How can you live without cheese?

September 7, 2010

Cheese tray

When BigSis initially told me at the beginning of the year that she had made the decision to become vegan, the first thing out of my mouth was “I think that’s great, but HOW can you live without cheese?”

We’ve always been big snackers/grazers in our family. Growing up, we would almost always snack on some cheese and crackers late in the afternoon before SisMama would start on dinner. I can still remember the white cheddar cheese that our parents would bring back from their trips to Nebraska or our aunts and uncles would bring down to us when they came for a visit.

And when we would visit our Grandmama in the summer, a late afternoon snack was always a freezing cold, slushy, orange Crush soda or Dr. Pepper with a big ole’ chunk of cheese! I think that was when I fell in love with cheese.

I obviously have some very fond childhood memories that revolve around cheese. So, why the walk down memory lane? Isn’t that what you usually do when you’re in mourning? I think that’s exactly what’s going on with me right now.

Some people, like BigSis, make the conscious decision to become vegan, which I happen to totally admire, but then there are those like me, who after 40 something years of eating cheese, are told that they can’t have dairy anymore! That’s not news that’s easy to swallow when it’s something that you enjoy as much as I do! :-(

I’ve lived with a sensitive stomach my entire life and there are lots of things I can’t eat; fried stuff, greasy potato chips, fatty meat, etc., but I’ve learned to live with that. This is going to be a little tougher. It took every bit of will power I had to not get into the gorgeous cheese tray that we had at our Labor Day party on Sunday!

But, after a few bad episodes, followed by a couple of doctors visits, a ton of tests, some medication, and process of elimination, it’s been determined that I’ve become lactose intolerant. Even though it’s not the news that I was expecting to hear, it definitely could have been something worse so I promise that I won’t whine about it too much.

I’m now asking myself the exact same question that I asked BigSis about nine months ago. “How am I going to live without cheese?” I don’t know the answer to that right now, but I do know that it isn’t going to easy.

I’ve already discovered that low-fat vanilla soy milk isn’t bad and Earth Balance buttery spread is actually quite good. BigSis has also given me a few suggestions for “faux cheese” but that’s going to be the real trick; finding a veggie/soy cheese that actually tastes good. My first experiment over the weekend with the Trader Joe’s soy mozzarella didn’t really impress me.

I know there’s medication you can take to ease the symptoms IF you do decide to eat dairy, but for now, I’m going to try to do without it completely to see how things go.

If anyone reading happens to be vegan or lactose intolerant, we would LOVE to hear from you if you’ve found any great cheese substitutes! :-)

Photo credit from ayngelina’s photostream

~LilSis

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Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownies

August 14, 2010

What if I told you I could make brownies without butter? Probably doable, right?

How about without eggs? Hmmm, getting trickier. How will you keep them together without eggs?

Now, what if I told you I made brownies with no eggs, no dairy, AND added blueberries! What?! Get outta here!

Using the Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownie recipe from Veganomicon, that’s exactly what I did. And guess what? They’re awesome!! I took them to the office and actually got good reviews. Even great reviews! And the comments weren’t what you would expect: “I guess they’re ok for healthy brownies, BigSis. Better than no brownie at all”.

Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownies

Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownies

They’re moist, they’re unbelievably chocolatey, and you really can’t figure out what’s different about them. I guess blueberries have such a mild flavor usually, that the brownies don’t scream “BLUEBERRY!!!!”

These guys have 3 chocolates (I used vegan), fresh blueberries, and a whole jar of blueberry spread. Plus the usual suspects: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, canola oil, vanilla and almond extract,

They aren’t completely without guilt, but at least you get a little fruit with your chocolate.

~BigSis

Super Speedy Mexican Vegetable Stew

August 12, 2010

Being single and eating my biggest meal of the day before noon, it’s really easy for me to skip dinner or to just have a handful of almonds.  I try to eat intentionally though, and skipping dinner doesn’t set me up for a very energetic morning.

