Holiday Meals: Breakfast and Lunch
Having family over for the holidays can be one of those wonderful and also challenging experiences. A house full of loved ones should be a fun and happy time, but it can be crowded and stressful, especially feeding all of those people. We don’t have a plan to make your house bigger, but if you’re wondering what to feed your omnivorous loved ones, we’ve got some answers.
Photo by Snarky Vegan Julia Moran Martz
Take some of the stress off by planning delicious vegan meals in advance. Knowing what you’re making, shopping before hand and doing preparation steps ahead of time can all make your holiday meals go over smoothly and calmly. For great time-saving tips even for more complicated recipes check out Snarky Vegan’s Vegan MoFo series EZ Comfort Food for Tired Wenches. Here are some suggestions from Allison’s award-winning “VeganizeIt!” column from VegNews Magazine:
Photo by Heather Blackmon of Better with Veggies
If you’re having family staying with you for the holidays chances are you’ll want to plan more than just dinners. But a meal planned doesn’t have to be a big, sit-down affair. For a sweet and simple breakfast treat try warm and buttery scones. Our bloggers have created several versions for you to try: Pumpkin Cranberry, Orange Chocolate Chip, and the latest Better with Veggies version Currant-Raisin Orange, which are all spin-offs of Allison’s original Orange Currant recipe. Scones make great casual breakfast fare as they can be kept warm or re-heated for everyone to eat in their own time.
Photo by Snarky Vegan Julia Moran Martz
For a fancy sit-down breakfast or brunch nothing beats a golden-brown Frittata complete with seasonal veggies and topped with your favorite shredded vegan cheese. For extra decadence and tastebud delight, serve slices of Frittata with a fruit salad and strips of Smoky Fried Tofu Bacon on the side (or crumbled and baked in). YUM!
Amidst all the holiday eating, lunch can be a satisfyingly simple and healthy affair. Turn a plain-jane soup and salad combo into light lunch extraordinaire with French Onion Soup (available in the September/October edition of VegNews), Clam-Free Chowder, or Cream of Broccoli Soup and a very green kale salad.
Of course, we’ve got you covered in the sweets department. Let us do the baking, and make dessert one less thing for you to worry about.
Gourmet cookies in seasonal flavors and trays of decadent vegan fudge make perfect holiday snacks and desserts. They’re also great as gifts for friends near or far. Check out the Holiday Gifts and Gifts By Price sections of our website for seasonal gift ideas to fit any budget.
Come back next week for a super exciting chocolate announcement on Monday, and then holiday dinner suggestions and even a new recipe or two later in the week…
Vegan MoFo 2011: Ghoulish Shepherd’s Pie
Just in time for this Halloween, one last Vegan MoFo Recipe from our lovely guest blogger, Snarky Vegan (aka Julia Moran Martz). She had a super time with Allison’s Vegan Shepherd’s Pie recipe as you’ll see below. It’s such a warming and comforting meal any time of year, but we absolutely LOVE the Halloween twist Julia adds to it! What do you think? What are your favorite recipes for Autumn? Halloween? Let us know over on Facebook and Twitter!
Ok, so I’m on a ghost roll. I love Halloween and just couldn’t come up with any other ideas for the mashed potatoes on Allison Rivers Samson’s Shepherd Pie recipe printed in her award-winning VeganizeIt! column in VegNews magazine.
Of course, other folks have created better mashed potato ghosts than mine. My first effort at making mashed potato ghosts is a bit amateurish but I’m sure with practice they could resemble those ghosts by these other masters.
Use a zippered sandwich bag with the corner cutoff to squeeze out easy ghosts made from mashed taters on shepherd’s pie. Push in lentils for eyes before baking.
This Shepherd’s Pie is perfect, even DH said so.
You may have read here that my hubby is rather picky about food so if he likes something, it’s got to be good, right? Yep. This is a great Fall/Winter dish that will definitely become a regular around here because it’s healthy and something hubs will eat.
Reprinted here with permission by Allison Rivers Samson and VegNews magazine. Any changes on my part are noted.
6 servings
Ingredients:
- 3 1/2 cups yellow potatoes, dices, cooked and mashed
- 1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, divided
- 1/4 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 3/4 cup chopped onions
- 1 cup slices mushrooms
- 1/2 cup diced carrots
- 1/4 cup diced celery
- 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons barley flour
- 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 3/4 cup vegetable broth
- 2 cups cooked French lentils, drained well
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vegan Worcestershire sauce
- 4 teaspoons tamari
- 1/2 cup frozen peas
Steps:
- Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, combine mashed potatoes with margarine, 1 teaspoon salt and non-dairy milk. Set aside.
