Thursday, October 20, 2011

I can't believe I just veganized that...


Hey MoFo'ers! I hope this is a better late than never game. 'Round Megatarian land this has been Megan Month of Stress. ENOUGH WITH THE STRESS!! More with the food. I'll catch up, really, I took a bunch of pics and made a bunch of food. What better way to start in the end of the month than with a food that probably should not have been veganized, but as I type, the boy is sitting in the recliner beside me making yummy sounds.

Here's how it started.

KFC started running commercials for their NEW KFC Famous Bowl... with Bacon. The boy and I were watching TV and this commercial aired. I admit it, I married an omni with a junk-food-tooth. I think he may have started drooling. I told him he better not get that because he'd probably die on the spot. He pouted. I looked up nutritional info - the original bowl has almost 700 calories and over 2000 mg sodium. That's WITHOUT bacon!! NO!! I said. More pouting. OK OK I THINK I CAN VEGANIZE IT JUST DON'T BUY IT! He perked up. And so... tonight I veganized the KFC Famous Bowl with Bacon.

And here's how...

This was actually more complicated than I had expected, and I didn't exactly have everything I wanted to use. A KFC bowl is mashed potatoes, corn, fried chicken bits, gravy, cheese, and bacon.

Step 1: Make mashed potatoes (I used a half dozen organic red skin potatoes, skins on, mashed with earth balance, unsweetened original almond milk, a splash of apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper)

Step 2: Heat corn (Frozen corn + boiling water)

Step 3: Prepare Gardein Chick'n Tenders according to package directions

Step 4: Make Gravy (broth + poultry seasoning + nooch + tamari + cornstarch/almond milk slurry)

For cheese I used melted We Can't Say It's Cheese spread, and for bacon I used fake bacon bits.

Now here's the trick with these steps. You actually have to have everything ready at the same moment. Once it's all ready, layer and enjoy! This was where my fatal flaw came in -- I put gravy on top of everything, and the gravy is SUPPOSED to go over the potatoes with everything on top. This apparently did not ruin the integrity of the dish. The boy's only complaint was that the cheese texture was wrong. I hadn't planned on making this tonight; if I had I would have bought some Daiya shreds, but all in all yummy noises prevail*.

(* I'm not included in the taste test because I hate mashed potatoes!!! This actually looks really gross to me. Anything mashed potatoes based does. BLEH! But it's apparently quite good. The boy licked the bowl)