Okay, so I woke up this morning and went straight to my finally cold fresh soymilk that I made last night and poured myself a big disgustingly bad for me bowl of generic chocolate cereal.  And you know what?  It was De.li.cious.

I love making my own soymilk and I can’t thank Peter enough for buying a soymilk maker for me.  By making my own soymilk I am avoiding additives and tetrapack cartons that can’t be recycled.  Plus, I have unsweetened soymilk on hand for things like gravy.  As a girl who spent her formative years in the South I cannot stress how important gravy is to me.  I could use it as a condiment the way crazy people use Ranch dressing.  *retch*

After downing far too much sugary cereal goodness I set about making some Mac (shells) & Cheese.  See?  You thought I’d never get to my point, didn’t you?

This isn’t really so much a recipe because there’s nothing to it.  But I’ll explain what went into making this delicious golden concoction of comfort.  I sautéed a handful of onions in some vegan margarine until they were tender.  I then tossed in a bunch of shredded Vegan Gourmet cheddar cheese and a dash of soymilk and stirred until melted and smooth.  I then poured it over the freshly cooked pasta and dished it.

The onion adds a good deal of flavor to this that I heartily recommend.   I don’t like the consistency of onions, but I like the flavor.  That’s why I cook them until they practically fall apart.  This way their texture blends in with the mac & cheese.  Also, when the cheese cools it begins to solidify, much like regular cheese does.  But I’ve yet to find a component to add to my cheese sauce to keep it from doing so.  So if you use Vegan Gourmet cheese in your mac & cheese I would recommend dishing it up in an already warm bowl and eating it quickly.  But doesn’t it look good fresh?  Go ahead and scroll back up.  I’ll be here waiting for you.

On the Vegan Cheese Front, I just learned what many of you probably already knew.  Daiya is now available at the retail level without having to special order it from a website who bought it through food service channels.

Daiya is, in my opinion, the absolute BEST vegan cheese on the market.  And if Food4Less carried it my life would be complete.  At the moment, the only retailer in my area that does carry Daiya is the Ashland Food Coop.  It’s a bit of a drive but worth it in my book.  However, since driving is not something that I do, I have to rely on the understanding of my mother to make the trip to Ashland.  I’m hoping to convince Food4Less to carry Daiya.  They’ve done an excellent job so far of stocking more vegan foods than I ever though I’d find in The Valley.

Well, I have things to do.  So I guess that’s all for now.  Oh, and don’t worry.  I still plan on making that tofu pepperoni and blogging about it.  But I still haven’t been shopping.

Much love

I don’t have any of the pictures from most of these meals readily available, so I’ll just do a picture blog later. But don’t expect a lot. I had a difficult time remembering to take pictures and by the time I did, most of the food was already crammed in my mouth.

I used all of my Daiya cheddar during Peter’s visit. And I have to say that it is fabulous. And if I had a retailer nearby I would be buying Daiya’s Cheddar exclusively. I used Follow Your Heart Cheddar in a homemade cheez-it’s recipe and they turned out okay. Verdict is still out on wheter I will be buying it again. I think I’m just gonna have to try it in more things. But I think the key to using Follow Your Heart Vegan Cheeses is to press out the excess moisture before use because it is a very wet cheese. Also, their cheddar flavor is not something I would just munch on. I didn’t use my Italian Blend Daiya on the pizza I made, although I imagine it would be perfect. Instead I used the Mozzarella flavored Follow Your Heart cheese. I could probably much on the Moz. The taste wasn’t bad alone and it was GREAT on my pizza. Although I liked the other toppings on my pizza, I could happily chow down on an all vegan cheese pizza. So even if the Daiya ends up being better, my cheese of choice will still be Follow Your Heart. It’s local (Food-For-Less in Medford, OR) and a great product.

The moistness of the Mozzarella cheese was not a problem, since it was gonna be melted, and also since fresh mozzarella cheese is a moist cheese anyway. If your only experience eating real mozzarella cheese was in the form of those dry shreds, then you missed out. I effin’ love Follow Your Heart’s Moz Cheese. And I am so incredibly grateful that I have a vegan cheese for pizza that I can find locally.

I have so much more to write about. I got a fabulous soy milk maker from Peter for my birthday that I am über stoked to fire up. I’ve lost 10 lbs since going vegan (not exercising a lick). But I also have a main blog that I need to write a novel in. So this is where this post ends.

So, anyway, last night (was it last night?) I made my seitan nuggets again for him because he had been going on and on about how he wanted to try it. If you want to read what he thought about it, his blog post is here.

Today, after waking at the UNGODLY hour of noon I scampered down to the kitchen and made us some “breakfast” burritos. I had some tofu and wanted to try my first tofu scramble, but didn’t really want to eat it by itself as a side on a breakfast plate.

the scrambled tofu recipe I used was Vegan Dad’s.

