Archive / vegan

As Seen On TV: The Rollie Bisquick Biscuit

Not entirely satisfied with my Bisquick and Rollie collaboration last week, I decided to try another recipe this week that I have had greater success with in the past: the Bisquick biscuit with shredded cheese brushed with garlic butter.

I use Follow Your Heart cheddar as my cheese of choice. Here’s a bit of the mixture. It’s a wee bit sticky but I managed to get a skewer through it and put it down into the vertical cooking chamber of the Rollie.

These biscuits normally cook for eight to ten minutes, so I set my oven timer for ten and watched the cat pace the kitchen while meowing at top speed because he thought it was kibble time. It was not kibble time.

When the timer went off I grabbed the end of the skewer and pulled out only to have the biscuit itself remain in the Rollie’s vertical cooking chamber.

Not one to panic, I ran the skewer around the edge of the biscuit to loosen it and then tipped the whole Rollie over onto my plate. A few crumbs fell out but the Rollie Bisquick biscuit remained mostly intact.

I brushed it with some of the garlic butter and gave it a taste. The verdict: not bad. The biscuit cooked all the way through and had that signature Bisquick garlic cheddar flavor. It no faster that baking in the oven but if you didn’t have access to an oven this would be a perfectly acceptable way to get your biscuit on.

Tasteless Tablescapes: Casino Night

What’s more fun than getting a bunch of friends together for your very own casino night? Doing it up with a Sandra Lee style tasteless tablescapes and turning your card table into a real card table. Spread those decks out! It takes so long to lay out the individual cards that you didn’t have any time to make snacks, but have no fear!

Guests love a plate full of extra cards! Stick one in the tines of the fork for a little extra something something. Tell them that the first person to get a three story house of cards built from the cards on their plate gets to buy take out for the table! They’ll be coming back every week for more casino fun.

Panda’s Portland Oregon Vegan Recommendations

Veganstock comes to Portland Oregon, this September! I have assembled a list of Panda’s Picks for all comers. These are some of my preferred places to get a vegan meal in the Portland Oregon area.

First up! Dovi Vivi pizzeria. I love the corn cashew pizza with cornmeal crust. So good. They use a homemade cashew cheese which is preferable to many of the local places that use Daiya.

Departure is the place to go for a ‘fancy’ meal. The prices are still reasonable and I’ve yet to have a bad menu item here. Asian-Fusion-y served as small plates. Excellent when you have a group so everything can get shared around. Chili lime Brussells, spicy carrot avocado salad, salt and pepper tempeh, oh yes.

Sweetpea Baking Company, for the sweets and sandwiches. They have a line of breakfast pastries that include croissants, almond rings and danish. The lunch sandwiches are also worth checking out with a mix of housemade seitan and tempeh meats.

Falafel House at Slabtown has the best vegan falafel in town. The whole menu is vegan and includes seitan gyros and tater tots.

AND Cafe is my favorite breakfast spot. Good waffles, good housemade sausage, good sandwiches, love their meatloaf. I love the biscuits and gravy Soul Bowl.

DC Vegetarian is a food cart downtown that has a good selection of sandwiches. I prefer the burger but a lot of people like their cheesesteak.

Flavour Spot for their maple pecan waffle taco. Yes.

Cellar Door Coffee Roasters have bagels with Tofutti and good coffee and teas.

Palio also offers coffee and tea with vegan dessert options, including fabulous Irish oat cake.

This is obviously not a comprehensive list of vegan food in the Portland Oregon area. It’s a list of places that I frequent and would recommend to others. The real estate market here has costs going way up, so lots of places are closing and opening with short notice. Check all hours and websites before you go.

The Garlic: Soymilk Hidden In Back of Work Fridge

Every Monday for the month of MoFo I’ll be bringing you breaking news stories from the satirical vegan favorite, The Garlic.

SOYMILK HIDDEN IN BACK OF WORK FRIDGE

Cleveland, OH- Jean Powers, accountant at Crumb, Elliott & Crumb Associates in Cleveland, Ohio, has started hiding her carton of soymilk in the back of the shared work fridge. Her newly opened cartons were mysteriously running out by the end of each week, despite Jean’s frugal usage in her morning coffee.

“At least four co-workers have sneered at my aseptic cartons but it appears some of them are using it behind my back,” Powers reports.

The soymilk was mysteriously drained early for three consecutive weeks. Powers made some quiet inquiries and has been spending an extra fifteen minutes in the shared kitchenette in the mornings but no suspicious activity was observed. At that point Powers decided to take matters into her own hands.

“I put my carton on the second shelf instead of the first, and put the slimy bag of unopened baby carrots in front of it. Those carrots have been in there at least two months, so I’m hoping this solves the problem.”

