In praise of soggy bread

I made my first dumplings tonight.  I know - shocking - I'm Southern and I've never made dumplings (to the best of my knowledge).  My grandma is spinning in her grave.  Or maybe now she's stopped spinning.  But there's a reason why I never made dumplings.

When I was young, I never ate anything even remotely like soggy bread (with the exception of biscuits and gravy).  You see, my mom hates (HATES!) soggy bread, so I just assumed that I also hated soggy bread.  But then there were the biscuits and gravy (but even my mom likes biscuits and gravy).

I'm not exactly sure what made me realise I actually love soggy bread.  (I should clarify, I'm not talking about a piece of bread that's been sitting in water, and I've never had bread in milk.)  I don't know if it was realising that biscuits are bread and gravy makes them soggy.  I don't know if it coincided with my soup revelation (i.e., I like soup), the day I had a delicious soup at my friend Julie's house with a piece of bread to dip in it.  All I know is, I like soggy bread - biscuit-topped cassoulet, the lump of cheese-covered deliciousness atop French onion soup, sammiches moistened by condiments, and dumplings.

Incidentally, the recipe I made was Seitan and Dumplings from American Vegan Kitchen as part of week 2 of the cookbook challenge.  I have to say, it took a long damn time to make.  If you were to make it from start to finish (from the seitan to the bowl), it would take about 4 hours.  Luckily, I at least made the seitan ahead of time.  That said, it's totally worth it.  So delicious.  I might see if I can figure out a way to make it take less time.  I don't know how, but there must be a way.  Anyway, even taking as long as it does, I would definitely recommend it.

Mini-post - MoFo plans

Considering that I get a couple of hits per day even when I don't post, I figured I should give my fan something to read.

I know a few people are really planning for MoFo - setting out a schedule, theme days, things like that.  I am far too lazy for all that noise.  I'm just gonna cook, hopefully take some dodgy pictures with my crappy old camera and my shaky hands, go to some restaurants, and then write about it.  But I do have a few things I'm aiming for, so here's a glimpse of what I hope to accomplish.

Veganized Scottish recipes - Haggis has been done commercially with excellent results, but I'll try to tackle tablet (which I'm told is difficult with the original ingredients), stovies (basically roast leftovers mashed together), skirlie (Scottish stuffing - made with oats, natch), and if I end up deep frying something, I might try to get a Twilight bar and deep fry that at the same time for a vegan deep-fried Mars bar.

Macarena Muffin Pie - During the PPKamping trip, Amy mentioned a dream about a pie.  A pie with apples and a muffin batter top "crust".  I'll probably make changes to her dream pie, but the apple/muffin pie will happen.

Poutine - French fries, cheese, and gravy - what more could you want in a meal?  One of our friends has talked about it enough that I want to try it.  Even if I don't get the taste exactly right, a) I won't know and 2) I'll still be eating cheese fries covered in gravy, so it's win-win.

I mentioned some other stuff that's happening in my last post, so I'll keep this brief.  But I'm well excited about MoFo.

Vegan MoFo V is almost upon us!

Holy shit! I only found out yesterday that Vegan MoFo V is in October! That's less than a month away! And is this really the fifth year of Vegan MoFo?!

For those who don't know, Vegan MoFo is the Vegan Month of Food, when vegan bloggers from all over the world, well, blog about vegan food for a month. Last year, I think we had something like 600+ participants, so maybe we'll have over 1000 this year!

The goal is to blog every weekday, but some people blog every damn day. I did that my first year, but last year MoFo was in November, so I couldn't blog daily. I'm not making any commitments this year beyond the weekdays, but we'll see how it comes out.

Most people try to have some sort of theme, but I don't think I can confine myself to a single theme.  Last year I did a couple of different things, like Mix v. Scratch, but nothing to tie everything together.  This year, I think one of the things I'll try is vegan versions of Scottish foods/vegan foods made with iconic Scottish products (like mince and tatties and Irn Bru cookies/cupcakes).  I'd like to try to veganize some of my grandmother's recipes, which I'd wanted to do last year, but I'm still waiting on getting the recipes from my family.  But we're also doing another cookbook challenge on the PPK, so I'll be posting reviews from that.

I'm open to suggestion - Any Scottish recipes you'd like to see veganized?  Any recipes from the books in the cookbook challenge you want to see (bearing in mind, I don't have Vegan Soul Kitchen or either of the Colleen Patrick Godreau books and will probably do another week of Isa/Terry)?  I have 20 days to come up with some stuff, so if you have ideas, let me have them!