The Betty Crocker Project: Vegan Chili-Lime Chicken

OK - So we had a huge bunch of cilantro and so we got a little crazy with it this week. I think there are worse crimes. If you're one of those who don't love the taste of this leafy green -- you can always skip that part of this recipe.

It's another fast and easy recipe that will get you in and out of the kitchen with little suffering. We had ours with some lemon pepper Israeli couscous from Whole Foods made with peas and had dinner in about 30 minutes. We defrosted our Gardein chick'n scaloppini breasts earlier so that definitely cut back on how long this took.

I know a lot of us might be feeling a little food prepping, dish washing and hostessing burn-out after yesterday's festivities so I thought this might help give you an out for dinner for the rest of the week. I mean making sure that the ice chest stays full while the BBQ coals don't go out and figuring out how to keep bugs away from the pie and Soy Delicious is fun at the time but after the fireworks... it's freaking exhausting.

We celebrated this year with an epic game of Civ5 and season 4 of Sons of Anarchy* because Dan caught some kind of death flu on his work trip to Seattle. Oh and we're total nerds. So there was no read, white and blue flag cakes or BBQ burgers for us this year. But that's what grill pans and liquid smoke are for right?

Super Fast & Easy Soyrizo Pasta Dinner

So I admit it. I burnt myself out. if you know me in person -- you know that me admitting this is a huge deal.

After years of working 40+ hours a week in the animal rights movement and writing this blog and then writing our book and now starting our second book... I'm exhausted. There was also a slight shift in this blog that was unintentional but after taking a little break from posting regularly I can see pretty clearly. See in the beginning this blog was about our mission to make anything and everything vegan but as this blog became more popular and more and more people who I didn't know and who have never eaten any of my food began to read this thing -- well there was this pressure for lack of a better word -- to not have typos and never admit that that I burnt a cookie or that a recipe was anything less than a cruelty-free dream come true.

I neurotically tested and tested recipes for the book and I tried to keep up with all the emails we get and failed. Somewhere in all this I started to feel like a little rock was sitting on my chest. I started to stay up late worrying that people won't like our book and worry that people wouldn't read it and understand that Betty Goes Vegan is full of great weekday standbys, old family favorites and guilt-less pleasures. It's also about helping people use all these great vegan products out there to their full potential. I mean yes a lot of us are DIY types but most people in our society choose their food based on convenience, cost and flavor. I've been doing vegan outreach for over 20 years now and I keep hearing the same reasons why people were reluctant to go vegan : giving up their favorite dishes, weird food and inconvenient. The reasons I keep hearing why people stopped being vegan : giving up their favorite dishes, weird food and inconvenient. That's why Betty Goes Vegan is carefully designed to not just help people go vegan but stay vegan by turning old meaty and cheesy favorites into vegan classics.

Yeah. I've lost a lot of sleep lately over it. It can be scary to put yourself out there and care about things. But there was a few things that have happened lately.

The Tacos  Photo Credit : Hannah Banana Baker

1. I read this post by Bonsai Aphrodite. See after 3 years (just like us) she also was dealing with a serious case of burn out. I related more than I liked to almost every line of this post and after reading it had this moment when I asked myself why something I love as much as this blog wasn't making myself deliriously happy. So I remembered why I fell in love with this blog and vegan outreach to begin with.
2. A vegan bakery named The Hannah Banana Bakery in the UK posted photos of our Thai Lemongrass Tofu Tacos and I started to cry a little. I have no idea why I get so excited when you guys send me pictures but it made me think over my morning tea and inspired me to write this long post and to get back to sharing that joy with all of you!

So here I am sharing with you a dinner we had the other night that is super simple and fast. So you know less time in your hot kitchen. It also features Tofurky's new vegan Chorizo style grounds but you can also use your favorite vegan soyrizo product if you can't find the Tofurky grounds in your area yet. I do recommend enjoying this with a salad. I try to get greens in every meal and this recipe lacks greens. Besides that... It's a pretty much a perfect weekday dinner.

I'm also promising that I'm giving up my little rock of doubt and fear... insecurity and getting back to posting on a regular basis. I'm trading in that rock for hope and not taking myself so seriously... and soyrizo pasta dinners.

OK enough gabbing. Let's eat!

Thai Lemongrass Tofu Tacos with a Lime-Sriracha Aioli & Basil-Cucumber Salsa

These are not the most photogenic tacos in the world but they are damn amazing.

These tacos came into our lives about a week ago when our darling friend and cookbook author Marta Holmberg posted this photo of Vegan Vietnamese Tacos made by The Mandoline Grill in Los Angeles. They had a strange combination of delicious things and being a bit ugly on the eyes. We're friends here. So we can be honest -- pink food can be hard to photograph.

But I really hope that you'll give these messy,spicy, savory and smokey tacos a try because they're more than worth the short amount of time it takes to make them (if you don't count marinading) and that rosy sauce is amazing on veggie burgers *, steamed artichokes, and with carrots sticks and really anything. Yes -- even corn on the cob. It's really a beautiful thing - even if it's pink**.