Tofu Pirate Comics: Answering the Vegan Critics for Vegan MoFo

Awkward Food Photos Veggie Burger Mix

If you are a connoisseur of a good veggie burger as I am, then you know a burger mix is not always the most food photogenic thing one ever did see. I recently got Chloe Coscarelli’s Chloe’s Kitchen from my local public library and was immediately intrigued by her double double drive thru burgers. I like tempeh and I like lentils, so I decided to give it a whirl.

This is a super easy burger recipe to put together, but does require a food processor. You basically mix all the ingredients in the processor until it comes together into a mix that can be formed into patties and pan fried. Simple! But that burger mix turns a light shade of gray-brown and looks like a pile of mush when it comes time to document it for the blog.

This photo needs help!

Photograph that Rubbermaid container on a slab of wood! Remember, wood is good! If you have a rustic wooden background, it will completely complement that burger patty mix. Look at it pop! The juxtaposition is striking. Try it with your awkward food photos!

Food That Looks Like My Cat: Coffee

This is a fun new theme this year for Vegan Mofo! It’s a whole month of Thursdays that feature food that looks like my cat George. This is George.

And sometimes this is George.

Y’all know that I think brown food tastes best, and since George is brown-ish in color and often lays around like a loaf, I decided to do some side by side comparisons to see what foods most resemble George the cat.

My lovely man friend Paul likes his coffee. He likes his fancy coffee, with scales and hand grinders and thermometers and Aero Presses and in this case homemade macadamia nut milk. In the ever present mason jar, no less. I thought it looked like George, so we put it to the test.

The fancy coffee drink it a bit lighter in color than George but not a bad match. George was ultimately not interested in partaking of the fancy coffee drink and continued to sit on the cat rug contemplating deep thoughts.

As Seen On TV: The Rollie Sausage Pancake

It’s Wednesday and that means for the month of September you’ll be seeing my adventures in the world of As Seen on TV. I purchased a Rollie a couple of months ago and you can meet and learn all about him here.

I decided to break in my Rollie by making one of the things suggested in their enclosed recipe booklet: the sausage pancake. A delectable sausage encased in perfectly cooked pancake using vertical cooking technology.

I started out with Tofurky sausage links and a box of Bisquick. I quickly whipped up a vegan version of the pancake recipe on the back of the Bisquick box. Then I skewered one of the Tofurky links and placed it in the Rollie.

Once in, you simply pour in some pancake batter and wait for the magic to happen. It’s a bit difficult to get a good pour into the vertical cooking chamber with the skewer coming out, but I wiped away the excess and then waited and watched. Within a couple of minutes the batter began to rise as promised in the Rollie video.

Unfortunately my batter was rising right out of the vertical cooking chamber, which meant it was not going to cook. I quickly scooped out what I could with a spoon. One of the keys to a successful Rollie is to not overfill the vertical cooking chamber. The cookbook recommends using 1/4 cup of batter, and though that seems slight, when combined with the volume of the sausage it will indeed be enough.

The pancake sausage did not rise out of the Rollie as seen on tv, so I set a timer for roughly 8 minutes and then pulled it out when it seemed ready. Ta-da!

A lightly browned pancake sausage rollie emerged intact. I ate it with a touch of maple syrup for dipping. Was this the best breakfast I have ever eaten? It was not. But I think some adjustments to the basic Bisquick batter would take it up a notch or two. I would use more spray oil next time, and leave it in for a bit longer to try get a better brown on the pancake exterior. But I am happy to have my first Rollie success and look forward to next week’s experiment.

Tasteless Tablescapes: Beach Summer Fun

Tasteless Tablescapes return! This year for Vegan MoFo I want to really concentrate on copying some of Sandra Lee’s best ideas. I found a really HOT beach themed tablescape of hers that used the super fun idea of beach towels as napkins. Towelnapkins!

They’re so big they hang right off the table. This won’t be awkward at all for your guests to use! Look at how beachy that looks! Are we having fun yet or what? For an extra good time, just put out a child’s beach pail and shovel full of BBQ sauce for each guest. Those towelnapkins will absorb any mess!

Vegan MoFo 2014: The Vegan Month of Food

It’s that time of the year again, Gentle Reader! Vegan MoFo 2014, the vegan month of food, is here! In addition to helping out with giveaways on the main MoFo blog I will be doing my own thang here all month. I have daily themes set up for your viewing pleaseure.

Drum roll please……………

Sunday- Iced Tea and a Bagel

Monday- The Garlic

Tuesday-Tasteless Tablescapes

Wednesday- Meet the Rollie

Thursday- Food That Looks Like My Cat

Friday- Awkward Food Photos

Saturday- Tofu Pirate Comics

Stop by all month for fun times and food.