Lunch Salad in the Park

When the weather is nice, I really enjoy eating my lunch in the park. I like to read at lunch and it's quite nice to sit in the fresh air and relax for a bit in the middle of a hectic work day. I wish I remembered to bring my lunch more than I do.

We don't have anywhere to eat lunch in the building where I'm currently working so it's either bring something cold to eat in the park if it's nice weather or go out to eat somewhere. That pretty much negates bringing leftovers for lunch like I used to do. Sometimes I cheat and go to a coffee shop and order a cheap tea and eat a sandwich or something in there if it's raining. Luckily, we've had some amazing weather out here in Vancouver lately so it hasn't really been an issue.

 

 

I get tired of sandwiches after a while and I've never been a huge salad person. I like my salads full of stuff with just a bit of lettuce as an accent, not as the main ingredient. One thing that really makes salads awesome for me are those Gardein Crispy Tenders. The plain ones or the newer chipotle lime flavor are both great. I'll cook them in the morning while I'm getting ready for work or even sometimes the night before and then chop them up and put them on a salad. That really adds a bit of jazz to the salad!

These things are really great at room temperature and add some extra goodness to wraps, too. Oh yeah, that's another favorite thing to do with those, but I never remember to take a photo when I do it. I eat them too fast. These Crispy Tenders are also really great on a caesar salad if you want a little something extra.

Disclaimer: I totally took this photo over the summer and forgot about it. Vegan MoFo is great for getting me to blog about photos I keep shuffling around on Flickr.

Vancouver Food Trucks: Mom's Grilled Cheese

Thanks to Twitter, I found about this really cool food truck that just opened this week in Vancouver. This discovery has actually inspired me to try and take the next two weeks of the MoFo and discover more vegan yummies at food trucks around town. Stay tuned for more of that! It's going to be like a delicious scavenger hunt.

 

Anywho, I wandered on over to the Vancouver Art Gallery and found Mom's Grilled Cheese right there on Howe at Georgia. That's a really great location for them. It's quite pleasant to sit on the VAG steps and eat lunch. I see tons of people hanging out over there all day long. It's great to have a place to sit (or stand if you want) and eat from a food truck without feeling like you have to eat while walking or you don't really have anywhere to chill out for a minute with your food. So A+ for location, for sure.

 

Even better, though, Mom's Grilled Cheese has vegan stuff! Well, obviously they do or I wouldn't be talking about it, right? I guess that was a bit of a given. For vegans, you have two options. You can order the tomato soup, hold the marscapone or you can order a grilled cheese sandwich with Daiya. I haven't tried the soup, yet, but I was told it's made vegan, so just ask for no cheese on it. I'm going to go back and try it one day next week, I think.

As for the sandwiches, you can choose from a bunch of different types of bread, even a gluten-free one! I love that they're offering that. I know so many people with gluten intolerances, it's nice to see more places offering options like that. When I went yesterday they had pepper jack and cheddar Daiya, so you can have either one you want. I got a mix of both on my sandwich. For an extra 50 cents per extra, you can add onions, pickles or tomatoes to your sandwich as well. I added all 3 because I'm crazy like that. You'll get some chips and a pickle spear with your sandwich. They're usually served in this really cute cone of paper, but since the Daiya doesn't really stick together, they put mine in a clamshell so it didn't get too messy.

Extreme closeup of my delicious sandwich with Daiya, tomatoes, pickles and onions on marbled rye.

I had never had these before, but I've heard tales of Pop Shoppe sodas from lots of Canadians. Apparently it's something they used to have back in the day that had all but disappeared. Recently they've started resurfacing in a few places. Mom's Grilled Cheese has a ton of different Pop Shoppe flavors and even though I almost never drink sodas, I decided to try a root beer just because.

