Green Bean Casserole

Last year we attended a mondo Thanksgiving potluck and one of the recipes we left dreaming about was for this fantastic Green Bean Casserole.

I have never particularly had very strong feelings either way about green beans but this dish will make you want to eat them day in and day out. Smothered in a flavorful and slightly cheesy sauce, these green beans will steal your heart (and your belly I suppose).

Oh and did I mention, they’re topped with those awesome fried onion bits. Yum!

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I wanted to make a few dishes early and stretch out the tastiness. Why only eat Thanksgiving food on one day a year?

That being said, I’ve eaten this dish for 3 meals in the past 2 days. It’s that good.

It’s also incredibly easy to make, almost as easy as it is to eat. I doubled the recipe to make it last even longer and just increased the cooking time a bit and it came out fantastic. Here is the recipe!

Vegan Green Bean Casserole

recipe from here

• 1/4 cup vegan margarine
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 2 14 ounce cans French style green beans, well drained
• 1 3 ounce can French-fried onions

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a small saucepan, melt the margarine and add the flour. Add the vegetable broth, soy sauce, garlic powder and onion powder, stirring frequently, until sauce thickens. Whisk in the vegetable oil and nutritional yeast.

Toss together the sauce and green beans in a casserole dish. Bake for ten minutes. Remove and sprinkle the French fried onions on top of the casserole. Bake for another ten minutes.

Tofu Benny

After seeing two awesome bloggers post scrumptious photos of the Tofu Benny from Vegan Brunch I knew I had to make it. Not to mention I’m slightly obsessed with making tofu benedict.

I was super impressed with every detail of this recipe. It was all timed out so that you could serve it up without having to wait for one of the elements to be finished. It was particularly good for me at the moment as I am working on my mise en place in the kitchen

Mostly I was surprised at how much this sauce was like hollandaise made with real eggs. It had that stretchy elasticity of raw egg that is rare in a vegan dish. Honestly it was kind of freaky, but definitely cool.

I just happened to wake up particularly early this past Sunday and used the opportunity to marinate the tofu needed for the recipe so that it could all be prepared by the time everyone was awake.

I opted to use some thick toast instead of the home style potato option, mainly because I love toast. I also added in a bit of steamed spinach, just for fun. Spinach is fun, right?

The tofu was awesome, I was able to grill it up with breaking it or getting it stuck to the bottom of the pan (for once!). I had a nice light flavor that was complimented well by the hollandaise sauce and the hint of liquid smoke on the tomato.

I would say that this is probably the most authentic vegan tofu benedicts that I’ve had. I’d be interested to try it with some sort of vegan ham. I enjoyed the tomato, but perhaps would like to grill it up a bit. In fact, I think I’d just like to try a million different versions of vegan benedict and have it for brunch every weekend.

bread and butter

Dear readers, this post has a split personality. But that’s kind of just how I am. I’m leading you, just momentarily, to a more personal place.  A place of bread and butter.

I was reading this post the other day about following your dreams and your passion and it really resonated for me. Now, while it may seem that I spend most of my time in the kitchen our out photographing fun stuff with Shawn, the truth is I have a full time, totally not creative job,* just like tons of other people out there. I spend most of my day calculating things and making a lot of spreadsheets.

Then I get to go home and bake and blog and photograph and sew for the few hours I have before I am too tired to function. It’s been going like this for about the past few years with a few variables. At some point there was a lot of script writing. Sometimes there are a lot of night time bicycle adventures. At one point there was a lot of watching edits of Brainwashed Love.

It hasn’t been easy. It’s been a lot of work, to keep up all these interests and paths. Sometimes I hate that I can’t just decide on one thing. I know it won’t ever be like that for me. I want to make movies. I want to bake cupcakes. I want to do it all. Of course all these creative endeavors come at a cost. So that’s what the day job is for in the mean time. It’s the bread and butter.

In 2009 Shawn and I took that crazy leap of making a feature film. We completely produced and financed it ourselves. It was something we both knew we had to do. I’m sure it was one of the best decisions we’ve made even though it was scary. I’m still so proud of what we’ve accomplished by making a movie together. It’s something that many people dream of doing and never get the chance to do. We did it, and we did it well. Not to mention it just gave us that much more confidence for the next one.

