Does anyone remember having cream of celery chicken & rice in their pregan days? It and similar meals were among my favorites as a kid and my mom had lots of these types of recipes in her weeknight dinner arsenal — simple, cheap, and easy comfort food at its finest.  I’ve always wanted to veganize this, but I wasn’t sure what to sub in for the chicken and for whatever reason it didn’t occur to me that I could buy/make vegan condensed “cream of” soups.  Well, duh, it’s totally possible and delicious, as we discovered this week!  If you want to keep with the Campbell tradition and go all store-bought, you can find dairy-free cream of celery soup (I spotted it at Whole Foods) and packaged seitan, but it’s going to cost a chunk of change and honestly, I just don’t think a lot of packaged vegan foods (esp veggie meats) taste very good.   If you’re looking to impress, go with homemade!  You can make the soup and chicken in advance and freeze them, to have a quick meal at your fingertips.

*What to sub for chicken?
Chickpea cutlets from Veganonicon.  F’reals, these things are life-changing.  Savory and chewy, I will never buy seitan from the store again (plus they’re cheaper and healthier!).  I follow the recipe exactly, except I don’t knead each cutlet individually or stretch it out into cutlet shape; I just grab a chunk of the dough, roll it into a ball and slightly flatten it with my hand, brush lightly with olive oil, and bake.  I think they come out softer this way, but it’s a personal preference.

Cream of celery cutlets:

-double batch of chickpea cutlets
-4 cups condensed cream of celery soup (recipe below)
-mashed potatoes (I use this recipe from the PPK blog), or rice, or any other starch

Layer the bottom of a Dutch oven with the cutlets.  Spread the soup over the cutlets.  Cover, and simmer on the stove for 20 min.  Alternatively, put cutlets and soup in a baking dish and bake at 350 deg F for 20 min.  When done, soup should be slightly brown and thickened.  The cutlets will be softer and will have absorbed some of the soup. Serve over mashed potatoes with green peas and applesauce on the side.

The vegan version relies on whipped Ener-G egg replacer, so it’s actually a very easy recipe! You really do need a stand mixer though so that you can whip at high speed.

I made the vanilla flavored cookies, which tasted a lot like crispy marshmallows. In truth I don’t really remember what meringue cookies taste like, I just remember the texture, which these mimic perfectly. I can taste a little of the egg replacer so I think some stronger flavors would be really good, like maybe matcha or lemon, or strawberry. The book recommends adding some cocoa powder to make chocolate cookies, which sounds amazeballs to me. Maybe putting some jelly on the top of the vanilla ones would be good too.

I copied an idea from this month’s Sunset magazine and made chocolate candy cane cookies. It was super easy, just (carefully!) dip the cookies in some melted chocolate and sprinkle them with crushed candy canes. They are so yummy!

I made a few modifications, so check the recipe below!

Recipe:
24 oz cream cheese (3 packages)*
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
2 tbsp cream**
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp agar flakes in 1/2 cup water
chocolate graham crackers (store-bought or homemade)
unsweetened cocoa powder, for dusting
paper cutouts of leaves

With a mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugars until smooth. Then beat in pumpkin, creamer, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla.

Combine the agar and water in a large measuring cup and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir with a whisk and microwave 30 seconds more. Whisk again and let cool 1 min. Quickly add to the cream cheese mix while whisking rapidly until thoroughly combined. Let mix sit until cooled and set.

Cover the bottom of a 9″X9″ pan with graham crackers. Spread 1/4 of pumpkin mixture over crackers. Layer three more times, ending with pumpkin mixture.

Cover and chill overnight. Set leaf cutouts on top and dust with cocoa powder, then remove. Cut into squares and serve!

*Cream cheese: I made 2 cups of cashew cream cheese and added one package of Tofutti brand cream cheese. You could use all cashew cheese (will taste less like cheesecake) or all Tofutti. I’m trying to get away from relying on so much processed stuff, so I compromised by using mostly cashew cheese for richness and healthfulness while the little bit of Tofutti added the right amount of cream cheese flavor.

**Creamer: I used 2 tbsp soy milk powder, mixed with just enough warm water to dissolve. You could also use soy creamer or coconut cream.

A note about agar: 2 tbsp of flakes will get you a thick pudding-like consistency. If you want it to be more jelled, I would add 4 tbsp. And make sure to rapidly whip/stir when adding the agar or little bits will clump up and give you something like tapioca pudding!

