Still Eating Leftovers

I’m still eating leftovers, so no food today. However, there is some housecleaning (as people would say) to do, so let me get on with that.

First, I received quite a surprise on my shopping trip earlier this week. Not only did I find the new So Delicious Coffee Creamer (website not yet updated to show product), but right next to it was sitting MimicCreme in the 16 oz size they have for coffee creamer use. After having it in my coffee for the last two days I can tell you that any hype you have heard is all true and you should run out and buy some immediately. I have even added some agave nectar and cocoa to some to make a chocolate creamer (I like chocolate in my coffee). And ironically the only reason they are now stocking MimicCreme is because this store no longer sells Silk soy milk products, due to their decision to stop using both local and organic soybeans (but not reflect the change on their boxes), so these creamers are their replacement.

Second, I have plans to start making my own peanut tofu. Unfortunately, I have only fnd one store (of the three that I frequent on an as needed basis) that carries raw peanuts. And none of the stores around here seem to carry granulated peanuts or peanut pieces (like what is needed to make Celine’s Peanut Milk). So I may have to look at using salted peanuts that I rinse thoroughly with water before using; however, I am not sure that is a great idea and would only be a fall back solution. I also plan on ordering a tofu kit sometime in the next week and am looking for directions on making silken tofu as well. With tofu, I can live without tempeh.

Thirdly, I am still drinking kefir, but do plan to stop my experiment. Currently I am using a starter (that is not vegan, but vegetarian) and have realized that I really do not have the space in my tiny kitchen nor the desire to have to drink this every day. I am not saying kefir is hard, just that it doesn’t work for me and my needs. Lately I have realized that this is something that I will have to drink for the rest of my life to occasionally eat soy products and that really doesn’t make sense to me. With the peanut tofu now, the only product I would want would be tempeh, and then only on occasion. Also the only other time I would eat a soy vegan product is at a restaurant. It just does not make sense to devote time and space to something; that though helpful, is a daily commitment. I am now looking at the possibilities of what I can use for occasional eating of soy products. More to follow on this. However, for those of you that are soy allergic I do suggest that you look into this and it may be a great help for you.

Fourthly (and last), starting next week is VeganMoFo 2009, which is a food blogging event that Isa at PPK Forums has put on for the last few years. I just missed last year and will be participating this time. The goal is to blog regularly in the month of October and show the world how good vegan food can be. I intend on showing that even those of us with food intolerances can still eat very healthy and wonderful vegan food. If you are not part of the PPK forums you can still participate by getting in touch with kittee and have your blog added to the list. Or you can just read and enjoy. And I hope you don’t mind leftovers, because you will see them here on a regular basis next month.

Thai Tossed Salad

I have been looking for different salads in all of my books and this has been one that sounded interesting, to say the least. Since I have never been to a Thai restaurant, I can’t say if this is authentic or close to what they serve; but it does have the flavors of Thailand.

This is another recipe from Vegan Express, actually two recipes; since the dressing is also from the book. The salad is really easy; just some broccoli, red bell pepper, cucumber and roma tomato. The recipe also calls for sliced mushrooms and some sprouts, but because I’m not fond of either of those, I just left them out. It is also supposed to have some pineapple as well, but for some reason I totally forgot to put that in until after I ate. The pineapple, though, would have added a definite sweetness that would have been quite nice.

And the recipe is quite easy. Just prep the veggies, toss together, place on top of lettuce and pour on the dressing. The dressing is the Coconut Peanut Sauce or Dressing, from the same book. And that is easy also. It just has jarred Satay Sauce, agave nectar, coconut milk, and some curry paste. It is quite easy to put together and tastes quite good. And it doesn’t thicken in the refrigerator. Wonder how it would work as a dressing on a rice or pasta salad?

And just to round out the meal, I had some Burmese Tofu that was simply baked in the toaster oven. It was very good with the Coconut Peanut Sauce or Dressing on it.

Broccoli Slaw with Craisins and Ginger

I’m using another recipe from PDQ Vegetarian tonight. This time it is a salad based on broccoli slaw that has raisins and candied ginger added to it. Or it is supposed to be raisins; I didn’t have any, so they got replaced with craisins instead. Don’t think it hurt the salad though. The dressing is just vegan mayo, rice wine vinegar and powdered ginger. And just in case you think that the ginger will overwhelm the salad, it is a nice accent, but not an overwhelming flavor. The ginger was also nice with the Dijon Beets (that I earlier wrote about here) and my favorite veggie burger. All in all it was a simple dinner for the end of summer.

Kefir Update and Curried Asian Vegetables

First off, time for the kefir update. Today was my last day of the second quart of the So Delicious Coconut Milk Kefir. I started drinking four ounces per day at the end of last week, without any problems. And since today was the last day, that meant it was time for my test. As part of lunch today, I had a single serving of Silk Live yogurt. This was around noon. As of right now (6:45) I feel fine and have no nausea; which was my major symptom of soy intolerance. Does this mean the kefir helped? Not sure, but it is interesting. And it does mean that I will continue this experiment. Now I just need to make my own kefir. So next on the things to do is to buy some of the starter from a store and also look into getting some of the grains as well. After drinking this for a month, I should see if I can eat tempeh. That would be a real challenge to see how well I tolerate soy.

For those you who want to try this, please heed this warning. I am not here to give medical advice and have no medical training. If you are soy intolerant or even soy allergic, this will be an attempt at your own risk. If you still want to try this experiment at home, please follow the suggestions below.

1. Start slowly. Only drink an ounce or two for the first few weeks. After that you can increase the amount taken daily, but do not attempt any soy until you have had at least two quarts of kefir.
   


