Vegan Chili Cook-Off Deep in the Heart of Texas

This past weekend, Society of PEACE took a roadtrip to Austin, Texas to compete in the 20th annual Lone Star Vegetarian Chili Cook-Off. Don't let the sign below fool you, this was an all vegan event held at the Austin Farmers Market :-)

17 teams from around our beautiful state competed in the competition. Each team was charged with making 5 gallons of vegan chili. In case you've never had to make 5 gallons of chili yourself, here is what all the ingredients look like.... thank goodness all those cans are recyclable!
After the vegan police inspected all of our ingredients, we got started bright and early (around 8am) chopping vegetables, draining beans, measuring spices, and getting everything prepped to start our first batch of chili.
At high noon, the doors were opened to the public for chili tasting. Before we knew it, there people were lined up at our booth! From then on, it was an almost constant stream of filling up chili bowls, serving up cornbread, selling baked goods, and handing out vegan literature. With all the running around trying to make additional batches of chili, I barely had time to say hello to Diann from Eat'n Veg'n who stopped by for a sample. It was nice to see a familiar face!
So did I manage to actually eat any chili during the cook-off? The answer is, of course, yes. We did several tastings of our own chili to get the seasoning right, and John was nice enough to run out into the crowd for brief breaks from kitchen duty and bring me back almost all of the other chili entries.
Chili wasn't the only vegan food being served up at the Society of PEACE booth. We made several batches of cornbread (one with jalapeno and one without) that were complimentary with chili samples while supplies lasted (it went fast!). To soothe the taster's taste buds, we offered grapes as a palette cleanser. And to finish with something sweet, as a fundraiser we offered Stacey's pumpkin oatmeal cookies and my pumpkin pie brownies as well as chocolate and vanilla cupcakes (Happy National Vanilla Cupcakes Day by the way) swirled with Society of PEACE colors.
As the competition came to a close, we gathered around to hear the results of the judges voting as well as the crowd favorite. Imagine our surprise when we heard Society of PEACE called out... the judges awarded our chili 2nd prize!! It was a rewarding finish to a crazy day. I had such a great time making chili with our awesome team: Sergio, Stacey, John, Kristen, Tosh, and Cairo (he's hiding between Stacey and I). Be sure to check out Stacey's post about the day on her blog Te Amo Vegano! And Tara posted about her experience as a chili tester on her blog My So-Called Vegan Life!
Congratulations to everyone who competed!! And the next time someone asks you how a vegan could ever survive deep in the heart of Texas... send them to the Lone Star Chili Cook-Off!

PPK: The Texas Gathering

That's right, a room full of vegans with lots of homemade vegan food, two adorable chihuahuas named Charlie and Betsy, the game Apples to Apples, and all in Texas! This past weekend I made the drive up to Austin to attend a ppk potluck, done up Texas style. I made cupcake toppers especially for the event (oh, and cupcakes too... lemon macadamia with lemon buttercream and chocolate with peanut butter filling and chocolate ganash), because every Texas event has to include our lone-star studded flag (and here is a fun factoid for yall, we are the only state allowed to fly the Texas flag at the same height as the US flag because we entered the nation by a treaty rather than annexation).

Look at all the food!! For more food porn, visit here.

Here is my plate, I think I sampled pretty much every dish that was there. Let's see if I can remember them all (from the top moving clockwise): lasagna, macaroni salad, tempeh salad (which I also made), fruit, pasta salad with tofu, enchiladas, and in the center some carrots with ranch dip. I ate my dessert plate so fast I didn't take a picture, but I had a toffee bar, a chocolate chip cookie, and a cupcake.
And since someone asked for the recipe on the ppk boards, I figured I would list it here too. All ingredient amounts are approximate since I usually just toss them in and taste test until it's right. There were a few tempeh virgins at the potluck, and I didn't hear any complaints!
Southern Tempeh Salad
Ingredients:
1 8 oz. package of tempeh
1/2 cup vegan mayo
1 T vegan sour cream (optional)
2 T chopped fresh dill
1 T fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup red graped, halved
1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

1. Cut the tempeh into cubes and steam for approximately 10 to 12 minutes. Place tempeh in a bowl. Mash the tempeh with a fork so that no whole cubes remain.
2. Once the tempeh has cooled a bit, add mayo, sour cream , dill and lemon juice. Adjust amounts as necessary.
3. Add chopped celery, grapes, and walnuts and combine. Season with salt and pepper. 4. Chill and serve.

