Alton + Isa = perfection

I love Alton Brown's Good Eats. His cooking show is so... practical. He talks about the chemistry of cooking and different foods, he is honest about which kitchen gadgets are truly necessary and which are just superfluous, AND he's from Atlanta-ish! I saw an episode once when he made waffles, which excited me because I'd never found that perfect waffle recipe. This morning I decided to try his waffles, using vegan substitutions. First of all, I cut the recipe in half because Bob and I don't eat enormous quantities of waffles at once! Then for the buttermilk, I used 1 cup of soy milk with 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar; I let it sit while I assembled the rest of the recipe and when I was ready for it, it smelled and tasted just like buttermilk! I was amazed. For the eggs, I used Ener-G egg replacer (the good thing about egg replacers is that you can cut a recipe in half easily without having to use "half" an egg), and in place of the melted butter I just used soybean oil (I usually do that anyway in place of melted butter).

As the waffles were cooking, I flipped open VWaV and found her recipe for Lemon Corn Waffles with Blueberry Sauce (p. 39). I made the sauce, again halving the recipe.

The result, with a small dollop of Soyatoo! whipped cream, was waffle delight:

Bob exclaimed that this was the best waffle he's ever had. A winner! Next time I'll make the full batch, and freeze what we don't eat so that we can have toaster waffles on a hurried morning.

Recently Urban Vegan posted about making seitan and, more importantly, using the broth to reconstitute TVP for a mock chicken salad. I'll try to tackle seitan someday, but I was intrigued by the TVP. So I bought some for the first time at Earth Fare yesterday (two cups cost $0.70!) and reconstituted it with a can of veggie broth. As it cooled I added scallions--the white and green parts--and bell pepper, and some rubbed thyme, and some freshly ground pepper (I like the Pepper Medley that McCormick makes), and finally just a bit of Vegenaise (also my first time buying it). Bob and I had it for lunch on a bed of fresh spinach. We couldn't believe how good it was! I wasn't expecting it to be that flavorful and satisfying--and sooo inexpensive.


Last night it was time to make some more bread. I used the recipe from The Grit this time, except I played with the ratio of all-purpose to whole wheat flour so that I was incorporating more of the whole wheat. It made the dough a little tougher to knead, I think, but the result was worth it because the loaf was slightly denser--heartier and healthier. This is actually one of the nicest-looking loaves we've made in a while. I usually get so careless when shaping the loaf, but this time I took care to try to make it smooth and nice.

Thank you for all your comments and for just visiting! You all make me smile! Peace to you all, until next time...