I have a solution that works for me, even in the summertime when you don’t automatically think of something warm.  How about a one-pot stew/soup dish that’s inexpensive, nutritious AND super speedy?  I got it for you.  It’s so simple, I don’t even need to give you an official recipe; I can just tell you how to do it in a few words.

Take 5 cans from your pantry, and don’t feel bad that you’re using cans!  You need a big can of fire-roasted tomatoes (diced or crushed), a small can of diced fire-roasted tomatoes with green chilis (similar to Rotel but I think much better!), a can of green beans, a can of red kidney beans and a can of corn.

Vegetable Stew Cans

Open all the cans, and dump both tomatoes into a large saucepan and turn the meat to medium.  Fill the small can with water and add that.  Then add whatever mexican seasonings you like to the tomatoes and simmer for few minutes.  I used garlic powder, cumin, chile powder, dried cilantro, shallot pepper, salt and a touch of dried chipotle.

Bring the tomatoes to a boil, and then add the drained corn and green beans, along with the kidney beans that have been drained and rinsed.  You don’t want that nasty bean juice.  Heat until the vegetables are heated through.  Voila!  You’re done!

I like to serve my stew with dairy-free cheese (Daiya) and sour cream (Tofutti).  My diced tomatoes with chilis were pretty potent so I didn’t even need any Frank’s Red Hot Sauce!

Vegetable Stew Bowl

In this one bowl, you get nutrients from the veggies, plus protein from the beans that will keep you full for a good long time.  Use whatever veggies you have, and feel free to add other goodies like mushrooms, onions, and chili peppers.  Hatch chilis are almost in season and they would be incredible in this.

I’d say this is a much better dinner than a few sorry nuts!  :-D

~BigSis

Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies

June 10, 2010

Vegan Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since our next SPCA Bake Sale is only 6 months away, I better get myself busy building a repertoire of vegan recipes!  I’m almost 6 months into “eating vegan”, but I’m not a big sweets eater so I haven’t done much baking.

After my coworker K-to-the-T brought these awesome Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Coconut Cookies to the office the other day though, I knew this was a recipe I had to adapt asap!  They were scrumptious, and reminded me of a Cowboy Cookie I used to make.  She had made a few tweaks of her own to the original Epicurious recipe, and I tweaked it even more.  Voila and ta da!  Here’s my first adapted cookie recipe, sans eggs and dairy products!

Vegan Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies

Adapted from K-to-the-T and Epicurious

1 stick (1/2 cup) Earth Balance, softened
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ground flax seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup + 2 tablespoons old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1/2 cup semisweet vegan chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Beat together Earth Balance and sugars in a bowl with an electric mixer at high speed until fluffy. Add applesauce and vanilla, and mix until blended. In a separate medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, flax seed, cinnamon, and salt. Stir to mix ingredients. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix at low speed until just blended. Stir in oats, coconut, chocolate chips, and walnuts.

Arrange 1/4-cup mounds of cookie dough about 3 inches apart on 2 ungreased large baking sheets (about 6 cookies per sheet), then gently pat down each mound to about 1/2 inch thick. Bake until golden, about 14 to 15 minutes.

Cool cookies on sheets until set enough to transfer with a spatula to racks to cool completely. Makes about 12 big cookies.

Note: The bottoms of my cookies were pretty brown. I think that using parchment paper might help with that if you prefer lighter bottoms.

My cookies had a slightly different texture than K-to-the-T’s, but they were absolutely delicious!  I never would have guessed that they were vegan.  They were moist and chewy, and had great flavor.  I will absolutely make them again…and yes, they may make an appearance at the Bake Sale!

