There are products, people have tried, and there are OK substitutes out there…but just ok.  Nothing quite does it for me.  They are often filled with oils and starches and yucky things…and most of the time have the texture of wax, certainly not anything you’d want to eat on its own.

That is why I like to make my own.  Raw cashews form the base.  Their creamy, fatty, neutral flavor are a perfect foil for the rest of the ingredients.  Roasted or raw red peppers contribute a sweet flavor and reddish tint.  Nutritional yeast adds the cheesiness, and miso and lemon juice give it that tart, aged taste.  Yummy!

I often have to break out this “cheese” for Warped tour.  I use some variation of it for the mac and cheese, nacho cheese, grilled cheese and the quesadillas.  Sometimes I add some tofu to bulk it out, sometimes I sub raw sunflower seeds for the cashews to make it more economical…and sometimes I add some onions and garlic sautéed in vegan margarine.  For a spicy addition,  I might add diced jalapeno and chilis. Anyway you slice it, it is pure yumminess!

Here is a kinda thrown together recipe for it:

• 2 cups raw cashews, soaked for a few hours
• 1 roasted or raw red bell pepper, sliced
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/2 cup mellow white miso
• 2-4 TBS. cup fresh lemon juice (depending on how tart you like it)
• 2 TBS. neutral oil or more for extra fatty creaminess
• dash of onion powder, garlic powder and sea salt
• any other additions you would like, fresh chopped jalapeno, pepper, chipotle or smoked paprika for smokiness..etc..

Blend all of the ingredients in a high speed blender until completely smooth and creamy, adding water if needed to help it blend.  Heat in a pot over medium heat, keeping an eye on it to prevent scorching…(I have done this numerous times..and had to call it “smoked” cheese!)

Use it for nachos, pour over cooked macaroni, or let it chill in the fridge to firm up and spread it on bread for grilled cheese or tortillas for quesadillas!

Here’s me all hot and sweaty, showing off my vegan smack and cheese for dinner for 70 vegans on Warped tour:

Here is AJ, our catering manager and fellow vegan, about to take a bite!

It was creamy, dreamy goodness!

After we left New Mexico, we ventured onto Texas.  On the Houston date, it rained..all…day…long.  Non-stop, crazy, on the tail end of a hurricane rain.  Nuts.  Wet feet, work tents collapsing under the weight of the fallen rain, and mud, mud, mud.  The next day I started feeling tired…by the end of the day, I could hardly keep myself upright, as I chopped vegetables for my dinner entree.  I couldn’t make it through dinner.  I spent the next two days in bed.  I was on fire.  Sweating, chills, aches…flu.

After  Texas, Missouri, and Ohio..and …oh somewhere…we ended up in Buffalo, New York today.  I like this venue.  It is in Darien Lakes, right next to an amusement park.  You can see the roller coasters and hear the screams from the kitchen truck.  Right after work, a few of us rushed over to make it before closing time.  We rode the “Viper” and the “Mind Eraser.”  Holy…crap…..I don’t know if it is just because of my 38 years…or the fact that I haven’t been on a coaster in years, or the fact that they are getting scarier….but..I was thoroughly freaked out.

My voice is croaky from screaming.  I closed my eyes and gripped with all of my might.  I tried to be one with the present moment, thinking of Eckhart, but really..could only think about my impending death.

Whoa…

Tomorrow is Scranton, PA.  There are a lot of snakes there.

Oh, todays food consisted of:

sautéed “chicken” and onion sandwiches with garlic aioli with a bunch of other stuff…

and dinner was grilled tofu with hoisin sauce, vegan chinese salad with crispy wonton strips, homemade Vietnamese spring rolls with peanut dipping sauce..plus a whole lot of other veggies…mashed potatoes..bread rolls…tons..o food!

Off to the land of nod!

So, obviously, we made it to New Mexico.  We didn’t have to hop busses and be uncomfortable and sleep in other people’s front lounges.  Some blessed bus driver stopped to help fix our bus..and succeeded!  We were all praying for it..it was a busted pipe or water heater thingy, or something or other.

We are on the road again, after another long adrenaline filled day.  We are on a long drive, headed to San Antonio for the next show.

Here’s what I made today;

Lunch:  Mediterranean chickpea hummus and old-fashioned macaroni salad   Dinner: Vegan caesar salad and “beef” pot pie with an herbed biscuit crust

Looking at it, it sounds so easy.  But when you are cooking for 150, the amount of work you have to do just multiplies and gets harder.  But it all turned out fine and yummy.  I didn’t eat it of course, but tasted it only.  The last thing I want to eat at the end of the day, is something I cooked.  Usually, I crave easy easy..like a almond butter and jelly sandwich.  Or, what I had tonight, a couple of handfuls of roasted almonds, and a green energy drink.

I gotta sign off..another big day tomorrow.  Falafel!  Oh, and eggplant parmesan for dinner…whew..

Happy eating and rolling on down the road….

The day started with a Sysco order…about 8 pallettes full of produce and dry goods, stacked over 6 feet tall.   A lot of lifting, hurling and sweating.  They bring us just about everything we need…except for my vegan specialty items.

