Well, it’s over. All 243 Veganomicon recipes have been made, pictured, and eaten – and I’m so glad it’s done. It’s amazing how much work it takes to follow a list of recipes as opposed to just making meals on the fly. And it feels great to be able to make whatever I want again! Looking back, I really had no idea what I was getting into.

I sure did learn a lot though. I’m a lot more confident in the kitchen – especially with respect to vegan cooking. I’ve used pretty much every fruit and vegetable that the grocery store offers, something that I never would have done without a forcing function. I’ve made tamales and pot pie, chutney and scones. I know that flour can be made from just about anything (from garbanzo beans to millet) and that homemade soy ice cream is light years better than the stuff from the store. I can even make my own nutella!

So I’m really glad that I followed through with Veganomnom. It was a large undertaking, but it was well worth the effort.

This was a very easy dressing to put together. The herbs stand out really well, and it doesn’t have any vinegar in it, so it was actually pretty good with bread.

It makes a good basic dressing that you can whip up in a flash.

#45 – Page 88
Easiness: 4
Tastiness: 4

The dressing on this salad was really good. Figs in maple syrup, all cooked down into a warm sweet liquid is just a fantastic idea. The cooked potatoes were also tasty, and I ate a bunch of them with the dressing while everything was still warm.

The beets though, those just aren’t my favorite thing. And they took extra time to cook too. I did speed them up a bit by roasting them in slices rather than whole, which was a nice shortcut.

So the dressing portion of this recipe was great, but the salad itself wasn’t anything special.

#5 – Page 52
Easiness: 4
Tastiness: 3

This was a food processor intensive recipe. All the ingredients get blended together into a big tofu mash, tossed with some tomatoes, and finally coated with some bread crumbs. Because everything just gets tossed together, making the dough was very easy.

Coating the batter with the bread crumbs was tricky though. The batter was very wet and sticky, so I was kind of making a mess, and eventually left the crumbs off of most of the fritters. I don’t think I’d do that again though, because the bread-less pieces really didn’t taste as good as the others. Or at least I didn’t think so, Joey actually preferred the whole mixture raw, he said it had more flavor.

Overall I don’t think this was my favorite recipe. It wasn’t bad, but nothing great either. I think the final product relies a little too much on the fried outer coating to be something I’ll make often.

#43 – Page 86
Easiness: 4
Tastiness: 5

Joey says this was his favorite salad out of the whole set. He is a big fan of dried cranberries, but the shallot dressing really won him over. The roasted fennel was also pretty good, I even ate some of it.

Making the salad involved some roasting of veggies and a slightly more difficult dressing, but the overall effort was still fairly minimal. So this recipe was definitely a huge success.

My first tamales ever!

I didn’t even know what a tamale was before this recipe. I had to do an image search to understand what I was making. They are cute little bundles, and were pretty fun to eat, but fairly time consuming to make.

The filling and dough came together quickly, but tying the 2 ends of the corn husks just wasn’t very fun. I’m not sure why the recipe recommended doing so either, because I’m pretty sure the ties weren’t necessary at all. Once the tamales are in the steamer, they don’t move around at all, so the husk structure doesn’t need to be robust.

For the steaming process, I actually just took a normal colander, stuck it in my biggest cooking pot, and put a lid of top. This worked surprisingly well, and means one less specialty cooking device in my kitchen!

Overall, tamales were fun, but they do take some effort, so I’d have to be in the right mood to make them again. They would be a cute thing to serve to guests.

Salty!

I didn’t actually have any escarole here, so I substituted in some spinach (once again!) Spinach is just my main leafy green standby.

This dish was very easy to make, but the caper brine made it really salty. That was pretty much the only flavor I could taste. I mixed my portion with some nutritional yeast, which made everything a little bit better, but this still wasn’t a dish I liked.

#115 – Page 143
Easiness: 4
Tastiness: 2

This soup was definitely hot. The spicy liquid just seems to seep into every part of my tongue. I haven’t been able to eat too much of it. The overall flavor is alright, just a very brothy soup, which isn’t my favorite.

The wood ears were disgusting though. I’ve never used those mushrooms before, and they ended up with a horrible crunchy texture. I’m not sure if I did something wrong there, but other dried mushrooms I’ve used (like shitakes) have turned out much better.

I was pleasantly surprised by the napa cabbage. I thought I was going to hate it, but after some cooking the greens just shriveled up and got lost in the broth. So they didn’t detract from the rest of the dish at all. That said, I don’t think I’ll make this one again.

I actually ate some sushi!

Unfortunately, I thought it was pretty gross. The seaweed flavor was overwhelming, and doesn’t taste good to me. Joey didn’t like it either, and mentioned that other sushi he has had doesn’t have such a gross flavor to it. I’m not sure what’s different, but I would definitely need to find out before I made something like this again.

The hard part of this recipe was mostly just assembling the rolls. It was very difficult to cut through the nori, and all of our pieces ended up a little squished. We ended up eating the insides without the nori wrapping, which was pretty good – just some rice, tempeh and avocado.

This salad was huge. It made way too much. Joey also said it was pretty bland. Filling, but not very exciting. It needs to be mixed with other things in order to give it some flavor.

It was pretty easy to make though. And bulgur is kinda cool – I like the fact that you only need to pour boiling water over the grain to cook it. It might be useful when backpacking (just like couscous).