Vegan mystery mush…

The other day something went terribly and inexplicably wrong with a pot of black beans. We ended up with onions floating atop murky water and a layer of spent beans at the bottom of the pot. I thought the best thing would be to puree them and ‘re-fry’ them.

After several cracks (no pun intended) about how the beans looked the same in the pot as how they’d look once we pooped them out, we tasted them and decided they were edible. Arlene made some tostones and salad to go with the bean mush. She topped a hapless toston with the bean slurry and salad as you can see in the picture below.

It was good considering how bad it looked.

Not a recipe we’d recommend, unless something goes terribly wrong with your cooking.

We hid the mush on purpose

Like little bursts of sun

PIZZA!… with some new cheese-like stuff on it!

So Arlene, in her continuous search for something like cheese that is not cheese found what was touted in several places as the best non-cheese cheese. She ordered it, and a few days later we decided to test it on pizza. I made the usual whole wheat/semolina crust and bought some Field Roast Italian sausage (read: SA-ssich!), mushrooms and these bad-ass pepper stuffed olives from WF that were truly spectacular.

The cheese, Daiya, is vegan, but has some weird soy derivative in it we’d never heard of before. The flavor was good, and it melted pretty well, but we found the taste got old after we ate a lot of it. However, it probably was the best substitute we’ve ever used, and while we won’t probably order it again (shipping cost + shipped in styrofoam = no bueno), if we could buy it locally, we probably would use it here and there. It’s supposedly sold at WF, but I’ve never seen it here in Florida. Anywho, enjoy the pics.

These are all the toppings and the dough.

This is how the cheese comes packed… looks very homemade.

First attempt… looks good.

Cast iron faina… or farinata if you’re upper class.

These are the olives, now cut, I was raving about.

Love,

Chris