Biscuits and gravy is a staple round these parts. I've gone through many iterations of gravy over the last few years: hemp milk based using a roux (too bitter/earthy), soy milk based using a roux (consistency issues, would break a bit after addition of lemon juice), and raw cashew based (good but wasn't quite there). In most cases I used TVP flavored with sage and red pepper flake as my sausage substitute, and while good, sometimes you just need to use all the mushrooms to make a great brunch.

But the last handful of times I've made biscuits and gravy I've added a new player to the game: cauliflower! Why cauliflower? Why not cauliflower I will snap back. It stemmed from a) having half a head of cauliflower in the crisper that needed to be used soon and b) remembering seeing cauliflower based alfredo sauces a few times around the old internet. The first attempt wasn't anything special, I was shocked at how not cauliflowery it tasted, which was good. The texture was surprisingly smooth and creamy (though a Vitamix makes anything smooth).

While definitely a good addition to my gravy arsenal, it was lacking a little bit of body and oomph that I knew could be obtained by tossing in some raw cashews. The fat from the nuts gave the gravy a richness that was lacking before and made it a much more luscious gravy. As a mushroom lover, I used two types of mushrooms for this dish to serve two separate purposes. The shiitakes were cooked to drive almost all the water out of them, leaving behind crispy little bits that taste like bacon and work great sprinkled on top of the dish. Having them sliced to 1/8-1/4 inch thick really does the trick here. The button mushrooms were cut radially to keep some body to them and were sauteed at a much higher temp to quickly brown them.

I won't go into biscuit making here as that could be a blog post in and of itself, but I will say that I really love the Minimalist Baker's biscuit recipe. One of the few recipes online that I don't tweak or modify in some way, which says something really nice about that recipe. Once you have the biscuits made, and the gravy is thoroughly blended, add it all to the button mushrooms and heat it back up. At this point taste and re-season if you must. I usually add a ton more fresh cracked pepper because a good peppery gravy is the stuff dreams are made of. When it's all set to your liking, ladle the mushroom gravy over the biscuits, and then sprinkle with your shiitake bacon. 

Recipe:

• Half head of cauliflower, cut into large chunks
• 1/3 cup of cashews
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 2 cups of cooking liquid
• 8 ounces of thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms
• 1 pound of button mushrooms
• Salt and pepper

Simmer the cauliflower, cashews, onions, and garlic in lightly salted water for 5-10 minutes until the cauliflower is soft. Add the simmered vegetables and nuts along with with 2 cups of the boiling liquid and 1 tbsp of lemon juice to your blender. Blend on high for at least 1-2 minutes until creamy. Let sit until the mushrooms are ready.

While the vegetables are simmering, take the shiitake mushrooms and saute them with 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper with 1/2 tablespoon of oil until brown and crispy over medium high heat. Toss every few minutes to ensure even browning. You don't want the heat too high or else you'll start burning the mushrooms before they've released every last drip of liquid. This is the best, easiest way to make shiitake bacon.

Take the rest of the mushrooms, slice them, and saute them over high heat with 1 tablespoon of oil and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper until browned. Add gravy, stir, bring to a simmer, and serve over biscuits.

I grew up in Minnesota so I have some strong feelings about Chicago... most of them negative. I was raised to have a strong distaste of the Blackhawks, Bears, Bulls, and White Sox. But eventually, something from Chicago found its way into my heart — Chicago-style stuffed pizza! When we lived in San Diego, there was an amazing place that made great stuffed pizza, but after going vegan I feared I'd never have it again... until today! (Actually, I also had it when I was in the Bay Area recently and now twice in the last week, four times if you count leftovers.) 

I don't want to get controversial here, but I know there's a lot of debate online as to whether a Chicago-style stuffed pizza is actually a pizza rather than just some bread/lasagna hybrid, so let me just say this: of course it's pizza – I mean, it's right there in its name!

The best part of this dish is how surprisingly simple it is to make while still being a guaranteed crowd pleaser that looks like you slaved away in the kitchen all day. I initially added the vegan cream cheese as an afterthought, but it turned out to really take it to another level. Most grocery stores have pre-made pizza crusts that work perfectly for this. I like to let the crusts sit in the fridge for at least two days before using. You'll get a stronger, yeastier flavor in the crust that way, and it really punches the dish up.

