Vegan MOFO - Day 2 - Daiya Cheese to the Rescue

Well, today I was going to post a conversion of one of Fred's childhood favorites, but it was an utter failure. Like totally nasty I could use it as a paste failure. What a drag! So I'm going to have to rework it and post it another day.

I'm working 12 hour shifts this week, so I'm not cooking anything complex to speak of. Simple and quick will be the order of the week if I'm in charge of the cooking. However, I'm hoping Fred will be my pinch cooker this weekend. Maybe if I'm really nice, he'll hook me up!

Anyhoooooooo. I'm going to go back to my childhood repertoire for today. After my miserable failure in the kitchen last night, I had to do some quick thinking. Fred had been working on our new garden most of the day and he was starving. After he choked down some of the paste casserole, I offered up something a bit more tasty. When I was in high school, I worked two jobs and went to school, so I was pretty busy. I figured out a few things I could always make on the fly. I practically lived on eggs over easy and toast, boiled frozen corn, french fries, and grilled cheese. Don't worry, there were vegetables in the mix too. My dad was quite a gardener.

Grilled cheese was one of my ultimate comfort foods. I loved the gooey, creamy, rich cheese oozing out of the bread. Oh yes, and the bread, whole grain, perfectly browned and crispy. Wow, I'm drooling and it's only 630am. Fred used to love Velveeta and I was a big fan of Kraft Deluxe Singles. EW! I know...like one molecule away from being plastic or something like that. Still, I loved the stuff. I wasn't very hopeful about finding an ample sub, but then came Daiya cheese. It was love at first melt. I bought some the other day for another recipe I am hoping to convert next week. I was psyched I had this lovely container of yellow-orange joy in the fridge. I whipped out the iron skillet, slathered some yummy multigrain bread with Earth Balance and made the perfect grilled cheese. It was late, so we shared. It was so freaking good that next time there will be NO sharing!!! Ah thank you Daiya for bringing one of my all time favorites back to life.

I promise, when I have days off, I will get more creative.

Vegan MOFO Day 17 - The Cheezy Showdown

As we keep venturing down the vegan road, we have grown more curious about some products vegan products we keep seeing on the boards. I did a little review of soy curls yesterday. I find them amazing and revolutionary. I thought I should try another "substitute" for something eaten with abundance as an omni.

Tonight we had a little vegan cheeze taste test. I haven't really gotten into the vegan cheeze thing. I prefer non-processed stuff. I have been reading for months about the wonderous Teese. Well it just so happens there is one restaurant here in the Phoenix area that now sells it retail - Green Vegetarian in Scottsdale. So my sweetie made a road trip and picked some up for me.

First we grated them to see if there was a difference in the texture while grating. I didn't see any significant difference at that point in texture. Neither is great to eat cold, but Teese was much tastier in my opionon.

Next I rolled out pizza dough I made from Nonna's Italian Kitchen recipe. I made my own pizza sauce, sauteed some mushrooms and leftover gimme lean italian sausage (yes I know processed heaven tonight). I put a little cornmeal in the bottom of my iron skillet and threw the whole shootin' match into the oven. Unfortunately, I didn't read the instructions on the Teese. I put it in at a lower temp so it really took a long time to bake. No worries though. The Teese melted, but certainly not like dairy cheese. It was quite gooey underneath. Yum!

Next was the FYH quesadilla. We made this one with some fresh tortillas, sauteed onions, mushrooms and roasted hatch green chiles. There was a couple of those chiles that were hotter than hell, but so tasty.

I don't know if it was really a fair comparison. The dishes were so different. I have to say that I preferred the flavor and texture of the teese. The FYH was tasty, but was just more liquidy. I don't think I will be a huge faux cheese eater. But it is nice for something different.