In case you somehow missed this, come have a sausage and a pink grapeefruit mimosa on us tonight.

You know that party guest that shows up 2 hours early and then you don’t have time to put your make up on and they won’t stop talking about their irritable bowel syndrome? Well, that is the exact opposite of Vegan Brunch arriving early.

I’ve put up a bunch of samples recipes for you to check out; Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes, Puttanesca Scramble, Pumpkin French Toast, Herbed Whole Wheat Drop Biscuits and Smoked Almond Gravy. I hope that you guys have as much fun cooking from it as I did creating it. Let me know if you’ve got it and what you think so far. You can pick it up at Amazon, but Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe is having a sale right now, too!

I said Pumpkin French Toast!

All this cookie excitement made me almost forget that Vegan Brunch will be out in just a few weeks! I’m going to share a few recipes with you over the next month and maybe even a video if I can get it together. I know today is Saturday but maybe you’ve got enough time to procure the ingredients in time for Sunday for one of my favorite brunch appetizers, Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes.

Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes
Makes 10
I love the succulent little pieces of tempeh you get when biting into this crisp, flavorful cake. Crab cakes are the inspiration here. I used to spend lots of time in Baltimore and back then pollution in the Chesapeake Bay was a big issue. I think it’s doing much better now and these cakes are a tribute to it. Update: Came to find the Bay is actually doing worse. All the more reason to eat tempeh instead of crabbies!

Make ahead: Make the entire mixture and the remoulade the night before. In the morning, form into cakes and pan fry.

For the cakes:
8 ounces tempeh (use the nori tempeh if you can find it, but plain soy tempeh is fine, too)
1 cup water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 bay leaf

3 tablespoons Vegenaisse
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard (stone ground Dijon works, too)
1 tablespoon hot sauce
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/4 cup very finely chopped red bell pepper
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspooon salt
fresh black pepper
1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs, plus extra for dredging
Optional: 1 finely chopped nori sheet or 1 tablespoon kelp granules (if you like a little fishiness)

Oil for pan frying

For the remoulade:
2 tablespoons Vegenaise
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard  (stone ground dijon works, too)
1 tablespoon hot sauce
2 teaspoons capers (try not to get too much brine)

Lemon wedges for serving

First we’re going to steam the tempeh to get the bitterness out and also to infuse some flavor with the soy sauce. Crumble the tempeh into a saucier or small pan in little bits. Add the water, soy sauce, oil and bay leaf. The tempeh won’t be fully submerged, but that’s fine. Cover and bring to a boil. Once boiling, let boil for 12 to 15 minutes, until most of the water has evaporated. Stir once during boiling.

Transfer contents to a mixing bowl, remove bay leaf, and mash with a fork. Let cool for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to hasten the cooling process. Make sure the tempeh is barely warm before you proceed, or the cakes may fall apart when you cook them. Add the mayo, mustard, hot sauce, vinegar, chopped bell pepper, spices salt and pepper, and mix well. Add the bread crumbs and nori and use your hands to incorporate.

Once you are ready to form the cakes, preheat a thin layer of oil in a heavy bottomed non-stick skillet (cast iron is great) over medium heat. Pour a few tablespoons of panko into a bowl. Scoop a little less than 1/4 cup batter into your hands and form into a ball. Flatten between your palms and then roll the sides gently with your hands cupped to smooth them. You should have ten 2 1/2 to 3- inch patties. I do them in batches of five. Press them into the panko to lightly coat. They don’t need to be thoroughly covered, just a little bit for some texture.

Fry a batch of five cakes for 4 minutes on one side and flip when dark golden brown. Fry for 2 minutes on the other side and transfer to a paper towel or paper bag to drain. Do your second batch and in the meantime make your remoulade by mixing all the ingredients together in a bowl.

Serve with lemon wedges.

Autumn has come to represent a time of relaxation for me. Leaf kickin’, couch sittin’, pumpkin roastin’, bank robbin’. For the past three years I’ve had a book come out at this time of year and was able to sit back and enjoy all the fame and accolades. But this year…bubkis! Since the brunch book is coming out in the Spring, I am instead in the chaotic and stressful throes of the tail end of book writing. Finishing up recipes, taking photos, ignoring panicked phonecalls from people who need things from me (for anyone reading this whose phone calls I am ignoring, I am not talking about you!)

Since living in Portland kind of feels like I am in a lifelong sleep-away camp, I want to be able to just relax and enjoy things. I mean, I totally do relax, that isn’t exactly it, but lately it feels like my relaxation is at the expense of my responsibility.

I guess I need a morale boost! I’ve worked my little tuchus off on this latest book and I need gratification NOW. So I’m posting some photos. Because I am totally excited about it. And I want you to be excited. But not too excited, like, don’t drool on me or anything. The beautiful and talented Jess of Get Sconed (or jdfunks depending on how much you are on the internet) was assisting me for most of these shots, and she also baked a bunch of the items. Thanks, Jess!