Now you might be wondering what makes these Thai tacos rather than Vietnamese like the originals.Well I am neither Thai or Vietnamese so my take on these cuisines comes mostly from restaurants and research. Both cuisines do share a lot of the same key ingredients like lemongrass, coconut milk, rice and noodles. Although Sriracha sauce is Vietnamese, my experience is that Vietnamese food is not as spicy as Thai and these tacos are actually really fiery. I mean they're hot.

I also added Thai basil, cucumbers and lime to the salsa recipe to add a freshness and a citrusy bite to keep the Lime-Sriracha Aioli from over powering everything with it's awesomeness. But really does that make it more Thai than Vietnamese? Hard to say.

So I guess -- long story short -- They might be dressed in pink but they kick ass. 

Vegan Meyhane Pilavi (Turkish Bulgur Pilaf)

There is a crazy thing that happens when you're a food blogger who hasn't been able to post reguraly because you're working on a book. You're still writing all the time but you can't decide what to post and then you end up not posting at all. This week we actually had a house guest! So it was double the posting drama.

I know! We actually let someone into our Fortress of Solitude that has become our Brooklyn apartment. Michelle Schwegmann from Herbivore Clothing Company and I stayed up late talking like we were having a slumber party and explored this not so little borough we call home. Including a happy jaunt around Park Slope and an afternoon in uber-hip Williamsburg. We had a vegan Creamsicle shake, vegan Caesar salads and some Buffalo fries with the lovely animal activist Amy Trakinski at Foodswings then took a walk over to see Leanne and her adorable dogs at Vaute Couture. Not a bad week. Not a bad week at all.

But it left little time for cooking and blogging. Then I woke up this morning with the remains of a dream in my head. In this dream, I was talking to people on a bus about how much I love bulgur and all the fun dishes I have made over the years with it. I was speaking with real purpose and passion about my adoration for this grain and at times would turn to people for validation to find that they were either completely captivated or looked like they were being held captive by a crazy person. Yes. It was an odd dream but it reminded me that I had a recipe I had been meaning to share since our return from Istanbul a few months ago.

Now some of you might remember when we made Vegan Turkish Tempeh Whole Wheat Lahmacun -- we mentioned that we bought a pretty interesting Turkish cook book. Well, we've made a few things out of it since then and everyone has been pretty much awesome. This dish was one of my personal favorites because (obviously) it's a very flavorful bulgur pilaf that gave us an opportunity to use some of the herbs we bought at The Grand Bazaar. The thing about this book is that it's full of inspiration but the recipes are strangely vague. For example the original recipe for this dish in the book calls for 150 grammes meat in small cubes. I guess it doesn't need to be any particular kind of meat and the liquids in the book are measured in "glasses". I'm not kidding.

Needless to say - we took some liberties like usual. Our dish is pretty delicious and makes a lot. You'll have a lot of leftovers to keep your kitchen cool this summer or to take to lunch for work. Whatever you want. That's not my business. What I can tell you -- this recipe will flip you for real!

Raspberry Lemonade Tart with a Rosewater & Coconut Crust

So I admit I've been a little MIA lately. There has been a lot going on and to be honest -- I've fallen behind on basically everything. I mean emails, laundry, cleaning out the fridge... pretty much everything but bills*. But there have been a few really exciting things that have happened lately. To paraphrase:

1. Our book Betty Goes Vegan is finally available for pre-sale! There are all these early bird special discounts available on the amazon page -- which is cool.

2. I was able to share some of my favorite vegan baking substitutions on the kitchn. I love this blog so it was a real honor for me. Plus it was great to be able to share with a not-all-vegan community how easy it is to bake vegan. I focused on substitutions you can find in any old grocery store and was really touched by the over 600 likes!

3. The Seed - Vegan Experience conference is this weekend. I won't be able to make it unfortunately but if you're around NYC -- you should really check it out. They have a pretty impressive speaker line-up. I'm also excited because it means my buddy Michelle Schwegmann from Herbivore Clothing Company will be in town. Love that girl.

Michelle & me at The NYC Vegetarian Food Festival - photo credit : The Village Voice

4. I finally posted our photos from Belgium. We spent a few days there around the end of May and you're going to hearing a lot about this trip. I mean this is a country famous for fries, beer, chocolate and comics. What's not to love? Today's recipe is actually inspired (in part) by a tart I saw in the window of a bakery in Brussels.

We didn't glaze ours and didn't add as many raspberries in the photo so you could see the filling. We also played around a lot with some more Mediterranean summer flavors by adding rosewater to the crust. Last summer we made Rosewater Lemonade Sorbet (shaved ice) and it just wouldn't be summer with out dabbling with the rosewater some more.

I'm curious -- what flavors say "Summer" for you?