(Almost Vegan) Hearty Trail Mix Cookies.

(Almost Vegan) Hearty Trail Mix Cookies and (Soy) Milk

Every year, my friend Alison hosts a Christmas gift exchange. This year, instead of the traditional "spend $20 on crap no one wants" kind of gift exchange, we did a re-gift exchange. (Confession time: I don't keep presents I don't want—I return them or sell them or give them away or whatever, but I certainly don't keep them around. I bought my present for the re-gifting. I'm too ruthless in my purging.)

Anyway, I ended up with this:

Lord only knows how old it was. Or where it came from. Or what the ingredients even were. But since I don't have food allergies and I like cookies, I was happy.

I was even happier that the instructions were so simple, and that I only needed to add butter and eggs.

Anyway, skip forward a few months to, well, now. I've been thinking about making some cookies for a while, and trying out some vegan baking, but I don't want to go all-out on something that might not work, you know? I get really anxious about spending money on a recipe that either doesn't work out or tastes bad*. So I thought this would be a good "recipe" to test out the vegan baking waters.

I went off to the Herb and Spice to pick up some Earth Balance butter replacer (which does not taste like butter, keck, but worked out well for baking), and my roommate had some powdered egg replacer that I borrowed some of.


I dumped the contents of the jar into a big bowl—or at least I tried to. Like I said, I don't know how long this had been sitting in the cupboard of the person who gave it to me, but when I turned the jar upside-down a couple of chocolate chips fell out… And that was it. Huh. OK. Shake shake shake. Huh. There seems to be a layer of coconut that has formed an hard layer that is preventing all the other ingredients from getting out. Poke poke poke with the handle of a wooden spoon. Oh, that was easy enough. Dump contents of jar into a bowl.


Except for the layer of brown sugar at the bottom. Brown sugar gets really hard, really quickly. This was no exception. I eyeballed the amount stuck at the bottom of the jar, and measured out 3/4 of a cup from the cupboard into the bowl.


Then I added a stick of Earth Balance, a teaspoon of egg replacer and two tablespoons of water (for the egg replacer) and went at it on low speed with the hand mixer. It was… crumbly. So I added another 1/4 cup of water (a little bit at a time) and then it came together perfectly.


I would like to point out that in the time I was making these cookies, Andrew was asleep mere feet away on the Plus Two Couch of Napping. And he didn't budge, not even with the hand blender going.


I put the cookies on baking sheets in heaping teaspoonfuls, then baked them for 11 minutes in a 325 degree oven. 


Andrew couldn't stop eating them. I would like to say, for the record, that they are delicious with tea.


And they are only almost vegan, because of the chocolate chips and all. Not to mention that I have no idea what was actually in this mix.

*I once spent a lot of money on a shrimp dish recipe for Michael and I, and even the smell of it cooking made me nauseous. Although, to Michael's credit, he loved it and none went to waste.

Crispy Tofu.

So, it's been a busy week this week, not a lot of cooking, and certainly not a lot of experimenting.

I threw together this meal the other day, and Andrew and I ate rather quickly. Part of the way through, I jumped up, yelling, "Oh crap! I forgot to take pictures of the food!"

So this what was left at that point. This is Andrew's plate. Mine was already clean.

So, the recipe!

Ingredients

• 1 pound extra-firm tofu, pressed* and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
• 2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce (because that happened to be what I had in the cupboard)
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast (or NOOTCH, as my vegan friends Kym and Lauren have been known to yell at parties)
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• Pinch nutmeg (I like to buy a whole nutmeg and grate it on my Lee Valley rasp)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Oil for frying in a pan

Method

Put soy sauce in a shallow bowl. Combine nutritional yeast, cumin, nutmeg, salt, and pepper in another shallow bowl. Dip slices of tofu in soy sauce, then dredge in yeast mixture. When they are all coated, heat oil in a frying pan  and fry the slices until crispy, five to seven minutes per side. 

And that's it! I served this with sweet potato oven fries and a sliced up cucumber. 

Now, I am decidedly not a fan of tofu. I want to like it, I really do, but I usually don't, although it is maybe starting to grow on me. You know, like a fungus. Every time I have cooked with tofu the recipe has generally been tastier the next day as my lunch leftovers, and this remains true for crispy tofu.

But the awesome thing is that it was also delicious when I cooked it.

Both Andrew and I cleaned our plates. Wow. Amazing.

*Here's my method for pressing tofu: I wrap the tofu in a clean dish towel, set it on the counter, put a cutting board on top, and weight it with a heavy book (In this case, Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook ). Then I leave it alone for 20 minutes to a half an hour.

Adventures.

Hello, and welcome to The Incidental Vegan.

Incidental, because it's happening on the way to something a lot better—I've met someone wonderful, who just happens to be a vegan. We eat a lot of meals together, and we're both trying to save money, so we don't go out to restaurants often. This means we cook a lot together.

Which means rather than cooking two separate meals, we're cooking vegan.

I'm an omnivore. Yes, I eat vegetarian a lot of the time, but I also like bacon. And steak. Oh, and cheese.

Cheese.

Cheese is maybe my favourite thing in the world.

Anyway, I'm going to be trying some new recipes out. Seeing how it goes. Seeing how they can be improved.

Stick around. It could get delicious.