It started this summer when I was making my Fluffy Pancakes for Milo on a regular basis. You know, in the morning, the time when pancakes are typically made.

I found myself fantasizing about the boxed pancake mixes that I grew up with, the omnipresent box of pancake mix which can still be found in most American pantries to this day:

Oh the convenience! Boxed mixes are made for early morning cooking and baking! I wished I could just measure out the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients, give it a few good stirs, and be done with it.

Then I thought: “Wait, why can’t I?”

I quadrupled the dry ingredients of my pancake mix, put it in an airtight container in the pantry with a sticker on it which reminded me of the quantities needed per batch, and voila! Homemade vegan packaged pancake mix!

This led me to wonder what else in my day-to-day life would be even easier if I made a mix beforehand, and I started making mixes like crazy: waffles, corn muffins, muesli, even nuggets!

I happened to make a batch of nuggets mix today and I documented the process so that you could see how easy it is:

First I measure out the dry ingredients for one batch of the recipe into a bowl:

Then I mix the ingredients, and I use a measuring cup to double-check the total amount of dry ingredients, since this will be my dry measurement later:

Now that I have my dry measurement, I quadruple all of the dry ingredient amounts and add it all to a storage container. I like to reuse my coffee cans, since they hold a lot:

Shake it well to mix up all those ingredients, or enlist a kid to do it for you!

Finally, write the measurement on a sticker on the container. I also write the measurements for the liquid amounts, so that I don’t have to drag out my cookbook every time that I want to make nuggets.

Ta-da! So easy! Now the next time that I want to make nuggets, it’s just that much easier to get the ball rolling. This is also a great way to enlist another member of your household to do more cooking: some cooking novices might have trouble following a recipe, but literally anyone can mix dry and wet ingredients together and shove it in an oven.

What was your biggest food revelation in 2011?

I am thrilled to tell you that my newest cookbook, Yellow Rose Greatest Hits, is finished, available to buy, and is discounted this weekend!

Yellow Rose Greatest Hits features roughly 100 updated and improved fan favorites from Yellow Rose Recipes, Potluck Mania, and this website: all killer, no filler.

I did an informal poll on Facebook and asked if I should print the cookbook in full color or in black and white, given that the color version would be almost twice as much as the black and white. Every single commenter said that they would be willing to pay extra for color, but I decided to give the choice of a black and white copy, anyway. That’s the exciting thing about self-publishing! I have the choice, and so do you.

This weekend—November 24-28—I will be offering a 10% discount on the color copy and a 5% discount on the black and white copy.

Here they are:

♥ Yellow Rose Greatest Hits (full color)
♥ Yellow Rose Greatest Hits (black and white)

Thank you so much for all of the emails, tweets, and Facebook messages asking me if and when I was going to republish Yellow Rose Recipes. Knowing that there was a demand has really motivated me to get this out there. I feel blessed to be part of a community which is so supportive. This Thanksgiving, I am giving thanks for all of you.

Happy holidays from Portland!

This is my pal Kati B (with her beautiful new pink hair, no less):

Kati B works at Sweetpea with our Katie Jane (and with Matt, for that matter, but that is not relevant here, let’s look at a picture of pretty Katie):

Thus the last initial to distinguish which Kati(e) you’re talking about/to. But I’m not really down with first names & first initial of last name combos. They’re so impersonal. It feels like I’m back in grade school.

So I call her Kati Bee’s Knees.

Last week, I had a mad hankering for Thanksgiving food, and I didn’t want to wait six weeks, dammit! So I emailed Katie and suggested that we collaborate on a mini-Thanksgiving dinner. Fakesgiving, if you will.

Friday night, Katie and Kati came over and together we made a feast: seitan roast, gravy, brussels sprouts, pumpkin potatoes, and apple pie.¹

“Pumpkin potatoes?” you’re asking, I can tell. I know, I was skeptical myself! I tend to relegate pumpkin to sweet treats and baked goods. But I trust in Kati Bee’s Knees, and I’m glad that I do, because these were incredible.

