Merry Giftmas, or as the Pastafarians like to say: Happy Holiday

I’m updating from the comfort of my sickbed, which I’ve been nestled in since early on Giftmas Day.

Pro Tip: If you feel too sick to go to work, you’re too sick to go to work.

I went in on the next day and left work two hours later after slumping over in my cubicle, on the verge of passing out and puking. I think I scared my boss when I called her from my cubicle, which is about four feet from hers, to tell her that I felt sick and she had to ask me if I was sitting up because she couldn’t see me. I literally couldn’t move or do anything but stay slumped over. So much for being the stoic office worker. However, since my parents were super generous and got me a brand new laptop this year (I know, I still don’t believe it), I’ve been sickbedding relatively comfortably, with the Inkernet and Team Fortress 2 (SteamID: reiliel) always within reach. Also, I’ve been reading the hell out of the Dexter novels that my guy got me for Giftmas. Nothing says love like forensics and sociopathy! <3

You’re here for the snot tales and the blood spatter, right?

Just in case you came here for the food, I was super busy before Giftmas making all kinds of food to take to my parents for Giftmas Eve, and other food just to have to stay alive. I made it all in the same evening, and you know what that means – something had to suffer. I managed to fuck up the one recipe that I’m pretty sure that no one in the history of the world has ever fucked up before: falafel from Vegan with a Vengeance.

And how does one do that? Forget to add flour to the mix. There was an interdimensional pocket on the page between breadcrumbs and onion, apparently. What didn’t fall apart and was salvageable did taste really good, but the majority got turned to oil slurry. Yaaaaay. At least I didn’t fuck up the tahini sauce to go with it. When I’m feeling better, I’ll make another batch. Also, note to self: don’t attempt this in the blender, use the Kitchen Aid grinder until you get a food processor.

The other casualty of the evening was the Sauteed Green Beans and Mushrooms, also from Vegan with a Vengeance. Since my copy is from the first printing, there’s typos in it that I wasn’t aware of, mostly because everything I’ve made out of it has turned out perfectly. That is, until this recipe. 4 teaspoons of salt is too much for any recipe, and you should know better. The proper amount is 1 teaspoon. One. It would have been really good if I had known that, and the dish did nothing to help my mom’s opinion of vegan cooking which makes it all the more painful that it’s pretty much the first recipe I’ve really fucked up. (The falafel were made after the green beans.)

But wait, there’s good news! I prepared mashed potatoes and Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy, which my mom liked but commented that it tasted like split pea soup. Whaaaat? Neither Jake or I like split pea soup, so not only did we find this comparison to be inaccurate, it was also grody. But hey, it came out well.

And for dessert?

Individual Heart-shaped Apple Galettes

I made these quite a bit smaller than the recipe calls for – mine made something like 10 or 11 while the recipe says it makes 6. The reason is that I had a larger, heart-shaped cookie cutter that proved to be a lot easier to work with than cutting out the bigger hearts by hand. As a result, my mom kept referring to them as cookies, but I think I’d like to see them as small tarts. They’re also insanely easy to make, once you get the crust out of the way (do yourself a favor and get a $3 pastry cutter from your local Mega-lo-mart.)

I had to improvise a little with the placement of the apple, with the smaller size of the hearts (the bigger sizes allow for fanning), but I think it worked well. My mom mentioned that the way I placed them was quite visually appealing; I know that if she had said something like that, she really meant it.

Serve warm with a scoop of Soy Delicious/So Decadent soy ice cream. Nom.

Yes, it’s half-eaten because it was the last one and I had forgotten to take a picture after icing. I made these for our office potluck (along with the carnitas and almond cookies), and these disappeared even before everyone made it into the office. They’re popular.

And they’re very sweet. My favorite robohomo, David, said that he thought he preferred the almond cookies because they were more subtle and less sweet.

I also made them twice as big as the recipe calls for. Maybe a tablespoon of batter in California is bigger than one in Brooklyn? No matter, they still came out fucking great. And the inclusion of dark rum sent me on a reverse engineering adventure into Dremel-meets-bottle-lock Land, but that’s a story for a different day.

The icing is boozy without being gross and overwhelming, and the texture of the cookies is awesome, even if they were a little delicate after removing from the oven – they firm up. These might become a winter tradition for me.

The jackfruit revolution is upon us, ladies and germs.

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These fuckers are huge, so when Terry says to use large cookie sheets, do it. Or just bake in batches, see if I care.  If you don’t, this happens:

Which is okay, I guess, but I crave perfection, not one big cookie.

These are exactly as promised: crispy, almondy and probably similar to what you’d find in your localish Chinatown. (But probably not in LA’s Chinatown because all you’ll find there are bootlegs of everything imaginable, and the occasional street person smelling of urine.) Make ice cream sammiches with these and the recipe for their green tea ice cream. Fucking nom.

This just in! I made waffles again, and didn’t fuck up any of them! No more sink waffles.

This is what the first try looked like.

By the end of the batter, I was an old pro. Amazening.

I think that the bananas I used were a little on the small side, so I let them get really ripe before I used them. In the future, though, bigger bananas. The chopped walnuts in these give a really neat crunch and the banana is an awesome egg replacer in this. Nom.

I make this soup all of the time when it starts getting a little cold, but I’ve never taken any food porn of it before. It’s not all that photogenic, but it’s seriously got restaurant flavor, as Isa says.

The problem with mid-week cupcake making is that when I get home from work… I don’t want to do anything. So, I stall and stall until it’s late and I must bake now or I’m totally fucked. It goes without saying that I was up all night making these.

