Casual Vegan

Hello tumblr. It's me, naranjaspencer.

Today I have something that isn't a recipe I followed. See, sometimes I like to get creative with my food and make something new, because I think very highly of my talents and ideas. Thankfully, this turned out pretty good, so my ego is intact and I can continue to over-estimate my skills.

Nutty Mashed Sweet Potatoes!

For this recipe, you will need the following ingredients (I did not take measurements because I am poor at preparation):

Sweet potatoes (I had 2.33 lbs, roughly) Roasted Cashews (I'd estimate that I had about .66 of a cup, or perhaps a full cup) Almond Milk (not a clue how much I used) Margarine (same as almond milk) Honey (or agave nectar, used probably .5 tablespoons) Salt and Pepper to taste (I see that phrase on other cooking sites and using it makes me feel like a real cookerman)

(all of the ingredients that i took a picture of - it’s incomplete, just like me)

The first thing you'll need to do is think really hard about how you can improve sweet potatoes and turn them into a complete meal, with protein. This is where ideas are born, and after a few minutes, snap your fingers and flick on the lightbulb over your head because you've got it! Nuts! Sweet potatoes are sweet and you could swear you've had nuts in yams or something once and that wasn't terrible!

Consider for a moment though: you're in uncharted waters. You have no recipe. Are yams even sweet potatoes? You're unsure, but confident in your inspired ideas. Press on my culinary explorer. Press on.

Now that you've imagined a dish, it's time to make it a reality. You'll need to buy all of those ingredients, so head out to your local grocer and purchase them all. To get the proper casual vegan experience, look at yams, then look at "white ----- sweet potatoes" and decide maybe yams aren't sweet potatoes after all. Purchase the "white ----- sweet potatoes," and all the other ingredients you don't already have. If you don't have leftover cashews like I did, you can buy those or any other kind of nut. Meredith suggested pecans, and I agree. Pistachios might also be delicious. I had cashews on hand, though, so that's what I'm using.

Go home. Roast your cashews. I had to google it but, dear reader, I will provide you with a handy guide. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Toss your cashews into an ungreased baking dish, I used a loaf pan because the guide I read said to use something with high sides so you could just shake it to mix. Put a big ol' dab of margarine into the middle of it. Knit your brow. Margarine isn't a liquid. Haha, why'd you think that would work without microwaving the margarine first? Well, it'll melt in the oven, just put in there for a second. It'll prolly be fine.

After ~60 seconds, pull the loaf pan back out and check your margarine. To your horror, it will not have melted at all. Knit your brow even harder. Begin to worry. You're not making this for anyone but yourself but what if it isn't good?! What if your ideas aren't great?! What if you mess it up?!

YOLO, dear reader. YOLO. Put it back in the oven for 4-5 minutes. Once that time is up, you'll notice the margarine has actually retained its shape despite clearly having mostly melted. This is a sign, God has frowned upon your cooking efforts, and is now laughing at the futility with which you struggle. Grab a fork and mix the nuts with the margarine, it will turn to liquid quickly. Your dish is saved, and your confidence is restored, but your hubris has left you damned and you can never regain God's favor.

After you've mixed the nuts a bit, put the dish back into the oven for 5-7 more minutes. You'll be looking for the nuts to darken a bit, I recommend going on the short end of the timer and checking them. When they've finished, pull them out and transfer them to a dish, but put a paper towel between the dish and the nuts to absorb the extra oil. Leave them. Take a break and ponder your sins. I spent an entire day mulling over my godforsaken existence, but you should only need... however much time it takes for the nuts to dry. I wasn't keeping track so you'll have to figure that out yourself.

Next, you'll need to chop up your sweet potatoes. Don't be intimidated by them, they may have a curved shape and you may be just atrocious at chopping, but if you believe in yourself, you can do anything! The important thing is that they're all roughly the same size, and smaller chunks will cook faster, so bear that in mind when cutting.