- In a large saute pan over medium head, add oil and onions. Saute for 2 minutes. Add mushrooms, carrots and celery. Cook for 2 minutes. Add garlic and saute for 1 minutes. Add flour and stir until absorbed. Stir in marjoram, celery seed, thyme, paprika, remaining salt, and pepper. Cook for 1 minute, and then stir in broth. Continue to stir frequently until the mixture comes to a slow boil. Stir in lentils, parsley, Worcestershire, tamari and peas, then remove from heat.
- Transfer mixture to a deep pie dish or a 9×13-inch casserole. Spread the mashed potatoes on top of the vegetable mixture in the dish. Use the tips of a fork to rake across the top of the mashed potatoes, making a rough surface to facilitate a brown crispy top.* Bake for 40 minutes, or until potatoes are browned. Serve hot.
*I used ramekins to make single portion pies with an individual ghost for each pie. Glad I put them on a baking sheet to bake because they did cook over the sides.
Just look at how yummy the pie is under the ghost!
Tired Wench Tips:
- Make a stash of lentils up to 3 days prior.
- Use frozen carrot and pea mix to cut back on some chopping.
- Buy pre-sliced mushrooms.
- Make both the taters and vegetable mixture in advance and assemble for dinner after work. Not sure I’d put the mashed potatoes on the veggies ahead of time because I don’t know if they’d merge into a goo. You can nuke a side dish of veggies and set the table while this is baking.
Now pardon me while I go determine how many leftovers to eat for lunch. It’s difficult to determine this when you have to share with someone else.
Great job, Julia! It’s ghostly delicious looking. 
And the Winners Are…
Our Tee and Tote Design Contest was a great success with the entry of many beautiful and creative designs. 
In the end the final challenging decision was left to our judges and myself, and after painstaking deliberations, I am very excited to announce these winners…
It was a tie for third place among all the judges, so instead of having to choose between these two elegant designs, I decided to award two third-place prizes:
Karen Rosenstein (above) and Devin St Clair (right) will each receive a 3-month brownie, fudge or cookie of the month club membership from AG, plus a year’s subscription to VegNews Magazine so they can stay current on affairs of the veg world and always have access to my latest VeganizeIt! recipe.
The second place prize goes to Jonathan Day. 
We especially love his “A” inspired logo design (left). He will enjoy a 6-month monthly club membership, 6 containers of his favorite So Delicious Dairy Free ice cream, and an autographed copy of Kathy Freston‘s new book “Veganist.”
And finally, the grand prize of $500 cash and a 3-month Allison’s Gourmet monthly club membership goes to Erika Themaras for her gorgeous logo design. I especially love her “Sustainably Sweet” tag line.
Congratulations to Erika, Jonathan, Devin and Karen!
Congratulations are also in order for Jessica Campbell, Heather Cox, Adam Youngers, Ashley Blodgett, Colin Redmon, and Brooke Parker whose designs made the final 10 after public voting. You will each receive a $25 gift certificate to Allison’s Gourmet as my way of saying thank you for submitting your work.
A big thank you to everyone who participated and helped make this contest such a success!
Allison Saves Lentil Loaf from Your Boring Hippy Aunt
Vegan MoFo is in full effect and we are pretty darn ready for a slice of Snarky Vegan‘s twist on Allison’s Lentil Loaf! Yumm. Perfect for a chilly Meatless Monday too. Check it out below and you can view all of Snarky Vegan’s recipes on her website.
EZ Comfort Food for Tired Wenches
by Julia Moran Martz
Remember those soulless lentil loaves from the 70′s pretending to be healthy meatloaves? No? Well, let me describe one for you: brown, pasty, tasted like cardboard, squishy, gross and h-e-a-v-e-y. Yeah, that one lentil brick I tasted as a kid in the 70′s prevented me from trying any modern, updated vegan meatloaf—no matter what the ingredients. To me, there was no way to pull this off…until now.
Allison Saves Lentil Loaf from Your Boring Hippy Aunt
EZ tip: prepare the meatloaf on Sunday then assemble and bake on Monday after work. Nuke some frozen broccoli and a potato and you’ve got dinner!
Let me start by saying I wasn’t really able to shave off significant amounts of time from this recipe for my favorite Tired Wenches. It’s critical to the flavor depth of this meatless loaf that you NOT skip any ingredients or steps. At the end of this post I’ll list some ideas for saving time but they’ll mostly involve advance prep-work.
