Today our assigned prompt is to have vegan food with a non-vegan friend. Scroll down for the video.
Yesterday a friend was in town who lives in suburbs of Chicago. We really love this friend, and have grown close over the last few years. He is a bachelor and basically all the cooking he ever wants to do shouldn't be more than "open box, insert into microwave." There's a FEW exceptions to that, and his #1 exception is steamed hot dogs. And guess what.... since meeting us and becoming our friends, he exclusively eats vegan hot dogs. In fact, we've learned it seems he's dropped meat, but still eats dairy (sorry everyone, but the dairy industry IS the veal industry, no free passes from us on this one). We want desperately for him to go vegan, and are always throwing simple vegan food at him to try so he can replace those items when at home.
Our friend likes burgers. Yesterday, we prepared a delicious simple vegan lunch for our friend consisting of a Field Roast hand formed vegan burger with Field Roast Chao vegan cheese (original flavor) topped with onion, lettuce, ketchup, mustard, (all out of tomatoes yesterday, oops!) housed within a delicious home made vegan challah pretzel bun made by yours truly. I'm showing you a close replica of yesterday's friend's lunch.... this plate has a simple potato salad, and an equally simple chocolate chip cookie recipe. To wash this down, I made him organic lemonade (our bachelor friend's favorite drink) using just organic lemon juice, simple syrup, water and ice.
He LOVED it, although we knew he would.
After the video, I give you the sites where I found the recipes. Yes the buns take a bit more work, and no I don't think our friend is going to go home and make pretzel buns. That's ok though, he can buy vegan buns (he already does anyway) and so can you. If you want to make your own, including the cookies, I tell you where to find the recipes after the video.
What am I trying to prove? I'm trying to prove that vegan food is delicious, gorgeous, and simple. Hey you haters out there getting on me about the meat analogues (this includes vegans who hate on the analogues as well) let me tell you this: if we do not find unity and stop telling people HOW to be vegan, all is lost. If YOU don't want a meat analogue, have at it with your no sodium lentil burger. As a point of fact that's MY preference too, however.... I don't expect my bachelor friend to eat a lentil burger when this Field Roast is already made and ready to go. I'm not that gal telling ANYONE how to be vegan. I will say however, we all MUST go vegan, or yes I believe all will be lost.
The pretzel buns are a yeast bun/bread recipe I pulled off the files of the Vegan Meringues-Hits & Misses Page. They indeed are made using aquafaba (all that is the bean water we all used to dump off our cooked or canned beans!) The cookies are also made with aquafaba, and seriously took 5 minutes to make, honestly just slightly more time consuming than slice and bake. If you cannot find the recipes, hit me up with a private message, I'll get them to you. And that potato salad? NO RECIPE! Wash and cube your potatoes, boil them till fork tender, drain and cool. Then, add Vegenaise or Just Mayo to taste (heck, get all fancy, make your own mayo again off that Vegan Meringues page!) give a generous squeeze of Dijon mustard, a little shredded carrot, sweet pickle relish, salt and pepper.
Boom.
xo
I was so happy and surprised to discover that Publix is now selling Just Mayo here in the Keys! Vegans are becoming more mainstream. We can even buy vegan yogurt now at Winn Dixie! This is getting exciting. Maybe in the not so far future, good vegan cheese might become available.
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