Two Vegan Sisters: Happy St. Patty's! Low Fat and...Healthy?

Theme day! Before bed last night I cut up veggies for dinner tonight, and made the slow cooker seitan pot roast from Vegan on the Cheap. Instead of using my big crockpot and using all the veggies, I just made the seitan dough and put it in my little crockpot that I normally reserve for steel cut oats. I couldn't believe how much it puffed up today - it looked like a souffle! But I really should have added some more water to account for the water the poor roast didn't get from all of the veggies that would have otherwise surrounded it. I just had to cut off some dry bits but other than that it was perfect! Cooking it overnight worked out really well and cut down on the prep required at a busy time in the afternoon.

So what did I use the roast for? Appetite for Reduction's Irish Stew. Made with vegan beer, I can't get over how authentic this tastes! Now when I say authentic, I mean Puritan Irish Stew from a can. Tracy and I seemed to have that often when Dad was in charge of dinner. Can't say I've ever had it from a real pub. Anyways, I'm sure this tastes like what would be served in one! I included some of my oatmeal bread (see this post) as it contains Irish oats, or steel cut oats. Yummy combo!

But the real showstoppers were Chloe Coscarelli's Chocolate Beer Cupcakes with Irish Whiskey Buttercream...yummy! I do admit that I love Isa's cupcakes as they turn out so reliably (I had these ones in the oven for 10 minutes longer than specified since they wouldn't cook!), but this flavour combo was pretty cool. Anyways, for the buttercream, I wanted green, and since I'm not a fan of artificial colours, I added a scoop of my Vega Smoothie Infusion powder. Spinach anyone? It gave a pale green hue and didn't impart any weird flavouring. Healthy cupcakes? Kinda. Sweet? Omigod...I swear I developed a cavity eating these! I also made the caramel drizzle...I don't know, but cooking sugar stresses me out. Seems like there's this fine line between soft ball and hard ball (?) and I always seems to mess it up. I found her instructions a little unclear for the slight moron I can be, so to salvage a crunchy hard sugar mess, I added about 1/4 cup of soymilk and cooked over medium heat. Seemed to work! It resulted in a sticky taffy-like confection. Anyways, it looked good.

Solo: