Barbecue Wham

Thought I'd do another Wham recipe this week. A very versatile stuff is Wham! It's easy to make up for barbecue. Here's how!

Ingredients:

• Thawed roll of Wham sliced and cut up into thin strips or shredded
• Chopped onions chopped fine
• 8 minced garlic cloves
• 2 bottles KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce
• 1 small bottle of ketchup
• 2-3 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Directions:

1. Mix onions and garlic
2. Mix barbecue sauce, Worcestershire sauce and ketchup
3. Mix wham, onion/garlic mixture, and barbecue sauce/ketchup mixture
4. Place in crockpot and cook on high for 2 or 3 hours stirring occasionally

Serving Suggestion:

This makes a large amount of barbecue suitable for a potluck.  Serve on buns with fries or chips. Makes a great easy sandwich for a bunch of hungry young people.

Tom

Wham Croissants

I love this stuff. It's hard to get but the ABC bookmobile sometimes can bring it around when it visits. Also there's usually some available at camp meeting and some health food stores have it. It's not as common as the canned stuff since it's frozen, but it's worth getting if you can. A big roll lasts a long time. These warm sandwiches are great.

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks of butter softened
• 4 Tbsp digon mustart
• 4 Tbsp poppy seeds
• 1 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce
• 1 small onion chopped fine
• Fresh spinach
• Swiss or pepperjack cheese

Directions:

1. Slice and fry wham in butter 
2. Sautee' poppy seeds and finely chopped onions
3. Spread croissant with sauteed seeds and onions with digon mustard and Worchestershire
4. Add slice of Swiss and/or pepperjack cheese. If you prefer you can use American or cheddar slices
5. Top with spinach and heat in the oven at 350 degrees until the cheese melts. You can wait till the cheese melt and then add the spinach, but I like the spinach a little wilted, so I add it first. Either way works.

Serving Suggestion:

A Wham croissant is great with handful of potato chips and a dill pickle. that's all you need for a light summer lunch. Simple.

Tom

Sandwich Stuff - Olive and Pimento Cheese

All dressed up and ready to go!

I'm kind of a sucker for pimento cheese. It's always been a favorite of mine, but the tubs the commercial stuff comes in are either too small or too expensive, although I have been guilty of buying the giant size Prices' Pimento Cheese when I could get it. Hardly anyone sells it or understands pimento cheese up here in the Pacific Northwest, so I have been reduced to making it myself. This is one of my experimental version with which I am pleased.

It's kind of an "all-in" / clean off the cheese shelf kind of versions of this popular (at least in my neck of the woods it's popular) sandwich spread.  Every wedding has to have little triangular tuna sandwiches and little triangular pimento cheese sandwiches, so if you're doing a sandwich supper for the potluck gang, here's the first of several really good sandwich fillers.  I've already given you Sheila's vege-chicken salad. This goes great as a partner on the buffet board.

Ingredients:

• Medium Cheddar Cheese (more of this than the others - you need that cheddary flavor)
• Velveeta Cheese
• Cream Cheese
• Swiss or American Cheese or whatever other cheesy oddments you have left on the cheese shelf in the fridge. The more the merrier I think.
• Mayonnaise
• Green olives (stuffed with pimento)
• Black Olives
• More Pimento if you like lots of pimento
• Sweet pickle relish
• Pineapple (alternative to olives and pimento)

Directions:

1. Cut up the cheeses into cubes and place them into a food processor with the chopper blade set. Don't fool with the grater attachment. It's messy and unnecessary.
2. Chop the cheese into chunky bits.
3. Add a spoon or two of sweet pickle relish and bump the "pulse" button
4. Add pimento and olives and bump the pulse button until everything is chopped. .
5. Add Mayonnaise and bump the food processor a few times till it's blended in.
6. Scrape it all into a nice Tupperware bowl (I like the glass ones best), put the lid on it and you're ready to take it to potluck with your vege-chicken salad.
7. You can pretty much leave the rest of the recipe the same only leave out the olives, pimentos and pickle relish and substitute pineapple chunks and you have Pineapple Cheese. It is a little more sweet than your usual pimento cheese spread. It's a little different taste, but I really like the pineapple variant of this recipe. Warning! Don't mix pineapple and olives. The chemistry of the two doesn't mix well. I tried it. It's kind of bitter.

