Sylvia’s Veg*n Food Reviews: Countdown to Thanksgiving

Hi folks, it’s been a while since I talked about food and with the start of fall (it still feels like summer here in LA) I am so looking forward to more crisp weather (the mornings and evenings have at least been cooler), overcast skies, and of course the holidays!

I know, I know, Halloween is coming up and everyone is getting their Sexy Olaf the snowman costumes ready, and yes, I love Halloween, but I really don’t look forward to it as much as I do Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is awesome, it involves lots of food, sitting around the table with family members, lots of food, anticipating what you’re going to get people for Christmas (or Hannukah, or Human Light, or Kwanza, what have you)… oh yeah and LOTS OF FOOD.

It’s no surprise I love Thanksgiving really, you guys know I like to eat and even though I’m a vegetarian and “Turkey Day” is pretty much how most people refer to the holiday… I’m here to say, Thanksgiving is just as enjoyable without the turkey.

Yup, every Thanksgiving, since 2009, I have passed on the turkey and every year, I find myself just as satisfied as I was in my omnivore days.  So today, I wanna talk to you guys about what I’m looking forward to having this Thanksgiving (t-minus 46 days). The great thing about my list is, you don’t have to be veg*n to enjoy, everyone can enjoy these things (in fact, that’s how it is with all veg*n food, duh… unless you have specific allergies) and maybe you have some go-to thanksgiving foods that are non-meat and would like to share, so let me know!

7. The cup of coffee after the meal (or second, or third meal)

In my aunt’s house, which is where we normally have our get togethers, it’s pretty routine to have a cup of coffee after we eat and have digested our food a bit. It’s really pretty much the only time I’ll have coffee at night.  Yes, you can have coffee any time of the day, month or year, but maybe it is the fact that I rarely have coffee late in the day and maybe it’s because it’s just nice to sit and have a coffee with my mom and my Tias… it’s just nice, and it’s just something I do find myself looking forward to, even amongst all the potatoes and pies and all that.

I usually have my coffee black, and black coffee is best with a piece of pie or a super sugary sweet, but if you really want to sweeten things, fellow vegans (or just plain non-dairy folks) should really try Soy creamer. Trader Joes has a pretty good soy creamer and Silk soy creamer is pretty tasty as well.  A little bit goes a long way… I will mention, I’ve tried Coconut milk creamers and it just tasted like plain coconut milk, so if you go that direction, try the flavored ones like vanilla, it’s much better.

6. Biscuits

I don’t care how you eat your biscuits… with butter, from the can, from scratch, with cranberry sauce, or by cutting them in half making a little thanksgiving sandwich (that’s me personally)… biscuits are the best and it really doesn’t need much further explanation than that.

5. Apple Pie

Pumpkin pie is good, yeah, but I am all about the apple pie.  My little sis even makes me a vegan crust sometimes when she makes me a pie (btw, my sister makes the best pies ever). Apple pie is so good, so savory and sweet, and cinnamon-y..mmmmm.  Apple pie is good in it’s natural vegetarian state (with butter and veg shortening), but if you like to keep Earth Balance around, there are lots of recipes online… unfortunately, not so many awesome little sisters willing to do the baking for you!

4. Green Bean Casserole

Speaking of sisters, my older sis, Pati (yeah the other one who writes on this blog) makes a BAGBC…. that’s BAD ASS GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE. I don’t know why, but Pati, being an omnivore and all… just makes the BEST veg*n foods… better than me and that’s like, my specialty.  Anyways, every year Pati makes the BAGBC but last year she had a baby so I had to take over and it was just GBC.  I made it totally from scratch (as Pati has done in the past) and since I took over, I made it completely vegan. I found a cream of mushroom recipe online… which turned out to be great but unfortunately, I lost the link…. the only thing that went wrong is my fried onlons burned a little on top. It was still good though and the best thing about making deceptively vegan foods is watching people eat it, be like “hmmp, disus goof” with their mouth full and all and then you say… “yeah.. I know… and… it’s VEGAN!”  diabolical laughter follows.

3. Sweet Potatoes

Just, sweet potatoes in general… that’s always a plus whether it’s in it’s french fry, puree, baked, or candied form, but on Thanksgiving I like ’em mashed. I usually just eat the mashed sweet potatoes alone, but combining them in with some classic mashed ‘tatoes, now that’s magical.

