First Pumpkin of the Season!

Well, I am proud to announce that this week, I was able to get myself to Agway with some friends and purchase the lovely pumpkin below.  (No, it wasn't pre-cut; I did that yesterday.)  It came without a stem, but I like it anyway!

I was thinking about doing a jack o' lantern featuring my business name, but decided to do a PGS jack o'lantern this week instead, just for a bit of practice.  I actually think it turned out fairly well.  The only tools I used were my pen, my knife, & pumpkin scraper.  The letters were freehand -- the little loopy part of the "P" in "Pretty" fell off while I was cutting it.  I have another picture where I stuck it back on with a piece of skewers left over from summer's choochacheechachoo, but I was too lazy to put it up. ;) I wound up having a ton of little pieces of leftover pumpkin from the letters, so I'll be putting those in my crockpot today.

Anyway, here's the first of many of the 2011 season.  I'm already trying to decide what to do with my next one!

Mmmm, smell those fresh pumpkin guts! :)

The Incredible Edible Vegg!

I came across a recipe for vegan egg yolks on The Airy Way.  Usually I just do a tasty tofu scramble with my "secret ingredients," but I thought Zoa's take on vegan egg-style meal was really innovative!  The pictures were so tempting, and the idea of making a tofu "egg white" with a yellow "yolk" just couldn't be filed away for too long.  And yes, there was a footnote about people finding the ingredients to be "gross" -- which, I must admit, I kinda did!  But my curiosity outweighed the gross factor, and I'm so glad it did, because I discovered that it's actually pretty good.  So try it, maybe you'll like it too!

Here are the ingredients from Zoa's blog:

Vegan egg yolk (makes 2 yolks)

1/2 tbsp Veganaise
1/2 tbsp carrot juice (if you don't have carrot juice, just finely grate a carrot and squeeze the juice out of it)
2 tbsp vegetable broth (or 2 tbsp water and 1/4 tsp nutritional yeast)
1 tbsp Earth Balance*
1 tsp cornstarch

(*Admittedly, I did not vegan-ize this recipe all the way.  All I had was "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter," please don't be mad at me!)

The real technique can be found if you click on the Airy Way link above.  The recommended microwaving time is in 5-second increments, which I failed to remember while I was doing my cooking (I had only written down the ingredients.)  As it was, I just mixed everything together -- using the water/nutritional yeast method -- and microwaved it in 20 second increments, whisking the hell out of it after each pass.  I think it took me two 20-second passes in the microwave.  You might need a third, depending on how hot your microwave cooks.  Or you can just follow Zoa's directions and do it correctly. ;)

After I first mixed everything together, I must admit that it that it looked pretty ho-riffic.  I began to have some second thoughts, but decided to press on!

Yeah, it's not a pretty picture.  If it looks like this, you're (unfortunately)
 doing it right.  But... keep going.  It gets better, I promise! :)

After the first 20-second pass in the microwave, I whisked the hell out of it, then did another pass.  It mellowed into a beautiful golden egg-yolk yellow shade.  The consistency was smooth and velvety, with just a hint of lumps from the carrot I grated to get the carrot juice.  And incidentally, I would not recommend omitting the carrot juice from this recipe; I must admit that I don't taste it much at all, but it really does help impart a beautiful eggy color to the finished product.

Somehow, everything melted and melded together
into a beautiful "vegg yolk" starter!

Zoa carved a hole into the tofu and then in a separate post (here) recommended microwaving the tofu before filling the hole with the "yolk" -- it makes the wet tofu give up its water a lot more efficiently, and become more eggy in texture.  I carved my yolk holes, and did my best to shape the tofu.  Mine weren't even remotely as pretty as hers, but hey, I tried!

Yum!  It's not just for breakfast anymore!

The blog posting also recommended that the yolk mixture made a good sauce on its own as well, so for the rest of my 'fu, I made another batch -- only this time, at the end, I added a dash of Montreal seasoning and a packet of True Lemon.  Viola... I Can't Believe It's Not Hollandaise! ;)

All in all, I'd give this experiment a good solid B+.  I'll give it another shot sometime and make it an even better grade in the future.