Daiya. It's to Daiya for.

Oh, I'm so punny.

So it would appear a lot of people come to my blog because it's the first page that comes up if you do a google search for Daiya vegan lasagna. While this makes me happy, it also makes me embarrassed because if you recall, my only posted lasagna attempt looked a lot like vomit. If any of you vegans saw that gooey mess and thought "hm, I would like to try that" I would like to hear how it went. Hopefully you had more sense than I did and you added more layers and/or used a taller dish.

Anyway, Daiya is really taking off now that it's in all the Whole Food's stores nationwide and more and more veggie restaurants are picking it up. (I mean, seriously, vegan/gluten free mac and cheese at Veggie Grill? Amazeballs.) So with more people trying to figure out what to do with their blessed packages of fake cheesyness, I thought I would post a list of my 10 favorite things to do with Daiya. Some with pictures. The rest you will need to use your imagination.


BTW, my cheesyness? 100% real.


1. Vegan daiya cheesy pasta, as mentioned above.

2. Grilled cheese. Duh. Add some tomato soup. Yum.

3. Quesadillas. I know this picture of quesadillas is rather uninspired, you can imagine it is a lot fancier if you prefer. I think I just really wanted to eat it.


4. Daiya Cheese sauce. Cheese sauce usually is 1/2 cup of soy milk and a pinch of salt, boiled, then brought down to simmering. When it's simmering, stir half a pack of cheddar daiya in, along with margarine if you want. Of course, this is just a base, you can probably add jalapenos or drained salsa for queso dip or whatever you want to do with it. I like to use it for baked potatoes.


5. Or you could use it for nachos.


6. Of course, daiya pizza is good too.
>


7. Vegan Potato Cheese soup (good use if you make too much cheese sauce)


8. Chili cheese veggie dogs/fries. A staple in my home.

9. if you have leftover veggie dogs, make vegan cheddar pigs in a blanket. Kroger crescent roll dough is vegan (you may wanna doublecheck to make sure, I got it at Ralphs here in CA). Add some daiya cheddar and cut up hot dogs, and voila!

10. Or you can bake with it. I experimented baking some cheddar daiya into some corn muffins. It was pretty good, but I think I need a new muffin recipes. Maybe I should contact Betty White.

Tofu lettuce wraps a la me

I know, I know, not a whole lot of updates. I need to step up my blogging game. Luckily, I have moved and have a beautiful new kitchen, so I'm hoping that will inspire me.

So, as usual, I've fallen a cooking rut recently, but I did make a recipe recently that turned out pretty well. For those of you who have been to PF Changs, you have probably tried the lettuce wraps, available in tofu or chicken. They are sooooo yummy, I crave the tofu wraps constantly. Well, being as cost conscious as I am (read: stingy and cheap) I wanted to be able to have them in the comfort of my own home. I know that they use oyster sauce in the tofu and a bunch of other stuff I can't put my finger on, so I just kind of put together my own variation. Super easy, super yummy, definitely not the same, but still good.

Of course I didn't measure anything so everything should be added according to taste. Sautee the following items together.

1 block of extra firm tofu, drained and diced
Few splashes of soy sauce. Don't add too much at the beginning.
Olive oil
Pepper
Red Pepper Chili flakes
Powdered ginger (I'm sure fresh ginger would be awesome)
Onion Powder
Shredded carrots, diced into small pieces
1 can of water chestnuts, drained and diced
Minced/chopped garlic

Sautee over a medium heat until the tofu is nice and brown. During this process, your pan may dry up and make the tofu stick to the pan, so you will need to add some splashes of soy sauce and olive oil as you go on (which is why I advise to be conservative with the soy at first, to avoid overly salty tofu). PF Changs serves their wraps with some full leaves of lettuce and wedges of lime. Simply spoon some of the tofu mix into a leaf of lettuce, squeeze some lime juice, and enjoy. We had ours with rice, as you can see in the pictures below.

The mix


The wrap

A tale of two turkeys, or why I am the worst vegan ever.

Warning for vegans: raw turkey photos :( Totally not vegan friendly.



