Canarsie Vegan (Part I)

I thought finding lunch around Canarsie may be a bit difficult for a vegan. However, across the street from the school is a Keyfood with some very interesting selections. Given the large Caribbean population in the area, there is one long aisle dedicated to island cuisine. Bags of light and dark “Soy chunks” are a-plenty and very cheap. Export these bags North to my side of Brooklyn and you’re talking at least a 400% mark-up. I threw two bags of the chunks in my basket (for $1.39 each) looking forward to the night’s stir fry. The Jerk sauce also appealed to me because the first ingredient was bananas. So in the cart that went.The result didn’t have as much flavor as I had hoped although the spicy kick snuck up on you.

And having nothing to do with Canarsie really was my decision to utilize the remaining vegan “whip” topping from the strawberry shortcake recipe on top of VCTOW‘s vanilla cupcake. I must admit that this was my first success using the book’s recipes. The golden vanilla cupcakes were moist, scrumptious and risen, unlike the sunked-in dense cups of sweet I’ve come up with in the past.