Vegan dessert experiments

One of the biggest challenges in our attempts to go dairy-free (or nearly free) is figuring out how to get the dairy out of dessert. Cookies aren't really a problem; not only has Brian invented at least one good vegan cookie recipe, we can make pretty much any cookie vegan by using plant-based butter and aquafaba (or another vegan substitute) in place of the butter and eggs. And we've already discovered that our favorite chocolate pudding is actually better with almond milk than with the skim milk we used to use. But there are still lots of desserts we love that are heavily dairy-dependent, with no obvious way of making them otherwise.

The most obvious example is raspberry fool. This simple dessert pretty much has nothing in it but raspberries, sugar, and cream—and in a spectacular case of bad timing, we discovered it only about a month before I first started thinking about getting off the moo juice. So even as I was giving up milk, I was assuming it would be pretty much impossible to give up cream without also giving up this fabulous dessert. I'd seen vegan whipped creams in the store, but they were all the kind that comes in a spray can, which would be impractical for a dessert that calls for the stuff in bulk. And all our attempts to make vegan whipped cream at home, using either chilled coconut milk, aquafaba, or a combination of the two, had been spectacular failures.

However, I still had hopes that I could at least find a decent vegan substitute for the canned whipped cream of which I've long been such a heavy consumer. And one day, while searching for "best vegan whipped cream," I hit upon a recommendation for a product called Coco Whip from So Delicious. This stuff comes in a plastic tub, like Cool Whip, but unlike that product, it truly is vegan (and doesn't have as many weird, unpronounceable ingredients). And after a little digging around on the So Delicious store locator, I was able to find that it's available at a nearby Shop-Rite.

The reviews of this stuff on the web mostly said that the product itself is great, but the packaging is a pain in the butt. Many reviewers said the tub was really hard to open, and some had actually cut themselves trying. So we were a little wary when we first tried it, but we found it wasn't all that bad. It requires a little force, but it wasn't actually hazardous. And to our delight, the Coco Whip blended almost as well with our mashed, sweetened raspberries as real whipped cream. It had the same light, fluffy texture, and if the flavor had a faint hint of coconut to it, there was nothing about it that was incompatible with the raspberries. The only thing we didn't like about the product is that it comes in a nonrecyclable plastic tub, but that's probably less damaging to the environment than cream from a methane-belching cow. (And to be fair, the cardboard cartons that we buy cream in aren't recyclable either, since they're lined with plastic.)

After the success of that vegan dessert experiment, I was emboldened to suggest another one this week. We happened to have some silken tofu left over after making another batch of our recently discovered vegan mozzarella, and I was musing about whether it would make a good substitute for evaporated milk in a pumpkin pie. Brian had heard about this kind of "tofumpkin" pie before (a friend of his made one during his post-doc years, which he dubbed the "resplendent tofumpkin" pie), so he knew it was theoretically possible, but he'd never actually tasted it. So we decided to give it a try this weekend, and if it worked, we might consider making this year's Thanksgiving pumpkin pie the same way.

Brian did some research on tofu pumpkin pie recipes and came up with one that was sort of a composite from several different websites. The filling was:

• 5 to 6 oz. silken tofu
• 8 oz. canned pumpkin
• 3/8 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

To make it a true vegan experiment, Brian also decided to make the crust with our favorite vegan butter, rather than the real butter he's been using in his pie crusts ever since he discovered what shortening does to your arteries. So the crust contained:

• 1/4 c. fake butter
• 3/4 c. flour
• a little less than 1/4 tsp. salt

He said he had to add much less water to this crust than he usually does, presumably because there's more moisture in the vegan butter than there is in real butter. He started out with 2 tablespoons of water, and even that turned out to be too much, so he had to add a little more flour. He eventually managed to get a workable dough, rolled it out, laid it in the pan, filled it with the custard, and baked for about 10 minutes at 450 and another half-hour at 350.

Sadly, this experiment was not nearly as successful as the first one. Part of the reason the pie looks a little odd here is that it's a half-sized pie baked in a slightly-larger-than-half-sized pan, since Brian forgot when he started the recipe that our smallest pie pan is currently in use as a cat dish. But the other reason is that tofu, even silken tofu, simply doesn't have the same texture as evaporated milk and beaten eggs. The pumpkin filling never firmed up to the point that you could put a knife in and have it come out clean; it remained soft and dense, with a custardy texture that isn't what you expect in a pie. And the crust, while acceptable, was crisp and hard, not light and flaky like a true butter crust.

So it looks like when Thanksgiving comes around, we'll have to take a break from our dairy-free eating and buy ourselves a can of evaporated milk and a pound of real cow-based butter for the pies. But since Thanksgiving comes but once a year, I'm not going to worry about it too much. It's probably more important to focus on trying to find a vegan whipped cream substitute for our everyday use. (Coco Whip is great in a fool, but keeping it on hand for other desserts isn't really practical, since it doesn't keep nearly as long as well as whipped cream in a pressurized can).