So I made 2 turkeys today. I made a real turkey and a tofurkey.

"But you are vegan" you say. "Why make a turkey?" I don't have an answer that covers every inch of the moral ground I stand on, so my easy answer is, well, it was free and I saw it as a challenge. But yeah, I'm not a good vegan at all.

I received a 14 pound turkey at work monday morning and it was frozen solid. It slowly thawed up until Thursday morning. In the days leading up to cooking day, I was going over different recipes and how to cook it. I mean, I've made chicken and pot roasts and stuff but a whole turkey was completely new to me. So come thanksgiving morning, I had an idea of what to do.

I woke up at about 8:30 am and tell husbinator to gut the turkey. Being a good husbinator, he does so. I think I would have been too grossed out. He later tells me about the blood that was in there and yeah, I would've freaked out.

So I step into the kitchen and there is my turkey.


I will admit, it made me sad. Poor turkey. I couldn't look at the neck hole because I kept thinking about how it used to have a head. It got easier as I got used to handling it, but there was sadness over the turkey. However, like the title says, I am the worst vegan ever, so eventually I was OK.

Sophie, however, was ecstatic. I think she thought the turkey was chicken. She loves chicken.




So Step one. Rub oil and salt and pepper all over the turkey. This required turning the turkey over which again, grossed me out. I then chopped up some onion, celery and garlic for the inside of the turkey. Then it was oven time.



It was going pretty well. At this point, I make some time to be superwife and I make my husband some eggs and bacon.

I always overcook eggs for some reason.


I was supposed to baste the turkey every 45 minutes with it's own juices, so I did that. About the 2nd basting, I thought, "what am I supposed to do with all those extra leftover veggies?"I doublecheck my recipe and they were supposed to go into the pan when I first put it into the oven.

Damn it.

So the next basting, in they went.



It looks like a real grown up turkey, right? So the next basting, it was time for a special step.



I wrapped the sucker in bacon.

Oh did I forget to mention I was making a bacon wrapped turkey recipe? Silly me. I must have forgotten that detail.

Back into the oven it went for an extra 30 minutes. In the mean time, it was finally time for turkey #2, aka the tofurkey.

Tofurkey's have a much less dramatic presentation than real turkeys. A lot of people ask me what they look like. Well, mystery solved! Here is a tofurkey in the packaging:


Kind of like a football without the pointy ends or something. They're good though. They also come with stuffing on the inside that we don't have to worry about, and that's kind of nice.

So to add flavor to a tofurkey, you need a baste. The box has 2 recipes on the box, but I use a combination of the two. My baste contains orange juice, soy sauce, garlic, olive oil and a bit of ginger.


It's yummy. Here is my tofurkey basted:



I know. It doesn't take your breath away. But for a veggie, it is totally yummy.

So into the oven it went. Tofurkeys get baked covered at 350 for 1 hr and 15 minutes. Then it gets basted again and cooks for an extra 10 minutes uncovered.

So how did the turkeys come out?

Bacon covered turkey:


And my tofurkey dinner:



Happy Thanksgiving!

(btw, if you want to see the recipe for the bacon turkey, click here)

Daiya cheese vegan lasagna and vegan cheesy pasta

Warning: This blog is not safe for people who don't like delicious food that may look like vomit.



Yes, I know. You are tired of hearing about the magic of Daiya vegan cheese. Unless you are vegan yourself, in that case you might be singing Daiya's praises along with me.

So my latest attempt, on Jess' suggestion was lasagna. Usually lasagna has beef and ricotta cheese and stuff (mmmm ricotta, I miss you.) No vegan ricotta out there that I know of, and I'm not really interested in an almond tofu mixture, so I improvised. I used the following:

Filling:
1/2 lb of italian Daiya, divided
1 package of tofutti Sour Supreme or another vegan sour cream
1 package of tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
1 cup of frozen spinach, prepared
Basil
Garlic
1/4 c margarine

1 jar tomato sauce (i used a basil marinara)
no bake lasagna noodles

Save 1/2 of the Daiya and mix the rest of the ingredients. I used my stand mixer for this, until it was all creamed together.

