Vegan Mofo - Very Successful Tempeh Loaf

Last night my Parents & Grandma came over for dinner. Having five people to cook for and finding I was pretty close to having all the right ingredients for tempeh loaf from the Real Food Daily cookbook, I decided to go for it. As I was making it I realized I've been wanting to find a good vegan loaf recipie for a while and as it came together it looked more and more like I had found it. Real Food Daily is a really great restaurant in L.A., all vegan, organic, two locations. When we visited L.A. last October their food was so good we visited them twice and bought the cookbook. And so far I've had nothing but luck with the recipes. The recipes are well written to be exciting yet reliable, and like the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook, it's peppered with stories about how the restaurant started, why they started offering thanksgiving meals, etc. Anyway, I went with the route of making the recommended side dishes as well, roasted fall veggies and mashed potatoes with golden gravy. Most of the food, other than the veggies, was prepared by me the night before and Chuck helped by reheating it when my family came over. It all worked out really well, and the tempeh loaf got great reviews from the family despite their typically meat-eating ways. Which is exactly what you hope for with a dish like this. Oh, and I got to use the cool dicing wheel on our food processor too, to mush up the tempeh. That was so much fun!

I think we've got just enough leftover for dinner, and my stomach is growling in anticipation!

Vegan Mofo: Tofu Loaf with Green Beans

Somehow in 10 or so years of cooking vegan I've never tried to make tofu loaf. Tempeh Loaf a few times, but never tofu. Last week I was browsing The Chicago Diner Cookbook and it occurred to me it might be interesting to try. I very loosely followed the recipe in there, substituting oats for sesame seeds, based on suggestions in recipes like this one.  (Oprah even has a recipe for Tofu Loaf. Lots of ingredients in that one.)

I had a larger pan and less tofu on hand (it was 20oz.) than the recipes called for, so I improvised by adding the last two Tofurky sausages we had left. They were chopped and added after blending the tofu (with oil) in the food processor. They did a nice job of making the whole dish less tofu-flavored, which has perhaps been part of the reason I haven't tried it before. It also added some spices (it was the Italian style) in addition to the thyme I added. Other ingredients were shredded carrots (made it yellow!) and chopped onions.

We also had green beans, fresh from the farmer's market, on the side. Based on the suggestion in the Veganomicon, they were simply roasted with some olive oil, salt and pepper.  Also turned a few hoagie rolls, picked up at the Pearl Bakery booth at the Saturday Market, into garlic bread slices. (Not all of their breads are vegan, but they are good about providing ingredient information) Chuck had done that earlier this week. I thought it was clever so I copied it. It made for pretty satisfying garlic bread.

The tofu loaf was good both with the last of our leftover mushroom gravy and without any topping, which we had tonight:

 

I can see making tofu loaf again, plus it makes about 3 meals worth of food!

Thanksgiving/Tempeh Loaf Day

 

Some pre-food prep. preparation went on before Thanksgiving this year over the course of the preceding week. This involved finally agreeing to locations and arrangements for the cubbies and poster pictured above on the left, hanging the ork posters, buying some chairs at Ikea and quickly making a tablecloth and runner (pictured above on the right) on thanksgiving morning. 

 

Holiday preparations usually put me in the mood for watching old movies and/or movie musicals. While preparing our food we set up the laptop so we could see it from the kitchen and watched Moulin Rouge & Funny Face. Funny Face is one of my favorite movies. After having a really odd dream the night before involving carrying Lucy around Paris, witnessing a murder and being chased down the Seine, I was really in the mood for it. (Charade, another one of my favorites, might have been a more appropriate choice, but we'd watched that much more recently, and I prefer watching musicals on holidays.) 

 

I decided to make the Tempeh Loaf from the Real Food Daily cookbook this year. We've done Field Roast and Tofurkey in the past; I think last year I insisted on Tofurkey since it was really the only time of year we have it. I like it alright, but this year I just felt like making something myself rather than using a prepackaged item was more fun, more adult. I am officially old now after all. Chuck roasted veggies that we bought last weekend at the market, mashed some sweet potatoes. We found a package of stuffing this year from a local bakery, which did not have the typical vegan-unfriendly enzymes, etc. And we made up Golden Gravy, also from the Real Food Daily Cookbook. 

We had a very nice, cozy thanksgiving! I'm in the mood for the holiday season to start, and we're off to check out the tree lighting ceremony downtown later today. Happy holidays!