Here is my take on her amazing pumpkin potatoes. Vegenaise stands in here for the traditional sour cream in mashed potatoes recipes. Kati used a full cup of Vegenaise for only 1 1/2 times as many potatoes, and they were truly decadent. If you want your potatoes to be the star of the show, bump up the Vegenaise. Vegenaise is magic, you know? It makes everything better.

Bee’s Knees Pumpkin Potatoes
makes 6-8 servings

3 lbs russet potatoes, roughly peeled, cut into 1-2″ chunks
3/4 cup pureed cooked or canned pumpkin
1/4 cup Vegenaise
2 tablespoons non-hydrogenated margarine
3 cloves garlic, smashed and pressed, minced, or Microplaned
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika or 1/8 teaspoon paprika and 1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
1/4 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Add potato chunks to a large stockpot and add just enough cold water to cover the potatoes. Salt the water liberally, at least one teaspoon. Cover and bring the water to a boil. Boil the potatoes until tender, usually 10-15 minutes.

Drain the potatoes then transfer them back to the pot they were cooked in or a large mixing bowl. Mash them with a potato masher while they’re still steaming hot. Add pumpkin, Vegenaise, margarine, and garlic, and mash again. Add seasoning and incorporate the seasoning thoroughly using either the masher or a spoon. Serve immediately.

¹ Want more details? You won’t have to wait long. This Wednesday’s Daily Eats will include pictures of all the delicious food we ate Friday night.

For the past week, I have been compiling the recipes for my upcoming Best Of cookbook, and I can’t help but think of these Belle & Sebastian lyrics while I’m doing it, because they really are true! Writing about love does make me feel better, and this cookbook is nothing if not a labor of love. It’s also a little bit like reading an old diary, because each recipe transports me to the time and place when I was writing and testing it.

I wrote this recipe when Matt, Milo, and I were living with my parents in Texas, and I don’t think I would have been quite as pancake-obsessed were it not for my dad. My dad makes pancakes regularly, but they are definitely not vegan. Waking up to the smell of pancakes on the griddle and knowing that I couldn’t eat any of them lit a fire under my ass to develop a buttermilk pancake recipe of my own.

I apologize for the quality of the photo below: when you’re making pancakes at 6 in the morning for your hungry preschooler and yourself, there is a serious shortage of both natural sunlight and time to stage photos.

Fluffy Pancakes
makes 4 servings

1 1/2 cups soymilk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil

optional:
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
1/2 cup of mix-in (blueberries, bananas, nuts, chocolate chips…)

Heat a griddle or a skillet with low sides to medium-high heat. If you won’t be serving the pancakes as you make them, preheat an oven to 200 degrees and set aside a baking sheet.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the soymilk and apple cider vinegar and set aside for 5 minutes. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and then give the dry ingredients another good stir for good measure. Add the water and vegetable oil to the soymilk and vinegar mixture, which by now should have curdled, and stir together.

Before combining the wet and dry ingredients, turn the heat on the griddle down to medium. Add a tiny bit of oil to the surface (it should skid across the surface, not hiss or pop), then use a generous wad of paper towels to rub the oil into the hot surface of the griddle while still protecting your hands. There should be no oil visible on the surface.

Now, make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients and the flaxseed meal, if you’re using it. With a spatula or whisk, stir together the batter for ten seconds, or until all very big lumps are gone. The batter will still be lumpy. That’s okay.

Ladle 1/4-1/3 cup of pancake batter directly onto the skillet. If you want to mix in an ingredient, this is where you would do so, not during the mixing process but directly onto the ladled pancake. You want to add just a few to the center of the cake. You can choose to ladle as many pancakes as will fit on your griddle or you can do them one at a time, whatever is most comfortable for you. Just leave enough room between the pancakes to easily flip them.

