Something is going to happen. Something wonderful. Something delicious. Something sure to be amazing.

Something that can only be…A WHEELER’S TASTING IN DC. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you obviously haven’t been keeping up on your vegan blogs for the past few months. Wheeler’s Black Label Vegan Ice Cream is pretty much the talk of the town. It’s vegan ice cream that (word on the street has it) blows every other vegan ice cream on the market away. And it’s about time, isn’t it? I prefer Tofutti to the other brands available, but it’s not sensational. Still, I’m withholding judgment until I taste this upstart myself.

And it’s a big deal for DC that we’ll be able to. Toward the end of January, Wheeler’s had a big tasting weekend that included Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Snubbed for Philly? I was not pleased. I mean, we are the capital of the United States. But our day has come, so let me tell all you Washingtonians (and suburbonians) exactly what day it is. Here’s the information—hope I’ll see you there!

WHAT, PRECISELY: “A fun-filled COK (Compassion Over Killing) benefit bash! We’ll be serving free samples of premium vegan ice cream, courtesy of Wheeler’s Black Label Vegan Ice Cream, plus ten percent of sales from Asylum’s vegan menu will be donated to COK.”
WHEN: This Saturday, March 22, 2 - 4 p.m.
WHERE: Asylum Lounge at 2471 18th St., N.W., Washington, D.C.
METRO: Adams Morgan Metro station on the red line
RSVP: info@cok.net or 301-891-2458

Yes, these would be Beverage-Themed Cupcakes #4. And there are still more I want to make (Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes, Margarita Cupcakes). Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World has not yet failed me. I made these for last weekend’s dinner party and they went fast. Even the leftover Cappuccino Creme filling went fast. For the record: my agar-agar flakes mysteriously disappeared, but the filling worked just fine without them (I increased the arrowroot powder to make sure it got firm enough). Here’s the cupcake-filling saga; it begins with the unadorned cupcakes above.

First you stick your (clean) finger in the cupcakes, hollowing out a little reservoir by pushing around the sides of the hole. In my first attempts, the holes weren’t big enough—that means less Cappuccino Creme. No. You want lots of Cappuccino Creme. Make a big hole.

Then you use a pastry bag (or, in my case, a Ziploc-knockoff resealable bag, the poor man’s pastry bag) and fill those cupcakes. This part is a lot of fun. You’d be surprised how much creme can fit in those nice holes you’ve made.

Et voila! Your filled cupcakes, dinner party-ready. If you like you can spread more of the creme on top—I had plenty left over. Or you can let your cupcake eaters spread their own. Either way, you are sure to win friends and influence people with these cute caffeinated cupcakes.

Oh yeah. An all-vegan dinner party. Whose chefs, with the exception of me, are not vegan. Aren’t my friends great?

What was most impressive about this dinner party was not its veganness, however—that accomplishment may have impressed my lacto-ovo and omni friends, but most of you know that’s no problem. The feat lay in cooking all our dishes in a tiny, dirty dorm kitchen with a stove that only has the strength to heat two burners at a time, a considerable shortage of pots and utensils, an oversensitive fire alarm, and a handful of neighbors trying to make their own dinners. Sure, I broke my blender. Sure, we had to waft smoke out the windows with plastic bags. But the food was excellent. And for managing as successfully as we did despite the circumstances, I am particularly proud of us.

On to the fare. What you see above is a vegetable stir fry with fried tofu and a most delectable peanut sauce (not pictured). I’m not responsible for any of that, although I did graciously offer my taste-testing services to its cooks.

At first I was just going to make dessert (more on that later), but we thought we might not have enough food (ha!), so I decided to make a double recipe of my easy-delicious staple, Mac and Cheese from FatFree Vegan Kitchen:

Good as always. Below you see a full plate, which has both of the above dishes plus “Mullatkes”: potato-sweet potato latkes, loosely based on the Potato Latke recipe in Veganomicon. There were about ten gazillion of these, the majority of which we ate while we cooked. I think they might have been the best latkes I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lotta latkes in my day. (Sorry, I just can’t resist the opportunity to make latke puns.) And we even had vegan sour cream on the side! It was practically Channukah.

Not pictured are the tasty but unphotogenic Tom Yum Soup, Amy Winehouse, eighty-three dirty dishes, and Cappuccino Cupcakes. The cupcakes are my babies and thus get their own post. So stay tuned…and throw a dinner party this weekend.