I then layered the sauce, noodles, mix, and the rest of the daiya. Bake according to your pasta's instructions.

Um. It was interesting results.



I probably should have had more layers. Was it pretty? No. Not really. That dinner was just a bowl of delicious cheese mixture with intermittent noodle pieces throughout.



The cheese was really goooooood though. SO I decided to try again, just with cooked noodles. So next time around, I made the mix, I cooked a pound of noodles (I think they were fuscilli noodles) and I mixed the drained noodles, cheese and tomato sauce. I topped it off with sprinkled daiya and baked at 350 for 30 minutes.


The results:


Hot vegan cheesy pasta deliciousness.



So that's it for this blog. Hopefully my melted over lasagna didn't make you vomit.

Stay tuned for upcoming special features:A Vegan Thanksgiving and Eating through Las Vegas with special guests, Jess and Adam! They're not vegan so there should be meaty food porn as well.

Freezing tofu, and making orange peel (style) tofu

Tofu.

Did you cringe? If you did, I am not surprised. I love it though. I hear people say it's flavorless and spongy, and that's true, that is part of the charm. You can use it I all kinds of stuff, and it just takes on the flavors whatever you cook it in.

One of my favorite dishes is Orange Peel Tofu from Pick Up Stix, a takeout chinese place. I was craving some the other day but I no longer live superclose to one and didn't feel like driving out of my way to get it, so I figured I could just make it.

Well you can't make Orange (style) tofu without tofu. Duh. Lucky for me, I keep tofu in the freezer for just such an occasion.



Oh yeah, I should tell you, tofu changes color when you freeze it It magically changes back when you thaw it. Appetizing, right? Yeah, I know. You can let it thaw in the fridge or do what I do and run it under hot water in the sink until it comes out of the packaging. Put your partially frozen tofu in a pot of simmering water or broth. I just chuck a boullion cube in the water. The nice thing about frozen tofu is that it absorbs more as it cooks than unfrozen.

After it's thawed and simmering away, you can cut it into cubes.


See? It's normal colored again.

While that's going on, you should make some rice. Because you are super busy (or lazy), use a rice cooker.


After some simmering in broth a while, your tofu can stop swimming. Heat up a skillet with some olive oil and sautee the suckers.


Yummy right? Now you can add some sauce. I used this recipe for Orange Style Tofu, mostly because I'm lazy and it was the easiest looking one I could find. It was pretty tasty though. I also threw in some water chestnuts because that's what they do at Pick Up Stix.

Wanna see?




I gotta say, I like it.

The amazing burrito story, or a boring day with me. With lots of pictures.

In this case, amazing = boring. Amazing also means picture heavy.

My lovely friend Jess recently posted a blog about an average day in her life in West Virginia. I find things like this interesting. Perhaps that is why I watch so much TLC. I like to see how others live, even if they are crazy stage moms or little people or whatever. Anyway, I decided last Saturday would be picture blog day. If you have been paying attention to my other blogs, you know what Saturday is: grocery day. My favorite day of the week, believe it or not. I like shopping, even if it is for food. I like knowing the house is stocked. It makes me feel spoiled. Maybe that's why I also like paying bills. I do not like HAVING bills, but I like paying them, knowing that I don't have to worry about it for a whole other month. I'd pay all my bills in one day if I could.

Anyway, for everyone in Southern California, please bear with me. I have friends in WV and Canada and stuff, so I took lots of pictures of things we've seen 1000x for their benefit :) Yes, I love them THAT much.

Saturday starts off like any other Saturday. I wake up around 9 ish. I look at my phone. I try my damndest to stay awake.



It never works. Bonus points if you can name everything on my husbands nightstand. And by nightstand, I mean the crate Sophie sleeps in.

Time to get out of bed. Rupert does not approve.


Sophie is enthusiastic about the day.


I step into my messy living room and already want to dive into bed again.

One of these days, I will have matching couches. And an entertainment center.

I can't jump back into bed though. It's grocery day. I have a list and everything!


That's my menu up there at the top. The TJ's are the stuff I get at Trader Joes.

