I had a great birthday weekend in the RV with my family. It was filled with food and fun!
Here is a picture of The Good:
That is a picture of the raw vegan carrot “cheese” cake I mentioned that I was going to make in an earlier post. I was so incredibly easy to make and it tasted so good, so very, very, very good, like I cannot even begin to tell you how good it really was, that I think I just may not be able to fully enjoy regular old carrot cake ever again! The “cream cheese” was delightful and really, truly tasted just like it was sweetened regular dairy cream cheese but held up like a cheese cake topping. The carrot mixture I was initially wary about. I thought it might taste like raw carrots and nothing else but was I ever wrong! It indeed tasted just like carrot cake! The sweetness and texture were spot on. This is my new favorite cake and one I will make again! We had leftovers for a few days and it never lost its flavor. Delicious!
Now The Bad:
While shopping for our trip up to the RV I decided to give a couple of processed vegan items a try. I was going to make a vegan kale lasagna and although the recipe didn’t call for mozzarella cheese I know how nice gooey cheese is when put into a lasagna so I found a vegan mozzarella. The texture was not like cheese, it was more like biting into tofu. At first the taste was not at all cheese like until the aftertaste of mozzarella set in. It was an odd sensation to eat something and only taste what it is supposed to taste like at the very end. It grated easily enough and melted very well. The melted taste was lacking even with the mozzarella aftertaste. Would I use it again? I think not. The lasagna had tons of flavor and while I was hoping the “cheese” would even further add to the taste, it didn’t.
The Just Plain Yucky:
Oh boy, and was this truly yucky, vegan sour cream. I also was going to make us vegan nachos and have seen many recipes using vegan cheddar cheese but my recipe which I had made in the past and liked, used a homemade mixture of cashews and nutritional yeast and a few other things instead of cheese. So I decided that since nachos without sour cream is just not nachos that I would try vegan sour cream. Now mind you, I looked at the ingredient lists for both the sour cream and vegan mozzarella and felt alright with that I saw listed but I wasn’t expecting what I tasted when we dolloped this onto our warm chips with all the fixings. Like Andrew Zimmerman on the show “Bizarre Foods”, I like to try something new at least twice with the minimum being two bites. That was difficult for me with this. It was kind of like cardboard liquified in a chemical stew and thrown into a container. The consistency was more like yogurt, the color less white and more off white with a hint of tan, but the taste….just plain yucky. No one could stomach it and with the leftover nachos we got dairy cream cheese instead.
Speaking of yogurt I also decided to try almond yogurt which is also vegan. While I would have liked it better had it been more the consistency of something close to a Greek yogurt, it wasn’t bad at all. We enjoyed it every morning with granola and all liked it quite a bit.
I think that for me I prefer eating things that I make from scratch. Like the good cake I made. I have no doubt that had I spread an already processed “cream cheese” vegan product on top that it would have not even come close to the awesomeness that was what I made from scratch. So my next mission? To try to find out if it is possible to make your own vegan sour cream and your own vegan mozzarella. If you have any links or advice to share I would be most grateful.
On the agenda for today is preparation for another weekend in the camper. I’ll be making a variety of things from quinoa pizza balls for snacks to a kale and cabbage vegan coleslaw, Chesapeake chickpea sandwiches, sun-dried tomato cheezy kale chips (which won’t make it five minutes past the oven I’m sure) and who knows what else. Like kale chips too? Here is a link to the recipe I’m going to try:
http://ohsheglows.com/2012/05/04/sundried-tomato-cheezy-kale-chips/
So last weekends adventures in vegan and vegetarian cooking had some ups and down and even some upset bellies, but as I always say, “You never know until you try and if you don’t taste it, you just may be missing out on something great!” or something good, bad or just plain yucky!
Many Moons Yoga 