vegan | anunrefinedvegan

May 16 2013

Bread, Breakfast, Brunch, Muffins, Biscuits and Scones

Loaded Morning Muffins with Crumb Topping

You can see from the long ingredient list why these are called “loaded” muffins, but gosh, they’re delicious.

It’s crunch time over at Ethical Ocean and their Eat What’s Good vegan recipe contest. I’ve been hovering around fourth place, which is great considering my competition, but I wouldn’t mind a bump up. You can vote for my Mango Sticky Rice Cake recipe right here. Thank you!

Loaded Morning Muffins with Crumb Topping
Makes 12

Muffins:
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup almond meal
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp. powdered ginger
1/2 tsp. powdered stevia
1/4 cup maple sugar
2 tbsp. egg replacer + 6 tbsp. water (whisk and then let sit for a few minutes)
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup almond or other nut milk
1/3 cup coconut oil, melted
1 cup shredded carrots
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, chopped
1/4 cup unsweetened, shredded coconut

Crumb Topping:
1/4 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup unsweetened, shredded coconut
1 tbsp. maple sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted

Preheat oven to 350F and lightly oil ~9 muffin cups.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then carefully remove to a cooling rack.

Make the muffins:
Preheat the oven to 350F and lightly oil a muffin pan (~9 muffins). Fill any empty cups with water.

In a large bowl combine the flour, oats, almond meal, baking powder, spices, stevia, and maple sugar. Set aside. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the egg replacer mixture, pumpkin puree, nut milk, and coconut oil. Pour this into the dry mixture and stir to combine – and then add the carrots, apricots, walnuts, ginger and coconut.

Divide the batter between the muffin cups.

Make the topping:
Combine all of the ingredients and sprinkle evenly among the muffins. Bake muffins for 30-35 minutes or until firm. A toothpick will not come out clean on these babies.

Tagged applesauce, breakfast, carrots, coconut, coconut oil, dried apricots, easy, Eat What's Good, Ethical Ocean, ginger, mango sticky rice cake, maple sugar, muffins, oats, quick, vegan, vegan recipe contest, whole wheat pastry flour

Mar 05 2013

53 Comments

Dehydrator, Pizza, Raw, Slow Food, Virtual Vegan Potluck, Virtual Vegan Potluck Blog, Virtual Vegan Potluck Website

Dehydrator Love

I don’t have a recipe to share today, just some low-quality, iPhone photos of a raw pizza that kinda rocked my sheltered plant-based planet. You see, I recently acquired an Excalibur 9-tray dehydrator, an item that had been sitting patiently on my Amazon Wish List for many, many months while I accumulated enough points (freebie!) to hit the Order button. To many vegans, purchasing a dehydrator produces feelings akin to having a sturdy high-speed blender (there are two camps: the Vitamixers camp and the Blendtecers) gracing their countertop. (For insight into how people feel about owning a high-speed blender, please read this very funny post.)

The pizza pictured below is made from a mish-mash of recipes: the crust is a very slight adaptation of a recipe by Matthew Kenney, one of the gods of raw food cooking. It is absolutely delicious and stands up as a snack – sans topping – in its own right; the cashew-mushroom sauce is my adaptation of yet another recipe found in the pages of Runner’s World. I didn’t change it enough to justify including the recipe here. Again, it’s tasty enough to scoop up on its own, but I’d hold off unless you are trying to gain weight.

Already my dehydrator has opened up a new food world to me and I know I have much left to learn and dry out. Look out world!

Shameless plug: did you hear that Virtual Vegan Potluck made it onto Post Punk Kitchen’s 100? Yep, it did! Please check out the list to see their blurb about the VVP and to visit 99 other awesome sites (including Vegan Richa and Keepin’ It Kind)!

One year ago today: The Vegan Option
One year and one day ago today: Buttermilk Rolls with Flaxseed and Wheat Germ

Tagged Blendtec, dehydrator, Excalibur Dehydrator, Jason and the Veganauts, Keepin It Kind, Matthew Kenney, pizza, Post Punk Kitchen, Post Punk Kitchen 100, PPK, raw, Runner's World, slow food, vegan, Vegan Richa, virtual vegan potluck, virtual vegan potluck blog, Vitamix

Dec 20 2012

19 Comments

Cakes and Cupcakes, Chocolate, Desserts, Muffins, Biscuits and Scones

Chocolate Mint Cream Cheese Muffins

Christmas and mint. How did they become an item? The red-and-white-swirled candy canes dangling from stuffed stockings? The tiny pastel-colored, melt-away candies piled in bowls that appear only in December? The Santa- and snowman-shaped chocolate candies filled with a gooey mint center? Or maybe the cool of mint recalls drifts of snow and icy winds. It can’t be helped. Mint reminds me of Christmas.

This is the classic chocolate cream cheese muffin but without the dairy and a little bit less of the guilt. I’ll take one of these over a candy cane any day.