Served with chips and a pickle spear, though my pickles are hiding behind the sandwich

One note - make sure you specify that your sandwich is vegan when you order. They usually brush butter on the bread, but they won't do that if you ask them not to. Pretty awesome. They were all working so fast and were quite friendly and very nice. I pretty much liked everything about Moms Grilled Cheese and will definitely go back there again.

They were jammed when I was there yesterday so I had to wait a few minutes for my sandwich, but that's really not that big of a deal. Cindy, (the Mom of Mom's Grilled Cheese) was offering so many of us a complementary soda or ginger tea or soup as a thank you for waiting for our sandwiches. She even offered for a few of us to come back another time for a free sandwich. I'm looking forward to collecting on that in the next few days. If you're in Vancouver, check them out if you're downtown and feeling hungry, even if you just need a homemade ginger tea (I can't wait to try that, actually).

You can check out their menu here if you're curious.

Green Bean Casserole and the Rest of Thanksgiving 2011

Mostly I want to post the recipe for my green bean casserole, but I thought I'd also give the rest of Thanksgiving dinner a bit of time in the spotlight.

 

I make this homemade vegan roast every year at Thanksgiving. Even the omnivores get seconds, sometimes even thirds. It's quite good. I found the recipe online. (Edit: The recipe page isn't online anymore, but I have it written down. If anyone wants it, let me know and I'll do another post with the recipe.) (Edit: You can get the Vegan Holiday Roast recipe here.) I found that it needs about an hour longer of cooking time than it says to soak up all of the broth. Keep that in mind if you make it. It's so good and everyone will think you're a genius for making it.

I found the recipe for these Harvest Pies over at Vegan Dad's blog. I wish I had taken some photos of them without the tops on. They're full of butternut squash and potatoes and carrots and stuff. I think tempeh would be a great addition to theses as well. I'm going to try that the next time I make them. These are especially good with a bit of gravy.

 

Speaking of gravy... what Thanksgiving would be complete without it?! Stuffing and gravy are two of my favorite parts of the Thanksgiving meal. I've started making the Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy from Vegan with a Vengeance every year. The first time I made it, I was in heaven. I could probably eat this gravy with a spoon by itself and be happy. Quite a few people commented on the tastiness of the gravy this year, too. The only thing I do differently from the recipe is puree it. I like my gravy smooth so I stick my immersion blender in at the end and puree the heck out of it.

 

The mashed potatoes are almost gone! You know how to make mashed potatoes, I don't need to tell you. My secret ingredients are Earth Balance and vegetable broth. Yum!

 

And now for the green bean casserole! James was nice enough to top and tail them for me while I was doing other things... like finishing up that Sm'love Pie you see in the background there. The thing that makes my casserole special is the homemade mushroom soup. It's not hard to make and it freezes well so you can always make it in advance or make a double batch and stash some in the freezer for a rainy day. I also find it quite delicious on its own. You can make cream of pretty much anything using this recipe. Just substitute the mushrooms for whatever you like. Cream of asparagus, anyone?

Green Bean Casserole

Note: If you're making this for a crowd, double the recipe to fill a large rectangular baking dish. That's what I did for Thanksgiving. You might end up with some leftover soup, especially if you double it. I usually just freeze it and eat it later as a soup with some asparagus or something added to it.

3 cups of green beans, topped and tailed and cut in half (I'm guessing here. Use however many fill a small 8" square baking dish. When I buy them from the market they come in bags, so I usually just buy one bag for a little bit and 2 bags for double this.)
Cream of Mushroom Soup (recipe below)
1 can of fried onions

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Mix the green beans, the soup and 3/4 of the can of friend onions and pour it all into an 8" square baking dish. Top with the remaining fried onions. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 5 minutes before eating.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked for at least an hour, up to overnight
2 cups vegetable broth
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
half a head of cauliflower, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 generous handful of oyster mushrooms, chopped
1 generous handful of another kind of mushroom, your choice, chopped
2 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon white pepper, optional
1/2 teaspoon salt (you might want to leave this out if your broth is salted)

 Add the broth and cashews to a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. This will probably take from 2-5 minutes. Set aside.

