Doughnuts! And Bunnies.

As much as I intend to keep this blog strictly focussed on reviews of vegan cookbooks, today I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent to talk briefly about two of my favourite things:

Doughnuts, and bunnies.

Liberation BC held a bake sale recently as part of fundraising efforts to neuter and relocate feral rabbits that are over-running the campus of University of Victoria. I haven't been to the UVic campus personally, but I've seen photos of it. In one photo, I counted 20 rabbits hanging out in front of a building. While this would be my dream come true, campus officials are concerned because the rabbits are damaging the landscaping and leaving droppings all over the athletic fields.

When the university announced that the feral rabbits would be culled, Earth Animal Rights responded with a letter offering to capture the rabbits, have them spayed and neutered, and moved to a rabbit sanctuary. The university gave them until the end of July to figure out how many rabbits they'd be able to afford to take. Hence, the bakesale.

According to a newspaper article in The Examiner, 40 bakers and hundreds of attendees showed up to participate in vegan bakesale goodness. Additionally, they were selling ballons and toy rabbits, and 3G restaurant graciously hosted the event and offered to donate 20% of their dinner proceeds from that day to the fundraising effort. Go 3G!

Vegan baking happens to be one of my favourite things in the world. Normally, I do cupcakes and candies for these sorts of events, but I decided to try something new this time.



That's right. Freakin' doughnuts.

I tried out two recipes for this experiment; Vegan Dad's doughnuts, which are yeasted and deep-fried, and Lolo from VeganYumYum's doughnuts, which are baked cake doughnuts.

I had made Lolo's doughnuts before, and knew that it was a good recipe, so I experimented with that one by adding different types of frostings and fillings. The VeganDad recipe was new to me, and I was apprehensive about trying a new recipe when I was already making so many other doughnuts, so I kept it simple; I added a bit of nutmeg and vanilla to the batter, and rolled the doughnuts into little balls instead of taking the time to cut them into doughnut shapes. Once they were cooked and the oil was blotted, I rolled them in cinnamon sugar and called them Bit Bits.

Being a dork, I came up with names for the other flavours, too;

Happy Vanilla Glazed Doughnuts - I used Lolo's glaze recipe and kept adding sugar until it looked thick enough. Once those doughnuts were frosted, I added colourful sugar sprinkles to pretty them up a bit.

Sammies - My first batch of doughnuts was too flat. I doubled the batter recipe for the remaining doughnuts, but what was I going to do with the flat ones? Glue'em together with chocolate to make sammiches, that's what!

Jammies - I made some chocolate doughnuts without holes (hole-less doughnuts? Unholy doughnuts?) so I dipped them in chocolate and injected them with strawberry jam. I decorated them with little chocolate turtle candies that I made.

Jimmies - For the sake of alliteration, my New Jersey friends have finally won the sprinkles vs. jimmies debate. I dipped these chocolate doughnuts in more chocolate, and covered them in candy sprinkles.

Lovely Lemon Lumps - Vanilla doughnuts with lemon glaze and a vegan lemon curd filling. Yellow sugar sprinkles gave them their sunny appearance.

I think they went over well. They sold out, and I had one person profess their love to me over facebook, so I think this means that vegan doughnuts are a success. If you need a vegan doughnut recipe, VeganDad and VeganYumYum are your people.

The last thing I want to say in this post here is that the bakesale alone raised over $8300 for the rabbits. Apparently this is a record for vegan bake sales. Additionally, Fur Bearer Defenders stepped in with a donation of $50 000 to donate to the cause. Thanks to them and the donations of many individuals, there is now enough money to save the rabbits! Hopefully UVic gives EARS enough time to come in and capture them.

I'm so happy I had the oppurtunity to participate in this awesome bake sale. Even though my contribution was small, it was part of something big, and it was wonderful seeing so many people coming together to participate.

There are more photos and information about the bakesale at the Liberation BC Blog.

And just to toot my own horn (because what's a vegan blog without food porn?) here are those doughnuts again:



Nom!

Vegetarian Burgers by Bharti Kirchner

Vegetarian Burgers
The Healthy, Delicious Way to Eat America's Favorite Food
by Bharti Kirchner

I always had trouble making a decent veggie burger from scratch. Until I got this book, I'd tried one good recipe and tons of mediocre ones, so when my mom found this one at a thrift store, I was immediately intrigued – especially after a cursory glance through the book showed that all of the burgers are either vegan or can be made vegan.

This cookbook has a chapter devoted to each of five different types of burgers; grain and bean, vegetable, nut and seed, tofu, and stuffed burgers. Additionally, there's a chapter for side-dishes and one for condiments. Overall, the recipes look creative and they seem to draw inspiration from lots of different cultures, all united under one theme – they all have ingredients that can be thrown into a food processor and made into a burger.

