Okay, so maybe not as extreme as the women and men featured on TLC’s strangely addictive new show Extreme Couponing (it’s all fun and games…until someone uses their store credit to buy meat!) – that would require a commitment equal to a part-time job – so let’s just say “serious about free money,” mkay? Because that’s exactly what coupons are: money. Hopefully free, but at the very least cheap, as in pennies on the dollar.

Unfortunately, coupons for vegan foods – particularly intentionally vegan items, such as Tofurky pizzas and Follow Your Heart cheese, and fresh, whole foods like fruits and veggies – can be hard to come by. Not impossible, but certainly more difficult than, say, Dannon Yogurt freebies. But. With a little craftiness and a bit more patience, it is possible to score a discount on vegan goods!

Here are a few tips and tricks to get you started:

Ask. Really, it’s that simple! Write to your favorite manufacturers; explain to them that you’re a vegan on a budget who would love to try items xyz, but are hesitant to shell out so much money for a new foodstuff that you may or may not like, and would they be so kind as to send you a few coupons? Don’t be afraid to pour on the sugar! If coupons are to be had – and they aren’t always; you’ll find that smaller, newer companies don’t usually offer coupons – you will have them (usually in six to eight weeks). If you’re especially lucky (and charming!), the company may even send you vouchers for free items. As in you pay zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

Go dumpster diving for coupons. Take a trip to your nearest recycling center or paper recycling bin (Paper Retriever is a popular one ’round these parts) and dive in! Look for newspapers and inserts, but don’t make a mess. (Etiquette, y’all.) Load up your car, backpack or bicycle basket to go and sort through the coupons at home. When you’re done, save time, gas and trees by recycling the unwanted paper on your next dumpster diving expedition. It’s a win-win!

Hit up online auction sites. The idea of paying for coupons may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s the same principle behind online deal websites like Groupon: spend a little to save a lot. Coupons are a hot commodity, particularly those that are rare or hard to find. Oftentimes you can buy coupons by the bundle, either grouped thematically or by manufacturer. Some lots involve an entire book of coupons for the same item, which can be a great deal if it’s something you use frequently. Otherwise, team up with a friend or two to split the cost – and savings. Pay attention to the expiration dates, though; you don’t want to get stuck with a ton of coupons that expire in a week or two. (Then again, those are usually the cheapest! Decisions, decisions…)

Join a group discount website. Speaking of Groupon, group discount websites like Living Social, VeganCuts and the aforementioned Groupon offer deeply discounted rates on all sorts of items and activities. Sure, 90% of the deals involve spas and dating services, but every once in a while you’ll find a rare gem, like free shipping on Nacho Mom’s Vegan Queso, $20 worth of Whole Foods groceries for $10, or half off vegan marshmallows from Sweet & Sara. And VeganCuts, as the name implies, is all vegan – no gross summer sausage deals here – so you should definitely go show ‘em some love!

Subscribe to your favorite store’s e-newsletter. Stores routinely offer incentives to subscribe to their email lists, such as a first look at new, discounted and/or discontinued items, coupon codes entitling customers to a percentage off an entire order, or free shipping – vegan retailers included! (Vegan Essentials comes to mind.) If you don’t mind receiving a little extra email in your inbox, this can be a relatively simple way to hunt for savings (let them come to you!).

If your store offers a discount “loyalty” card, take it. Commonly, these cards shave a percentage off your order, or entitle you to extra savings on sale items. If you’re deterred by privacy concerns, you may consider purchasing more “private” items separately, without using the card.

Keep an eye out for coupons while shopping. Sometimes manufacturers affix coupons directly onto their corresponding items, or include books of tear-off coupons on displays. Always be on the lookout for these (vegan) Easter eggs!

Join a coupon swapping community. This one can be tricky for vegans – I tend to shred coupons for non-vegan items, rather than share them – but if you’re down, there are plenty of coupon swapping websites and forums online. Search for “coupon swap” on Yahoo Groups or Google to get started. Or, better yet, start your own vegan coupon swapping community! Maybe on VegWeb or the PPK forums? No need to compromise your ethics to score a deal!

Updated to add: Over on tumblr, Emelda tipped me off to Recyclebank, which allows users to earn points for doing good deeds; these points are then redeemable for various rewards, including – wait for it! – coupons! If you do, sign up using this link so she gets ten free points!

Well, (semi-)extreme couponers, it’s your turn! What do you do to save money on vegan foods and items?

