Sam, our lovely host from Becks and Posh has presented us with quite a quandary for IMBB #19. Vegan, she tells us. Specifically, I Can’t Believe I Ate Vegan. As in, a meal suitable for trickery.

Ah, vegan. Where do we begin?

Granted, though Chopper and I have, on occasion, accidentally eaten vegan, it’s just not something we would want to do on a regular basis. We like edible animals far too much. And no honey? What’s up with that?

Now, don’t get me wrong, we eat tofu and attend peace marches with the best of ‘em, and hell, I’ll even say thank you and mean it if someone calls me a socialist, but we are not about to say goodbye to fresh fish or eggs or bacon or … Augh! How do you vegans do it????

Ahem. Well.

Anyway, for this month’s all-vegan IMBB, since we have no one to trick into eating vegan but ourselves, we decided that the best route was to throw the stereotypes to the wind, scream a big NO THANK YOU to sprouts, and ask the question “what if vegan CEOs controlled the fast food industry?”

We think the results would be something like this:

Direct from Veganville USA:

Burger, fries and a shake!

Now, I do have to insert the caveat that we didn’t check every single syllable ingredient against a strict vegan rule book, but we did our best at eliminating all obvious animal products. I mean, if Crisco is made from animals, that’s news to us.

Besides, the important thing is, this food tasted good. I mean GOOD good. As in wow, that was a great burger, and the shake rocked my world. (I said to Chopper after two sips: why the heck didn’t we figure this one out at the beginning of the summer?) The tofu fries were a little bland without ketchup, but hey, add some salt and look out Micky Ds!

So, anyone up for franchising?

Tagged with: IMBB # 19 + Vegan

I am so glad no one tagged me for the cookbook meme. Thing is, I don’t have a shelf of favorite cookbooks. Around here, it’s always been more about making it up on the fly then it’s ever been about following a recipe. Even in baking, we twist and tweak till half the time we’re not even sure where we started. And I have to confess I can’t remember the last time I googled a recipe online and actually followed it.

That’s not to say we don’t have cookbooks around here — we do — it’s just that our cookbooks come in three odd varieties:

1) The texts from Chopper’s culinary school.

2) The occasional book someone’s given us as a gift. (We’ve probably got, all-told, about five of these.)

3) Cookbooks that have been in my family forever, and I mean eons.

Like this one:

Only my junior high copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is more trashed than this, and I read that baby six times.

And catch that price: 35 cents. NEW. Do I even dare ask what fashions were popular the year Mom bought it?

Now, here’s what I didn’t realize until a recent browse though The Round-the- — Cookbook: This cookbook contains recipes that I grew up believing were family recipes. All this time I thought family recipes originated on index cards in Mom’s handwriting with multitudes of grease, butter, oil, vanilla, and tomato sauce stains. But no. Now, all I can think is: Hey! Mom! You cheated!

Right. Like no one else’s family recipes have ever come out of a book.

I’m sure some of ours didn’t either — in fact, we’ve got a cake recipe that I’m pretty certain originated with my grandma on Dad’s side — but at the moment, it’s looking like I’ve discovered the secret stash: Mom’s ancient cookbook collection, and point of origin for many a favorite childhood dish.

Let’s take a peek inside and see what we find.

First up, from the tattered tome pictured above: Hungarian Goulash. And here, in one of its more recent incarnations, is the family recipe card:

Now, I’ve made this recipe several times, and here’s the thing: I’ve always thought that it was Mom who was really vague about writing down the ingredients. I mean: “1 Can tomato sauce.” What sized can? Regular or honkin’ big? And what about the noodles? Shouldn’t I know if I need one bag of noodles or two?

Turns out, the original recipe is pretty vague too. Then again, maybe tomato sauce only came in one size way back when.

No worries though, because here’s the thing: with a recipe like this, it doesn’t matter. So long as you have lots of everything on hand, you just add more of whatever you need till it looks like you’ve got enough of everything.

Like paprika. Last time I made this we started off with four pounds of beef instead of three, so needless to say, the paprika mix ran out before the beef did. Good thing we had three containers of paprika in the spice drawer because it’s all about mixing more, and more, and still more — what ever it takes till the beef cubes are coated.

Next step. Four pounds of beef seem like too much? Fine. Add a second can of tomato sauce. But not a honkin’ big can, because then you’d have to go back to the store for more beef. Unless you’ve got more in the fridge, and then I say, why not? Go for broke.

Then what? Simmer that baby. Covered, uncovered, it’s no big deal, just let it cook for a nice long time till you’ve got this big pan full of chunky paprika tomato stew. When you’ve got the noodle water boiling and dinner’s just around the corner, add the sour cream. How much sour cream? Lots. Or rather, enough. Enough till it’s thick and creamy and bright paprika red. Could be a pint. Could be two pints. Just have enough, just in case.

Then, it’s noodle time. One bag or two? Well, that’s when you gotta ask yourself a question:

Do I feel hungry? Well, do ya, punk?
How big an army’s showing up for dinner, and how much space do I have in the fridge?

If the dinner squad’s small and so’s the room in the fridge, then stick with a single bag. Store the rest of the goulash sans noodles and cook more noodles up next time. If you’ve got a hungry battalion at the gates, then, hell, go for three bags. You don’t need to stir them all into the goulash pot at once. Save a portion for the end of the meal when someone asks for fourths.

Oh, and last but not least, if you’ve got a hungry brood of seven and a love of leftovers like some moms I know: Definitely go for broke. Six pounds of beef and about those tomato sauce cans? Honkin’ HUGE.

Socked in and surrounded by spiderwebs… it must be Fall.

Meet my new best friend, Genevieve!

Still cute, even after a swim!

(The Dog bloggy round-up is up! Check it out, over at Sweetnicks!)

Oh very well. Since we are showing off pictures of our friends, here is… ahem… Well. I do not know her name, but trust me, she is a very dear friend.

Otherwise I would not be letting her bask on my garden bench, now would I?

(Visit more gorgeous kitties over at Kiri and Clare’s Weekend Cat Blogging Round-up!)