Wait, dear reader. What's this? You've begun to cut your potatoes and you noticed the flesh is white?! No! Curse your word-skipping brain, you thought it said white skin but it really said white flesh! Now you truly know the extent of God's wrath. Curse the heavens, and quickly perform a google search to ensure that sweet potatoes can actually be white fleshed and that you didn't buy some sort of exotic bitter potato. They can, so continue chopping as though nothing has changed. You don't know how these will taste, but it's too late for you now.

(what hath God wrought?)

Cover the chunked potatoes in .5 inches to 1 inch of water, preferably starting with hot water, and set it on your stove on medium high - high heat depending on your pot size and how many potatoes you have in there. While your potatoes are boiling, use a food processor to chop some nuts. If you don't have a food processor, you can use a knife, but, haha, do you really think you're capable of chopping something as small as nuts? You may have seen chefs do that fancy rapid chop on television, but your knife skills are nowhere near their level, you could never replicate such an advanced technique. No, if you don't have a food processor, you're better off giving up, or quickly running to the store to buy one as your potatoes boil. Or you could use a blender probably.

Chopping the nuts will take seconds if you've followed my above instructions, leaving you with several minutes while the potatoes boil. I did the dishes at this point in the recipe, but if you have no dishes to do, you could reflect more on the religious crisis you had a few paragraphs back. What will you do now that God has abandoned you? That's Christian God that you've offended. Maybe you could convert to some other religion, or even become a pagan. I can't tell you how to live your life, though, you filthy blasphemer.

The potatoes will be done once you can slip a fork into them easily. If you think they're done, you should probably give it two to three more minutes to ensure all the chunks are cooked, not just the small to medium ones. Drain the water and find your potato masher. You do have a potato masher, don't you? No? Well, you can use your roommates' muddler. No one knows what that's for anyway, so you may as well use it to mash potatoes. If you can't leech off of your roommates, bend a fork until the tines are perpendicular to the handle and use that. To start, toss in a bit of almond milk and some margarine. This is the tricky part, because I never take measurements for making mashed potatoes. Mix in a little of each or either until it's fully incorporated, then give it a taste. Once the taste and texture are to your liking (I prefer mine to be very creamy), you can stop mashing. Stir in the nuts and the honey, taste again, then add salt and pepper until you're satisfied. Serve! The goal of this dish is to be a meal in one bowl, which means you can either serve it on its own, or as a side. I recommend a hearty, savory main course, if you serve this as a side.

(as you can see, this is completely indistinguishable from regular mashed potatoes - surprise your guests by not telling them you made sweet potatoes!)

Hey tumblr.

Now I know what you're thinking: "Chickpeas? That's absurd! I've clearly subscribed to the blog of a madman." You're exactly right, you have subscribed to the blog of a madman, but chickpeas aren't absurd! I have learned from Meredith that chickpea... juice, for lack of a better term, is used sometimes to replace eggs in vegan recipes, and after making these, I'm sold on it.

Chickpea Peanut Butter Cookies!

For this recipe, you're going to need a lot of trust in your best friend, because the thought of using chickpeas in cookies when you've only ever used them in curry is intimidating. Thankfully, I trust Meredith implicitly, and we were cooking these together over skype.

You'll also need:

1 can of chickpeas (mine had salt added, I didn't notice until too late) Vanilla Dairy-free chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate) Sweetener (I used maple syrup, Meredith used agave nectar) Creamy peanut butter Baking powder a food processor

(the ingredients together - I was initially going to use sugar, but decided against it)

If you're a long-time subscriber for all three of our previous posts, you'll know that I frequently use Trader Joe's brand items, but didn't name any of them in the ingredients list up there. I feel at this point the Trader Joe's is implied, but since you asked, yes, I did mostly get the ingredients from TJs. I appreciate your interest in my shopping habits, dear reader.

The first step is to start your skype call. Everything is better when done with a friend, and baking is no exception. Once you've made contact, ask your friend about the ingredients one more time, because you didn't write them down. Here is a good place to get started on your cooking worries. You bought chickpeas with added salt, and you left your agave nectar at work, so basically you've already failed to make these cookies. But the great part about friends is that they're comforting! Meredith said it'd probably be fine and to use maple syrup, which is something I hadn't even considered but now that I know that's an option, I'm not sure I'll ever make peanut butter cookies with regular sugar again. Honey is also an option, and it really makes me question why any PB cookie recipes call for sugar at all.

Meredith had the foresight to buy semi-sweet Ghiradelli chips made with soy milk (I think?) but I bought actual dark chocolate bars. If you're cooking with a friend, buy the chocolate bars like I did so you awkwardly slow down your companion while they wait for you to chop them into uneven chunks. This slowed-down period offers you a great opportunity to talk with your friend about whatever happens to be going on in your lives.

Suddenly remember that you need to preheat your oven to 350, then open up and drain your chickpeas. You'll want to drain out as much of the liquid as possible because chickpea juice is icky. For the true casual vegan experience, get a little bit on your hands and shiver uncomfortably. Off-camera, though, because you don't want your friend to see you being weird. Dump your drained chickpeas into the food processor and worry that it's not large enough to handle all of the ingredients. Hold it up to your webcam and your friend will agree that it might not be, but will provide alternate solutions like using a potato masher. Take a moment here to begin a fruitless search for your roommate's masher, but it was lost in the move and no one in your house makes mashed potatoes, so you won't find one. Decide to use the food processor. Begin praying to whatever god or goddess you've invoked in my previous recipes. Ask your friend for reassurance.

Next, add in the baking powder... and all of the other stuff except for the chocolate chips. This is a really simple recipe, which is part of the appeal. Double check with your friend on all the ingredient amounts, because you're really nervous that you'll get it wrong, but it's okay because she'll add her stuff at the same time as you so you know you've got it right. To continue being awkward, make sure it takes you an absurd amount of time to get peanut butter out of the jar and into the measuring cup, then from the measuring cup into the food processor. Your friend will complete that step in about a third of the time it took you to do it, and you'll secretly wonder what forbidden cooking techniques got her peanut butter to not stick to the spoon so much.

(Meredith’s blender with the ingredients together)

Blend all the ingredients together. It should be very slightly chunky with a good, thick consistency. Ask your partner if you aren't certain, because you won't be certain, and when you hold the bowl of the food processor up to your webcam, you'll learn that it isn't high enough resolution for her to really tell. Tell yourself that it's probably fine, then decide against that and give it another few seconds.

Once everything is good and food processed, add in your chocolate chips and use the food processor to distribute them. You may notice that this isn't really moving them from the top of the dough to the bottom. Ignore that feeling, even though you're right. Uneven distribution continues with the uneven theme you set when chopping up your chocolate earlier.

Take a bite of the dough here at your friend's suggestion. It's good! The next step is the hardest, but now you know that it'll all be worth it. Spray down a cookie sheet and get a bowl full of water. Dip your fingers into the water, then scoop the dough out and onto your cookie sheet. I don't like getting my hands dirty, and if you're like me, you can take an extra step here to dance around a little bit and wince the same way you did for the chickpea juice above. Your friend will see this and have a giggle at your expense, but that's what friendship is all about, shared experiences and laughter, and frankly you look ridiculous. It's just cookie dough, you can eat it off your fingers, why are you even dancing around like that?

After your icky-hands-dance, clean your hands off and return with a fork. Wet the fork and roll the tines into the cookies to mash them down a bit and get that neat peanut butter cookie pattern that you've always wondered about. Put the sheet into the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes (mine were fairly large and took about 23 minutes).

At this point, you have time to kill, so I recommend sharing an embarrassing anecdote with your friend. Feel free to use mine if you don't have one. Tumblr, I am 25 years old. A few days ago, I was in the store with my roommate, looking for some honey. He wandered off to get whatever he needed, leaving me in the honey aisle. I was there for several minutes, long enough for him to get back to me and wonder what was taking me so long. I told him "I'm trying to find honey that was made by bees." Please reflect on that statement and my age for a moment. George let out a small laugh, then realized I was serious. Apparently, all honey is made by bees, and "clover" or "orange blossom" refers to the nectar the bees used to make it, rather than being artificial honey made from those plants. Huh. You learn something new every day.

