Friday VeganMoFo round-up

Well, it's Friday, so I decided tonight's VeganMoFo would be a blast from the past... a Friday Food Round-up! Do you guys remember these from last year? It's when I would inundate you with way too many photos of food from the previous week? Good times. I stopped doing that because, well, those posts were a bit much. But, since VeganMoFo is all about revisiting the past, I thought I'd do a (shorter verstion of) a round-up this week.

All through this post, I will give little thrifty tips. As you guys know, Daiku and I are eating out of the pantry until Thanksgiving, trying to keep supermarket shopping down to a bare minimum. There are many reasons for this: one, we are a bit broke this month, and trying to save some money for the holidays. Second, this is the time of year when it's good to clean out the pantry, eat all those things you've said you'll get around to, and make room for a new year's worth of stuff. Third, and my favorite reason, has to do with the upcoming holiday, centered all around food. I find the feast/famine dichotomy fascinating. Before gorging ourselves on the holiday, it's fun to meditate on what it means to be able to do so. The bounty of food that we have, the amount of choice we can exercise, and the meaningfulness of being able to feast whenever you want.

Ok, more about Thanksgiving later- for now, on to the round-up!

Ok, the first photo is definitely not something we ate! Here is a brand of margarine in the supermarket that caught my eye because of its impossibly cheesy 70's-style packaging. It is vegan, but possibly the most vile stuff you could ever see. Not only is the margarine artificial and extremely unappetizing, but the sticks have a whopping FIVE grams of trans-fats per serving! Definitely one for the "Frankenfoods" file... If you want vegan, or kosher, or parve margarine, why not give Earth Balance a try? It's not hydrogenated. It's not artificial. It's not scary. Yikes!

Here are banana-wheat bran muffins from Veganomicon. I replaced the wheat bran with oat bran, because that is what I had, and I mixed a handful of walnuts into the batter. Finally, I topped each muffin with walnut halves and maple sugar before baking.

They came out very well, and they are part whole-grain and not too sweet, making them perfect for breakfast.

As soon as Hannah posted about these vegan butterscotch chips on her blog, I knew I had to try them, just for fun. They are a bit too sweet and artificial-tasting to enjoy out of hand, but they are perfect for baking, especially because I haven't had butterscotch since going vegan!

When Celine posted this cookie recipe on her blog, I noticed that I had every single ingredient in the house- score! - so I immediately baked them. Trust me- you can't go wrong with a Celine recipe, especially one involving chocolate, butterscotch, whiskey, and extra chunky peanut butter! This recipe used rice flour, which made the cookies tender and crumbly and good. I want to bake with brown rice flour more often now!

You know how disorganized I am about getting around to trying recipes? Well, how about if I tell you that this is SusanV's peach upside down cake- that she posted in early AUGUST? I had saved and frozen some peaches from my big haul this summer, and after I baked cookies, I figured, hey the oven's on, I might as well bake some more. So, after months of drooling at the recipe, I finally got to make it.

And it was good! I used date sugar for the caramel part on the bottom of the cake, and it worked much better than I thought it would. I love the lemon flavor in the cake- this recipe is a winner. I'm glad I have tons more peaches saved in the freezer, because I want to have this again!

Here's a tip- if you ever make biscuits, save the little bits of dough that are left after cutting them, and freeze them in a baggie. Then, whenever you make soup, you have ready-to-go dumplings at the ready! Last night, we made this kitchen sink soup: potatoes, onions, garlic, red wine, cabbage, radish, cauliflower, celery, tomatoes, peas, everything we had in the fridge, plus some millet! Today, when re-heating the soup, we dropped some frozen biscuit dough in there and voilà- veggie dumpling soup! It was so good- warming, hearty, filling. I want to try this method to make some chicken-dumpling soup, too. Maybe with some thyme, dill, not-chicken broth? Some sage? What are the dominant flavors of chicken soup?

Finally, here's a deep-dish sourdough pizza. I feel so spoiled now that we have home-made pizza practically every week. I promise not to go off on a sourdough tangent here...! At first, it seemed as if we had nothing in the house that would be a pizza topping. But, a can of crushed tomatoes made the sauce. A cheezy sauce came together with some flour, oil, soymilk, nooch, and seasonings in about 2 minutes. A couple of pieces of tempeh were transformed into sausage (using this recipe - my favorite!). Some onions were caramelized. And before we knew it, we had a deep dish, awesome pizza for about $1.50. Making your own pizza and toppings is such a good feeling- and such a quick dinner!

Ok, that was my blast-from-the-past Friday Food Round-Up! I promised it wouldn't be too painful, right?

On a final note, we had our first snow in Syracuse today. Everything outside became very quiet and very pretty, very quick! Here's a shot of our backyard this morning. Good night, all!

Friday VeganMoFo round-up