This got this wonderful banana bread recipe from my dear friend and fellow artist Jennifer Bock-Nelson. Sorry I don’t have an image of the mini loaves themselves, but I did manage to snap a photo of it all wrapped up for Christmas giving. At the request of Bridget, one of the lucky bread recipients, here’s the recipe.

Banana Bread*

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup oil (we use safflower)
• 2 tbsp egg substitute (we use unsweetened peanut butter)
• 1 tbsp baking soda
• 5 tbsp soy / rice / almond milk with 1/2 tsp of apple cider vinegar mixed into it (simulates buttermilk)
• 4 very ripe, mashed bananas
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• blueberries, nuts, chocolate chips are all optional additions

* You can call this bread if it makes you feel better about eating what is so deliciously cake-like

The only substitutions we made were one block of silken tofu in place of the condensed milk and eggs. The silken tofu makes for a great consistency, binds well, and doesn’t add anything extraneous to the taste. The pie crust could easily be your favorite gluten-free version.

We’ll post back shortly with some additional photos, but we wanted to get this out the door in time for anyone who wants a really simple, traditional pumpkin pie recipe in time for Faux-Turkey day tomorrow.

• 1 9 inch pie crust (this one works great)
• 1 16oz can of pumpkin filling (or 2 cups homemade)
• 1 box of  extra firm silken tofu (probably Mori Nu ™ brand)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves

We’ll be making this again this year, while visting Amy’s folks in their new home in Iowa. The Spanksgiving faux turkey is becoming a bit of a tradition.

Just think, last year we were celebrating with new friends in Iceland:

 Since Spanksgiving is largely about tradition, I’m not sure we’ll be breaking any new molds this year–but if we get a wild hare, we’ll be sure to post.

Cheers!

Mark’s birthday fell on Labor Day this year and we had friends in town for the long weekend. Saturday was one of those beautiful later summer days and apples were already out at a couple of the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market stalls. So naturally I bought a 25 lb bag. The last of the raspberries were also available, so I bought a quart, deciding then and there to bake Mark an apple/raspberry pie for his birthday.

Little secret. I dislike raspberries. I know I know. I like them okay to just pop in my mouth and I like raspberry soy or coconut yogurt, but I pretty much loathe them in everything else. SO I decided to bake TWO pies: plain apple (read: for me) and the other one for him. Our friends seemed to generally open to eating a bunch of pie, whatever the filling.

Another little secret. This was my first time baking pie. Ever. Though I have made a mean tofu quiche, so I decided to use that recipe for the crusts. Here’s what I did for the whole project…

Apple Pie and/or Raspberry-Apple Pie

• About nine small apples, cut into slivers (use slightly less, maybe 6 for the AR pie)
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pie crust (I followed this recipe we use for quiche crust) and it worked great
• 1 quart fresh raspberries, if using

Start out by making the pie crust and let it chill in pie plate in the fridge while you prepare the other ingredients. One note: for two pies I tripled the crust recipe, one whole recipe for each pie and then half a recipe each to roll out for the tops of the pies.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. To make a simple filling that requires no apple peeling or pre-cooking, mix apples (and raspberries if using), OJ, sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl. Allow to sit for a few minutes so the flavors can combine.

Taking the pie crust from the fridge, spoon the filling into the crust. Roll out half a crust recipe onto a sheet of wax paper or rolling mat, and carefully overturn thinly rolled crust onto the top of the pie. Tearing off any excess crust (this is fun to roll into little balls and bake with your pie), pinch the edges of the top crust onto the sides of the bottom crust, sealing up the pie. Cut little slits in pretty or amusing patterns in the top crust with a floured sharp knife so that the juices can escape if necessary. Dust the top with cinnamon and sugar for good measure.

I set the pie plate on a cookie sheet lest the pie drool all over the oven (which the raspberry pie decided to do–see photo above). Bake the pie for thirty minutes, then turn the heat down to 375 and bake for about 15-20 more minutes or until the crust is golden brown and crisp-looking. Once cool(ish), enjoy with birthday boys and friends!

OK!