When bubbles have formed in the middle of the pancakes and the edges are dry, use your spatula to lift the corner of the cake and check the color. It’s ready to flip when it’s golden brown. Do not, under any circumstances, press down on the pancake with your spatula. Let it do its thing. The less that you mess with pancakes, the better. After you flip, the second side will cook faster than the first side.

The first round of pancakes is usually … I don’t want to say bad, but they’re not as tasty as the rest of them will be. This is just part of the process. The first round is how you find the right temperature, so you need to sample one of them. Tear it open: if it’s cooked on the outside but too raw on the inside, turn the temperature down. If you make pancakes regularly, you’ll find your “sweet spot” on your stove and may eventually be able to do away with the tester round altogether.

Before each round of pancakes, give your batter another good whisk to re-activate the baking powder.

If you can serve them immediately, that’s best, but if you want to serve them all at once, put the pancakes onto a baking sheet in a single layer and then into a warm oven until you serve. Don’t stack them or they’ll get soggy.

Serve warm with syrup and margarine.

I am embarrassed that it has happened so soon, but I’ve missed a Recipe Monday. To make it up to you, here is a recipe on Wednesday.

What do you do when you’re low on cash and have a half dozen friends coming over for crafts and noshing? You make a big pot of kitchen sink stew, that’s what you do!

I make this soup once a week in the fall, sometimes with white beans instead of chickpeas, or without the seitan, or with just corn instead of peas and corn, or… really whatever is in the house at the time dictates the ingredients.

Don’t be intimidated by the length of ingredients here; it all comes together easily and most of the time is spent waiting and stirring rather than doing actual work. If you make it the first time without the seitan or dumplings, you could always try it with one or both at a later date.

Kitchen Sink Stew with Sweet Potato Dumplings
makes 8-12 servings

2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked at least 8 hours
2 T olive oil
2 cups chopped yellow onion (about 1 large onion)
1 cup chopped celery (about 2 large stalks)
1 1/2 cups chopped carrots (about 2 medium carrots)
2 T vegetarian chicken-flavored broth powder
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
10 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 lb yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1/2 pieces
1 recipe Seitan Chunks (see below)
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen peas
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 recipe Sweet Potato Dumplings (see below)

Seitan Chunks

1 cup vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 t salt
1/2 t rubbed sage
pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 cup water
1 t Bragg’s Liquid Amino Acids or soy sauce
1 1/2 t olive oil

Sweet Potato Dumplings

1/2 lb cooked sweet potato (about 1/2 large sweet potato)
1 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 t rubbed sage
freshly ground black pepper
2 T olive oil
6 T soymilk

If you haven’t already done so, soak your chickpeas for 8-24 hours before starting the soup, changing the water every 4-8 hours. Rinse well.

Heat olive oil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onions, celery, carrots, and a large pinch of salt, stir, and cover. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cook until carrots are tender and onions are translucent, stirring every few minutes, about 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, assemble your seitan chunks. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Add the wet ingredients. Stir to combine. Set aside.

Add broth powder, nutritional yeast, water, soaked and rinsed chickpeas, and bay leaves and bring the soup to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, give it a good stir, cover, then set your timer for 30 minutes.

Assemble your dumplings. Mash the cooked sweet potato in a medium bowl, then add the dry ingredients one by one, then use a fork to mix the dry ingredients with the potato until it’s small crumbs. Then add the wet ingredients and mix just until wet ingredients are fully incorporated. Set aside.

Come back when the timer comes off, reduce the heat to a low simmer if it’s not already there. Add the potatoes. Drop chickpea-sized seitan chunks into the soup. I do this by hand but you could do it with a spoon, I guess. Cover again, set the timer for 30 minutes. Check every 5 minutes to make sure temperature is staying at a low simmer, adjusting heat as necessary.

After the seitan and potatoes have cooked with the stew for 30 minutes, add the frozen corn and peas, season generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and then drop the dumplings into the stew with a teaspoon. Try to keep them from touching each other; I like to work in concentric circles from the inside of the pot out. Cover again and simmer for 10 more minutes.

