Vegan MoFo 2012

I'm excited to be participating in my third year of Vegan MoFo (Month of Food).  I'll be posting every weekday in October, and I even got organized this year and came up with a theme.  My theme is classic flavor pairings, and I'll be focusing on a different flavor pair for each week of MoFo.  My (tentative) schedule is as follows:

Week 1: Peanut Butter & Banana
Week 2: Blueberry & Lemon
Week 3: Apple & Cinnamon
Week 4: Chocolate & Mint
Week 5: Pineapple & Coconut

The majority of the recipes will be for desserts and sweet breakfast foods, but there will be a few savory recipes as well.

I'm excited to see what my fellow MoFo-ers will be cooking up; I love having my Google Reader full of delicious recipes/food porn all month long.

Camp Food: Peanut Noodles

Good camp food is a lot easier when you prepare as many of the ingredients as possible at home.  For this "recipe," you can cook everything in a single skillet over a camp stove, and since the noodles are pre-cooked and the veggies are chopped small, it cooks in just a few minutes.

The Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups of your favorite peanut sauce
2 bundles soba noodles
3 cups vegetables, chopped small
1 package baked tofu

The Process:

1. AT HOME: Cook soba noodles according to package directions being sure not to overcook, then rinse under cold water to cool.  Store in a ziplock or other container with enough water to half-cover the noodles.  Pack sauce, vegetables, and tofu each in a separate container.
2. AT CAMP: Slice tofu into bite-sized pieces.  In a nonstick skillet, cook vegetables and tofu for a few minutes until veggies are tender. Pour into a mixing bowl.  In the same skillet, cook noodles and sauce until just heated through.  Add to vegetables and toss to combine.

Gourmet Camp Food: Crescent Roll Cinnamon Rolls

My husband and I spent the weekend camping in Yosemite National Park to celebrate his birthday.  I always try to make sure birthday food is special even if I don't have a kitchen handy.  Since one of my husband's favorite foods is cinnamon rolls, I decided to surprise him with cinnamon rolls for breakfast, cooked over the campfire.

The first step in making this happen was to buy him a clever device called a pie iron as one of his birthday gifts.  The pie iron is a hinged, two-piece cast iron pan on a long handle.  I presented it to my husband the morning of his birthday,and he jumped up and down ecstatically as I pulled the cinnamon roll ingredients out of the cooler.

Pie iron in action

Needless to say, the cinnamon rolls were a smashing success, so much so that my husband wants to buy a second pie iron so he can make larger batches.

This recipe makes 8 cinnamon rolls, and the pie iron will cook 2 at a time.  The ingredients keep well in a cooler so you don't have to cook them all the same day.

The Ingredients:

2 packages crescent rolls

Cinnamon Filling:

1/3 cup (packed) brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1 1/2 t cinnamon

1/4 c margarine

Icing:

1 c powdered sugar

3 T almond milk

a pinch cinnamon

The Process:

1. To make cinnamon filling, beat together all filling ingredients until combined.  Pour into a mason jar or other container to pack in the cooler.
2. To make icing, beat together all icing ingredients until smooth.  Pack in a separate mason jar.
3. Pack crescent rolls in a water-tight container or ziplock bag to keep them dry if the ice in the cooler melts.  Note: the crescent roll's packaging may burst at high elevation.
4. To assemble: unroll crescent rolls and press together 2 crescent roll triangles to form a rectangle.  Spread cinnamon filling over the rectangle, and roll into a tube with the filling on the inside.  Repeat with remaining rolls.  Cook two at a time in a pie iron, turning occasionally, until golden-brown on both sides.  
5. While rolls are cooking, warm the icing by placing the mason jar of icing in a pot of hot water.
6. Pour warm icing over rolls and eat while hot.

I'll have another post up soon featuring more of our gourmet camp food...
And in other news, for those of my readers who don't know me in person, I wanted to announce that there's another little vegan on the way...I'm due to have my first child in early February!

Hashbrown Burger

This is my latest take on burgers and fries:  a veggie burger tossed under the broiler with some vegan cheese and sliced onions on top, served on a "bun" made of waffle browns.  To make the optimal waffle brown bun,  pile the potatoes fairly thick and don't spread them all the way to the edge of the waffle iron, instead aiming for a round that's about the same diameter as your burger patty.