Tag Archives: potatoes

Oh boy this week is going to be CRAZY! So I am hoping I can keep up with everything. Needless to say I am probably not going to eat much of CSA shares outside of leftovers for lunches (if I am lucky) So you will largely see dinners. So here we go:

Sunday

I honestly can’t remember what I ate for lunch. I can say that Wolfie ate the last bit of beet pasta, I have been giving Jon little bits of green bean and cucumber salad for lunch, and he had a wrap with tofu and leftovers. Nothing super exciting.

I got to make this AMAZING dish! This is always one of my favorite dishes from Vegan Eats World. Part of the reason is that I love the sweet and tart taste of cherry tomatoes when they get warm/cooked. It also uses up some green beans. I love how she uses small potatoes which makes my life easier, and oh yeah, that BAKED TOFU! I took the time to bake the tofu and made my house super hot, but no regrets. There’s leftovers and I am SOO excited about eating the leftovers this week.

Monday

Tonights dinner was super yummy, even if it doesn’t really look so hot. It is a Chorizo Chili with Tomatillos and Sweet Potatoes, a recipe I heavily modified from Sunbasket. I used Trader Joe’s soyrizo, so that’s the obvious swap. But I doubled the sweet potato, cooked in some red lentils to prevent it from being too soupy and to sub the black beans. They also just say “spice blend” so I just added whatever I thought sounded good. I am thinking about maybe using the leftovers for a crazy chili mac. *crosses fingers* I will totally have to do it, mostly because I just noticed the list for the week is all chilis and stews. Oops.


It’s been a hot summer, and it really has been a damper on my desire to bake lots of cakes and pies. Ouch. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t busy in the kitchen. Nope. I’ve just been busy exploring other parts of American desserts- candies. I am not a big candy maker, but I do have fond memories as a child of buttering my fingers and cutting hot sugar and rolling them into hard candies.

The first candy I was happy to feature on the blog doesn’t use melted sugar. It is a very simple candy to make, like most American candies, but has an ingredient that is unexpected- potato. I’ve made them twice before, once from a vegan recipe from Homestyle Vegan. I’ve simplified and more readily “veganized” the recipe today. But… let’s take a step back- What is a needham? Where are they from? And what’s the history?!

Well, a needham is made with sugar, coconut, mashed potatoes, and butter. They are cut into squares and coated in chocolate. If you are an American and never heard of this candy, chances are you haven’t been to the New England area, specifically Maine. This is a local treat that is kind-of overshadowed by lobster, blueberries, and whoopie pies for tourists. But many Maine natives have fond memories of the dessert.

This history of the Needhams. Like all candy it is shadowed in a bunch of folklore. One story tells about a priest who made the candies to increase church attendance. Another story tells about a candy maker who named the candy Needham after a popular evangelical priest in hopes to increase sales. If you need a non-priest storyline, supposedly one year there were “too many potatoes” for crops and a competition was set up to find new ways to eat them. And guess which recipe won- the needham of course! Most historians think most likely there WAS a competition, but it wasn’t because of a surplus of potatoes but because it was set up by a company that sold potatoes. The facts are that the earliest recipes for Needhams go as far back as 1926/1930

Regardless there is a little something about using potatoes in the candy. It does have some binding properties, making it so you don’t have to do any of the usual candy making heating. Some people claim it cuts down of the sweetness, but I think there is something to be said about the starchy texture in your mouth. If you have time to cover these gems in chocolate give this recipe a go! Don’t be like me who got tired towards the end and just poured the chocolate over the remaining candies. I didn’t include those in the pictures. lol

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I love YUKI. Most people don’t know who the heck she is, and I don’t blame most western readers! YUKI is a singer from Japan, and I fell in love with her lead vocals in the band Judy and Mary. I pretty much love all projects and collaborations that YUKI does including a duet with Chara, an album with some B-52 members, and her superband Mean Machine. And if you click on any of those links- sorry for the low quality videos. The songs are pretty old, 13-15 years old, plus Japan doesn’t really like using YouTube as a way to promote music videos.

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My love for YUKI got stronger as I got older because of her bold personality. She is creative, spunky, cute, and sexy all into one. Then as she went solo, she got married, had children, and snag about it all. She seemed grounded, and still continues to sing even with children, which isn’t that common on Asian countries. She has released lots of photograph books, novels, and drawings that show she really does more than just music. Oh her music videos are visually awesome!

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I picture YUKI being a pretty traditional Mom. So I imagine her making homemade Japanese style curry from scratch. She would probably use Beyond Meat Chicken-free Strips since she friggin loaded, and because she just doesn’t have time to make her own seitan. If you want you can use a curry packet, I found that some of the Japanese curry packets are actually vegan, but still read the backs before buying. I find Japanese foods love to sneak in bonito flakes at any given chance! Also check thetonkatsu sauce when buying it in a store.  The brand I bought was vegan, but there weren’t any others to compare ingredients to. Making this curry at home isn’t that much extra work. All you need to do cook a roux in another small pot, adding maybe like 5 extra minutes to the cook time.

