Birthday Vegan Brunch, Dinner, Cake

I can't give the recipes for any of these meals because I had no part in them. The four children at home took over the preparation and cleanup while I lolled around and waited to be served.

The brunch consisted of a potato pancake/hash browns patty, home fries, sweet potato and onion, some kind of vegan sausage, scrambled tofu, toast with Smart Balance, hot Roma, and cold mimosa. All very tasty.

Dinner was very yummy. They looked up the recipes for Spanish rice, Sweet and Sour Sesame Tofu, and Oven Baked Kale, which turned out to be crisp and chewy all at once. Again, yum!

 

Dessert was a cake called Boston Cream Pie. A one-layer vanilla cake (flavored with almond extract in this case) was sliced horizontally in half and filled with vanilla pudding. It was topped with melted dark chocolate and ringed with blueberries. My favorite! I had some for breakfast the next day.

 

Thank you, children, for making my birthday so special. (I enjoyed the calls from the farther-flung too!)

Vegan Deviled Eggs Will Fool the Eye

 

My daughter sent me a link about making VEGAN DEVILED EGGS, so I had to see for myself. I never really liked eggs much, so these are a little too close for comfort for me to enjoy, but luckily I was able to foist most of them off at a party last night. They weren’t hard to make at all, once I got the two special ingredients. I had everything else on hand. I made up a batch of unsweetened soy milk to start off with, and I had Morinu tofu on hand for the centers.

The original recipe used grams, but my partner converted the measurements for me. I am also doubling the whites and halving the yellows, as I needed more of the first and less of the second. But, other than that, I have to give a tip of my hat to the creators of these uncannily egg-like reproductions.

 

Black salt is an Indian mineral salt containing sulfur compounds that lend it the characteristic smell of hard-boiled eggs. It is also called Kala Namak and is used in the Indian spice mixture Chaat Masala. Agar powder is derived from seaweed. You can use your favorite mayonnaise substitute. I used Nasoya’s Nayonnaise.