Janky Mac and Cheeze Sauce with Chickpea Cutlets.

Basically this is my version of Vegan Mac and Cheeze. I made a liquidy sauce by blending nutritional yeast, veggie broth, garlic, earth balance, apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper. I heated up the blended up goop and added cornstarch to thicken. The sauce thickened slightly, and then i poured the whole thing over the noodles and veggie mixture. I then added pieces of chreeze to the top, as well as some earth balance, and baked it up. It was so good, but not cheezy, just saucy and goopy, kind of like an alfredo sauce, only cheddar. For the veggies, i sauteed up some leeks, carrots and broccoli until tender and crisp.
I also made the chickpea cutlet recipe from VCON, but i think my needed a bit longer in the oven. They still turned out toothy and delicious, just a tad mushy in the insides.
I did get those important gluten strands to form though which made them chewy and amazing. This was a good and filling meal with left overs to spare. It was also really inexpensive and easy to make. It was fun to make my own cheeze sauce for the noodles and veggies, but next time I might just stick to VCON's Cheeze sauce. Its so good!

Zesty Cara Cara French Toast

I actually like vegan french toast better than the traditional recipe. It becomes much more crisp and is less sensitive to burning or overcooking. If you don't add the orange, you can even save the batter for the next day. This one is a mixture of the "Fronch Toast" recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance and something on the menu at Kate's Kitchen near my house.

You'll need:

• Some bread. I generally use whatever we have, but steer clear of anything other than french bread if you're going to use a roll type bread. If you go the pre-sliced loaf route, you'll need aprox. 4-6 for this recipe depending on size.
  
• 1/2 cup soy creamer
  
• 1/2 cup your favorite non-milk milk milk (Almond milk is my favorite)
  
• 2 tablespoons corn starch
  
• 1/4 chickpea flour
  
• An orange (I used Cara Cara because that's what I had, it's good with any orange though)

Mix together your soy creamer and corn starch until smooth. Add your non-milk milk milk choice, then your chickpea flour. Keep mixing until incorporated, don't worry about a few chickpea flour clumps, it's all good. Grab your orange and zest about a 1/3 of the rind, around 2 tablespoons worth I would say. You can add more or less as you wish. Peel the orange and squeeze 2 or 3 wedges into the batter and mix one last time. Time to fry!


Heat a large pan on med-hi heat and add enough canola or vegetable oil to form a thin layer. Once the oil is heated, dip your bread into the batter so that is completely coated. Toss it into the pan (be careful--hot oil burns a lot)! Flip when it is nice and brown, like the image above. Between flippings, prepare any fresh fruit and granola you'd like to use.


You can preheat the oven to like 200 degrees to keep it warm while you fry the rest of the bread, but I'm usually too lazy for that. I usually serve with some maple syrup, the fresh fruit, and granola sprinkled on top. Enjoy!