Start by slicing up the onion and getting it caramelizing in a pan with a little bit of olive oil and salt. Once the onions start browning a bit, chop up the garlic, slice the mushrooms, and shred the sausages and add all them to the pan with the onions. After cooking for a bit, chop up the kale and olives and toss it in with the rest of the filling. Turn off the heat and just let the kale wilt from the residual heat in the pan.

With the stuffing complete, get started forming the crusts. Divide the crust in two parts, with 2/3 of it for the bottom and 1/3 for the top. Roll out the bottom crust so it's bigger than your spring form pan. Grease up your pan and toss the crust in, pinching it at the top to help it stay up. Dump the toppings into the crust and spread them evenly around the pan. Mix the cheeses together and spread that on top of the toppings. Roll out the top crust so it's the same size as your pan and place on top. Seal up the crust, dump on your tomato sauce, and toss it into the oven to bake. 

As it bakes you'll be transported to an aromatic and beautiful new world... one where pizzas are inches thick and the sauce is on the outside. And, of course, one where they're made without animals. There are a lot of variations on this theme that you can go with. Use shaved seitan and peppers and onions with some Giardiniera to give it an Italian "beef" twist. Or maybe do whole cloves of garlic, artichoke hearts, and spinach with some chickn. The trick is to make sure the vegetables you're using don't release too much liquid (slice them thin and make sure to bake/sauté them to get rid of a lot of excess water).

Recipe:

For one 9-inch pizza (a spring form pan works best, but a cake pan will do the job too):

• 1 16-18oz prepared pizza crust
• 2 medium onions
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 8 ounces of mushrooms
• 2 Tofurky Italian sausages
• 4 or 5 kale leaves
• 15-20 kalamata olives
• 1 cup of Daiya shredded mozzarella cheese
• 3 tbsps vegan cream cheese
• 1/2-1 cup of spicy marinara sauce

Preheat oven to 425F. Peal and slice your onions and place in a sauté pan with 1 tbsp olive oil over medium heat. Add a touch of salt. Every 5 minutes, stir the onions. Cook until translucent and when they start to brown, add chopped garlic, sliced mushrooms, and sausage. Continue cooking another 5-10 minutes, letting the mushrooms release a bunch of liquid. When most of the liquid has evaporated, toss in the copped kale and olives and remove from heat.

With the kale wilting, split the pizza crust, using 2/3 of it for the bottom layer and 1/3 for the top. Roll out, stretch, and prepare the dough so it's a few inches bigger round than spring form pan. Place the stretched dough into the pan, pinching it around the rim so it forms a bowl. Dump in the stuffing and press it evenly in the pan. In a small bowl, mix together the mozzarella and cream cheese and then spread the mixture over the top of the stuffing.

Roll out the top crust so it's the same size as your pan. Put it on top of the cheese and fold over the excess from the bottom crust. Pinch together the top and bottom crusts and tuck into the rim of the pan. Poke a few holes in the top crust and then spread the marinara on top of the pizza.

Place the pizza into the oven and let it cook for 25-30 minutes. When it's done, take out of the oven and let it cool for at least 5 minutes before removing the rim. Cool for another 5 minutes and then slice and serve.

I guess Chicago isn't so bad after all. (Just don't tell my family back home I said that.) Enjoy!

By Craig

"You went vegan? But you used to love food so much and were such a great cook!" I've heard variations of this statement from friends and family, and it surprised me to learn that by going vegan I apparently suddenly hated food and became a bad cook.

In actuality, going vegan opened up an entire universe of foods I never really cooked before, and it inspired me to play with flavors and textures in ways that I just didn't think of when I was an omnivore.

I cooked with tofu in my omnivore past, usually tossed it in stir-fries, often poorly seasoned, and almost always poorly executed. After learning a few tricks from Lorelei and reading up on it a bit more, I've become pretty adept at making it sing a tasty tune. I make a mean tofish and chips now, and my scramble game is on point, but this dish is my pièce de résistance, my Tofu Lisa. It's sweet, salty, a touch spicy, packed with umami, and juicy. Yes, this tofu is juicy.

The first thing to do is to whip up the marinade. Simply take all the ingredients listed below, dump them into a bowl, and whisk. Let them sit for a good 10-15 minutes and then whisk again to make sure the sugar is dissolved. After that, dice up your tofu in 1"-2" cubes and rinse them. There's no need to press the tofu, just dice and rinse. I used a hand-crafted tofu from Bridge Tofu out of Connecticut. If you're in the Northeast and can find it, I highly recommend it. Their website lists where it's available.

