For me, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were hard to give up. I tried Justin’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups but wasn’t super blown away. Luckily, today, I had an aha! moment.

“Aha!” I said, rifling through my freezer. “I will make chocolate coconut almond butter truffles!”

These had four ingredients (you could add flax seeds). The almond butter was fresh ground from the bulk section. Whole Foods 365 brand keeps it cheap.

I didn’t write down proportions but it’s super easy and I bet you could make them, too.

1. Melt semi-sweet chocolate in a double boiler – put a ceramic/glass/metal bowl over a pot of boiling water. This melts the chocolate and keeps it from burning. Some semi-sweet chocolates have milk products in them, which is annoying, but you just need to check the ingredients.
2. Mix up the almond butter and shredded coconut in a separate bowl. You should be able to make little balls of this coconutty almondy paste that somewhat stay together.
3. Drop the little ball in the melted chocolate and roll it around with a spoon, until it’s coated.
4. Remove the chocolate-coated ball with the spoon and put it on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Freeze.
5. Remove to eat, ravenously. You have to keep them cold-ish or they’ll make a mess.

Here one is, closer up. Enjoy!

**Side note: I thought of entitling this post “Nuts and Balls” but decided that that would not be family-friendly enough for teh Facebooks. 

Join us as Copper Kettle Brewery re-opens the tap line for their summer Kolsch! A clear and light German ale and a summer favorite of the CKBC regulars.

We will also be hooking up with The Vegan Van, offering 100% vegan food pairings that night from 5-9 PM.

This month is Lebanese-inspired cuisine. We are taking traditional Lebanese meals and putting our own twist and attitude in them. Just come and find out just what we’re talking about.

RSVP + BYOP: Let us know how many people are coming with you by RSVPing to this event (so we know how much food to make). And bring your own plate and utensils to help cut waste (we’ve got you covered if you forget).

As always, there will be a raffle with great prizes from awesome companies and organizations. Suggested donation $7-10. Your donation helps us cover event costs, and supports the vegan advocacy projects of Plants & Animals Denver.

Chomp is a monthly vegan dinner. Anybody can come.

In case you’re a vegan/vegetarian/hipster-ass-capitol-hill-chick in Denver and have been living under a rock, our favorite vegetarian spot is going to be closed during the month of August for a big expansion.The updated space will be worth the 31 day time-out from huge, animal lover’s pizzas and Cinco Lager, so I know we shouldn’t complain. Nevertheless, I feel like this:

If you feel like a crying little kid like I do, then I suggest you stop by and get some coffee and a breakfast burrito on weekday mornings outside the restaurant. That, or just go drink/eat your sorrows away at Sputnik.

The pancakes are vegan and it’s a great cause. Yes, please!

Who doesn’t love festivals? I love them, all shapes and sizes too.  And I’m particularly fond of those that aim to unite the local community and also happen to be veg-friendly. Hmm…if only one there was one  going on in Denver this weekend. Oh, that’s right, there is! It’s the Capitol Hill People’s Fair. And it’s this Saturday and Sunday in Civic Center Park.

…..so that was the intro I wrote for what I hoped would be  a blog post about all the vegetarian/vegan options you would find at the People’s Fair this weekend. I wanted to be your personal vegan guide to navigating the many food booths there. I wanted to define vegan identity at the People’s Fair. Also, I thought “veg out” was a clever play on words.

And then I couldn’t find a food vendor list anywhere.  So, all I know is that Sabra brand hummus is a sponsor. I love that shit. It’s delicious hummus. I imagine they will have some for you to eat if you go. Oh, and I noticed that a couple of natural soap brands will be selling things. Natural soaps tend to be vegan, I think? That’s the entirety of the info I’ve got. Damn, this was disappointing.

As a consolation prize, here’s an awesome photo from People’s Fair 1994.

A crappy cell phone picture of delicious orange-almond green beans.

It’s Meatless Monday, that wonderful time of the week when we’re allowed to demand that our omni friends forego the flesh and try some new vegetarian delights.

To inspire your day of cruelty-free chow, today’s meatless recipe is Orange-Almond Green Beans.  Okay, so green beans are generally meatless anyway.  But people are going nuts with the bacon these days – it’s like, oh look, I’ve made a delicious pasta primavera.  What does it need?  Bacon!  How about these roasted carrots?  Bacon!  Chocolate cake?  Bacon!

Ahem.  Sorry.  (Seriously though, fuck bacon.)

This is a 100% BACON-FREE (is that going to be a new food label now?) dish that is still unbelievably delicious.  If it’s too early for fresh green beans, you can certainly use asparagus instead – just skip the initial boiling step.

This recipe has 2 speeds: normal, and extra-super-fancy.  See the note for how to fancy it up, like if you’re making it for a throwdown against Bobby Flay.

Read the rest of this entry →

The winning entree, chef Michael Robertson's Barley Risotto in Mushroom Jus. Photo courtesy of Granville Online.

From the blog of the lovely ladies at Vegan Mischief, I stumbled across a description of a Vancouver vegan foodie event called Social Bites. The winning chef, Michael Robertson, is a non-vegan himself, and while that would normally annoy me, his insightful and interesting comments about the experience are well redeeming. (Plus, he shares some great recipes! Bonus!) It’s a lovely contrast to the usual response from omni chefs that cooking vegan is either impossible, boring, or personally offensive.

From the Granville Online article:

In homes across our city, across the country, the question “what shall we have for dinner?” is most often met with single word responses: “chicken,” “pork,” “steak.” The same can be said of restaurants: “I’ll have the lamb.” Vegetables and complex carbs play second fiddle to the viand virtuoso. Planning a vegan meal forced me to reconsider this paradigm.

Vegan cooking requires planning (unless you want to spend a year living on tofu, rice and broccoli). Often the key players—tofu, lentils, quinoa, etc.—are relatively void of flavour. Rather than being a deficit, my cooking partner Christi and I came to view this as a great opportunity. Here was a blank tableau that we could infuse with subtle flavours—unlike meat dishes that tend to be accompanied by stronger and saltier accompaniments.

It’s what I’m always saying: cooking vegan immediately expands your palate and your culinary creativity, because you are forced to step outside the typical meat-bread-vegetable plate paradigm. I think most people don’t realize how incredibly restricted the typical western diet is. Eating vegan, on the other hand, is the farthest thing from being a restrictive diet: personally, I eat about a thousand more different kinds of foods than I did before going vegan.

At the end of the day, regardless of what you eat yourself, if you can’t cook without the use of animal products, you’re a sub-par chef.