I don’t really have much to say about this, except that the recipe is from Veganomicon, it’s suppper easy to make, it’s delicious and I make it quite often.

It’s also low-fat, if that tickles your fancy at all.  I kinda dig that if you replace some of the oil in a recipe with apple sauce, you can also usually decrease the amount of sugar without noticing a difference.  I don’t like things to be super sweet, so that makes me happy.

Also, this recipe doesn’t use any unusual ingredients, which I like.  Some vegan baked goods require a specific egg replacer or something that you might not already have on hand.  But the great thing about banana bread is that the bananas themselves bind the recipe.  Also, you can sub out the molasses for another tbsp or so of apple sauce if you don’t have it on hand.  It comes out a bit lighter in color, but it still tastes great.

Ok so I guess I did have a few things to say about this banana bread.

These are The Great Chickpea Cutlets from, you guessed it, Veganomicon!

You have bought your copy by now, haven’t you??

These are a staple in my diet.  They are perfect smothered with vegan gravy,* slathered with buffalo wing-style sauce, or sandwiched with toasted bread.

They are also delicious cold out of the refrigerator.

Not that I’d know.

They are a great way to eat all that protein that every omnivore is sure you’re not eating enough of.  (Don’t get me started on that one…)  And they are a pretty painless way to introduce yourself or someone you love to seitan.

They are a brilliant mixture of mashed chickpeas (from a can-easy!), vital wheat gluten (the stuff that makes seitan, you can find it in the flour/baking section of nearly any grocery store), breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

For VeganMoFo, Isa, the author of Veganomicon posted the recipe for a double batch of chickpea cutlets on her blog.  The recipe as written in the book makes 4 smallish cutlets, which I can fly though in a day or two, so I’ve always doubled the recipe.  The leftovers are great, and they freeze well either before or after cooking them.

To go along with the cutlets, I made mashed potatoes and gravy.  MMMMM.  Mashed potatoes are my favorite food, and if I had to pick my favorite food group I’d have to go with gravy.

I found organic fresh rosemary at the grocery store on clearance for $0.25 so I had to have it.  It paired perfectly with the thyme in the cutlets.  The combination of flavors reminded me a lot of thanksgiving, and I bet you couldn’t lose serving the cutlets with gravy for your thanksgiving feast.

I made a really basic vegan gravy.  I started by mincing that gigantic garlic clove you see above, and sauteing it with a bit of olive oil.  Then I made a roux by adding more olive oil and some flour, and cooked it just until it started to brown a bit.  Then I whisked in mushroom broth and whisked like crazy until it looked like gravy.  I added tons of black pepper and a chopped sprig of rosemary.

Don’t let the photo fool you, I doused those mashed ‘taters with plenty of gravy after I snapped this picture.

Oh, and we had salad too.  It wasn’t anything special.  I ate it first to get it out of the way so that I could focus on the good stuff.

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* FYI- Tofu Mom, a blog that I LOVE, is writing all about vegan gravy for VeganMoFo.  You should check out her gravy recipes.  I definitely want to make the vegan hollandaise!

As I mentioned in this post on Tofu and Seitan Kabobs, you need to own the Veganomicon cookbook if you’re into vegan cooking, if only for the basic seitan recipe.

With the leftover seitan from the kabobs, I made a super simple, but super delicious Thanksgiving-inspired sandwich.

The cranberry mayo is really the star of the sandwich.  All you do is combine:

• 1 teaspoon of cranberry butter, with
• 1 teaspoon on vegan mayo (I prefer Vegenaise brand. Nasoya tastes weird to me.)

I toasted two slices of whole wheat bread and spread the mayo on in a thin layer.  Then I added some thin slices of seitan and romaine lettuce.

The apple slices on the plate eventually made their way into the sandwich itself for a bit of crunch.  This was a really satisfying lunch.

Don’t let the crazy pink color of the mayo put you off- the combination is delicious!

Since I’m still new at this blogging thing, I thought I’d try a different approach to posting.   Here is a fairly random sampling of food that I’ve made and eaten over the past couple of weeks!

First up: A Green Smoothie

Green Smoothie

I bought a bunch of spinach at the farmers market (an entire plastic grocery bag full!) and decided to use some up in smoothies before it went bad.  Green smoothies are great, just add everything you usually like in a smoothie and chuck in a handful of spinach!  You can’t taste the spinach at all.  This one had banana, yogurt, soymilk, and some blueberries.

Next up is a typical breakfast.

Oatmeal with half a banana mashed in and homemade granola, yogurt, blueberries and flax seeds on top.  It’s getting a bit hot out for oatmeal these days though.  More recently I’ve been having cereal or yogurt.

Some weekends I really make an effort to make a bunch of food to take for lunches during the week.  Here’s photo documentation of it   First I made Spaghetti and Bean Balls from the vegan bible cookbook Veganomicon.

I topped the bean balls with some shredded vegan mozzarella cheese.  I’ve tried a bunch of vegan cheeses, and I have to say that I’d rather just go without rather than eat “fake” cheese.  The texture and the flavor are just not satisfying at all.  I thought I’d swoon over Teese and I was disappointed, and FYH was a little bit worse.  Bummer.

I’d show you the final product, but the pictures came out pretty bad.  Basically I cooked some whole wheat pasta, topped it with some of the red sauce, some of the bean balls, and a bit of sauteed zucchini.

I also took advantage of my oven space, since it was already on and made some Chickpea Cutlets, also from Veganomicon.

Chickpea Cutlets

These are awesome to make in advance, and are great on top of salads, pasta, or in sandwiches during the week.  My favorite way to have them is to reheat them in the toaster oven, slather them with Franks Red Hot, and chow down with some yogurty dipping sauce.  Who needs chicken wings??