Vegan MoFo, Day 27 (Catching Up) – Meals for the Young (at Heart)

We’re definitely playing catch-up today here at the Fake Meat & True Love house after a week of party planning, holding said party, and binge-watching the new season of Stranger Things. Thursday’s prompt was “Meals for the young (at heart)”. We wanted to pick something that we loved when we were young, but make it a bit more “grown up” and fancy.

For both Sarra and I, many a childhood meal consisted of fish sticks and macaroni and cheese. We both liked our fish sticks with ketchup, but Sarra usually skipped the ketchup if there was macaroni and cheese available, since she could dip the fish sticks right in the excess cheese sauce from the macaroni. We both loved it, and since it’s a classic slice of Americana on a plate, it’s still right up our alley. So then, how can we make it better? Well, read on to find out!

Vegan MoFo, Day 6 – Comfort Food

Well, we’re still a day behind here, but we don’t want to stop bringing you our adventures in delicious food. Today’s topic – comfort food. Sarra was raised in Texas, while I grew up in New York, so we both have different (but equally firm) ideas of what comfort food is. To Sarra, nothing is more comforting than a plate of gravy-soaked carbs and fat, but I usually just want to stick a large quantity of “meat” in between a couple of slices of bread.

Vegan MoFo, Day 9 – Most Retro Recipe

Disclaimer: this isn’t a recipe. It is, however, a very retro dinner.

Mike and I are both really drawn to retro and vintage styles and items. We love the aesthetics from the 1950s & 1960s – Mike loves cocktails and mod and anything atomic in particular, and I can usually be found in full-skirted dresses with a pocketbook and bright lipstick. (Mike hasn’t seen Mad Men yet, but I’m looking forward to watching it with him just so I can see him get all swoony over the clothes and furniture.) Additionally, we’re both defined in a lot of ways by the pop culture of our respective childhoods, adolescences, and young adulthoods. We’re both very nostalgic people, by and large, and really prone to reminiscing and “Do you remember…”. We’re your basic Gen-X cliché, is what I’m saying.

I have an abiding fondness for vintage cookbooks, even if they are loaded with pictures of dead animal parts. I assumed I’d turn to one from my collection to find a recipe to veganize, but then I had a flash of inspiration.

Vegan MoFo. Day 4, Part 1 – Weird Food Combo!

There will be a post from Mike along in a couple of hours, showcasing our weird food combination dinner. But I couldn’t pass up a chance to talk about a weird food combo that I have loved since I was 17 years old (I’m 42 now, so that’s a quarter-century… dang). Just so you know: there’s nothing healthy after the cut.

Vegan Mofo, Day 2 – Recreate a Childhood Favorite

Y’all, I had this whole thing figured out – I was going to make a dinner we ate a lot as a kid. But when Mike went to get eggless ribbon noodles from the one store we know for sure carries them, they… don’t anymore. Well, damn. So I thought about what I could do instead – pizza? No, I’m doing that tomorrow (spoiler!). Maybe breakfast for dinner? That was SO exciting to me and my siblings when we were kids, so maybe. And then, at like 4 in the afternoon, when my sockless feet were cold and I needed to grab a cardigan to chase away a chill, I got it – I remembered one of my all-time favorite childhood dinners: tomato soup and grilled cheese.