Dia de los Muertos Festival and Food

I’m a bit upset I only made it to 17 posts during Vegan MOFO. But I think I did pretty good for a first-timer! Hopefully I’ll have more time to post next year 🙂

But all of that is in the past! And so is everything in this post, because the holiday was two days ago! Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) was celebrated on Monday. I had originally planned on making some of the traditional foods, such as tamales and pan de muerto (bread of the dead), but my day was already booked up as it was. Me and my boyfriend did, however, make it to the Dia de los Muertos Festival at the Bare Hands Gallery in downtown Birmingham.

Day of the Dead altars

Uncreepy.

All Hallow Eve is near.

Since I had already bought all the ingredients to make tamales and pan de muerto, I figured I would go ahead and make them. So that’s what I did today.

Butternut Squash Tamales

Butternut Squash Tamales

I got this recipe off the Food Network website. This was my first time making tamales, so I’m not sure if I did everything correctly. But they still tasted good! 🙂 I had these with some Spanish rice; made with white rice, a taco seasoning packet, and some frozen peas. (Hey! Tamales take a LONG time, so I deserved a few shortcuts! haha.)

Pan de Meurto - Bread of the Dead

 Pan de Muerto – Bread of the Dead

For the pan de muerto, I used this recipe. I halved the recipe to make two, small loaves. I added a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and accidentally didn’t halve the sugar. I replaced the egg with Ener-G egg replacer, and used a glaze of orange juice and agave nectar. I sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on the loaves before baking.

And that’s how I celebrated Dia de los Muertos! I was going to paint some paper mache skulls and masks, but I never got around to it. Again, there’s always next year! 🙂

– Andrea

Happy Halloween!

I’m a bit busy today, so I won’t really have anything cool to post. I just wanted to wish everyone a happy, happy Halloween!

This morning I carved pumpkins with Jon, then we went to the Oak Hill Cemetery in Birmingham for a tour. Now we’re back home and I’m going to make Black Bean and Pumpkin Chipotle Burgers with spicy spider-webs. I’ll also be roasting the pumpkin seeds out of our pumpkins! After that, we’ll be going to the Alabama Theatre to see Phantom of the Opera! Then we’ll come back home and bob for apples 😀

Have a great night, everyone!

– Andrea

Hallow-weiner Roast

My cool, reuseable, Halloween shopping bag from Publix!

Last night my boyfriend had the fun idea to have a Hallow-weiner roast! So, we got out to purchase our supplies and headed over to my sister’s house to start a fire. It took a while, but we finally got it going after our magical fire dance:

Fire dance.

I thought it would be fun to tell spook stories around the fire, but no one really had any other than sleep paralysis experiences (which are scary enough, by the way).

Roasting the weiners!

Anyway.. We roasted our weiners, I heated up some vegetarian baked beans, and we had a nice little Hallow-weiner meal:

 Halloweiners, dried bat wings, snot-slime salsa, and banshee baked beans! 😀 haha.

Made with Dandie's vegan marshmallows!

After dinner, we made spooky s’mores! I would have very much liked to cut the graham crackers into spooky shapes, but this was sort of a last-minute decision. I’ve heard that it’s easiest to cut graham crackers into shapes after they’ve been microwaved for about 45 seconds.

Last but not least, we threw some magic powder onto the fire to create pretty colors!

Magic fire!

And then my boyfriend did this because he’s cool:

Fire dancer.

And that was our Hallow-weiner roast adventure!

I saw Paranormal Activity by myself yesterday, and I had a horrible time trying to fall asleep last night. I mean, obviously the movie isn’t real. But just imagine if those things that happened in the movie really did happen. Yeesh. I couldn’t help but feel like there was some invisible demon standing next to my bed all night.

Tonight we’re going to the Rocky Horror Masquerade Ball at the Alabama Theatre, and tomorrow we’re carving pumpkins. On Halloween, we’ll be attending a cemetery tour in Birmingham, and will be going to the Alabama Theatre twice more for their Halloween children’s matinee and for the 1925 version of Phantom of the Opera with live organ accompaniment (which we’ve attended every year since 2004). Should be fun!

