Friday, July 30, 2010

How you can help spread the vegan pizza goodness!

Greetings Humboldt Veggers!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and having lots of fun adventures. Our household has been consumed these past few months by the massive effort involved in moving our home, my studio, Matt's shop, and all of our animals, while simultaneously attempting to renovate/remodel the house we're moving into. Fun stuff. ;-)

Many of my fellow group leaders have also been busy with travel this summer, and it seems we let July pass without managing to plan a get-together. I'm hoping to host a vegan ice cream sundae party at our new place in Bayside later in August (if you all don't mind the disarray and construction mess!). But I thought it would be fun to try something new in place of our July event...

About a week ago, we brought our own Daiya vegan cheese to Big Pete's Pizzeria in Eureka and they made us a delicious vegan pizza. It was my first authentic pizza parlor style pie in about ten years (cheeseless pizza doesn't count), and I cannot tell you how good it tasted! That got me thinking - if we harnessed the power of this awesome group of people, might we be able to get Big Pete's (or any other local pizzerias) to make Daiya a regular offering on their menu? (thereby saving vegan consumers about $10 worth of vegan cheese from the Co-op for enough for two medium pizzas!).

Coincidentally, within days of these musings, I came across a campaign on an LA-area vegan blog to try to get more LA pizza parlors to offer vegan cheese. I borrowed the idea from them and am proposing that anyone interested in helping to expand vegan dining options in Humboldt County email me to request the form I drafted and send it in to one or more pizza parlor locally (perhaps with an emphasis on Big Pete's, since they do have two cheeseless vegan pizzas already clearly marked on their menu, and because the owner did seem receptive when I chatted him up recently). All you have to do is write the date, the name of the restaurant, and your name on the handy-dandy form and mail it in or drop it off at the pizza parlor(s) of your choice. Then we just sit back and (hopefully) wait for the delicious, gooey vegan pizza deliciousness to begin. :-)

Thanks for helping, and I hope to see many of you next month!

Tamara

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Vegan Dessert Recipes, Part 9

ALMOND CRESCENTS

Makes about 50 little cookies that are great for holiday gift giving.

1 stick vegan margarine
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar, plus additional for coating
2 cups unbleached flour
1 cup ground almonds (other nuts ok)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Cream butter, add remaining ingredients and mix well.

Shape with fingers into crescents. (Kid friendly for other shapes or rolling out too.)

Roll in extra confectioner’s sugar and bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 12 to 15 minutes.

Take out when just starting to brown. Cool, then roll in more confectioner’s sugar before serving.

Submitted by Heather Gladding. Adapted from “The Fanny Farmer Cookbook.”