That story doesn't take long enough to fill 20 minutes, and I doubt your embarrassing anecdote will either, but if you're cooking with your best friend, you'll have something to talk about. Friendship is the greatest, dear readers. Coming home to chat with Meredith is the emotional equivalent of coming in on a cold winter day and wrapping up with a blanket and a book in front of the fireplace. Our conversations are warm and comfortable and entertaining. I hope you have a friendship like that.

Pull your cookies out of the oven and spatula them off of the cookie sheet onto a cooling rack. Let them cool for a few minutes before enjoying!

(one of my cookies - the iPhone 5S is not known for its camera)

(all of Meredith’s cookies - her lighting is better, because she is more skilled than I am)

I liked this recipe a lot, and I want to make it again. It's extremely simple and low-budget, since I had most of the ingredients on hand already. The cookies have a fantastic texture from the chickpeas, sort of like a finer crunchy peanut butter. Mine weren't as sweet as normal peanut butter cookies, but I think that was a function of having salted chickpeas and dark chocolate. The maple syrup was amazing in them, there was a very subtle hint of it that I'd like to enhance next time, so I'll probably use more maple syrup and a little less peanut butter or a little more chickpeas to not mess up the consistency. They would go very well with vanilla soy milk, I definitely recommend having that on hand for dipping purposes. I give this recipe a 9 out of 10 which sounds really high but I'm a positive guy and this hits a lot of my high notes: inexpensive, simple, fast, baking, and sweet. And I got to make it with Meredith, which always improves the experience!

Hey tumblr.

So it’s your turn to make dinner for your roommates but you’re like me and you’re terrible at preparation, but great at projecting your flaws and insecurities onto others. What you need is an easy meal that’s vegan so you can post about it on your blog but is still good enough that your picky roommate will eat the entire thing. I’ve got just the recipe:

Trader Joe’s Vegan Burgers!

There’s a Trader Joe’s a ten minute walk from my house, and it accounts for solidly 90% of my grocery shopping. Maybe Trader Joe himself will one day thank me for all the free advertising he’s getting on my tiny, tiny blog. Aside from their deceptive cheeses, they’re pretty vegan-friendly, which means they’ll be featured on here a lot.

For this recipe, you’ll need:

Dr. Praeger's California Burgers

Vegan buns (I think most buns are vegan?)

Condiments of your choice (ketchup, mustard, dill relish for me)

Cheeze of your choice (if you spell it with a Z, it means it’s not made with dairy!)

Additional toppings of your choice (I used onions and romaine lettuce)

Trader Joe’s Zucchini Fries! (I don’t have a picture of these, but imagine breaded zucchini, because it’s breaded zucchini - there’s no egg in the breading though)

(the ingredients together - pretend i didn’t take this picture afterward, and that there are zucchini fries and buns in there)

My first step when making anything for my roommates is to put it off for a week. I have a picky roommate and a roommate who loves vegetables and enjoys the idea of meatless dishes some of the time, but the picky roommate (we’ll call him George) has heavy influence on whether or not I cook. If you don’t have a roommate to talk you out of cooking tonight, please let me help you.

“Hey, wanna order pizza instead?”

“We’re going out for dinner tonight.”

“Hey, wanna order chinese?”

Feel free to repeat any of those as many times as you need. It only takes until the first syllable of “pizza” to get me to abandon my plans to cook.

Now that you’ve put off making these burgers until you’re concerned for the buns you’ve bought, it’s time to stop procrastinating, buckle down, and get cookin’! Start by preheating the oven to 400 and pulling out your zucchini fries. Briefly consider spraying the pan down with some spray-can oil, but decide against it. After all, it’s probably fine, and if it isn’t, your stress and self-deprecating remarks later will guilt your roommates into complimenting your food! Once the oven is preheated, put your zucchini fries in, set the timer for 15 minutes, and stop cooking.

This dish has no preparation, which is basically the best part about it! You can actually spend the entire fifteen minutes here worrying that you aren’t going to finish making dinner by the time you have to leave, or worrying that dinner will be finished too quickly and will be done before your second roommate gets home from work. Ideally you’ll have something on either end of the clock to worry about that leaves you with a narrow window in which to cook and eat. If you’re not stressed out, are you truly cooking?