When the 10 minutes are up and the dumplings have risen to the top, you’re done! Serve warm.

Today, I was making vegan nuggets for Milo’s and my lunch, and I thought to myself: “I wonder how these bad boys stack up nutritionally against their packaged equivalents?” Since nuggets form a significant portion of my family’s diet and are part of our go-to lunch on busy weekdays, I wanted to see the numbers for myself.

Just for the sake of comparison, let’s look at the numbers for the other nuggets first, shall we?

Starting with 6-piece McDonald’s McNuggets:

276 calories; 17g fat; 42mg cholesterol; 600mg sodium; 16g carbohydrates; 14g protein.

No real surprises there. Is anyone who reads this blog taking their kids to McDonald’s? Doubtful. Let’s move on to the healthier options.

Next we have Morningstar Farms:

190 calories; 9g fat;  0mg cholesterol; 600mg sodium; 19g carbohydrates; 12mg protein.

The calories, fat, and cholesterol numbers here are much better than McDonald’s. However, did you happen to notice that their serving size is 4 nuggets? Don’t worry, I’ll be doing a comparison chart here in a second so that you can see how the numbers compare when the serving size is equivalent, and I’ll be comparing serving size by weight for maximum scientific whatever whatever.

The Morningstar Farms Chik’n Nuggets aren’t vegan, so let’s keep this train a-chuggin’ right along to Health is Wealth.

Health is Wealth Chicken Free Nuggets are vegan! Hip hip hooray!

Let’s look at their nutritional info, shall we?

120 calories; 2g fat; 0mg cholesterol; 450g sodium; 14g carbohydrates; 14g protein.

Based on the nutritional facts alone, Health is Wealth Chicken Free Nuggets are the best option by far. They also have the fewest ingredients, many of which are organic. If you are buying a commercial nugget, this is the clear winner in every category.

But let’s move on to the real star of the show: homemade, in your mouth in under 30 minutes from start to finish, seitan nuggets:

I change up the seitan nuggets recipe all the time based on what ingredients I have in my house. That is one of the beautiful things about this recipe. Out of chickpea flour? Use more vital wheat gluten. Don’t have breadcrumbs or panko? No problem, just use all-purpose flour. Did you just find a package of french onion soup mix in the back of your pantry which you had completely forgotten about? Use half the packet to season the dry mix and the other half to season the breading mix! So versatile!

Here’s the current recipe I’ve been using for the last two weeks or so:

Nuggets
makes 28-36 or 4-6 servings

dry mix:

1 cup vital wheat gluten
2 T nutritional yeast
1/2 t salt
up to 1 T of dry seasoning

wet mix:

1 cup water
1 T oil
1 T soy sauce or Bragg’s Liquid Amino Acids

breading:

2 T cornmeal or polenta
2 T unbleached all-purpose flour
2 T nutritional yeast
up to 1 t of dry seasoning
freshly ground black pepper

Preheat your oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a liquid measuring cup or small bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and use a spatula to stir until all the liquid is absorbed.

In a bowl, combine the breading ingredients.

Break off a small piece of the dough, form it into a nuggety shape, coat it in breading, and transfer it to the baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough. You can save any remaining nugget breading for next time.

Bake for 18-20 minutes. Serve warm with your favorite dipping sauce.

Using a serving size of 7 nuggets (90g), here is the nutritional info:

177 calories; 3.8g fat; 0g cholesterol; 436g sodium; 15.4g carbohydrates; 24.3g protein.

Let’s see a comparison chart! You know how much I love a good chart for comparing and contrasting. Or maybe you didn’t know that about me. You would if we lived together, or if we’d ever shopped for a car together, or if you’d ever stood in a grocery aisle with me while I picked a new snack to try.