So what’s next? This:

So after that adventure into pie semi-success (I thought the pie with raspberries was offensive, but everyone else really liked it), I still had more than half of the 25 lb. bag of apples left. So another beautiful Saturday about two weeks later, I decided that baking little personal pies would be just the thing. Mark, having fond memories of eating Hostess ™ pies as a kid, was in full support.

I decided to try out a different recipe for the crust, more of a flaky, pastry approach. I adapted this recipe from the Purple Foodie. Not a veg blog, but the recipes look great and are very adaptable and her photos are gorgeous! I substituted Earth Balance ™ for butter and a tablespoon of applesauce for each egg. I tripled the recipe for the amount of apples I had: approximately 20-25 smalls.

For a change, I also decided to peel the apples. Mark and I used a counter top apple peeler with mixed success. This gadget is great if your apples are large and firm, but ours were little and had turned over to the mealy side, SO it was quite messy and not the prettiest process in the world. But it made apple chopping easy since in addition to peeling, it also cores and cuts them into spirals. A few slices of the knife and they were in appropriate-sized pieces.

I used the same filling recipe as before, rolling out the dough into roughly the size of a dessert-plate (6-8 inches) and dolloping a generous amount of filling into the middle of each one. I folded, cinched edges, cut slits and performed the requisite cinnamon sugar dusting and popped trays of about five mini pies each into the oven for about 40 minutes or so per cycle.

Once Mark and I had stuffed ourselves with pie (YUM!) I panicked and wondered what we would do with the other dozen or so mini pies we had leftover. Since it was a gorgeous day (and we had just consumed a ridiculous amount of calories) I got the zany idea to wrap up the rest of the cooled pies in wax paper and deliver them to friends all over town by bike. We had a ball riding around town and leaving pies on front and back porches for friends. Naturally we let them know they were there so no racoons got an undue treat that evening.

If you ever find yourself with 18 lb. of apples on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I highly recommend following suit.

On our first night, we got the tacos vegetarianos (w/vegan chicken) and the soba salad.

As you can see, I’d already eaten half of the Soba Salad before Amy could bust out the camera.

For desert we had a rare treat: tiramisu.

This was one of those experiences that was so good, we wanted to replicate it at home. We make a lot of Mexican, and don’t do a lot of desserts, so in this case, we focused on the Soba Salad:

buckwheat noodles tossed in a sesame vinaigrette served on a bed of mixed greens and topped with tahini dressing,
seasonal vegetables, and cumin-sesame blackened tempeh

Since this is a salad, the noodles and tempeh are cooked and warm, but everything else is cold/raw. We didn’t have any soba noodles on hand, so we used udon noodles (the variety we had on hand were thinner, like soba). Otherwise, ours ended up pretty close to theirs:

Soba/Udon Salad

Salad

• 1 pack of udon or soba noodles, cooked and drained
• 1 package of tempeh, sliced into thin strips
• 1/8 – 1/4 cup soy sauce
• ~ 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1.5 tsp cumin
• 1 large carrot, shredded or sliced very thinly
• 1 -2 heads of broccoli, cut into small pieces (if you’re not cooking broccoli, it mixes in with a salad better if it’s small)
• 1/4 head purple cabbage, sliced into strips
• ~8 – 10 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 cucumber, cut into disks then quartered
• 1/4 purple onion, cut into disks, then halved
• lots of green and/or red leaf lettuce

The recipe called for 1/2 cup of white sugar, which seemed like a lot, so we decided to try nixing it, supplementing with agave if necessary. It also called for fresh peanuts, which we didn’t happen to have on hand, so we subbed crunchy peanut butter. We also reduced the vinegar a bit–1/2 cup of rice wine vinegar seemed like a lot. The result was pretty amazing–zesty with just the right amount of zang. It didn’t necessarily complement the eggplant parmesan we were having as leftovers, but would be a great addition to any number of summer meals.

Thai Cucumber Salad

• 3 large cucumbers, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and cut into 1/4-inch slices
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1/2 cup crunch peanut butter
• 1/8 cup water (just enough to thin this enough to coat the cucumbers)

We just recently experimented with beet greens to fairly nice effect, so we decided to try out the everlasting spinach first. You cook this pretty much just like standard spinach. For this batch, we sauteed 4 cloves of garlic in olive oil. Once the garlic began to brown, we tossed in the spinach and cooked briefly–be careful, these cook quickly and you really just want to soften them a hair. If you cook them too long, they can get a little slimy. Salt and pepper to taste.