Continue to worry until the timer beeps. The first alarm reminds you to flip the zucchini fries. Simple enough, pull them out of the oven, grab a spatula and try to flip them by sectors. If you followed my instructions above, this should be a real struggle, because you didn’t spray oil on the pan. As it turns out, it wasn’t fine, and a lot of the bigger pieces are kind of gooey on the inside while the bottom sticks to the pan. Press onward, however, and do your best to flip all of them. Put them back in the oven, sigh deeply and rub your hair a little bit, and set the timer for 7 more minutes.

An important step here is for your roommate to arrive home early. Her early arrival means you could have started cooking earlier and you’d have more time to finish cooking and eating. Make sure to check the clock because you’re actually somehow eight minutes behind schedule even though you’re using an oven timer that counted down fifteen minutes and you started at 7:30.

Once both roommates are home you can ask (we’ll call her Sally) Sally if you can borrow part of the onion she bought. What Sally doesn’t know is that you’re never going to return the onion, but she is a kind-hearted woman, so she’ll give it to you anyway. While the time ticks down to the next alarm, slice the onion a couple times and break off some romaine lettuce, or do whatever you need to prepare your condiments. You can also take this time to slice any cheeze you have, assuming you’re stuck living in the past and don’t have pre-sliced cheeze. I’m stuck living in the past, so I paused here for a moment to reflect on my middle school years, where I thought “staring” was a synonym for “flirting.”

Keep staring into the distance until the timer brings you back to reality. Finish slicing the cheeze, then reset the timer for eight more minutes. Pull out a non-stick pan big enough to cook one burger for each person eating with you, get it warmed up to medium heat, then place in your patties. Ideally, all of this will be achieved in 60 seconds, but nothing has ever lived up to your ideals, so it will take more like 3 minutes and you’ll question whether or not the cooking guide you’re reading is really the best way to learn to cook.

Four minutes left on the clock leaves you with three extra minutes after the timer’s run. You’ll have to estimate and count yourself. Thankfully, these patties don’t take any real interaction, so you can keep time by Mississippis to one-hundred-eighty Mississippis as you unload the zucchini fries. Count out loud so your roommates can question your sanity.

Once you’ve reached one-hundred-fifty Mississippis, you’ll want to start doubting that you’re keeping an accurate count. Let this doubt overrun you around one-hundred-seventy Mississippis, and flip your patties. My motto is “it’s probably fine,” and I’ve found that if you repeat that enough, it’ll probably be fine. Turn the timer on for five more minutes to break the spell of counting, and gently set your cheese slices atop each burger. Be sure to note that one is cooked better than the other two, which you can correctly attribute to uneven pan heating and poor patty placement. Shift them all into the middle, but not that close, because you don’t want the different cheezes touching. Haha, that would be disgusting, and you’re cooking for others today.

This is probably the hardest part of the recipe. Earlier, Sally asked you if the vegan cheezes get melty, to which you confidently replied “Yeah, I made grilled cheeze the other day.” You know George isn’t going to really care for the meal, but you actually kind of want Sally to like it and say encouraging things to you, so now you need to stare at her patty and will her cheeze to melt. It won’t help. You sliced it too thick. Why doesn’t Daiya come presliced like Chao does? If you’re religious, you could try to pray here. Some of you may consider putting the lid on your pan, but that will trap in any escaping moisture, and you want your patties to be crisp more than you want melted cheeze. The Chao will have softened by now, which will instill in you a false hope that the Daiya will too. Allow yourself to embrace that hope before looking at the timer because there’s only thirty seconds left and it’s not going to make a difference.

It’s time to eat! Before serving, remember to make a self-deprecating remark about the zucchini fries. This way, you pre-empt any criticism from George and Sally will say something nice, but it doesn’t really count because she just likes zucchini.

