Jay's Vegan Cafe

[ChrisZer0]

For veggies like broccoli, califlower and even portas, I like a tempura batter, it sticks to the veggie better and it comes out tasking better..

[sugart]

Love cooking threads. Couple of things. First you should put your taters in cold water and then bring it to a boil, it cooks the potatoes evenly. Second Ive tried most of the crab chips and Utzs is the best, followed by Lays, which are sometimes hard to find. Surprisingly Herrs are my least favorite even though I love Old Bay. Finally, Mets suck, Go Phils

[gerd.muller]

For veggies like broccoli, califlower and even portas, I like a tempura batter, it sticks to the veggie better and it comes out tasking better..

 

Try this one:

Dip your vegetables into seasoned creamcheese (or some compareable lactose-free stuff!) and roll it into spring-roll-dough, fry it: awesome!

[nay]

I've been a vegetarian for several years now, but I truly suck at cooking. I'm really enjoying this thread though, and maybe I'll even try some of these myself. Right now I stick to things that I can't screw up too much - Boca and Morningstar (I'm obsessed with their buffalo wings!) products, pasta, beans and veggies.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing more!

[Calaway Park]

I find the batter sticks better if you dredge the onions in a bowl of flower before putting them in the batter.

 

Looked yummy though.

[Hercules]

There are a bunch of different ways to get the batter to stick, but I haven't found a problem with my batter as long it is the right consistency.

 

I have a really hard time finding vegan onion rings at restaurants because most of the time they are dipped in egg, then dredged in flour.

[Hercules]

Since I've been home during the days now that I'm out of work (that will change come Monday thank God) Tricia has been coming home from work for lunch (since she only works about 2 miles down the road from the new house). So I've been in charge of lunch prep work lately. Today I went back to the fryer once again, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a heart attack within the next day or so because of it. I made a pretty simple polenta dish.

 

Polenta is an Italian staple. It is made from boiled cornmeal, and can come in many forms, either as a "gruel" or porridge, or in the packaged form found in grocery stores that will be shown below. Although it isn't very flavorful, it is very versatile, and can be baked and flavored up well with tomato sauce. It used to be kind of an Italian peasant food, but has grown more prominent over the years.

 

Fried Polenta Sticks

Serve with your favorite marinara sauce, and you have yourself a pretty nice little lunch!

4-5 minutes later, the sticks go onto the papertowels. They will come out a light brown color and don't really completely golden. Once again, this is the perfect time to season them with whatever you want (a little extra salt and pepper did the trick for me).

While waiting for the sticks to fry, I made quick simple salads with some romaine hearts, butter lettuce, vine rippened tomatoes and white mushrooms. Because let's face it, with all of the fried crap I've been eating over the past few days, I need to put something decent into my body.

..... and watch those suckers fry.

Place the sticks into the basket of the 375 degree pre-heated fryer....

Set each aside on wax paper until all of the sticks are covered.

After dipping into the oil, roll the polenta into the mixed cornmeal mixture until covered.

Next will come the fun part. Prepare a dredging station of olive oil, and a bowl of cornmeal seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley and rosemary.

After that I cut the polenta into sticks about the size of mozzarella sticks. An 18oz. package of polenta will yield about 20-25 of these sticks depending on the size you cut them. I cut the polenta into quarters and then cut the quarters into the sticks shown.

When you unwrap the polenta you will find that it has a very smooth exterior. For the purpose of this, I cut off the ends and the smooth outer layer to make a rectangular block like this.

I won't make my own polenta today for the sake of simplicity, so I pulled out a nice organic polenta I picked up at the store. You can find it in a bunch of different flavors (my personal favorite is sun-dried tomato) but here is Basil and Garlic I used today.

[ParkTrips]

I think a vag cafe would be way better

Yes I've had a few

[Sean Menefee]

I think a vag cafe would be way better

Yes I've had a few

 

 

-Sean

[Hercules]

If anyone is interested, I haven't been able to post anything in the past week because I have been training at my new job at their headquarters. I do have pictures on tap to get posted and will do so when I return home on either Wednesday or Thursday. Good vegan breakfast.

[Ed]

What I don't understand is why vegetarian & vegan things are packaged as "Quorn Chicken-Style Pieces" or "Vegetarian Bacon". Surely if you're a vegelesbian/vegan you disagree with the principle of killing animals for their meat, why would you want to eat something that copies the name of it?

 

I'm quite interested in what recipes you can cook up without any milk products, (i'm one of these stupid lactose-intolerant people).

[Teacups Make Me Sick]

^Fake meats are good and ad variety into a diet.

 

Besides, they really dont taste like the item they are trying to copy, but they are salty, tasty, and dont require killing animals to make them. Some people dont eat meat b/c of principle and some people dont b/c of taste.

[Hercules]

Alright, so I'm back from training and I'm on my new computer, working remotely for a few weeks. I figured I would use some of my lunch break to post a little something that I made a couple weekends ago. I figured I would be nice and make a nice breakfast before I left to go up to Elysburg. This is what I made.

 

Chocolate pancakes, Oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins and a fruit smoothie

And breakfast is served. Overall, the batter made 6 pancakes.

Add some brown sugar and raisins to taste.

About 10 minutes and a few stirs later, the oatmeal is done.

Nice and brown. It looks a little browner than what it is because of the chocolatey goodness.

You will start to see bubbles forming at the top of the pancake when the other side is just about done. That means you flip it.

The spoon I use is like the perfect size.

Now time to spoon the pancake batter.

All done.

This thing works pretty well too.

I'm running a little late this morning, so I don't want to clean up a huge mess, thus I hold down the top to the blender.

Then the rest of everything you saw, with a little more ice to top it off.

First a little water and ice in the blender.

While waiting for the oats to get done, and for the pan to heat up for the pancakes, I make the smoothie. A banana, orange juice, and frozen strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries.

I then got this thing out. It is the best thing I have to make pancakes on. I would much rather have a griddle or something, but this will be good for now. Non-stick, and on medium heat.

And, as they say it in the dirty south, sturred.

With the batter mixed, I noticed the water for the oatmeal was boiling, so I added a cup of oats to the 2 cups of water.

Then I added the cocoa powder. I added about a 1/16 of a cup. I didn't want to add too much to it because then it would have just tasted like crap. Have you ever licked straight cocoa powder before? I have.

Mix it all together and you come up with this. Not too thick, not too thin. I think I added about an 1/8 of a cup more soy milk to get it mixed to this with no lumps.

Next, a cup of soy milk.

Of course, if you didn't learn from the last time..... you fill it. Here we have the dry ingredients for the pancakes - 1 cup flour, Tb sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/8 teaspoon salt. Along with 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil.

Here is that empty bowl again. And what do we do with an empty bowl?

Blast the stove, and put 2 cups of water into a pot.

And here is what will be used for the other attraction of the morning. No quick or instant oat crap here!

Here is a line of all the ingredients that will be needed for the main event, the chocolate pancakes. Now, I normally make chocolate chip pancakes, but no chocolate chips in the house. So I figured I would experiment a little bit.