So here I am, a bit over a month out from the first time we screened our film, thinking about how to follow my dreams. I know I have to devote as much of myself to these creative endeavors as I can stand.

I’ve realized that I love this blog. I don’t just enjoy blogging, I LOVE cute & delicious. I love that it is a place where I can sprinkle bits and pieces of all the things I create. So I’ve recently invested more time into it, trying to post more often and make it as cool as possible because it makes me happy.

I’m loving planning our wedding. It’s like the biggest excuse to craft and design ever. How could I not love that?

The one thing I’ve had to let fall to the wayside recently is Vegan Bake Sale. It will return. In a grander more splendid form. Cross my heart.

I’ve been really into practicing photography lately. I’ve always taken photos for this blog (although, in the past, all the good photos were taken by Shawn). I’m really trying to step up my game. It helps that I have a good teacher.

I’m still trying to figure out how to turn all these loves, these things I’m truly passionate about, the things that I live for, into my bread and butter. I know somehow someday this will happen, I just haven’t figured out how to make it happen yet. I’m ready though.

So I’m leaving you with these thoughts and some insanely good Beer Bread from a mix I bought at Trader Joe’s. I know I said I don’t usually buy boxed bake goods but sometimes you have to make an exception. This is one of those times.

Spork Online

Today I come bearing awesome news for vegans across the country. The lovely ladies of Spork Foods have brought their amazing cooking classes to the web with Spork Online.

I’ve written before about how awesome and insightful their cooking classes are, but I can’t stress enough how talented these two are. Their recipes are innovative and delicious, showcasing how great vegan cooking can be.

So here is the rundown, with a membership to Spork Online you get access to their themed four course cooking classes as well as a bunch of other goodies. You’ll get to see them cook with special guest appearances, travel out of the classroom to see how some vegan products are made and have access to Food 911 where they’ll answer your food emergency questions.

Basically, if you’re not in Los Angeles and aren’t able to go to one of their classes in person, you now have the opportunity to take probably the best vegan cooking class around. The Spork sisters really know their stuff. Even if you are in LA and haven’t been able to check them out, here is your chance.

Just look at how lovely this tiramisu is. Let me tell you, I know from experience, making tiramisu is not easy. Especially beautiful vegan tiramisu.

If you’re a long time vegan or just want to learn some more about vegan cooking Spork Online is definitely the place to go. Not only do the Sporkies create fantastic recipes and make them easy for anyone to follow, but they also have a wealth of information about nutrition and food history.

So here they are, Jenny and Heather. They’re really that smiley and fun in real life. Trust me when I say, if you take one of their classes, you’ll feel as good as they look in this photo. Not even kidding.

Need to convince your family that vegan food is super tasty and doesn’t taste like cardboard? Take one of these classes and surprise them with your newly acquired cooking skills. I think this would also be a an awesome holiday gift, but that comes from a girl who loves to cook.

Now go to Spork Online already and sign up!

Vintage Postcard Save the Dates

The first thing on our big to do list of wedding planning was making our save the dates. Shawn and I both really liked the idea of using vintage post cards. We went to the infamous Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market and bought up a bunch.

It was super fun to browse through the booths and find cards we liked. I really liked reading the ones with original writing on the back. People sure did talk about their sick relatives a lot back in the day.

The best part about getting the postcards at the flea market, rather than ordering online and just getting a lot of unknown cards, we were able to hand pick each one. We chose ones that were all from California and if possible, from Los Angeles.

We hand stamped each postcard with a stamp set our friends had given us. I can’t tell you how handy that stamp set is. It’s really just a box full of individual letters so we’ve used it for our return addresses, postcards for our movie screening, cupcake boxes, you name it.

We also chose one of the photos that Shawn took of us to send along to personalize each announcement.

We hand addressed all the envelopes with some help from my mom and sent them out!

I think they look rather sweet and definitely capture that vintage feeling that will be present throughout our wedding. Next up…invitations!

p.s. we didn’t really send one to the president…but wouldn’t it be cool if we did?