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YUKI would be a little fun so I think she would shape her rice into animals for her kids. This isn’t very hard, and I was even able to do it with brown rice! Just try and get a short grained brown rice, and I got sticky results using this method. Remember- steaming the rice afterwards is key and you will want to let the rice start way before you start the curry so it can cool down to comfortably shape it. Oh! And don’t forget to wet your hands, otherwise all the rice will stick to your hands. I used nori sheets and kitchen shears to cut out facial features. This makes the rice characters cute, and the nori melts in the curry, giving you some extra vitamins and much needed iodine. 

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Vegan Mofo is asking for us to share our regional dishes. Many people in the US will say this is a little bit of a tricky one. Yes, we do have foods we are proud of and only found in certain parts of the US, BUT we are a melting pot here. I think it becomes most obvious in places like New Jersey, where we are sandwiched between two major cities. It isn’t that we don’t have local foods, but it more like people say it is a “Philadelphia” food or a “New York City” kind-of food. It is more obvious to me, since I have went from North Jersey to South Jersey, and can see all the local foods get snatched by the cities.

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One very regional food is the Irish Potato. One might think two things- one that the food is really Irish and two that the food would have potatoes. I am not sure how this weirdo dish came to be, but it has no potatoes, and no Irish roots. The food gets it’s name because they resemble a small potato. And although they don’t have Irish roots, they are a seasonal treat with the Saint Patricks Day holiday.

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And if you are sitting here thinking “I’m from New Jersey and I’ve never heard of an Irish Potato!” then I am going to guess you are from Central/North Jersey. I never heard of these guys until I moved to Philadelphia. My roommates (one from Northeast Philly, the other from South Jersey) thought I was crazy that I never heard of these things. One told the story about how for class their assignment was to make a food from their heritage. So Italian kids made lasagna, German kids schnitzels, and Irish kids would make Irish potatoes. As laughable it maybe for a kid to mistake “American” food with “Irish” food they are a great food to make with kids. They are super sweet and super easy to make. You just need an electric mixer, or a really good potato masher.

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So what is an Irish potato made of? Well, they are like small candies on par with a fudge. They are pretty much just butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and coconut rolled with a cinnamon coating. As my roommate described it “They should be really disgusting, but you can’t stop eating them.” Oh I think I should note that most people use Crisco over butter in the recipe!

But I couldn’t just leave it be simple. I took another region dessert from the United States and mixed it. Needhams. These are a Maine treat that use potatoes, powder sugar, butter, and coconut flakes, that is covered in chocolate. The snack uses potatoes to balance all that sugar and fat, which is probably what Irish Potatoes need.

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I made the batch and sent to my husband’s work, putting it to the true locals test. Turned out that everyone loved it, and couldn’t taste the “vegan” parts of it. Plus most people liked how the potatoes cooled out the sweet parts.

I technically made this recipe almost 2 years ago before I “opened” the blog up. But I thought I should update the photos. I only had two pictures, and I remember taking it with a very-old not-so-hot camera. These are such a local food, that I think they need to be shared around more often.

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It has been a rough few weeks. My work schedule has been totally flipped upside down, and I found myself working mostly night shifts instead of morning. Which means that I’ve just been unable to make dinner for half of the week. Now, just the idea of cooking dinner feels like a chore. At the end of each day, I think about how someone has to cook otherwise our ingredients will go bad.

Luckily, I have the best husband who will cook dinner even though he gets home around 7pm at night. I become an early morning sous chef and pre-chop veggies to make it easier.  I’ll try to gather or bunch ingredients together in the fridge or cabinets, so he doesn’t have to hunt them down.  Sometimes all he has to do is toss a casserole dish in the oven and bake. But one night I wrote down a totally new recipe and let him work it out. 

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Irish Potatoes are a weird snack. Being from North Jersey, I never heard of them. You wouldn’t think driving an hour and half south would make such a cultural difference. Apparently, I was the only person in Philadelphia who didn’t know what an Irish Potato was. It’s such a big treat that there is a local factory that makes pre-made Irish Potatoes for the yearly demand during Saint Patrick’s Day. And I see them in every single supermarket.

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My roommates insisted to break my “Irish Potato” cherry and make some. To my surprise, there wasn’t anything Irish about it, nor was there any potatoes in there. The recipe was pretty simple, crisco (or butter if you are fancy), cream cheese, and coconut. Roll it in cinnamon. Bam! Done. If I remember correctly not liking them much, but I couldn’t help but grab more.

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But I am a sucker for local traditions. And seeing the popularity of cake pops and oreo truffles, I feel like it time for Irish Potatoes to shine. But I think they could be more creative, and more flavorful. I cut down on the fats, and added some leftover mashed potatoes. Sounds crazy, but this idea isn’t new. It is the basis for the Needham candies that are made in Maine.

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The result? I told my husband to take to candies to work and give them out. Nobody knew. Everyone commented on how they were some of the best Irish Potatoes, so as far as I can tell I improved on the recipe. One person said that they could taste a little bit of the potato once I revealed my recipe, and I agree. But I think it add a nice velvety layer to it, and makes them a little less rich (which means you can eat more right?)

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