After the Sysco order, I started prepping lunch, here is what I made:

vegan “steak” strips sauteed with onions and garlic (to stuff into hoagie rolls), and homemade battered and fried zucchini rounds with vegan “bleu cheese” dressing.  Maybe not the healthiest food in the world…but….they also had a salad bar…and a heck of a lot of other food.  These people eat like crazy.

Lunch went right into dinner prep, it is such a tight turnaround…I made chipotle and roasted red pepper black bean burgers with a cilantro-lime cream.  They were really good!  I actually ate one…

The heat was soooo intense in the kitchen.  Especially when I was standing over the flat grill cooking my burgers.  Oh, it feels nice to be lying in my bunk right now.

Awww….shoot.  Our bus just stopped.  We are sitting on the side of the highway.  I can feel the rocking of the bus by the intensity of the cars shooting by.  A belt broke..oh crap.  That means, if they can’t fix it, that we will have to all split up, and go on other people’s buses.  Please God..not tonight.

One with life…one with life..yes to life.

Nighty night..

I will try my best to blog about my time on this years Warped tour.  This can be a place for me to share the adventures of being a touring chef…complete with all of the blood (yep..cut myself already), sweat (touring across America in a hot ass kitchen truck during the summer, you better believe there’s sweat!) and tears (already had my first tears of the tour on day one!)

It is such a strange thing, this tour.  It kinda feels like I have been abducted by aliens.  Picked up out of my normal everyday San Francisco existence, and transported into a mish mosh of craziness, filled with Sysco orders, heavy lifting, minions of tattooed people, cigarette smoke, beer… and showers in random places. All set to the background music of bus generators.

What a trippy trippy ride…

More to come…

The only reason I am on now is because we are on a two day break after a 12 day run, and I managed to steal away to my parents house in N.J. and am using their computer! 

Tomorrow we start again on another 12 day stretch, beginning in Massachusetts.  The tour is now a little over halfway over!   It has had its trials and tribulations surely, but on the whole has been going well.  It has been so nice for me to come home to my old childhood home and rest and relax.

I will start my blog up again when I get back home after the tour, and have access to a computer.  Thanks everyone for reading it..and I promise there is more fun food adventures to come!!

Dinner: Salad bar with assorted toppings and vegan ranch dressing
Sauteed veggie black pepper “steaks”
Vegan jalapeno mashed potatoes
Roasted asparagus and cauliflower
Blueberry pie

Enough food you think?
Tomorrow to San Fran! Yay! Some cooler weather!
For me now….sleep…while the bus rolls along zzzzzzzzzzzz

The Warped tour seems to be a test for me…a test of my emotional strength mostly…it seems to push all available buttons that I have. What a learning experience.  This is definitely not a tour for cry babies and softies..and I can be both..oh well. 

Anyway, time is flying on by.  We were in Boston today, tomorrow we are in Buffalo, NY.  Then on to Canada for 2 days before a day off.  Then we start the trip back across the country to the West coast…

I really have been enjoying my days off when we have them..I just love to explore places I have never been before.  One of my favorite places was Butte, Montana of all places.  The old town was just beautiful, perched up high, big sky above, beautiful light everywhere, and a feeling of quiet magic about the place.  Almost eerily so. I loved it though and want to go back.  I also really enjoyed Milwaukee..some great old buildings and nice neighborhoods with cool stores, cafes and bars.

It is funny, you would think that all of the travel that I am doing would make me want to go home and stay there for awhile.  Well, sure, I can’t wait to get back to SF and be able to relax.  But, I have the travel bug, and I would love to go on a cross country trip by car and check out all of these places I have seen and other small towns and just explore lazily…..it really makes me appreciate the beauty of this country I live in, which is actually hard for me to say.   Not that I am usually anti-American necessarily….just anti our stupid government, and big business, and stupid decision makers.  I am blessed to be here.  Not only for the fact that this land that we are all on was once occupied by people that were mostly annihilated by our ancestors and we should feel privileged to be here…but also because it is such a beautiful, varied place.    Some of these landscapes I have seen just make me cry.    Hmm..did any of that make any sense?  I am not sure.

Well..time for me to tuck in very soon, so I will end this one.  Oh, the reason I titled this one losing time is because being on tour makes you do just that.  Lose all sense of time and place and date and day.  It is an odd bubble to be in, this Warped tour thing.

Goodnight…

So we woke up today to sprinkling rain, which quickly turned into a downpour.  We were all wet and soggy (no raincoat/poncho), but it ended up clearing up in an hour and was clear for the rest of the day.  The venue was trippy, our kitchen truck was parked on a sidewalk between two stadiums, one for the Detroit Tigers and the other for the ….uh…whatever the football team is in Detroit..

The day got stranger when the head chef sliced his finger badly and had to go to the hospital for stitches.

Need to go to sleep early tonight as lots of people are sick and I need to keep up my energy.  Just 2 more work days before a day off!!  Yahoo! 

I miss home, I miss my Joey and I miss a nice comfy bed and good ol healthy food…ahh, can’t wait to make a good green juice!

Tomorrow we are in Illinois so we gain an hour!  That is awesome, I will take that extra hour gladly…

goodnight…