Tempeh Bacon (Insert Clever Bacon Pun Here)

I admit, I had been known to partake in bacon (of the pig variety) in my former life. Leaving bacon behind to become a vegetarian wasn't a deal breaker for me, though, like it is for many others. It would be nice if there was a real-live, super-duper substitute of the veggie kind for bacon, but I'm not holding my breath. What makes real bacon so bacon-y is everything that classifies it as meat. Substitutes are either tooooooooooo salty, too chewy, or too not bacon. I have yet to try any that I can choke down and even the varieties other vegans swear by are unpalatable to me.

So, damnit, I made my own bacon-type substitute. My first disclaimer is that it AIN'T BACON. You must let that go. If finding vegan bacon is standing between you and true bliss, well, I don't see happy skies in your future. Even so, this recipe fills an empty "bacon space" on a breakfast plate or tucked into a sandwich. I mixed and matched recipes I found and then added my own little touches until I had it just the way I liked it. Besides, I hear they take away your vegan merit badge if you don't come up with a tempeh bacon recipe. So, here's mine!

Tempeh "Bacon"

16 ounces tempeh, sliced über-thin, as pictured (man oh man, be careful. Take your time because it really wants to fall apart, but the thinner it is the better it will turn out)
¼ cup maple syrup
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3-4 teaspoons liquid smoke
4 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons coarsely-ground black pepper
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy
1 teaspoon Mrs. Dash Steak Grilling Blend
2 teaspoons olive oil for grill



1. Add all marinade ingredients to a large bowl and mix well.
2. Add the tempeh and marinade to a marinating container, making sure to alternate the marinade and tempeh slices. You want the tempeh to be wet with the marinade on all sides.
3. Marinate for a few hours or overnight.
4. When ready to make, carefully remove tempeh from marinade and put on a hot grill. I use a George Forman grill, so it gets good and crispy on both sides and has the groovy grill marks. Go lightly with the oil; too much and you get a mushy mess. I grill it until it starts to dry out a bit, to give it a more bacon-y texture. If you think it needs a tad more flavor, brush with a little reserved marinade as you grill it. Just be sure to cook off the liquid and try not to get too excited as it starts to carmelize.
5. Serve in your favorite sandwich, as a side for breakfast, or crumbled into anthing that's yearning for bacon. Enjoy!

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Teriyaki-Flavored Happiness (or, These Vegetables Aren't Going to Eat Themselves!)

If you've been following my blog, you may notice the same ingredients used in multiple recipes. There's a really good explanation for that: I'm a normal person and not a gourmet cook. I make a trip to Whole Foods once or twice a year, for example, to purchase specialty ingredients and to stock my freezer with vegan meat alternatives. Other than that, I'm shopping down the street at Kroger, Meijer, or on a day when the three boys aren't trying to kill each other in the back of the mini-van, I may get a trip into the local health food store.

As far as the purchase of fresh vegetables goes, I have learned to think with my brain and not with my eyes in the produce section. When I stopped eating meat, I suddenly became a fresh vegetable hoarder. I. Had. To. Have. Everything. Every color and variety of peppers, everything labeled as organic, each and every kind of leafy green. I wanted everything and I wanted it all at once. And like a hoarder, my "collection" took on a life of its own, quickly turning bad before I could get to everything. My peppers got soft and wrinkly, my organic mushrooms were covered in slime, and my leafy greens dissolved into gelatinous black goo. I had to admit I was throwing out more than I could eat each week.

So- after a few months of fuzzy tomatoes, I wised up. I started purchasing produce more strategically. I refused to make eye contact with that already-ripe avocado unless I knew I was going to use it that night. I bought less, and attempted to use all of it before I purchased more. I'm not always successful. Right now as I type this, there are four tomatillos well past their prime, mocking me from a bowl on my counter.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. I write this blog for people like me, who want to eat healthier but aren't about to run up to the grocery store each day. I'm a working mom with a realistic grocery budget who hates to waste food. If I bring home a bag of shallots, you're going to see shallots in most of my recipes until they're gone, People. That's just how I roll.

Today's recipe was made with all my remaining fresh vegetables prior to Friday's trip to Kroger. A stir-fry it is!