(The final product - a casual, easy meal for a Monday night after work)

To talk seriously for a moment, I definitely recommend this dish. A lot of vegan food seems to be intimidating to cook, like you slice up forty vegetables, sautee some tofu, spiralize a cucumber, toss it all in some oil and vinegar, and then boil it, or some equally complicated set of instructions. I’m atrocious at cutting vegetables and preparing things in an efficient order, so I love food like this. It’s very palatable, too, the Trader Joe’s garden burgers have a good texture - crisp on the outside, a little soft on the inside, and the flavor is mild and hearty enough that you can modify it in any way you modify a regular burger. I like the classics, so I had onions, lettuce, relish, ketchup, Chao cheeze, and mustard, and throughout all that, the burger’s flavor didn’t get overwhelmed, it served as a great base for the toppings to work together. Even George enjoyed the burgers, and he’s always skeptical of meat-substitute meals.

Despite the problems I had with the zucchini fries, I enjoyed them immensely. Any of the smaller pieces that were totally crisp on the outside were absolutely perfect, better in my opinion than regular fries. Zucchini fries have a faintly sweet flavor to them that’s somewhat like sweet potato fries, but they have a different texture once you bite into them. I think they go great with ketchup, or if you’re serving as vegetarian instead of vegan (or have vegan ranch), they’re amazing with ranch dressing.

Hey there! I’m Mer and I am an actual vegan. I’ve been tenuously incepting the vegan agenda into my friend Naranjaspencer for a while now and I’m incredibly excited that he’s willing to go on animal-free cooking adventure with me!

I’m a huge proponent of eating well and making your calories count so I’m looking forward to sharing some healthy recipe’s and tips here. My first contribution to this blog, however, is a quick tour through vegan junk food hell. It sounds like I’m complaining, but these snacks actually aren’t too bad as far as eat-your-feelings arsenals go. I would even go so far as to say that I would recommend some of these as a decent alternative to your typical couch-potato munchies. They’re certainly no substitution for good ol’ fruits and veggies, so definitely snack in moderation with these guys. Now, without further ado, lets get this show on the road!

Hello tumblr! I'm naranjaspencer, and I'm a casual vegan! Well, really, I'm a casual everything, I'm not even professional at my job.

Anyway, I'm making this blog because I want to chronicle my misadventures in the kitchen as I noncommittally delve into veganism. It's important for me to note here that I am not vegan. I'm just a young man who loves all food and doesn't discriminate based on protein source. The main reason I cook and eat anything vegan, though, is for my best friend, Meredith. We live on opposite sides of the country, but every week or two, we get together on skype to share a recipe, cook, and eat. She's vegan, so everything we make is vegan, and the food is so good that I have started to make (or attempted to make - this is foreshadowing) vegan food on my own. Food is one of the greatest joys and experiences that two people can share, and there is nothing I look forward to more than cooking with Meredith.

That said, tonight I have my first (probably one of the easiest) vegan recipes! It's not even a recipe! Nor is it vegan completely by accident! I call it:

Deceptively Not Vegan Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

To make this, you'll need good intentions and an inability to read labels completely, plus Trader Joe's Soy Cheese Alternative Slices, Country Crock (or your favorite non-dairy butter substitute), white bread of your choice that doesn't have milk in it, and Campbell's tomato soup.

The first step is buying the Trader Joe's Soy Cheese Alternative Slices and assuming they're vegan. You'll find out later that you're wrong, but for the moment feel good because Trader Joe's is on both sides of the country and you can tell your vegan friend to try it.

Next, make a nerve-wracking trip to Walmart or some other store that sells the other things I listed for my grilled cheese. You can probably also acquire TJ's version of each of those things, but I wasn't at Trader Joe's today, and I really like Campbell's tomato soup. Suprisingly, Walmart's Great Value white bread doesn't contain milk as an ingredient, though it does say it may contain traces of milk, so don't use that if you're lactose intolerant or have some other dairy-related health issues. I think traces is okay for vegans since it's not intentional, though I didn't actually ask Meredith to know for sure.

(the ingredients together - i am an atrocious photographer and my camera is an iphone)

Now that you have everything together, it's time to read the label on your Trader Joe's Soy Slices! It's 99% lactose free, and cheddar flavor, which lists milk as like the third ingredient in the cheddar flavoring. At this point, you have a couple choices. If it's not late in the day, you really want some vegan cheese, and you aren't too tired, you can run down to a store and pick up actual vegan cheese. Meredith recommends Daiya, which can be found at Whole Foods. If you're not vegan, though, I recommend just eating it because it's surprisingly good! Definitely feel a small sense of humorous guilt, though, and make good-natured jokes about it despite being somewhat disappointed. For future reference, from an actual vegan, always check the label because cheeses made for lactose intolerant folks are sometimes mixed in with the actual vegan cheeses, despite not necessarily being vegan, as in this case.

