Hot Wingz and Scalloped Potatoes

Tonight I decided to try the infamous Hot Wingz from Vegan Dad, and they did not disappoint! I didn't have panko bread crumbs, so I toasted the bread crumbs I did have for 6 minutes at 325 to dry them out. At 2 and 4 minutes I took them out and gave them a quick shake. I also didn't have the chicken broth powder called for and felt too lazy to make it, so I used two veggie bullion cubes instead. Otherwise I followed the recipe pretty closely. I don't have a ton of experience with seitan, so I didn't feel like this was the time to experiment too much! For the hot sauce I only used 1/4 cup (I used Franks Red Hot), since I'm not a huge fan of super spicy things. They were just about the perfect level of spice for me. They were a little doughy when they came out at first so I popped them back in for five extra minutes, and they were much better after that. I will definitely try this again with a different sauce.

We had scalloped potatoes last night for dinner, and despite large amounts of time in the oven they were pretty crunchy. I decided to have some of the leftovers with tonights dinner so I popped them into a casserole dish and gave them about 40 minutes, and they were perfect. I used this recipe from glutenfreegoddess, and altered it to my tastes.

Vegan Scalloped Potatoes

4 potatoes, washed and sliced into medallions (We used the food processor, which gave fairly consistent thickness)

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp flour

2 1/2 cups non-dairy milk

4 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes

2 tbsp tahini

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp minced onion

1/2 tsp dried mustard

Heat the oil in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk to form a thick paste, for about 30 seconds. Add the non-dairy milk and stir until it comes to a boil and thickens. Reduce heat and add nutritional yeast, tahini, salt, garlic, onion, and mustard. (My sauce didn't thicken all that well so I ended up adding some cornstarch.)

Lay the potatoes down in layers, adding sauce to each layer. Cook for at least 1.5 hrs at 350F (Original recipe called for 50 min cover and 10-15 additional uncovered). Potatoes should be tender when poked with a fork. As I said, ours were pretty crunchy despite quite a while in the oven, but that is probably because we quadrupled the recipe.

I also had a little frozen corn with my dinner. Between the corn, scalloped potatoes, and crispy wingz it felt like a Southern meal. I also had a giant glass of chocolate soy milk. :)

Vegan Welsh Rarebit

Well, sorta. Vegan creamed peas on toast. Dad made creamed peas last night for dinner, and one of my favorite breakfasts is creamed peas on toast. Essentially, it's a vegan roux with frozen peas mixed in. The following recipe is the basic ratios, but doesn't give you a whole lot of sauce. We definitely multiply the recipe many times for our family. Dad always makes this in the microwave, and it is super super easy. If you don't want to microwave, it can easily be done on the stove top.

Vegan Roux

1 tbsp vegan margarine

1 tbsp flour

1/4 cup liquid (we used a mixture of soy milk and veggie broth)

Melt the butter in a microwave safe container, large enough to hold your finished sauce. Whisk in flour and zap 30-40 seconds. Stir in liquids and zap 2-3 minutes. Stir and zap 1 minute. Repeat until your sauce has its desired thickness. You cannot combine the zapping or the sauce will boil over and make a giant mess. You can now spice your sauce as you see fit. Garlic, salt, pepper, parsley, paprika, whatever you'd like, really. Mix in warmed frozen peas and you're done!

This is a dish we have with basically every holiday meal, and like I said it makes a great breakfast. This morning I had it on Silver Hills Squirrelly sprouted grain bread.

Eggnog Cake

We went to my Aunt's place for Christmas dinner, and I was in charge of dessert. I decided to go with an eggnog cake, since I had some soy eggnog (which I like to call snog). I doubled the Golden Vanilla Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and substituted snog for the normal soy milk. I also added some nutmeg, cinnamon, and a little cardamom (which I didn't really measure). I wasn't sure how long it would need to bake since the instructions were for cupcakes, so I kept checking it every five minutes after the first twenty. It was probably about 40 minutes or so, but I didn't keep great track. That's probably not too accurate, anyways, since I opened the oven a lot, which would have cooled it some.

I decided to ice the cake to look a present. I went with light blue because I don't really like the taste of red, and I would have needed a lot to make a red present. This isn't exactly my best icing job - I did it super fast as we were sitting down for Christmas day waffles. My first plan was a fondant bow but that just didn't happen, so I piped the bow on. My brother got me this awesome Wilton Dessert Decorator Pro for Christmas, so I decided to try it out. I will definitely have to practice a bit with it.

Dim Sum Party!

I absolutely love dim sum. It's a ton of fun. But you can't get vegan dim sum in Edmonton, so I've had to recreate my own. I had some friends over the other night, and we made a party of it! I took the pictures afterwards, so I didn't get pictures of everything. 


We started with hot and sour soup. It was really good. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, because it went really fast! I used this recipe:

Hot and Sour Soup

8 cups vegetable broth

2 cups woodear mushrooms

1 can sliced water chestnuts

1 can bamboo shoots

3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp hot sauce

3 tbsp vinegar

4 minced garlic cloves

dash of pepper

1 bunch of green onions

2 tbsp chili oil

Put everything together in a pot, except the green onions and chili oil and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the green onions and simmer for another 3 minutes or so. Remove from heat and stir in the chili oil. 

We had sticky rice in lotus leaf. I was inspired by this recipe from Chow Vegan, though I used woodear mushrooms, corn, bamboo shoots and veggie dogs for my filling. I also didn't put any veggie oyster sauce in my sauce because I didn't have any. 