4 Gardein Scallopine cutlets, thawed
1 cup teriyaki sauce
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon fresh, ground ginger
1 teaspoon Five Spice powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 tablespoons agave nectar
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper
Vegetables for stir fry (I used cauliflower, shallots, portobellos, Brussels sprouts, bok choy and radicchio)
Grain of choice (I used brown rice)



1. Combine all the ingredients (except for vegetables and rice) and marinate for at least 20 minutes. I have a Food Saver Marinator, and it is one of my favorite things.
2. Add a little oil to a large skillet and heat it over medium-high heat. Add the marinated cutlets and cook about three minutes on each side, or until they start to brown up.
3. Add the reserved marinade to the cutlets in the skillet, and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer and let the marinade reduce down. You want it to get nice and thick, but still liquid-y enough to pour some over the vegetables when serving.
4. Meanwhile, do a quick stir-fry of the vegetables in a hot skillet with a little oil.
5. When it looks like the vegetables are almost done and the marinade is thickening, remove the cutlets to a platter so they can rest for about two minutes.
6. To serve, arrange vegetables over prepared rice, spoon a little of the marinade over them, and top it all with sliced cutlets.

Note: We had two cutlets leftover that we didn't eat. Later that night (as I am wont to do) I tiptoed to the kitchen under the cover of darkness for one wee bite more. The "chicken" was so good, ice cold and coated in the sauce, that I not only ate one entire piece, but TWO. I went to bed with sticky fingers and a smile on my face. So, long story short, these are amazing cold, and would be a great addition to a sandwich or salad, or as a midnight snack!

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Julie Hasson: There's a Pig I Didn't Eat, and He Has Your Name All Over Him!

So, the way my mind works (and maybe yours, too) is that contemplating cutting out my main food group caused me to obsess over what I would no longer eat. I didn’t (at first, anyway) think about the whole world of food opening to me, food that I’d not only never tried, but never even heard of. Nope. I thought mainly about one particular food that would be cut out of my life forever if I gave up meat: Italian sausage.

This caused me to worry that I couldn’t commit to a vegetarian life. Honestly, this one food could have been my undoing. It wasn’t enough that I no longer had any in the house, so I wouldn’t be tempted. I vividly remember in the first weeks of leaving meat behind I had a dream about Italian sausage. No lie. And it wasn’t even like I was dreaming of, say, George Clooney eating sausage. Just the sausage on a bun, swimming in peppers and onions. According to the Free Dream Dictionary, a dream of eating sausage denotes that “you will have a humble, but pleasant home.” There would be nothing pleasant about leaving my sausage behind me if I didn’t find a replacement (and fast).

I know that there are packaged vegetarian sausages and they are very good. My favorites are Field Roast, Morningstar Farms and Upton's Naturals. I was adamant, though, to do it myself. Part of what kept (and still keeps) me motivated is the real fun of cooking again. Even though I never ground up any meat and spices and squirted them in intestines in my former life, I was determined to make my own sausages now. Minus the meat. And the intestines, for that matter.

It doesn’t take much research into vegan and vegetarian cooking before you find Julie Hasson. She’s my favorite cook on the excellent YouTube cooking channel, “Everyday Dish.” Her video and recipe for making your own vegan Italian sausage was a revelation to me. I could do it! I could make my own damn sausages and stop dreaming about them (or at least add George Clooney to the dream from now on). In the past year I have probably made this recipe six times. I use these sausages on and in everything. I love them on pizza, and also fried with some grains and spinach. I’ve adapted her recipe a bit. Originally I added Parmesan cheese, for instance, while hers are straight-up vegan. If you want to omit the cheese, go ahead. I don't use it anymore in this recipe and don't miss it. I also added some other spices. You can follow my adapted recipe or follow hers to the letter- they’re both good and hit the spot.



