This is a new series we’re going to visit from time to time – you know how when you went vegan, you had to learn some new kitchen techniques?  What about the old stuff you knew from your animal-product days, and specifically, the equipment?

Don’t throw it all out yet, because it turns out there are vegan-friendly uses for most of it.  Here’s what to do with your (formerly) cheese grater:

By the way, Amazon tells me that I’m using a Progressive International Folding Grater and they’ve got it for 11 bucks or so [affiliate link]. It folds flat for storage but stands like a triangle when you use it – way better than the box-style grater I used to use that would rip my knuckles apart when I cleaned it.

I’ve got other segments planned, but feel free to add spoilers in the comments: what kitchen gadget have you managed to repurpose from a previous animal-product use, and how?

Today’s top actually comes from Molly, who signed up for the newsletter but instead of telling me what the best tip I could give her would be, she told me her best tip, and here it is:

Oh, and the pizza I referred to was from A Vegan Affair Event Catering, whose site is not easily linkable but if you go to the gallery you’ll see the mini-pizzas.  No money changing hands here, just a plug for someone who gave me some samples, is all.

How do you make your vegan pizza sing?  I gave my add-on tips in the video, now share yours in the comments!

As I promised in this week’s newsletter, here’s my new recipe for pomegranate balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing – I know, it seems like salad dressings are all we do for recipes these days (see tahini miso dressing here!), but what can I say that I haven’t already said? I really like salad!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Half a pomegranate
• 1/4 cup oil (olive, Udo’s, canola, whatever you like)
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (we used white balsamic, red works too)
• A pinch of pepper
• A pinch of garlic powder

Mix it up in a blender – any blender will probably work, but we use a Vita-Mix, just like we have for the past 13 years or so – we use it almost every day, and if you’d like one you can use code 06-002733 at vitamix.com to get free shipping (and we’ll get a commission which helps pay the bills around here.)

This is a great dressing that you can make in small batches like I did or double it up.  I like to keep half the pomegranate to either snack on or throw into the salad as a topping.  Pomegranates are cheap this time of year around here, and they’re loaded with antioxidants and other things I don’t pretend to understand beyond the fact that they’re super good for you.

But like I said, be careful opening them up or you will end up with some crazy stains on your shirt!

Seriously, this is one of the easiest ways to learn new ingredients, and it works for beans better than anything else I can think of (I wouldn’t try it with spices, for example) – even the deadest of palates is going to learn something from this with relatively no risk:

If you want a great way to cook beans, I highly recommend a pressure cooker – we did a video a while back explaining the process, and it’s really not as scary as it seems!

Here’s a pop quiz for you, as inspired by The Happy Herbivore: what one kitchen gadget, tool, accessory or appliance would you hate to do without? And more importantly, why? Here’s mine:

Let me know yours in the comments – I want to read this in a few days and have at least one “oooh, I wish I thought of that” and maybe a “wow, that’s what that’s for? I have to try that!” and I hope the same thing happens to you.

Apologies for the poor lighting and the lazy camera work (though I think that part’s endearing, frankly) but this is one mighty tasty salad dressing that you all need to make in mass quantities right now:

Also, I made this twice, the first attempt was too watery but I mixed the two together and put them in the fridge overnight and that tahini thickening thing I mentioned made everything OK.

Teflex sheets are those things we talked about in the “how to make kale chips” episode that prevent sauces and crumbs from falling through the trays of your dehydrator. They are easy to clean and a pain to dry. At least they were, until I had an attack of the obvious:

As I said in the video, I don’t think they sell the dehydrator I have any more, but most of my friends who have them use the Excalibur brand – there’s a 9 tray machine on Amazon
for $219 right now [affiliate link], and don’t think 9 is too big – the counter footprint is basically the same as a smaller one, and trust me on this, if you get into dehydrating you’ll wish you had more than 4 trays.  If you’re in Canada, I haven’t purchased anything from the folks at Green Health but they seem nice and offer free shipping (we make no money off of sales from the GH link, just promoting a Canadian business, is all.)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and what better day could there be for a green smoothie?

I’ve been meaning to get into green smoothies for a while, and recent emails I’ve gotten as part of the Taste Better “ideal breakfast” series suggest they’re pretty popular, so I finally went for it – it turns out there are more ways to use kale than just kale chips!

This one was totally simple: one banana, about the same amount of kale (in size; I didn’t weight it) and some water.  I blended it up in the Vita-Mix [aff. link, but free shipping!], and it was a bit gritty but tasted better after I added some ice and blended it for a few minutes (without the ice the Vita-Mix turns smoothies into warm soup, and I prefer a cold drink.)

