October 15, 2023 – Hispanic and Italian American Heritage Month

Sunday, October 15, 2023
VBC Meeting #128: Hispanic and Italian Heritage Month
Host of the month: Quakertown Park
Location: Denton, TX

Since we had an intersection of Hispanic and Italian American Heritage Months, we celebrated with a cultural fusion of the two for our Vegan Bake Club theme. With nice October weather, we met up to eat and play at Quakertown Park in Denton.

This is what we made:

Billy: Pizza Chiles Rellenos

Billy roasted tri-colored mini peppers at 425°F in the oven. While the peppers cooked, he made a filling of Daiya Mozzarella shreds, crushed tomato, and chopped Field Roast Pepperoni and a batter of flour, non-alcoholic beer, garlic powder, paprika, and salt. After precooking the peppers, he filled, battered, and deep fried them.

Lauren: Sopapilla Cannoli

Lauren rolled out store-bought puff pastry in sugar and cinnamon to approximately 15×10 inches then cut it into strips. She wrapped the strips around tubular forms she made with foil and parchment paper.

After baking and cooling the pastry, she dipped the ends into melted dark chocolate chunks. She filled the tubes with a vegan ricotta she made with blended soaked cashews, coconut milk, lemon juice, lemon zest, powdered sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt.

Kori: Loaded Spaghetti Squash

Kori cut a spaghetti squash in half and baked it cut side down for 40 minutes then scooped out the seeds. Meanwhile, she sauteed yellow onion, chopped red and green bell pepper, and Beyond Meat Steak Tips with minced garlic and taco seasoning. Once the squash was cooked, she combined the veggie mixture with tomato basil pasta sauce, nutritional yeast, and grated Violife Parmesan Cheese and poured it over the squash halves.

Mehgann: Roasted Veggie Taco Pasta

Mehgann roasted green and yellow bell peppers, red onion, jalapeño, and garlic then chopped them up. She separately cooked Soyrizo then added the veggies, black beans, four ounces of vegan cream cheese, water, half a packet of taco seasoning, and chipotles. She mixed all of this in a casserole dish with some shell-shaped brown rice pasta, and added cilantro. Next she took the pasta to the park with Drew and his dish, but upon finding that VBC was not until the next day, she took the pasta home and reheated it in the microwave before the Sunday meetup.

Drew: Pesto Quesadillas

For his vegan quesadillas, Drew made cashew pesto with boiled cashews, olive oil, nutritional yeast, fresh basil, spinach, arugula, water, and salt. He spread the pesto on Stacey’s Whole Wheat Tortillas with thinly sliced Roma tomatoes and Daiya Mozzarella and Italian Blend Shreds then cooked them to toast the tortillas and melt the vegan shreds.

Slynn: Refried Bean Ravioli

For her ravioli, Slynn made pasta dough from scratch with flour, water, olive oil, and salt. After mixing the ingredients, she kneaded it, chilled it, and rolled it out with a rolling pin into two sheets. On one sheet of dough she put small mounds of filling consisting of canned Amy’s Refried Beans and a couple pieces of Daiya cheese shreds, then she layered over the other sheet of pasta dough. Using her mother-in-law’s ravioli cutter, she cut out her ravioli, using a fork to pinch the edges closed. She boiled the pasta for three minutes (longer than the prescribed one minute because the dough was thicker). She made an accompanying cheese sauce from a Veganomicon recipe with a basis of nutritional yeast, olive oil, and flour then added basil, oregano, rosemary, and parsley to make it Italian style.