Onion pie and vegan cat food
Let me start off by saying that I don’t like onions. I understand that they provide a good deal of flavor to certain dishes but if given the option, I would more often than not go without them. I really wanted to make a savory pie though and even though this was nothing like the recipe I envisioned, I came across this recipe and decided to try it.The end result was delicious. It was something like eating sweet onions on a cheezy biscuit crust. I even had seconds. It’s not necessarily something you would want to have for dinner all the time and could probably have used some greens to go along with it but was insanely good. Check out the recipe below.
Onion Pie
Recipe adapted from How to be a Domestic Goddess.
topping:
2 very large yellow onions
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp Earth Balance
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 oz soy cheddar cheeze, finely shredded
salt and pepper to taste
crust:
1 1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp egg replacer
2 Tbsp water
1/2 cup soy milk including 1 tsp apple cider vinegar, left to curdle
1 tsp dijon mustard
3 Tbsp Earth Balance, melted
1/2 cup soy cheddar cheeze, finely shredded
For topping: Cut onions into large pieces. Heat olive oil and Earth Balance over medium heat. Add onions and saute for about 30 minutes, covered and stirring occasionally. When the onions being to soften, add the salt, pepper and thyme. Continue to cook until the onions are quite soft and browned on the edges.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9″ pie dish with Earth Balance.
Put the onions into the pie dish, sprinkle with soy cheeze and set aside.
For the crust: Mix the soy cheese, flour, baking powder, nutritional yeast and salt in a bowl. In a separate dish, beat the egg replacer and water together until frothy. Combine the soymilk/vinegar mixture, egg replacer, melted Earth Balance and mustard. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir. The dough will be fairly sticky. Remove from the bowl and stretch out as if you were making a pizza crust about the size of the pie, being careful not to tear holes in it. Lay on top of onions in pie dish and seal edges.
Bake for 15 mins then turn down heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 10 mins or until the crust is golden brown. Let sit for a few minutes after removing from oven then place a large plate on top and flip the pie upside down. Slice and enjoy!
And on to the cats…When I decided to adopt cats, one of the big concerns in our household was what to feed them. Being vegan, it didn’t seem right to feed them non-vegan food, but being that they are naturally carnivores, it was important to give them proper nutrition. So far their diet is a bit of an experiment and a combination of vegan and non-vegan cat foods.
The vegan option that seemed the most promising was some supplements made by Hoana that you make into your own cat food. It comes with a bunch of recipes from kibble to rice and tofu mix. I went with the recipe for seitan as seen below.
kittie seitanI tore up about 3 cups of the seitan into even smaller pieces and mixed them a sauce made of 4 tsp VegeKit, 1/3 cup nutritional yeast, 1 Tbsp olive oil and a bit of soy sauce.
The verdict? They really like the stuff! I was surprised after hearing quite a few people say their cats wouldn’t eat vegan cat food. I can understand where this general misconception would come from since a lot of people wouldn’t take the time to make food for their cats. For example, they really don’t like the canned vegan cat food I ordered and won’t eat it unless it’s mixed with something they do like.Since the seitan chunks are a bit more chewy than just plain cat food, Mochi (the grey one) has taken to batting them around on the floor while she eats. Personally I’m fine with this. If a cat were going to eat a live mouse, they would probably play with their food just the same. Meeme on the other hand likes to lick most of the ‘sauce’ off the seitan before she eats it. Every time I have fed them this, it is all gone by the morning. I’ll definitely have to try some of the other recipes but this is a total success.
2009!
I know it’s a new year (first post of 2009 in fact) but I still have a few things left to share from 2008. For the holidays I tried to create as many gifts as possible instead of buying them. I made a handful of stuffed animals, knit projects and of course holiday cookies. While I started all of these ambitious tasks well in advance, there’s only so early that you can bake cookies without delivering them stale to their recipients. I had decided on snowflake sugar cookies and had even acquired some edible glitter to decorate them. Unfortunately, this cookie baking session was doomed from the start. I burnt whole batches and had other mishaps including dropping an entire sheet on the floor while burning my hand. In the end, the beautiful glittered and iced cookies I had imagined did not come into fruition. I’m pretty sure the end product still tasted good though, even if it wasn’t as pretty as I would have liked.
Immediately following the new year was Shawn’s birthday. To celebrate he got the dessert of his choice, which ended up being peanut butter cup cupcakes. I think my favorite thing about these guys is getting to say “cup cup.” Ha! As you can see, they’re chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling/frosting and peanut butter cups on top. They turned out super good. I think next time I will have to try a different way of frosting them so that they can have an entire peanut butter cup on top (and not look ridiculous). Also, I’d love to make the peanut butter frosting a bit more fluffy. It’s a great consistency for the filling but a little dense on top.
Holidays, NYC and lots of dessert
homemade cinnamon bunIt is the last day of 2008! Had to squeeze in one last delicious post before the new year. I’m excited for all the projects and plans coming up. I know it’s going to be an awesome year.
Before moving forward, I’m going to have to look back for a moment as the past weeks have been terribly busy and I haven’t had a chance to show off some of the treats we’ve been indulging in. I made the above cinnamon bun from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I’ve been dying to make these, but was a bit scared off by the prep time. Since I have had a couple of days off, I finally had a chance to indulge myself. It was extra inspired by smelling the Cinnabon in the airport the day prior. Despite the fact that those things are quite possibly one of the most disgusting creations ever, the sure do smell good.