While raw, these aren’t as tasty or tender as real spinach. Cooked, however, they actually hold up a little better and are very flavorful. What’s great about this variety, is that they have a very long growing season, much like kale. These would be a great addition to a summer/fall salad garden.

Two nights later, we had the French Onion Soup leftovers and decided to once again supplement the soup with greens–this time the collards. We’d had collards out at restaurants on occasion, but for some reason had never picked any of our own up to cook. Having them forced upon us by virtue of the CSA share, we finally delved in.

Collards have large, soft leaves. If you’re into doing a fully raw wrap or taco, our friend Andy T pointed out, these are ideal for the tortilla/shell/pita.

Since we were doing a soup, we wanted to revisit something similar to the other night’s greens. We cut out the stalks and sliced into large pieces. Like the previous time, we sauteed garlic in olive oil, but this time tossed in almond slivers, toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, and crushed red pepper. I don’t know where the inspiration came from, but these are some massively addicting greens!

I’ll post the actual recipe here, because we love it that much:

Kickin’ Collards

• 2 bunches of collard greens (probably 8 leaves), stemmed and chopped coarsely
• 4 large cloves of garlic (1 for each 2 leaves), diced
• 1/8 – 1/4 cup of slivered almonds
• ~1 tbsp olive oil
• ~1 – 2 tbsp sesame oil
• ~ 1 tsbp soy sauce (to taste)
• 1 -2 tsp crushed red pepper (depending on how spicy you want this)

For folks who don’t know, a CSA–Community Supported Agriculture–is a program offered by local farms to essentially sell folks a share of their produce over the entire growing season. This is awesome on many levels:

1. You’re contributing to local farms and the local economy.
2. You’re investing in the farm in advance–this allows them to secure the resources they need and provides them with a modicum of security in what can sometimes be an uncertain profession. If they have a great growing season, you reap the rewards. If it’s a tough season, you help shoulder the burden.
3. You learn to eat seasonally. You get a lot of produce–and you get whatever is growing at the time. This means you only get asparagus for a month and that you don’t get tomatoes until July. Spinach comes pretty early, then lettuce, then various greens like collards, and finally kale (okay, our garden kale came in just after the lettuce). Instead of cooking what you want, you cook what you get.
4. You save money. Family shares are around $500 – $600 for about 20 weeks. While this sounds like a lot–and is a sizable investment–it actually breaks down to only $25-30/week. If you eat as much organic produce as we do, this is actually pretty cheap. Of course, the shares in those early weeks are pretty slim compared to what you get once everything is in full swing.

Grilled Eggplant

Not bad for our first pass at CSA living! Up tonight, French Onion Soup and spinach greens.

On our recent Southwest road trip, we found ourselves hurling through the Rockies in the early dark of night, heading toward Denver. The drive started pleasantly, heading Northeast out of Arches National Park in Utah, along the Colorado River. The mountains were unbelievably large. I mean, there are mountains, and then there are mountains. But as night fell, the majesty gave way to anxiety; driving in the mountains at night, around blind curve after blind curve, wreaks havoc in the nerves. And arriving famished in a strange town at 11pm is rarely a good thing.

So imagine our elation when we arrived at City O’ City, an all veg pub with a kitchen serving vegan pizza and wings. Imagine our ecstasy upon receiving this:

This is hands down the best vegan pizza we’ve ever had at a restaurant. They offered both Daiya ™ and their own house-made cashew ricotta. And I hope this redeems our guilty pleasure a bit–we went with the cashew cheese. It was awesome. The pizza we got was the “animal lover’s”–carmelized onion, regular onion, green peppers, sausage-style seitan, and pepperoni-style seitan (also both made in-house).

We’ve been vegan for a long time. I was already vegetarian by the time I could drink legally, and already vegan by the time I started grad school, when I found myself chained alternately to a desk and a bar stool. For years I watched my friends and colleagues order delicious pub pizza at the end of a drunken night, jealous and salivating. And finally, years later, City O’ City has scratched that age-old itch. We ate amazing pizza, with beers, late at night.

