Potluck in the Park

Last weekend the Austin Food Bloggers got together for a potluck picnic. The food was all very veg-friendly, and perhaps these photos will give you some spring food inspiration.

I usually take salads to these events, but this time I made my favorite savory muffins. Everyone seemed to enjoy them.


Oatmeal Walnut Muffins from Vegan Soups for All Seasons.

Always a favorite of mine, plain ol’ raw fresh fruits and veggies.

Bruschetta

Shredded raw Brussels sprouts with fennel. My first raw Brussels and they were fantastic!

Mango, Grapefruit, and Mint Salad – a delicious flavor combo.

Artichoke Pesto Tartlets. Put a jar of artichoke hearts in the food pro, add your favorite pesto, and spoon into filo tarts. So simple and so fabulous.

Blueberry Cheesecake Bars. I wish I had taken a picture of a plated single bar because it was the most amazing shade of purple.

Quinoa and Black Bean Salad – yay!

Avocado and raw tuna?

Multicolored beet slices stacked with goat cheese and topped with nuts and microgreens. Stunning presentation.

Bread

Chocolate Chip Cookies – the big flat chewy kind.

Swiss Chard with onions and garlic. This was my favorite dish. Chard fresh from the farmers market and perfectly sautéed.

Austin Food Bloggers always rock!

Beer Food

Not food you EAT with beer; food you MAKE with beer! Beer was the theme for our October Food Bloggers potluck. Now it may not seem like the season for cole slaw, but it’s still warm in Texas. I can even remember making a Christmas cole slaw one year with green cabbage and red peppers. Anyway, I brought Cole Slaw with Beer Dressing to our potluck and got plenty of compliments on it. I admit I know nothing about beer and I don’t even drink beer, but I do keep Budweiser in my fridge for guests, so that’s what I used in this recipe. I would think whatever you have in your fridge would work just fine.




Cole Slaw with Beer Dressing

This recipe serves 12. I also made a tester half batch using exactly half of all ingredients.

Ingredients:
1 pound red cabbage, finely shredded
1 pound green cabbage, finely shredded
1 pound carrots, shredded (I used a preshredded package)
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/3 cup white sugar
1 t. celery seeds
1 – 12 ounce can beer
1/3 cup canola oil
¼ cup cider vinegar
3 t. prepared mustard
1 t. agave nectar
2 t. salt
½ t. black pepper
½ t. red pepper

Directions:
In a very large bowl, toss together the cabbage, carrots, onion, and pepper. Sprinkle the sugar and celery seeds over the mixture and toss again.

Pour beer into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Let boil for 5 minutes. Whisk in the oil, vinegar, mustard, agave nectar, and spices. Remove from heat and pour over slaw. Stir until well coated. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to serve, drain in a colander. Taste for seasoning, toss again, and put into a serving bowl.


Our potluck was held at the 512 Brewery. Can you believe I had never been to a brewery before? 512 is a small business, more like a hobby for the proprietors. They had several beers available for sample and of course the head man was available to answer our questions.

As always, the bloggers brought some very creative dishes to share. Some food I could eat:

Beer Battered Fried Avocado

Beer Braised Brussels Sprouts

My slaw and my cousin’s beer braised black bean salad and homemade tortillas (My cousin makes what she calls *hybrid* tortillas, made with half white flour and half corn meal – corn flavored tortillas that don’t break!)

Some rice that went with a meaty stew!


Nonvegan foods that were a hit:

Beer Crust Pizza

Kabocha Squash Pumpkin Ale Cakes; Roasted Cauliflower and Rice

Pumpkin Ale Cheesecake

And the crowd favorites – Beer-a-misu and Beer Caramels.

Kind of a small crowd this month, but the weather was great and 512 was a great host. I look forward to the next event!

Soup and Snax

I cooked for 6 hours on Sunday and I don’t have much to show for it. I made my weekly pot of beans, then I made a test recipe for the upcoming Austin Food Bloggers potluck which I don’t want to share yet (it's good!), and then I made some requested nonvegan birthday scones for a friend, which he loved.

It was a cold and rainy weekend, so a big pot of soup for dinner was in order. I made another recipe from Love Soup and took to my mom’s, hoping Chase would join us as well. Naturally he got called in to work, but in these hard times we are all thankful to have jobs and don’t complain. Anyway, I decided on White Bean, Garlic, and Greens Soup.

I used spinach for my greens. The soup was very good, nicely seasoned with sage (an herb I don't use often enough) and garlic, and perfect topped with some seasoned croutons.

Now for the snacks! I love really really crunchy snacks. First the store bought variety.

These Go Raw Snax are very tasty and are nice to have with my salads for lunch. I usually have rice cakes, but these, as you can imagine, have way more flavor.

Best raw crackers I’ve found so far.

I like to have a bedtime snack. I can’t seem to manage more than six hours of sleep a night, so I need quality sleep. I’ve always heard that carbs before bed help you sleep better. This would explain my lifelong habit of having a bowl of cereal about an hour before bedtime. I usually chop up a whole apple, sprinkle on tons of cinnamon, then top with a little cereal and vanilla almond milk. My new favorite cereal is Yogi Crisps.

I imagine this is similar to the new granola clusters cereals I’ve seen. Yogi Crisps are delicious, wheat free, low calorie, and have a way cooler shape than clusters.

I buy cinnamon raisin flavor. There are no raisins in the package and for a while I thought they forgot to add them in. Then I read the ingredient list and saw that the raisins are pureed and added to the crisps – nice! This is a great cereal, even eaten straight out of the bag.