Serving Suggestions:

This is really good on those triangular sandwiches all made up in advance or you can just take the tub along and let folks make their own sandwiches with it.  It also makes a nice dip kind of spread to put in the center of your vegetable and chips tray next to the French onion dip. I personally use Wheat Thins or tortilla chips to steal bites of pimento cheese out of the fridge even before we get to potluck.

As soon as I get me a can of Vege-links, I'll post my Vege-Weenie Sandwich Spread. It's really good stuff and makes a nice companion sandwich spread to pimento cheese. Meanwhile fool around with the recipe till it works just the way you wanted to. I knew a lady once who bulked her pimento cheese up with some kind of Jello. Not sure what flavor or whether it was unflavored gelatin, however she did it, it was really good stuff! So experiment yourself and come up with your own secret recipe.

Then don't forget to share it with me.

© 2017 by Tom King

Sheila's Famous Semi-Secret Vege-Chicken Salad Recipe

Vege-Chicken Salad on my favorite Oatnut Bread

I have a recipe for vege-chicken salad that even carnivores will love.  - SK

INGREDIENTS:  

• 1 box of chick nuggets from Morning Star. 
• 2 boiled eggs
• 1/2 cup Mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup Miracle Whip
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 1/2 chopped bell pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 1/2 cup sweet relish 
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp celery seed

Directions:

1. Boil two eggs. Cool them down, peel and grate and set aside.
2. Finely chop up vege-chicken nuggets. It must be the Morning Star kind of nuggets and it must say "nuggets" not patties on the box. These should stay frozen until ready to use then you can thaw in the M/W just long enough to thaw but still be a little cold. I like to use a food processor to grind them up but if you don't have a processor you can use a plain grater.
3. Add grated egg to nuggets and mix up.
4. Add 1/2 to 1 cup Mayo and 1/2 to 1 cup Miracle Whip and mix well.
5. Chop into small pieces 1/2 onion, 1/2 bell pepper. and I/2 cup celery.  Add them to the mixture.
6. Add 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp celery seed. Stir into mixture.
7. Add 1/2 cup sweet pickle relish and mix everything well.  

Serving Suggestions:

You are all done! Serve as sandwich spread or as a dip for Christmas with Ritz type crackers. I never add any extra salt but you may want to use garlic SALT or table salt. I promise it's so tasty too!

Sheila King © 2015

Note from Tom:  

This vege-chicken salad is one of our family's favorite picnic treats. It's easy to transport in a big Tupperware container and make sandwiches out of when you get there. Everybody who's ever tasted it raves about the stuff. 

It's also a quite forgiving recipe. Even I can make it. You can vary the amounts of ingredients to taste. If you take out the celery, just add more celery seed. If you take out the onions, just add some onion powder. If you don't like bell pepper, well you're just a Philistine is all.  - Tom

Vege-Pigs in a Blanket

Here we have the Adventist vegetarian take on "Pigs in a Blanket". This is an easy breakfast potluck or a fun dish to add some variety to a traditional Sabbath potluck.  Better yet, it's easy to make. Here's how.

Ingredients:

• Biscuit dough (I make my own, but you can use canned biscuits as well). You can also use Crescent roll dough as well.
• Worthington Saucettes,  Worthington Super Links, Worthington Vege-Links, Loma Linda Big Franks, Loma Linda Linkettes, Loma Linda Little Links, Morning Star Farms Sausage Links
• Cheddar or American cheese

Directions:

1. Roll out your biscuit dough flat - a quarter to half inch thick.  Cut in strips a little less wide than the links you are using as shown above.
2. Place vege-link (whichever kind you want to use) on the strip of dough as shown. The Saucettes, Little Links and Sausage Links give it a more breakfasty taste. If you want this for a lunch or supper, you can make bigger blankets for the longer vege-weiners. It's like pre-made hot dogs.
3. Place a strip of cheese beside the link.  You can use pretty much any cheese variety you want - even tofu cheese if you want to go full vegan.
4. Roll the link and cheese in the dough, cut the roll loose and press the end into the dough to hold it together as shown in the picture. 
5. Bake at 350° until it the dough cooks brown on top and the cheese melts as shown in the photo at the top.

