Tag Archives: drink

How to make an Environmentally Conscious Vegan Michelada

Let’s imagine for a minute that you live in Texas. Just picture it, the heat hits you like a suffocating wave of vaporous molten lava. You crave a savory bloody mary because you want something spicy and substantive but it is Sunday and you live in Texas so you can’t buy liquor (buying alchohol on Sunday makes baby Jesus cry) plus a Bloody Mary isn’t exactly refreshing. No, when its this hot and you want a savory drink there is really only one option: the Michelada. Now, the non vegan version often involves a substance called clamato which sounds like a lot of fun but in fact muders defenseless clams. You could buy vegan micheladas but if you make it at home it can be so green that you can feel good about it.

Step One: Fill your glass with ice (preferably made from filtered rainwater)

Step Two: Pour organic tomato juice into the glass until you hit the halfway point. (If you are using a lazy smurf glass that is about to the third z)

Step Three: Add Bragg’s liquid aminos or any other non GMO organic soy product to taste

Step Four: Add Happy Dogs Hot Sauce to taste. There are other vegan hot sauces out there but are they really going to make dogs happy? I personally prefer a happy dog.

Step Five: Add “the Wizard’s Original Organic Vegan Worcestershire sauce. If you want the ultimate vegan drink you gotta go with the wiz, man, NO SUBSTITUTIONS!

Step Six: Squeeze in some lime. I think key limes are more authentic and usually regular grocery store limes are hybridized with lemons, picked before they are ready (probably by underpaid illegal workers), chemically “ripened” through some sort of a crazy formaldehyde process and then shipped all over the world.

Step Seven: Add olive juice optionally and only if you like olives.

Step Eight: Slowly pour in your Pasbst Blue Ribbon Beer or other locally brewed Mexican style pilsner. The choice here is a little more complicated, on the one had the “Schwag Beer” is brewed through an evil multi-national company that supports all sorts of republican-style malarkey but the locally brewed choice will probably be filter through a fish bladder so here you are going to have to pick your battle.

Enjoy with a clear consious.

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Cantaloupe Batido a recipe for another scorcher

This is the part of the year where you see if you really have what it takes to live in Texas. It is so hot that you can fry tofu on the sidewalk. You can leave some batter in the car and come back to find muffins. Eating tomatoes off the vine is like a slow cooked marinara sauce. In these times when it is a hundred and five it is too hot to do anything but relax with a cool refreshing drink.

In Central and South America Batidos are very popular. I think Batido means “beaten” because you beat the hell out of your ingredients with a blender. It is a lot more violent than the north American smoothie but it is also a hell of a lot more fun. You can use whatever tropical fruit you like, if your fruit is very sweet you don’t need to use and sweetener and you can omit the milk and use water instead. Here is how I made mine

Cantaloupe Batido

1/2 Cantaloupe, cut into big pieces

1 cup of milk or water (I used Oat milk)

1 Tablespoon of Agave Nectar

1 cup of ice

Then just beat It, beat it, beat it, beat it no one wants to be defeated showin’ how funky strong is your fight just beat it, with a blender.

I had my batido alongside another recipe from Vegan Brunch: Polenta Ranceros. This might be my favorite to boot. We added a little Black Salt to get the egg flavor and I topped it with a puree of yogurt, cilantro, and lime and then some cherry tomatoes & green onions it was fabulous.

Poor Dinger really hates the heat, he has allergies so I have to give him a lot of showers. Luckily, getting toweled off is one of his favorite things in the world. Whenever we get out the towel, even for us, he runs up saying “towel me”! My mom offered to take him for the summer which he would probably like. A beagle that summers in Illinois I can see it now.I plan to spend the weekend submerged in water so if you don’t hear from me know that I drowned happily! Have a fun weekend!

How to make Mexican Hot Cocoa

Chocolate originated in the Amazon basin and was transported throughout Central and South America in ancient times. The scientific name, Theobroma, means “food of the gods” and I can certainly see where they are coming from. The Maya first drank chocolate in drink form using chocolate, chilies, and cornmeal (the three Cs of early American cooking) they ground it into a paste and mixed it with water. Eventually the Spanairds came along and added milk and sugar. The Europeans also removed the chilies and added cinnamon. Of course, the US came along and made and instant version full of fake marshmallows and other nastiness which turned many off of this delicious drink. They key to making hot chocolate for me is to take it back to its roots and make, what we now call “Mexican Hot Chocolate” although really it is hot cocoa if you are making it from a powder and only hot chocolate if you are making it from chocolate bars.

For me it is the perfect winter drink because it is spicy hot and hot hot so you can ward off the chills in two seperate ways. I also like to make it because it is a little of this and a little of that and different every time. For that reason, I will give you a guidline with pinches and drops rather than teaspoons and tablespoons because you have to experiment and find what your perfect ratio of sweet to spicy is.

Fill the mug (or mugs) that you are going to use with Almond milk and then pour the milk into the pan

Heat the milk to warm and then slowly whisk in 1 heaping teaspoon of unsweetened coocoa powder

add 2 tsp of Sugar or 1 tsp Agave Nectar

a drop of vanilla extract

a drop of almond

a pinch of cinnamon

a tiny pinch of cayenne

a sprinkle of chili powder.

Whisk it all together, taste and adjust flavors and enjoy! Preferably in front of a warm fire cuddled up with a warm beagle. But don’t let him have any because dogs shouldn’t have chocolate. Or poinsettias. Or Ivy, apple seeds, raw onions, and grapes.

Orange Julius

Orange Julius, originally uploaded by sbogdanich.

So to kick things off and stick with the Smurf theme here is an orange julius that I made with soy milk, frozen concentrated orange juice, vanilla, powdered sugar and ice. It was so good.

I was feeling depressed and watching the republican national convention and that is why I decided to make this drink. I guess, unconsciously, I wanted to go back to an earlier time when I didn’t know about Republican and I was happy with a trip to the mall and an episode of the smurfs.