Spicy Italian Vegetarian Sausages
Adapted from Julie Hasson on Everyday Dish



2 ¼ cups vital wheat gluten
½ cup nutritional yeast flakes
¼ cup garbanzo bean/chick pea flour
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese (optional)
2 tablespoons Mrs. Dash chicken seasoning
2 tablespoons minced onion (dried is fine. Fresh makes the sausage a bit moister. Your choice)
2 tablespoons fennel seed (adjust to taste. I do a coarse grind of half in a pepper mill)
2 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons ground paprika
1 teaspoon smoked paprika (or another teaspoon of regular paprika if you don’t have smoked. The smoked really does make a difference, though)
½ teaspoon Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy (or dried chili flakes, more or less to taste)
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt (I use coarse sea salt)
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
2 tablespoons instant tapioca, unprepared (optional. Adding tapioca give the sausages a little bit of a softer texture. Try it with them the first time you make these, then try it without the next time. I prefer it this way)
2 ¼ cups cool water
6-8 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce

1. In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients then gently stir into the dry. Stir just until all the ingredients are mixed. The dough should be a bit wet.
2. Using a ½ cup measuring cup, scoop out dough into 8 equal portions. Shape each portion into sausages, then roll them up individually in aluminum foil, twisting the ends. Steam in steamer for 30 minutes.
3. When sausages have cooled, unwrap and store in fridge. They are much better the next day. These can be frozen or stored in the fridge for a week. You can eat them cold right out of the fridge or sautéed with a little bit of olive oil.
4. Cooking tip: because these are essentially a form of bread, they will absorb liquid. These are most “sausage-like” when fried in olive oil and/or grilled. I often make these separate from whatever I want to serve them with, then add them to the dish at the end.

Switching up the ingredient list produces any kind of sausage you'd like. We make a lot of chorizo, for instance, and I make a mean apple-sage sausage. I'll post those with upcoming recipes.

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What the Mouth Doesn’t Know Can’t Hurt It (or- Don’t Let Your Left Hand Know What Your Right Hand is Stuffing into Your Face)

I didn’t stop eating meat because I don’t like it. Granted, if I dwelled on what I was eating when I was still eating meat, I could pretty easily gross myself out. Even so, I’m an umami sort of girl- I would have chosen a pork chop over a slice of apple pie any day of the week. Giving up meat, for me, was a health issue and also a commitment to not support factory farming.

So if I was going to survive this transformation, I needed to find foods to bridge the gap from Meatopolis to Vegtopia. I needed to trick my brain until my tastebuds jumped on for the ride. Clearly, I love to cook. But since vegetarian and vegan cooking was new to me, it took some time for me to confidently prepare everyday meals. I needed to eat, you know, every day, and I wasn’t going to perfect my seitan recipe fast enough. At first I still wanted to eat meat without eating meat. Enter pre-packaged vegetarian cuisine!

It’s worth mentioning that while some of these products taste a hell of a lot like their animal counter-parts, some of them don’t. That was a big mind game that we had to work through in this house- we had to stop thinking of things as trick meat, and start thinking of these dishes as other food. I've rarely seen my husband as disappointed as he was when he bit into a meatloaf I made out of textured vegetable protein. He took one bite and pushed the plate away.

Me: “What’s the matter?”
Jason: “I bit into that expecting meatloaf.”
Me: “And?”
Jason: “That isn’t meatloaf.”

Nope. And Tofurky ain’t turkey, no matter how you slap it on a platter, surround it with roasted root vegetables, and slice it. But it’s damn good.

So, what follows is my list of processed faux meats, most all of which can be purchased at your local grocery store (and definitely at Whole Foods). Most all of these brands make a lot of different varieties; I’m only listing the ones I personally used. Just like any processed foods, I don't recommend eating these at the exclusion of healthier, whole foods. But they certainly are a support as you transition away from meat. These products got me from “there” to “here.” Even if you have no plans of abandoning meat, give some of these a try. You might be surprised at how good they are.

FYI: You should know that some of the meat alternative products aren’t vegan because they use dairy in some fashion. When in doubt read the label.

Boca Burgers


Chances are you’ve heard of Boca Burgers before. Readily available in typical grocery stores, these are really amazing burgers. I never was a big “hamburger” kind of person, but Boca burgers are really delicious. They have a nice “bite” to them and the mushroom-mozzarella burger is yummy.

Morningstar Farms


Even though I now know how to make my own Italian “sausage,” these babies got me through many an afterschool face-stuffing. Their texture is a bit soft, but the seasonings are really close to their piggy cousin. Morningstar has a large variety of products which are pretty good, but by no means the best (read: most meat-like) out there. I dabbled in their breakfast sausages which are a nice replacement (although a bit salty to me). My kids happen to like their “chicken nuggets” better than any other brand, but I can’t say the same.