This is an omelet. It’s got tofu, chickpea flour and some other stuff. I am addicted to them (and so is Jess!) It took me like 10 tries to get the recipe right, which is probably the most I’ve ever had to test a recipe in my life. It’s really sad to watch testers have stuff fall apart right in their cast iron pans. What a disappointment for everyone involved! But it finally clicked and they came out nice and light and workable.

From Glengarry Glen Ross:

Ricky Roma: How was her crumbcake?
Shelley Levene: Hmm? Oh… from the store.
Ricky Roma: F*** her.

You have to make crumbcake when you want to close the sale. This is the jam variation of my east coast coffee cake, or crumb cake to the rest of the world. This recipe is an easy but messy one. There are a bunch of variations in the book. I hate when cookbooks pad out their recipes and make a whole new one for something that is just a variation.

Savory scones - tomato rosemary to be specific. Elegant, fragrant and bright friggin’ orange - this is what dream brunches are made of.

These are called Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes. That there on top of them is remoulade. Crab cakes is a hot brunch item in the North Atlantic, so that’s where this came from. Mouthwatering.

Is anyone else addicted to red swiss chard? It’s my leafy green of choice these days. Earthy and bold, here she is showcased in a frittata.

Lots of new waffle recipes are coming your way! These are gingerbread waffles with caramelized figs. And you can actually afford thrift store plates here so that has improved my food porn exponentially. That gorgeous plate was like two bucks!

And finally, there’s me holding waffles. This photo is being used for catalog purposes, but isn’t quite the final cover. Someone came over and curling ironed my hair for this and it shows. But that is the final title. Sorry for people who loved “Crack Of Noon.” The publishers didn’t like it and I was tired of fighting. I think Vegan Brunch is just fine since it’s, well, vegan brunch.

Thanks for indulging me! I am sure that I will post some of these recipes in the coming months if’n y’all want. Let me know what you think and there’s still some time to get your brunch requests in there if you think I might have missed anything.

What exactly is brunch? Chad says there’s no such thing, but he hates cupcakes so can he be trusted? I like to look at other brunch books to get (steal) ideas from. Most of the ones I find are from the seventies, their covers speaking of a time when pineapples-as-garnish and copious amounts of raw egg yolks were what it was all about. The ideas are just as dusty as the front covers, but sometimes they just need a little brushing off.

The recipes run the gamut from the everyday (oatmeal) to the unsurprising (scrambled eggs) to the real stumpers (lasagna?) In New York a typical brunch was dim sum at Vegetarian Dim Sum House at Pell Street. Dragging ass to Chinatown with bedhead and smudged mascara from the night before for some greasy goodness was a welcomed tradition. The sunlight hitting your eyes as the D-train crossed the Manhattan bridge was worth it alone. The rest of the day would be spent nursing your tummy into recovery, but so what? It was Sunday. And who can resist treasure boxes?

The typical cravings I get for brunch are usually smoky and earthy and herby; fennel, mushroom, sage, thyme, tempeh. But the big question is always savory or sweet? My favorite way to decide is “both.” A big plate of scrambled tofu and homefries with burnt crispy pieces of onion, but also a plate of pancakes to split between the table. In the winter top them with cinnamon apples, blueberries and lemon for the summer. A little ginger in the batter always. It never smells quite as warm and homey at any other time of day.

As I come to the end of cooking, baking, rolling, kneading, frying and sprinking for the brunch book I’m no closer to understanding what brunch is exactly. Why is it okay to bite into beer battered tofu at 11 am on a Sunday but not 8 am on a Tuesday? The only answer I really have is that someone, somewhere said so.

This book has been so fun to work on. Some of my recipes testers have been with me since Vegan With A Vengeance, some just joined in, but they’re really the heart and soul and elbow and bellybutton of the book writing process. You’ve probably seen some tester photos floating around, but I’m going to share some of my favorites with you.

Raised Waffles With Baked Cinnamon Apples from tofu666.

Banana Flapjacks from Hoveringdog.

An omelet from Jess.

Stuffed Poblanos from Katie.

I’ll share some more soon! And maybe some recipes if I’m not feeling too mean and lazy. The brunch book will be out next Spring!

Julie Hasson’s steamed seitan sausages have been calling my name for weeks now and who am I to deny a sausage? I actually purchased a new (and needed) steamer just for the occasion. And wow, just wow. What a great method steaming turned out to be!

This is one of the reasons that I sometimes get frustrated with “vegan secrets.” I’ve written about it a little before and I know it comes across as bisque-y, but the reason behind it is nothing but nice. When you have a great new method for, oh, I don’t know, meringue or frosting or mayo- why not share it? I mean, for free - the way Julie has in her video. People will still support you and buy your cookbook, in fact, they might be more apt to buy your cookbook because of recipes they’ve tried from a blog or where ever. My book sales aren’t hurting because the chickpea cutlet recipe is all over the internet.

