Vegan Football Sunday: Potato Skins, "Wings," and Guacamole

The Eagles were televised yet again, so I thought it would be fun to have a few friends over to watch the game.  I decided to do a number of vegan friendly and football friendly finger foods for the occasion: "wings," loaded potato skins and guacamole.

The wing recipe is from the October 2011 Vegetarian Times.   I used Upton's Naturals original seitan, Cholula hot sauce, Whole Foods maple syrup, Original Vegenaise and the smoked paprika we had handy in the spice cabinet.  The wings needed to marinate for two hours before being breaded and cooked, so I did that step first and then popped them in the fridge.

Next, I started the prep for the potato skins.  My husband had picked up a five pound bag of medium potatoes for me earlier in the week, so I baked those in the oven for 45 minutes at 425, and sent them on a wire rack to cool.

While the potatoes were cooking, I made tempeh bacon crumbles.  The October 2012 Vegetarian Times had a recipe for Warm German Potato Salad that included directions for the "bacon" crumbles, so I decided to try those for my skins.  The recipe's not online yet, but it includes tempeh, low-sodium soy sauce (I used Bragg's Liquid Aminos), blackstrap molasses, ketchup or tomato paste, and liquid smoke.  I ended up using both ketchup and tomato paste to get the crumbles to a more "bacony" color, and also cooked them in the pan a bit longer than the recipe called for to get them to crisp up more.  There is a TON of "bacon" left over, so I'll likely sneak it into recipes throughout the week.

To finish the potato skins, I used this CHOW recipe as a guideline, but veganized the ingredients. Instead of butter, I used Earth Balance, and I stuffed the potatoes with the vegan bacon crumbles and daiya cheddar cheese, then topped them with freshly chopped chives.  The potato skins were definitely the hit of the party - my non-vegan friends couldn't believe they were vegan, and especially that I didn't use real cheese.  When I explained what daiya was, my friend Greg joked that I have "gone to the dark side."

To make the guac, I used four ripe avocados,three roma tomatoes (diced), two serrano peppers (seeds removed, minced), half a red onion (minced), four cloves of garlic (minced), the juice from one fresh lime, fresh cilantro (chopped), sea salt and freshly ground black pepper,  I set out the guac with some Garden of Eatin' Multigrain Blue Corn Chips for my friends to eat while I finished the skins and wings.  I also had a tray with carrots, celery and hummus.

After the potato skins were out, I finished up the wings, using whole wheat panko for the breading.  The breading really didn't stick as well as I would have liked, but they had a nice golden exterior.

 

For dessert, thanks to my friend Carol, we had Football Shaped Oreos.  Did you know Oreos are vegan?  (My friend Valerie describes them as "accidentally vegan.")  That's yet another example of an everyday food that non-vegans eat that's vegan friendly.  I'd put them in the same category of pasta with marinara sauce, PB & J, rice and beans and the guac I made today.

Are you a vegan football fan?  How do you veganize your favorite football snacks?

PIGS Celebration and Vegan Cocktail Food

Tonight, I attended a cocktail party in celebration of PIGS Animal Sanctuary's 20th Anniversary.  PIGS is a home to many rescued animals, and I one day hope to visit there.  In the meantime, I am happy to support PIGS from here in DC!

Tonight's keynote speaker was Victoria Moran, who is such an inspiration for anyone interested in becoming a vegan.  I'm midway through reading Main Street Vegan and am so moved by how Victoria has shared her personal vegan journey and how she encourages compassion not only for the animals and for the earth, but also for ourselves as we transition from the standard American diet to a plant-based, vegan one.  Tomorrow, I'm attending her workshop at Tranquil Space, and I look forward to learning more from her!

My favorite part of Victoria's remarks was her vegan acronym, which she shares on her blog:

V - Validate your choice by learning all you can.
E - Enjoy the adventure: have fun with this; we’re lucky to know about it!
G - Get to know other vegans, thru conferences, MeetUps, making online friends.
A – Add more than you subtract: new foods, new dishes, new activities, new places to shop — Going veg should make you happier every day.
N - Never forget the animals: If you’re doing this for your health, good for you — but there are lots of opinions on health. Reverence for life, on the other hand, isn’t an opinion based on one study that could be invalidated by the next; it’s a living ethic, a way of being that will enrich your life and cultivate your soul.

Tonight was a perfect example of living the acronym for me!  V - I learned a ton about making compassionate choices.  E - I definitely had fun and enjoyed myself!  G - I hung out with some current veg-friendly friends and met some new ones.  A - I tried some delicious food (see below) and N -  Hooray for PIGS! 