A quick but important aside to thank one of my very favorite bloggers – Nicole, of Cauldrons and Cupcakes – for naming An Unrefined Vegan as one of her Blogs of the Year. If you haven’t met Nicole, do yourself and your psyche a favor and go visit. Nicole is a gentle, wise and sensitive soul who shares of herself without reservation; her readers reap the benefits.

One year ago today: Onion & Walnut-Stuffed Beer Bread

Chocolate Mint Cream Cheese Muffins
Makes ~22

Mint Cream Cheese:
1/2 cup vegan cream cheese
1/2 cup silken tofu
1/2 tsp. white miso
2 tbsp. maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract
1 tbsp. egg replacer
3 tbsp. nut milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
~1/4 cup cacao nibs

Muffin batter:
1/2 cup brown rice flour
2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp. powdered stevia
2/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1 1/2 cups nut milk
1 tbsp. flaxseed meal
4 oz. unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp. brown rice vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F and line ~22 muffin tins with paper or silicon muffin cups.

Make the cream cheese filling:
In a food processor, add all of the filling ingredients, except for the cacao nibs, and process until very smooth. Taste and adjust for sweetness and mintiness. Stir in the cacao nibs. Set aside.

Make the batter:
In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda and powdered stevia (no, I did not forget to add salt). In a medium-sized bowl, combine the nut milk, flaxseed meal, applesauce, vinegar and vanilla extract.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until thoroughly combined.

Fill muffin tins about 2/3 full with batter and then top each muffin with a heaping tablespoonful of filling. Bake for about 20 minutes – do not overbake – and remove from the oven. Allow to cool for 10 minutes or so on cooling racks, then remove from the tins.

Tagged apple cider vinegar, Blog of the Year, brown rice flour, cacao nibs, Cauldrons and Cupcakes, chocolate, chocolate muffins, cocoa powder, cream cheese, muffins, silken tofu, tofu, Tofutti, vegan, whole wheat pastry flour

Sep 18 2012

172 Comments

Book Review, Food News, General, Giveaway, Miscellaneous

Unprocessed: A Review & A Giveaway

You know how it is. You switch to a plant-based diet and you get educated; you arm yourself with the data that informs your decision to eat healthfully and mindfully. You read The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell, PhD. – it pisses you off to no end – and then you grab a copy of Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. M.D. and you see the medical establishment in a whole new light. You wonder if they are really trying to heal you. You want everyone you know to watch Forks Over Knives (and Earthlings and Food, Inc. and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead), because you know in your heart that if they do, their lives will be changed for the better forever. You realize you can not un-know what you’ve learned. You now know that there is “food” and there is food. One kind harms and the other kind heals and nourishes. You now know that animals are creatures with their own desires, needs and fates that have nothing to do with our desires and needs. You understand all about “locally-grown,” “organic,” and “whole food” and you avoid “factory farm,” “GMO,” and “processed.” Even if you think you know everything you need to about a plant-based diet – there’s room on your nightstand for one more life-altering book: Unprocessed: How to Achieve Vibrant Health and Your Ideal Weight. Written in a straight-forward, open, engaging and incredibly personal way, it would be difficult to close the cover of this book and not feel the need to walk into the pantry and discard every processed, artificial, fatty, sugary and salty item lurking on the shelves.

So, instead of drugs or surgery, I took another path that would change the course of my life forever. I used diet. I figured that if my food choices could cause or at least greatly contribute to this disease, would it not be possible for better food choices to reverse it? – Chef AJ

Here’s the thing about this book. The facts are in there. But because they are presented within Chef AJ’s personal experience it’s a bit like (pardon the expression…) taking a spoonful of sugar along with the medicine. She’s totally approachable, totally us. She begins by chronicling the story of a body completely out of whack, a body addicted to processed food and suffering the consequences. Some of us have had a similarly bumpy, trying and scary road. Some of us just got curious about what we were putting into our bodies.

My best advice to you is to just do something. Just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything. Optimum health exists in a continuum and even small, incremental changes made consistently over time can still be of great benefit. – Chef AJ

After sharing her life story (including a gig on The Tonight Show involving flutes and bubble gum), Chef AJ spends time debunking the many myths and YABBUTs about whole food-based eating such as time, cost, difficulty, puzzled/hurt/angry family members, etc. This would be a very handy book to have on hand when you have a crew of skeptics coming over for dinner. You can demonstrate how easy it is to prepare healthy meals – and with no funky, hard-to-find ingredients. She writes about navigating the grocery store and how to fill your ‘frige, freezer and pantry with health-giving food and offers tips on how to begin and what to eat when dining out. You’ll find both raw and cooked recipes here.