And it was amazing vegan pizza. With hand-made ingredients.

Suffice it to say, this blew our minds (and our bellies).

Suffice it to say, we had to replicate this.

And lo and behold, replicate it we did!

Be forewarned–this ones takes some serious prep, but you can double up to save ingredients for a second pizza later or, better, make a few pizzas with friends and beers.

There are five key components to this pizza: the cheese, the sauce, the crust, the sausage, and the pepperoni. Let’s tackle them in order.

The Cheese

This is pretty much an augmented version of our standard cashew cheese, but with a bit of nu yeast and vegan parmesan.

• 1 cup raw cashews, soaked 5 hours or more
• 1/4 cup (or a little more) water
• 1/2 tsp (or more to taste) salt
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 – 1 tsp nutritional yeast
• 1/2 – 1 tsp vegan parmesan

In a shallow container, mix everything but the seitan. Once mixed, toss the seitan, coating well. We use a sealable container and shake it thoroughly. Refrigerate.

Putting it all together

Cut whatever veggies you’d like into whatever size pieces you like. We used white button mushrooms, thinly sliced; peppers, diced; fresh basil, diced finely; and purple onion, cut into rings, then halved or quartered, half raw and half caramelized.

Once the crust has been pre-baked and oiled, you’re finally ready to assemble this beast. Spread the sauce on the crust first. Next, dollop on the cashew cheese, then spread gently (it’ll mix in with the sauce a bit, but that’s okay). Add all of the toppings, then drizzle lightly with olive oil. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 – 14 minutes.

Get ready for the awesomeness.

Garlic scapes (the long curly green stalks in the picture above) are the young stems from growing garlic. They are harvested before the plant matures, and are packed full of delicious garlicky flavor–though not quite as intense as the garlic itself. They are seasonal, and thus are well worth grabbing when you happen upon them. They may seem a bit pricey, but a little bit goes a long way, and they last for quite a while in the fridge. We’ve been using them in everything lately.

Also pictured above, the first heirloom tomatoes from the farmer’s market! We’ve been jones-ing for some real, fresh, local tomatoes, and these were just the ticket. Also pictured above: garlic from the farmer’s market and fresh herbs from our own garden.

We’ve also begun harvesting green beans and zucchini, not to mention the lettuce and kale that have been growing like champs since early-mid june.

As you might expect, the first thing we did with the tomatoes was to make a salsa, using up a handful of our extremely abundant cilantro). We used said salsa with loads of our lettuce for a new variation on our taco salad (post forthcoming!).

Apparently, the thing to do with scapes is make pesto, so we tried out this. It was pretty tasty, like a thick garlicky tahini (on account of the roasted sesame seeds). As good as it was, it still needed something, so we added in a handful of basil from the garden, which definitely did the trick. We used  it (and some cherry tomatoes) to make pesto pasta:

This is pretty much just cooked wheat penne, tossed in olive oil and the pesto, with a few sliced cherry tomatoes. Simple!

The next night, we used those afore-mentioned heirloom tomatoes to make raw caprese salad, served with fresh green beans (boiled until al dente, then tossed in garlic, salt, and pepper) from our garden, and a fantastic blend of roasted veggies from the farmer’s market: beets (purple and gold), scapes, onions, garlic, carrots, zucchini, and summer squash.

Historically, I haven’t been a huge fan of beets, but these were out of this world! In combination with other veggies–especially the garlic, onions, and scapes–they were tender and savory, not at all too sweet. The preparation was simple: just chop the veggies into large-ish pieces, douse in safflower oil and a bit of red wine (key!), and sprinkle generously with fresh minced rosemary, thyme, and oregano. Salt and pepper to taste.

We were so taken with the roasted veggies, we had a very similar meal a few nights later. We made the same veggies, but this time used the beet greens, as well as some okra–which is also currently in season–in a saute with noodles cooked in veggie stock Earth Balance.

Beet greens are actually quite tasty–somewhere between collards and spinach–soft and savory, but just a tad more bitter and tough than spinach. They can be prepared just as you would collards or kale.

Stay tuned for more summer veggie action!