Vegan Month of Food V - Wrap Up!

Vegan Month of Food Wrap-Up!

I made 26 individual posts, and did 22 days. Not bad for my first Vegan Mofo! This was the fifth annual Vegan Mofo, and I REALLY look forward to participating next year. I've already been contemplating different themes and ideas.

What did I learn? To not hold back and post, post, post! This made me not afraid to post things, even if I've made the exact same thing or don't have a recipe. Talking about food is something I LOVE to do, so why not do it more? I am also trying to be more entertaining as my writing is seriously dry and I need to cut loose a bit. Food is fun.

So, for reference, here are the various posts I did thorughout this month. I tried to put them into similar groups, but some just had no category to fall into.

This month I posted about food trucks, twice, and
I also documented my annual visit to the MN State Fair.

Soups and Stews dominiated this month: one made okra, tomato and quinoa; one with kidney beans; one with white beans; a lentil soup; and a hard lesson learned with old beans.

I made & ate several sweet things, including breakfast:
chocolate chip cookies and cookie cannonballs; blueberry waffles which on a later day became pancake pelotas. I also tried some chocolates from Sjaaks.

I tried my hand at making seitan bites and curried seitan strips with great results.

I "baked" - sort of: I tried samosas in puff pastry and
a whole wheat chickpea pot pie.

I did a couple Asian-inspired dishes (aside from those not already listed):
broccoli fried rice and mock duck coconut curry, curry sauce from pureed butternut squash and tried out Thai Veggie Chicken.

And the other food posts with no identifiable category:
cornmeal crusted tofu with broccoli, mango/parsley/raspberry smoothie, onion tater tots, taco beans & rice, and I took a stab at a chik'n salad sandwich.


To round everything out, I showed off my empty fridge and discussed how I reuse bottles for everything.

Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies & Soft Cookie Cannonballs [Vegan Mofo]

It's the last day of Vegan Month of Food
!!!! It's been a blast doing this and I am already excited for next year, haha. I have also been thinking of different themes or putting more thought into next year's event. I'll have more on my reflections and recapping what I did this month tomorrow. Today, let's talk cookies.

Ah, cookies. I LOVE cookies. All types, you can't really go wrong. In my house, there is a great cookie debate. I like a crispy cookie to dunk into milk and then devour. I could easily put away a sleeve of Oreos. Lots of people prefer chewy, soft cookies, but I only like those if they are fresh from the oven. Mr. Coconut, on the other hand, prefers chewy, tender cookies that melt in your mouth, no milk necessary.

Did you know? Target's Market Pantry brand chocolate chip cookies are accidentally vegan. Both the crispy and chewy varieties. They taste like Chips Ahoy! I've actually found quite a few generic brands of cookies that are accidentally vegan.

No store bought cookie can top the wonderfulness of homemade, though. This is mainly because I love eating cookie dough, though.

I had a craving for cookies and happened to have all the necessary ingredients on hand, so I made THIS recipe for chocolate chip cookies from The PPK. The only thing I changed was using cornstarch instead of tapioca flour. It worked great. I used
Ghirardelli chocolate chips - the semi-sweet variety.


I must say that the dough felt a bit oily, and maybe next time I make these I'll try cutting back on the fat and subbing in flax seeds or something. I baked these for a little longer than I should have so they were quite crispy. I loved them

Since I have a small cookie sheet and could only bake 8 at a time, I pulled out my donut hole maker and went to work on delicious cookie "cannonballs". I had to cook these for much longer than the machine wanted to, about 2-3 "rounds" to get my desired texture. The cannonballs turned out great and the best of both worlds: firm, almost crisp outside with a chewy, tender inside.

I then took whatever remaining dough was left and made 3 smallish cookies and baked them in the toaster oven just to see what would happen. The cookies were still great! These were a little chewier than the oven-baked ones, mainly because I baked them a shorter amount of time.

A close up of a cannonball:



And a close up of a cookie:

Puff Pastry Samosas [Vegan Mofo]

Vegan Month of Food has only one more day left!

I experimented a bit with puff pastry today. I made a samosa mix: potatoes diced very small, cooked with small diced carrots and onions and frozen peas. I cooked the mixture with curry powder, veggie broth, garlic, and salt. I finished it with a little flour to help thicken the broth and some cilantro and parsley.

Then I spooned the mix onto thawed squares of frozen puff pastry, wrapping to the best of my ability. I baked at 400 degrees F until golden brown. The above photo was the most successful triangle shape I made.

In the end, there was too much pastry to filling, but I'm not sure how to fix this other than using phyllo dough instead off puff pastry. I would like to try more of a mashed potato approach to the mixture: make curry mashed potatoes and then mix in cooked onion, peas and carrots.

Here's a photo of the other various shapes that came out of this batch (with some cookies cooling on the edge of the photo, that's another post, though):