~BigSis

St Patrick’s Day Cupcakes

March 16, 2010

St Patricks Day Green Cupcakes

Happy St Patrick’s Day!  LilSis and I are only 1/4 Irish at the most, so we can’t really claim this holiday as our own, but it’s a pretty fun little holiday anyway!  There are no responsibilities or expectations; it’s just about the wearing o’ the green, eating food you probably wouldn’t eat every day like corned beef and cabbage (I’ll pass), and having fun.  Oh, and green beer works its way into the celebration more often than not!  And do you remember when McDonald’s used to have green vanilla milkshakes on St Patrick’s Day?

I’m determined to find a delicious way to bake without using eggs and dairy, and I’m encouraged by my success so far with my favorite Pumpkin Bread and the Banana-Wheat Germ Muffins I made recently.  Getting braver, I decided it was time to be a big vegan girl and try something a little trickier…cake!  With St Patrick’s Day coming up, I had the perfect excuse to bake!

I found this recipe for vanilla cupcakes on VegNews.com and was intrigued!  The amount of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar sounded very acidic, and I wasn’t sure about 100% whole wheat pastry flour in cake.  My rule for a brand new recipe is always to follow it precisely the first go-round though, so that’s what I did.

How’d the cupcakes come out?  My first thought was that they could benefit from a bit less sugar, and perhaps 25% to 50% all purpose flour in place of some of the whole wheat pastry flour.  They were pretty coarse in texture, and maybe a bit more like dense muffins than cake.

St Patricks Day Green Cupcakes

I took these to my test subjects at the office, and got a variety of reactions:

  • A laugh and a shake of the head followed by a brisk/frantic walk away from the untouched cupcakes.
  • Silence after eating one.  Dead silence.  Still silent.
  • “It’s really good, but I like things that taste like they’re healthy”.
  • ” That cake will take some getting used to but I like the frosting”.
  • “Well, they look good.”

I’m convinced that there is a tasty vegan cake recipe out there; actually, I’m sure there are several.  Is this cupcake one of them?  Mmmm, nah.  But it’s not bad.  And when you’re vegan, maybe “not bad cake” is better than no cake at all?

~BigSis

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This Muffin has a Secret

March 14, 2010

Banana Wheat Germ Muffin

This humble muffin is a muffin with a secret.  He’s not very flashy; lots of other muffins are turbo-size, or chock full of fruit and even chocolate chips.  He’s not real pretty either; just a modest little tan guy with a few glimpses of nut here and there.  And he’s not a sweet-fluffy-puffy-light-as-air muffin.  He’s a substantial guy, moist and dense.  But his secret is what makes him more special than the flashy or pretty muffins.  This muffin is healthy AND tasty.

This guy’s given name is Banana-Wheat Germ Muffins, and he was born in the cookbook called Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.  Yep, you guessed it!  This muffin’s middle name is Vegan!

Banana Wheat Germ Muffin Top

I made these muffins a couple of times when Bry was here, and we polished the dozen off between us in only a couple of days.  It is true that Bry is my nephew, and a sweet one at that, so even if these muffins were craptastic, he would probably still gobble them up and declare them delicious.  I’ve had my share of baking disasters though, and I don’t count these muffins among them.

This recipe was my first foray into vegan baking, and I was nervous to say the least.  How could I make a delicious baked good with no eggs and no dairy?  The first thing I needed to do was find a reliable and creative vegan cookbook, and Veganomicon fits the bill.

These muffins use baking powder for leavening, with a bit of canola oil added to the mashed banana for tenderness and moisture.  I made just a couple of changes to the original recipe.  I added about a cup of toasted, roughly chopped walnuts, and used my homemade almond milk instead of soy milk.  I also added a dash of good nutmeg, along with the cinnamon.  You can find the recipe for Banana-Wheat Germ Muffins on RecipeZaar.