My room is a sty. I haven’t had clean socks in days. I have three loads of laundry, 150 pages of reading, and a fearsome paper to do this weekend. But there’s always dinner.

I pried myself out from under the crushing pile of obligations long enough to make said dinner, as dining hall vegan hot dogs seemed somehow less than appealing. Good meals to good think!

My mom sent me a veganized recipe from the New York Times Bread and Soup Cookbook which she figured would be simple and quick enough for a college vegan to make. I had most of the ingredients on hand and a grocery store run covered the rest.

I further adapted my mom’s adaptation by adding spinach and cayenne to the recipe, so I figure it’s different enough from the original to reproduce here. Oatmeal soup sounded a little strange to me initially, but it was quite tasty. The oatmeal gives it a nice texture and substance, and, well, I always like spinach. I eat cayenne on everything these day; you probably should too. The soup was indeed fast enough for a busy college student to make. On a crusty dorm stove, to boot.

(Sort of) Mexican Oatmeal Soup
Serves Six…or one, with five days of leftovers!

1 1/3 cups rolled oats
4 Tbs olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium (15 oz.) can diced tomatoes, or 2 large fresh tomatoes
6 cups vegetable broth*
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cayenne (or more, to taste)
3-4 cups loosely packed spinach
black pepper, to taste

1. Toast the rolled oats in a large heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they are brown but not burned. Set them aside in a bowl.

2. Heat the oil in the skillet; add the onion and garlic and sauté briefly.

3. Add the tomatoes, broth, salt, cayenne, and oats. Simmer for 6 minutes over medium heat.

4. Add the spinach and stir in until wilted. Grind pepper liberally over soup and serve immediately.

*Because this soup is simple and barely spiced, the quality of the soup will depend largely on the quality of the vegetable broth. Homemade broth is ideal, but I know I don’t have time for that. Make sure the ingredients don’t include too many things that aren’t vegetables; you might need to try a few brands before you find one you like.

I was hoping to make these lemon bars from Veganomicon before I came back to school, but life (and packing) took over and I never got the chance. When I got here one of my (omnivorous) friends raved about them to me. That was all the motivation I needed to make them.

I had never made anything with either agar flakes or arrowroot before. Thickeners are crazy! The bars weren’t hard to make, but I wasn’t sure whether I was handling the thickeners properly. A word of advice: don’t get boiling agar on your hands. Not only will it burn, it will stick to you most persistently. Eventually everything mixed smoothly and I filled the crust and set the bars out to cool.

Having had a half dozen tasters for these, I can say confidently that they’re a hit. Whatever reservations my friends had about the lemon bars’ radioactive hue (hard to detect in this picture) disappeared after the first bite. Want testimonials? “Oh my god, I’m majoring in lemon bar eating.” Fact: making these lemon bars has been proven to increase your popularity by at least 46%.

That said, I should point out that their texture is different from that of the lemon bars I used to eat. The agar makes it quite gelatinous, smooth, and firm (”like a petri dish,” said the lemon bar majorer, and with good reason: most petri dishes are made of agar). The lemon bars I remember from my pre-vegan days were basically thick lemon custard over shortbread. I might try to recreate them someday. Please don’t let that turn you off, though—the only reason we have one lemon bar left is that I’m saving it for the friend who recommended them.

Yikes. Is it Sunday? How did that happen?

Well, I kind of know how it happened. My lovely long winter break ended and I went back to college. In other words, my free time suddenly disappeared and my kitchen became a filthy stove and a clogged sink. So, unfortunately, I won’t be updating (or cooking) as frequently as I have been. I will make my best effort to keep posting regularly, though—but now regularly will probably be a couple times a week. Yesterday I drove to Cleveland to stock up at Whole Foods, so now I can actually get back to cooking. (I’m planning to make lemon bars. Oh yeah.)

In the meantime, here’s a recipe for my favorite dish ever. My parents make it whenever I come home because it’s always the first thing I want to eat. I think it came from my dad’s grad school days, but it’s been substantially adapted to our tastes since then.