Two more Money Crashers articles

It never rains until it pours! Money Crashers has published two more of my backlogged articles in the past 24 hours. The first one is on financial literacy — or, where Americans are concerned, the lack thereof. It turns out that Americans get failing grades on many tests of basic financial knowledge. In one very basic test presented in the British newspaper The Guardian, only 64% of Americans could answer the five simple questions correctly. On a similar quiz administered by FINRA, the average respondent got only three questions out of six correct.

This lack of financial literacy shows in the average American's financial situation. Most Americans have outstanding debt, and significant numbers have high-interest consumer debt. Only about half of us have an emergency fund, and less than half are saving enough for retirement. In all these areas, our lack of financial literacy is holding us back.

For those who don't want to be part of these sorry statistics, this article offers a rundown of what financial literacy means, why it matters, and how to improve yours.

How to Increase Your Financial Literacy & IQ – Why It Matters

The second article is a companion to my earlier piece on the gender wage gap. That one talked about how much less women earn compared to men, and why. This one is about how much women spend compared to men — in many cases, for basically the same products.

This phenomenon, known as the "pink tax," has been in the news lately. CBS ran a story in June about how New York is considering a law to abolish the pink tax, and NPR's "The Indicator" podcast did an episode on it in August as part of a series on the gender gap. So my article on the topic arrives just in time to help you identify the products women pay more for than men — and, where possible, figure out how to pay less.

Pink Tax: 9 Things Women Pay More for Than Men (and How to Save)

Three more Money Crashers articles

Money Crashers is continuing to crank out all those articles of mine it's been sitting on for the past few months. Three more have come out in the past couple of days, all on very different topics.

The first piece deals with a subject you've seen me cover here many times before: repairing your old stuff so you don't have to buy new stuff. One of the main tenets of the ecofrugal lifestyle, which is pretty much meant to be exactly the opposite of the dystopia in Brave New World, is "mending is better than ending," so we try to keep our stuff working as long as possible. We've successfully repaired all kinds of small items, including books with detached covers, ripped jeans, and Roman shades, but we're most vigilant of all with big items that cost us big money to begin with. We're rigorous about maintaining our home, car, bike, computers, and appliances so that we can squeeze as many years of useful life out of them as possible.

In this Money Crashers article, I explore this topic in detail. I explain which items it's most important to maintain if you want to save money in the long run, and how to do it.

6 Things You Should Maintain & Take Care of to Save Money Long-Term

The second article is about a newer topic that's been making news recently: universal basic income, or UBI. This radical new government benefit would simply give a flat payment to every single American adult each month, with no strings attached. Tech billionaires say this will be necessary in the face of the widespread unemployment they say is certain to occur as machines replace humans; politicians  argue that it's better than our current system of government benefits because there are no bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and no social stigma attached to accepting a benefit that everyone else is getting to. But opponents point out that UBI would be enormously expensive and wasteful, giving benefits equally to beggars and billionaires.

In this piece, I delve into the history of UBI, previous experiments with it around the world, the arguments for and against it (and the extent to which they're supported by the data), and the chances it will ever become a reality in the United States. And I examine a couple of alternative forms of aid that could offer many of the benefits of UBI with fewer drawbacks.

What Is Universal Basic Income & Could It Work in the U.S.?

And finally, I'm back on familiar ground with the subject of flooring choices for your home. This article is about the pros and cons of the most popular flooring choices, so it doesn't cover the paper floor technique we used in the downstairs room, but it explores the relative merits of hardwood, engineered wood, bamboo, ceramic tile, laminate, vinyl, linoleum, cork, and carpet. For each one, I cover such considerations as how it looks, how it feels underfoot, ease of installation, durability, cost, and, where appropriate, environmental considerations. (This last item apparently really annoyed one reader, who called the information useless and said, "I would floor my house with skins from baby seals if it looked good and added value to my house." I'm assuming, perhaps optimistically, that the majority of readers will not share this viewpoint.)

9 Best Flooring Options for Your Home & How to Choose on a Budget

Gardeners' Holidays 2019: Harvest Home

The fall equinox, or Harvest Home, might just be my favorite gardeners' holiday of the year. The hard work of planting and weeding and watering is mostly done, and the fun part—the harvesting—is in full swing. Of course, the harvest has been going on for months already, and other gardeners' holidays also celebrate it, but most of them tend to focus on one particular crop that's producing abundantly at a given time: rhubarb or asparagus in May, berries or plums in July, butternut squash in late October. But in mid-September, there's a wide variety of crops producing in abundance, including summer crops that are just winding down and fall ones that are just gearing up.