I hope everyone has a wonderful, Halloween-filled weekend!

– Andrea

Halloween Party Food, 2009!

 Finally! Halloween party food is here! I’m not going to say too much, and I probably won’t even post any recipes for right now. Just pictures and descriptions!

Left side of the Boo-ffet

Right side of the Boo-ffet

Bleeding Heart Punch

This was 1 large bottle of red Hawaiian Punch, 1 large bottle of ginger ale, 1 large bottle of apple juice, and 1 large bottle of cranberry juice. I froze some water that was dyed red inside a heart-shaped mold and floated that in the punch 😀

Add large chunks of dry ice for a spooky effect!

Just make sure no one gets any of the dry ice in their cups! And don’t touch it with your hands, or any other skin, for that matter. Use tongs.

Vegetable Vertebrae Wraps

I had both white and wheat wraps, filled with (v)cream cheese, spinach, alfalfa sprouts, red onion, tomato, cucumber, and salt & pepper.

Moldy Cheese Log

This is a cream cheese log, tinted blue. It’s flavored with lemon juice, garlic powder, onion powder, hot sauce, and a few drops of (v)worchestershire sauce.

Dead Man's Fingers with Bloody Mary-nara

Pretzel-like breadsticks made to look like human fingers, served with a jarred marinara sauce. The fingers were veganized from this recipe. For the egg wash, I just used some water mixed with a little agave nectar.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

Please excuse the flour pockets. I made a huge batch of these, so I was bound to mess up a little. :-\ Nevertheless, these are still everyone’s favorite cookies!

Pumpkin Spice Bats + All Hallow's Cheesecake

 I explained the cookies in my last post, so..

All Hallow's Cheesecake

These are mini orange cheesecakes, with a chocolate cookie crust.

Mold Dip and Dried Skin Flakes

Spinach dip! Consisted of frozen, chopped spinach, sour cream, cream cheese, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, onion powder, garlic salt, a little soymilk, freshly ground black pepper, and.. I think that’s it.

Black Cat Brains and Pureed Flesh

I meant to put some carrot sticks in the middle bowl, but never got around to peeling them. The Black Cat Brains are falafel balls. I got the recipe from Boma at the Animal Kingdom Lodge in Walt Disney World. The pureed flesh is store-bought red pepper hummus.

Vampire Bite Cakes

These are red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and red gel icing for the bloody vamprie bites. The cupcake recipe came from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Toenail Brittle

My disgusting way of saying, “Peanut Brittle”.

Dried Bat Wings

Blue corn chips!

Goblin Guts

My mom’s favorite homemade guacamole.

Mashed Brains

Store-bought salsa.

Mini Deviled Quiches

Mini quiches from Fat Free Vegan, with red pepper devil horns.

Stuffed Eyeballs

These are baby bella mushrooms, stuffed with mashed silken tofu that was mixed with cajun seasoning. They were then dipped in cajun-seasoned breadcrumbs and decorated with sliced olives and chopped red pepper to form the pupils. They were baked at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Toxic Punch

This was 1 large bottle of green Hawaiian Punch, 1 large bottle of ginger ale, and 1 can orange juice concentrate. I then washed and sliced an organic orange and floated the slices in the punch.

Warm Vampire Blood

I didn’t get a good picture of it, but on the stove, I had a hot, spiced, cranberry punch from VegParadise.com.

Mauled Apple Cider + Veritaserum

Also on the stove was some hot, mulled, apple cider (the heat was turned down right after this picture was taken.. haha). Next to the stove I had a pitcher of filtered water that I labeled Veritaserum 😀

And that’s all, folks!

– Andrea

More Halloween Party Prep

Before I get into the final party food post, I just wanted to post some more of the Halloween party preparation pictures:

Pumpkin Spice Bat Cookies

These are the pumpkin spice bat cookies. I dipped them in orange icing, and piped on some melted chocolate, tinted a litttle darker with black gel food coloring.