Friday was a gross, chilly, dreary day – about as dreary as you can get without the actual falling of precipitation – and so I spent much of the day in the kitchen, peeling, coring and dicing apples while the dogs hovered about, waiting to snatch up the stray scraps. (Of which there were none! I’m getting PROFICIENT at this, yo!) To date I’ve conquered about half of this tub -
 

 
- not bad considering it was filled to overflowing and took two warm bodies to schlep it into the garage. But still, so many apples! Need more recipes! What’s a vegan to do, but hit up the internet for ideas?

It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon a recipe for Apple Pandowdy on marthastewart.com. The lazy woman’s pastry, it’s kind of a cross between the apple crisp I made a few weeks ago and a proper apple pie. “Dowdy” like Liz Lemon (as in NOT REALLY!),
 

 
the dessert gets it name from the arrangement of the crust, which is cut into squares and spread on top of the apple base, all willy-nilly like. In this way, it’s a much more forgiving dish than a pie, since there’s no need of perfection where the dough is concerned. In fact, the dough-slash-crust is pretty easy to make – your food processor does all the work! – and I was unable to fuck it up, try as I might. (Too much margarine! Problem solved by adding more flour! Check your measurements! You’re welcome! Also, I eyeballed the apples with no problems. Fill ALL the pan!)
 

 
The total prep and cooking time is a little on the long side – there’s a lot of sitting around, waiting for the dough to chill (y u so tense, doe?) – and the dish bakes for nearly an hour – but man oh man is it worth it. SO YUMMY. My favorite part is the crust and how it caramelizes in the apple juices. omnomnom!

Bonus points for being an accidentally vegan recipe. Only one substitution is needed – margarine for butter – and honestly, it’s such a minor one that this recipe is practically made for vegans. Suck on that, Martha Stewart! (Actually, idk whether I should be giving her a hard time or not? Is she considered one of the more vegan-friendly celebs nowadays? BLISSFULLY IGNORANT, THAT’S ME.)
 

 
Served with a scoop of vanilla coconut milk So Delicious ’cause it’s pretty and photogenic and delicious.

People! I still have at least 50 cups worth of apples left to use! What should I do with them? HALP!
 

Fuck you, Monday! You ain’t got nothing on vegan breakfast ice cream!
——————————

My very first Iron Chef Challenge, y’all! 2011 is the first year I’ve ever felt confident enough of my culinary abilities to join in, and I hope my Chocolate Chip Coffee Banana Ice Cream doesn’t disappoint.

As you’ve probably already guessed, the ingredients for this challenge are (drumroll please!) banana and coffee. I really wanted to cook up a batch of banana pancakes, topped with coffee-infused syrup (what can I say, I’m on a pancake kick!), but just didn’t have the time.

(We’re sealing the concrete floors this weekend! I know it sounds like a drag, but it’s so worth it in the end. When freshly sealed, the floors look like they have a candy-coated shell! So rad! And then someone – *cough* Mags *cough* – pees in the hallway and it’s all downhill from there.)

Instead I settled on coffee-flavored banana ice cream (as always, no ice cream machine required!), which fits in nicely with two of my themes (meant in the loosest sense of the word!) this mofo, namely ice cream and frugality.

I was a little skeptical of the banana-coffee flavor combo – especially since the taste of bananas can be overwhelming in these ice creams, what with bananas serving as the base and all! – but this is one delicious dessert. The bananas complement the coffee nicely, and how can you go wrong with chocolate?

Okay, so maybe coffee is a bit more than just an accent flavor, but the good news is that you can vary the strength of the coffee according to your tastes. Use two teaspoons for a light touch, or four (or more!) for a stronger brew. Decaf or no, it’s your call. But may I suggest this is as an early morning pick-me-up? Coffee and fruit, all in one convenient little bowl. So simple, yet so divine.
 

The artsy crop.
——————————

Chocolate Chip Coffee Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients

4 or 5 over-ripe bananas, peeled, sliced and frozen
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup soy milk or – better yet – soy creamer
2 to 4 teaspoons instant coffee, depending on how strong you like your ice cream! (I used three.)
1 to 2 tablespoons sugar (to taste)
1/2 cup chocolate chips or chocolate bark

Directions

In a small mug, whisk the soy milk with the instant coffee. Combine the frozen bananas, vanilla extract and coffee in a food processor and mix until smoothly blended. Sample the batter and, if it’s not sweet enough for you, add a tablespoon or two of sugar (or other vegan sweetener) and the chocolate chips or bark and process until blended. Try not to overprocess the batter, as this can result in soupy ice cream. If the soft serve is too much on the soft side, transfer it to a covered container and store in the freezer for an hour or until it’s thickened up a bit.

