rants & recipes

Today, we did manage to make 3 batches of soymilk in our pressure cooker. We were hoping that it would be able to handle large amounts and make it more practical to make homemade tofu but I don't think it worked out that well, so much as we just got lucky. A yuba-like skin formed on the bottom of our PC which was probably about 2 minutes cooking time away from burning. Evin used the 'milk, plus about 1/2 of a small container of Whole Soy plain yogurt plus about 1/4 cup of sugar and made soy yogurt. It looks like curds 'n' whey, but we haven't tried it yet.

Anyway, as is our custom for post-soymilk-dinner, we had Meatloaf, using some of the okara. Ironically, the linked recipe doesn't mention okara - I add okara from 1 batch of soymilk (as measured by our soymilk machine, maybe 1 cups' worth of okara) to the linked recipe and roughly increase the other ingredients by a third. It's meatloaf, not rocket-science! :-)

Every time I make meatloaf, I'm reminded how much I love vegan cooking and not having to worry about raw meat contamination - it's kinda cool to be able to sample your raw "meatloaf" and check on seasonings!

I also fixed mashed potatoes, steamed some broccoli and mushroom gravy (which was based on this recipe). As written, my gravy didn't thicken and so I broke out the corn starch.

Vegan Mushroom Gravy

• 2tbsp oil
• 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 onion, minced
• 2 cups water, 1 Rapunzel vegetable cube, @ 1.5 tsp beef boullion
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 3 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp salt
• freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• @ 1 tbsp corn starch and 1/4 cup water, added once the above didn't want to thicken
• 1 pinch instant coffee, added when the above wasn't dark enough
• sprinkle of dried, roasted garlic chips

You know how to make gravy, right? (the linked recipe has instructions)

Whew, is the vegan month of food over yet?!