So yes, let's talk about the food.  There was a lovely array of small bites to choose from, from white bean and broccoli raab bruschettas to cheeseless pizzas to hummus and fresh pita chips to a gorgeous veggie plate.  But, my favorite had to be the arugula and fresh fig flatbread.  I adore arugula and fresh figs on their own, but never thought of combining them, and now I think I'll have that combination as often as possible, which won't be much longer as the window for fresh figs is slowly coming to a close.

Here's the delicious veggie plate we noshed on!

Also, I got to sample a Pig-Tini, which helped raise money for PIGS.

Carol and I really enjoyed our Pig-Tinis!

Oh, and I won two items in the silent auction -  an autographed copy of Neal Barnard's Breaking the Food Seduction and original artwork by fellow yogini Mary Catherine Starr:

All in all, a great night!

Cooking for the Masses, Or How Many Lasagna Cupcakes Might Fit in My Oven

Tomorrow (or, at this point, later today) is my sister-in-law's baby shower, and I am on deck to provide the vegetarian options. 

About a month or so ago, I saw an episode of Aarti Party that was baby shower themed.  One of the items Aarti prepared was "Lasagna Cupcakes," which are essentially little individual lasagnas made with wonton wrappers, rather than noodles.  I thought a vegetarian version of this dish would be a cute idea for the baby shower.


Mind you, the original recipe serves 12, and there will be 30 adults and 7 kids.  So, I quadrupled the recipe, which meant eight trays of lasagna cupcakes.  To get to the eight trays of my version of the cupcakes I needed 112 ounces of canned crushed tomatoes with garlic and italian seasoning, 3 pounds of mozzarella cheese, 3 pounds of grated parmesan, 3 pounds of part skim ricotta, two large onions, four enormous zucchini and 192 wonton wrappers.

All the ingredients that I was able to fit on the counter.

I made the sauce in a five quart sauce pan.  Since I knew I had a full night of chopping ahead of me, I decided to use the food processor to chop the onion.  I basically pureed it, but it was still chunky enough to add texture to the sauce.

The original recipe called for chicken sausage.  Normally, when I  vegetarianize a pasta dish, I sub mushrooms or eggplant, since they have a nice, meaty texture.  However, my sister-in-law is very allergic to both mushrooms and eggplant and you really don't want to poison the guest of honor.  So, I decided to go with zucchini, which I thought would be chunky enough to make the sauce interesting.  While the Indian elements of the recipe sound good, I decided to omit the mango chutney and the cinnamon and cloves and go with more of an Italian vibe.

Most of the 48 lasagna cupcakes, pre-baking.

The sauce making and ricotta filling went well enough.  However, when I got to the assembly part, I started to lose my mind a little bit.  After all, I was putting down a wonton wrapper, layering sauce and then layering cheese 192 times. 

So, at this point, I did what anyone in my position would do at 10:37 in the evening.  I called my mother.

"I am about to have a wonton wrapper related psychotic break.  Please entertain me," said I.

"How many of these things are you making again?"  said Mom

"48.  But there are FOUR LAYERS.  Plus an individual basil leaf inside each!" said I.

Mom graciously stayed on speakerphone with me through the lasagna building process, which did make the whole shebang go much faster.  I ran out of parmesan (I don't think I bought a full three pounds after all), but we have leftover sauce and filling that will go into a pasta in the next few days.

All 48 lasagna cupcakes!

Anyhoot, I am glad I decided to do 48 and not 60, because the eight trays literally took up our entire oven and all of my counter space. I put them in for the entire 20 minutes and then moved the bottom trays up to the top rack so they could brown properly.

I finished all of this around 11:45 and which point I started the second dish, a vegetarian version of Ina Garten's Orzo Pasta Salad from Barefoot Contessa at Home.  I've made this one tons of times, and it's great for parties.  Ina's recipe calls for shrimp, but it tastes just fine without it. 

I triiple-plused this recipe, which allegedly serves 8-10.  I used three one pound boxes of orzo, three cups of dill, three cups of parsley, three whole bunches of green onions, one extra large red onion, 14 lemons, two cups of olive oil, two two-foot long hothouse cucumbers, and two pounds of feta cheese.  It ended up being so much pasta salad that I had to split it into two bowls while I was making it.

Yes, this is a ridiculous amount of food for 37 people, some of whom are too young to have all of their teeth.  It's even more ridiculous when you keep in mind that I have the makings for a large fruit tray and a large veggie tray also in my fridge.  Oh, and I'm also not the only person bringing food.

Lots and lots of lemony orzo pasta salad goodness.

