Chick*n

One of the blogs that I follow - Vegan Dance if You Want To - recently posted a link to a brand of vegan chicken that she recommends. She also commented on the 'mysterious pink mechanically seperated meat' that any and everyone on Facebook has seen. Nasty!

While I have eaten this brand before, Gardeins, it is not available in Denmark. We do have some interesting replacements here though.

I am a fan of a brand called goodsoy. They sell dried soy products. I especially love them because they have an incredibly long shelf life, come in a variety of sizes (crumbles, bites, nuggets, fillets, etc.) and come back to life with a bit of veggie broth. I have bought the 'steak' variation as well. Same flavor, different color.

Here are a few meals I have made using the goodsoy dried soy products.

Chick*n Parmesan: Noodles, fillets breaded in breadcrumbs, nutritional yeast, and seasonings, tomato sauce and shredded vegan mozzarella.

Super Easy Vegan Chili (soygood crumbles)

Breaded fillets: breadcrumbs and seasonings

Caldo Verde with Crumbled Tempeh

I have been cooking up a storm lately, just not blogging much. I have decided that to catch up, each time I post something new, I need to also post something old!

John picked this recipe from the Appetite for Reduction cookbook. I am not a huge fan of tempeh but was excited that he was helping out with meal planning!

It turned out so good. I was not sure what to expect, but it is a soup (I now know that Caldo Verde means green soup!) that is spicy and tangy and really filling. It consists of onion and garlic, fennel, thyme and red pepper flakes, along with veggie broth, potatoes and kale (recipe calls for chard). The tempeh is boiled to remove the bitterness and flavored with lemon and tamari.

I did skip the step at the end where you are supposed to puree half the soup for a more creamy consistency. I just did not have the motivation to get the blender out and then have to wash it. Regardless, this soup is fantastic.

Carbonara Style Spaghetti

This recipe was 1) so good and 2) so easy that we not only made it for dinner but then again for lunch the very next day!!!
The basics are spaghetti, a cream sauce and vegan bacon.

The cream sauce consists of an onion cooked in coconut oil and a blend of 6 oz rice milk, 1.5 oz shredded cheddar style 'cheese', and 4 TBSP soy creamer. When the sauce is poured into the hot spaghetti, the 'cheese' melts down a bit and it thickens up nicely.

I made a batch of eggplant bacon and it was absolutely perfect sprinkled on top. I can see this recipe showing up weekly around here now!

'Veef' Stew

John made dinner tonight! I suggested a vegan beef stew to use up the 'Veef' that we had in our freezer. I Googled and found this recipe, although it was incomplete. John said it listed several ingredients that were never in the instructions. I guess it was not difficult to figure out when to add them but still annoying no less.

We used shallots instead of onions and sweet potatoes and no celery seed. Here is the recipe. It really was excellent. Very hearty and flavorful and filling!

Happy New Year!

This was the view from our patio last night! Hundreds of people were setting off fireworks all over the city for hours!

This poor blog has sat neglected for far too long. I have been taking pictures of nice meals I have made; they just have not made it up! Eventually I will catch up, or more likely, not even try! But I am going to start posting more regularly!

...starting with our New Years Eve dinner. We had a frozen piece of 'salmon' that I just kept putting off. I guess mainly because I had no idea what to do with it.

We finally decided it would be nice pan fried with jasmine rice and Hollandaise sauce. On the side, roasted Brussels sprouts in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

The sauce was great. The 'salmon' was what I expected. It was covered in a layer of seaweed to give it a fish-like flavor. Appearance wise, it looked just like salmon. But it was mushy and had that universal 'fake meat' flavor. I would have no problem eating it again, but it will not make it into a permanent rotation around here.