Remember, the ONLY thing that works for addiction is complete and total abstinence. Moderation does not work for an addict. – Chef AJ

Her book is a kind of detox manual which will rid your body of its addictions to salt, sugar and fat. Her recipes allow the flavors of the whole food ingredients to shine through and the best part is (at least for me) that these are simple and generally quick recipes. I love that! I want to eat well and I want to eat nutrient-dense food, but I really don’t want to spend hours preparing every meal.

I don’t know anyone who has regretted trying an unprocessed diet.
- Chef AJ

Be aware that there is minimal instruction with each of Chef AJ’s recipes. She – unlike me – is blessed with being able to create delicious food without exacting measurements. She explains that she also does not include servings per recipe because if you avoid processed foods in your diet you can eat as much whole food as you want; whole foods fill you up and leave you craving-free. And… there are no photos, save for a few on the back cover. If you are a visual type and need to know what the end result should look like, this may prove challenging for you. I don’t have a problem with it – I just love food photo porn. Bottom line is this is an inspirational book that just may give you the nudge you need to make positive changes for your life and health. The recipes are not complicated and the ingredients won’t have you endlessly trolling the Internet. Hey, she starts the (100+) recipe section with Desserts – how could you not appreciate that?! Finally, what I like is that Chef AJ is sharing methods – yes, recipes, of course – but this book will arm you with the techniques (like making the pie crust or the date syrup) to help you create your own healthy, unprocessed dishes. I’ve still got lots of cooking and sharing to do so please check back throughout the week.

Now for the best part. Chef AJ has a book to give away and here’s how you can enter for a chance to get it: simply leave a comment on this and any (or all) subsequent posts about Unprocessed letting me know which is your Dark Master, your weakness, your downfall at the grocery store: sugar, salt or fat. Or tell me how a plant-based, whole food diet has changed your life. The more comments you leave, the more times your name will be entered to win. For additional entries, click the Like button at An Unrefined Vegan and/or Virtual Vegan Potluck on Facebook. Just be sure to leave comments there so I know that you are entering the Unprocessed Giveaway. As they say in television, yes, it really is that easy. The Giveaway ends on September 25.

In my next post, I’ll be sharing Chef AJ’s recipe for Lara Bar-like PB & J Bites. Trust me, you’ll never go back to the packaged variety.

The Deets
Title: Unprocessed: How to Achieve Vibrant Health and Your Ideal Weight
Author: Chef AJ (aka Abbie Jaye) with Glen Merzer
Publication Date: 2011
Page Length: 178 pages including 100+ recipes
List Price: $19.95
Publisher: Hale to the Kale Publishing
Websites: www.EatUnprocessed.com; www.chefajshealthykitchen.com
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Tagged book review, Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Chef AJ, cookbook review, dates, dried cherries, Earthlings, fat, food, Inc., oil-free, pb & J bites, peanut butter, plant-based diet, Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease, salt-free, Sick and Nearly Dead, sugar-free, T. Colin Campbell, The China Study, Unprocessed, vegan, Whole Foods

Sep 07 2012

50 Comments

Cookies and Bars, General, Lunch, Main Dishes, Miscellaneous, Sandwiches, Tofu, Uncategorized

(Eating Vegan) Under the Sheltering Sky

It can be challenging enough to feed Kel and me while we are on the road, but what about feeding 10 or 11 or 15? In a place with (count them) zero restaurants, convenience stores or a bright and shiny Whole Foods stocked with vegan salads, hummus and whole grain bread? Now consider that most of those I’ll be feeding are carnivores.

To celebrate my brother’s life, a big group of us – including many camping greenhorns (I’m among that number) – are heading south into the desert of Ten Mile Wash for a few days to spend time in a place my brother loved. And before we do that, we’re running, walking or strolling The Little Grand Canyon 10k. An army fights on its stomach; we have to eat. By my count we’ll have two breakfasts, two lunches and one dinner out in the boonies. I’ve cooked in small kitchens before, but the camper kitchen is a little snug, so I’m planning on bringing everything down in a nearly-finished or finished state. Coolers will be clearly marked with “breakfast,” “lunch” and “dinner.” Plastic bins will have almond butter, mixed grains, trail mix, dried fruit, utensils, kitchen towels, wet wipes, foil, freezer bags, a cutting board, knives and of course, lots of dog food for Ike. He has to eat, too.

I planned out my menu several weeks in advance and in the week before the trip, I’ve been preparing and pre-baking and -making what I can. I started with dessert first (makes sense, right?) with crazy Cookie Cookies from The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions. Along with Double Chocolate Cookies with Blueberries and Mini Dark Chocolate Cashew Cheezcakes (based on a recipe by Somer at Good Clean Food - who toiled away in her kitchen to develop these just for me; her selfless family did the taste-testing), our sweet teeth should be well-satisfied.

Breakfasts will consist of mixed rolled grains with dried fruit and almond milk, whole grain bread with cashew and almond butters, apples, bananas and yummy raw bars featured in a previous post; plus the amazing Cookie Bites from a recipe by Erika at Good Clean Food. My friend Sue specifically requested coffee so I’ll be bringing down a pound of Two Creek which serves up a proprietary blend from Jack Mormon Coffee.