Once you have the marinade and tofu ready, simply toss them together gently and place them into a vacuum bag and vacuum seal it. If you don't have a vacuum sealer, just use a ziplock bag and try and get most of the air out so the tofu is only in contact with the marinade and not air. Once sealed, place it in your fridge for 24-48 hours.

The reason I like to use a vacuum sealer is for the next step. When you're ready to cook the tofu, first steam the contents in the bag for 15 minutes. This helps to fully infuse the tofu with the marinade and really drive in the flavor packed liquid. If you can't do this step, I'm sure simmering the tofu covered in a sauté pan that barely fits the tofu for 15 minutes would work – just remember to turn the tofu halfway through to keep tofu/marinade contact consistent.

Once it's steamed for 15 minutes, cut the bag and dump out the contents in a bowl. Heat up your sauté pan over medium heat and add 2 tbsp of vegetable oil. Carefully add your tofu cubes and 1/4 cup of the remaining marinade to the pan. Every 3 minutes or so, turn the tofu 180 degrees so the side that was on the pan is now facing up. Keep rotating the tofu 180 degrees, only cooking the two sides in the oil/marinade mixture. As the last of the marinade evaporates off, swirl the pan a bit to coat the tofu and create a little crust on the two sides you're cooking.

Once the tofu starts browning and getting a few black flecks on it, it's good to go! Simply serve with your choice of sides. For this meal I went simple with oven roasted broccoli (dry roast at 550F until some of the florets start getting blackened, toss with a bit of salt) and green lentils with a lemon/caper dressing. Any kind of potato would be fantastic with it too, or some wilted greens, or really most any other vegetable.

The taste is incredible. It hits all the flavor profiles and just begs to be devoured. This might be the closest thing I have to a signature dish.

If you want to help spread the word of the wonders of the "other...other white meat," check out the amazing t-shirt below. Fifty percent of their profits go to Green Mountain Animal Defenders.

-Craig

Recipe:

For one package of tofu

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp liquid smoke
• 1 tsp molasses
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp chili garlic paste
• 1 tsp vegan worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp white miso paste

In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients and whisk well. Let sit for 10-15 minutes to help sugar dissolve completely. Whisk again. Dice your tofu into 1"-2" cubes, 12 total cubes from a traditional block of tofu. Rinse your tofu and add the cubes to the marinade. Gently stir to coat. Add tofu and marinade into a vacuum seal bag, using a vacuum sealer, remove the excess air and seal. Place in fridge for 24-48 hours. If you don't have a vacuum sealer, use a ziplock bag and squeeze out most of the air before sealing.

When you're ready to cook, set up a steamer and steam the tofu still in the vacuum sealed bag for 15 minutes (if you used a ziplock bag, dump contents into a saute pan and slowly simmer on low heat for 15 minute while covered, rotating the tofu half way through). After the steaming, cut the bag and dump the contents into a bowl, get a saute pan ready over medium heat, add 2 tbsps of oil and carefully place the tofu pieces into the pan. Add 1/4 cup of the marinade to the pan (if you were simmering the tofu, turn the heat up, remove all but 1/4 cup of the marinade and add the oil).

Every 3-5 mins rotate the tofu 180 degrees (treat them like a burger cooking just the top and bottom side). After you rotate them, gently swirl the pan to better coat the tofu in the evaporating marinade. When the excess liquid from the marinade is gone, you'll get a little browned/burnt crust on the tofu, when both sides have this, you're ready to serve.

This is my first real Fall since 2001. California is great, but it can be hard to really cook seasonally. "Oh, you want to make a nice hearty stew and enjoy it on this cold November night? Surprise! It's 80 degrees today." So as the days continually get shorter and the temperature continues to drop, I've become quite excited again to be able to roast, stew, and braise.

With Thanksgiving just a week and a half away, I figured this seitan roast with root vegetables would be a great recipe to share. It's a dish that you can proudly share with your omnivorous friends and family that should satisfy their desire to slice up a big slab of protein. And did I mention that it's pretty easy to make too?

Some people may not be aware of what seitan is, but if you've ever eaten mock duck, chicken, beef, pork etc. in a Chinese restaurant, it was likely seitan. It's a low-fat no-cholesterol protein, derived from wheat gluten and it's been a dietary staple in many cultures for over a thousand years. You can buy it pre-made or follow the recipe below to make a dense, meaty version of it.

