Vegan Baked Coffee Cake French Toast

I hope you all had an enjoyable Mother’s Day! Whether you have children or not, or are a dog mom like me, it’s a great day to honor all nurturing female beings - human & non-human alike.

I am so lucky to come from a strong line of women & spent the day honoring my Mom & Grandmother at our mountain getaway in Julian, CA. We decided to beat the brunch crowd (besides there really isn’t much aside from a fruit cup on the menus in this country town!) & make brunch ourselves. I thought about making this splendid coffee cake creation again, & we also considered trying to veganize a baked French toast recipe we’d made in the past but didn’t want to fuss with the trial & error of veganizing something unfamiliar. Then I remembered this “Baked Coffee Cake French Toast” from Keepin’ It Kind. Why try to decide between the two when you can have both?This was the perfect solution & everyone at the table loved it - vegan or not! We served it with warm maple syrup & coconut spread, alongside greens with an apricot vinaigrette, & fresh fruit salad for a wonderful homemade Mother’s Day Brunch Feast!

While my images pale in comparison to Chris & Kristy’s (wait until you see, so pretty!), I still had to share this to make sure you head on over to KIT immediately & pin this recipe! You won’t be disappointed!

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• vegan
• veganfoodshare
• food
• keepin it kind
• vegenista's kitchen
• french toast
• coffee cake
• brunch
• mother's day

Raw Squash Noodles with Lemon-Basil Cashew Cream Sauce

The farmers’ market is abound with so many of my favorite seasonal delights - fresh cherries, asparagus, strawberries, romanesco cauliflower, tomatoes, & summer squash! I’ve been waiting for the moment that summer squash arrived at my CSA stand & yesterday I caught my first glimpse! Why the excitement? Raw “pasta” of course! Last summer I bought a spiral slicer, & made my first batch of zucchini noodles with raw tomato marinara & my life changed that instant! I love pasta, but my ever slowing metabolism doesn’t. And really what’s pasta without the sauce? Isn’t it the topping - a spicy tomato marinara, a creamy cashew alfredo, a zesty basil pesto - where all the flavor is anyway? So the beauty of zucchini noodles is that they are practically, if not totally guilt free! And they’re way more fun to prepare than dropping a bunch of dry pasta in boiling water. I enjoy the meditative process of cranking the handle & watching the dense squash become delicate noodles. And I recently cashed in the Joyce Chen for the Benriner, which gives you 3 blade options for varied noodle sizes, & I find the middle size to be perfect for zucchini squash noodles.

While I was instantly inspired by the arrival of squash at the market, I was further inspired by the friendly marketeer at my CSA’s stand. After a brief hiatus, I am back to my bi-weekly share & anxiously rooted through the contents of my box to see what I had to work with. A bundle of “basil fino verde” caught my attention. It certainly smelled like basil, & that was a delight, but looked a bit like thyme. So what should I do with it? Use it as a garnish? Mmmm, sprinkled on pizza, or pasta? Perhaps. I asked the marketeer if he had any suggestions, & boy did he! Win! And turns out he’s vegan. Win! Win! He said he had recently used it to make a “Basil Cashew Pesto” that he used as a spread on toasted bread, & as a dip for artichokes. Wow. Right? Get me some artichokes & baguette! But then, with zucchini & summer squash in hand, my inspiration bell rang. Ding ding! Raw “Pasta” with Basil Cashew Pesto Sauce. I quickly called upon my blog friends for some recipe assistance & came across Dreena’s recipe for “Lemony Cashew Basil Pesto”, & looked no further. What I created was more like a cashew cream sauce than a pesto, & that was certainly the result I was seeking, if you desire more of a “pesto” double up on the basil as Dreena did in her recipe.

“Raw Zucchini Noodles with Lemon-Basil Cashew Cream Sauce”

***adapted from Plant Powered Kitchen

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 3 medium zucchini, 3 medium summer squash
  
• 3 1/2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 clove garlic
• 3/4 tsp. dry yellow mustard
• 3/4 tsp. sea salt
  freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 4 Tbsp. water, plus more to reach desired consistency
  
• 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup raw cashews, soaked over night, rinsed & drained
• 1 cup basil fino verde leaves
• 2 Tbsp. pine nuts
  

Preparation:

1. Spiralize the squash & set aside in a colander to drain excess liquid.
   
2. In a food processor, combine lemon juice, garlic, mustard, salt, pepper, oil, & water, & purée until fairly smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
3. Add cashews & basil fino verde & purée until smooth & creamy. Add more water to thin out the sauce if desired.
4. Toss zucchini noodles with desired amount of sauce. Top with fresh black pepper, a sprinkle of pine nuts, & basil fino verde leaves.
   