For lunch on the first day, we’ll have BBQ Baked Tofu Sandwiches from The Real Food Daily Cookbook, by Ann Gentry, served on Ezekial sprouted (wheat-free) tortillas (these are my new favorite thing) loaded with avocado, arugula, red onion and an amazing ranch dressing also from Real Food Daily. Black bean potato salad with arugula pesto should compliment the sandwiches nicely. That recipe is courtesy of the Forks Over Knives: The Plant-Based Way to Health cookbook. We’ve got some gluten-intolerant folks coming along and I don’t want anyone to go hungry.

We’ll start dinner off with a few slabs of Macadamia Nut Cheez, another recipe from the good folks at The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions. It can get pretty chilly in the desert as the sun sets, so I’ll employ one of the camper’s burners to heat up a big pot of Red Lentil Soup also from the first Forks Over Knives cookbook. I use green garbanzo beans instead of green beans and add mustard seeds and fresh spinach and cilantro. It is such a flavorful and satisfying soup and I was able to freeze a big batch several days before the trip. I’ll serve Curried Couscous Salad with the soup as well as whole grain rolls and the aforementioned mini Chocolate Cashew Cheezecakes.

I’m trying not to stress out too much, but there’s some pressure here. Most of the people I will be feeding are not vegan and I want their eating experience to be satisfying, surprising (in a good way) and delicious. I’d love to change some minds about what it means to eat plant-based. I’d also like to be prepared enough that I can focus on why we are out in the desert. This is all about remembering and celebrating my brother.

Tagged 10k, brother, celebration, desert, family, fat-free, Forks Over Knives, Little Grand Canyon Marathon, memorial, red lentil soup, red lentils, running, Ten Mile Wash, travel, Utah, vegan

Jun 08 2012

50 Comments

General

The Evolution of Eating

Part rogue’s gallery, part dean’s list, this is a quick, condensed sketch of what I’ve eaten over the past twenty-eight years of my life – from the time that I was more or less responsible for feeding myself. Most of it isn’t pretty, but the story has a happy middle. Getting curious about the food I was putting into my body caused me to make small tweaks over time. The more I learned, the more my diet evolved. And it’s still changing – for the better.

1984-1989
(Oxford, OH-Cleveland, OH)
Cafeteria food (need any more be said?)
Cream cheese bagels
Cheese Fries
Cheese pizza
Ramen noodle soup
Pepperoni rolls
Chocolate milk shakes

1990-1994
(Cincinnati, OH-Oakland, CA-Boulder, CO)
Buttered popcorn (a full bag of Orville Redenbacher’s butter variety at one sitting)
Haagen-Das Chocolate Chocolate Chip ice cream (sometimes a pint in one sitting)
5-way chili or coney dogs from Skyline Chili
Double chocolate chip muffins (a daily morning thing)
Matzo ball soup
Peanut butter crackers

1995-1999
(Boulder, CO-Moscow, Russia-Santa Monica, CA)
Pot roast
Roast chicken
Progresso Lentil Soup
Baked salmon
Tuna- and egg-salad sandwiches
Hot dogs
Fish tacos
Khatchapuri (cheese bread)

2000-2004
(Cambridge, MA-Washington, DC-Baghdad, Iraq)
Jello Chocolate Pudding (one daily)
Gumbo
Krispy Kreme doughnuts
Fried clams
Pepperoni pizza
Brisket
Vanilla cake with frosting
Iceberg lettuce salads

2005-2009
(Washington, DC-Oklahoma; Vegetarian)
Whole wheat home-baked breads
Baked goods made with unrefined sugars
Vegetarian chili
Hummus
Veggie & bean soups and stews
Tofu
Salads with tuna (my daily lunch)
Cheese, yogurt, sour cream

2010-Present
(Oklahoma; Vegan)
Whole grain home-baked breads & baked goods (unrefined)
Green smoothies
Wheatgrass
Raw fruits, veggies and more raw fruits and veggies
Home made nut cheez
Overnight grains for breakfast
Brown rice, quinoa, hemp, chia
Spinach, kale, collards, mustard greens, romaine
Tempeh
Tofu
Seitan

Tagged carnivore, diet, eating, evolution of eating, junk food, plant-based, vegan, vegetables, whole food, whole grains

May 12 2012

88 Comments

Bread, Virtual Vegan Potluck, Yeast Breads

Virtual Vegan Potluck: Sage & Rosemary Dinner Rolls with Roasted Garlic Coconut Butter

Welcome to the Bread course of the Virtual Vegan Potluck! This is just the beginning of some tasty carbs – both savory and sweet – here at the Potluck. Thank you so much for being part of our delicious plant-based event. I know you’ve already enjoyed lots of goodies – and there are a lot more to come! Hope you left some room on your plate for a roll or two!

