geminigirl | Vegan Question

Christine Kane just posted this on her blog:
http://christinekane.com/blog/the-five-best-dairy-substitute-products/

There was some info there... a starting point at least!

Thanks! That does help...I'm trying to figure out which ones I can get in my neighborhood instead of having to drive an hour to Whole Foods. Unfortunately, my neighborhood choices are rather limited.

I'm not sure what you mean about TVP, since TVP is vegan. Do you mean TVP-based products? I hear good things often about Morningstar Veggie Crumbles, which I think is TVP-based, but I haven't tried it myself.

As for cheese, Follow Your Heart is the best brand these days. IMHO, their mozzarella is tasteless and the cheddar has more of a mozzarella flavor than the mozzarella. For pizza, what I've found works best is using a mix of the cheddar and monterey jack, but I'll fall back on either if I don't feel like buying both. (And in practice, I rarely buy either, since I usually make my own sauce to go on pizza.) But it melts well into something that looks just right, for when that matters. I can dig up a photo or two of my pizzas if you'd like.

Sometimes I like Veganrella, but I adored their old version and have been kind of bitter about the switch, I confess. Vegi-Kaas was the best thing ever, but it hasn't been available anywhere I've checked (including wholesalers) for years now. The parent company went through some weirdness, I dunno.

I use Tofutti slices (mozzarella) on sandwiches. Convenient form factor and it melts nicely in the toaster oven. Tofutti cheese is also available in bag of shredded, though I've only ever actually found it that way once. If you live in a Jewish enough area, this might be your best bet.

I could go on about this at even greater length if you like, but it would help if you said more about what you're looking for.

(PS: Shanah tovah!)

I'm preparing both fleishe and vegan dishes for Rosh Hashannah (I've got vegans and carnivores, so I'm doing a mix of both.) I'm either making a vegan shepherd's pie or a gratin with vegan cheese, veggies and tofu...depending on what we can find. Cayne was doing the shopping and reading soy cheese labels to me over the phone and they all had something in them that was questionable, and the TVP he saw all was flavored as beef or pork...though I'm not sure with what it was flavored as I wasn't there.

For the gratin, the FYH or Tofutti would work best, assuming you can put it under the broiler or similar to really get it melted. A lot of people say the stuff doesn't melt on their pizza, but that's just because they don't know how to make pizza. :) The tofutti will melt more easily, though, and even if you only find the slices, you can slice them into shreds and use them.

If you can't find TVP, how about getting veggie burners or meatballs and crumble them?

OTOH, if you'd like an awesome veggie pot pie recipe, I can send you one. I tend to add in either seitan or frozen/thawed tofu (either of which tends to make the omnis think it's a chicken pot pie (in one case, insist on it, even!)), but I just add it for the extra texture/protein/whatever.

You can also do a "cheese" sauce that doesn't use any of the pre-mades, either with nutritional yeast (great product, unfortunate name) or other recipes.

I'm trying to avoid a two hour round trip to get nutritional yeast, but I have a block of silken tofu in the fridge. Same with finding Ener-G for eggs...I'm doing a vegan apple cake with applesauce swapped for eggs.

Broiling's not a problem. Assuming of course, I can find cheese.

It's likely that if I go to the other grocery store (not the one that Cayne was in tonight) I may be able to find TVP or some other vegan product...he wasn't really sure what to look for on the labels. If I can't find it, there will be similar products that will work.

If you feel like sharing your veggie pot pie recipe, that would be great. It might work better than the ones I've got.

The pot pie also has NY in it, and I don't have it typed in yet, so it sounds like it's not worth bothering with right now.

Be careful swapping applesauce for eggs -- I know it's common in fatfree cooking and it sometimes works, but cutting down the fat in a cake can be dangerous, and there are a ton of recipes that don't call for eggs in the first place. (Of course you may have made this one before or it's all set or yada yada, in which case ignore me and I totally don't mean to imply that you may not know what you're doing. I just get asked about this stuff a lot.)

(PS: I'm working on starting a Food Blog and one of the recipes already in there is a Mac and (Not)Cheese if you want to look at that. It only calls for a little NY, so it can be left out and still be okay, and the other ingredients are reasonably standard.)

The cake actually has other fat in it. The original calls for both oil and eggs-it's a recipe I got from a friend who typically does the replace oil with applesauce but use the eggs. I'll do the opposite-use oil but replace the egg.

The mac and (not) cheese looks wonderful. It's a shame it's full of soy or I'd want it. I may even have raw cashews in the house already. Thank you for all your help. It's been wonderful.

You're welcome. Shana tovah! So nu, what did you make? :)

FYI, if you ever do want to make the mac&cheese (or just the sauce), you can of course use ricemilk or nutmilk or even just water instead of the soy. It's not really key that way.

Also, I'm about to officially announce the blog, and there's even an LJ feed for it now at

frog_food if you're interested.

Thanks. And to you too.

Roasted red pepper soup, shepherd's pie (I found vegan margarine and made mashed potatoes with silken tofu and margarine, and had stuff to make vegan gravy in the house) and a really delicious apple cake, the recipe came from

wait. However, the one vegan guest (the girlfriend of our friend Jon) got sick and didn't come to dinner.

I'll remember that for the mac and cheese...if I can do it with rice or nutmilk it's much better for me.

Did you see my other post about TVP, and why I was concerned about the vegan-ness of it?

Mmm. Textured vinyl protein. Delicious.

1: shana tova!
2: lj brain trust? what's wrong with you? :P

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