Serving Suggestions:

You can serve this with breakfast food like cereal or scrambled eggs or hash browns for a breakfast potluck. You can also serve them like hot dogs with beans, potato salad, corn and fried potatoes. You might even try these for a Pathfinder fund-raiser.

© 2015 by Tom King

Southwestern Veggie Burgers

It's the avocados slices and cheddar and perhaps a little picante sauce
that give this vegeburger the "Southwestern" touch.

This was a fun sort of vegeburger recipe and turned out really tasty.  We had a giant can of Loma Linda Taco Filling and only used about half of it when we made tacos. Sooooo.....

I'm hungry for vegeburgers and fresh out of regular vegeburger, so I thought, "Why not come up with a Tex-Mex vegeburger.  I already know how to give regular vegeburgers a Tex-Mex flavor, but I wonder if Taco Filling will give it a little more bite?"

Here's what we came up with in the El Rancho de' King kitchen.

What You're Going to Need:

Can(s) of Loma Linda Taco Filling (or however much you have left from Taco Night)
Eggs
Flour
Oatmeal (optional for texture)
Chopped onions
Chopped jalapenos (optional)
Mono-unsaturated oil
Hamburger Buns  (# depends on size of group)
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Avocado
Pickles
Mayo/Salad Dressing
Ketchup
Picante sauce
Shredded Cheddar cheese or Cheese slices (if you want cheeseburgers - cheddar is best)

Directions:

1. Get out a big bowl and put all the Taco Filling in it. How many servings you get out of this recipe will depend on how much Taco filling you use and how big you make the patties. You don't need seasoning because the Taco filling is already seasoned. However, feel free to add a little cumin. I did. Gave it more of a Tex-Mex aura.
2. For every large can of Taco Filling, add a quarter cup oatmeal, a quarter to half of a chopped onion, two eggs (to hold the patties together), 2-4 tbsp of flour and however many finely chopped jalapenos your group can tolerate.  I go very light out of deference to the tender mouths in the group. You can put the rest in a bowl and set them with the condiments. Mix thoroughly.
3. Chop the lettuce, slice the tomatoes, slice some onions, slice the avocados. Set up a burger bar with a plate for the burgers, then put out buns, mayo, ketchup, picante sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, avocado and shredded cheddar/cheddar slices in that order for successful burger building.
4. Once the burger bar is set up start frying up the patties so they will be hot as everyone cues up. If your church has a big grill, you've got a perfect setup. I've used 4 large frying pans to keep up with the demand.  It works for a potluck or a burger sale for Pathfinders in the church gym. The hot vege-burger is what's important to making the burgers extra special. 

Note:  Let people know that these are Tex-Mex burgers so they won't think something is wrong with them. Also make sure the tender-mouths know that the bowl of little green bits isn't pickle relish, but jalapenos.  You might make a separate mix without jalapenos and set up a hot vs mild plate of burgers on the burger bar. 

Makes a nice change-up for burger night with your youth group and also is a great way to use up leftover Taco Filling around the house. This is also a fun thing for small church groups or socials.

Bone Appetite!

Tom King
(c) 2015

The Great Pathfinder Vege-Corn Dog Cook-Off

Okay, we've been promising this for more than a week 

There are all sorts of recipes out there for corn dogs. Many are complex and confusing. This one uses just three basic ingredients. This recipe has been bumping around Pathfinder clubs for ages. I got it from a Pathfinder director out of California. Let me warn you. If you're expecting beautiful pristine looking corn dogs like out of the box, you're likely to be disappointed. These things are ugly.

The ones made with Loma Linda Linketts or Worthington Vege-Links are well-tested at countless Pathfinder weiner roasts campouts and more than a few corn dog fund-raisers in the church gym during the Saturday night basketball game/family night. We sold them for $3 a pop one night and went through a bunch of the big deluxe sized cans of Big Franks and paid for a campout. People couldn't get enough of them.