Banana Wheat Germ Muffin Split

There’s a lot to love about these muffins.  They are:

  • Low in sugar: only 1/3 cup for the whole dozen.
  • Full of whole grains from the whole wheat pastry flour and wheat germ.
  • Low in fat: only 1/3 cup canola oil.  No butter, no eggs, no sour cream, nothing to clog your arteries!
  • Easy to customize by adding your favorite nuts, seeds or spices.
  • Filling and do a great job of keeping you satisfied til lunchtime.

One note:  I think these are better the second day.  The first day, they have a very slight bitter aftertaste that I suspect may come from the wheat germ, but it mellows and dissipates by the second day.

Hey, LilSis! Don’t give up on baking, even if you weren’t happy with your Low Fat Fruity Breakfast Muffins.  Any time you try a modification, you run the risk of a boo-boo, but keep trying!  I wonder if maybe you weren’t totally pleased with these muffins because there was a pretty high ratio of goodies to batter?  And don’t be intimidated by the fact that SisMama and I like to bake; we both have our failures and we both always use a recipe!  Don’t quit!  For the love of HayHay and SirHoney’s sweet tooth, don’t quit! :-)

~BigSis

Raw Vegan Lunch Adventure

January 25, 2010

Occasionally, all of us girls at the office sneak out for a lunch together, and last Friday, we decided it was time to shake it up a little bit.  Sometimes we go for a posh girlie lunch at a fancy place, like Stephan Pyles or Fearing’s at the Ritz Carlton, and other times it’s a cheap delicious lunch at Cafe Brazil.  This week, we went raw vegan!  The “we” is me; a 15-year vegetarian/3-week vegan, and 3 open-minded carnivores!

I don’t want to say where we went since the restaurant was having a bad day: their chef quit, they were short-handed, and they were having a sewage issue.  Probably not the day to give them a fair review!

All 4 of us got something different so we could share.  Some dishes were more successful than others.  Our favorite was the Coconut Kale Enchiladas.  I never thought I’d say those words!  Marinated kale was wrapped in coconut tortillas with nacho cheeze, pico de gallo, salsa verde, and cashew sour creme.  It was spicy and really tasty, but not sweet at all as you might think it would be from the coconut.  I usually find raw kale to be too tough and chewy, but this was perfect.  I would order this again.

Coconut Kale Enchiladas

Our second choice was the Greek Pizza. Creamy tahini hummus was topped with a Greek salad of cucumbers, avocado, red onion, capers, fresh tomatoes, Greek olives, chopped parsley, and romaine.  The dressing on the salad had a great flavor, and the hummus base was delicious.  You had to dig a bit to get to the “pizza” part, but it was delicious digging!

Greek Pizza

In third place was Raw Tacos. Crisp corn tortillas are topped with chipotle flavored beans, guacamole, nacho cheeze, pico de gallo, and salsa verde.  This is a pretty dish as the previous two are, and had fresh ingredients on top, but we found the “tortilla” and bean topping to have a slightly bitter flavor.

Raw Tacos

And our least favorite by a mile was the Raw Pad Thai.  Kelp noodles are tossed in almond butter and chili sauce, and
garnished with crispy vegetables.  This dish was practically inedible, sorry to say!  It was bland, watery and had a pretty nasty texture.  The kelp noodles were oddly crunchy, and were mixed with slightly slimy zucchini noodles.  None of us could eat this.

Raw Pad Thai

In spite of the challenges of the day, our waitress did her best to take care of us, and it was a pretty fun eclectic experience.  Maybe we’ll go back after they’ve had time to recover from last week!

~BigSis

Creamy Tomato Soup, Cut the Cream!

January 11, 2010

It may be beautiful and sunny in LilSis’ neck o’ the woods, but it’s colder than a well-digger’s butt here in Texas.  I guess that’s pretty darn cold, right?  Our last few nights have been close to 10 degrees, and our daytime highs have been well below freezing.  It’s definitely soup season here!