Meatloaf Remixed
Reprinted here with permission by Allison Rivers Samson from her VeganizeIt! column in VegNews Magazine. Any changes on my part are in parentheses.
4 servings, if you aren’t me.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup tomato paste (almost one of those small cans, I added the extra to my lentils as they cooked to give more depth)
- 3 tablespoons tamari, divided
- 1 tablespoon dark agave nectar (I used brown rice syrup)
- 1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
- 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons garlic, minced and divided
- 1/4 cup vegan margarine, divided
- 1 cup onion, chopped and divided
- 1 cup portabello mushrooms, diced into 1/2-inch pieces
- 1/2 cup celery, diced
- 1/2 cup carrot, finely diced
- 3/4 teaspoon salt (I cut this back by half because I cooked the lentils and rice in salted bullion, but in hindsight, I should have cut this out completely or used bullion without salt)
- 3/4 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
- 3/4 cup cooked brown rice (I cooked in bullion)
- 2 cups cooked French lentils (I cooked in bullion)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vegan Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, minced (my garden was bare so I used 1 tablespoon dried tarragon)
- 1 tablespoon arrowroot powder
- 3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs (time saver: used panko from pantry)
Steps:
- Preheat oven to 350°F (I waited to do this until I was in the final mix because I’m a slow cook.) Line a small loaf pan with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a small bowl, combine the tomato paste, 2 tablespoons tamari, agave, liquid smoke, and 1 tablespoon garlic. Set aside.
- Heat a large skillet over medium heat, add 2 tablespoons margarine and 1/2 cups onions. Saute 5 minutes. Add the portabello mushrooms and sauté for 7 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl. Add remaining 2 tablespoons margarine to the skillet and saute the celery, carrot, remaining 2 teaspoons garlic, salt and pepper over low heat. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- In a food processor, pulse the rice and lentils 10 times, then transfer to a large bowl. In the food processor, pulse the cooked carrot/celery mixture with Worcestershire sauce, remaining tablespoon of tamari, mustard, parsley, arrowroot and 1/3 cup of the tomato topping 10 times. Add this mixture to the bowl with the lentils.
- Fold in the reserved sautéed onions and mushrooms, breadcrumbs, and the 1/2 cup chopped onion.
- Press half of the mixture into the prepared loaf pan and spread the top with half of the tomato topping. Press remaining loaf mixture in the pan then coat the top with the last of the tomato topping. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes, Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes until top is browned Remove from oven and cool for 20 minutes before serving.
Tip to keep the loaf moist: when processing the veggies, don’t strain them from the margarine you used during sautéing. Dump the margarine from the skillet into the processor as well.
Tired Wench Tips:
- Make a stash of lentils and rice up to 3 days prior. Use a veggie broth instead of plain water and you can use them for other things too (just cut back on the salt in the recipe if you use salted broth). Good weekend activity for when you’re mad at hubby.
- This tomato topping would make a great topping for burgers or hot dogs so I recommend making a batch of it to keep in the fridge. Then you can just pull it out like we used to with ketchup on past meatloaves.
- Celery, carrots and onions can always be chopped and stored in little airtight containers in the fridge. Garlic however will lose some of it’s potency if you try this time saver.
- Dry herbs are a time saver if you don’t have fresh.
- Use panko or other boxed breadcrumbs so you don’t have to make your own.
- Let the parchment paper extend over the sides of the pan and it’s super easy to pull the loaf out when it’s cooled down.
- And of course, MY FAVORITE IDEA, make the meatloaf mixture on a Sunday then assemble and bake it Monday night for dinner. Plan 1 hour for baking and 20 minutes cooling time to set the table, make a side salad and nuked potatoes with Teese® or Daiya® cheese.
Overall, I really like this recipe for many reasons: nobody died, no chance of biting into any boingies, and it’s loaded with flavor. Even DH liked it and you know he hates everything. 
Thanks Snarky Vegan!
Tee and Tote Design Contest Public Voting Starts Today!
Congratulations to all of you who submitted your designs to Allison’s first-ever Tee and Tote Design Contest! It has been an exciting process for us here to watch the sweet creativity flow in over the last six weeks!
Now the time has come for Phase One of the voting process. Beginning today, you can vote for your favorite designs once every 24 hours until September 30th. Your votes are so important! They will help us narrow down the entries to the top ten designs that will then be voted on by Allison and our dream team panel of judges to determine the winners.