Optional: for more finely chopped chocolate chunks, process the chocolate chips or bark first, and then add the bananas and follow the directions from there.
 

Soft serve, freshly whipped.
(Ignore the icky Cool Whip container, mkay?
It’s a throwback from my pre-vegan days.
Reuse, then recycle!)
——————————

As a follow-up to the uber-popular (IN MY WET DREAMS!) “vegetable porn” post, I give you: FRUIT PORN! Whereas the veggies were mostly accidental penises, much of the fruit – with the obvious exception of bananas – consists of accidental vulvus and testicles. (Pairs of cherries hanging from the tree = Mother Nature’s Truck Nutz. Tree Nutz!) Interesting, that.

Speaking of bananas, I’ve thrown in a few Doctor Who pics for extra-geeky measure. DOCTOR WHO IS ALWAYS RELEVANT. Happy Friday, Whovegans! (See what I did there? Whovian + vegans = Whovegans!)

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For a brief moment, I considered making my veganmofo theme a His Dark Materials one this year. But after several days of wracking my brain and only coming up with a few scattered foodstuffs – namely, marzipan, chocolatl, Tokay, tea crackers and vegan seal blubber (!) – I gave up on the idea, with not a small twinge of regret. But! We can still have marzipan and chocolate, can’t we? I don’t know about y’all, but I fancy some sweet almond paste today! Plus, I did promise you a marzipan recipe earlier this month, did I not?

Since marzipan ice cream is a more unusual flavor, I decided to try my hand at making my own concoction. Plan A was to use a standard vanilla ice cream recipe as a base, and then mix marzipan blended with (vegan) heavy cream (for a creamy effect) in with the ice cream after it was processed through an ice cream machine, à la this recipe for Marzipan Swirl Ice Cream (veganized, of course). For the marzipan, I used this recipe (also veganized!) for Almond Paste at food.com. Epic disaster!

I’m not sure what (if anything) I did wrong, but the end result was less like paste and more like soup. Even after I doubled the dry ingredients, the almond “paste” had at best the consistency of caramel sauce – not even close to paste-like. Just as I was on the brink of despair, it hit me: I was planning on liquefying the marzipan anyhow, so what’s the diff? If anything, this saved me the extra steps of making vegan heavy cream and then heating it with the marzipan to make the “cream” for the swirl. Score!

So here’s Plan B, the result of a happy accident which saved me at least a half hour of extra work and a quarter sink of dirty dishes. May this little taste of the sweet stuff bring you a fraction of the wisdom and fortune that it did to Mary Malone – and, by extension, Lyra, Will, and all the animals of all the worlds, human and non.

Go forth and play the serpent, my friends.

 

FIND THE GIRL AND THE BOY. WASTE NO MORE TIME.
But why?
YOU MUST PLAY THE SERPENT.

- Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials (The Subtle Knife)
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“Playing the Serpent” Marzipan Ice Cream

Ingredients

for the marzipan:

1 1/3 cups dried blanched almonds or almond meal
1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup sugar
1/8 cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon almond extract
1/2 cup water

for the ice cream batter:

1 cup soy or almond milk, divided
2 tablespoons arrowroot powder
2 cups soy creamer
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract

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While searching around for new ways to use up all the apples we harvested this year – compared to years past, it was a pretty meager haul, but we still ended up with several buckets full of red and green deliciousness – I found a recipe for Fried Apples on about.com, and immediately thought that it’d make for a rather yummy pancake topping. (Always the carnists, about.com suggests that you serve it as a side dish with pork. Pork who, just like bacon – and beef and chicken nuggets and prime rib – had a mom too! Thanks, but not.)

With a few minor tweaks and a healthy side of maple syrup, I was able to transform six cups of free, organic apples into a hearty (though not necessarily healthy) dinner dish. (Also great for brunch, if you’re into that sort of thing!) Alas, after peeling, coring, slicing and dicing all those apples, we got a little lazy with the pancakes – hence the Bisquick-based recipe. Feel free to sub in your own favorite pancakes if you’d rather. It’s hard to go wrong where cinnamon apples are concerned!