So off husbinator and I go into the real world. It's a cool Autumn day in Southern California.


And my chariot awaits.

Yes, that is my toaster. Every reputable nerd has one. It hasn't been washed in about a year.

First stop: Big Lots!



I buy my coffee here because the brand I like is only $5 here. It's like $8 in the grocery store. Screw that, yo. I live cheap stuff. While browsing the shelves, I did see a box of 100 calorie dog treats. I regret not taking a picture. WHY? I did not realize so many dogs were on Jenny Craig. What's next, low carb wet food?

We do have a detour on our trip. Husbinator is brewing beer with my awesome cousin, and today was bottling day. So off we go to Oshea's for some bottles.


Neat little place. Lots of equipment and kits and stuff. Too bad beer brewing takes up so much space.


Mission accomplished.

At this point, we are hungry. Husbinator, being the awesome man he is, obliges my whim for some yummy vegan food. So we head for the Irvine Spectrum.



And head for Veggie Grill for some amazing vegan noms.


I cannot express how much I love their food. Carnivores even like it (well, ok, they tolerate it, but much better than other veggie stuff). I chose a Southwestern Chick'n Sandwich with Sweet Potato fries and a root beer. Heaven on a plate.

That little cup? Vegan chipotle ranch dip. I could drink it by the gallon.

Properly stuffed, we continued on our way to grocery shop. It was a light grocery day, only 2 stores.

First was Albertsons. Albertsons is boring. I forgot to take pictures, it was so boring. You didn't miss much though.


Next was Trader Joes.

Can I point out the stupid BMW that parked crooked? I swear, people with money do not know how to park. It's like when I go to South Coast Plaza and the parking lot is pure chaos. Why bother painting lines?

Anyway, if you don't live near a Trader Joes, I feel sad for you. Where do you get your veggie chicken, your soycutash, your kettle corn, your awesome salsa, your potstickers, your curry, or your beer bread mix? And no tiki themes and cartoon characters? That's just sad.


Note to Adam Culver: I don't know if you can tell, but there's Superman sign in the back corner that says "Not even kryptonite can foil our plans to bring you the tastiest produce." I thought it was silly.

At this point I feel like a weirdo for taking a picture in a Trader Joes. Time to go home.

I get home and remember "oh yeah, my kitchen is a mess too."

Told you I am a disaster in domestication.

So what's a girl to do? I start beans for dinner. Burritos tonight, with avocado cucumber lime salad.

Say hello, beans.

Like my big pot? It was my mom's I wonder if we will all get lead poisoning one day.

And while the beans are cooking, I clean my kitchen.

Yay! Btw, underneath that white towel on the counter, there is half a loaf of beer bread that's supposed to be croutons by now. I think it's too far gone now, so it shall reside in my trash bag soon :( Point is, that's not a random white towel, it was there for a purpose damn it.

Rupert and London celebrate the clean kitchen with a kiss.


Did I mention London has a mohawk?


Clean kitchen. Beans simmering. Dinner is a few hours away. What to do now?

Easy choice.

Make a soy iced latte with the coffee I bought at Big Lots.


Settle down with the kids.


And play a video game.


Time goes by. OK, a couple hours go by. The moment we have all been waiting for is here: dinner time!

My beans are ready! Rejoice. Way better than canned.


Time to make my cucumber lime avocado salad. It's exactly what it sounds like. Lettuce, avocado chunks and cucumber with lime squeezed on it. At this moment, I have a big sad. Out of THREE avocados, only 1 is good :( The others have big black gross stuff in them.

This is my only avocado. Out of THREE stupid avocados.


Not very fabulous at ALL.

So, plan B. Use avocados for burritos. Make salad a boring salad with vegan dressing. Not as amazing, but whatever. Shred some carrots, slice some cukes, and we are back on.

FINALLY! Dinner! Wanna see?



Yay! A lovely beans, rice, (daiya) cheddar, avocado, and sour cream burrito with a side salad.

And that my friends is my amazing aka boring burrito story. Or another boring day in my life. In my opinion, boring is very very good most of the time.