The Grand Prize winner receives $500 cash and a 3-month membership of Allison’s Gourmet goodies; the Second Prize winner will receive a 6-month membership of Allison’s Gourmet treats, 6 containers of So Delicious Dairy Free Ice Cream and an autographed copy of Kathy Freston’s book, Veganist; and the 3rd Prize winner will receive a 3-month membership of Allison’s Gourmet goodies plus a 1-year subscription to VegNews Magazine!
Good luck to our entrants and a BIG thanks to our panel of judges: Gene Baur from Farm Sanctuary, Nathan Runkle from Mercy for Animals, Colleen Holland from VegNews, Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart from Vaute Couture, Troy Farmer and Katie Frichtel from Raven + Crow Studio and Chloé Jo Davis from GirlieGirl Army.
So whether you submitted a design or just have a great eye for aesthetics, we hope you’ll get clicking, spread the word on Facebook and Twitter, and help us determine this contest’s winners!
Monday Yumday: Baked Shells and Cheese
Confession: I’ve never had baked mac and cheese before, vegan or otherwise. (Although, I did grow up somewhat addicted to the neon Kraft blue box special until I realized that cheese was in fact, disgusting.) So, when Allison asked me to make her Veg News recipe and post my result here,
I was a bit nervous (more than my usually anxious state, that is). And after looking at her recipe, which calls for both onions and garlic, my sworn enemies, I felt like I could be in big trouble, until Allison suggested I make the recipe my own way. Giddyup.
Where I alter the recipe from Allison’s original version is noted (*), and despite the changes, it still came out really well balanced with a creamy sauce and crispy crumbs on top and a good bit of spice from my extra dose of cayenne. You can read Allison’s original Veganize It recipe here, and for my adaptation, read on. And in the spirit of Allison’s direction to me, I urge you to make it your own way, too!
Baked Macaroni & Cheese
By Jill Ettinger
Adapted from Allison Rivers Samson
Serves 6
What You Need:
4 quarts water
8 ounces brown rice shells*
3 slices Ezekial sprouted grain sesame bread torn into pieces*
2 tablespoons + 1/3 cup non-hydrogenated margarine
1 cup yellow potatoes (about 1 medium potato)
½ cup chopped carrots
1 cup water
¼ cup raw almonds*
¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes*
1 teaspoon Himalayan mineral salt*
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard*
¼ teaspoon ground cumin*
¼ teaspoon ground cayenne*
1 tablespoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon ground paprika
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a large pot, bring 4 quarts water to boil. Add shells and cook until al dente. Drain and rinse, setting aside.
3. In a food processor, mix breadcrumbs with 2 tablespoons margarine and pulse until uniform crumbed texture. Set aside.
4. In saucepan, add water, chopped potatoes and carrots and bring to boil, simmering covered for 15 minutes or until veggies are soft.
5.In blender, mix almonds, salt, margarine, mustard, yeast, lemon, black pepper, cumin, cayenne. Then, add the cooked vegetables (with water) blending until smooth.
6. Transfer shells to a large mixing bowl and stir in the cheese sauce, coating evenly.
7. Spread into a 9 x 12 casserole dish and sprinkle the bread crumbs on top. Dust with paprika.
8.Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until you see cheese sauce bubbling and the top has turned golden brown.
We’ve Been “Nom”inated!
We heart VegNews Magazine and we’re so thrilled to be nominated, once again, for three VegNews Veggie Awards this year. 
As you may know, in 2004 we won a Veggie Award for Best Brownie and in 2006 we won again as the Favorite Bakery (Online). This year we’re up for:
1. Favorite Bakery (Online)
2. Favorite Vegan Candy (our Chocolate Almond Toffee)
3. Favorite VegNews Column (Veganize It! by our founder and mastermind Allison Rivers Samson)
In recent years the proliferation of vegan food options, especially vegan baked goods, has really skyrocketed, and we’re so pleased about that. More options mean more people exposed to the vegan lifestyle in a positive way and more possibilities for omnivores to experience how excellent vegan food can be. But, all those options do make it harder for a small company like ours to get recognized, even if our products are premium-quality and better than anything else on the market. So, we hope you’ll vote for us in all three categories of the 2011 Veggie Awards and give some love to the little guy (or gal as it may be)!
Just in case you need an extra incentive, voting gets you automatically entered to win some really awesome prizes including a vegan vacation and a year’s supply of vegan ice cream! Hurry, polls close August 31st!
Meet Our Celebrity Judges!
With just over a month left to enter our Tee and Tote Design Contest, the buzz is growing and designs are starting to come in. We’re beginning to look forward to the excitement of choosing our winners! First, we need you and your friends to submit your most awesome designs and slogans. Then, after you’ve submitted your artwork, online voting will commence on September 16th. This will be your chance to tell everyone what you’ve been up to and encourage them to vote for your design. This round of voting will narrow the field to 10 finalists.