Cinnamon Pancakes with Sweet Fried Apples

Ingredients

…for the fried apple topping

1/2 cup margarine
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
6 cups apples, diced

…for the pancakes

2 cups Bisquick mix
1 cup soy milk
An egg substitute equivalent to 2 eggs (we used NRG Egg Replacer)
1 teaspoon cinnamon

…to garnish

maple syrup, pecans, vegan whipped cream and/or vanilla ice cream to taste (optional)

Directions

1. In a large skillet, melt the margarine on medium-low until it’s soft and creamy. Stir in the brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Increase the heat to medium and add the apples. Sautée for about twenty minutes, or until the apples are cooked/tenderized to your liking. Cook covered for the first fifteen minutes and then remove the cover for the last five minutes or so. Remember to stir the pot! (Errr, skillet.)

2. While the apple are cooking, make your pancakes! In a large bowl, combine the Bisquick, soy milk, egg replacer and cinnamon and mix until well blended. Pour the batter onto a hot, greased griddle 1/4 cup at a time and cook until the edges are dry. Flip and cook on the underside until the pancakes are golden brown.

3. Serve the pancakes warm, topped with the sweet fried apples and your choice of maple syrup, pecans, vegan whipped cream, and/or vanilla ice cream.

Optional: add the pecans to the sweet fried apples about halfway through to caramelize them!

Also optional: use up an extra apple by dicing it into small bits and adding it to the pancake batter to make Apple Cinnamon Pancakes!

So regular readers, Facebook friends, passing acquaintances, the cashier at my local Green Acres, et al. are already all-to-familiar with my mac & cheese pizza recipes, mostly because I talk about them ALL THE TIME. As in, EVERY CHANCE I GET. (I love macaroni and cheese, yo. YOU DO NOT WANT TO COME BETWEEN ME AND A POT OF MAC & CHEESE! Throw in a pizza pie and it’s on like Donkey Kong!) And veganmofo is no exception! Why should it be? More people to share my soon-to-be infamous Creamy Vegan Mac & Cheese Pizza with!

I’ve actually made three different versions of this pie, including one with twice-baked macaroni and cheese, and a similar dish using Daiya Pepperjack cheese in place of the traditional cheddar. But version #2 is far and away my favorite: because the mac & cheese – made with both Daiya and Follow Your Heart cheeses, for double the cheesy goodness! – is added to the pizza pie after it’s baked, it retains its oozy, gooey, melty, liquid cheesy deliciousness. And if I love anything, it’s a hot, soupy bowl of vegan macaroni and cheese on a chill fall evening. Like hot chocolate, BUT WITH CHEESE! Pizza in a cup, drink up!

Okay, done now. Promise. I JUST LOVE MAC & CHEESE SO MUCH!

This recipe – along with dozens more – was originally published on the Perfect Pizza Press blog. If things go as planned, we’ll be able to give away some shiny pizza presses for veganmofo vi! But alas, those were my plans last year, so we’ll have to see how things play out. WHO KNEW THAT IT WOULD TAKE SO LONG TO GET A PRODUCT SAMPLE!?! Six to twelve months, pfffft.

 
Creamy Vegan Mac & Cheese Pizza, No. 2

Ingredients

For the dough:

1 cup warm water (110 degrees F / 45 degrees C)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/4 tablespoons active dry yeast
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

For the mac & cheese:

1/2 cup Follow Your Heart cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 cup Daiya cheddar cheese, shredded
1 cup uncooked macaroni (Mini shells are my personal fave!)
2 tablespoons margarine
6 oz plain soy milk

FYI: this is 1/4 of my recipe for Creamy Mac & Cheese with Daiya and Follow Your Heart vegan cheeses; double or quadruple this recipe you’d like some extra mac & cheese to serve with that mac & cheese pizza – or if you’d just like the mac & cheese, please! For a healthier pizza, sub in a mac & cheese recipe that uses a nutritional yeast sauce.

For the pizza:

Cornmeal or cooking spray with which to coat the pizza stone or pizza pan
Two to four tablespoons of margarine with which to coat the dough
1/2 to one cup of vegan cheddar cheese for the pizza (We used Daiya – it melts better than cheddar FYH, at least in the oven. Stovetop, they’re roughly equal.)
Eight to twelve strips of of vegan bacon, diced into small bits (Optional; we used Lightlife Smart Bacon.)

Directions

Prepare the dough!

