March 16, 2008
everyone loves a fat sausage
aren't sundays the best? they've always been pretty great, but ever since sweet pea started offering an all-you-can-eat vegan brunch on sundays, they're even better. if you live in portland, i strongly recommend stopping by.
i have been doing my daily eats again, if getting a glimpse into the food habits of a stranger rocks your boat. i'm going to try and do it for four months this time instead of just one month.
but i know why you're really here. you want to know if i attempted beer brats again. i did, and this time, it was a stunning success!
here are my ingredients, but you should head over to julie's site for directions. (better yet, watch the episode.)
dry mix: 2 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten 1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes 1/4 cup chickpea flour 2 tablespoons onion powder 1 tablespoon Spike (or your favorite salt-free seasoning) 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon sage 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 1/4 teaspoon white pepper 1/4 teaspoon savory 1/4 teaspoon rosemary 1/4 teaspoon dill 1/4 teaspoon allspice 1/4 teaspoon thyme 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
wet mix: 12 oz stale beer 1 cup vegetable broth 2 tbsp canola oil
you're going to want to make the brats a little "fatter" than you would the other sausages; i ended up with ten of them.
here's the dry mix in a bowl:

so beautiful, right?
and here is a brat, sliced up with some mustards for dipping:

hooray! these will definitely be a staple in our house from now on. thanks so much to julie for coming up with a quick way to make veggie sausages. don't you think she should write a sausage book?
in other food nerd news, i finally got around to organizing my spices this week:

prior to this, i had a horrible combination of those magnetic spice containers that were popular for about a year and then completely disappeared and bags (some of which weren't labeled) in my drawer. it made it tricky to find what i was looking for when i was cooking, and since i hardly ever do a full prep before i start in on a recipe, i was frequently in my kitchen frantically throwing bags around because i knew i had cumin seeds somewhere, dammit!
now i can open my spice drawer with zenlike calm. what a relief.
testing has begun for the second yellow rose book and it's going really well so far. like any creative project, i can already feel this morphing a little from what i had originally expected and planned for it to be, but it's growing in a good direction, i think! of course, this is still happening all in my mind. if everything that was going on in my mind were actually occurring in real time, i'd be twice as busy as i already am.
posted by joanna @ 4:07 PM
24 Comments

January 30, 2008
beer brats!
yesterday was my first attempt to make beer brats with seitan. it was a failure from my perspective because they didn't tasted like brats. they were good, and we're still eating them, but they need some serious tweaking.
here's what i did:
i started with julie hasson's spicy italian vegetarian sausage recipe, and i adjusted all the herbs and spices so they'd be more appropriate for beer brats. aren't they beautiful?

and then i swapped 1 1/2 cups of the water with a 12 oz bottle of beer. i chose deschutes brewery's jubelale, one of my very favorite local seasonal beers. next time, i will probably use a lighter beer, like a hefeweizen.

after mixing everything together, i rolled the mixture into foil logs and baked them for 90 minutes on 350, cooled them on the sheet, and then put them into the fridge until that evening.
for the first tasting, i just cut the brats into slices and tasted them with mustard. it was obvious right away that the main problem was the texture; the brats were almost spongy. the flavor was great! but the texture was all wrong. i'm pretty sure that i should have let the beer go flat before combining it with the wheat gluten mixture. the foam obviously started a reaction that puffed up the dough and created air holes in the dough.

later, i ate the brats with sierra nevada porter mustard and sauerkraut on a toasted bun, and of course it tasted delicious! you could put my big toe in a hot dog bun with mustard and sauerkraut and it would be heavenly!

so, i will be trying this again eventually with a light beer and letting it go completely flat before i do the mixture, so i get all of flavor without affecting the texture of the seitan. onward!
posted by joanna @ 1:04 PM
12 Comments

January 29, 2008
blogs!
i know that this really shouldn't warrant a post, but suck it! it's my blog!
i finally got around to making a list in the sidebar of the food blogs that i read. and of course it didn't take as long as i thought it would take, once i got rolling. why did i build it up to be this sisyphean task that i could never accomplish? why did blogger just underline sisyphean as if i misspelled it? don't make me question myself, blogger!
can you tell that i've had a half-caf soy latte today?
please let me know in the comments if you have a food blog and it's missing from my list. i would love to read it.
posted by joanna @ 10:30 AM
24 Comments