The first thing I need to do is get the serving sizes equal on all of these so that it’s a fair comparison. The serving sizes are pretty similar as is, but for the sake of MAXIMUM FAIRNESS, I multiplied the Health is Wealth data by 1.125, the Morningstar Farms data by 1.1, and my data by 1.05. After doing that, all 4 serving sizes are within 1g of each other.

Yes, you’re reading that right: compared to chicken nuggets, my nuggets have 1.5 times the protein, 100 fewer calories, and 1/4 of the fat content. Holy moly!

When I was reading the newest issue of Martha Stewart Living¹ this month, I stopped on this page and turned down the corner: Cannellini and Kale Soup. Vegan? Yes! There has been a noticeable increase in the percentage of Martha’s vegan recipes, and I guess we have her vegan daughter Alexis to thank for that.

soaked beans and magazine

There is nothing new about cannellini and kale soup: it’s a classic. Hell, I did a search on marthastewart.com, hoping that this recipe would be there so that you could have it, and while I didn’t find this version, I did find 78 results for similar recipes. What I liked about this iteration, however, is that the soup is blended before the kale is added, and then right at the end, you throw garlic chips on top. It’s easy for a weeknight and perfectly comforting and warming for a chilly fall night.

I did tweak the recipe just a bit. The recipe called for 2 onions, but my onions were large, and after chopping one of them, it became clear that 2 chopped onions would have yielded over 5 full cups of chopped onion, and at that point, the soup would have been Onion and Cannellini and Kale Soup. I also subbed fresh rosemary for the fresh thyme; rosemary grows in my front yard, and I know that Martha would definitely approve of using what you grow yourself over what you can buy at the store.

Because this issue is still on the newsstands, I won’t repost it here, but I highly recommend it you’re already a regular Martha reader: October 2011, page 174.

Cannellini and Kale soup with baked sweet potato

We ate ours with baked sweet potatoes, and that recipe I can share with you:

Baked Sweet Potato with Spiced Maple Butter

makes 1

1 medium to large sweet potato

2 tsp Spiced Maple Butter (recipe follows)

Preheat your oven to 400. Scrub your sweet potato, poke all over with a fork 4-6 times, then wrap in aluminum foil. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 45-60 minutes, depending on size.

After taking it out of the oven, allow to cool until you’re able to touch the foil without a glove, about 10 minutes. Then open it up, cut the potato down the center, and mash the Spiced Maple Butter into the baked sweet potato flesh.

Multiply for however many sweet potatoes you’re making.

Spiced Maple Butter

1/4 cup non-hydrogenated vegan margarine

2 T pure maple syrup

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground ginger

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground allspice or cloves

pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until margarine has melted. Serve warm.

When this has cooled all the way, you can store it in the fridge for up to a month. We like it on pancakes and waffles, too!

¹ You read that right. Furthermore: not just a reader; a faithful subscriber for 3 years. And my favorite thing to do on sick days is make a big pile of back issues and read them in bed. I find it soothing, what can I say.

Matt will be solo parenting it for 2 days, so I thought it would be helpful if I left them a fridge full of healthy meals that they could just heat-and-eat, so I got out my trusty legal pad, got Yellow Rose Recipes and Potluck Mania off the shelf, and my newly-acquired copy of Julie Hasson‘s Vegan Diner, which I was really excited to cook from.

Jumping up every few minutes to check how much I had of one ingredient or another, I made a list of recipes which would use up our pantry and fridge items, and then I made a shopping list next to it of the ingredients I needed.

The recipe list:

• salsa verde & chips
• Vegan Diner‘s Great Smoky Mountain Cheese
• Yellow Rose Recipes’ Black Eyed Pea and Potato Soup
• creamy tomato soup
• Grilled Cheese (using the Great Smoky Mountain Cheese)
• Potluck Mania‘s Smoky Chipotle Split Pea Soup
• veggie noodle soup
• Vegan Diner‘s Banana Chocolate Chip Bread
• sweet potato fries
• Yellow Rose Recipes’ Roasted Red Pepper Hummus
• Yellow Rose Recipes’ Sloppy Joannas
• Vegan Diner‘s Cinnamon Orange Rolls
• strawberry mango blondies

The groceries only cost $29! Thirteen recipes for under $30! I haven’t done the per-serving breakdown, but I’m guessing that it’s less than $.25.