However, I am genetically predisposed to making too much food.  This dates back to my great-grandmother, if not earlier.  Nanny Sadie was legendary for making two roasts for Sunday dinner to serve eight people.  Thus, down my mother's family line, all of the women were pre-conditoned to assume that whenever we are preparing a meal, the entire Eagles roster, plus the practice squad, the cheerleaders, the coaches, the medical staff, the beer guys and several season ticket holders would show up unexpectedly, and none of them would have eaten since breakfast.

Have I mentioned I typically make five pounds of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving?  We do at least eat all the leftovers.

Anyhow, five hours later, everything is in the fridge and ready to go for tomorrow.  The only things I need to do are load all the food and serveware into the car, reheat the lasagnas, put together the fruit & veggie trays, garnish the lasagnas, take pictures of all the food, eat and watch my sister-in-law open presents.  :)

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Salad

If you haven't guessed by now, I am a huge fan of anything with roasted veggies, so I jumped at the chance to make the Roasted Vegetable Pasta salad from the newest edition of Clean Eating Magazine.  (It's on Page 48 if you're a subscriber).

For those of you who aren't familiar with the magazine, it's chock full of recipes that eschew refined carbohydrates, added sugars, high amounts of saturated fats and processed foods containing lots of additives and preservatives.  Each issue comes with a food budget planner and a monthly meal plan.  While not all the recipes are veg, they're full of fresh fruits and vegetables, and it's often easy to sub or modify to make the dishes veg friendly.

This recipe calls for roasted peppers, onions, tomatoes and zucchini, and a vinaigrette chock full of garlic and fresh herbs.  It also calls for goat cheese, but it can be made vegan by omitting the cheese. I thought it would be perfect to take to tomorrow's Fourth of July BBQ. 

I did make some subs to this recipe for a variety of reasons.  First, as much as I love eggplant, we're taking this to a party at my brother & sister-in-law's house, and as she is allergic to eggplant, I omitted it from the recipe.  To make up for it, I added some navy beans and an orange pepper in addition to the red, yellow and green.  Second, although I was dying to try kamut pasta, it wasn't available at Balducci's (and their whole grain pasta offerings were scant, in my opinion).  Since we had enough errands to run yesterday without another stop, I ended up going with some nicer traditional macaroni. 

Another sub I made was the verjus, which is made from the juice of unripe grapes. They did have that at Balducci's, but only in a large-ish bottle.  A quick google search revealed that red wine vinegar was an okay sub, so I used that and fresh lemon juice.   And, finally, I doubled the whole recipe, which serves eight as it's written in the magazine.

My mother always told me that pasta salad tastes better the second day, so the whole thing is marinating as we speak.  I'll bring the goat cheese along and plan to toss it in right before we serve it.  We'll see how it tastes tomorrow!

Potluck Side Dish: Corn and Black Bean Salad

Fiance' and I were invited to a barbeque yesterday where all guests were asked to bring a side or a dessert.  One of my favorite side dishes to make for a summer barbeque is Corn and Black Bean Salad.  You can find umpteen versions of it on the internet, but here's the one I put together yesterday:

In advance, strip the kernels off of four ears of fresh sweet corn.  You can either use a sharp knife or a corn stripper.  I then toss the corn in olive oil and bit of salt and roast it in a very hot oven - 475.  Putting the corn on a single layer on a baking sheet and stirring it frequently helps.  It took me 20 minutes or so to get the corn slightly browned, but watch yours closely - some ovens may perform better and thus your cooking time will be decreased.  You ideally want your corn to be slightly browned - this will add a nice roasty/smoky flavor to your dish.

After the corn has cooled (I refrigerated mine overnight), dice 4-5 firm tomatoes.  The firmer the tomato, the better the texture of your salad will be.  Also, make sure to remove the seeds and accompanying goo - this will prevent your salad from being soggy.

Next, open a can of black beans and rinse them in a colander.  This will reduce the sodium content and "canned taste of your salad."  Mix tomatoes, corn and beans in large bowl.

Now, it's time to add some color to your salad - I went with greens.  I finely chopped four green onions (also known as scallions), both the white and green parts, along with some fresh cilantro.  Make sure to use fresh cilantro if you're adding it.  You can also use minced red onion instead of the green onion.

For my "kick," I deseeded and minced two fresh jalapenos (I used a chopper - you do not want to get jalapeno juice in your eye!).  If you want even more heat, you can leave the seeds in or use serranos.

For the dressing, I juiced two limes and added a healthy amount of fresh ground pepper, 1/2 tsp or so of sea salt, about a 1/2 tsp of cumin and a little garlic powder.  I then whisked in a few glugs of olive oil and combined the whole deal with the salad.  Taste it and decide if it needs more seasoning - mine needed a little more salt.

Ideally, you want this to sit for an hour or so for the flavors to combine, and serve at room temperature.   This also makes for a good filling for burritos or veggie tacos, as well as on a taco salad.