Vegetarian Star

Brendan Brazier

Brendan Brazier has the formula for a how a vegan athlete stays the course–through every Iron-man, Ultra Marathon and National Long Course Triathlon.

No stranger to the kitchen, Brazier has his own line of supplemental powders, bars and smoothies, all of which are vegan.

“To provide staying power, the optimal carbohydrate to protein ratio immediately before a longer workout or race is about three parts carbohydrate to one part protein,” he told NJ.com. “I like to have half of a banana, a couple of dates and a Vega bar before a long-distance workout. I’ll also make an energy gel to eat if I start to feel hungry or weak during a workout

Grab the recipe for Brendan’s gel after the jump.

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Spaghetti Tacos. Credit: Vegancognito.blogspot.com

Spaghetti Tacos are all the rage, thanks to the Nickelodeon on Sunset television series iCarly, which features adolescent Carly Shay, played by Miranda Cosgrove, who creates her own web shows with her two best friends Sam and Freddie.

Sam (Samantha) is known for her gluttonous desire for meat, which is probably why the original recipe for Spaghetti Tacos listed on the iCarly website calls for meat sauce. And burping.

Get taco shells.
Get spaghetti (with meat sauce).
Get a BIG spoon.
Use the BIG spoon to put spaghetti into taco shells.
Eat.
Burp.

Thank goodness for Carly’s 26-year old brother and guardian Spencer, who at least recommends some low-fat vegetarian pizza from time to time.

There are numerous ways to vegify this recipe to make it healthier and cruelty-free, as Vegancognito did using faux meat and vegan sour cream.

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Chocolate Pecan Pie

This is for Veg Star’s fantastic graduate students out there, in the middle of another grueling semester.

When a writer at Riverfront Times wanted to conduct a, ahem, “scientific” experiment on vegan goods, she tested the hypothesis that “Vegan baked goods are always readily identifiable as being vegan.”

In other words, this skeptic wanted to prove that vegan desserts are cardboard, pasty, granola pyramids of disaster. Sure hope she didn’t bet her thesis on it.

Materials for vegan chef and author Bryant Terry‘s vegan dessert included a coconut pie crust made from coconut oil in place of butter, a chocolate pecan pudding filling with non-dairy rice milk, maple syrup and arrowroot powder, a fantastic thickener for pies, puddings, gravies and other dishes that doesn’t add fat.

Results: “I don’t understand how that is vegan.” (In non-scientific terms: How the heck does it taste so good?)

Conclusion, experimenter notes and recipe below.

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Giant Quinoa Tamale

Today’s Meatless Monday recipe is from Mark Bittman‘s latest cookbook released this month, the Food Matters Cookbook, which is described as a collection of “500, terrific, less meatatarian recipes.”

Bittman’s Giant Quinoa Tamale with Tomatillo Salsa is a completely no meatatarian dish from the book, which can easily be made vegan by either leaving off the Monterey Jack cheese or substituting with a vegan brand of Jack like Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet.

This recipe is actually 2 in 1, as the tomatillo salsa featuring the green or green-purple colored tomato can be saved for your favorite Mexican snacks later.

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Tahina. Photo: Serious Eats

Michael Natkin is a vegetarian food blogger at Herbivoracious who stops by the highly trafficked SeriousEats.com website to share a meatless recipe for the Serious Meatless section.

Tahina goes great as a veggie dip, sandwich spread or drizzled over falafel, but don’t confuse it with hummus, as Natkin says many people do. Hummus is created from chickpeas while tahina is crafted from sesame seeds.

Then there’s that conundrum of how to spell it.

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Jamie Oliver's Pumpkin Rice Laksa Soup. Credit: Cookstr.com

In some parts of the world September means back to school, leaves changing colors and pumpkins popping up everywhere!

If carving creepy faces isn’t your thing, there are dozens of delicious ways to use a pumpkin this season, like in the Pumpkin Rice Laksa Soup by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

Cookstr.com is a website launched in 2008 that publishes recipes from top cookbook authors online.

Oliver is one of several chefs with dozens of recipes listed on Cookstr and his pumpkin soup makes a great dish to start off the cooler season with flavorful combinations of coconut milk, cumin, five-spice, lemongrass and chile, to name a few ingredients. If you’ve used all your pumpkins in the carving contest, don’t fret, butternut squash, onion squash or acorn squash can also be used.

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Bryant Terry Jidan Koon. Credit: Bridan-Kerry.com

Eco, vegan chef and author Bryant Terry is now officially unavailable in the line of single, vegan men who can cook to save the Earth and satisfy an appetite. Terry married Jidan Koon this weekend at the couple’s home in Oakland, California.

The couple loves to cook, combining foods from both African and Asian cultures, and for their engagement party, Terry and Koon created Afro-Asian Jung, a soul-food twist to a traditional Asian tamale-like food “jung,” that wraps a plant-based filling inside bamboo leaves.

“While glutinous or sweet rice is traditionally used to give jung its trademark stickiness, we used three kinds of rice to add color, texture and depth of flavor,” writes the couple at Hyphen Magazine. “For additional filling, we used peanuts (a staple of African and African American cooking as well as a symbol of long life for Chinese), black-eyed peas (a symbol of good luck for African Americans), and shiitake mushrooms (a symbol of longevity in Japan and China).

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Iron Chef America-Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy. Credit: Healthy Happy Life

In case you haven’t heard, New York vegetarian restaurant owner Amanda Cohen did broccoli well on an episode of Iron Chef America that aired this weekend. The secret ingredient could be found paired with a crispy, orange tofu, which one judge said tasted, “nothing at all like the tofu I made when I was a teenager, when I was a strict vegetarian.”

Ironically, another judge liked the tofu and everything else but the secret ingredient. “I’m not so found of the broccoli.”

Sigh…You can’t please everyone.

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