Frying the falafel

These are the falafel balls I made to be “Black Cat Brains”!

Assembling the Stuffed Eyeballs

I assembled the stuffed mushrooms prior to going to my sister’s house. I put them in the oven about 30 minutes before the party started so that they would be hot when I put them out.

Assembling the Vegetable Vertabrae Wraps

Cutting the Vegetable Vertabrae Wraps

To keep the bite-sized pieces of the wraps intact, I stuck a toothpick into the wrap before I cut each piece.

Party food only! No real food allowed!

This is what my refrigerator looks like before every major holiday. No “real” food. Just holiday food!

But it’s just so cute..

Transportation

And, last but not least, here is the last-minute party food and decoration transportation bus. All aboard!

Up next: Halloween Party Food, all dolled up!

– Andrea

Martha Stewart is Dead?

Thank goodness the title to this post isn’t true. I just woke up from a long nap, crying because I dreamed that Martha Stewart had died. And I kept crying after I woke up, because my dream made me feel like it had really happened and I was freaking out.

That is going to seem so pathetic to some people, but I don’t really care. I love Martha. And I know she’s not vegan or vegetarian, but she’s played a big part in helping me figure out how I want my life to be lived.

She taught me how to organize and helped teach me the basics of cooking. I don’t know where I would be without Martha. Probably lying dead in a ditch somewhere… Ok, that part probably isn’t true. But I sure would be in a big mess. And I mean that literally! I’ve always loved to organize, but if it weren’t for Martha, I would have never really leared how to organize.

And I’ve always loved holidays, but I don’t think I would have been as into them as I am now had I not recieved this magazine when I was 12 years old:

It seriously changed my life, and my view on holidays. It showed me that there was so much more one could do to celebrate Halloween than just carve a pumpkin and go trick-or-treating.

Since I recieved that magazine back in 2000, I’ve collected nearly every October issue of Martha Stewart Living, as well as the special Holiday issues. I even have extra copies of them, because if I ever see one in a thrift store, I just can’t leave it there.

Now, I know Martha doesn’t come up with all (or, really, any) of the ideas in her many magazines. But it’s all a part of her brand, and she chooses to include these fantastic ideas because she feels they’re up to her standards.

I really just admire her as a person, and as a business woman. I mean, just looks at all she’s done! She has books on cooking, decorating, crafting, homekeeping, entertaining, business, and more. She has a television show. She has goodness knows how many magazine titles. She also has a radio show, an arts and crafts retail line, and another home decorating line.

It’s just amazing, really. I would love to shadow her for a day just to see what a day in her life is like.

So.. Thanks for being awesome, Martha. I’m glad you’re not dead.

I’ll be posting pictures from the Halloween party later today. My camera died halfway through uploading the pictures, so I have to charge the battery :-\

– Andrea

Halloween Party Prep

BUSY WEEK. And the next two days are just going to be even more busy. Decorating for the Halloween party started late last week. Here’s some of the progress:

My Very Vegan Halloween Vehicle : D

This car breaks for hitchhiking ghosts! This is the back of my car, all decked out for the holidays. I mean, everything besides the severed hand is there all the time. But still. This is what I’ve been toting all my Halloween decorations in for the past week. Major cool points to anyone who knows what the lady with the parosol decal is from!

The party is at my sister’s house. These are the chairs that go to her kitchen table. Colorful plaid isn’t exactly spooky, so after I saw a quick clip from the Halloween Block Party show on HGTV, I bought some fabric and wrapped the seats up like mummies!

Mummy-wrapped chairs

 Up next is my boyfriend’s main project for the party:

Halloween Photo Stand-In

I helped paint the grass! 😀 Seriously, though. This is such an awesome addition to a party. We bought some scrap wood from Home Depot for $4. Jon secured it with some 2x4s and other wood things. I think the cost only came to around $15-20.

Post-Mortem I.D. Tags

These are the post-mortem I.D. tags I made for our costume contest trophies. Yay for Excel! The winner’s names will be penciled in during the contest.