1. Stir the water, sugar and yeast together until dissolved. Add the olive oil and salt, as well as any extra spices or seasonings. Stir in the flour until blended. Form the dough into a small ball and let rest in large bowl, covered loosely with a towel, anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.

Assemble the cheesy pizza!

2. Once you’re ready to make the pizza, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

3. As the oven is heating, spread a dusting of cornmeal onto your pizza stone (or lightly coat your pizza pan with cooking spray). Using fingers dipped in olive oil (optional), pat the dough onto the stone, spreading it out evenly.

4. Next, lightly spread some margarine onto the uncooked dough, taking care not to press down too hard as you do so. It helps if the margarine is near room temp when you try this! You want even but sparse coverage; too little margarine means that the pizza will be a little on the dry side, while too much will compromise the integrity of the crust. We used between two and four tablespoons to coat the entire pizza.

5. Spread the diced bacon onto the pizza, followed by the cheddar Daiya cheese.

6. Bake at 425 degrees, for between 15 and 20 minutes for a single pizza, or 30 minutes for two pizzas.

Make the cheese sauce!

7. Once the pizza’s in the oven, it’s time to make the macaroni and cheese! Begin with the cheese sauce. In a small saucepan, bring the soy milk to a boil.

8. Reduce the heat to medium and mix in the margarine, stirring until melted.

9. Add the cheese shreds, stirring gently until they combine with the liquid to form a creamy cheese sauce.

Optional: season to taste with salt, pepper, onion or garlic.

10. Reduce the heat to low, stirring every few minutes.

Make the pasta!

11. In a skillet or sauce pan, cook the pasta according to the directions provided on the package. Stop when about 90% done and drain, leaving a little hot water with the pasta. (This will mostly cook down as you continue to heat the pasta.)

Combine the two to make mac and cheese!

12. Mix the cheese sauce into the pasta, stirring well. On medium low heat, let the pasta continue to cook until it’s the desired consistency. Stir constantly during this last step so that none of the pasta or cheese sticks to the pan.

Mac & Cheese Pizza, holla!

13. Once the pizza’s done cooking – and hopefully you’ve timed this so that the pizza and pasta finish cooking at roughly the same time! – remove it from the oven and top with a drizzle of mac & cheese. Let cool for a few minutes before slicing and serving. Enjoy warm, perhaps with a side of extra macaroni and cheese?

Hey, it’s not too hard to double or even quadruple the recipe, giving you two glorious vegan junk food meals in one!

Ralphie! Everyone’s favorite one-eyed wiener dog turns fourteen years old today! FOURTEEN! He’s not old, he’s distinguished. Doubly so with all these surgical scars and skin tags and patches of missing fur. His motto? “Bitches dig scars.”

Hey, Rennie can’t get enough.

(Note peeping Peedee off in the background. Pervert! Nevermind that I’m photographing their intimate moment.)

Rolling with the weather, we celebrated his birthday a wee bit early this year. On Friday, I baked him a batch of Apple Cinnamon Muffins

and made him dress up in a silly hat -

but not before he got the first taste of his pre-birthday treat.

(The other six canines were pitching a fit, locked in the house away from mom and her nomz. I think Ralphie enjoyed that as well – almost as much as the muffins!)

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Cold, no-cook salad is really more of a summertime snack – and, in point o’ facts, this post has been sitting in my drafts folder since June (!) – but what the hey. Sometimes you just need a fast, no hassle meal, no matter the season. Minus the epic gas such a bean-heavy dish is bound to give you, this Four-Bean Salad is just the trick.
 
Four-Bean Salad

Ingredients

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 cans green beans + liquid
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can light red kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can whole black olives

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the red wine vinegar, sugar, and liquid from the green beans and mix well. Drain and rinse the kidney beans and black beans and add those, as well as the green beans and black olives (minus the “juice”), and mix well. Add extra red wine vinegar and sugar to taste. Serve cold or immediately, at room temp.

Optional: Sub in your own favorite beans in place of the kidney and/or black beans.
 

Just for shits and giggles (and because I needed a quick filler post for the day! you got me!), I decided to troll for “vegetable porn” on flickr. (Yes I know that tomatoes are actually a fruit! But play along, mkay?) Holy slutty vegetables, Catwoman! It’s like a PETA PSA over there – minus the exploitation, that is. Nature, full of accidental penises! So … enjoy? BUT NOT TOO MUCH!

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