It came out beautifully, but unfortunately I dropped the whole thing on my way into the potluck and it smashed into a million billion pieces. I was SO SAD!!! My boyfriend is determined to have me make another one because he really wanted to try it, so stay tuned! Hopefully I’ll get a few shots of the next one before I klutz it up again Here’s the…erm….after shot:

I used the soy curl recipe from Chez Bettay and I threw in some stir fried carrots, onions, steamed broccoli, green onion, snow peas and sesame seeds. Served over perfect brown rice.

After the walk was over, we engaged in a little veg tourism in Berkeley. We grabbed some lunch at Cha-Ya, an all-vegan Japanese restaurant. I ordered a sushi/inari lunch plate, miso soup, and gen-mai cha. It was pretty freakin’ delicious.

That last picture is the sukiyake that one of my vegan buddies ordered. It looked amazing.

After a tasty lunch, we checked out Berkeley Bowl. It’s got a reputation for having a beautiful and extensive produce section. I was impressed by the selection (lots of stuff I’d never seen before!) but I think Rainbow Grocery is still my favorite SF market.

Trunk or Treat is basically a way for parents to provide a safe space for their kids to celebrate Halloween. A lot of churches do it because it’s an alternative for parents who don’t want to send their kids out to strangers’ houses on Halloween plus they can control how spooky everything is. The parents line up their cars and sit in their Halloween-bedazzled trunks, handing out candy. Since everyone knows each other, you can totally make homemade sweeties to hand out instead of pre-packaged candy! I’m usually stuck buying the “boring” (i.e., non-chocolate) candy for Halloween, since the cheap chocolate is full of dairy (and slavery!) and the fair-trade/vegan stuff is way too expensive.

I didn’t have a lot of time to make stuff so I opted for chocolate-covered pretzel logs (with vegan Halloween sprinkles!) and caramel popcorn balls.

They came out great! I put the pretzel logs in special bagse you can find at any craft store. I also had Sour Patch Kids and Swedish fish, but the homemade stuff was the first to disappear! In fact, I think the pretzels were gone in the first 10 minutes

The next day we went into San Francisco to go see a Halloween performance of The Phantom of the Opera. Of course, if we were in the city we had to check out a new vegan restaurant!

There’s been some buzz on the PPK about a new vegetarian Thai restaurant, Thai Idea. There’s also a good review of the place in SF Weekly.

Here’s what we ordered:

Thai iced tea

Firecracker balls – they are deep-fried, panko-crusted and nori-wrapped veggie tuna balls.

Massaman curry with tofu

Pad Thai with veggie chicken

Everything was good! The restaurant was super cute and all the entrees were under $10. The service was really attentive, too. I recommend the firecracker balls. They tasted a little fishy from the nori and they were served with a delicious sweet chili sauce. The Massaman curry was one of the best I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a lot!). The Pad Thai was just ok…it needed more zip but I’m also really picky about my Pad Thai. We were hoping they’d have mango sticky rice for dessert, but instead they offered deep fried bananas with coconut ice cream. As good as that sounded, I was only in the mood for mango so we passed.

Yay for a great new Thai restaurant (sans fish sauce!) and yay for Halloween!

Here’s what I sent my partner for the fall swap:

So there are some Halloween-themed goodies…socks, tea towel, glow-in-the-dark nail polish…and inside those treat bags are the whole collection of Go Max Go bars, Primal Strips, Swedish Fish, and Sour Patch kids (hope she likes candy, haha!). The yarn in the back is really soft fall-colored cotton from Yarns of Italy. My swap partner likes wine so I sent her a nice local Red, and I also made the cookie jar mix from the PPK. I also made some Dia de los Muertos stitch markers. I wanted to bake some treats for her pet bunnies, which I’ve done in the past, but dang I just ran out of time.  Anyway, I hope she likes it all!

Here’s the package that came in the mail to me today!