2. Gravy

My favorite: mushroom gravy. I make a mushroom gravy based on a recipe my mom uses. It includes wine (i’m a terrible cook cuz I can’t even remember what type of wine without looking for the recipe) it’s not too thick, it’s actually pretty thin, but it’s really good on top of my tofurky… speaking of which…

1. Tofurky

Yup, tofurky, that is my number one.  So some people might go, “lame, why do veg*ns even eat faux meat… that means you like meat! YOU’RE A PHONY”

Whoa whoa, put down the pitchforks, I will be the first to say, meat tastes good. But I don’t want to partake in eating it. Now, if I can get similar flavors and textures from a source that doesn’t conflict with my beliefs… and note, I said “similar” I don’t want to have something exact because if it’s too close, then I get a little paranoid about what I’m eating. I really enjoy faux meat products… another argument I get is that faux meat is not exactly heatlhy, to which I say, yeah I know, I don’t refrain from meat because I want to stay in shape, though that is a nice side effect.  I know eating too much processed food is bad, but I don’t eat it all the time, and hey, when thanksgiving rolls around, I want me some Tofurky.

And for those who doubt the wonder that is Tofurky, I’m a big fan of Turtle Island, the company that makes the products. Their foods are always well made and taste wonderful. High quality faux meat folks.  If people didn’t get so offended by faux meats, they would discover tofurky is really good in it’s own right.  It’s not turkey, of course it isn’t!  But if you stop trying to think that this is somehow supposed to magically be something it isn’t, you would find that it’s this really good, savory protein that tastes great with gravy and potatoes. My little sis and my uncle both eat turkey at thanksgiving, but they also grab a slice of my tofurky each year because they like it for what it is. So this year, if you have a veg*n friend that brings a tofurky, get your jokes in, fine… but then have a taste… you might like it, you might not… but chances are, you will like it!

So that’s my list of Thanksgiving foods, what are you looking forward to?

Sylvia’s Veg*n Food Reviews: Sweet Earth Curry Recipe Seitan

Hey Pati, (and others reading this blog)

So sorry for the hiatus… you know how it is… Family Days approach at the museum and I’m completely useless and non-productive in all other aspects of my life for like a week.

But I’m getting the hang of it, so it shouldn’t be a permanent thing (hopefully, that would suck, seeing as they’re monthly).

So this week, I decided to do another food review since I went shopping today and got something totally different: Seitan.

I’ve never bought seitan, it’s usually pricey and I tried to make it from scratch twice to underwhelming results. I bought this stuff, curry seitan by Sweet Earth.

I love curry, I’m no expert on it, but I do enjoy most things curry…. I once had curry flavored popcorn… hooo mama!

Anyway, this stuff comes in about 4 rectangles, that you can chop up. I took 2 rectangles and sliced them into thin squares and made simple skillet dish with some chopped veg (broccoli, cauliflower, and snap peas).

I kept the seasoning light, with only some salt and pepper (mainly for the veg) because I wanted to taste the full curry potential of this seitan… it was very aromatic from opening the package, so I knew it would be packed with flavor.

I served it on a bed of seasoned cous cous (salt, pepper, paprika) and dug in.

 

The texture was good, firm and kinda spongey (in a good way) very aromatic, as curry should be, and it took everything in my power not to scarf down my bowl.  It was a very yummy dish, for being so simplistic and easy to make.

My rating: 10/10

I’ll be buying this stuff again, I could see it being good in a sandwich.

Any suggestions or products I should try for future posts?

P.S.

1) sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures, I really should start using a legit camera on this blog.

2) I wanna share a little thing that made me smile today (as this blog is about enjoying the little things) so here you go, a video of a schnauzer freaking out and fainting from happiness when she reunites with her owner after 2 years apart!  (She’s okay now!)

Sylvia’s veg*n food reviews: Victoria Vegan Alfredo Sauce

Oh Sprouts, I love that place, so many great vegan specialty goods available there and they have great produce (I get all of my fruit and veg there).  Unfortunately, I’ll be moving soon and so I won’t be so close to a Sprouts anymore, so in the meantime, every week, I’m going to treat myself to at least one vegan specialty item. This week was Victoria Vegan’s Alfredo Sauce.