Here's the Texas Gathering crew! I had fun getting to know other ppkers/Texas vegans. Of course, we all kept forgetting everyone's actual names and called them instead by the ppk name. I almost made cupcake toppers with everyone's avatar... next time I guess. Hopefully at our next gathering, I won't be the only Houstonian!

And a trip to Austin in the spring wouldn't be complete without gratuitous bluebonnet pictures. I thought about posing one of my little cuppies with them (as pretty much every parent does with their child), but was afraid the sun might melt the buttercream. Can you spot the ladybug that instead posed for me in the picture?

A special thanks to the ppkers who organized and hosted this monumental event!

Chili When It's Not So Chilly

There is nothing better than eating vegan chili at chili cook-off in Austin, TX in 80 degree weather. Okay, maybe a few degrees cooler would've been better, but still. This weekend we drove three hours up to Austin for the Lone Star Vegetarian Network's 19th Annual Vegetarian Chili Cook-Off. They should just rename it a vegan chili cook-off because that's what it was (all entries had to be vegan).

Ten dollars buys you entry to the Austin Zoo (a rescue zoo) and all the chili tasting your stomach can handle! We got to vote on our favorite of over a dozen chilis that we tasted. My vote went to a smoky white bean chili, but it was a tough call. There was everything from traditional chili to raw chili and everything in between. You wouldn't think that a few bites of each chili would fill you up, but then you'd be wrong! I could barely move by the end (although I did manage to save room for some vegan pumpkin carrot cake with cream cheese frosting ... don't ask me how, I think I have a separate compartment in my stomach for dessert).
We also got to walk through the zoo and see some of the rescued animals. There was some excitement when one of the monkeys escaped and was hovering in the trees between the lions and the tigers (it ended happy)! Regular zoos have always troubled me, I love seeing these beautiful animals up close, but hate the fact that we have taken ownership of them. I don't know too much about this Austin Zoo, but from what I've gathered from their website, it seems different.
Another highlight of the festival.... I got to meet Diann from Eat'n Veg'n and her son Chase as well! My first encounter with a fellow vegan blogger! It was so nice to meet you Diane!!

The rest of the weekend was spent biking and running along Town Lake, one of our favorite things to do in Austin. We also got to try three different veg-friendly eateries. First, after a grueling (okay, it wasn't grueling, but my butt is certainly sore from it!) bike ride, we drove down to "the Drag" near UT campus and went to Dhaba Joy for their famous Oatscreme! I got the chocolate-vanilla swirl. Very different from soy ice cream I thought, but still delicious. Also, I couldn't resist all of their vegan cupcakes, so I went for a mini chocolate-mint cupcake. Yum. And I didn't have to bake it! It's almost a good thing I don't live in Austin, otherwise I would be buying cupcakes right and left!

Our other two food outings were for brunch on Sunday at Mother's Cafe and dinner Saturday night at Mr. Natural's. Even though brunch made us quite full before the chili tasting, it was awesome to be able to go out for breakfast and not have to scour the menu for vegan options. I had breakfast tacos. My heart had originally been set on pancakes, but since they have just re-opened due to a fire, the menu was limited. Unfortunately our experience at Mr. Natural's is not much to write about. The food was cold, service was slow, and the guacamole and salsa were unforgiveable (especially for being in Texas). It was a big disappointment, which I hate to say about vegetarian restaurants, but I have to be honest.

Alright, so enough about Austin. Does this count as a post for VeganMoFo? If not, I will do better tomorrow!