I did make myself one homemade treat. It’s another yummy Dreena recipe - Easy Pleasin’ Oat Bars. Of course I added in chocolate chips and cacao nibs.

These bars are easy to mix up, spread in the pan, and bake in just about 15 minutes.

I’ve been loving all of your MoFo posts. It’s hard to keep up but I’m doing my best!

Marvelous Mutabbal

Sunday the Austin Food Bloggers gathered for another potluck. This month’s theme was Hatch chile peppers. Our local markets have giant roasters and for the past two weeks have provided us with the most delicious peppers.

I really didn’t want to be the cliché vegan bringing hummus to the party, and I came awfully close by selecting Mutabbal for my dish. I got the idea from Bryanna Clark Grogan. Mutabbal is basically a spicy version of baba ganoush. Bryanna’s recipe didn’t actually use any peppers though, just chile powder, so I improvised my own tasty recipe. I thought my Mutabbal turned out fabulously, and it got raves at the potluck. One guest said it was her favorite dish at the party, which I take as quite a compliment coming from a group of accomplished and creative foodies. So if you are lucky enough to get your hands on some Hatch chiles, this would be a great way to use them. If not, a poblano or even a jalapeno would work as well.

Mutabbal

(This recipe serves 12, but can easily be halved.)

Ingredients:

3 large eggplants, totaling about 3-1/2 pounds
12 cloves garlic, cut into several long wedges
½ pound roasted Hatch chile peppers
6 T. tahini
4 T. EVOO
4 T. fresh lemon juice
1 t. kosher salt
1 t. freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup chopped Italian parsley, plus more to garnish
¼ cup toasted chopped walnuts, to garnish
pomegranate seeds, to garnish

Directions:

Prepare your outdoor grill and set it to high. Wash the eggplants and trim the tops, but don’t cut off the tops. Make many slits on each eggplant and insert the garlic wedges into the slits. Place the eggplants on the grill and grill until the eggplants are very soft, about 20 minutes. Turn the eggplants every 5 minutes to char evenly. Remove to a plate to cool. They will look like this:

When the eggplants are cool, remove the charred skins and chop off the tops. Place the eggplants with the garlic into a food processor. Pulse a few times. Add the roasted peppers, tahini, EVOO, lemon juice, salt, and black pepper. Puree until almost smooth (a little chunky is nice). Taste for seasoning and add more salt, pepper, or lemon juice to your tastes. Let chill for several hours or overnight; it keeps well for several days.

Spread the eggplant mixture onto a platter. Garnish with the parsley, walnuts, and pomegranate seeds. Serve with pita chips.

Not only does it look beautiful, but it tastes out of this world!

Here’s a few pictures from the potluck. Every dish was made with Hatch chiles, including brownies, cookies, breads, mac n’ cheese, Indian food, sandwiches, popcorn, gazpacho, and a fabulous vegan orzo pasta.

Rachel brought a delicious vegan peach cobbler with Hatch biscuits.

I think my favorite was the Hatch chile vodka served with habanero ice cubes – yum!

I hope you enjoy the Mutabbal recipe, and by the way, eat’n veg’n is now three years old!

Recent Good Eats

Today was the 63rd time this year our temperature reached 100 degrees or more, and it was actually a record breaker at 105. 69 days is the alltime record and we should easily match or beat that by the end of the week as there is no relief in sight. Needless to say, I’m still doing more assembling rather than cooking of food.

Last week there was a food bloggers meetup and we got a free burger at Elevation Burger. Their vegan burger is decent.






They are a green company using organic and sustainable products and environmentally friendly equipment. More businesses should follow their approach.


Okay, everything else here is raw. I love yellow zucchini and there has been plenty at the farmers market lately. Here I’ve spiralized a couple of them, added in some carrots, and topped it with guacamole. Yum.

Here is raw broccoli marinated in lemon juice and garlic, and topped with a cheesy sauce made from my new ebook from Kristen. The sauce was super easy and very tasty.

When I get really into raw foods, maybe someday I can make food as beautiful and exquisite as the food my mom and I ate at Austin's new raw foods café, Beets. We ate there last night and I cannot wait to go back. I’m also pleased to say that every seat in their beautiful space was taken, which is pretty awesome for a place that opened a week ago. Every single menu item was so tantalizing, I literally agonized over my selections. The excellent waitress offered to serve us each half portions of our orders so we could share our food without stabbing at it across the table or switching plates. Here’s what we were presented.

Starting from the bottom going clockwise, Caesar salad with eggplant bacon, pizza, cabbage slaw, and an open face burger with lettuce, sprouts, tomatoes, and special sauce. We also had flax chips and guacamole for an appetizer, and my mom had some tangy goji berry lemonade.

It was so good! Dessert? Why, yes, thank you!

We shared Maple Pecan Ice Cream (almost forgot to get a picture!), and I had my own little chocolate truffle in chocolate sauce. The chocolate sauce was divine, and the waitress told me it was just created that day. Lucky me.

Today I made okra pickles (an Alton Brown recipe) and cooked some fresh field peas.

I also made a raw pie inspired by Shellyfish’s Coconut Cream Pie. I made her pie crust using raw pumpkin seeds instead of walnuts because I’m saving the walnuts for another recipe. It’s really delicious.

I really really wanted to make coconut pie, but I only had ¼ cup coconut in my pantry. I know it’s not a proper substitute, but I used 3 peaches instead. I put it in the freezer to be sure it set up.

So fresh and delicious.

You still have a little time to enter my Flavor Tripping Giveaway. Comments will close tonight and I will post the winner in the next day or two.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.