2. After having two quarts of kefir, I would suggest that your first soy food be yogurt; simply because it also has probiotics in it and is the soy protein least likely to bother you in the first place. If you are soy allergic, please make sure you at this point, you have your auto injector or some Benadryl around, in case you have a reaction. Also do not do this alone and do it in your doctor’s office, if you can get them to come on board with this experiment.
   


3. If the yogurt goes well, and you are drinking from 4-8 ounces of kefir a day; I would not try tempeh or tofu till you are have gone through at least another two quarts.



4. This is not a cure all and results may differ. It will not work the same in everyone. You will not be able to eat all the soy protein you would like to do so. But it will allow you to eat tofu or tempeh when you have no other options and for those who are allergic, it may allow you to handle soy lechitan or soy sauce again. And that should make your lives much easier.

And now onto dinner. I wasn’t sure if I would even have dinner tonight, since I was unsure how I would be feeling. But, earlier in the day I made some of the quick Burmese Tofu developed by Vegetation (it does work with the chickpea flour as well), just in case. And in looking at my food plan for the week, Curried Asian Vegetables from PDQ Vegetarian seemed to be the simplest thing to have for dinner that would go well with the chick-fu. So it ended up being a nice, simple dinner that was not cold; since I am sick of cold salads and cold meals. The chick-fu is round, simply because that was the smallest container I had that could be used as a mold.

Nufu Tofu and Sweet Potato Cakes

No, you are not misreading the title of this post. That is a new product from Sunergia Soy Foods and it is a tofu made from peanuts and seasoned with wither ginger or herbs and hickory. And how do you make a tofu from peanuts you ask, why just like regular tofu. First you make peanut milk, then you add nigari, then you press it. Viola, peanut tofu. Oh, and it doesn’t taste like peanuts.

For dinner I had BBQ Nufu Tofu with Sweet Potato Cakes and a simple salad. The tofu cooks up just like regular soy tofu and even looks white when one takes it out of the package. It has the same feel and slices up quite easily. Place it in a pan and it browns up, just like tofu would do. After it had browned on both sides, I put some BBQ sauce (Bryanna’s Bourbon Barbeque Sauce, page down to find), turned off the heat and let it sit in the sauce. I don’t know if it soaked up any of the sauce, but since it comes pre marinated and seasoned, that may not matter. The Hickory and Herb did meld well with the BBQ sauce I used, and would most likely work well with almost any BBQ sauce.

On the side I have Sweet Potato Cakes. This is something I found up at Vegweb. The base is sweet potatoes, but they also have corn and shredded zucchini. Oat flour and panko breadcrumbs act as a binder. If you like sweet potatoes, needless to say, this is a dish for you; since it is a very different way to eat your sweet potatoes. These would be great to bring in a lunch, since I think they would reheat well in a microwave or could be eaten at room temperature.

My other side dish for tonight is just a simple salad of romaine, shredded carrots and grape tomatoes. On top is some Annie’s Naturals French dressing. Annie’s makes a quite good French dressing, which is both vegan and soy free.

As for my kefir experiment, I think I was overloading my system a bit; so I have cut back to only 2 oz a day. Since I don’t want to try to eat the soy yogurt until I have had at least two quarts of kefir, that will push off the final test at until early September. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Kefir Experiment Day Two

Day two of the kefir experiment. I have just had my second cup. I must warn you though, that if you try kefir, it does not taste a bit like yogurt. When I took my first sip yesterday, I could not believe how tart it was. And I am drinking the strawberry one (that has pureed strawberries in it). I cannot imagine what the unflavored one tastes like. However, I do understand now why people say that it can be used as a replacement for buttermilk. Not sure if I notice anything yet, but then it has only been two days.

Salads, Seitan, Sandwich and Kefir

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it. And this is only the last two days.

First the salads. It is still hot and humid here in Florida, so salads are still a large portion of what I am eating. My lunch is composed of two of whichever ones I have in the refrigerator at the moment. For today, my lunch was PJs Fresh Corn Salad and Miso Lentil Salad. I have been working on the corn salad since last week. It makes a ton, so if you need something to take to a potluck, this would be a good dish. The Miso Lentil Salad is my protein for lunch and also some probiotics, since the dressing is miso and apple cider vinegar.

The seitan is Dr. Pepper Seitan from Vebweb. I had high hopes for this, but am not really fond of it. Partly because I still have not figured out how to do baked seitan and partly because I don’t really like the BBQ sauce. It just has too much oil for my tastes. On the side is Southwestern Corn and Black Bean Slaw from Healthy Eats up at Food TV. This is a contribution from their vegetarian blogger, who is a regular poster. I am not normally a fan of coleslaw, but this is quite good. And you should try her Papaya Salsa Slaw from her blog Dine Dish Delish.

The sandwich is part of dinner tonight and was inspired by a post this week up at Dine Dish Delish. She had an open face sandwich of naan, spicy mustard, apple and soy cheese. Here I took the concept and made a sandwich of naan, baked eggplant slices and my mozzarella cheese. Once it cooled down enough to eat, it was quite good. On the side is some more of the Green Bean and Chickpea Salad from Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen.

The last thing for today is kefir. For those of you who do not know what kefir is, it is cultured milk that has its origins in the Caucuses Mountains. In doing some research on the web, I discovered that in 2006 some scientists in Taiwan found that (and this is in laboratory mice) it reduced the allergic response to both soy and milk proteins after drinking either soy or milk kefir. That got me thinking that maybe it could help me tolerate soy better, at least enough so that I could occasionally eat it. To that end I am going to drink one cup of the coconut milk kefir for the next 8 days, that would be two quarts, and then eat a soy yogurt to see the results. If it works well, kefir might become a regular part of my diet. I bought the kefir today and will let you know how it is going tomorrow.