Vegan Fried Chicken!

I have been checking out vegan cook books from the library like crazy lately, and loving almost all of them!  One that I have been very impressed with is Vegan Cooking for Carnivores by Roberto Martin who is Ellen's personal chef.  The tagline is "Over 125 Recipes So Tasty You Won't Miss the Meat!"   Well I don't miss meat at all anyway but my husband definitely does so I decided to test out the fried chicken recipe from the book for dinner last night.  OH.MY.GOSH!  HUGE success, the kids LOVED it, hubs LOVED it, I LOVED it and the last piece that was left over got fed to the lucky pup who LOVED it too!  I was concerned that it would take a long time but once I got the Gardein thawed it was actually pretty easy and quick to get it all assembled and cooked.  I have a deep fryer so I used that rather than pan frying it like he suggests in the book.  Also I didn't put in the blackening spice, as with the addition of hot sauce I was worried the kids wouldn't eat it if I made it any spicier.

There are a couple things that need to be done ahead of time for this.  You need to have some soaked cashews, if you are going to use the blackening spice for the extra heat it takes a couple minutes to mix that up, and you need your Gardein chick'n to be completely thawed so you can shape it, either leave it out on the counter for a few hours or use the defrost option on your microwave.

Blackening Spice Recipe is as follows:

• 1tbsp paprika
• 1tsp cayenne
• 2 tbsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp onion powder
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 2 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp kosher salt
• 1 tbsp fresh ground black pepper

Mix all ingredients in a small bowl and store in an air tight container

Cashew Cream Recipe is as follows:

• 2 cups raw organic cashews
• 2 1/2 cups water

Soak cashews in water overnight or bring the cashews and 4 cups of water to a simmer.  Remove from heat and let soak 1 hour.  Drain and rinse the cashews. 

Blend soaked cashews and water in blender until completely smooth stopping a few times to scrape down the sides of the blender and make sure you get all the nuts blended.  The book recommends straining the cream to make sure there is no unblended particles in your cream, I processed mine for about 3-4 minutes in my Vita-mix and there was nothing put perfect smooth cream so I didn't bother straining.  The cream should be the consistency of heavy cream.

This makes like 5 cups of cashew cream, you only need 2 for the fried chicken recipe, the rest can be refrigerated for 1 week or frozen for 2 months.

*TIP* I keep presoaked nuts of all kinds in gallon ziploc bags in the freezer.  I buy nuts in bulk and soak them in large quantities over night, then rinse and fill up the bags and freeze.  When I need some I just take out what I need they are presoaked and I'm all ready to go without waiting for the nuts to soak.


Southern Fried Chick'n adapted from Vegan Cooking for Carnivores

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp blackening spice or Chef Paul Prudhomme's Blackened Redfish Magic
  *Note* I left this spice out of the recipe when I made ours*
• 1 tbsp garlic powder *also I noticed at the last minute I was out of garlic power too so we skipped this ingredient too.
• 1 tbsp Old Bay Seasoning
• 1 tbsp onion powder
• 2 tbsp kosher salt
• 2 cups Cashew Cream
• 3 tbsp Tabasco sauce
• 2 packages of Gardein Chicken Scallopini
• 1 package rice paper spring roll wrappers

If you are pan frying you need about 2 cups high-heat oil for frying.

In a medium bowl mix flour, blackening spice, garlic powder, Old Bay seasoning, onion powder, and salt until well mixed.


In a separate bowl mix the cashew cream and Tabasco sauce.











Roll each Gardein patty into a ball and then shape into a 1-inch-thick patty.

Now it's time to put the "skin" on the chicken! You need a dish is big enough for the spring roll wrappers to fit into and deep enough to hold about a cup of water, a shallow bowl worked well for me.  Check your wrappers and make sure they don't have any holes or cuts.  You need one wrapper for each piece of chicken, the package of wrappers I bought from my local Asian market had like 50 wrappers so I just stuck the rest in a Zipoc and put em back in the pantry.  Put 1 cup of water as hot as you can stand into your bowl and you are going to soak one wrapper at a time for about 20 seconds or so, do not let them get totally soft.  Soak your first wrapper, take it out and spread it out smooth on your counter or cutting board.  Then put your Gardein onto the wrapper and roll it up in the wrapper like a burrito.  Repeat this with all 8 pieces of chicken.

Put a little of the seasoned flour onto a large plate or baking sheet.  Dip a patty in the seasoned flour bowl and coat it all over, then into the cashew cream and then dredge it back into the flour bowl, then place it on the floured plate.  Repeat with all the rest of the pieces.

The book recommends frying in a cast-iron skillet or heavy bottomed pan with sides that are at least 3 inches high.  I used our deep fryer heated to 375 and fried them for about 4 minutes.  I tend to burn almost anything I try pan fry, I can never get the heat right and always cook things too long, so using the deep fryer saves me from this issue the oil is all heated evenly and the timer beeps to let me know they are done.  If you are pan frying the recipe states to cook four patties at a time for about 2 1/2 minutes each side. 

After frying transfer to a paper towel lined dish.  Serve hot!  I served ours with smashed potatoes and baked white carrots.

So crispy and perfect!

Smashed potatoes and white carrots

The "skin" on these was sooo perfect, almost a little too realistic!

Perfectly juicy, crispy, hot and a little greasy... everything I remember fried chicken to be.