No doubt about it, I’m a bread junkie. I love kneading, baking and especially eating it. And I love these rolls. Simple, elegant, easy to make and packed with summery, warm, herb flavor. (If I’d included parsley and thyme I could’ve called these Simon & Garfunkel rolls…) Inside they’re soft and fragrant; on the outside they have a satisfying and tender crust. They smell so wonderful fresh out of the oven. Serve these flavorful, healthy rolls alongside some not-so-healthy but mouthwatering Roasted Garlic Coconut Butter, the recipe for which you’ll find below. It’s also easy to make and full of flavor; the perfect complement to the rolls.

Sage & Rosemary Dinner Rolls
Makes 12

2 1/4 tsp. regular yeast (1 packet)
1 tbsp. agave nectar
1 1/4 cups warm water
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tbsp. minced fresh sage
1 1/2 tbsp. minced fresh rosemary
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp. salt

In a large bowl, whisk together the water, yeast and agave nectar. Set aside for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, in a smaller bowl, combine the bread flour, whole wheat flour, sage, rosemary, salt and pepper.

When the yeast mixture is bubbly, add the flour mixture and stir until a wet dough forms. Add small amounts of flour – just until the dough doesn’t stick too much to your hands. Either knead in the bowl or on the counter for about 8 minutes. The dough will be very soft and should be smooth.

Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about 1 hour. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

When the dough has doubled in size, press it down to deflate and let it rest for 5 minutes. Lightly flour the counter and divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll the pieces into balls and place on the baking sheet. 12 will just fit. Using scissors, snip a deep X into the tops of each roll. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rise for 30 minutes. (You could also make 8 rolls. They are perfect for sandwiches.)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Bake the rolls for about 20-25 minutes, or until lightly brown on top and firm on the bottom. Cool rolls on a wire rack or serve warm alongside Roasted Garlic Coconut Butter.

Roasted Garlic Coconut Butter

1 head garlic, roasted and squeezed out and mashed
1/4 cup + 2 tsp. soy milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1/4 + 1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. + 1 tsp. refined coconut oil, melted
1 tbsp. canola oil
2 1/4 tsp. soy lecithin granules
1/4 tsp. xanthan gum

Combine soy milk, apple cider vinegar and salt in a small bowl and set aside for 10 minutes.

Gently melt the coconut oil. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the mashed garlic, soy milk mixture, coconut oil, canola oil, soy lecithin granules and xanthan gum and process for 1 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and make sure no lecithin granules are sticking to the bottom. Process for an additional minutes. Pour mixture into silicon molds or ice trays and freeze for at least 1 hour before removing from trays and using.

(Base recipe courtesy of VeganBaking.net.)

Sage, flowering

Rosemary

Thank you so much for being a part of the Virtual Vegan Potluck! We’ve all had a lot of fun planning and putting this event together and sharing it with you has been the best part. I know you will find many delicious vegan recipes to add to your repertoire. To read about the origins of the Virtual Vegan Potluck, please visit this post.

And now it’s time to visit another participating blog. Either click one of the icons below to be taken to the preceding blog or the following blog in the Potluck, or click here to be taken back to Veggie What Now in the Salad category – or – click here to move forward in the Potluck to visit Cocina de Nihacc with a delicious offering in the bread course. )If you would like to go back to the very start of the Potluck, please click here to visit Vegan Bloggers Unite!)

Tagged Cocina de Nihacc, coconut butter, dinner rolls, easy, postaday, roasted garlic coconut butter, rolls, rosemary, sage, sage & rosemary dinner rolls, vegan, Vegan Bloggers Unite!, Veggie What Now, virtual vegan potluck

May 10 2012

35 Comments

Entertaining, General, Miscellaneous, Virtual Vegan Potluck

Virtual Vegan Potluck: Final Update!

Two days away…Are you ready?

I’ve heard from most of you and the answer to that question has been a resounding yes! Below is the final list of participants. Is that list a thing of beauty, or what?!

Please check this list and confirm that you’ve got the correct links in your text or on your “Go Back” and “Go Forward” buttons. If you haven’t copied and inserted these buttons into your blog post, please visit the VVP Page to get them. Detailed instructions are available there as well. If you’d like to add a Virtual Vegan Potluck button to your blog, you can find that on the VVP Page, too.

Couple of reminders (can you tell I love lists?):

1) For those of us in North America: please publish your posts as soon as possible on May 12. As I mentioned earlier, I will be scheduling mine to publish automatically at midnight on May 11. For those wonderful bloggers joining us from the U.K., the Continent or Australia, maybe hold back a bit before publishing your posts. Give the rest of time to wake up, stretch and down a slurp of coffee before we hit the Publish button.

2) Please double check your links to the blog that comes before you in the circle and the blog that comes after you in the circle. A broken circle means lost readers. I will be eating my way through the Potluck and will try and check the links, but if you come across one that doesn’t work or if the blogger has not published their Potluck post, please let me know or contact the blogger directly.

