Help - another vegan brunch ahead and I am in a cooking slump!
Hi,
I am hosting a monthly vegan brunch, - have been for over 3 years now and these past months we have been blessed with about 8 times as many guests as we started with... (yeah, sounds great, but it's really only around 80 LOL)
Well, we have a bit of a problem because, though the brunch is set up as kind of a potluck brunch, - we always seem to have not enough food which has the other 2 helpers and I literally rotating in the kitchen days before the real thing.
Long story short, - I need advice, - the culinary kind... I am in DESPERATE need of crowd pleasing and crowd filling food ideas (vegan ;) ) that don't cost a lot (we are not doing this for financial reasons, hence our budget is a biiiiiiiiiiit on the small side), doesn't call for things we cannot get a hold of (like smartground or other specialties, - the more basic the ingredient, the better) and has been tied and truely good :) .
Any fellow brunch folks around that feel like giving me / us a hand?
Tips and ideas (and of course RECIPES :D ) HIGHLY welcome!!!!!
Corn souffle is cheap and easy to make and WONDERFULLY pleasing! If you google vegan corn souffle you will get a hundred different variations on how to make it. It is a dish that can be made for a lot of people with a few cheap ingredients. I made it a few times but I don't have the recipe I used offhand.
I like to make a cold wild rice salad. I make a big batch of wild rice ahead of time and refrigerate it (brown rice will work for this too). the next day I add chopped apple, chopped walnut, chopped onion, maybe some celery or dried cranberry and spices like cinammon, nutmeg, etc. I add a little maple syrup or agave to it (or any sweetener will work) or even a fresh fruit sauce like blueberry will work. Very healthy and tasty and you can make a large batch of it too. I don't measure ingredients, just go by sight and taste.
Bean dips or homemade hummus are cheap and quick to make. They go well with corn tortilla chips or homemade yeast bread.
I LOVE this recipe:
http://ohsheglows.com/2013/02/20/blissful-buckwheat-granola-clusters-oil-free/
The list of ingredients is short and you can make quite a bit of it. I did not use almond pulp in mine and it came out just fine. I also added sesame seeds to it and used brown rice syrup (perfect substitute for honey) for the sweetener. It is as easy as it gets for making granola. The only difficult item to find might be buckwheat groats but you can usually find them in healthfood stores in the bulk section. Grape nuts might even work as a substitute if you can't find buckwheat groats, but buckwheat groats are wonderfully nutty and crunchy.
Hope this helps!