry muffins

These were tasty, I didn't note any weird yucky flavours or anything. Recipe was from some website that I didn't note the name of but I altered it a bit anyways.

3/4 C soymilk
1/2 C applesauce
1/4 C water
1 C whole wheat flour 1 C all purpose flour
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 C blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Mix wet ingredients. Mix dry ingredients. Add blueberries to dry ingredients and coat with the flour mixture. Mix together and bake at 400 degrees for about 18 minutes.

I spent a long time looking for a dessert type recipe that I had everything for and finally fixated on cinnamon buns.

Very tasty indeed, although I think I skimped a bit on the margarine in the filling part so it was a bit dry. My big issue was the icing , cream cheese isn't vegan although there apparently is a vegan substitute that can be purchased. I looked around and finally decided on a sugar and milk concoction, however I was out of icing sugar, no problem, just wiz some granulated sugar up in the blender. That was not terribly successful.

A trip to the store ensued and me builts some homemade vegan cream cheese.


1 tub of firm tofu
3.5 T cashew butter
4.5 t lemon juice
Remove tofu from package and place in a clean dishtowel, squeeze to remove moisture, continue squeezing until very little water remains. Place all ingredients in blender and puree until smooth. For me the blender wouldn't mix it so I added some of the tofu juice until it would blend, even so it didn't get completely smooth but I think that is largely because of the age of the blender. Refrigerate, it will thicken as it cools.

With that built and icing sugar acquired, I could have me some cream cheese icing for my cinnamon rolls. Mix up some cream cheese with icing sugar, vanilla and some vegan margarine if you like and voila, icing.

My nice warm, iced cinnamon bun, yum yum!
And lastly, to use up my veggies in the fridge, I built some sloppy joe goo.

• 1 tablespoon light olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 10- to 12-ounce package tempeh, any variety, finely crumbled
• 1 chopped green bell pepper
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
  
• 1 tomato sauce
• 1 cup water
  
• 1 maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon each: chili powder, basil, parsley
  
• Whole wheat rolls or pita bread
• Shredded lettuce

Heat the oil in a skillet and sauté the onion until it is golden. Add the crumbled tempeh, celery and green pepper and saute over moderate heat until the tempeh is lightly browned.

Add the remaining ingredients (except the last 2), stir well, and cook over low heat for 10 minutes. Serve hot on whole wheat rolls or in pita bread with shredded lettuce.

This was a bit bland, I think because I vetoed a fair number of the originally called for spices, but on bread with lettuce, it isn't too bad at all.

And there you have it, a notsoshort summary of my vegan week.

Hermit