Saute the mushrooms over medium heat in their own pan for about 5 minutes then turn off the heat and set them aside. You'll use them in a minute.

Add the olive oil to a large pot over medium heat. Once the oil is warm, add the onion and cauliflower. Saute for about 5 minutes. Add in the garlic and saute for another minute. Add in about 3/4 of the mushrooms, the cashew mixture, water, bay leaves, thyme, pepper and salt. Stir everything up and cover your pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves. If you have an immersion blender, stick it in the pot and blend until everything is pretty smooth. If you're using a food processor or blender, puree the soup in batches, being careful not to burn yourself and also being careful to let the steam escape as you're doing it or you'll have a big mess on your hands. Now add in the remaining 1/4 of your mushrooms. Taste for salt and add more if you think you need it.

Lemon Cream Pie and Other Stories

I can't quite remember which year I started this, but it's a tradition for Thanksgiving to have 3 pies, now. I always make the Sm'love pie every year because everyone always asks about it and then proceeds to get this blissed look on their faces while eating it. Who am I to deprive people of their chocolatey Thanksgiving goodness? I try and shake it up a bit with the other two, though. I like to do one fruit pie of some type and the other can be whatever I feel like making at the time.

All that was left of the Lemon Cream Pie at the end of the night

How can you not love the Sm'love Pie?

I've made my award-winning Hazelnut Apple Cider Pie two years in a row because it was requested this year. That's kind of awesome, actually. I couldn't find any pink lady apples so I had to make do with Granny Smith apples instead. It was still great, I just prefer the pink ladies for my pies. They have such a great combination of sweet and tart and crisp.

 

I actually ended up having to send James to the store at the last minute to get more apples for me. I wasn't paying attention when I was simmering the apples in the cider and all of a sudden I had applesauce. Well, not all of a sudden, more like 20 minutes too long while I sat on the couch checking my email with one of the cats in my lap. What a bummer. Now I have to find things to eat applesauce with for the next few weeks to use it up. I put it all in jars and then realized that I didn't add any lemon juice so it won't be shelf-stable. Dang it.

The remnants of the Hazelnut Apple Cider Pie

For the third pie, I wanted to do a lemon cream pie. I got inspired by the Coconut Cream Topping that Vegan Dad made.  For some reason I was thinking the coconut cream would get super fluffy and it didn't really. It wasn't runny or anything, though. I think next time I might try adding a bit of arrowroot or cornstarch or something and beating it for a long time to see if I can get it any stiffer. Experimenting can be delicious! Also, I know that sometimes when you buy cans of coconut milk it's separated into milk and cream in the can, but mine wasn't like that this time so I just chucked it all at the beginning of the recipe and it seemed to turn out fine. So if you make this and have that same thing happen, don't worry, it's all good.

I used to love my Grandma's lemon meringue pie when I was a kid; though I remember loving the lemon part way more than the meringue. I'm going to have to do a bit more experimenting to get the lemon part of the pie a bit more like Grandma's was but this was still quite good. I got the recipe from the Fat Free Vegan Blog. I noticed that a few people commented that the recipe was too sweet as is and I generally like things less sweet than most people so I heeded their warning and reduced the sugar a bit. I ran some lemons through the juicer for fresh juice and I think that really made quite the difference, too. Oh, did I mention that there's no baking at all involved in making this pie? Just heating up some stuff on the stove and then refrigerating!

I only have two large pie dishes so I ended up using a springform pan for my lemon cream pie. You can use whichever you like, but the pie dish is probably best if you expect to have leftovers.

It looks so cute just out of the springform pan, but I still think a pie plate would be best.

Copied and Pasted, here is the recipe for the lemon cream pie:

Make whatever kind of pie crust you like. I just used a graham cracker crust. Just get some graham cracker crumbs (about 1 3/4 cup) and add a few tablespoons of canola or coconut oil. Mix with a fork until the graham cracker crumbs are all moist and hold together. Add more oil one tablespoon at a time, mixing after each addition if you find your crumbs are still too dry.

