Today is the one year anniversary of The Project, aka my Veganniversary. While I haven’t stayed perfectly animal-free all year (I have no plans to quit eating honey, and soy cheese containing milk protein occasionally finds its way to my fridge still), my diet and my life have completely changed in the past year. In celebration and commemoration, I will give you two lists:
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Foods I Miss:
Chick-Fil-A Chicken Nuggets. Sweet fancy Moses do those crazy conservative christians know how to fry up some goddamned chicken.
Seared Tuna.
Fresh Mozzarella / Caprese Salad. There will never be a suitable substitute for this, I’m afraid.
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Favorite Foods:
Skittles. Newly free of gelatin, holla!
Baked Garlic-Sesame-Ginger Tofu. I have finally perfected a tofu recipe.
Roasted Vegetables of Any Kind.
Dry Roasted Almonds.
Quinoa. Superfood.
Hummus. Anywhere, any time, forever and always, hummus.
Sweet Potato Chips. See also: Sweet Potato Fries, Baked Sweet Potatoes, etc.
Pizza with Carmelized Onions where the Cheese Used to Be. You’ll never need cheese again, almost.
Seitan. Praise Seitan!
It’s easy to see that the list of favorite vegan foods far outweighs the list of now verboten foods I miss. I really couldn’t be happier about my decision to quit eating meat, eggs, and dairy. Now if only there were more vegan episodes of Top Chef for me to enjoy.
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So how about you: What are your favorite foods? Your favorite guilty pleasure foods? I must know!
Raveling Out 
Bacon. Baaaaaconnnnn!
Please share the tofu recipe! Sounds delicious. What do you serve it with?
Something you might find yummy that I recently made: pumpkin curry. I used the little jar of Thai curry paste from the grocery store (may have fish sauce in it though, so I don’t know if that rules it out for you), and added a bunch of fresh spices and stuff too. Sauté onions, whatever other veggies, tofu, garlic/ginger/cumin/coriander/etc., add peeled cubed pumpkin (make sure it’s eating pumpkin, not carving pumpkin — I grew mine myself!), let pumpkin brown a little bit, then add curry paste, water, broth, coconut milk, and simmer until the pumpkin is tender. YUM
Okay, this isn’t exactly in the spirit of healthy vegan cuisine, but it’s vegan, and yumskious:
vegan margarine (we have a brand called Nuttelex)
brown sugar
vanilla essence
flour
cocoa powder
not-egg (basically tapioca starch)
milkless dark choc chips
baking tray
oven
voila! deliciousness!
Oh, and my favourite salad:
chickpeas
red capsicum
parsley
lemon juice
crushed garlic
and small fry-pan toasted rags of flat bread
and fry-pan toasted almond flakes
Mmmm, spicy chick-peas. Mmmmmm. Clarabella needs to give us Philly’s chickpea salad recipe again. Because I’m a dork and keep forgetting how easy it is.
In the spirit of your caramelized onion pizza, I can try to remember my caramelized balsamic onion tart recipe. It’s yummy.
Savory pie crust (whatever you like, the simpler the better)
3 or 4 big purple onions, sliced thin
olive oil
salt
pepper
balsamic
Saute onions seasoned with salt & pepper in olive oil until nearly clear, add balsamic vinegar (2 tbsp i think), cook until reduced. let cool.
Heat oven to 350
roll out dough into two circles on baking sheets, brush lightly with olive oil, pop in the oven for about 5 – 8 minutes until light brown. Take out of the oven, spread onion mixture over the surface of the dough. I put it almost all the way to the edge. Pop back into the oven and cook for about 10 minutes, until nice and warm and toasty. If you made big circles, slice into wedges. If you made little individual serving circles, pop them on a plate and serve topped with baby greens or spring mix tossed with a light vinaigrette. I add goat cheese and toasted pecans tossed with the greens, but you vegans can improvise.
I love macaroni and cheese. Yum.
Wow, I thought I was the only one with such a weakness for Chik-Fil-A!
Bacon is admittedly high on my list of guilty meat pleasures, though mostly I eat chicken.
If they could somehow develop a less-stinky tuna, I would likely eat more of it. Nothing gets you glared at in the breakroom like a hot bowl of tuna casserole.
No seared tuna? In my taxonomy, fish ARE plants.
FG – Ha ha. I didn’t even really like bacon when I was a meat eater. Overrated. There, I said it.
L – No problem, I will post it this weekend. I was going to make a batch anyway, so I can get some pictures. ALSO. PUMPKIN CURRY OMG. Making that soon.
A – Yum to both of those! I’ll just have you and L come by and do my cooking for me. Chick peas! That’s what I need. I keep forgetting to get some more.
R – That recipe looks awesome, too. I could definitely improvise around the cheese factor.
MCE – I think they put crack in the chicken there, I swear! Sometimes I catch a whiff of it and OMG. Yikes. Too delicious.
D – I am willing to accept snails as plants. Ate some escargots in Vegas and did not feel bad about it at all.
Oh, excellent. Now count shellfish and soon we’ll have that slippery slope all greased up!
Yeah, the only problem with the snails is they’re always served in butter, which is an absolute NO. Too bad.
I mean, you know, it’s hard to feel bad about eating a snail is the point I am making.
Right. I don’t think a snail would even have the wherewithal to object.