After those 10 finalists have been chosen, Allison will sit down with our panel of celebrity judges to choose the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place designs. Who are these celebrity judges, you ask? I’m here to tell you… we are so grateful to the following talented and dynamic individuals for helping us with this contest! In case you’ve been wondering about them, here’s a little bit about each of our amazing all-star judges:
Colleen Holland, one of the masterminds at VegNews Magazine, is an expert in marketing and brand-building who also studied at the Natural Gourmet Institute. She loves our chocolate almond toffee and vanilla chai fudge.
Gene Baur, co-founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, grew up in Hollywood and worked in commercials for McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants before going vegan in 1985 and beginning his true calling campaigning for the rights of farm animals.
Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart, the goddess behind Vaute Couture, backs up her eye for design with a background in activism. She has been vegetarian since age 10, and vegan since she was 17, when she helped push a bill into law for dissection alternatives in Illinois schools.
Nathan Runkle, founder and executive director of Mercy for Animals, has been named one of the “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians” and one of the country’s “Top 20 Activists Under 30 Years Old.” In 2009 he became the youngest person ever inducted into the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame.
Glamazon Chloé Jo Davis blogs at GirlieGirlArmy.com and loves our “orgasmic fudge and brownies.” She’s the sexist eco-goddess, vegan fashion expert, animal rights activist, and green mama we know. Among many other titles, she was recently named a “Rule Changer” by Italian Elle.
The dynamic husband and wife duo Troy Farmer and Katie Frichtel at Raven + Crow Studio do truly excellent graphic design work and also run a blog, Kindness of Ravens, where they write about design, music, fashion, and (what else?) vegan food.
Allison’s Gourmet Tee and Tote Design Contest!
Hi, I’m Allison. 15 years ago, in Seattle, WA, I founded this premier online vegan bakery and confectionary, Allison’s Gourmet. We’ve grown and changed a lot since then, including moving to Northern California and greatly expanding our product line, but one of the dreams I’ve held on to is to someday offer Allison’s Gourmet branded t-shirts and tote bags to our devoted fans. That someday has finally come, and since my talents live more in the kitchen, than in the design studio, I thought it would be fun to enlist your help! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be accepting submissions in our first ever design contest.
Here’s what you do: Create a design that includes a graphic, slogan/catchphrase and optional logo re-design for Allison’s Gourmet to be used on t-shirts, tote bags, etc. and you could win one of these delectable prizes:
Grand prize: $500 cash, plus one 3-month Allison’s Gourmet membership ($596 total value)
2nd prize: One 6-month Allison’s Gourmet membership, plus 6 containers of your choice of So Delicious Dairy Free Ice Cream, and an autographed copy of Veganist by Kathy Freston ($247 value)
3rd prize: One 3-month Allison’s Gourmet membership, plus a 1-year subscription to VegNews Magazine ($117 value)
Who we are: Allison’s Gourmet is an upscale, premium brand of pure, handcrafted, artisan baked goods and confections. With our unadulterated sweets we celebrate the joys of being vegan and we hope your design(s) will help communicate our message of compassionate indulgence!
How it works: If you live in the U.S. and are 18 or older, we welcome you to submit up to three designs by September 15th. After we receive all the designs, invite your friends and family to join the fun for the first round of voting September 16th – 30th. This will help us select the top 10 finalists, after which our all-star judges and the AG Team will choose the winners!
Click here to submit your artwork. Good luck!
Summertime Menu Ideas
As we move out of winter into warmer weather, for many of us our tastes change. Those rich, warm dishes that we crave in the colder months get moved aside in favor of fresher, lighter fare. 
But, just because you’re craving salads and sandwiches doesn’t mean that some classic comfort foods can’t make an appearance on your table. For some great summer sandwich ideas check out Allison’s Grilled Tempeh Reubens, Tuna(less) Salad, and of course, vegan BLTs with Smoky Fried Tofu Bacon as featured in the current issue of VegNews Magazine and coming up on our Monday Yumday post next week!
Other summertime favorites include All-American Potato Salad, vegan barbecue, and of course Allison’s famous Mac ‘n’ Cheese, which is an all-time favorite any time of year.
As for warm-weather desserts, you know we always have you covered in that department. 
Some of our not-to-be-missed summertime flavors include zesty Coconut Key Lime Cookies, refreshing Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies, and soft Peanut Butter Cookies (coming in July), as well as Sour Cherry and Apple Pie fudge flavors!
