Pizza

Buying pizza is a rare treat for my family, I guess I should say it's a rare treat for me because it means I get hot food that I didn't have to work all night making, but for my husband it means dry dough sparsly covered with overcooked veggies and a large bill since the meat lover's pizza was only $5 but the vegetarian was $14 plus the $1.50 per extra veggie, per pizza. Another great shortcut to pizza is simply topping english muffins, but the most inexpensive (and tastiest) option is to make our pizzas from scratch.
Now, I've done a lot of experimenting with pizza dough, my bread machine over worked it, most doughs require lots of kneading and time to rise, and a ton of recipes yield dough too elastic to work with, but I've finally landed on a recipe that works well for me.
We purchased 2 pizza pans on clearance at our local grocery store, they're thin and cheap in quality, but sprayed with non stick cooking spray and sprinkled with cornmeal, the pans release nicley and cook the pizzas evenly.
Quick pizza dough


1 package (2 1/4 te) active or quick rise yeast
1 te sugar
1 Cup warm water
2 1/2 Bread flour
2 TB oil
1 te salt
* garlic powder, rosemary, or italian seasoning to season crust optional

• Dissolve yeast, sugar, and water for 10 minutes
• Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix until smooth (I use a stand mixer with a dough hook)
• Let rest for 5 minutes
• Preheat oven to 450º
• Lightly grease pizza pan *a dusting or cornmeal is optional
• Roll out pizza dough on a floured surface to the approximate size of your pan, then place the dough in your pan and use your hands to form the pizza to your pan
• Top your pizza then cook for 15-20 minutes

Picture courtesy of wannabeavegan.wordpress.com

The dough will look more like a sticky mess than a dough ball when it's done mixing, but with floured hands and a floured surface, it becomes a malleable dough and lends itself easily to be stretched out. This crust yields one pizza, but I like thinner crust so I make two batches at once and divide it by three.

Toppings-
I'm a traditionalist, I prefer "meat" and "cheese" over spinach and mushrooms, but That's what's so good about making this dough, everyone gets their own pizza to top any way they like. My husband likes it simple homemade chorizo sausage cut up like pepperoni, onion, and Daiya cheese (a once a week splurge). My kids like pineapple and olive, homemade chicken that I whirl up in our food processor, and a spicy cheese spread my husband makes.


Variations-
I've made this dough into calzones before, you can fill them with almost anything, but my family likes seitan or chicken cut into cubes and marinated in equal parts melted butter and hot sauce for a hot wing calzone. We then cook it up the same as you would a pizza and dip it in homemade ranch sauce.


You can make this dough into bread sticks as well, roll the dough out and cut into bread sticks, place on  a pan that has been covered in foil and lightly greased. Bruch the bread sticks with melted butter and cook the same as you would a pizza, but keep an eye on them so you don't over cook

Bake Sale

Son #1 goes to a really great, small school. The teachers and faculty are all really nice and have never said anything negative about Son #1 being vegan, but in my head I always feel like people think vegans only eat salad and seeds and my poor son can't eat any of the sweet treats all the "normal" kids get to eat. So when I heard that our school was having a bake sale, I just HAD to show that I could make vegan treats that weren't just good for being vegan, but just good. My dilemma was baking a large quantity of something then packaging them in an appealing way, all while on a budget. I decided to make 160 (4 batches) of my Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies. Except for two runs to the grocery store to re-up on some brown sugar, I had everything I needed for 160 cookies already stocked in my pantry.

I went back and forth about weither or not to label the cookies as "vegan". I would have loved for people to try them and maybe change their minds about vegan food, but on the other hand I worried the word "vegan" might scare people away from buying them. In the end, the bake sale was all about raising money for the school, and that's what was most important.

Here's how I did it:

Labels- I found free label templates online and changed the color and font to what I wanted. I'm fortunate enough to have a husband who works in printing, so I just emailed him the file. My husband printed business card sized labels on a heavy paper stock. I cut the cards out at home, some companies charge extra to make cuts.

Bags- I have a free Michaels app on my phone which gives me 50% off coupons that I used to purchase a pack of 50 bags for about $1.50 after the discount.

Ribbon- Michaels has thin ribbon for $.99 so I purchased one in the robins egg blue I used in the cards, and brown to match the cookies and font. I took the length of the ribbon (printed on the box) and divided it by 50 (the amount of bags I would be making) the resulting number was how much ribbon I had to work with for each package.

Assembly- I put 2 cookies in each bag, then I folded the top of the bags down twice and stapled them closed. I used a hole punch to make a hole through the card and bag, then tied the label in place with a few knots in the ribbon, I made sure to place the staples in such a way that the card would cover them up.

In the end, all the cookies sold half way through the bake sale and everyone seemed to enjoy them :)

Coleslaw

I love coleslaw, and now that I make my own vegan mayonnaise, I'm free to make as much as I want. One of my favorite things to do with coleslaw is to add it to sandwiches. I get some hearty bread and make ribs or battered tofu and fill it with this sweet and zesty coleslaw for a wonderfully complex flavor that also helps to stretch your sandwich with an inexpensive filling.


Coleslaw

• 1 head of cabbage, shredded (you can substitute 1 bag of coleslaw mix for the cabbage and carrots)
• 3 carrots, shredded
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup Apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 
  

Mix the mayo, sugar, and vinegar.

Add the carrots and cabbage to the mixture and toss to coat.

One of the most important steps is to let the coleslaw refrigerate overnight to really let it soak up the flavors, it will taste completely different the next day.