3) Update your links either the day of the Potluck or the day after. The links should reflect the actual URL to the post, not the URL to the blog in general. For further explanation, visit the VVP Page.

4) Jason over at Watch Me Lose 150 Pounds had a couple of great ideas (good thing we added him to the list, no?). He’s planning on having an easy-to-print pdf file available in his post so readers can print out his appetizer recipe. If I knew how to do this, I’d offer one, too! His other fantastic idea is to create an e-book of all of our recipes and make it available for purchase on Amazon.com at a very reasonable price. What do you think? I think we should give it a go. This is something we can put together – as Jason says – after the dust settles.

5) Another great idea came from Shira at In Pursuit of More – a Twitter hash tag. I am mostly clueless when it comes to Twitter, but this is a really great way to spread the word. Please use #virtualvegpotluck when Tweeting about the event.

6) I want to thank you all once again for being a part of this world-wide plant-based blogging event. I’ve been continually amazed and cheered by your enthusiasm and support. Let’s hope we have a very successful Potluck and that it is the first of many!

Potluck Participants

Host Site
Vegan Bloggers Unite!

Appetizers
Air Eater
ASTIG Vegan
In Fine Balance
That Was Vegan?
Things My Belly Likes
Watch Me Lose 150 Pounds

Beverages
40 Fit in the Mitt
Former Fish Taco Fanatic
Bacon Is Not An Herb
Good Clean Food
Tearoom Delights
Turning VEGANese

Salads
Along Comes Mary
Anne Sture Tucker
Dudette Here!
Keepin’ It Kind
Rubber Cowgirl/Vegans Do It Better
Vegan Sparkles
Veggie What Now

Breads
An Unrefined Vegan (savory)
Cocina de Nihacc (savory)
In Pursuit of More (savory)
My Plant-based Family (sweet)
Sensual Appeal (sweet)

Mains
Cauldrons & Cupcakes
Emmy Cooks
Jenmi Jenmi
Joyness Sparkles
Luminous Vegans
Meizac’s Blog
The Not Starving Novelist
The Twenties Project
The Vegan Kat
Tiny Kitchen Stories
Toxic Vegan
Unsweetened Cocoa
V is for Vegetables
Veggie Witch

Sides
A Life Vegetarian
Bringing Europe Home
Everyday Vegan Girl
I Ate Lunch
Karma Chef
Terra, Not Terror
Veg Hot Pot
Vegan Fling

Soups/Stews
Christine Robyn
Foodie McBooty
The Adventures of Vegan Charlie
Veganmonologue

Dessert
Blissful Britt
Cruelty Free Review
Eat Pray Bake
Fridge Scrapings
Go Bake Yourself
Herbivoress
Lindsay is Vegan
Live Learn Love Eat
Naughty Vegan
Rachel in Veganland
The Hearty Herbivore
The Misfit Baker
The Savvy Sister
The Veg Bar
The Veggie Nook
Veggie 4 A Year
Veggie V’s Vegan Adventure

blahb alh

Tagged bloggers, blogging, plant-based, postaday, vegan, vegan bloggers, virtual vegan potluck

May 02 2012

26 Comments

General, Virtual Vegan Potluck

A Virtual Vegan Potluck Update: The Links Edition

That time is upon us, Potluck participants! Just as in a real, in-person potluck, there is some preparation that needs to be done before the guests arrive. Thankfully none of us has to tidy the house, lock the dog in the guest room, improvise when the dish we prepared tastes like fireplace ash or decide what to wear. Below are some thoughts and suggestions and the info on where to learn how to connect us all on May 12. My hope is that these instructions are clear enough that any pre-potluck jitters are eliminated! I’m looking forward to finding out what you’ve all come up with and to “breaking bread” with the wonderful folks I’ve met through blogging!

There’s a lot of info here and I appreciate your patience in slogging through it. First of all, I just have to say I luv you – there is a nice distribution of dishes, no orphans – but the obvious favorite is the dessert category! Perhaps the next Potluck should be all vegan sweets?? (Yes, I’m already talking a second Potluck…)

A Gentle Reminder:
I’m really pleased to have quite a few non-vegan bloggers participating in this event. It just might be the answer to the age old question: Can’t we all just get along?? I do want to mention here that all recipes should be animal-free. If you are a vegetarian or an omnivore and have prepared your dishes with eggs or dairy, please also include the non-vegan equivalent (i.e., nut milk for dairy, egg replacer of some kind for eggs, vegan cheese for dairy cheese, etc.). I would caution anyone against preparing a dish that relies heavily on eggs, such as a custard, souffle or frittata, as this makes a translation into a plant-based dish a might tricky to say the least. If you have any questions about this, please shoot me an email.

One other reminder. In case there is any confusion, you will be posting your photos and recipes on your blog on the day of the event (May 12), not submitting the recipe to me. Probably you all understood that, but I just wanted to clarify.