I then chopped up some potatoes, soaking them for a bit to take away that raw potato taste that even cooked potatoes have if you don’t soak them first. I fryed them up in a skillet while browning up some gimme lean sausage in another. I then mixed everything together, warmed up some flour tortillas (vegan of course) and cracked open the Daiya I’ve been hording.

Daiya cheese goes a looooong way. It’s more like a concentrated cheese flavor, so if you are a cheese-lover then dial back slightly on the Daiya.

I put all the ingredients in the flour tortillas and browned them up in a pan.

They tasted pretty good and I’ll probably be eating some more again later as there are plenty of leftovers. Peter seemed to like it quite a bit and he’s promised to blog about it too.

I really love milk chocolate. I don’t care for dark chocolate at all. But I LOVE milk chocolate. There is nothing I like more, not even cheese. And I really love cheese. In fact my love of chocolate (I eliminate dark chocolate from that label) might be partially responsible for my weight gain over the past several years. I cannot turn down a candybar. Or I should say, I “could not” turn down a candybar. Because although I have not gone to the store today, all day long I have been mentally turning away chocolate every five minutes. Not that I’m fixated or anything. I’ve heard that there are promising vegan milk chocolates out there but I haven’t stumbled across them yet. I might just have to make some chocolate cupcakes tomorrow to take the chocolate edge off.

On the topic of cooking, I cracked open my Veganomicon cookbook and decided to give something a try. I hadn’t exactly planned for this yet, so it was a lot of thumbing through pages and mentally recounting what I have in my pantry. In the end I decided to try the chickpea cutlets. They came out pretty good for a first try. Second time around should be awesome. I mashed the chickpeas too small and I think I’ll adjust the spices a bit, but all in all they were pretty nummy. Of course I had them with mashed taters, gravy & some other green veg. I have no pictures. My food did not come out at all photogenic. Maybe next time.

My initial plans for the day were to make Vegan Dad’s smoked turkey lunch meat, but it seemed I was lacking a couple things and the appropriate steaming hardware. Please don’t give me helpful tips on how to improvise a steamer. I had nothing I could improvise with. I’m fairly certain you can bake it completely and omit steaming, but I’d rather not. I don’t want to have to do variants in a recipe when I’ve never made it before. Compromises should never come at the very beginning. that’s starting things off on the wrong foot. lol So I didn’t make the fake meat today.

I also had my UPS tracking page for my Daiya shipment opened in a tab all day. And every time I would walk by my computer I would refresh it. It’s really sill because it was sent out for delivery (with every other package) at around 7 this morning. Rationally I knew that the status wouldn’t update until after I got my package, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m like a kid on Christmas and the UPS lady is my Santa. That analogy is all sorts of messed up because though I wouldn’t mind sitting on her lap it would not be in the holiday spirit. Maybe it’s the smart little uniform…

Welp, (yes, the P was intentional) I’m tired and I think I’ll lay down and look at my vegan pr0n (cookbooks). Happy Vegan MoFo!

I’ve read a few reviews here and there for various vegan cheeses. I even saw a blog that had a side by side comparison of several top brands which all failed in some way. However, now there is Daiya.

Daiya is a vegan cheese that melts and from what I’ve heard, tastes pretty good. Problem is that Daiya still hasn’t implimented a retail strategy yet and only sells in bulk to the food industry. A handful of mail order companies? have managed to get Daiya in stock, which they then source out to commercial kitchens to shred & package it in smaller portions. Two retailers, Pangea & Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe are both on the east coast.? Portland Oregon’s Food Fight only carries Daiya in stores and I live in Southern Oregon.

In the end, I ordered online from VeganEssentials who, I believe, is based out of Wisconsin.? The deciding factor was financial. I ordered 2 lbs of Daiya, had to pay for a cooler and ice pack and 2nd day shipping. This was the same across all three websites I found Daiya available from.? However, I found a one-time use coupon for Vegan Essentials that reduced shipping by $7. VeganEssential’s 2-day shipping was marginally less than? the others and in the end I paid $35 for 2 lbs of Vegan cheese.

Let that sink in.

I paid $35 for 2 lbs of vegan cheese.

I will not be repeating this unless Daiya fucking BLOWS MY MIND. At this price, I can’t afford it. This makes me sad because I love cheesey food so incredibly much. So I guess I’ll have to be more careful and plan out exactly how I am going to be spending this dietary currency.

Makers of Daiya cheese take note. There are people out there who willingly paid extra for coolers and 2-day shipping, essentially paying for your product TWICE over. Get off your asses and offer it to the public already so I can request my local grocer carry it.