Start by measuring out your dried ingredients in a bowl and whisk to incorporate them. In a large measuring cup, whisk the broth, vegan Worcestershire sauce, and salt together. Dump the wet into the dry and use a spatula to mix together. As the ingredients come together, kneed in the bowl for a minute and then dump the dough ball out onto the counter and kneed for two more minutes until it's very rubbery and elastic. Roll and form it into a loaf.

Set up a steamer and steam your seitan for 30 minutes, flipping over after 15 minutes. I steam the seitan here to keep it denser and give it a more 'meaty' texture. Your loaf will expand while steaming, but it's nothing like when you simmer seitan. Preheat your oven to 375 when you flip your seitan over.

When your seitan's steam bath is over, get a saute pan going over medium high heat with a tablespoon of oil and brown the seitan on all sides. While your seitan is browning, chop up your root vegetables. For this version I used carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, turnips, and celery. You can add garlic cloves, regular potatoes, mushrooms, squashes, etc. Toss your vegetables with salt, pepper, and what every herbs and spices you want. This dish just got rosemary, but anything you like will work.

Place the vegetables in a baking dish, snuggle your browned seitan into your bed of vegetables, and cook for 45 minutes to an hour. You can serve when all the vegetables are cooked through. If you want the vegetable to truly roast and brown, I'd try and keep the vegetables to a single layer, so you may want to use more than one roasting pan.

The gravy  you see on this dish is nothing more than the liquid that the vegetables gave up while cooking blended together with 1/2 cup of the cooked vegetables and then thinned with water a bit to get the right consistency and seasoned with salt and pepper.

We paired this beer with the Trappist Single I brewed the other month, but any light, crisp beer would do well. The earthy clove notes from the beer went really well with the vegetables.

-Craig

Recipe:

For one loaf of seitan

• 1 cup vital wheat gluten
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon all-purpose seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon sage
• 1/2 cup vegetable broth
• 1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

A random melange of root vegetables, salt, pepper, what ever herbs/spices you like.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, all-purpose seasoning, and sage. In a large measuring cup, whisk together remaining ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix with a spatula to incorporate. Kneed in the bowl for 1 minute to ensure proper mixing and then kneed for 2  more minutes on your counter top. Shape and form into one loaf and steam for 30 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Preheat your oven to 375F when you flip your seitan. When your seitan finishes steaming, brown it in a saute pan over medium high heat and 1 tablespoon of oil. While browning, peel and dice your vegetables, toss with salt, pepper, and herbs/spices and place into a baking dish. When the seitan is browned, put in the center of your vegetables and bake for 45 minutes to an hour.

You can make an easy gravy by taking the liquid from the vegetables, blending together with 1/2 of cooked vegetables, and then adding water to get the proper consistency. Season with salt and pepper.

The other week I posted my recipe for a Trappist Single Ale over on the Drink Beer side of the website. While doing quality control testing of the beer, aka drinking a good deal of it, it dawned on me that I should make some banana bread with it. Ok, that's a lie, Lorelei mentioned she wanted some banana bread and I was buzzed enough to make some.

So I did what I normally do, search out as many recipes as I can and mix and match until I come up with something I like in my head. Baking powder and baking soda need acid to really help them reach their potentials as leavening agents, which is why you'll see things like apple cider vinegar or lemon juice added to a lot of recipes. Instead of a traditional acid, I used beer. Beer usually has a pH of around 4.0, which makes it perfect for this recipe. While the acidity was the main reason I used beer, the flavor profile was still important. My Trappist Single has notes of clove and a biscuity honey maltiness, which would work well with banana, cinnamon, and allspice. Commercial beer styles that would work well would be a good hefeweizen (which often have banana notes from the yeast) or a Belgian wit.

The rest of the ingredients are pretty standard. I like a lot of bananas in my banana bread because bananas are delicious. A good dose of cinnamon and a light undertone of allspice help create the spice base, but the star is totally the bananas here. I like to keep some chunks of banana in the bread if I can, gives a nice burst of extra flavor in the finished product. And the toasted and crushed walnuts give some nice crunch to the finished product.

Dry Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients

• 1/2 cup beer (use something like a Belgian wit or hefeweizen)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 3 very ripe medium bananas, mashed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Extra Additions

• 3/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat your oven to 325F, and spray a loaf pan with with non-stick spray. In a small bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients. In a larger mixing bowl, add all the wet ingredients, and mix and mash everything together. Keep some chunks of banana for texture in the bread.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in two batches. Try to minimize your mixing, doing so until the ingredients are just combined before adding the next batch. Stir in the crushed walnuts.