But besides just increasing book sales, the experience of collaboration can be rewarding as you watch the recipe morph with every kitchen it passes through. It’s like a game of telephone, except at the end you’ll hopefully have an awesome sausage and not a sentence like “You have titty owls on your head.” But what I’m saying is that in collaboration there is community, in community there is strength. In strength there is…I don’t know. But you get the idea, don’t you? Sharing can only help vegan cuisine.

Speaking of morphing, I did deviate from the original recipe to reflect the way I usually cook. Since my steamer could only fit 4 sausages, I had to change the quantities. I also wanted to try to get a little more texture out of them, so I added some mashed pinto beans for a little Mexican flair. The result is a really nice, slightly spicy sausage that would go well with chorizo type dishes. Really, as Julie says in her cooking video, the variations you could come up with are endless. People on the PPK forums have had good luck with their own variations, including an Apple Sage one that I’d like to hit up someday soon.

Spicy Pinto Sausages

Makes 4 big sausages

1/2 cup pinto beans, rinsed and drained

1 cup vegetable broth

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 cloves garlic, grated (with a microplane, or very finely minced)

1 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed, crushed

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Several dashes fresh black pepper

Before mixing your ingredients, get your steaming apparatus ready, bring water to a full boil. The rest of the recipe comes together very quickly.

Have ready 4 sheets of tin foil. In a large bowl, mash the pinto beans until no whole ones are left. Throw all the other ingredients together in the order listed and mix with a fork. Divide dough into 4 even parts (an easy way to do this: split the dough in half and then into quarters). Place one part of dough into tin foil and mold into about a 5 inch log. Wrap dough in tin foil, like a tootsie roll. Don’t worry too much about shaping it, it will snap into shape while it’s steaming because this recipe is awesome.

Place wrapped sausages in steamer and steam for 40 minutes. That’s it! You can unwrap and enjoy immediately or refrigerate until ready to use. I refrigerated some of mine in wrappers and some out of wrappers to see if there would be a difference, but there really wasn’t. They’re really great sliced up and lightly sauteed, and this weekend I’ll be trying them on pizzas.

Check out Julie’s video and see just how easy these are. Thank you, Julie! I love you! <3<3<3 Also - you have titty owls on your head.

A mound of Fronch toast

I hosted a little brunch in my apartment yesterday. It was really nice to have my friend Amy in the kitchen with me. Even though she was supposed to come over a few hours earlier than she did (ahem), it was nice to have someone take the reigns and make the Fronch toast. I think it’s been a year since I’ve had any sort of soiree and the sad part was that I didn’t even realize it until yesterday.

Lately my cooking endeavors have been a little bit stressful. Twice this year I’ve cooked for 300 people, a few times I did huge brunches for 60, a handful of catering gigs and of course the countless weekends doing food photography for Veganomicon. It’s been awhile since I’ve cooked a nice relaxing meal with friends just for the hell of it. This is my reminder to do so more often.

It was also nice that the Sunday NY Times included Veganomicon in their holiday cookbook wrap up. Grace Paley? My friends are never going to hear the end of it. I’m going to be so annoying they probably won’t even want to come over and eat, so scratch everything.

The Times says:

Moskowitz is a tattooed 34-year-old Brooklynite with punk spirit and an old soul; spending time with her cheerfully politicized book feels like hanging out with Grace Paley. She and her cooking partner, Terry Hope Romero, are as crude and funny when kibbitzing as they are subtle and intuitive when putting together vegan dishes that are full of non-soggy adult tastes ? they throw a lot of capers and Dijon and spices and vinegar and shallots around. Don?t look here for bowls of vegan mush. Do look for an excellent roasted fennel and hazelnut salad, bok choy cooked with crispy shallots and sesame seeds, hot and sour soup with wood ears and napa cabbage and a porcini-wild rice soup they say is ?perfect for serving your yuppie friends.?

Brunch still piping hot

Did you know that VwaV started off as a brunch book? The original book proposal was a pitch for “The Crack Of Noon: A Vegan Brunch Book.” Know why? Because I love brunch! Food just doesn’t taste as good any other day of week or time of day than the weekend at around 1 pm. Anyway, my publishers wanted an all-purpose cookbook instead and I’m happy it went the way it did, but I may revisit the brunch idea someday.

When I was a teenager I had this awful habit of making everything taste the same. Like, all the spices that went in the scrambled tofu would go into the home fries. Then I realized that the key to happiness was: if you put the fennel in this, leave it out of that. And also - not everything needs cumin! I needed to graffiti my kitchen cupboards with that one.

This morning I didn’t want the same old scrambled tofu, so I made biscuits with white bean gravy, tempeh and sweet potato hash and garlicky kale. The gravy was flavored with sage and thyme, the hash was spiked with fennel seeds and a little soy sauce and the kale was super simple and super garlicky. The biscuits were biscuit flavored. And now I’m laying in bed totally full, the heat finally came on and the kitties are snuggling with each other. I’m living the American dream.