A Great Party

The sign of a great party?

Three kinds of fermented cabbage for your (vegan) hotdog.  How many parties have this?  I'm pretty lucky to have friends like Heather and Jesse.

Heather's birthday party was a juicing party and I think that everyone needs to hear about this idea and copy it!  I take no credit for it at all.  They had a juicer whirring all night!  There were "house juices" already made (grapefruit, apple-celery, and orange) and everyone got to combine any fruit or vegetable to make their own signature drink, with or without alcohol.

How many parties do you go to that are centered around fruits and vegetables?  Not many, I'm guessing.  What a great way to promote fruits and veggies!

Sure, not every party needs to have a public health message...But I think this is the coolest idea ever!

Gluten-Free, Vegan, Root Beer Banjo Cake

I'm not sure how many banjo-playing, mostly vegan, gluten free folks who love root beer there are out there.  But if you know someone who fits this description, then please make them this cake- Mike loved his!

Gluten-Free, Vegan Root Beer Cake
This recipe will make enough for 2 banjo cakes, which I recommend doing in case you mess one up (I did).  Choose your favorite vanilla frosting for this.

1 bottle Virgil's root beer (or other all-natural variety)
1 cup millet flour
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Pinch of each ground spice: Nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. mint extract
1/2 cup nondairy milk
Homemade vanilla frosting
1 handful of chocolate chips

Pour root beer into a small saucepan and simmer until reduced to about 1 cup (about 10 minutes).  Set aside to cool.  Preheat oven to 350F.  Line the bottom of 2 little 4" springform pans with parchment and grease the sides with a little oil.  Do the same to a loaf pan.

Whisk together the millet flour, rice flour, starch, xanthan, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the canola oil, sugar, vanilla, mint extract, milk and cooled root beer until the sugar is dissolved.  Add liquid to the flour mixture and stir until thoroughly combined.  Spoon batter into the two round pans and loaf pan.  Smooth the top with wet fingers to prevent the batter from sticking to you.  Bake for about 20 -25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Set aside to cool for about 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges of the pans and carefully invert (for the loaf pan) or release the sides (springform).  Allow to cool completely.

To form into a banjo cake, cut the loaf cake in half lengthwise to form two "necks".  If you want to get detailed and carve a shapely peghead, go right ahead.  I did and then found that my fluffy frosting covered it all up!

I made the Fluffy Vegan Buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but used 1 cup of Earth Balance margarine instead of 1/2 c. margarine and 1/2 c. shortening.  You do what you think is right.  You'll need to reserve about 1/2 cup of the frosting for the chocolate details.

After frosting both the round cakes and the "necks" with buttercream, place the neck firmly against the round cake on a serving platter.  Then just melt a handful of chocolate chips with a smidge of nondairy milk (like 1 Tbsp.) and whisk into about 1/2 cup of the leftover frosting.  Spoon this into a plastic baggie and snip off a teensy tinesy bit off the tip so you can pipe on the strings, bridge, frets, and hardware.

Serve with rootbeer and old-time music!

Southern Style

Because I feel the need to give things themes, my birthday was a "Dirty South" themed event.  I ushered in the big 3-0 with biscuits & jam, pickles, black-eyed peas and greens, sweet tea, gangsta rap and red velvet cake.  We planned on playing dominoes, but there was too much food on the table.

This is how it's done, people.  

My BFF Sarah made red velvet cake and even boiled down beets to make a natural red food coloring because she knows I won't touch the artificial stuff.  Just look at all that cream cheese frosting! (And, yes, I know I look like I'm about to gleefully slaughter the cake with that knife).

My other BFF Brandon drove in from Madison and whipped up the black eyed peas and greens from Appetite for Reduction.  We cashed out the bottle of liquid smoke on this one. 

My birthday was basically an excuse to eat biscuits all day.  I made a double batch and used a little cookie cutter to make them much smaller than usual.  Here they are with my favorite jams from this year: Raspberry Chipotle, Cranberry Ginger and Apricot Vanila.

If I was in the South still, these would have been picked from my own pecan tree, but the bulk bins at the co-op made do.  I coated these in a mixture of melted Earth Balance and maple syrup and tossed them with chile powder, cayenne and cinnamon before roasting them.  Positively addictive.

Does anyone else's family do this?  We always had crackers with cream cheese and jalapeno jam when I was growing up, but most of my friends were baffled by this (they ate it anyways).  These are Back to Nature brand "Ritz" style crackers with Tofutti cream cheese and my own jalapeno jam from way back in '08.  

Not pictured: Pickled okra, sweet tea, gin 'n juice and a fantastic Trinidadian habanero-pineapple dish.  I'll be making that soon and telling you all about it.  

Belated Fat Bombs

This post is so late, I'm tempted to lie and tell you that I made this crazy indulgent appetizer for President's Day.  Because who doesn't celebrate President's Day with spicy, cream cheese stuffed fat bombs?