Pour the batter into your loaf pan, turn your oven up to 350F, and place in the oven. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool in the pan. Slice and stuff in your face.

The muffin. It's such a simple little thing. There may be a lot of them on a platter, but when you grab one, it's all yours. No one asks to split a muffin with you like they do a slice of cake. And if someone suggests it, shake your head incredulously and tell them to grab their own dang muffin!

The weather keeps getting colder, the apples at the store keep getting better and better, and I wanted to bake. Do I make an apple pie? Apple cake? Apple crisp? I love all those things so I decided to basically make them all at once - in miniature form!

To start the muffins, simply take all the dry ingredients, add them to a bowl and whisk them up to blend them together. I added allspice and cinnamon to give a nice spice base to the batter, a lot of recipes call for mace and/or nutmeg and while I like them, I find they can easily become too powerful in a recipe and outshine the true star of these muffins:  the apples (and the incredible crisp topping).

With the flour mixture whisked up, peel and dice your apples. Dice the apples into cubes roughly the size of the tip of your pinky (please leave your pinky attached to your personage) and then add 3 tablespoons of the flour mixture from above to the apples and toss to coat.

Want nice warm beverage to enjoy while baking? Take the apple peels, add them to a coffee mug, and at a cup of boiling water to them along with a sprinkle of cinnamon and allspice. Let it steep a few minutes and enjoy a light, refreshing apple tea (keep the peels in, the flavor will intensify as you keep drinking).

Now we're on to the wet ingredients. I use refined coconut oil because it's not as coconut-y and the unrefined oil, and as a solid fat at room temp, it'll give the muffins body and moistness as they cool. I'll crack the lid on the jar and place it in water just off the boil until the oil is liquid and then measure it out (you can get the water back to a boil and use that for your apple tea, wasting as little as possible with this recipe). Add your oils, sugars, applesauce, and vanilla to a large mixing bowl and give it a good whisking. It won't really come together much, but letting it sit for a few minutes does help start to get the sugar melting.

We've got dry, we've got apples, we've got wet, now we need the crisp - man, there are a lot of components to these muffins, they better be good (spoiler alert, oh are they ever!). To make the crisp, mix all the ingredients together in another small bowl, I find using my hands to be easiest for this part, and set it aside for just a moment while we get all the other components mixed.

Take the dry mix, add half into the wet mix, stir it up gently, repeat this by adding the second half of the dry ingredients into the wet, and then give another gentle stir. Fold in the apples to the batter. Don't worry, the batter should be quite stiff. I use a standard ice cream scoop and add 1 scoop of the batter for each muffin. Once you get all the batter in the tin, add one packed tablespoon of your crisp mixture on top of each muffin and place it in your oven that's set to 350F. When you close the door, bump it up to 375F and let the muffins cook for 20-25 minutes. Bumping up the temp after you add the muffins ensures that your oven will be in a heating cycle, and will help the muffins rise better.

When they're done cooking, take them out of the oven (one of the more important steps of the recipe), and cool for 10-15 minutes before taking the muffins out of the pan to finish cooling. Try and refrain from eating one right now. Seriously, just try, because you'll fail. Now eat a dang muffin, it's why you baked them!

Dry ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups peeled and chopped apple (about 2 baseball sized apples)

Wet ingredients:

• 1/4 cup refined coconut oil, melted in hot water bath
• 1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 4oz cup of applesauce (1/2 cup)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

For the crisp topping:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup vegan butter, softened to room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F degrees and line a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, allspice baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. In a separate bowl, toss the diced apples with 3 tablespoons of the flour mixture.

In a mixing bowl, add the oils, sugars, applesauce, and vanilla. Mix well with a whisk and let sit for 5 minutes to give the sugars a chance to start dissolving.

Add the remaining flour mixture to the wet ingredients in two batches. Try to minimize your mixing, doing so until the ingredients are just combined before adding the next batch. Fold in the apples and add batter into prepared muffin cups, using ~1/3 cup of mixture for each muffin. I use an ice cream scoop at the mixture is dense.

Mix the remaining ingredients for the crisp topping together in a small bowl until well combined (you can use your hands if you don't mind getting dirty). Top each muffin with 1 packed tablespoon of the crisp topping. 

Turn your oven up to 375 and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in muffin tins for 10 minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.

"I'm thinking of making a potato hash with that leftover cashew cream tomato sauce from last night, how's that sound?" Silence...more silence....."I WANT PANCAKES!" Well then.