Here's a sampling of what our garden has produced in the past few days. Those tomatoes in the colander are a mix of several varieties. The smaller cherry tomatoes are mostly Sun Golds, with a few Honeydrops. These have been much less prolific than the Sun Golds this year, and we'll most likely drop them from next year's planting. However, the larger tomatoes in the basket are Premios, a new early variety we tried this year, and it's a definite keeper. They started producing even before the Sun Golds did, and since then they've kept up a steady stream of medium-sized fruits (42 to date). We've also harvested seven nice big fruits off the Pineapple vines this year, much to our relief after last year's disappointing performance. (You can't see any of them in this picture because they all got used in a roasted tomato fettucine, one of our favorite recipes from The Clueless Vegetarian, earlier in the week.)

The green beans you see nestling alongside the tomatoes in the colander are not our trusty Provider beans, which finished producing a week or so ago; these are the results of our successful attempt at growing Climbing French beans. Last year, we discovered that in amongst our Provider bush beans, a mystery bean plant of the pole variety had sprouted and twined its way up the trellis, where it proceeded to produce particularly tender and delicious beans long after the Providers had petered out. We obviously didn't know what variety it was, but a few image searches suggested that it was a Climbing French bean, so we decided to take a chance and buy some seeds from that variety to plan this year. Only we ran into a snag; our regular seed provider, Fedco, doesn't carry this variety, and ordering a packet of them from another company would have cost us about three times as much for the shipping as we'd pay for the seeds.

However, Brian had saved some of the seeds from last year's harvest, and based on my research, the Climbing French bean appeared to be an open-pollinated variety that would breed true, so we decided to just plant them (in the spot formerly occupied by lima beans, since we weren't getting very many of those) and hope. And by golly, it worked! We now have one trellis covered with lush green vines, and our first harvest, about seven ounces, came in this week. And if last year's experience is anything to go by, we should be continuing to harvest these for the remainder of the fall.

The two peppers shown here are another new variety we tried this year, a chili called Caballero. These are the first peppers we've harvested off the plant, and we haven't tasted them yet, so we don't know just how hot they are (not terribly so, according to Fedco). But regardless, they should work fine in a salsa or any other dish that calls for a hot pepper; all we have to do is adjust the amount we use. And if we can't use them up this week, we can just freeze them. (We've also been getting plenty of frying peppers off our two Carmen plants, but the Jimmy Nardellos have so far given us nothing. We'll most likely drop this variety next year and add yet another Carmen.)

The butternut squash at the back of the display is a Waltham, the first we've picked this year. However, judging by what's out there right now, it certainly won't be the last. The butternut squash vines, not satisfied with covering their entire trellis, have jumped it at both ends and extended their tendrils along the garden fence and into the neighboring beds. We have one large squash dangling off the outside fence near the gate and two small ones shoving their heads in unceremoniously amongst our marigolds. So we're certainly looking at a fall and winter packed with butternut squash soufflé, lasagna, pizza, rigatoni, and whatever else we can come up with.

The last item in the display, the raspberries, doesn't look like a particularly impressive harvest, but that's just what I gathered today, after having also harvested berries yesterday and the day before. The raspberry canes are now well into their second crop of the year; they produced bountifully all through July and into August, took a short break, and then returned quickly to full production, yielding us half a cup to a cup of berries every day or so. We've harvested a total of eight quarts of berries so far this year—which, when you consider that Trader Joe's charges six bucks for a half-pint container of organic raspberries, means that in this year alone, we've collected a $364 return on our initial investment of around $60 for the canes. Even counting the additional money we've spent on such things as mulch and the components for our raspberry trellis, that's one hell of a return.

Tonight's dinner, a Skillet Kugel, will also include one more item not shown in the picture: four small leeks, the first we've picked this year. Try as we might, we can never seem to grow big, fat leeks like the ones you can buy in the store, but even our spindly ones work just fine if you use enough of them. And we'll probably cook up the rest of those green beans to enjoy on the side.

Happy Harvest Home to all, and to all a good meal.

Three new articles on MoneyCrashers

After a long dry spell, Money Crashers has just put up several of my articles at once. Here's a quick rundown of what you can learn about:

A Consumer Protection Law That May Hurt More Than It Helps

With interest rates for consumer loans climbing even as interest on savings plummets, some legislators think the solution is to bring back usury laws - this time on a nationwide scale. But the proposed Loan Shark Prevention Act could backfire. By ending high-interest loans, it could cut off all sources of credit for low-income borrowers - or drive them into the arms of genuine loan sharks who operate outside the law. Learn what this act does, how it could affect the lending sphere, and what other alternatives could do more to help low-income borrowers.