But the truth is that this was one of my Superbowl snacks.  I'm just belated in sharing it with you by about 2 weeks.  Just think of it this way, I'm 50 weeks early for Superbowl 2012!

I wanted to do this recipe after drooling over our co-op's cheese buyer's recipe for cream cheese stuffed jalapeños wrapped in bacon.  Sounds crazy good, right?!  As you can guess, they weren't vegan.

This version is, though.  Even those these are vegan, they aren't in any way healthy.  I can't in good conscience recommend consuming them more than once a year.  Here's how to make them.

Most of this recipe is just vegan versions of the ingredients  from the original recipe-- nothing too creative. I thought that the Tofutti might be lacking in a bit of flavor (or rather that it has a bit of its own weird flavor), so I added some Veganaise to make it a little more spreadable and flavorful.  I don't recommend doing this.  It made the final product taste TOO fatty and rich.  I did add in a dash of tamari and 3-4 minced green onions.  I think this was fantastic.

One change I'd like to try is to brush the bacon with coconut oil before baking.  I think it'll help it crisp up some since it's baked instead of fried up in a skillet.

Vegan Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapeños Wrapped in Bacon

6-8 jalapeños, halved lengthwise and seeded
1/2 tub Tofutti cream cheeze, room temperature
3-4 green onions, minced
Dash of tamari or soy sauce
1 package LightLife Smart Bacon
16 toothpicks

Preheat oven to 350F.  Make sure all seeds and most of the inner membranes are removed from the jalapeños, unless you like things pretty spicy.  Stir together cream cheeze, onions and tamari.  Using a spoon or knife, stuff jalapeño halves with cream cheeze mixture, just until level with the top, not overflowing too much.  Carefully separate the pieces of bacon from each other.  Wrap bacon around each jalapeño half and secure with a toothpick.  Place jalapeños on a parchment-lined or greased baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes or until bacon is crisped slightly and cheeze is bubbly and hot.

Serve immediately... or enjoy cold the next day, straight out of the tupperware, while standing in front of the fridge.  I think they're best cold.

Local Party Food

We hosted a game night at our house last night and I challenged myself to make the snacks as close to 100% local as possible- Here's how I did:

Our burritos were made with homemade flour tortillas (flour from MN and soymilk from IA), homemade refried black beans (beans from MN, peppers from the garden, green garlic from MN/WI), lettuce from the garden, and homemade pico de gallo (tomatoes from MN, green onions from WI, japaleno from garden, cilantro from MN/WI).

The chips were from Whole Grain Milling Co. in MN. The cookies are my Sunny Oat Maple
Cookies (local except for the oil, salt, and vanilla). Our beverage of choice for the night was Rhubarb-Ade. I think I posted before about the Rhubarb Lemonade recipe that my friend Sarah gave to me. I tweaked it just a bit-

Rhubarb-Ade

6-7 cups chopped rhubarb
7 cups water
1 cup maple sytup
a small handful of fresh lemon verbena leaves
additional 1-2 cups cold water

Boil the rhubarb, maple syrup, and water until the rhubarb is very mushy (maybe 10 minutes). Then strain the liquid in to a pitcher with a fine mesh strainer. In a smaller cup, smash the lemon verbena leaves with a cup water to release the flavor, then add to the rhubarb liquid. Taste the rhubarb ade and add more cold water if it need to be diluted or more maple syrup if it is too sour. {If it's too sweet, you can add some lemon juice, but my rhubarb was tart enough} Refrigerate pitcher for at least 4 hours, until thoroughly chilled.

Here's a great bagel sandwich I had a few nights ago- made with a St. Paul Bagelry "everything" bagel, MN tomatoes, MN made pickles, my homemade pickled radishes, and Wisconsin dill mustard. Yum!

Scattergories Snacks

Last night we hosted a game night in honor of one of our most favorite work friends- She's moving away to Fargo and will be dearly missed around the co-op and at our game nights. I mean, sometimes the only people who show up at our game nights are her and Mike's best friend!

Unfortunately, she was very ill yesterday and couldn't come to the party...so we mourned the loss of our Sophia over a Mediterranean inspired spread:
Garlicky hummus with carrrot sticks, spicy Tunisian olive mix, green olives with herbes de Provence, and Deglet dates.
Stuffed grape leaves (Dolmades) with lots of extra dill ad lemon, just the way I like them.

And peanut butter chocolate cookies...I know...not fitting with the Mediterranean theme. I tried, though.

I made Pistachio Rosewater Cookies from VCon, but adapted them to be gluten free, oily, sugary, masses. I must have measured something wrong, because my (so far) fool proof method of GF cookie making has failed me. They are hard as solid burnt sugar on the bottom and leave behind oil stains on anything they touch. The flavor is great, though. And the dog knocked them off the counter this morning and ate through the plastic bag to get to about 3 of them. So they can't be that bad, right?