I'm going to give you the recipe here and also do a side-by-side taste test for you. Atlantic Natural Foods provided me with a can of Loma Linda Big Franks and a can of Worthington Super-Links, the deluxe versions of Linketts and Vege-links. So let's see how the big boys stack up against the familiar regular-sized veggie dogs.


Here's what you need:

• A Fry Daddy - For this experiment, however, since the Pathfinders have the Fry Daddy, I used a Wok, which actually worked pretty well and didn't spit and pop, so I didn't have much trouble cleaning the kitchen.
• Skewers - Finding actual corn dog skewers usually requires a trip to a restaurant supply, which is worth it if you're doing a fund-raiser. You can also use bamboo skewers found in the grilling section at your local Walmart or you can use flat shish-kebob skewers that I found elsewhere at Wally World.
• Paper towels - Lots and lots of paper towels
• Very large or very deep mixing bowl - you have to be able to submerge the dogs entirely in the corn dog batter.
• Wire whisk - For stirring
• Metal tongs - Sometimes the sticks get suprisingly hot after cooking, especially the shorter corn dog sticks.

Ingredients:

Super Links on the left; Big Franks on the right.

1. All the veggie wieners you can eat -There are the brands I've mentioned and a few others you can find in the frozen section of most stores. Stick to the canned ones from LL and Worthington. They're the best, especially for corn dogs.
2. 1 box of “complete” (add water only) regular-sized box of pancake mix - This usually surprises people. Cornbread mix just won't do it. If you can, get Krusteaz. It's the best.
3. 1 Box Corn Meal Muffin Mix - Be careful here. Most muffin mixes use lard which can get you in trouble at an Adventist fund-raiser.  Martha White brand is safe. They use vegetable oil in their muffin mix.
4. Gallon bottle of Canola Oil - Healthier oils are best. That way you can tell your wife they're made with "mono-unsaturated" oil when she fusses at you for how many corn dogs you ate.) Safflower oil works too. Some like peanut oil best for corn dogs. You just have to watch out for people with peanut allergies. There's always one!

Directions: 

1. Fill the Fry Daddy - About 3/4 full enough to cover the entire wiener.  Plug it in and let the oil heat up while you make the batter.
2. Make the Batter -  In the big mixing bowl, dump a regular size box of pancake mix and 1 box of corn meal muffin mix. Pour in water and whisk it up till the batter is smooth and not too thick, not too thin.
3. Prepare the Weiners - Wiener preparation is the secret to delicious homemade corn dogs. You have to thoroughly dry off the wieners. I use paper towels myself. Wet wieners prevent the batter from adhering to the dog long enough to cook. When cooking for a crowd, have one person in charge of weiner drying. Skewer the dried wieners on the corn dog sticks.
4. Dip the Corn Dogs - Dip them into the batter bowl and make sure they are thoroughly coated with batter. Lift them from the batter one at a time, letting the excess batter run off.  
5. Set the Coating - Set each dog gently into the Fry Daddy. Hold the corn dog by the stick, suspended in the hot oil for about 10 to 15 seconds to allow the batter to skin over. Don't let them touch the bottom of the fryer until the outside is firm.
6. Rotate the Dogs through the Oil - Put them in one at a time and allow the outside to cook enough so that the next dog you put in won't stick to the first one.   I like to put them in from right to left so I know that the one on the left is always the one ready to come out soonest.  Let them cook till they are golden brown.  Don't let them get too dark or they'll taste burnt.

Serving Corn Dogs
When the dogs are ready, I just put them out on a big serving plate next to a couple of open bags of chips and a stack of paper plates. I set out bowls to put the ketchup, mayo and mustard in rather than letting the guys dip straight out of the jars. That way, I don't have to throw away half a jar of mayo because it's "contaminated".  It just costs less to put it out a bit at a time in bowls with a hand-washing obsessed adult in charge of filling the bowls. Also, you don't lose a whole jar of condiment if some dribbly kid dips his weenie in the mustard jar. You learn this stuff if you do Pathfinders a lot.*

The Results of the Test:

I used bamboo skewers with the Super-links and shish-kabob skewers with the Big Franks so I could tell them apart (see picture). And I did my best to give them a fair side by side comparison, both with ketchup and without. To be frank (no pun intended), this old dog (that one I did on purpose) ate my corndogs so fast it was hard to tell. Man those things are good. Ugly as all git-out, but delicious.

