It's A Wonderful Life- Daiya Vegan Cheese, Strong Hearts Cafe, and Co-Op Grocery Finds!

The other day, last Friday to be exact, Jessi and I took a little adventure out to Syracuse, NY where we had planned to see a band play. Low and behold they were playing at a farm, and when I couldnt get an answer at the farm to find out what their definition of "farm" was we decided the chances of animals being there were high...so what did we do instead?

We headed on over to the Syracuse Co-Op Grocery store, grabbed some organic portabellas and ran into a pal of mine who works there, she told us that they now have Daiya Vegan Cheese, in bulk! We walked right by it and would have never even noticed, I dont make a practive of looking in the cheese cooler hah! For the last couple of months we have heard nothing but rave reviews of Diaya Cheese, and were waiting and waiting to have enough money to try it. Thank you co-op for making it easily accessible.

We left the co-op arms full and wallets on E and headed over to Strong Hearts Cafe, it an all vegan cafe in Syracuse, NY and Friday night is pizza night! We saved up for this night for a long time and were very very eager to munch on some Vegan Chicun Wang Pizza, which consists of dough, hot sauce, seitan strips, sheese blue cheese (which is to die for and tastes a lot like bleu cheese), and smothered in the Daiya mozzarella cheeze.

By the time we sloshed down our vegan milkshakes, we each could only eat one slice of the AMAZING pizza!

So we boxed it up and brought it home, after a long hour drive it was time for a bit of a snack again...so we each had one more slice and saved the rest for morning.

What did those crazy folks do with their bulk Daiya cheeze anyway? Well, glad you asked, we decided to make some of our famous spicy tofu subs and melt the daiya cheese on top! They turned out amazing and are super simple to make. Which makes for a cheap easy meal when you cant afford to eat organic raw veggies the entire winter in upstate NY (which sucks by the way, we are still trying tho!)

These were so simple to make, so heres the recipe!

You will need:
1 or 2 pounds of tofu, depending on how many meals you want to get out of them (we each got 2 meals out of our half of the big sub)
Your favorite hot sauce, we like red hot, it doesnt have corn syrup or sugar in it
Vegenaise
Black Olives (if you dig them)
A roll or many rolls depending on what you prefer (we went big ahha real big) Make sure to check ingredients strange dairy crap loves to creep its way into breads
Daiya Cheese shreds (however much you want)
1 c. nutritional yeast

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees
Drain the tofu, leave it a bit damp so it can be dipped! Dip each strip of tofu into the nutritional yeast (you can also mix in some garlic powder, if you love garlic)and place on a cookie sheet. Bake the tofu until it gets a bit crispy...the thinner you slice it the better it gets nice and crispy that way.
While the tofu is baking mix up your sauce, take a glob of vegenaise and add hot sauce until its the spiceyness that you prefer, set aside. Pull it out of the oven, dunk it in the hot sauce (or soak it, which I do sometimes) then spread the tofu slices on your roll. Cover with more sauce if you fancy, sprinkle with black olives, then smother with the daiya cheese. Put back in oven, just to melt the cheese....Yes thats right, daiya melts and stretches! Pull it out and munch! I wouldnt suggest eating this all the time, or atleat I wouldnt eat it all the time....but you could eat 3 and still be eating healthier than a meat/dairy eater...so have fun!

Posted by and recipe by Heather of Holistically Heather