Vegan Apple Pie with Crumb Topping

Apple pie is pretty much a staple around these parts during the holidays (evidenced here, here, and here), but lately I've been a bit discouraged by how runny my filling has been. So for this year I decided I'd try cooking the apples on the stove with some corn starch before putting it in the crust. I'm so happy with how it turned out, I don't think I'll ever go back to my old ways. 

Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

(P.S., I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that those leaves, those were cut by hand, with a butter knife. Watch out Martha Stewart.) 

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe got its beginnings up in Troy, New York while my mom was getting her Masters in math (she's a smarty). She bought a bag of Price Chopper store brand semi-sweet chocolate chips and because she was away from home decided to use the recipe for chocolate chip cookies on the back of the bag rather than trying to hunt down the one we normally used. As luck would have it, the cookies ended up being way better than the ones we normally made. As soon as she got home, the old recipe was out and the Price Chopper chocolate chip cookies were in. We've since then made some modifications and improvements making it what it is today: the recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies you'll ever have...added bonus: they're cholesterol free!  

Guest Post: Vegan Seitan Barbecue Ribs

In just about a week my single days will be over and I will be marrying my best friend (insert awwws here). It's shaping up to have the makings of a really wonderful day of family, celebrating, and of course, food. Food can be a touchy subject, especially when you're talking vegan food. But since my husband-to-be is mostly vegan and I'm all vegan, we decided it really only made sense to go the vegan route and serve a mixture of faux meat proteins and vegetables that would hopefully make everybody happy.

To have a vegan wedding can be easy if you plan on paying for a vegan caterer; however, after talking to a few, it became pretty clear that my family could do it cheaper and better. So my parents strapped on their catering caps, developed a menu based on my husband-to-be and my favorite foods, and set out a schedule to get everything made by the big day. I must say I'm quite impressed with what they've come up with and the work they've put in so far. My parents are great cooks and they're no novices when it comes to cooking for a crowd, but I was a bit skeptical about their ability to put together a meal 100% from scratch for 100+ people. But as we're just a few days away, I believe they're going to not only pull it off, but pull it off with flying colors.

In order to get so much food together with just the two of them, they've been pre-making, freezing, and canning a lot of the dishes and side dishes all summer. And all throughout the food-making process they have been emailing me and keeping me up to date with the status. Usually it's just a "we canned chili today," or "perfected the gluten free chocolate chip cookies." But when this very detailed description with associated photos came into my inbox, I knew it had to be shared, even if it puts my regular blog posts to shame with its descriptiveness.

So without further ado, my father's guest post, or as he called it "a photo experience" on making vegan barbecue ribs:

Start with an empty counter:

Add all the dry ingredients: gluten, paprika, onion powder, nutritional yeast:

Mix them together:

Combine all the wet ones: water, liquid smoke, soy sauce:

Add to the dry and mix them together:

Take them out of the bowl and you have big lumps of mixture:

Pull them apart into tiny 1 x 2 inch pieces:

In the meanwhile, put 2 gallons of water, 1/3 cup hot sauce and 2 tbsp salt in pot to boil:

After the ribs soak up the water they look like this:

They cook for 30 minutes and then you strain them. This is 1/3 of the ribs. Notice how much bigger they are:

Then you put them on drying racks to dry. There will be 4 trays like this:

Here they are waiting to be desiccated:

4 hours later they are much smaller than when they went in. They're slightly crunchy on the outside:

Put them in a big bowl and a whole bunch of bbq sauce and let them sit there, swimming in yummy sauce for an hour or so:

Then put them in two pans (this in one of them) and put them in the oven for 30 minutes:

There you have it. 7 hours of time and about 120 (depending on how many you sample along the way ribs.

Vegan Potato Salad

Summer may officially be over, but a good potato salad is always in season.

Vegan Grilled Cheese with Caramelized Apples

Why I never made this before, is beyond me.

I would imagine everyone at some point has made a grilled cheese sandwich, but have you tried adding caramelized apples? You probably should.

Avocado Summer Roll

These are one of my new favorite snacks/appetizers. They are light, healthy, and crazy delicious. There are lots of variations you can make to the recipe below. You could include cabbage, jicama, baked tofu, bean sprouts etc. One thing I always tend to include though is fresh basil. Mixed with the light rice paper and crunchy vegetables, the flavors combine for a perfect and refreshing summer snack.

Urban Blackberry Jam

I am currently in love with two things:

1) It is blackberry season in Seattle and they are everywhere

2) The color of my freshly canned blackberry jam (seriously in love, as evidenced by the quantity of pictures I've included in this post)

It all started when my mom was here visiting. While we were out exploring she pointed out all the many, many blackberry plants growing in various spots around the city and suggested I make jam. My mom is a genius sometimes.

After she left, I ventured out for a little urban berry picking. I chose a nice shady spot alongside a busy road in Seattle at rush hour. Needless to say I got my fair share of gawks, but I was determined to make this jam. So I got over my stage fright and began clambering all through the thorny bushes. Once finished, I marched my way proudly, albeit a bit roughed up, through my neighborhood with a bowl full of blackberries destined to be my first batch of jam.

I have been an assistant jam maker for most of my life, which primarily entails stirring and cleaning, but never the head jammer. While the job responsibilities of an assistant weren't exactly the best preparation for breaking off on my own, being in the kitchen as the whole process went down apparently gave me a pretty good gist of the procedure because I am now officially marking my first jam attempt as a success. All the jars made that lovely "pop" sound indicating they sealed properly, they have a beautiful deep purple color, as I may have mentioned previously, and considering I ate probably an entire jar of jam before it actually made it to the jar, I can confidently say it is going to make one mean PB+J.

While I'd like to say it was all fun and easy and I took to jam making as if I was Mr. Smucker himself, I do admit there were a few frantic calls home to my parents. Which is probably for the better because now you can learn from my nearly disastrous mistakes!