I’ve been trying my new vegan diet on for size this week, and so far, it’s been pretty easy.  I’ve been disappointed to see how many of my favorite products have unexpected animal products in them, but I’ll adjust and it really motivates me more. It’ll just take a little getting used to, and my palate will need to happily adapt to a dairy and egg-free world.  I did lose 3 pounds this week, but I think it’s because it was kind of a detox from the semi-bad eating I’ve been doing for the last month or so, and some of that weight was bloaty water weight from too much salt, sugar, etc. It’s the “etc” that gets you every time!

So dinner the other night needed to be 1) soup, 2) vegan, and 3) quick and easy.  Voila!  Here’s what I came up with: Creamy Tomato Soup with no added salt, no butter, no cream, no guilt AND lots of flavor!  It’s vegan, but I wanted to share it with you because it’s so delicious, but isn’t loaded with bad fats like the tomato basil soups you usually find.

You can use any seasonings you like.  I used the salt-free Italian seasoning and Mural of Flavor, and surprisingly didn’t have to add any salt at all.  I think it may have something to do with the citrus peel in the Mural of Flavor, since lemon reduces our perceived need for salt.  I’m super-sensitive to salt and get big “salt bags” under my eyes from a small amount of it, so being able to skip the salt is huge for me.

Creamy Tomato Soup
(recipe by me)

28 oz can Fire Roasted Crushed Tomatoes
Water (I filled the tomato can about halfway full, but make your soup as thick or thin as you like)
2 tblsp Italian seasoning (I used Pampered Chef salt-free)
Penzeys Mural of Flavor, optional but really tasty
3/4 cup cashew cream (see note below)

Simmer the tomatoes and water in a medium saucepan with the Italian seasoning and Mural of Flavor for about 20 minutes to let flavors develop a bit.  With an immersion blender, puree the soup until it is smooth, or leave it chunky if you prefer.  Stir in cashew cream and heat through.

Note: Cashew cream is my new favorite discovery.  It’s from Tal Ronnen’s book “The Conscious Cook“.  You might have seen Tal on Oprah recently.  Cashew cream can be used in place of milk or cream in lots of recipes.  All you do is soak some raw cashews for 12 to 24 hours, and when whiz them around in a blender with just enough water to cover them.  That’s it!  Just cashews and water.  Sure, nuts do have fat, but it’s good fat and you aren’t guzzling a gallon of this stuff.  You’re just using 3/4 cup in this whole recipe.

~BigSis

New Year, New Way of Living

January 4, 2010

Happy new year, everyone!  I hope that you had a wonderful holiday time, and that you’re fired up about the new year and ready to get it rolling!  I love that it always feel like a fresh start to me.  Who among us doesn’t need a fresh start in some area of their life?

I talked last year about how I don’t really like resolutions because I feel like I’m setting myself up to fail somehow if I make official “resolutions”.  Instead, I like to think about what I did the previous year…what worked, what was a disaster, what do I want to do differently, what do I want to add to my life.  For me, a new year is about reflection and reevaluation.

This new year, I can see that it’s going to take extra workouts to achieve and maintain the level of fitness I’m comfortable with.  I was on that train for several months in 2009, but wandered off it and have to get back on now.  I’m not totally out in the weeds, but I’m a bit off course, and that slight veering off the path can quickly turn into a full-blown physical train wreck when you’re forty-plus!  If you don’t know what I mean, you will eventually!

The biggest change for 2010 is one I’ve been seriously contemplating for the last few months, after having it in the back of my mind for 15 years. It’s time for me to stop fiddling around and finally go vegan.

When I first stopped eating all meat products, I also stayed away from eggs and dairy for quite a while, but finally succumbed and adopted a purely vegetarian diet rather than vegan.  Since I know that the egg and dairy industries are probably more abusive than the factory meat farms, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and stop putting eggs and dairy there.

I started out telling myself that this vegan business was going to be really hard; harder than going vegetarian was since that was pretty darn easy for me.  The biggest challenge is definitely going to be learning how to bake in a completely different way, and for me this is pretty major since I love to bake more than I like to cook.