Let’s just get this out of the way before we get onto the actual quality of the product… I hate the packaging, why is there a woman with presumably no top on holding little pasta shells?? Is this how you get an edge in the sauce selling game? Anyway…

I ended up buying some Hodgson Mill veggie noodles (because the price was right and it sounded healthy), they were rotini made with beet, tomato and spinach.

Cooked it all up, added some broccoli and voila:

looks as good as it tastes!

So first off, the alfredo sauce was good, and the only downside I could say is that it was a bit thin.  I always think of alfredo sauce as being thick and creamy.  A good solution to this would be to add some soy milk (or whatever milk of your choice) and maybe a tablespoon of nutritional yeast (something every veg*n should have in their pantry). The noodles were good too, although I wasn’t exactly fond of the beet noodles… or maybe I’m just biased against beets! I can’t really stand ’em.

All in all, despite the terrible packaging, Victoria Vegan makes a pretty good sauce which is good to buy in a pinch (and when it’s on sale).  I do prefer to make sauces from scratch, but for convenience purposes, this is a good choice.

My rating: 9 out of 10, since it requires adjustments, unless you like thin sauce.

 

 

 

Sylvia’s veg*n food reviews: Helen’s Kitchen Organic Veggie Carnitas

So I’m a veg*n. What’s that little star there for you ask? Well, that’s a way that I’ve noticed those in the veg community like to refer to both vegan and vegetarian… without having to say “vegan and vegetarian”… which can be annoying  to type all the time.

I started taking animal products out of my diet back in 2008 and gradually got to the point where I am now, which is primarily a vegan diet, with the occasional animal product (such as cookies and Morning Star Blackbean burgers, which last I checked, have egg as a binder). Because of those occasional treats, I don’t call myself vegan, but I definitely strive to be. So yes, that is why I like to identify as veg*n… online at least… I have no idea how you would pronounce that in real life (Veg-asterisk-en???).

Anyway, you’ll all probably hear more veg*n rants from me as this blog progresses, but right now… let’s get down to business.

CARNITAS.

As a Mexican-American, this was a food I grew up with and loved! Carnitas are soooo good! So savory and like all food bad for you, mouth wateringly delicious. But is the taste worth the guilt of eating a poor pig? In my case, no (along with lots of other meat products I’ve given up) And sure, I can live without ever having another carnitas taco again, there are lots of other foods I enjoy just as much, but there are times when I think, “man, too bad there aren’t any vegan equivalents to them”.

So of course, when I did my grocery shopping for the week and found these bad boys:

I had to try them.

Normally, I don’t buy too many veggie-meat products. One, because they tend to be expensive, and two, even when an item is meatless, processed food is still not good to have on a regular basis. I get most of my protein from Tofu, Tempeh, nuts and beans… but I thought, might as well try them!

My first impression was… this is a pretty small package and $5??? They better be good! Upon opening the package, they lumped right out onto the pan like … well, I’m not gonna sugar coat it… it looked like dog food, but I still kept my hopes up (plenty of foods look unappetizing before they’re cooked anyway).

Sure enough, as soon as they started to brown, my appetite grew back as the soy carnitas started to look… well… more carnita-y.

I heated up some corn tortillas and added a few toppings (cilantro, salsa, and Daiya cheese) and boom! Carnita tacos for the first time in six years!

kept the ingredients pretty simple, just cilantro, cheese and some salsa, though next time I’d like to add cabbage.

So how were they?

By themselves, they had a good texture and taste, though I tasted a bit too much lime flavor. Together with all the toppings, it was delicious… my sister took a bite and even said she couldn’t really tell the difference. Oh and I’ll also note that the package was deceptively small, the portion is actually pretty big and I got full off of two tacos, with more than half of the package left for at least another two meals this week.

The only downside to these carnitas is that one of the ingredients is lime, and man, could you taste the lime. It was too limey in my opinion, and I don’t understand why it would be part of the package when lime is one of those ingredients that’s best fresh.

Really, if I want lime in my tacos, I’ll put lime in my tacos. That’s the only thing holding these carnitas back. But do I recommend them, sure! If you find yourself in the mood for tacos… they’re a good choice for taco night.

So there you have it, if you’re looking for pretty decent vegan carnitas, Helen’s Kitchen has em’… but seeing as they’re the only brand I’ve seen that makes them, it’s really your only choice and I hope you really like lime!

My Rating: 8 out of 10, btw, I found them at Sprouts.

-Sylvia