I want to be better about making lists like this every single week, it would save me so much time and money and eliminate the: “What are we doing for dinner?” conversations.

Since Saturday, I’ve made about 2/3 of the list. Here is a snack plate I made today:

snack plate

Clockwise: chips, salsa verde, pretzels, roasted red pepper hummus, crackers, Great Smoky Mountain Cheese (make this right now!)

There would normally be veggies on that plate, but I had just used every last veggie in the house to make a giant salad for lunch.

¹ Or angry. Or sad. Or worried. Or bored. Pretty much the only time when I don’t cook is when I’m tired.

I read dozens upon dozens of recipes and blog posts about brownies, both in print and online, and fellow brownie-lovers seemed to generally agree that melted chocolate was necessary for the fudgy (as opposed to just cocoa powder), and flaxmeal was necessary for the crispy-crunchy. Not being a baker myself, I am extremely grateful to them for figuring out the food science. I am standing on the shoulders of brownie giants.

However, a lot of the recipes I found were using a full cup or more of fat, and I didn’t feel that was necessary, so I set about reducing the fat without losing any of the flavor. Which is not to say that these are low-fat brownies; they are lower-fat brownies. If you cut them into 9 squares and eat 1 square, you’re still eating a full tablespoon of oil.

I have made these brownies at least six times since first drafting the recipe in January, but I didn’t want to post it until I had tried practically every variation and combination of ingredients, producing the same quality of results every time. I personally feel that the coconut oil tastes just a little bit better than Earth Balance, but I haven’t tried it yet with the new Earth Balance organic coconut spread. That might be perfect combination of the two!

Save a place for these at your Labor Day picnic or BBQ, or if you’re working on Labor Day, make a batch for your coworkers so that you have brownies to munch on while you commiserate about your lack of a three-day weekend. I promise that you won’t regret it.

I love you, brownies

       print this recipe    

sunflowers on my shelf

Fall is just around the corner. This past Monday, I woke up and went outside to cut sunflowers, and I could just smell it in the air.

I like the anticipation of fall almost as much as I like the season itself. When I went searching through my archives looking for entries where I wax poetic about fall, I only found this entry, dated August 27th, where I said:

I know that I don’t need to sell you on Fall. Fall sells itself, baby: the weather, the colors, the foliage, Halloween and Thanksgiving, pumpkin-flavored everything, root vegetables, scarves and corduroys. Fall is when I feel like I am the best possible version of myself.

It’s true. I can’t wait for long walks, crunching leaves underfoots, soups in the crockpot, making Milo’s Halloween costume, sweet potatoes, autumn vegetables and tofu roast, deciding what to make for Thanksgiving this year. My heartbeat just sped up writing that list, I am not fooling.

But before it is officially fall, we still have a few hot days ahead of us. My family has been eating a lot of salads for dinner.

Eat-It-All-Day Salad

This is a salad which I call the “Eat-It-All-Day Salad,” because you could eat nothing but portions of this salad all day long and you’d be fine. All your bases are covered. And you wouldn’t even mind eating it three times a day, because it’s just that good.

This particular Eat-It-All-Day Salad had:

all tossed in a homemade balsamic vinaigrette, to which I had added: nutritional yeast, Bragg’s, and flaxmeal.

Do you see what I’m saying? Maybe I should call it a Power Salad instead.

Still, as delicious as this salad is, I’m ready to toss it aside in a heartbeat for roasted brussel sprouts, mashed sweet potatoes, hearty soups, and pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.

For those of you who have Spotify, I made a Spotify playlist of music that my family has been listening to the last few weeks.