I’ve decided this change will be fun, as well as the right thing for me to do, and one thing I’m going to do from square one to make it funner is to blog about it.  I realize that most BigSisLilSis readers aren’t vegan or even vegetarian, so I’m going to start a brand new blog for my vegan ramblings. I’m still noodling it around, so I’ll bust it out when it’s a bit more finalized.  I do know it’s going to be a little adventure, and I’m excited to start.  I’m in the process of cleaning all the butter and eggs and other holiday baking remnants from my kitchen, along with the holiday leftovers.  Once that’s gone, away we go to Vegan Land! Wheeee haw!

So, my goals or resolutions or whatever I’m calling them, are to:

  • Exercise with a new motivation and keep it up, with the goal of building more muscle and getting stronger. That means getting back to Jillian Michaels’ videos, yoga class, and using the new Wii Fit I just bought myself with Christmas money.  I also joined RecipeGirl’s 10 in 2010 program as LilSis did.
  • Adopt a vegan diet asap and blog about it.  You’ll notice a lot of new cookbooks in my left sidebar reading list now, since I’m going to need some help to keep my food interesting and nutritious!
  • Learn how to bake without eggs and dairy!  The 2010 SPCA Bake Sale is only 11.5 months away!
  • Find a new church and plug in.  It’s time already; stop messing around and commit to one.
  • Work toward balance between all aspects of my life: work, blogging, social, health, and spiritual. This is a toughie when you’re an all-or-nothing personality like me!

There you have it.  I bet that some of my goals and LilSis’ goals are the same as yours, so let’s all rally around each other, and make some positive changes in 2010!  We can do it!

~BigSis

Vegan Bacon Challenge Part 3: Faux Bacon Strips

November 5, 2009

Before we went off to BlogWorld, I was on a mission to find a vegan, or at least a vegetarian, alternative to bacon since so many of us seem to be enamored with it.  I’ve actually heard of people who are vegetarian except for bacon!  I haven’t eaten bacon or any other meat product in over 15 years, but I have confessed that I do love the smoky aroma and I long for the crunchy yumminess that you get from bacon.  I just don’t want a pig to have to die for me to get my crispy-urge satisfied!

So the search continues.  One of my favorite guilty-pleasure meat analog products for years has been MorningStar Farms’ Bacon Strips.  I say “guilty-pleasure” because these guys are full of all kinds of ingredients that are hard to pronounce and identify.  If you like to fill your body with as many unprocessed foods as possible, these strips won’t be on your menu very often.

MSFarmsBaconRight off the bat, they fail the vegan challenge because they contain egg whites, carrageenan and non-fat dry milk.  On the upside, they contain 60 calories per serving (2 strips, which is a pretty dinky serving), 44% less fat than pork bacon, and zero cholesterol.  So on the whole, they’re a far superior choice to pork bacon.

But, how do they taste?  The package declares that these strips have “the delicious hearty flavor of smoked veggie bacon with a crispy bite”.  I think that’s a fair claim to make; they taste pretty darn good!  I like to nuke mine on a paper towel til they’re really crispy; almost burned in spots.  I let them cool a second, then peel off the paper towel and make a faux BLT.  To be honest, I usually cook 5 or 6 slices at a time for a decent sandwich. The flavor is appropriately smoky and I get the crunch I crave.  With some good tomato, lettuce, mayo and maybe some avocado, you’ve got an excellent sandwich.

The verdict: tasty and crispy!  These strips aren’t the healthiest option in the world because of all the processing, but as an occasional treat, they aren’t a bad choice and they do satisfy a little of the bacon craving in me.  Would your meat-eating friends gobble these up and say yummy?  Probably not.  But if you’re like me and don’t want to eat pork, or just want to consume less fat, cholesterol and calories, then give these a try!  The bonus is they smell awesome while they’re nuking!

~BigSis