I didn’t measure the water I put in, but while it didn’t seem like a lot I ended up with 3 pints of smoothie, which was pretty filling by itself, plus I remixed the last pint with a scoop of protein powder (I used Absolute Vegetarian Protein, which is 26g of soy, rice, and pea protein per scoop at the lowest overall price I’ve found) which I found helped with the overall texture, smoothing things out a lot.  Which is probably desirable for a smoothie.

From the mails I’m getting, a lot of people add several different fruits to their green smoothies, including strawberries and kiwi, but the core ingredients seem to be a banana and some kind of leafy green, such as kale, lettuce, chard, etc.

I’m getting tired of the bland countertop photos, so I took this one by the window:

As you can see, it was pretty foamy, but that’s after a minute or two of separation (the version with protein powder was a bit more homogenous.)  Depending on your tastes, you can either drink it right away or let it sit for 5-10 minutes for a different texture.

As you can tell, I’m still working on finding ways to add juices and smoothies to my everyday routine, but at the moment I’m pegging green smoothies as a good 2PM pick me up – it’s obviously easier to do when you’re home at that time, but something like a Magic Bullet might work in an office environment – it’s something we talked about at my last workplace but never got around to trying.  Is anyone doing that?  Let me know in the comments!

After a week filled with a whole lot of JuicyNothing, (at least!) two big insights last night:

The first is that while clever, the “TGIF” theme of making an alcoholic juice or smoothie has a certain flaw in that it either has to be made in advance or written about the next day, like this post is, because drinking and blogging, while entertaining, has its own set of hazards.  I’d put it as safer than drunken emailing or eBaying, but perhaps not by much.

The second is this: we need to consume juice like (some of us) consume booze.  Cooking’s like this too.  Let me explain:

I made fresh pineapple juice, which, by the way, is incredibly tasty and thick and amazing and I can’t believe I ever drank the canned stuff, but I didn’t have any real plan for what booze to mix it with.  I ended up using peach schnapps and rum in one glass, and then just rum (but far, far too much rum) in the second.

It’s pretty obvious that these weren’t planned drinks, and while I know a few people who pride themselves for having gone to actual bartending school, most of my acquaintances use drink guides as just that: a guide.  The first one or two might be textbook perfect, but as the night goes on proportions slip, new ingredients get added or substituted as bottles empty, and judgements aside, at the end of the night, it’s about having fun and trying new things.

With juicing, it really doesn’t matter what proportions you use when making the ultimate apple carrot ginger juice, for example.  Witness most juice recipes that specify the number of fruits and vegetables to use – they don’t give precise measurements for each juice type down to the ounce or millilitre, and there’s a reason for that: every drink’s a little bit different, and that kind of becomes the thing that matters: it’s about having fun and trying new things.  Or it ought to be, anyway.

Oh, and in lieu of a poorly lit photo (working on those, honest!) I made a music video for you.  Shut Up Woman Get On My Horse was playing in the background, and Angela was doing stuff, unaware of my filmmaking opus:

OK, I had two problems today: I run a website about juices and smoothies, and it doesn’t have any smoothie-related posts on it, and secondly, I had a big bowl of leftover chilli that just… didn’t taste right.

It wasn’t bad chilli; there was just something about the spice mix that didn’t appeal to us.  Fortunately, I discovered that it tasted better cold (some spices just taste dramatically different depending on the temperature,) but eating a bowl of cold chilli just seems sad.  Like I’m one step away from eating directly out of a can.  Over the sink.  Not that I ever do that.

So I thought to myself, self, why don’t you make your first chilli smoothie?  That’s right, I turned this:

…Into this:

You may think that this is a really bad photo, but note that I am not apologizing.  I have nothing to apologize for, really, other than the fact that I made a chilli smoothie.  The thing looked really, really bad.  There’s no way you’ll see this in a restaurant that wants to stay open for more than a week.

I always took solace in the fact that the Vita-Mix would be a handy thing to have if I ever broke my jaw; I just didn’t expect I’d be doing a dress rehearsal.

The chilli had a fair bit of liquid in it, but not enough to produce more than a slurry of smoothie.  I was faced with a horrible choice: add water to the mix, resulting in a larger quantity of what might be a very bad idea, or drink it thick, in which case it wouldn’t pour as much as tumble into my mouth and down my throat.

I went with the thicker version, and other than the weird “I’m not proud of what I’m about to do but this is for science” sentiment I was feeling during the process, the chilli smoothie was actually a pretty good success.  It’s definitely the strangest protein-rich smoothie I’ve made, but I saved a lot of money on powders this way…