Lemon Pie Filling (reposted from the Fat Free Vegan Blog)

1 1/2 cups sugar (I only used 1 cup)
1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup water
1 cup non-dairy milk
3/4 cup lemon juice
grated rind of 2 lemons (about 2 Tbsp.)

Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in saucepan. Stir in water and soymilk and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and slowly add the lemon juice and grated rind.

Pour into a pie crust and chill for a couple of hours until set.

Coconut Cream Topping (reposted from the Vegan Dad blog)

1 can coconut milk
1 tablespoon agar flakes or 1 teaspoon agar powder
3 tablespoons sugar (I ended up using 6 tablespoons of sugar total to get it sweet enough)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Separate coconut cream from coconut milk and add the milk (i.e. the watery stuff) to a small saucepan. Sprinkle afar flakes over and let sit for 5 mins.  Add sugar and bring to bubbling over med hi heat, whisking constantly.  Cook for 3-5 mins, or until all the agar has dissolved.

Remove from heat and whisk in cream and vanilla.  Adjust sugar to taste then pour into a bowl, cover, and place into the fridge.  Allow to fully cool.

When ready to use, whisk the cooled mixture and spread over your pie.  Place pie back into the fridge until ready to serve.

Thanksgiving Bounty

I have another Thanksgiving dinner to go to this evening and I've pretty much spent most of the day chilling out after cooking for 2 and a half days. More recipes later in the week. For now, check out what we had for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday.

Green Bean Casserole and Homemade Tofurkey

Harvest Pies, Cranberry Sauce and Stuffing

Kale, Mashed Potatoes and Chickpea Gravy

Lemon Cream Pie, Hazelnut Apple Cider Pie and Sm'love Pie

Thanksgiving Cranberry Sauce

I found local cranberries at the farmers market this year! So cool. I don't think I've ever had cranberries that didn't come in a little bag. Apparently BC is one of the largest producers of cranberries. The things you learn when buying produce.

If you don't know how to make cranberry sauce, it's simple. 1 cup of water, 1 cup of sugar and a bag of cranberries. Mix it all together in a big pot over medium high heat and cover it, stirring occasionally. As soon as it starts to boil, turn the heat down to a simmer. Simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring every now and then. Remove from heat and chill.

You can add all kinds of different things to change the flavor if you want. I like to add orange juice instead of some of the water and some orange segments. Though that part's a pain in the butt because you have to open up each little segment of orange and get rid of the white stuff that holds it together. It tastes good, though! Some people add maple syrup or cinnamon sticks to theirs. Try it and see what you like. Once you try homemade cranberry sauce you won't want to buy that canned stuff again.

Super Fast and Easy Anything Goes Stuffing

Thanksgiving rocks. I think it might be my favorite holiday. That probably has nothing to do with how much I love cooking and having people over. When I moved to Canada from the US, it took some adjustment to get used to Thanksgiving being in October with only a 3-day weekend! I still pine for a crisp Thursday in November being the holiday.

I would always take Wednesday off as well so I could start cooking the day before. Hello, 5-day weekend. Or is that even a weekend anymore at that point? No matter, it was awesome. I always made a point to stay in on Black Friday but that is usually the day I'd start decorating for the winter holidays. Actually, sometimes I'd even start putting up my tree and decorating it after Thanksgiving dessert. I'm sure my guests were quite amused that I'd get so excited to do that, but hey - it's the little things sometimes, right?

Chestnuts ready to go into the oven

So Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend. People up here don't tend to stick to actual day to celebrate like we did in the US. That actually makes it easier, anyway. I have my dinners on Sundays so I can spend Monday eating leftovers and doing nothing that requires me to be on my feet like I am for the two days previous. I'm taking a break with a glass of wine to write this right now. I have a more things to make tonight so tomorrow's not too slammed. Vegan MoFo has given me a great excuse to come sit down for a bit. I don't typically stop moving until the very end of the evening when I'm about to fall into bed. So yay, MoFo for that!