I wanted something at the end of the driveway, to direct our guests to the house. I’ve always loved the scarecrow in Sleepy Hollow, so I made a small version of him:

This isn’t a finished photo. He now has two, hand-like twigs sticking out on either side. One hand will be pointing to the house.

The biggest thing someone like me could possibly do to prepare for a big party is to lay out the buffet table, assign serving dishes, and label where everything is going with post-it notes. So I’ve done that:

I’ve been terrified for the past two days that my sister’s cats are going to jump up there and destroy everything. This isn’t the finished look, by the way. I finished everything today, but you’ll have to wait until after the party to see the finished product. I sure am happy about how everything is coming together!

Here’s a photo of the lighting test I did a few nights ago:

And here’s a photo of the Bloody Mary bathroom I’ve put together:

I drew cracks on the mirror with eyeliner, and I wrote Bloody Mary backwards, three times, on the opposite mirror. It’s hardly noticable until someone goes to wash their hands and then they’ll see it in the mirror in front of them. There will also be a CD player under the sink, playing a lot of clips and scary music from last year’s Halloween Horror Nights website, which featured Bloody Mary.

And, last but not least, here are some of the treats I made today:

Peanut Brittle!

Pumpkin Spice Bat Cookies! These will have orange frosting, and I’m going to drizzle some chocolate over them.

And that’s all I have for now. I have a HUGE day in the kitchen tomorrow, making about 3/4 of all the food for the party. So I probably won’t get another chance to update about everything until Sunday or Monday.

Wish me luck! (More specifically, my feet.) 😀

– Andrea

Bloody Human Heart (More Gardein Halloween!)

So, I said in my post about Ratty that I had thought of another spooky/fun way to serve the Gardein Marinara Chick’n Good Stuff for Halloween: a bloody human heart!

Well, here’s what that would look like:

Bloody Human Heart

This is the chick’n stuffer, covered in marinara sauce. Spooky, huh? Yes.. It’s tasty, as well 😀

_______________________________________

My Halloween party is coming up this Saturday, and I am going to be a busy little bee! I start cooking on Thursday, so I have a feeling I won’t get to post anything too exciting this week. I may post about past Halloween parties and ways to prepare for the holiday season. But nothing new, foodwise. But by the time the weekend gets here, I’ll have a ton of stuff to post about!

Well. I guess that’s all. But just so this post has more than one picture, I’m going to post this picture of my boyfriend. Because he looks like a sexy vampire in it. And vampires are very prominent creatures this time of year:

Bite me!

Ok, so there was no real reason for me to post this. I just think he looks good 😀 There are some tortillas and two bags of tea in the picture, though.. So it does have food in it!

– Andrea

Vegan Caramel Apples!

So, apparantly I’m a compulsive liar when it comes to saying I’m going to make certain blog posts. Truth is, I really did plan on posting about candy and caramel apples yesterday. But it was cloudy. And I didn’t want to take pictures of caramel apples while it was cloudy. So I waited.

But all that is in the past! Now, onto some caramel apples..

First thing you need to do is go out in the woods and gather up some thin, sturdy sticks! Yes, sticks. You want your caramel apples to look autumn-y and pretty, don’t you? Then go get the sticks!

Of course, if you don’t live out in the sticks (like yours cruelly), then you can buy some crafting sticks or dowels. (Boooring! Go have an autumn adventure and gather up some sticks!)

The following recipe is enough to cover about 10 small Granny Smith apples with caramel goodness. And, yes, I’m going to reccomend you use Granny Smith apples because they make the best caramel apples of all time.

Vegan Caramel Apples

10 small Granny Smith apples (washed and completely dried)
1 1/2 cups chopped, roasted peanuts
3/4 cup  soymilk
3/4 cup margarine (Earth Balance pre-measured sticks are easiest)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
3/4 cup corn syrup
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Before doing anything, you need to set up your caramel apple work station:

Caramel Apple Work Station

Have your apples, sticks of your choice inserted, set off to the side. Right next to these, you’ll need to have a baking sheet with aluminum foil, sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Also nearby should be your bowl of roasted, chopped peanuts and a large bowl filled with ice water (this will be needed to stop the cooking process of the caramel later on).