Loan Shark Prevention Act – What It Is and How It Would Affect You

A New Way for Scammers to Target You

Ever had some nice people from "the power company" knock on your door, eager to help you save money on your utility bill? Yeah, sorry to disappoint you, but that's a scam. And it's just one of several utility scams making the rounds now. Utility scammers woo you with the promise of lower bills on your water, gas, or electric service - or threaten you with having it cut off. Learn how to recognize these bogus promises and threats for what they are.

6 Home Utility Company Scams to Beware Of (Water, Electric & Gas)

The Best TV Shows About Money (Including YouTube)

Have you ever read a book or an article on personal finance and felt like you just weren't taking it in? Maybe the problem was the format. When your information comes with a healthy dose of entertainment, you're more likely to pay attention and remember it afterward. That's what makes videos (on TV or YouTube) a good way to learn about money. Whether you're interested in choosing investments, starting a business, or just managing your personal finances, there's a show that can help you and keep you entertained at the same time.

7 Best TV Shows to Watch to Learn About Money, Finance & Business

Recipe of the Month: Pasta Romesco With Spinach

Last month, I got an e-mail from my dad with the subject line, "Delicious vegan recipe." This is not a phrase my dad utters often, so it caught my attention. He said he had signed up for an email newsletter from the Washington Post that delivers "vegetarian or near-vegetarian recipes" to your inbox, and this was the latest one. He found it not only very tasty, but "surprisingly satisfying, for a meal with no meat, fish, or cheese."

The attached recipe was Pasta Romesco With Spinach: a pasta dish with an interesting sauce made from roasted red peppers, roasted almonds, tomato paste, salt, and smoked Spanish paprika. All this gets whirred together in the blender and tossed with pasta (the recipe calls for fusilli, but says spaghetti is also acceptable), spinach sauteed with garlic (it calls for baby spinach, but my dad said chopped adult spinach worked just fine), and fresh basil. My dad also modified the Washington Post recipe by cutting the olive oil, as he is wont to do; he used just one tablespoon to cook the spinach and didn't add any to the sauce, instead thinning it with the reserved liquid from the red peppers.

Well, as luck would have it, the most exotic ingredient in this dish, the smoked Spanish paprika, was something we happened to have on hand. Brian had picked some up on a whim on our latest visit to Penzeys, and he still hadn't really thought of a good way to use it, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. And, since we're well into the harvest season now, we had plenty of fresh basil in the garden. The only ingredients we had to buy were the roasted red peppers, which we found at Trader Joe's, and the spinach, which we picked up for a buck at Shop Rite.

Since my dad recommended the recipe based on his own modified version, we decided to go with that for our first rendition of it. We substituted linguine, the only long pasta we had in the house, for the fusilli and thinned the sauce with the juice from the peppers. Despite this addition, the sauce was still rather thick, and it took a bit of work to get it to coat the noodles. Brian thinks it would probably work better with the full amount of olive oil, so he's inclined to try it that way next time.

And there will certainly be a next time, because this pasta, as advertised, was very good. The smoked Spanish paprika is a key ingredient; there's only a teaspoon of it in there, but it lends a distinct, smoky undertone to the entire dish, complementing the mellow flavor of the roasted peppers and the earthiness of the almonds. Although the recipe says it only makes three servings, we were able to get dinner for both of us out of it, plus a lunch each from the leftovers. And despite the shrill injunction in the last line of the recipe to "serve immediately," it was just as good the next day.

So this little baby is definitely going into our regular repertoire. In fact, we're going to make a point of keeping a jar of roasted peppers on hand in the pantry from now on, so that we can make it whenever we feel inclined. So we'll add that to our list of things to pick up whenever we hit a Trader Joe's, along with almond milk and toilet paper.

Money Crashers: How to Negotiate Financing on a Car Loan

Unlike most Americans, I've never actually had a car loan. I've bought two cars in my life, and I paid cash for both of them (though my parents loaned me some of the money for the first one). So I've never been personally subjected to the array of sneaky tricks the dealers use to maximize the total amount you pay them for the car, like focusing exclusively on the size of the monthly payment while stretching those payments out as long as they possibly can. And I'm very grateful to have been spared this experience, since just reading about it was enough to give me the heebie-jeebies.

If you'd like to escape this ordeal next time you buy a car, my newest Money Crashers article can help. It explains how you can save money on your car loan by shopping for the loan before, not after, you find the car, and offers specific tips for reducing the total amount you pay, such as:

• Shopping around for a loan
• Comparing lenders online
• Making sure your credit report is accurate
• Comparing loans by APR
• Choosing a shorter loan
• Making a bigger down payment
• Using online loan calculators
• Always reading the fine print

Get the details here: 6 Tips on How to Negotiate Financing on a Car Loan (Interest Rate)