I'm usually so bad about remembering to take photos of things for Thanksgiving, but I've been doing alright with it this year. I want to make a separate post about everything I'm making. Tonight, let's talk stuffing!

I make a homemade vegan roast and I actually do use this to stuff it, but I'll also serve some of it just in a dish on the side. I used to always buy those bags of super dry bread cubes and then try to make something wonderful out of it. I've actually discovered that I like stuffing better made from fresh bread. It's quite easy and takes almost no time. If you've never done it, try it sometime. The texture is a bit different, but that's because your stuffing is already moist and you're not trying to soak up everything with it.

No more hard stuffing! Sprouted grain bread is especially great for this.

Another great thing about my stuffing recipe is that you can pretty much add whatever you want to it and it tastes good. Though I don't know if you want to take me too literally and start adding weird things like peaches or something. That might not be the best. I typically always use onions or shallots, carrots, celery, chestnuts and shitake mushrooms in mine. For the herbs, I'll just grab whatever looks freshest. I went to the farmers market this morning and bought savory, thyme, sage and rosemary so that's what I'm using for this particular batch.

Roasted and peeled chestntus

I'm a huge fan of chestnuts in stuffing. They really add a bit of an extra punch of deliciousness. They're just slightly sweet while still being savory enough to blend in well with everything else. The texture is a bit softer than the carrots and celery while not being as soft as the bread. If you can't get fresh chestnuts, you can use canned ones, it's totally fine. Sometimes it can be hard to find fresh ones and when you do, sometimes they're old and yucky. I usually eyeball how many chestnuts I add to the stuffing so I'm just guessing at how much are in there. If you're using canned ones, just use a whole can. If you're buying fresh ones, just use whatever looks like enough. I always roast them all and then freeze whatever I don't put in the stuffing to use later. There are a couple of really great recipes in Veganomicon using chestnuts that you could make with the leftovers.

Roast Chestnuts

Preheat your oven to 425 F.

Cut a little slit in each of your chestnuts so the steam can escape when you're baking them. Arrange them on a shallow baking sheet and cook for 25 minutes.

Let the chestnuts cool on the pan for about 5 minutes and then pour them onto a kitchen towel. Gather the towel up at the sides so that no chestnuts can escape and mash them around a bit to loosen the shells. Peel them as soon as they're cool enough to handle without burning you. If you wait until they're too cold, they'll be really hard to peel so try and do it while they're still warm.

 

Stuffing

1 loaf of bread (I use sprouted grain bread)
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion or a handful of shallots, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 large carrots, diced
3-4 ribs celery, diced
3/4 cup mushrooms, chopped (I usually use shitake, but use whatever kind you like)
2 tablespoons each fresh herbs (I usually use rosemary, sage, savory and thyme or you can buy one of those "poultry blends" That works well for this.
1 1/2 cups roasted chestnuts, chopped
2 cups warm vegetable broth

In a pan over medium heat (I use my cast iron skillet for this) heat the olive oil. Add the onions or shallots and cook for about 3 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for another minute or so. Add the celery, carrots and mushrooms and cook for about 10 minutes or until the carrots just start to get soft. Add in the fresh herbs and cook for another 2 minutes.

While you're cooking the veggies, cut the bread into cubes and toss them into a large bowl. You'll probably have to do this just a few slices at a time.

Once the veggies are done, add them to the bread cubes along with the chestnuts. Stir gently to evenly distribute the veggies and chestnuts. Pour the warm broth over the mixture and stir.

If you're using this to stuff something you can stop here. It'll cook more when it's in the oven. If not, you'll want to transfer your stuffing to a baking dish and cook for about 20 minutes in a 350 F oven.