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the soymilk, 1/4 cup margarine (melted), and the cornstarch.  This is your heavy cream substitute.

Fit a large, heavy saucepan with a candy thermometer. Over medium-low heat, cook 3/4 of the heavy cream substitute, the corn syrup, the remaining 1/2 cup of margarine, and the sugar to 280 degrees F, stirring only once or twice. The caramel should be a dark amber color at this point, and it will be very hot.

Caramelizing

Quickly remove the pan from the heat and dip the bottom of the pan into the ice water to stop the cooking process. Stir in the remaining 1/4 cup of heavy cream substitute and the vanilla. Do not return pan to the heat.

Stirring in the remaining "heavy cream" and vanilla.

Allow caramel to cool for about a minute to thicken up.

Thickening caramel.

Working one at a time, dip and turn the apples into the caramel. Allow excess caramel to drip off, and dip the apples into the chopped peanuts. Place on the aluminum foil that has been sprayed with non-stick spray.

When you have finished with all of the apples, place the baking sheet into the refrigerator and allow caramel to harden.

After about 10 minutes, you can say..

"Ta-da! Vegan caramel apples!"

– Andrea

I Ate a Rat! – A Gardein Product Review

Today I went grocery shopping at my local Publix (which is where I usually do my grocery shopping..). My sister had let me know that they were now stocking gardein products (it really bugs me that they don’t capitalize their brand name..), so I went to see what they had. They didn’t have any of the refrigerated products, but they did have all of their frozen products!

I had no idea what I was going to have for dinner tonight, or what I was going to post about tonight. But I found it. There, in the freezer section of my local Publix, sat this bag of beauty:

I don’t do impulse buys like this too often, but this looked too amazing to pass up. I couldn’t help it! And look at the pretty, shiney “new” letters! How cute! You get two of these awesome “stuffers” for $3.99. $3.99 is a high price to me when I’m buying groceries. It would take a lot for me to say something at that price is worth it.

These are so worth it.

I knew I couldn’t (well.. shouldn’t) post about these unless they were holiday/themed food-related.. So, while I had my stuffer in the toaster oven, I grabbed a bunch of edible items to make my stuffer looks like a little rat.

My little rat (I named him Ratty, because I'm creative).

I used a quartered cherry tomato for his feet, black peppercorns for his eyes and nose, pieces of fresh rosemary for his whiskers, two almonds for his ears, and a sliver of carrot for his tail.

But, of course, I couldn’t eat him like that. Imagine cutting into poor Ratty and seeing all his guts spill out! How horrible!

Ratty's internal organs.

So, I deconstucted him before consuming. But do you see that?! Look how insanely delicious that looks! The chick’n “stuffers” are filled with marinara sauce and vegan daiya cheese. And, let me tell you, THESE ARE FREAKIN’ AMAZING! The cheese stayed gooey and melty long after I removed the stuffer from the oven.

These are seriously insane. I could eat them every night of the week and not get sick of them. And that is definitely not the case for most faux meats. While I like my occasional veggie burger or breaded chick’n patty, they’re not something that really scream “entree” to me. These stuffers, however, are. I would totally serve these to omnis if the chance ever arose (and I didn’t feel like cooking).

I thought of another fun way to make these Halloween-y after I finished eating. Next time, I think I’ll bake them and then cover them with marinara sauce. That way they would look like bloody human hearts! 😀 Weeee! Cannibalism!

___________________________________________________

I swear, if I don’t make my candy and caramel apple post tomorrow, I’m going to.. do something not cool! Like not post about candy and caramel apples!

THIS MUST GET DONE TOMORROW!

Luckily I found my peanuts today. So I probably will be posting about candy and caramel apples tomorrow. And tiny ones, at that!

– Andrea