Next up, har gao, or shrimp dumplings. The ones pictured are not very translucent. We ate all the best ones before I took pictures. I used a recipe from VegSpinz. I had a HECK of a time with the flour, which you have to cook before using. I will definitely try the method she suggests next time. I used the method on the poorly translated package and it turned into a huge mess. Oh well - certainly a cooking adventure! 

Vegan Hao Gao

1 1/2 C. thawed, ground fake shrimp

1 tsp. fresh minced ginger

1-2 cloves minced garlic

1/2 C. chopped green onion (or chives)

1 T. ground flax seed, mixed with 1 T. warm water (to mimic an egg)

season with salt and white pepper to taste.

Mix filling ingredients in a food processor and set aside. Next, make dough. She suggests adding boiling water to the starch mix and mixing until a smooth dough forms - sounds much better than my stovetop method the package suggested. Roll about 1" of dough into a ball, then flatten. The dough is super sticky so you have to oil your surface to prevent sticking. I found using a rolling pin made the dough stick to the counter, so I flattened it by hand. The trick is to get the dough thin enough to be transparent when steamed but thick enough to not fall apart. As soon as the dough was flattened I picked it up and held it as I filled it. I found this a lot easier than trying to lift a filled dumpling. So once you're holding the dumpling, spoon filling into the center and fold and pinch to seal. Cook them for about 10 minutes in a steamer. You should have a soft, translucent dough. These were quite delicious, though a lot of work!

I also made spring rolls, with a recipe from The Asian Vegan Kitchen. I don't usually deep fry, but I figured this might be the right time to break out the deep fryer. Unfortunately I used fairly small wrappers, so there was only a single layer of wrapper on part of the spring roll, which tore when deep fried on the first batch. I decided to bake the rest so they wouldn't fall apart. Better for us, anyways. No picture - Dad ate the last one before I had a chance.

My favorite dish of the evening was the steamed buns. Soo good! My recipe is from the International Vegetarian Union. I used water chestnuts instead of bamboo shoots in the mushroom cashew filling. I've made these buns a couple times before and they are one of my favorite things. They're a decent amount of work (or at least pretty time consuming) so I don't make them as often as I'd like.

Bestest always loved dan tat, an egg custard tart, when we went to dim sum. I wasn't sure they could be veganized, but fortunately for me, VegSpinz had already done it! This recipe uses coconut oil in the tart shell and coconut cream for the custard. Yum! 

For dessert I made green tea ice cream. I LOVE green tea ice cream, but I've never seen a non-dairy version. Once again, I turned to The Asian Vegan Kitchen. The recipe uses silken tofu and matcha green tea. It's really easy to make, but has to be blended a couple times once it's been frozen for smoothness so it has to be made ahead. 

Overall, the night was a huge success! Everyone ate a ton. And of course had a ton of green tea.  It was the perfect pre-Christmas shin dig and a great opportunity to hang out with some friends. Unfortunately bestest's partner couldn't come, as he had a last minute family commitment come up. I sent home lots of left overs for him, though. :) 

Avocado Coffee Smoothie

The last couple days I've been trying to use up avocados. We always get them in a bag a five, which means they're all ready at the same time. I absolutely love avocados: I normally eat them with a spoon, salted. It's definitely one of the things I miss about Uganda. Our neighbor had an avocado tree that hung over our fence, and giant avocados were only 20 cents at the market. I had at least one, if not two, every day.

In the interest of trying new foods, I wanted to use the avocados in a way I normally don't. I decided to try out a recipe from The Asian Vegan Kitchen, titled Avocado Espresso Shake. I altered it a bit, and that sort of stuff I'm really bad at measuring...

Avocado Coffee Smoothie

1 avocado

Ice (probably 1/3 of a cup)

Soy milk (probably 1/2 a cup)

Vanilla stevia (a couple drops)

Coffee (about 1/4 of a cup)

I blended it all up in my Magic Bullet. I love that thing! Coffee and avocado may seem like an odd combination, but I promise it's delicious. I used brewed coffee, because my brother had just made some. I'm sure instant coffee would be good, and I think cocoa would be too. I may try that tomorrow!

Getting ahead of myself: Christmas baking

So I may be getting a little ahead of myself...this blog is supposed to document a journey beginning in January. But now that classes are done for the semester I actually have time, and what better to do with my time than to cook? I absolutely love the holiday season. Fresh baking. Friends and family. What more could you want?

I started off my Christmas baking with Cherry Almond Cookies, from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I love the bite of the cherries. Using a good dried cherry here really helps. I've made these little jems before, so it's not all that adventurous. Still delicious!

Next up, vegan butter tarts! I have fond memories of my Nana baking dozens upon dozens of butter tarts for us grandchildren. I've really missed them. I used this recipe, from Vegan Dad. I cannot say thank you enough!! I used pre-made shells, a bit lame, I know. My mom had a box in the freezer that needed to be used up which, miraculously, were vegan. When you're cooking for three teenage boys, sometimes easiest is the best option.

I'm so stoked for Christmas! My cousin and my brother put the Christmas tree up this afternoon. We're a little slow this year... Mom is downstairs sewing stockings for my two cousins, who moved in with us this spring. Mom made us stockings years ago, and felt bad buying store ones for them. Poor dog - his stocking isn't hand made!