(more like traitor joe amirite)

Time to grill some cheese! If you don't know how to grill cheese, I'll outline it for you here.

Get your bread and your cheese singles and your margarine (or whatever butter substitute). Spread the margarine on two slices of bread, heat up a medium frying pan to middle heat and drop one slice of the bread butter-substitute-side-down into the pan. Maybe not literally drop, but like gently set it there. Now, the most important part is to use TWO slices of your soy slices. One isn't nearly enough, and three gets too excessive and has gooey cheese inconveniently spilling out as you're trying to eat it. Two slices per sandwich is basically perfect. Gently remove them from the package and note that the cheese is somehow slimy, off-color, and stiffer than Kraft Singles, which is your favorite grilled cheese cheese. These things are all alright, because you really like grilled cheese and have decided not to judge a cheese substitute by it's slip cover. Place your two slices onto the unmargarined side of the bread, then place your second margarined slice of bread on top, butter-substitute side up.

That was the easy part. See, you're always worried when you make grilled cheese because you frequently burn the first sandwich you make. It's so hard to tell when it's ready to be flipped, and you never seem to get it right the first time, plus the pan you chose heats unevenly... Make sure you're building up a little bit of nervousness, then prematurely flip your grilled cheese, noting that your vegetable oil spread hasn't browned at all and you definitely jumped the gun. Don't flip it back over! You're committed to this side now, so watch your grilled cheese and ponder on your culinary sins. It would sure be nice if there was a guide that told you how to determine when to flip your grilled cheese.

After contemplating for several minutes on your poor kitchen choices, you'll want to flip the sandwich again. At this point you should be good to flip it, because the pan will have fully heated and so this side will cook faster than the other side, which only half-cooked. Keep a close eye on it because now the half-cooked side will brown up even faster than the side you just finished, and you don't want to burn it! You're only cooking for yourself, but you are your harshest critic. Also you have to eat it, so try not to mess it up for the sake of edibility.

A few more minutes on that side, and you can pull it off the pan! Congratulations, you've made Deceptively Not Vegan Grilled Cheese!

The tomato soup is much simpler. If you're using Campbell's, just dump a can into the smallest pot you own and add one cansworth of water to it, then set it to middle heat on your stove and stir it a little bit. The timing here is important because you don't want to let your grilled cheese get cold, and you don't want to have unmixed, unheated tomato soup. I recommend starting it while cooking your second-to-last grilled cheese out of however many you're making (I made two, and so started the soup while worrying I was overcooking the first grilled cheese). It doesn't take very long, and you just have to stir it a couple times to make sure it doesn't get gross tomato clumps. If you get gross tomato clumps, don't fret, this can easily be fixed by throwing out the whole pot and starting over completely.

Once both of these are finished, you have your dinner! It's much easier than my several paragraph explanation would imply, but the existential crises of cooking is an important part of the culinary experience. Every minor kitchen failure should wear at your self-esteem until you reach your lowest point right as the food has finished, and then you can comfort yourself with food!

Speaking of, let's talk about the food for a moment. I was actually really skeptical of Soy Slices. I know I said I don't discriminate based on protein source up there, but I like dairy more than any other food group. My milk consumption is measured in gallons per week, and I eat a significant amount of cheese. While I don't care if we're replacing meat in a dish with something that isn't meat, I'm always a little more hesitant with dairy because of my love for it. TJ's Soy Slices don't fail, though! They're very creamy, if a little saltier than my normal beloved Kraft Singles, and while they have a slight... soy aftertaste, it's not unpleasant. It goes well in the tomato soup, and on the whole if you have a reason to avoid dairy but really like grilled cheese, I highly recommend it. This is one of my all-time favorite comfort meals, so it's good to know that there's an alternative in case my intestines fail me and I have to cut back on my lactose.