Candy Cane Cookies & Creme:

The very first cupcakes that I made out of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World were the Cookies & Creme ones, as illustrated in this post. I haven’t made them since, mostly because I was waiting for Trader Joe’s to start selling their seasonal Candy Cane Joe Joe’s (which, by the way, are made of crack.) They’re basically their regular Oreo-type cookie, but they have crushed candy canes in the creme filling. In fact, I have four boxes in my living room that I’m sending to Canadians because they’re that popular. I was impatient and piped the buttercream right after I whipped it up, I forgot to refrigerate it for a little bit, but it turned out okay otherwise. I haven’t tried one yet, but I’m sure they’ll be awesome.

They looked neat without the buttercream, so here’s a picture of that:

Chocolate Agave with Not-too-sweet Blueberry Mousse:

This is a variation of this cupcake, but with this mousse. This time, I refrigerated the mousse overnight and piped it on in the morning before coming in to work. It doesn’t really like being piped all that much, but it’s a much better consistency than if you try to pipe it right after you make it – it’s actually like mousse. The diabetics in my office are going to love me, and anyone else that doesn’t feel like slipping into a sugar coma.

God bless The Mighty Boosh, but fuck WordPress for not letting me embed the video.

Anyway, yes, vegan Bailey’s. I’m not a drinker, but as an omni I loved a splash in some hot cocoa or a glass of soy milk (yeah, I didn’t drink milk for a couple of years before going vegan.) Again, the PPK comes through to help a brotha out. It’s pretty good and very strong, in fact maybe a little too strong for me so I may cut down on the whiskey and up the brown sugar, chocolate syrup and vanilla on my next batch. Or, I may just be a pussy. Either way.

Fun fact: If you do a Google search for “vegan Bailey’s“, the second result is from the PPK forums, with my comment quoted: I’m glad that someone had the sense to finally made a vegan Bailey’s recipe that didn’t include some sort of coffee flavor blasphemy.

It’s hecka rad like dickmeat.

I had planned on making lemon bars and panko-stuffed mushrooms for this last weekend’s PPK meetup out in LA, but an old derby injury had flared up (from Thursday until this morning, when I procured some delicious Vicodin) and I ended up in bed all weekend. I started feeling a little frisky on Saturday night, so I decided to go ahead with the lemon bars, and make a big ass pot pie while I was at it.

Lemon Bars:

Do not over bake your shortbread. Repeat, do not overbake your shortbread.

If this happens to you and you have the time and patience, just go ahead and make a new batch. If you’re like me and impatient enough to roll with it, it won’t fuck up the lemon bars, but it will make the shortbread a little too crunchy to really play all that nicely with the filling.

But, it doesn’t matter because these are orgasmic. Yeah, I “went there.”  Just make them already.

Almost All-American Seitan Pot Pie:

Straight outta Compton the oven.

Oh boy, did I fuck up on this one, but I don’t think it really affected the outcome. Note to self: turn your fucking burners down. Listen to Emeril just this once and USE THE KNOB.  So, in short, I burned the hell out of the chickpea roux because the heat was too high and there was a coating of seitan chunks in the bottom of the pan to facilitate. So, I rescued the onions in the pan, pulled it off of the heat, scrubbed it out, and tried again. Success.

Also, I felt damn proud of myself on my apparent newfound skill of rolling up dough on a rolling pin to place over a dish, like how my favorite buttercream slingers do with fondant on Ace of Cakes. Okay, so I’m clearly a nerd.

The next time I make this, I’m going to use chicken-style seitan and figure out how to keep the spices from being beefy, because even as an omni I wasn’t into that. Also, double the crust, because the best part of a pot pie is the gooey bottom crust. Maybe invest in some small pie pans to make individual pies for freezing? In fact, I’d really like to replicate the Creamy Mushroom Chicken pot pies that Marie Callender’s sells, vegan-style. It can’t be that hard – chicken style chunked seitan, creamy mushroom gravy, portabellos, corn, carrots, broccoli… easy as, erm, pie. Note to self: maybe some agave in the crust to give it that slight sweetness in the Marie Callender’s shit. Mmmm… vegany goodness.

Take a look at mah insides:

And, because pot pies are always, always eaten out of bowls, here’s the proper bowl rearrangement:

Notice the open Veganomicon in the background. I loves my Isa and Terry.

Another semi-homemade thirty minute meal.

I’m really just making this post to talk about Companion Mock Chicken. I bought a can of the stuff on a whim while making an assessment of a local (mostly) Vietnamese supermarket, and it’s sat in my pantry for months, even surviving an apartment move. I finally cracked it open because I was mostly out of food and feeling too lazy to go to the store for fresh ingredients. (Goes to show how much I’ve changed, I used to be primarily a tv dinner/food out of a can person – now I avoid that like the plague.) Judging from the listed ingredients, it’s a chicken-style firm seitan, complete with a semi-creepy ‘chicken skin’ pattern on various surfaces of the pieces. It’s just convincing enough to work well for when you want to make your favorite super-unhealthy (California-Cantonese) Chinese dishes and it will probably satisfy any wandering omnis that get lured in by the aroma of your cooking. I just sauteed it all together with a few dollops of some Mandarin Orange sauce from Trader Joe’s, which I hadn’t found a good use for until right that minute, steamed some frozen vegetables and cooked the very small amount of sushi rice that I had left.

I think a can of this would go very, very well with the General Tzo sauce in an earlier post…