Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Man, that ice cream is pretty genius. I had forgotten about it until now.

Moon!!! my mother's tuna noodle casserole was hands down my favorite meal growing up. you can always tweak and play around with the veganization to her recipe we created a few years ago: (gluten-free version: http://happyveganface.blogspot.com/2010 ... again.html and gluten version: http://happyveganface.blogspot.com/2008 ... erole.html)

All of vctotw? I never liked dairy cheese or eggs so the savories were easy for me, sweets were the only thing I hadn't thought about/worked on and once I tried those cupcakes it was pretty easy.

Lies! They don't exist!

But actually, I DID NOT KNOW IT EXISTED IN CANS. I keep seeing it brought up and I'm just like, drrrrrrrr jackfruit? I've looked for it fresh, never canned. Next trip to the Asian grocery, I'm going to look around more. Thanks!

As soon as I saw the first pic I had hunger pains and drooled a little. Those actually look doable! I'll need to make a special trip for nori (and canned jackfruit apparently) but when I find it I am so doing it. I think I'll just have to whisk some daiya in to the sauce to make it perfect. Thanks so much, happyfaced!

you're most welcome, Moon - and we've made it before without nori and just used dulse or kelp flakes instead. ooooh, daiya would be soooo awesome in it!!! next time around i'm adding in a bit. mmmmmmmm!

I know it's not a recipe, but NOOCH! I think I first tried it to make tofu feta. As a lacto-octo for 15 years, I had long kicked the meat habit, but I wasn't sure if I could give up dairy. Nooch helped me over that hump.

I think it was Dreena Burton's sweet potato lentil chilli from eat, drink and be vegan! That whole book, actually. It was healthy, but still so hearty - and damn tasty!

I'll tell you what made me think I could NEVER be vegan - not knowing about different types of tofu. I'm sure I'm not the only one -but trying to blend an extra firm block of tofu down into a liquid, to pour into a stroganoff... OMG. The whole thing turned white, and tasted awful. I put so much mustard powder in it, trying to get rid of the taste, that it nearly killed my senses forever. My partner at the time had to take it away from me and take it outside to the bin, I was gagging so much. Ahhhh, Tofu.

Ditto.

Fred Meyer... You live in PNW?

This is not really a "recipe," but is was already mostly vegan when i invited my vegan friends over for dinner. I didn't really get it (cringe!) and told them the whole dinner would be vegan, exception the garlic bread. They were so cool, they said "oh, we can bring some vegan garlic bread!" this was long before Earth Balance. I was so skeptical of their vegan garlic bread, but it was so damned good. Honestly, I'm pretty sure it was that garlic bread (with Willow Run margarine) that tipped me over to the 100% vegan hood. :)

I went vegan half-way through my senior year of college, the first year I cooked for myself on a regular basis.

I made chickpea cutlets for me and my roommates and I was so excited. Then I spread a little sauce and veg cheese on them (though it was those weird kinds that still had casein.. rookie mistake), and I was like, yes, I can be vegan.

I'm not sure, maybe realizing that I could eat all the falafel I wanted?

I think 2 recipes stick in my mind, 1 was the chickpea/broccoli casserole from VWAV and the other was a pumpkin/black bean casserole from FatFreeVegan:
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2008/10/pu ... erole.html

Then I remember going to our local farm sanctuary's thanksgiving potluck and eating a drumstick thing (maybe vegan dad recipe?) and thinking it was the best thing I've ever eaten.

I'm pretty sure this is the recipe:
http://vegandad.blogspot.com/2008/05/ve ... wings.html

This was years before I went vegan myself, but my aha moment was making vegan cupcakes (one of the recipes out of VCTOTW, but I don't remember which ones) for a vegan co-worker/friend of mine who was sad because she was always getting excluded on desserts. Once I realized that I could be vegan and still bake, it was like, whoa.

http://www.ourveggiekitchen.com/2009/04 ... heeze.html - this cheesy spread and another nacho cheese recipe that I've since lost track of. At the time I thought Daiya was vile, and I just couldn't image a life without cheese.

Also, noodles with olive oil, nooch, and seasoned salt helped me realize that no matter how lazy I got, I wasn't going to starve.

For me, it was a two-step development (stretched out over a long long period of time). First step was learning to make fermented nut cheese, and realizing I could have 'real' cheese as a vegan. The second step was keeping vegan for Christmas with my family and having awesome food and supportive comments from people who had been very skeptical before. I was like, if I can be a happy vegan for Christmas, I can be a happy vegan anywhere and anytime. My mom and I made Isa's seitan roast and lots of veggie side dishes and it was a wonderful experience.

Yes, cupcakes. I never cooked much as a vegetarian, so when I bought my first cookbooks, it seemed to make more sense to just get vegan ones. I had vague plans of just gradually drifting more vegan, but ended up not looking back.

It exists in Canada still! It in my local tiny health food shop, but not at any of the large grocery stores.


We totally have this in Canada. I'm not sure where you are, but here in BC it's super easy to find. Just make sure you buy the kind in brine, not in syrup or you'll need to use it up in a dessert-like recipe.

Not a recipe, but flipping through VWAV in the bookstore made me realize that I could totally do it. I'd already decided that I had to do it, but VWAV made it feel like it would be amazing and wonderful.

For me, it was my first vegan cookbook (yes I'm a newbie - my first post!) called "Crazy Sexy Kitchen."
I mean I just went bananas! I could not BELIEVE how absolutely delicious everything was. It made a believer out of me.

Mac n Cheese made with Daiya. Mac n cheese is my favorite food, and I can't get behind noochy cheese sauces. Once i made one with daiya, i was like "okay, this is just as good as non-veg mac n cheese. i can totally do this."

V'con chewy chocolate raspberry cookies.

For me it was just realizing that [most] vegan baked goods can be delicious. I was a vegetarian for a long time before going vegan, so I had already gotten used to not eating meaty stuff, and I was never really a fan of straight-up cheese. Same with eggs. But I have a really sweet tooth and so realizing that I can be vegan and still eat cookies, brownies, was when I was like. . . this whole vegan thing will work just fine.

As a long time vegetarian beforehand, the meat was non issue for me. I needed some subs for certain cheeses and other dairy.

I started to try every non dairy milk I could find until I found some suitable replacments for sweet and savory applications. Also, a couple of recipes come to mind that were a-ha moments: tofu ricotta(I think the one on the whole foods website was the first one I ever made), cashew creams, homemade soy yogurt (I can't get into commercial unsweetened ones, they don't compare to my mom's formerly dairy yogurt that she made weekly), and being able to make fluffy cakes without eggs.

I think my best resource was Bryanna Clark Grogan's excellent blog, which really just solidified the idea that it is very doable and very tasty.

And a recent a-ha was Miyoko Schinner's cream cheese recipe from her cheese book. I hate everything Tofutti makes, so that recipe is really useful.

Funny about mac n cheese, I think the first mac n cheese I had was after I went vegan. Soul Veg in DC, so good.