I ended up over cooking my buns a bit, but I think this may have had a bit to do with using new cookie sheets. They still tasted awesome, and were even better reheated the next morning with coffee.
peppermint cookies and cream cupcakeFor my family Christmas party, I opted to bring cupcakes rather than anything to actually eat for dinner. It worked out rather well as a bunch of my cousins happened to make vegan vegetable dishes. I made peppermint cookies and cream cupcakes. The cupcakes themselves came out amazing, perfectly moist and chocolaty. I still can’t decide if I liked the peppermint in the icing though, it was good, but perhaps too much. Maybe not though.
cookies and cream cakeShawn and I went back East to spend time with his family for the holidays. It was super exciting for me to show up and see snow on the ground.
I feel very lucky to have so many vegan restaurants in Los Angeles to go to, but it’s nothing like going to NYC. There’s just a different style of vegan/vegetarian restaurant there. The other thing that gets me super excited is getting to have some Vegan Treats. Pretty much every vegan restaurant in the area serves their desserts and there is honestly nothing like them. Over the summer, Shawn and I made a pilgrimage to their storefront in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where I was even more blown away by their selection of French pastries.
On one of our days in the city, we had lunch at Curly’s. I had a toastie with tomato, which is basically a vegan grilled cheese with red pesto and of course tomato. It was one of the most satisfying lunches. Simple and tasty and exactly what I wanted. Shawn had the Suno melt. I’ve had vegan tuna melts before, but have never been impressed. I only had a bite, but this was super good. Of course, we had to get some dessert, and I insisted on a cookies and cream cake, freshly delivered from Vegan Treats the previous day. The cake was moist and the frosting light and fluffy. Honestly, exactly how cake should taste, sweet and rewarding.
peanut butter cheesecake
cookies and cream brownieAt some point we also made a quick stop at Moo Shoes and Babycakes. I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with me, but after some more sampling, I’m really not a fan of Babycakes. Their desserts just don’t quite fulfill my sweet tooth. I can’t really pinpoint what it is about them that I don’t care for. The best way I can describe it is that I always feel a level of excitement when I enjoy a really good vegan dessert. Babycakes just doesn’t give me that thrill. I also am not a fan of their prices at all. Some cupcakes cost nearly $5 and that seems outrageous to me.
So that’s about it for 2008. Many exciting things to come in the future. I hope everyone had lovely holidays and Happy New Year!
Vegan Blogger Potluck
This past Saturday Shawn and I were invited to a Los Angeles vegan blogger potluck organized by Your Vegan Mom and Hugger Food. Although I’d been to a number of the blogs present, I hadn’t met any of the bloggers in real life. It made me quite nervous to make food for a bunch of strangers, let alone a group of vegans who write about food on the internet!I decided to make mini-paninis filled with portobellos, spinach and white bean spread. I sauteed the portobellos in wine and olive oil with a sprig of fresh rosemary for about half an hour till they were soft.
The white bean spread was a bit of an experiment. I looked over some recipes but didn’t really bother to follow any of them. I also didn’t bother to write down what I actually did but here’s the basic idea.1 can white beans, drained
4 large cloves of roasted garlic
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until fairly smooth.
To assemble the paninis:
Cut a baguette style loaf of french bread into 1/2 inch slices. Spread one half of each panini with vegenaise and the other with the white bean spread. Put the sauteed mushrooms and spinach on one half of the bread and then the other half on top. Drizzle with a tiny bit of olive oil and follow the directions for your panini maker. You could also toast these and I’m sure they would come out quite well.
Before I ate anything, I got to enjoy some lovely pear and ginger cocktails crafted by Your Vegan Mom. They were a touch sweet but definitely not sugary, which I believe is ideal for a fruit based cocktail. Yum!
I made a small sampling plate of some of the dippable fare. Here you can see the potato-parsnip latkes with applesauce from Hugger Food, pate with toast from Liz at Yo Soy, vegan Doritos with spinach dip from Quarrygirl and baked ravioli with marinara from Lex at Vegan-LA.
Jenn from Veganize It, Don’t Criticize It made a brisket that was really rather good as well. She of course also brought some of her notorious twinkies filled with jelly.
Kevin from the The Vegan Collection brought cinnamon rolls. I’ve been dying to make some for a couple of weeks now, but haven’t had the time so I was quite pleased to have these. There were even more delicious desserts, such as Quarrygirl’s chocolate chip cheesecake and Hugger Food’s twice spiced ginger cookies.Thanksgiving and more
This Thanksgiving was all about stuffing. Shawn and I made probably about 20 servings worth of stuffing which has lasted us for days. We both spent the whole day in the kitchen with our various projects. Despite the potato peel disaster of 2008 everything turned out really well.Instead of Tofurky, I made a version of the Seitan Roulade from Vegan Yum Yum. I filled it with apple cranberry stuffing (more stuffing!) that made it taste even better a day later. The fruit flavors seeped into the seitan after being refrigerated. Although it probably would have been prettier cut into smaller pieces, it was kind of fun to eat “caterpillars” for Thanksgiving.
Shawn made a monster batch of mashed potatoes that further tested the abilities of the new mixer. Of course they turned out smooth and delicious. I also made my first apple pie. I made the crust from scratch, which was slightly terrifying. Unfortunately I decided to bake it in our small oven (yes we have two) and ended up with a slightly burnt top crust. It still tasted really good, the filling was the perfect consistency and sweetness, and the bottom crust was not bad at all, but it wasn’t quite photo material. I can’t wait to try another.
I also got a new cupcake courier, and a good deal on it no less. I love this thing. I previously had a smaller carrier that carried 24 cupcakes but was always irritated that half the holders were too shallow and the other half were too deep. The new one holds 36 cupcakes securely for travel. It’s great. So here it is on it’s first delivery filled with red velvet, pumpkin spice and vanilla/chocolate cupcakes (from the top).
Hope everyone else had a great turkey-free Thanksgiving.