Meet Your Hostess:
Lidia at Vegan Bloggers Unite! has graciously agreed to have VBU! be the launching site for the Potluck. Chances are, readers will land on a blog within the circle and move backwards or forwards from there, but I thought it would be a great idea to have a starting off point and her blog is the perfect place. VBU! readers can begin their Potluck journey from the very first appetizer. Lidia has been a wonderful support as I’ve fumbled about with this idea, so thank you, Lidia!

Suggestions:
This might seem like a firm grasp of the obvious here, but it would be a good idea in our posts to briefly mention that we are taking part in a virtual potluck that connects like-minded foodies and bloggers for a worldwide eating and drinking celebration. I will also most likely put the words Vegan Virtual Potluck in my post title.

Timing:
Since bloggers from around the globe are participating in this event, timing our postings will be a bit funky. My plan is to set my post to automatically publish at midnight on May 11. There will be some lag time between published and unpublished posts – it would be too complicated to try and coordinate everyone. My feeling is the earlier I have the post up, the better.

How I Listed the Blogs:
Bloggers are listed in the order of courses, starting with appetizers and going through to desserts. Sort of like progressing through a real meal. Within each course, I’ve placed blogs in alphabetical order.

Why the Links are Important (The Links are ALL):
Imagine that you are riding a bicycle on a silky smooth path. As you easily pedal along, you take in the beautiful scenery and glide with ease over the gentle hills and valleys. Suddenly, however, someone thrusts a stick in between the spokes and you come to a complete and unpleasant halt. This is what would happen if one of us has a broken or bad link. Our readers will come to a screeching stop and will be unable to move forward or backward. Blog readers, for all of their wonderful traits, are fickle creatures. They will leave the site and miss out on the remaining Potluck contributions.

It is imperative that the links be valid and it is imperative that everyone who participates publishes their post on the day of the event. If something occurs and you wish/need to back out of the Potluck, please let me know a day or two ahead of time so that I can make the necessary adjustments. If you have questions or problems with adding links, email me – or – Tweet me @AnOlive so I can help you. Please, please, please check the list of participating bloggers one last time before the event (i.e., on May 11). If there is any shifting about, you will need to change your links.

It is also imperative that all of us update the links the day after the Potluck. Why? Because you want readers who are visiting for the Potluck to land on the specific posts about the Potluck – not the blog/site in general. Just update the links the same way that you entered the first links (see instructions).

The Not So Good News for WordPress Users:
The fancy-schmancy HTML I wrote was summarily rejected by WordPress, perhaps due to an HTML vs. XHTML issue, or more likely because I have a freebie WP account and only so much tinkering with the coding is allowed. Who knows. After freaking out about this for a while, I decided to come up with a different solution and not turn any more of my hairs gray. I’m working with WP Support (Chris, you are so very nice!) on coding, but don’t want to hold anyone up. Perhaps we’ll have the kinks ironed out for the next Potluck. In the meantime, Blogger users CAN use the HTML code. You can find out how to do that on the VVP Page.

The Good News:
The upside to the Not So Good News is that I think the solution (two solutions, actually) will be much easier for everyone and the process much more familiar. Not as good-looking, but they’ll get the job done. Rather than outline them here, instructions for both methods are available on the VVP Page. Briefly, Method 1 involves inserting graphics and linking those graphics to sites. Method 2 is simply inserting links into your text, the same as you do when you mention another blog, website or article. Probably all of you have inserted links directly into your text before. Both methods are very easy, but I encourage you to use the one with which you feel most comfortable. I don’t want this to be a stressful occasion, I want it to be fun and social and rewarding.

Here are the two graphics (Method 1):

Go ahead, click on them (but come back here when you’re done). They’ll take you to two different sites. (Yeah, there’s a shameless plug in one of them.) Which is exactly what your graphics will do once you insert them and link them. Instructions on how to do this are on the VVP Page. You can either copy and save the graphics from here, or from the VVP Page. Size the graphics to whatever works best with your blog. The last person in the Potluck will get a different graphic which I will email separately.

So…the sooner you insert the links and/or graphics (which are available on the VVP Page) and test them the more time I have to straighten out any problems that may arise. I don’t anticipate any issues, but never say never. Please email me if you have questions or if you need help.

Ways to Connect:
I’ve added all of your blogs both to the FB Event page as well as onto my Pinterest board called Virtual Vegan Potluck May 2012. It’s been great seeing some of you on An Unrefined Vegan’s FB page as well. Thanks to the many of you who have Liked it – and please – if you have an FB page (many of you do) put your link on my FB Page so that I’m sure to Like you back! I’ve gotten most of you, I think, but there are always a few that slip through the cracks.