Here are the recipes I tried:

Earthy Burgers with Buttery Beans - Kirchner describes them as follows; “These robust burgers composed of earthy kasha, buttery lima beans, and rich-tasting walnuts have a smooth, delicate texture.” I found them to be easy to make, and despite the delicate texture, they are hardy enough to hold their shape in a bun. The flavour is great; tasty enough that I could eat them plain, but unobtrusive enough that I can happily bury them in condiments without feeling like the flavours are clashing. They even taste good cold! I like how they're not super-fragile or gooey like other veggie burger recipes I've tried in my life. I also like how they got me to eat kasha and lima beans. Very sneaky.

Three-pepper-saute – Well, that's weird, the recipe actually calls for 4 peppers, but I'm not going to quibble since I guess I was only supposed to use three colours of peppers. Ultimately, I used red, green, yellow, and orange bell peppers. This simple dish was really fresh and vibrant looking, and was great as a side-dish and as a burger topping.

Wine-glazed mushrooms – This is a simple dish of chopped scallions and mushrooms glazed with Japanese rice wine. I had to substitute with some ordinary white wine, but I'm assuming it would have turned out just as deliciously either way. Great burger topping.

Saffron Rice Pilaf – Described in the book as “a fragrant combination of basmati rice, saffron, cinnamon, and cardamom.” This is very mildly spiced with little bursts of sweetness from golden raisins. I don't think I'd eat a bowl of it straight up, but it was the perfect foil to the spicy curry my mother made for dinner last night.

Tahini mustard – I made a half-batch of this since I'm the only one here who eats mustard. I really like the ingenious combination of Dijon mustard, tahini, garlic, and lime. I'm looking forward to eating another veggie burger with this. I might turn what's left over into a marinade for tofu!

Caramelized onion – I'd never caramelized an onion before, but it turned out to be super easy, if a little time-consuming. I'm glad I took the time to do it, though, because the onions were great on the veggie burgers and also on baked potatoes.

Recipes: All good. 5 out of 5 stars.

Extras: The book is lacking photos and nutritional information, but the book and each chapter has an introduction, each burger comes with serving suggestions, and there is a nice glossary to explain any “weird” ingredients you may encounter. The introduction gives a lot of useful information about various aspects of veggie burger preparation.
3 out of 5 stars.

Final grade: 8/10

Would I recommend someone to buy it? Yes! Eat veggie burgers and be happy!

Introduction

Ahh, the inaugural post of a brand spankin' new blog.

So, my name is Kay, I'm 26, and I just moved to the west coast of Canada. I have been vegan since June 2003 and over the years I have managed to amass quite a collection of vegan and vegetarian cookbooks. Unfortunately, when I need a recipe, I have this habit of turning to the Internet instead of to my cookbooks. I think the reason for this is that recipe websites often have sections for comments and ratings; I can tell right away if it's a 5-star recipe that people are raving about, or a 1-star flop that leaves people reeling in horror. With cookbooks, though, there's no such luck unless it's a second-hand cookbook and the previous owner was prone to scribbling notes in the margins (a practice I heartily endorse, by the way.)

This project is my attempt to change that – and to justify the number of cookbooks I own. It's about time I start using them more! I haven't decided yet how often I'll update this thing, but every so often, I'll grab one of my cookbooks at random, pick 5 or more recipes from it, cook up a great big meal, and tell you how it went. If you own the book and have been hesitant to use it, at least you'll find out here if some of the recipes worked for one person.

So, here's the deal. Each cookbook is going to get two ratings, a recipe rating, and a rating for extras.

Recipe rating: Out of five stars. If I test five recipes, then each recipe will potentially earn one star depending on whether or not my family and friends and I enjoyed eating it. If I test more than five recipes, I'll bust out my math skills and make it work.

Extras: Also out of 5 stars. I'm looking for the things I want to see in cookbooks;

1. A kick-ass introduction
2. Nutritional information for each recipe
3. Photographs
4. Sample menus, a meal plan, or serving suggestions
5. This last point will be a little arbitrary, but I'm looking for things like clear instructions, easy-to-find ingredients, a nice layout, etc. This point will allow me to reward anything that really stands out, or deduct if something random gets under my skin.

Then I'll add the two up for a final grade out of 10. Ta-da!

So that's it. Hope you'll have fun reading about this project. If it inspires you to buy a book, or avoid a book, or use a book that you already own, or try a recipe that you've been meaning to, then I'll know that I've done a good job here.