stew from melomeals, and a non-profit you should really know about

Two days ago, Melody over at melomeals posted a recipe for Creamy White Bean Stew with Collards. Not only did it sound delicious, but with pre-cooked beans, she claimed the recipe comes together in 30 minutes. I came home late-ish and starving on Tuesday night, so I put this claim to the test! Unlike most stews, which need a lot of cooking time to develop their flavors, this recipe really does come together in half an hour, and it is delicious, hearty, and warming (which is important, because we are in the middle of some boiler issues and won't have heat till tomorrow). I didn't have poultry seasoning, so I used a variety of herbs and spices--a pinch each of onion and garlic powders, sage, thyme, parsley. I also didn't have any "nutritional yeast base sauce" made up ahead of time (though that's a cool idea of Melody's, making a big batch of cheesy sauce to last you throughout the week. I suspect the boyfriend would eat it all in one go, though, since he's a sucker for cheesy sauces), so I added each of its parts to the stew individually. I put in 1/4 C nutritional yeast, a bit of mustard and garlic powder, and 1/2 C water when it says to add the nutritional yeast sauce. Toward the end of the cooking time I stirred a tablespoon or so of arrowroot powder into another 1/4 C water, and stirred that into the stew. It was so delicious!

I made the cornbread biscuits from Vegan Brunch to go along with it. I am a huge fan of all things that involve cornmeal, so I can't believe I'd never tried these! They are ridiculously easy to make, taking about 20 minutes from when you first get out the ingredients to when you pull them out of the oven.

The combination of the two was awesome.

As a sort of public service announcement, one of the things that makes me come home late-ish (and anxious for a quick-cooking meal like the afore-mentioned stew) each week is the volunteer work I do for a non-profit called RfBD, or Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. It is an organization that records textbooks for students with disabilities--physical or learning-related--that prevent them from reading at the pace of their peers. RfBD offers students audio files of their textbooks, allowing them to navigate their texts by page, chapter, section, etc, just as if they were working with a book. Because there are hundreds of textbooks to record for students from elementary to graduate school levels, RfBD relies heavily on volunteers to record the content of the books.

Volunteering has always been important to me, and helping people with learning differences and visual impairments is another cause in which I'm personally invested. As a volunteer, I spend 2 hours a week in a sound-proof booth, reading aloud. I was a radio kid in college, and doing this soothes the part of me that misses having a radio show. The training was easy, and if you don't feel like recording, they have other tasks for volunteers to do. RfBD (which is about to change its name, since they cater to a much wider variety of people than only those who are blind or dyslexic) has been around since at least the 1960s (possibly the 50s?), and has over 20 locations in 14 states; they also have some satellite locations in other places. I've been volunteering for them for almost 3 years now, and I intend to do so for many more. If you're looking for a way to spend some of your time (or money; they take donations) helping other people, this is a great way to do it. (Plus, if you're moderately antisocial like I am, this allows you to help people without actually spending time with people--you're in a sound-proof booth!)

Tomorrow, and every Friday this November, I'm going to run a series of entries on how to replace nightshades, since, if you are allergic to nightshades, or just ever try to avoid them, you'll know that you need a little help sometimes. Or a lot of the time. Or every time you open a cookbook. Stay tuned!

Surprise Sausage Muffins

[Back from summer vacation! And by "vacation" I mean "full-time job." BUT I am back, that’s the important thing.]

You heard me. Sausage. Muffins. Together at last! The “surprise” part comes from the fact that you can’t tell they contain sausage… UNTIL YOU BITE INTO IT:

As you may remember, I love anything that I can make muffin- or cupcake- shaped. However, though you’d never know it from the hundreds of cupcakes and desserts I’ve photographed for this blog, I try not to eat a lot of sugar. This combines the best of both worlds: a muffin, but not sweet! And I’m a sucker for almost anything with cornmeal in it.

This recipe is perfect for a filling on-the-go breakfast (or snack). I am generally not a fan of store-bought meat analogs, but Tofurkey’s beer brats are good and much less time-consuming than making one’s own sausages. Any non-breakfast [ie, crumbly] sausages will do. These muffins are best with gravy or something cheesy (if you’re in a hurry, I have a “Speedy Cheesy Cheater Gravy” recipe below), because they can be a little dry, depending on what kind of sausage you use.

I was inspired by a very non-vegan version of this somewhere on cooks.com, but I changed it a lot AND can’t find the original anymore anyway, so I am not giving you a link. If you have a favorite cornbread/muffin recipe, feel free to use it instead of the batter I give you below, but remember to add the pepper!
Surprise Sausage Muffins

3 Tofurky Beer Brats, each sliced into 4 pieces
(any non-breakfast sausage links will do, though you may need to adjust how many sausages/slices depending on their size. Basically, you want the slices to be around an inch and a half)
1 C non-dairy milk
1 Tbsp vinegar
2 T flax meal
1 C cornmeal
1 C flour (all purpose, or up to half whole wheat pastry flour)
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a muffin pan (or put in muffin cups).

Stir together the milk, vinegar, and flaxmeal in a small bowl or large measuring cup. Stir it really well, then let it sit for at least 5 minutes. In the meantime, combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add the oil to the milk mixture (it won’t combine well, but that’s okay), then stir the liquid ingredients in with the dry ones until there are no major lumps.

NOW. Fill the muffin cups ONLY HALF WAY, then put a sausage chunk in each half-filled muffin cup. Like so:
Once you’ve done that, use the rest of the batter to fill the muffin cups completely. Bake 15-20 minutes, until the tops start to turn slightly gold-brown. Let cool slightly before serving. Top, if you want, with vegan margarine or:

Speedy Cheesy Cheater Gravy

I’m almost embarrassed to post this because it’s so simple and silly. However, it tastes like more than the sum of its parts and is ready in five minutes or less. This will generously cover 4 muffins, but as it is so simple it doubles/triples well. It doesn’t keep, though, so eat it all.

up to 1 C water
2 Tbsp yellow (mild) miso
2 Tbsp Earth Balance*
1/8 tsp black pepper

Set the water to boil. While it’s heating up, in a small bowl, mash the miso and Earth Balance/margarine/your fat of choice with a fork until they are really well combined. When the water is boils, remove it from heat and add 1/4 cup of it to the miso/fat mixture. Fork or whisk it until it is a lumpless, thick sauce. Add more water, ONE TABLESPOON AT A TIME, until it is the consistency you desire. Pour on top of Surprise Sausage Muffins or whatever you wanted a Speedy Cheesy Cheater Gravy for in the first place.

*-I recommend this, but you can use other vegan margarine, OR olive oil but if you use oil you will probably end up using less water.

And it would not be a triumphant return if I didn’t post at least SOME cupcakes.
These are from the beginning of the summer, so I forget if they were anything other than just chocolate cupcakes, but they are topped with Sweet and Sara vegan marshmallows, which make me really happy.
I didn’t take a picture of the inside, but these are the orange cream-filled cupcakes from vegan cupcakes take over the world. I brought them in for coworkers within my first couple weeks of work and gained respect as the best baker EVER. Thanks, VCTOtW.

The disadvantage to not blogging over the summer was that I wasn’t at all tempted to write down recipes for things, so when I made up my own recipe for banana cupcakes, I dind’t bother to record it. I LOVED THEM AND I WISH I DID. Some are topped with chocolate, some are topped with a cinnamon icing, and some are both. Though I usually go for chocolate everything, I actually liked the cinnamon-topped ones best.

Next week, I think I should try to stay away from sweets and even muffin-shaped things altogether. Maybe an Indian food post!? I am constantly experimenting in nightshade free Indian cooking.

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?