Holiday Eats & Treats

Holidays during the summer months mean BBQ; not necessarily at my home, but definitely in the neighborhood. One drawback to an evaporative cooler is that it pulls in outside air (over wet pads) constantly, and along with that air comes all the smells of the area. When someone fires up their grill, I smell it and later smell the cooking meat.

When I know I'll be facing BBQ smells, I take pre-emptive action. I usually pick up some vegan hot dogs and/or hamburgers along with whole wheat buns. Depending on what came in the CSA share, I'll plan corn on the cob or potato salad as a side. This holiday, however, something kept me from doing my usual shopping. Perhaps it was calculating that my two dogs eat a pound of food a day and realizing what a hit the budget is going to take as a result. Or perhaps it was just that I want to avoid buying food someone else made instead of making it myself. I limited my shopping yesterday to just the vegan hot dogs, and got those only because my sweetie requested them. Personally, I've never really cared for hot dogs, meat or vegan. It's the condiments that are tasty.

I'll be making my hamburgers from scratch, using a recipe from a cookbook written by a monastery abbot. Just because the monks are vegan doesn't mean they don't want to enjoy the same types of dishes as everyone else. Simply Heavenly! is, I believe, currently out of print so it may be hard to track down a copy. It took me two years of scouring used bookstores to finally find a copy (at a reasonable price) after I first heard about the book.


The hamburger recipe starts with making "unbeef" out of gluten. It doesn't look too appetizing at this point, but I'll grind that up tomorrow morning, trying out the meat grinder attachment on my Italian food mill, and mix it with a number of other ingredients including shredded zucchini, minced onion, bread crumbs and flour, seasonings, and some fake cheese. I've got fake mozzarella cheese in the freezer, made from another good vegan cookbook I've mentioned before - The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.


I also avoided buying buns because I figure it's high time I try making them from scratch. As I began to search for a recipe this morning, I was finding ones with loads of eggs and oil in them. Once I added the word "vegan" to my search, Bryanna Clark Grogan's site popped up. She is yet another great vegan cookbook author. I haven't decided which bun recipe to try out of the four she posted, but I can't get started until my sweetie grinds me some flour on the bike anyway. Tomorrow will be baking day.


Last night, I made him happy by adding cut-up hot dogs to a can of vegetarian baked beans. A quick and easy supper was in order and this worked perfectly. Lest you think I'll let him just eat that kind of food without any vegetables, let me assure you that there is a sauteed onion, grated potato, and shredded zucchini in there as well. (Shh, don't tell him.) To round out the meal, I later made a delicious cherry cobbler. It really needed a scoop of soy ice cream but there is no room in my freezer for the ice cream maker.

For drinks, I'll again turn to the cucumber for a cooling lime drink. Maybe we'll have cucumber granita/sorbet for dessert again.

Are you planning a tasty holiday meal?