Get Social!:
Speaking of connecting…Once you’ve put the final touches on your special dishes, have taken the photos and written the post and published it for all the world to see – invite the guests! What good is a potluck without people to snarf down the gorgeous goodies?? Tweet, post on FB and contact your friends. Let’s drive some serious traffic through this thang!

Please come back to this post if you have questions. If you don’t find the answer, email me. Once again, instructions on how to link are available on the VVP Page. The sooner you write your draft and insert your links, the more time I have to help you if you encounter problems. I hope everyone enjoys the Potluck and once again – thank you all so much for your enthusiasm, creativity and your love of GOOD FOOD!

Tagged Blogger, community, Facebook, food bloggers, HTML, Pinterest, postaday, Twitter, vegan, vegan bloggers, vegan food, virtual vegan potluck, Wordpress

Apr 27 2012

40 Comments

General, Miscellaneous

A Letter To Cooking Light

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and more inclined to speak my mind. Maybe it’s because I’m so passionate about being vegan. Maybe it’s something I haven’t even thought of yet. Whatever it is, I’ve become one of those people. A letter-to-the-editor-writer.

I’ve been ranting on Technorati for a while now and then there was my recent response to The Plain Dealer article about veganism and earlier this month, I fired off a letter to the editor of Cooking Light magazine. That letter had been simmering inside me for quite some time and when I got a notice that I was about to receive my last issue, the spark was lit. They needed to know (well, I thought they needed to know) why I wasn’t renewing my subscription, even though I’d been a loyal subscriber for many years. And since my letter has very little chance of seeing the (cooking) light of day otherwise – no doubt an efficient administrative assistant has filed my letter under Crazy Vegan - I decided to “publish” it here on my blog.

What about you? Have the urge to let someone know how you feel about veganism?

Scott Mowbray, Editor
Cooking Light
P.O. Box 1748
Birmingham, AL 35201

Dear Mr. Mowbray,

I have been a mostly-on, sometime-off again subscriber to Cooking Light for over 20 years. One shelf of my cookbook bookcase is devoted to Cooking Light Annual Recipe books, all of them filled with sticky notes and my terrible penmanship. One way or another, Cooking Light has been a trusted kitchen companion for a long time. However, I am once again letting my subscription lapse – permanently this time. Cooking Light’s culinary path and mine have finally diverged too far.

You see, a little over a year ago, after many years as a vegetarian, I adopted a plant-based diet; one that also excludes refined sugars and added oils (even the so-called “good” ones like olive oil). This was an ethical choice, but primarily one made for health, based on the powerful evidence presented in T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s amazing book, Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease. The recent Harvard School of Public Health study further confirms their findings: that consuming meat is associated with increased risks of death by cardiovascular disease and cancer.

As the evidence of the benefits of adopting a plant-based diet and foregoing meat and dairy mounts, Cooking Light’s recipes become less and less relevant to my lifestyle and the way that I wish to care for my body. It is not enough anymore to eat light.

I am very surprised that Cooking Light has apparently chosen to ignore both Campbell’s and Esselstyn’s findings. It would be wonderful to see the magazine blaze a trail – to encourage its readers to eat not only lightly, but thoughtfully, ethically and healthfully by preparing and consuming meals that are animal-free. Cooking Light could help shatter the myths that a vegan diet is boring, difficult to follow, time-consuming to prepare, and that getting the necessary vitamins, minerals and protein is next to impossible. At 45, I am in the best shape of my life. I run, practice yoga, lift weights, garden, keep up with a puppy, write a vegan recipe blog, prepare three meals a day, bake all of our own bread and run a small greeting card business from my home. I have the energy of an eighteen year old (as long as that 18 year old isn’t eating the typical “Western” diet, that is!).

I am not suggesting that Cooking Light become a vegan recipe magazine. That would be unrealistic considering the strong pull our society seems to have to consume meat and dairy. A change that big takes time. However, it would be a benefit to subscribers to at the minimum include plant-based recipes in each issue – not coated in cheese or based on eggs as the recipes in The Enlightened Cook/Everyday Vegetarian section are now. True enlightenment would be to include dairy-free, plant-based recipes! By the way, it is a shame that Mark Bittman’s column very often includes meat; he has wonderful vegan recipes that I’m sure would satisfy cooks and eaters of all stripes.

Thank you for many years of cooking enjoyment and learning. My Annual books will remain on my shelves – it is a challenge for me to veganize these recipes and some have become beloved staples. When Cooking Light decides to include creative, delicious and healthy plant-based recipes within its pages, let me know. I will happily become a subscriber once again.

Sincerely,
Annie Oliverio

P.S. For dinner this evening, I prepared a recipe from my final issue (April 2012). It’s the Eggplant Involtini recipe from Everyday Vegetarian. I made an easy tofu ricotta – it’s so creamy and flavorful it blows the “real” stuff away – and topped the eggplant rolls with cashew cream instead of Parmesan.

Tagged Cookling Light, health, letter to the editor, letters, low-fat, postaday, vegan, veganism

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