Here’s what is in the picture above:
-lovely organic cotton yarn from Long Ridge Farm…and some patterns tucked alongside to inspire me!
-fiber wash
-candy corn (my favorite Halloween candy-this one is almost vegan, except for some beeswax and confectioner’s glaze),
-adorable pumpkin stitch markers from See Jayne Knit
-greeting cards, I think they are handmade, wow!
-a bound notebook that I’m going to use to write down patterns
-fall themed tea towel
-a little Halloween figurine that is already decorating my desk at work
-lots of fun teas to try
-a box of sweet annie, a really fragrant and lovely herb I had never heard of! I’ve been having a lot of fun reading up on its medicinal uses and history. I think I will make some sachets with it with rosemary and lavender

I love these swaps! They’re so fun to assemble and I love getting treats in the mail.

-Red velvet loaf with cream cheese frosting: I saw this at a coffee shop recently.  What a cool idea!  I like being able to see the red cake with an outline of frosting.  I just used the red velvet cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and baked it in a loaf pan for about 15 min longer than you would bake the cupcakes.  It came out great!

-Oatmeal sandwich cookies from the Sunny Days in Texas Zine

-Chocolate peanut butter pillows from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

Of course, I saved a few for myself!

While I was buying my tofu at the store I spotted Tofurkey Italian Sausage. I was already feeling too lazy to work out how to spice the TVP, so I just decided to spring for this stuff instead. It’s actually pretty tasty! I think it’s mainly tofu and seitan with spices so I didn’t feel like it was too processed. I made the tofu ricotta from Vegan with a Vengeance and mixed it up with the sausages, which I ground up in the food processor.
As I was preparing everything I started to saute the holy trinity of soups: onion, celery, and carrots.  I also added some zucchini.  Then I added broth, diced tomatoes, spinach, frozen corn, frozen peas and spices and let it all simmer while I made the tortellini.
Wrapping the tortellini was pretty easy, if a little time consuming.  The pasta dough recipe is from Vegan Dad’s site.  I had waaaaay more filling than I needed.  It might find its way into a lasagna this week.  There are a million videos on how to form tortellini…I’ve condensed it down to a few easy steps:

1) Roll out some of the dough till it’s pretty thin and cut it into 3″x3″ squares using a pizza cutter:

2) Place about 1 tsp filling in the center:

3) Fold dough in half over filling and press the pocket shut:

4) Roll the bottom up.  Be careful at this step – if you fill the pocket too full and roll too much it can bust open:

5) Place your finger in the middle and fold the corners over.  Pinch together.

One batch of pasta made about 50 large tortellini. Please excuse my ugly tray!

When the soup was done I threw in all the tortellini and simmered it, covered, for about 10 min:

It was delicious! Even better than the canned stuff.

Here’s a list of the ingredients:
-tofu ricotta, per VWAV
-4 ground Tofurkey sausages, or equivalent amount of spiced TVP
-1 batch pasta dough (see link above)
-1 onion, chopped
-3 stalks celery, diced
-2 large carrots, diced
-1 zucchini, diced
-1 large can (64 oz) can diced tomatoes, with juice
-6 cups water or broth
-1/2 cup (or 1 handful) frozen peas
-1 cup frozen chopped spinach
-1/2 cup (or about 1 handful) frozen white corn
-2-3 Tbs Italian seasoning
-salt, to taste

There are a few places for vegans in Tahoe but they can be pretty expensive.  Sprout Cafe is pretty reasonable and had  good reviews on Yelp so we decided to check it out.  It’s a mostly vegetarian cafe that relies pretty heavily on cheese but almost everything can be made vegan (there is no vegan cheese though).

I ordered the tempeh burger, which had to be served on a plain bagel rather than a bun.  Apparently the bun contains dairy.  The burger “patty” was a big slab of tempeh that tasted like it had been marinated in teriyaki sauce.  So I guess this was more of a sandwich than a burger!  It was also loaded with veggies – carrots, cabbage, sprouts, onion, tomato, and avocado.  The bread was slathered with a tasty sweet mustard dressing that was full of whole mustard seeds.  Thinking back, it may have been a honey mustard dressing…I’m not sure and didn’t think to ask.

I was also happy to see that all their soups are vegan, made with a water base. On the day we visited they had a sesame noodle soup and a pesto veggie soup. Intrigued, I decided to try a cup of the pesto soup. It was really good, basically just a normal vegetable soup with pesto mixed into the broth. I really liked it and will probably try this out in my own soups.

They also had a juice bar but I was way too full to try it! The staff were young, friendly, and courteous and were knowledgeable about what vegans eat – always a plus.