January 28, 2008
because i just don't have enough going on
i just wanted to pop in here and let everyone know that i've begun writing recipes for the second cookbook, tentatively titled yellow rose family, to be released by herbivore in spring 2009.
the only reason that the title is tentative is that i really don't want to exclude my single and childfree audience, because the real target demographic of the book is the person who doesn't feel like he has enough time to cook healthy vegetarian meals in addition to everything else he has going on. it saddens me most americans consider a home cooked meal to be a luxury rather than a priority, even though i completely sympathize with feeling like there just isn't enough time in the day. the goal of this book will be to provide some healthy, quick, and mega-tasty recipes for everyday life.
posted by joanna @ 2:27 PM
14 Comments

January 02, 2008
yellow rose recipes table of contents
many people have been asking for a list of the recipes in the book, so here it is:
Tofu Scramble Perfect Oatmeal Buckwheat Pancakes Jalapeño Corn Cakes Buttermilk Biscuits Rosemary Home Fries Cherry Almond Granola Zucchini Muffins Raisin Bran Muffins Very Berry Muffins Roasted Red Pepper Hummus Roasted Eggplant and Garlic Hummus Spinach Chickpea Dip Lettuce Wraps Polenta and Eggplant Napoleons Veggie Wontons with Ginger Miso Dipping Sauce Baked Samosas with Cilantro Mint Chutney Potato Corn Chowdah Tortilla Soup Black Bean Soup Miso Soup with Edamame Black Eyed Pea Soup Curried Carrot Ginger Soup Mom's Lentil Soup Daily Green Salads Antipasto Salad Taco Salad Minty Summer Fruit Salad Barley and Avocado Salad Texas Caviar Goddess Pasta Salad Couscous Chickpea Salad Quinoa Tabouli Carrot Salad with Herb Lime Dressing Wild Rice Salad Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce Ratatouille Pasta Sauce Marinara Béchamel Sauce Pesto Mexican Pesto Lemon Artichoke Pesto Mushroom Gravy Almond Milk Gravy Lemon Tahini Dressing Creamy Pepita Dressing Tangy Sour Cream Nacho Sauce Guacamole Mango Salsa Raw Corn Salsa Birthday Salsa Chipotle Ranch Sandwich Spread Tapenade Sunflower Feta Vegan Parmesan Simply Sweet Potatoes Braised Cauliflower Lemon Pepper Chard Collard Greens Sesame Green Beans Pickled Onions Creamy Herbed Polenta Spiced Applesauce Lemon Rice Green-wa Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes Stuffed Twice-Baked Potatoes Roasted Roots Refried Black Beans Dirrrty Rice and Beans Simple Chicken-Style Seitan Mustard Crusted Seitan Crispy Beer-Battered Seitan Tofu Marsala Baked Mac and Cheese Spinach Lasagna Butternut Squash Lasagna Penne Alfredo Pasta E Fagioli Kasha Varnishkes Grilled Portabellos Asparagus with Spinach and Artichoke Cream Sauce Thai Bowl Sloppy Joannas Chana Masala Cajun Spiced Tofu White Beans and Kale Black Bean and Sweet Potato Flautas Tamale Pie Better-than-Basic Veggie Chili Northwest Meets Southwest Chili Aloha Bread Cherry Compote Soft Oatmeal Cookies Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Bars Mojito Pie Lemon Almond Cake Spice Cake
posted by joanna @ 2:10 PM
10 Comments

December 18, 2007
it's here!
if you pre-ordered the book, there is a good chance that it arrived in your mailbox yesterday or today!
here i am holding the cookbook and milo on saturday when josh dropped off my copies, hot from the press:

and later that afternoon, we all went over to the herbivore store and i signed every single tester and pre-order copy:

i am bursting at the seams with the excitement and happiness of having a newborn and my first cookbook arriving in the world within a week of each other.
please let me know in the comments if your book arrived and you have any questions, or if you just want to let me know what recipe you're making first, or whatever else you'd like to say!
and of course, no matter how many people pore over the contents of books, some mistakes always slip through the cracks and escape attention until it's too late, so i'll be posting a whole page of corrections soon and we'll fix them for the second print run. if you catch errors, please do let me know, no matter how minor they seem!
posted by joanna @ 4:24 PM
27 Comments

December 09, 2007
baby before book!
milo bear okin was born on december 7, 2007 at 4:36 PM! he is absolutely beautiful and perfect.
ak1drland was randomly selected from the people who voted that the book would come before the baby! ak1drland, send your address to joanna@yellowroserecipes.com and we'll send you a free copy of the book!
posted by joanna @ 12:57 PM
13 Comments

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