I’m so taken with the onion cream I made a couple of days ago that I thought I’d centre our evening meal on it. I also happened to making a couple of loaves of chickwheat today, so I thought I’d throw that into the mix as well and came up with this delicious low-point recipe.

VEgan Chick’n Alfredo

Blend in the Vitamix until smooth:

1 and 1/2 cups onion cream

1 TBS miso

1 TBS Better Than Bouillon vegetable base

1 TBS lemon juice

3 TBS nutritional yeast

1/4 cup cashews

2 dried shiitake mushrooms

1 tsp sea salt

1 and 1/2 tsp nutmeg

3 garlic cloves

1 TBS tapioca flour

Heat over medium heat (stirring continuously) until shiny and smooth.

Next, add to the pan:

1/2 pound of shredded chickwheat

Stir until the chickwheat is covered and heated through.

Serve over brown rice rotini with a sprinkling of vegan parmesan and some green veg on the side. I’ve been using the Cookieandkate.com version of vegan parmesan lately–this recipe calls for hemp seeds instead of walnuts, almonds, or cashews. I like it because you don’t grind up the nuts (and mix turning your parm into nut butter!). You can just combine the ingredients in a jar and shake it, shake it, shake it….like a polaroid picture. To the parm recipe, I like to add a heaping TBS of vegan chick’n soup powder mix.

And it’s another glorious day on Denman Island! I spent the day tidying and making a couple of loaves of chickwheat in anticipation of our weekend guests. James needs a selection of seitan loaves because he’s going to attempt a vegan rijsttafel.

In case you’re not familiar with the concept, rijsttafel (or “rice table”) is a Dutch-Indonesian meal consisting of a couple of rice dishes surrounded with several small side dishes to serve atop the rice. For larger crowds, as many as forty dishes are served, but since we’ll have only four people, we’re going to keep it to eight dishes in addition to the two rice dishes. We’ve decided our summer project will be perfecting the vegan rijsttafel. We’ll need to rely heavily on seitan, however, because so many of the dishes involve some kind of meat.

And the song of the day is Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield’s cover of the late, great Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars”: