vegoftheweek

Inside The Oven: A trip back to fun houses, funnel cakes, and grotesque looking teddy bears. Week Links: Flexitarians-those part time vegetarians.

Around this time of year, there’s a week long festival in a Midwestern town I lived in for years. It’s the pretty standard carnival type atmosphere with games, rides, and several blocks of food booths containing your traditional fair food of pizza, bratwurst, haystacks, and all things not vegetarian. My most repulsive memories were that of seeing and smelling fried brain sandwiches-made from brains of pigs and cows…As they say on airplane flights: there’s a trash bag or can at your side. Please regurgitate and get back to reading this when you’re done.

Anyway, there were a few, but scarce veggie options if you were a lacto-ovo. I was still eating cheese at the time (but not anymore) and every year I looked forward to finding the cheese stick booth of choice, as there were several to choose from. Depending on the year, it could have been Future Farmers of America to St. Anthony’s Catholic Church where I chose to be a cheese stick patron.

Normally, I’m a pretty flexible and laid back kind of person. So, in the company of friends at the festival, I had no problem standing around for hours as they futilely attempted to win life size teddy bears that frankly so looked so bizarre, you’d wonder what child actually liked taking these to bed. However, when it came to getting my cheese sticks, all manners, cooperativeness, and “thinking of the other person,” were pushed aside. Once satisfied with the taste of warm, soft, stretchy mozzarella cheese dipped in marinara sauce, I couldn’t care less how many teddy bears my friends and family threw horseshoes for.

Fast forward a decade. No longer doing the cheese thing, I thought I’d never bite into the fried mozzarella festival goodness again. Until I began thumbing through recipes for regular mozzarella cheese sticks and thought to myself, “Let’s veganzie this.” Learn how I veganized fried mozzarella cheese sticks and get the recipe after the break… (more…)

Inside The Oven: Make model home with chow mein noodles. Week Links: What’s Vegan Momma Up To These Days?

A. A creative model of a future TLC “Trading Spaces” project.
B. One of Donald Trump’s toupees.
C. My chow mein noodle hut before it’s broken down into smaller chow mein noodle pieces.

If you guessed C, you’re not only a genius, but also recognize good art. You see, I must admit, the model chow mein noodle hut was not completely my idea. Rather, I was inspired by an interesting and beautiful photo stock pic of rice noodles. The noodles were stacked high in an elegant fashion as if they were ascending to a veggie heaven only the purest of vegan, raw foodies, and greenies could ever dream of. Go ahead, take a look. But come back.

Now that you’re back, you don’t have to smother on the compliments. I know, I know. I am quite the sculptor. Really, it’s nothing but a natural gift that I couldn’t possibly take any excessive pride in…

Regular chow mein noodles I’ve seen in the grocer’s Asian or ethnic section will often have one of the 7 deadliest sins, “Trans-fat.” (I don’t know what the other six are, but I was hoping we could have a contest one day and decide.) These homemade noodles nix that problem and allow you to have a unique experience with udon. Recipe for Chow Mein Noodles after the break… (more…)

Inside The Oven: Heather Mills' 8 page food demands for her vegan daughter, food stalker toddler, Curried Sweet Potato Shepherd's Pie in Week Links. Vegans, non cheese eating vegetarians and non-dairy queens can find happiness in nacho cheese again.