Princess portions!  My daughter's dinner plate was 1/2 a piece of chicken, 1 smashed potato and some of the baked white carrots.  She ate every bite of this!

OH!  I almost forgot!  Here is a coupon for Gardein products! 
*Tip*You can print the coupons twice from each compute you own*

A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place!

I'm OCD, we all know this... I have issues with having to have order in almost everything I do... I also have a husband who... I swear takes joy in seeing just how red my face will turn when he makes a sandwich in the kitchen I just cleaned and leaves it a disaster... bread crumbs on the counter, mayo on the cutting board, spinach dropped on the floor... OY!! he does it on purpose I'm sure of it! and after he cooks... OMG it looks like a bomb went off in there! But the food is AMAZING, he is one hell of a cook :) so I smile and enjoy my DELISH meal and go clean it up later... but seriously babe HOW in the heck DO you get spaghetti sauce on the ceiling!?  Anyhoo back to me and my issues lol.

Do you have to have order with your little one's toys?

I do, everything has a place and everything should be in its place!

For a while my husband convinced me to just let them have all their toys in big toys boxes commingling with each other, it was a DISASTER!  For one thing they could never find anything they wanted to play with because everything was just one big mess and because it was all just a huge mess that was how it always got left, things got lost, things got broken and after a while I finally said we are going back to doing things my way.  My way is: A bucket or container for each and every different type of toy with a label on the front to let them know what goes in there.  My husband was convinced I was saddling the kids with my OCD issues by making them clean up and sort their toys in this manner, that was why he just wanted a big toy box "let them be kids!" he said... "Kids make messes" he says...  Um, I don't think teaching your kids to be organized is "saddling them with OCD" but whatever...
 
I do realize that I take it bit further than most might, rather than just a bucket or bin for action figures in general, I have specific ones for the different types:  Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Star Wars, Super Heroes, Ben Ten etc... but honestly the boys are not going to play with their Luke Skywalker and their Superman at the same time, so it makes perfect sense to me to have them in separate bins.  

I have had a problem for years, when it came to labels because often their collections would outgrow the containers they were in. So I would have to move them into bigger containers, or they would lose interest in something and it would get donated or sold at a garage sale and I'd have this bin with a label on it. Sometimes I'd just stick another one over it for whatever was in there now but after a while that starts to looks like garbage and the labels themselves start to peel and get all mucky.  I had bounced around the idea of laminating some labels like I had seen here and here but laminate sheets can get spendy and doesn't solve the problem of what to do when their interests change.

 One day I was cleaning out a drawer of my husband's old junk and I came across a pile of these little plastic sleeves:

And I thought... I can do SOMETHING with these, so I set them aside, and then as I was scraping an old label off a bin later that week I remembered them.  I Googled to see what the measurements of a baseball card are (2 1/2 x 3 1/2) and I got busy!! 

I have been putting pictures on the boys labels since they were babies so even though they are now 7 and 9 I can't help myself but to always Google for a cool pic of whatever toy it is and use that as the label.  I put it in my editing software and just told it to make the image the correct size.  Then I repeated for all the toys they have.  Printed them out and then cut them to size.  Then I had to get all the old labels off the darn bins... rubbing alcohol is your friend here squirt some on, let it sit, come back and then it should be a LOT less work to get the label and all the goop off.

If you don't already have some of these baseball card sleeve things laying around (ask your hubs he might have a stash somewhere) they are really cheap!  Like 100 for $1 and you can get them at any Comic book shop or hobby store.  The ones we had might have been a little more expensive as they had a black backing and not totally clear but I bet they were not that much more.  There are also some thicker really nice ones that are like 25 for about $3.00 if you want them to be really sturdy.



Run a bead of hot glue around the outside edges of the card holder and press onto the container.  Be careful not to touch the tip of your hot glue gun to the card holder because it will melt it.  Then slide your printed image into the sleeve and viola! Neat organized labels!  

But the BEST thing about these for me is that they are SO EASY TO CHANGE!!  NO MESS, no label goo... just slide out the printed image and slide in whatever new one you want to change it out with!

And... don't limit yourself to labeling toy boxes!  I have gone kind of crazy with them around the house.  I have them on the dishwasher:

 Just use those cheap free magnets you find all over  the place to hold them on!

I used a hole punch and zip ties to attach them to my kids catch-all baskets that I keep at the top of the stairs.

Hole punch and zip ties to label containers in the freezer.  Told ya... I kinda went crazy :)

Hey before you go, I wanted to share one other thing with you all today...  We read SO much around here, seriously PILES of books and we LOVE the library!  We check out so many books.  We always have a HUGE stack to carry up to the counter.  I have two library baskets in our house; one is filled with the books we need to read, and one is filled with the ones we have already read, that need to go back.  We have to go empty that basket about 2-3 times a week (of course we always bring home more too!) Anyway... I have found that checking out books from the library is a GREAT way to determine which books are worth buying and are destined to become favorites!  Two that we read this morning over breakfast that we just LOVED were Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers, which is about a bunch of CRAZY, WILD animal crackers on the loose



and Spoon, which is about a little spoon who thinks he is kinda dull and not cool like his pals the fork or chopsticks, but he learns that spoons are pretty awesome too!


I definitely think these are two that we will be purchasing to add to our personal library.  Check them out from your library and if you love them like we did we'd love to hear all about it!!

I am linking up over at:
Gluesticks