Tastes like summer around here! While I can imagine that this luxurious topping would be wonderful smothering my favorite brown rice spaghetti noodles, the pairing of crisp raw noodles with the rich & brightly flavored sauce creates a wonderful balance of decandence & freshness. This would also make a wonderful sandwich or cracker spread, if left on the thick side. It would also make a wonderful creamy salad dressing! Yum yum! As I plan on going at least 60% raw this summer, this will become a staple in my raw kitchen! Enjoy!

• Tags
• vegan
• raw
• raw vegan
• food
• recipe
• vegenista's kitchen
• zucchini noodles
• basil fino verde
• cashew cream sauce
• summer

LAVBF, PART II

Hey, there, heeeeyyy! I promised you part two, so I give you part two of my one day adventure to the 2013 Los Angeles Vegan Beer Fest. In part one I gushed about meeting Tony Kanal, & shared delicious eats from Shojin, The Franken Stand, Mohawk Bend, & Susan Feniger’s STREET. And as if that wasn’t a lot of food already, oh you betcha, there’s more!

• At last year’s LAVBF (recapped here) I experienced the magic that is the Seabirds Truck for the very first time. Their fried avocado tacos & jackfruit tacos are legit. I seriously craved them all year long, counting the days for the next LAVBF! They make daily appearances throughout Orange County, & will be opening a restaurant, Seabirds Kitchen, in The Lab this summer, so I really have no excuses if I let another year fly by without visiting them again! It was while I was in line at Seabirds that Tony Kanal walked by, so I jumped out of line to bother, harass gracefully approach him & when I returned to order my food I was so starstruck/flustered that I forgot all about the jackfruit tacos & delicious cupcakes they were offering. I did manage to blurt out a frenzied request for an order of the “Beer Battered Avocado Tacos,” while I tried to gain my composure. And once again those tacos did not disappoint! My friend also ordered the “Cheesy Potato Taquitos,” oh yeah! I had serious a late night love affair with potato taquitos back in my bar-hopping days, & pretty much O.D.’d on them years ago, but couldn’t pass up an opportunity to try out the Seabirds creation! Crispy, cheesy, comfort food, a perfect beer fest snack, for sure! Please, Seabirds, please come to San Diego before you retire the truck!

• Follow Your Heart, the makers of everyone’s coveted vegan staple “Vegenaise,” & of my favorite vegan mozzerella, was there cooking up samples of grilled cheese sandwiches & quesadillas to show off their new line of gourmet shreds & sauces. The samples were gone just as quickly as they were plated, so I wasn’t able to snap photos, but I did catch them in their cute shirts while I stuffed my face! And lemme tell ya, move over Daiya, there is a new shred is in town! This stuff gets melty like whoa, & in the best way possible, & tastes divine! I cannot wait to get my hands on these shreds, & the “Chipotle Vegenaise!” Oh the culinary possibilities!

• Next up a trio of “Cryptozoological Gonads on a Stick” by Doomie’s Home Cookin’! Holy, ha whaaaaat??? While I did not sample these myself (my friend got them for the road) I absolutely had to take a photo to share the ridiculous but creative awesomeness that is “Unicorn Nuts, Abominable Snowballs, & Loch Nesticles.” OMG! Haha! I wish I could give a better description of what these were comprised of, but I all know is that, while they appear to be sweet treats, they were actually savory! Absolute A+ for presentation & marketing!

• Last, but most certainly not least I enjoyed a cone of vegan “Mint Chip Ice Cream” from Kind Kreme. They share a space in Echo Park with Sage Organic Bistro, where I had the pleasure of dining for lunch on my birthday! Although I was tempted to try a scoop of Kind Kreme that day, I knew there would be much more indulging later, so I refrained. When I saw them set up at LAVBF, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving without an ice cream cone in my hand! Even though I’d had more than my fair share of food that day, what’s a tiny scoop of ice cream? Besides, “vegan” means “guilt free” right? Sure! I hadn’t had a lick of mint chip since the dairy days & it was worth the indulgence. Sage was there as well, serving up mozzerella sticks & butternut squash tacos, but then my friends would’ve been rolling me out the door!

Thus, that concludes my 2013 LAVBF recap! There were so many other amazing food vendors with amazing looking food that I wish I could’ve stuffed into my belly - M Cafe, Cafe Gratitude, Gracias Madre (yep, they’re opening one in West Hollywood, yay!), LA Vegan Crepe, Mandoline Grill, Golden Road Pub, & more, more, more! LA, you’ve got it going on! I only hope that San Diego can get more on the ball & follow suit. Maybe a SDVBF in the future? We’ll just have to see!

Big props & THANK YOU to QuarryGirl, TDA, & The Roxy for a rocking good time!

• Tags
• lavbf
• quarrygirl
• Tony's Darts Away
• the roxy
• ON THE ROAD
• vegan
• vegan event
• vegan beer fest
• 2013
• seabirds truck
• doomie's home cookin'
• kindcreme
• follow your heart