cornbread, or, I'm goin' south!

I'm flying down to Tampa, Florida this weekend to present one of my papers at a graduate conference. This couldn't come at a better time, as this happened here in Boston the other night:
And on the SAME DAY it was 80 degrees in Florida! I am excited for the conference. And nervous. Anyway, in honor of heading south, I present you with a southern meal!
Southern-fried tofu with a tomato-free barbeque sauce (no recipe yet, I'm perfecting it), collard greens, and cornbread! I love almost all things that involve cornmeal, and I'm always in search of the perfect cornbread. This time I used the cornbread recipe from Veganomicon, which is decent. I left out the corn kernels, though.

So one of the best parts about making cornbread is making more than you need, because then you can have it for multiple meals! I had it with leftovers, I had it for breakfast with agave and soymilk:

And then I still had a lot of cornbread that went stale. So what to do with it? I present:
Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Cornbread Croutons

2 Sweet Potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2-3 large pieces of leftover cornbread, also cubed
1 onion, quartered, then sliced
1 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
3-4 Tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 425. Combine all of the ingredients except the oil in a large bowl, then drizzle the oil over it and stir until everything's coated with oil.

Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes, taking it out to stir every 10 minutes.

This makes 2 large main servings, or 4 side servings. The picture shows it served over raw celery.

So to reward myself after my presentation, while I'm in FL, I plan to check out Grass Root Organic Restaurant. Any other recommendations for good eats in Tampa?

fixing failures

I had a crepe failure a couple weekends ago. I thought I'd just whip some up for brunch, but my trusty crepe recipe (the really simple one from the voluptuous vegan) failed me. I think it was just too thick. Anyway the crepes were thick and clung to the pan like two-year-olds with separation anxiety.
A rather awful picture of me scraping rather awful crepes from the pan.

Ultimately I would've just given up and stormed off to pout in a corner, hungry, had my boyfriend not recommended adding some more flour and some baking powder and calling them pancakes. He fixed brunch!

Bu I still needed reminders of times I didn't fail at crepes! Fortunately I had these pictures saved from a little while ago to fix my mood...
Crepes with a sweet red-wine-and-pear filling, made just like my dried fruit compote, only with canned pears and raisins. Topped with soy yogurt!

Savory Collard crepes! Finely chopped collareds, sauteed in olive oil with pumpkin seeds, mushrooms and a lot of salt. Topped with tofutti sour cream and an olive.

And sticking with my "fixing failures" theme: a recipe! I tried veganizing and de-alcoholing (since we didn't have any) a Chocolate Kahlua Pie recipe. The recipe called for straight milk, not cream, so I thought I'd be okay, but the soymilk didn't thicken enough and it ended up being chocolate soup in a pie crust instead of a thick pudding. I'd even added used some of my vast stores of mimiccreme in place of some of the soymilk! but no. It was not even goopy, just liquid.. After refrigerating it a while and realizing it would not resemble anything cream-pie-esque, I stuck the whole thing in the freezer. And later that night, I discovered it was not a failure!

Fudgesicle Pie

1/3 Cups cocoa powder
1 C sugar (or 3/4 C agave nectar, but decrease the milk by 1/3)
1/4 tsp salt
2 3/4 Cups non-dairy milk
3 TBsp coffee (I used instant dissolved in water)
2 TBsp margarine
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp chocolate extract (optional)

1 pie crust (graham cracker's good, especially if your mom has a natural food store and gives you 3 because the are past date)

In a saucepan, combine cocoa, sugar, cornstarch, salt. Stir in milk over medium heat. (If using agave, add it here instead of in the beginning). Continue to stir until the mixture boils. Reduce heat down to low, add coffee. Stir 1 minute more. Add margarine and extract(s), then pour into the pie crust. Freeze overnight, or 4-6 hours.
When you serve it, let each piece sit for a minute or two after removing it from the freezer, so it's not too hard. It goes great with berries, especially the berry sauce you had originally made for crepes that failed miserably (see above).