Chickpea Curry
serves six to seven

vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped
1 large (28-oz.) can diced tomatoes
(or about 4 large fresh tomatoes)
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp or more cayenne
at least 2 tsp salt
pinch (or more) cinnamon
pinch (or more) cloves
pinch (or more) black pepper
2 large (25-oz.) cans chickpeas, plus at least some of the liquid
olive oil
2-3 Tbs lemon juice
chopped cilantro (or parsley) to taste

1. Sauté onion in oil until translucent.

2. Add garlic and green pepper. Continue to sauté until the pepper is softened.

3. Add tomatoes, turmeric, cumin, cayenne, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper. Cook 5 minutes.

4. Add chickpeas with quite a bit of the liquid. Simmer for a half hour or more.

5. Stir in lemon juice and garnish with cilantro or parsley just before serving. Serve over rice.

Aren’t beverage-themed cupcakes inexplicably delightful? I can’t seem to stop making them. I love chai lattes, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong with this recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Oh my god, let’s just start with the batter. I could have called it a chai latte and drunk it from a cup. The spices were exactly right and it was so creamy and delicious. (Yeah, I lick the bowl. No salmonella risk, right?) Since I was aiming for a solid version of the drink, though, I restrained myself and put them in the oven.

Actually, I think I might have kept them in the oven a tiny bit too long. They were a little spongier than the other cupcakes I’ve made from VCTOTW, but it was certainly nothing grave. They were still good. The only thing I would change in the future is the frosting, actually; I thought they could have used something moist and creamy on top instead of the sugar and spices they recommend. If you wanted to make it really authentic, you could even top it with vegan whipped cream. Ooh, I should do that next time.

Okay, I must admit that this is a meal of ambiguous origins. The corn pudding is southwestern, the collard greens are southern, and the hot seitan “wings” are…from Buffalo? It’s not really a Buffalo wings kind of sauce, though. One thing I’m sure of: it all came from my kitchen.

The Veganomicon Southwestern Corn Pudding caught my eye when I saw it on Vegan Dad. I just wasn’t sure what to make it with. The pudding looked like a bit of work, so I wanted one salty/filling thing and one green thing to go with it that wouldn’t be too labor-intensive.

I settled on seitan for the salty/filling component and collard greens for the green component (you can only eat so much spinach and kale, after all). The former I marinated in the Hot Sauce from Veganomicon’s Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh. (I could have just coated the seitan in Frank’s Red Hot—I practically drink that stuff by the gallon—but I could only find generic! I bought it and it’s just not the same.) Then I coated it in Ener-G Egg Replacer and cornstarch and pan-fried it (a trick I learned from VeganYumYum), topping with more marinade. I used the leftover hot sauce, garlic, and a few drops of liquid smoke to sauté the collards. I’d never cooked collard greens before and I think I could have left them in the pan a little longer. How tender are they supposed to get?

The seitan and the greens were good, but the star of this meal was clearly the corn pudding. It’s not very photogenic, but don’t let that fool you. It’s full of different colors, flavors, and textures. It’s creamy from the coconut milk; it’s crunchy from the corn and red pepper. It’s yellow from the corn (duh), but it’s flecked with red and green from the pepper, scallions, and cilantro. It’s a little sweet and a little salty but mostly just good. Yeah, it’s not the fastest recipe, but I thought it warranted a late dinner. If you like corn—or if you miss summer—make this pudding.

My internet was down for a couple days, so I have some posts to make up. Don’t worry, I’ll keep them brief. I made this soup from VeganYumYum when I wanted vegetable soup that was hearty and filling. We all liked it a lot because it has lentils and soymilk, so it sticks your ribs. All it requires is a slice of crusty bread for sopping up the bowl.

What really makes the soup, though, is the roasted red pepper coulis (forgive the psychedelic pattern). Roasting peppers over a gas stove is so much fun. It might make your kitchen smell weird, but trust me, it’s worth it. The maple syrup and the tahini in the coulis complement each other well, and the sweetness of the whole thing contrasts nicely with the savory soup. I recommend making crazy shapes out of the coulis. Faces would be good.

A couple nights ago a family friend came over for dinner who seemed a bit leery of vegan food. I decided to recycle two of our favorite recipes that I’ve posted about before—no experimenting when doubting omnivores come to dinner. Sure, my dad’s an omnivore, but he’s related to me, so it’s no disaster if I make him something less than dazzling. I made VeganYumYum’s Pan-Fried Tofu, Kale, and Stir-Fried Noodles and Veganomicon’s Tea Poached Pears in Chocolate Sauce for dessert.

These recipes worked before and they didn’t fail me this time, either. I may not have dispelled the idea that vegans subsist on tofu, but I hope I at least demonstrated that we eat good tofu. Our friend seemed to like both components of the meal; he’s not the type to gush, but he did compliment. Good enough for me.