Here at Eat Plants / Drink Beer, pancakes are kind of a big deal. They are a versatile platform for delivery of all sorts of good stuff. With so many different combinations of fruits and nuts and toppings, you could make pancakes once a week for years and never have the same thing twice (which, believe me, we're testing that theory). Today's blog includes our basic pancake recipe that will make anyone a believer in the vegan pancake revolution. I use a bit of brown sugar to help the pancakes brown, the vinegar helps react with the baking powder to give more lift and fluff to the pancakes, and the flax "egg" gives you some of the binding properties of chicken eggs and helps retain some moisture, giving the pancakes a bit more body. There is also omega-3s in flax meal, so you can almost say these pancakes are health food!

First things first....get the flax "egg" going by adding the flax meal and hot water to a little bowl. Stir to combine and let sit for 10 minutes to rehydrate and thicken. While this is sitting, measure out your dry ingredients into a large bowl and whisk to fully incorporate everything.

Once the flax meal "egg" is fully rehydrated and thick and gooey, add it, along with the rest of the wet ingredients, to a small bowl and whisk it all up to combine.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk gently to combine. People always tell you to not overwork pancake batter because you don't want to develop a lot of gluten because that makes pancakes tough, and they're right, so mix/stir until everything looks incorporated, and then let it sit while you slice your strawberries, that'll give the batter time to rest.

Slice the strawberries pretty thin (about an 1/8 of an inch thick), add approximately 1/3 of a cup of batter to your griddle, toss on the strawberry slices, cook until the bottom is golden brown, and flip, cooking until the other side is browned as well.

While your pancakes are cooking, or staying warm in a preheated oven, prepare the banana cream by adding the banana, coconut yogurt, nondairy milk, and sugar to a blender and blending on high for 10-15 seconds. It should be about the consistency of maple syrup. We always have frozen bananas around for smoothies, so I just use a frozen banana for this step.

When everything is ready, add the pancakes to your plate, drizzle with the banana cream, top with toasted walnuts, and start shoveling food into your mouth!

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 cup nondairy milk (I've been using cashew lately)
• 1 flax "egg" (1 tablespoon flax seed meal mixed with 3 tablespoons hot water, let sit for 10 minutes)
• 3 tablespoons sugar (I use 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar and 1 tablespoon white sugar)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon raw apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Dry Ingrediets:

• 1 cup white all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Banana Cream:

• 1 banana
• 1/4 cup vanilla unsweetened coconut yogurt
• 1/4 cup nondairy milk
• 1 tablespoon sugar

Add-ons:

• 6 strawberries, sliced thin
• 1/3 cup walnut pieces, toasted

This recipe takes advantage of a simple stove top smoker, details on how I smoke will be coming soon. Smoking the risotto gives the dish an extra level of flavor, an almost sweet umami punch that makes you want to keep digging into the dish over and over again. For the risotto, 15 minutes of smoking time was enough to impart the flavor and 1.5 tablespoons of wood chips was the perfect amount. Once the smoking was done, the real cooking started.

Start heating up your broth over medium heat (I add the bits of the asparagus stems that I trimmed to the broth to help give more flavor). Finely chop the onion along with thinly slicing a quarter pound of white button mushrooms and sauteed together for 5-10 minutes in a tablespoon of Earth Balance butter over medium high heat until the mushrooms start to brown. Then add the garlic, pepper, and risotto to the pan and toss around to coat the rice in the oil.

As soon as the garlic get fragrant, toss in the wine (some for the pan, some for your belly), and lower the heat to medium, and the risotto was stirred until all the liquid had either absorbed or evaporated. Ladles of simmering vegetable broth were added one at a time, with regular stirring, until most of the liquid is absorbed before adding the next broth addition.

After about 10 minutes, start heating your vegan sausage of choice in a small pan over medium heat with a small splash of oil. Turning every few minutes until browned and heated through. When the risotto has been cooking for 15 minutes, add the slivers of asparagus stems and nutritional yeast along with the lemon juice. Stir to incorporate and add the last tablespoon Earth Balance. Taste and adjust seasons if needed.

When everything is finished (5-10 minutes longer), ladle the risotto onto a plate or shallow bowl, top with the asparagus tops, and add the sausage.

Recipe

• 1 cup risotto
• Half an onion, finely diced
• 1/4 pound of mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1/2 pound of asparagus, tops removed for garnish, thinly slice stems
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup of white wine
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons Earth Balance (divided)
• Salt and pepper
• Your favorite vegan sausage