The Vegan Bacon & 3 Cheese Frittata of Your Dreams

Wednesday night can mean a lot of different things to folks out there. Now just going off your emails, I know a lot of you are pretty loyal Top Chef watchers. Now Dan and I aren't the kind of people who plan our lives around what's on TV that night. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But ever since Baby Jesus invented TV shows On Demand and putting whole seasons out on DVD - so you can have deep long term relationships with marathons of your favorites - Dan and I go about our lives and watch what we want when we want. With the exception of Top Chef and Wednesday night*. Why you ask? What makes Top Chef so special? Don't they make like a ton of meaty - eggy - cheesy  stuff? They do and just like with Betty - we watch to get ideas and inspiration. We watch for the food photography and styling. We watch it because it is a Shannon family tradition to watch and talk about what we would do to make dishes vegan. I mean some families travel around in pimped out school buses wearing matching outfits singing pop songs. I mean if that's your thing - that's cool I guess. We watch Top Chef and we like to eat schmancy vegan eggy breakfast dishes.

This one was a big hit around here and is going to be a regular for Sunday Brunch... I recommend making some toast to go with it. 

The Betty Crocker Project : Vegan Baked Latkes

If anyone had told me there would be so many Latke recipes hitting the internet the first day of Hanukkah - Well let's just say I wouldn't have believed it. I had been looking forward to posting this recipe since I found it hidden in the Vegetable section of Betty's Big Red under the title Potato Pancakes. But in a world of Latke recipes here's what makes this one special :

• Vegan 
• Baked not Fried 
• Super Tasty 
• Um - Like Extra Super Tasty! 

We've been enjoying these this Hanukkah with some Vegan Sour Cream while we watch basketball (How sad was it that Lebron didn't get his butt kicked last night? I'm not even from Cleveland but I don't like selfish people. That Gibson kid played his heart out though) and The Wire ( Can you believe Dan has never seen it? Really one of the best TV shows ever) ... We've also been playing a new game. We still love our Zombies but ya know it's cold and we wanted something we could play while I remain warm snuggled under 3 blankets on the sofa. Enter into our lives : Munchkins.

Yes - This game is as adorable as it sounds and you how I love those adorable things. It is full of inside old school D&D and RPG jokes (Oh yeah - We're going there). It  makes sense since it is put out by Steve Jackson Games - the Milton Bradley of RPGs. Though Munchkins isn't a RPG - just a card game that requires you to be super competitive and turn on those you love the most with curses like Chicken on Your Head and Duck of Doom. So obviously it has become a pretty popular way to spend a quiet night at home for us Shannons.

But enough nerdery for today - here's a song to grate potatoes too.You have to at least enjoy the LARPing by this Jewish Boy Band  if not the tune.  Thank you goes to Rachel S. who sent this song after seeing our Matzo Ball Soup featured on Peta2's blog. Happy 15th Birthday Rachel!

OK that's a lot of chatter. Let's make some Latkes! OH and for you folks who are feeling left out - We're making gingerbread cookies and some other Christmas stuff this weekend!

The Betty Crocker Project : A Halloween Treat - Vegan Devil's Food Cupcakes

You knew they were coming. All the signs were there. I mean we're a blog that spends a lot of time veganizing Betty Crocker recipes. It was only a matter of time before we made adorable holiday cupcakes. I won't bore you with chit chat about what our cats have been up to, what video game is kicking my ass this month or various other random updates. You're here for chocolate cupcakes and I'm here to help you out.

Now if you're not familiar with Devil's Food Cake it is light, fluffy chocolate cake that has a hint of coffee to it. Now some doesn't have the coffee in it but the fancy ones do and who doesn't want to be fancy?

Who's ready to bake some cupcakes?

The Betty Crocker Project : Artichoke & Spinach Dip

Yeah - Yellow but DAMN good.

Is there anything cuter in the vegetable world then a little green onion? Hmmmmm. Nope.

Lately Dan and I have been focusing quite a bit on cute. We've had a lot of cute things in our lives these days, and I'm about to gush about one of them: a little XBox Live Arcade game featuring the artwork of Dan Paladin (Ed. note: no relation.) called Castle Crashers.

We spent a good part of Saturday night beating this game, and I was almost sad to see it end. From the second the adorable little castle band starts to play, I was totally hooked. Even the ghouls and zombie polar bears are freaking precious but you don't have to take my word for it. You can just watch this (you have to hit 'read more' at the end to see the player):

Another charming item making a special appearance this week: The Artichoke. Man, I love artichokes! They're delicious, spiky flowers that I would eat everyday if I could. Expect some artichokes this week; we have another recipe coming up that I think is going to rock.

Until then, bake yourself up a dish of this incredibly delicious dip that is the perfect bribe to get your friends over to play Castle Crashers. Castle Crashers and this dip are designed to share with loved ones. I'll be honest: it's kinda rich. Here's a photo of the not so vegan at all version - ours isn't nearly as rich as that. Actually, it isn't even close to being as rich as the "lighter" version suggested in the cookbook. But put this on a thin cracker or pita... this dip is pretty much divine.

Yeah, I said it. Divine. Thank you Betty. This dip completes me.

The Betty Crocker Project : Beef (Gardein) with Bordelaise Sauce & Roasted Rosemary Potatoes

Hurricane Earl is at Norfolk's doorstep. Trees are waving in the wind, and the birds and squirrels who are usually up at dawn are being being all crazy, hiding away in the courtyard of our apartment building waiting for it to pass. Right now as I type this, I have a huge Siamese cat on my lap looking for comfort and another, much smaller cat under my chair. But the funny thing is that while there are folks out there filling their freezers with 15 loaves of bread and OBX is being evacuated, there's another group out and about without even an umbrella.