I like both types of super-sized vege-weiners almost equally as well. Which one you will like best kind of depends on whether you're a Linkett or a Vege-Link man. Big Franks definitely come off the Linkett family tree and Super-links are pretty much a giant Vege-Link.

I, myself, have always preferred Vege-links as my dog of choice. They have a smoother taste that I prefer when I'm burning a vege-dog over an open campfire.  So I leaned toward the Super-Links in my judging, but only just. My Sweet Baboo, the culinary expert in the family had no opinion at all on which was better, other than that I kind of burn one of her corn dogs.

I'll just say that, your choice of "Super-sized" corn dog is probably going to depend a lot on which regular-sized veggie dog you prefer. Really, guys, it's a corn dog!  It's hard to go wrong with any sort of weiner if you coat it with corn batter and deep fry it.

For you militant vegans out there, yes, I know that this is probably not the healthiest sort of vege-food when prepared corn dog fashion. It is, however, I'd venture to say, the healthiest corn dog out there (unless you can show me some batterless, baked tofu dog on a stick and then I'd be willing to bet it's not nearly as tasty as these crispy beauties).

So I'm going to call it a tie for right now, with me buying regular-sized Vege-links for most of my future corn dogging efforts. There are more of them in the can so it feels like you're getting more corn dogs for your money. But I'm just weird like that. Anyway, enjoy some corn dogs soon. If you help with a Pathfinder club, make you some money. You'll make more every time you do this as word gets around about how amazing Pathfinder veggie corndogs taste.

* No Pathfinders were harmed in the making of this weblog.

Georgeburgers!

When I was a kid I used to pedal my bicycle past Blair's store six days a week. Most of the time there would be this wonderful smell drifting out the front door.  Mrs. George makin' vege-burgers.  Those things were great. She'd fry them up on this heavy iron griddle with some carmelized onions. The patties were already chock full of onions. Now, when I was a kid I hated onions, but somehow, Mrs. George made all those onions delicious.

Mrs. George would never tell anybody what was in her vegeburger mix. It was her big secret. By keeping that recipe under her hat, she remained the top vege-burger maker in Keene, Texas, my hometown, for some 50 years. Keene is an Adventist college town and everybody there was either a vegetarian or at the very least, a semi-vegetarian. Vegeburgers were to Adventist kids, what Big Macs were to everybody else. I used to save up two or three days' paper route money to buy one of those imminently delicious things hand made things. When Blair's closed, Mrs. George went on to work at the Railhead and several other short-lived cafes and burger joints around Keene. She never gave away her recipe, till she finally told it to Melba Bruce, March 09, 2004 as she sat in Mrs. George's living room. Mrs George passed away a few weeks later. It's like she saw it coming. A special thanks to Melba's son, Stanley Bruce who collected a copy of the recipe and shared it on Facebook. God bless him.


- Tom King

At last - the secret is revealed:

Ingredients

1.One 16 oz can Loma Linda Vegeburger
2.Three eggs
3.Two medium sized onions finely grated
4.One tablespoon garlic powder
5.One teaspoon sage
6.Salt to taste
7.½ cup quick oats
8.Flour
9.Oil

Instructions:

1.Open vegeburger, add to mixing bowl with grated onion, eggs, garlic powder, sage and salt and stir.
2.Add half cup of oats
3.If the mixture is still too thin, add a little flour. The vegeburger mix should not be runny nor should it be too dry and thick.
4. Fry the patties in a small amount of oil. Never bake them.

Making the Actual Burger:

1. Heat the buns in the oven or on the grill
2. Add still sizzling patty and pile on the fixings.
3. Eat while making soft sounds like “Ooooooh” and “Aaaaaah” and “Mmmmmmmmm”

(c) 2011 by Tom King