Quorn


This mystery meat was probably the first thing I ate that assured me I could easily make it through my transitional stage. Quorn is (oh, man. See- when I explain it you’re going to be grossed out. But it’s far less gross than a factory farmed and slaughtered chicken. Just trust me) . . . Quorn is a manufactured protein (made in vats and processed like a lot of food you eat). It’s made out of what they call a mycroprotein, which . . . OK. Forget this. Here’s the website. Read it for yourself. Suffice it to say that it literally, magically, tastes like chicken (and turkey, and ground beef) and is really delicious. It’s vegetarian, not vegan, because they use egg whites in the manufacturing process. If I haven’t scared you off, you can find this product in the freezer section of your grocery store.

LightLife


LightLife makes the tempeh I use, and Mama looooooooooves tempeh! But we’re talking about ready-made faux meat products here. I have cooked with their "chicken" and "beef" strips before, and at first I didn’t care for them. Much like Jason and his meatloaf despair, I, too, bit into them and expected chicken (or beef). No, Ma’am. I also made it worse because I didn’t really cook them correctly (there are things you can do to season these strips to make them tastier). Their Buffalo Smart Wings are pretty good and we eat that a lot. Cut up in a stir-fry, their Savory Smart Wings taste like pork to me. Their lunchmeat is an acquired taste, but I do keep a package around for a quick sandwich (I prefer my homemade lunchmeat). They are also known for their hotdogs which my children refuse to eat and I haven’t really gotten around to trying for myself.

Upton’s Naturals Seitan

(Image taken from company website)

Upton’s had me at “hello,” with their sweet old-timey packaging. Seitan is a wheat-based “meat” which is chockfull of protein and really good for you. I’ve since learned how to make my own and season it to my liking, but Upton’s showed me how versatile seitan could be. Jason really likes their chorizo sausage and I prefer the Italian. Seitan takes some getting used to- the texture is a little, well, rubbery. If I started out with seitan I don’t know if I would have kept at this. Now I absolutely love it. It took some getting used to, though. This company also makes vegan tamales using their chorizo seitan. They are smack-your-Mexican-mama-good.

Tofurky


Yes- ok, bring on the Tofurky jokes. All I can tell you is that I made my first whole Tofurky roast about 3 months into being vegetarian and it honestly was delicious. It was “close” to turkey, but a little off. Not a bad “off,” but enough that you wouldn’t trick a serious turkey-phile. They also make the best lunchmeat I’ve had, but unfortunately it isn’t carried at my local store.

Match


Match is a wonderful product that I can only find at Whole Foods. Sadly, the closest Whole Foods is an hour away so I don’t get there too often. The texture of their ground meats is right on, and my youngest gorges himself on the meatballs I make out of their “chicken.” Seasoned correctly, this product is one that could definitely fool a meateater into thinking he’s eating meat (if that’s your idea of fun).

Field Roast


(Cue angel trumpets and beatific light shooting through impossibly white clouds). Field Roast calls itself a “grain meat” company, and I’m here to tell you they figured out some spectacular secret recipe. Their Celebration Roast is one of my favorite things to eat (so much so that I’ve banned it from my house because it was keeping me from learning to cook). Their meat loaf is amazing (it was a vegetarian meatloaf redemption at our house). Both of these products freeze really well which is lucky because I can only get them at Whole Foods. Their sausages are more widely available in local grocery stores. They have a really great variety (the apple sausage is to die), but their Celebration Roast is the crown jewel.

Gardein

(Image taken from company website)

Last, but not least, we come to Gardein. Amazingly, I just started using this product a few weeks ago. Since I’ve learned to cook vegetarian and vegan protein, I’ve honestly relied less and less on prepackaged products. But when I was stocking my pantry I also stocked my freezer with meat replacements, and last month I found a package of Gardein Beefless Tips waaaaaaaay in the back. I served these at my 4th of July party last week, and the first thing my guests said was that they would never guess that it wasn’t beef. It really is good stuff. The Chick’n cutlets have a great taste and texture. The Crispy Tenders are pretty darn good, too. I think I could go without all the other products I’ve listed (with the exception of my Field Roast Celebration Roast) and only purchase Gardein for convenience food. If you’re hesitant about replacing meat in your diet, buy a package of Chick’n Scallopine, and use it for your favorite chicken cutlet recipe. You won’t be disappointed.

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