The Shannons fall into the watching-the-G.I.Joe*-movie and playing-Xbox category. Obviously that means we should make a fancy French dinner to go along with our evening of high culture. I mean, what goes better with a movie that literally shows the Eiffel tower being eaten than some Vegan Bordelaise?

I get asked a lot why we aren't veganizing Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, since this project was inspired by the movie Julie and Julia. Especially since I freaking love French everything. The answer is simple.

Dan and I asked ourselves what we wanted to do with this project - what were our goals and what would help the animals the most. It was pretty clear. We wanted to prove that you can make anything vegan. We wanted to show people how to use vegan products and share little tricks we have learned to maximize the potential of these products. The choice was pretty clear after that: Betty Crocker.

We get to still make the fancy French stuff that made Julia swoon, but we also get to experiment with more American cuisine, like Cheeseburger pie. Betty is the undisputed champ at teaching America how to be creative with products and foods that you may never have thought were capable of such levels of awesome-ness. We just want to show vegans that they can do that too, and dispel the myth that we're stuck with veggie burgers or quinoa pilafs... not that those aren't pretty amazing sometimes too. We're just trying to show that going vegan doesn't mean sacrificing some of your favorite dishes... like, for example, a schmancy Bordelaise sauce.

This dinner was so easy and so good, I've fallen in love with it. When we make this again (and we will) we're planning on a side of steamed asparagus or green beans to go with it... maybe some vegan fondue too. Both vegetables would be very good with the Bordelaise. That's not to say the Rosemary Potatoes didn't compliment this dish perfectly. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a sucker for a good rosemary dish.

This may not seem like an obvious recipe to post for Labor Day Weekend, but with Earl making his way up the East Coast, many of us are going to be trapped inside playing Zombie games. This is a great Date Night dinner that you many already have the ingredients for already. Plus, what warms up a rainy night faster than a deep glass of red wine?

Bon Appetit...

IOU : 1 Vegan Cupcake Recipe

Image by Klas Fahlén

I owe you one cupcake recipe. Please expect this over the weekend.

See, I was going to bake them last night, but yesterday was a pretty big day for me. IDA rescued 55 long-tailed macaque monkeys from a research lab in New Jersey, and I was working until after 10pm. Then I sat down to find the recipe in Big Red and instead found Army of Darkness on TV. I did a little happy dance and exclaimed "sweet" to myself... maybe the cats heard... who knows really. That pretty much covers the most interesting parts of the story.

But let's not focus on the cupcakes that are to come. I'm going to take this opportunity to answer 3 Questions about The Shannon Household I get a lot. See, there are a lot of you loyal lurkers and bold subscribers/followers out there reading this blog (over 17,000) and I get a lot of emails. So much so that I admit I have a problem keeping up with them all sometimes. I apologize for that. But I hope today's post will answer 3 of the questions I get the most, and hopefully those of you out there who are waiting for a response to your email will read this and forgive me.

The Betty Crocker Project : Cornbread & Bacon-Stuffed Pork Chops

Dan and I are a pretty normal American married couple*. Kinda textbook, really.

We watch Top Chef. We talk about taking trips to sunny-beachy places, and on the weekends take road trips to American historical landmarks. We listen to NPR in the morning and recycle. Last night, we played a board game about escaping zombie hoards and ate vegan pork chops.

Maybe this weekend we might hit up Target and Trader Joe's... I don't know. I don't know if we'll have enough time.

These pork chops didn't actually take much time at all. I think they look kinda fancy, and I have to admit I'm really grateful that Match Vegan Meats exists so we could make these. I'd say they took about 20 minutes and were seriously good news. According to Top Chef, things this good are called "Da Biznus."

The Betty Crocker Project : Butterscotch Brownies

We had big plans for this weekend. . . plans that included Free Comic Book Day at Local Heroes, watching the Celtics beat the Cavaliers, a Ben Peterson visit and homemade Cinnamon Rolls. If you saw the basketball game Saturday night - you know the weekend didn't go as planned. 

We did spend WAY too much on comic nerdery Saturday morning. . . as planned*. . . taking advantage of that sale like she was a hayseed right off the bus (please take some time to check out the updates on our Nerdery page). We got in some good Old Fashioned Ben Peterson Time. . . though the bar we were at had a music selection suited for an unoriginal 11 yr old girl. I mean I can handle some Lady GaGa but Mylie Cyrus at a bar? That's just not OK.  On a side note - for those who didn't know - Mylie Cyrus and Hannah Montana are the same person. I know I'm not the only one.

That is where our list of victories ends. See Betty's cinnamon rolls are real works of art and by the time Sunday morning came around, well I had made a mistake that would follow me around till this very moment. 

I had picked up the second season of the American Gothic epic Supernatural. I thought I could watch Sam & Dean fight demons and ride around the back roads of America in their black Impala while I baked. But I put that first DVD in and I was hooked. Our dreams of cinnamon rolls would have to wait till another day. These brownies take around 5 minutes to mix. . . I made them during the credits of No Exit. They were quick and pretty much amazing with vanilla soy ice cream (not pictured above so you could see more brownie). . . maybe too good. Next thing I knew - I was here typing this and thinking about how much I loved this weekend, these brownies and of course - My old man.