As the temperatures drop and the garden season ends, it seems that you naturally start to crave more substantial foods. Suddenly, baked dishes that involve beans, potatoes, and thick, savory sauces sound better than ever.

You might think vegans would have a tough time when the craving for comfort food strikes, but the possibilities for rich, savory vegan foods abound. Just about any carbohydrate, such as rice, pasta, or potato, can be combined with tempeh or beans to make a satisfying meal that will have you easing back from the table with a smile and patting your tummy gratefully.

One example is our Tempeh Eggplant Florentine (click to see the recipe on our ManyVeggieRecipes.com web site). This dish combines tomato sauce, spinach, tempeh and eggplant into a hearty, tangy, and delicious casserole. It's satisfying even if you are watching your carb intake and choose not to serve it over rice or pasta.

Give this dish a try, even if you aren't much of an eggplant fan. The recipe incorporates the eggplant in a way that eliminates the rubbery texture you may have experienced in the past. Sliced thinly, the eggplant breaks down during baking and absorbs the tomato sauce. The result is remarkably tasty.

Do you have favorite vegan comfort food meals? Please feel free to comment on this post and share your favorite dishes.

One very nice thing about spuds is that they are inexpensive. It isn't uncommon for us to find a ten-pound bag of potatoes on sale for $2 a bag. That's a lot of carbs for $0.20 a pound!

If you are a potato fan as we are, you find it hard to pass up a great deal on a big bag of spuds. But then you get them home, and you find you have a problem. What do you do with them all? Potatoes store for quite a while in a cool, dark place, but they don't last forever, and that cool dark place is often "out of site, out of mind."

If you have a big family, you might be able to chomp through them all pretty quickly, but for a small family or a couple, you may discover rotten, sprouting, and shriveled spuds by the time you reach the bottom of the bag.

Pre-Baked Potatoes

If you have a bit of extra refrigerator space, I have a solution that will let you take advantage of those great prices and conveniently incorporate more potatoes into your cooking: pre-bake them.

I enjoy my potatoes baked more than just about any other form. The problem is that you have to plan ahead, because it takes a good hour to bake those puppies up. And that's not counting prep and pre-heat time. But here's something to consider: it doesn't take any longer to bake 20 potatoes than it does to bake 2.

You can bake an entire 5-pound bag of potatoes and store the ones you don't need right away in the refrigerator. The next time you are trying to figure out what to make for dinner, they will be sitting there, all ready to heat and use. They seem to keep for at least a couple of weeks, although they rarely sit around that long in our house.

Here are some ideas for speedy dishes you can create with your pre-baked potatoes:

• Broiled slices: Our favorite. Slice a few potatoes into 1/4-inch rounds, stir in a bowl with some oil and spices until evenly coated, and broil them until the edges of the smallest pieces start to char. This is a great breakfast companion.
• Stuffed skins: Slice a few potatoes in half and scoop the flesh out of them with a spoon. Leave just enough flesh for the skin shell to retain it's shape. Spread margarine across the inside of the skin and broil them until they get crispy. While the skins are broiling, mix the potato flesh, some sour cream (we use Tofutti's "Better Than Sour Cream"), spices, and some cooked veggies if you like. Mix together and microwave until hot. Fill the skins with the mixture and serve.
• Mashed potatoes: You can either scoop the flesh out of the skins or dice the potatoes and incorporate the skin into the mash. If you choose to scoop, you can broil the potato skins with margarine and garlic salt, and serve them as an appetizer. Either way, heat up the spud flesh and mash with margarine and spices. Add some soy milk or vegan sour cream for an extra creamy and rich experience.
• Plain bakers: You don't have to do anything special with them at all, if you are really in a hurry. Just nuke until hot and serve. You can also broil them briefly to crisp the outside, or stick them into a toaster oven for a few minutes.
• Diced additions: If you want to "beef up" a soup vegan style, spuds are a great way to do it. Just dice them into bite-size pieces and throw them into the soup for the last five minutes to heat them up. You can do the same thing with many dishes that could use an extra "comfort food" dimension, such as stews or curries.

Preparation

When preparing the spuds for baking, you'll want to keep in mind that you'll probably be using the skins as well as the flesh. So, you'll want to scrub them thoroughly with a stiff brush and use the end of a vegetable peeler to scrape off anything that looks unsavory. Basically, remove anything you don't want to eat!

After I clean the spuds, I usually dry them off and coat them with oil. It's a bit messy, but I just put a few drops of canola oil on the potato and rub it on with my hand. To me, oil significantly improves the flavor of the skin.

Watch for Those Deals!

Now you know our secret for taking advantage of great potato prices without ending up with a bag of rotten spuds. Pre-baked potatoes give you a convenient and healthy way to get dinner on the table fast and save money at the same time.

If you make your own tofu and bake your own bread, you can merge the two activities and improve the quality of your bread loaves.

What is okara?

Okara is the bean pulp left behind when you filter pureed soybeans during the production of soy milk. When you make tofu, you end up with a lot of okara, because the first step is to make a big batch of soy milk.

Our method of making tofu produces about a cup and a half of okara for each block.

What can I do with it?

Okara may at first seem like a "waste" product of tofu production, but it actually has many uses. When we make tofu now, we look forward to using the okara as much as the tofu itself. If you search the Internet for okara recipes, you'll be amazed at the variety of dishes you can create with it.

Keep in mind that okara is just soy bean pulp, so it is easy to come up with ways to use it. You can use it as a thickener and a binder in place of non-vegan alternatives like milk and eggs. It mixes well with other ingredients to produce meatless patties and nuggets. Spiced and dried, it can even be used as a substitute for grated hard cheese products like parmesan. It never goes to waste in our house.

How do I use it for bread?

One of our favorite uses for okara is as a dough conditioner for our artisan and sandwich breads. Okara gives you the binding effect of eggs. It has little flavor, so it doesn't compete with other ingredients in the dough. It helps produce a softer, moister, and less-crumbly crumb, and at the same time, a stronger, crispier crust.

It doesn't take much. In a typical batch of bread dough using 3 1/2 to 4 cups of flour, you'll only need about a quarter cup of okara. Depending upon how well drained it is, you may also need to reduce the amount of water you add to the dough mixture. Our okara is usually pretty wet (about the consistency of pudding), and we reduce the amount of water in the recipe by 1/8 cup.

What happens if I use too much?

You can add more than just a 1/4 cup of okara and get different effects on your bread. The first time we tried using okara, we used 1/2 cup and created a loaf that was reminiscent of an "English muffin" style bread loaf. It was a little too dense and chewy for our taste, but not bad overall.

The upper limit on how much okara you could use would be similar to any other non-gluten ingredient. The more you use, the more you interfere with the dough's ability to rise. You can offset this effect to a point by adding vital wheat gluten.

Where can I get a recipe to try it?

We posted one of our favorite bread recipes on our recipe site ManyVeggieRecipes.com. Read our Sunflower Seed Bread recipe for an example of using okara in bread dough.

The next time you make a batch of tofu, be sure to save aside some of that okara for your next loaf of bread. You may never bake bread again without it.

Thanks for visiting the Creative Vegan blog!

We are just getting started here, but if you need information fast about cooking fun and flavorful vegan meals, check out our other resources:

• The Many Veggie Recipes Web site: No preaching, just great vegan recipes.
• Our book Web site for Vegan Success: Scrumptious, healthy, vegan recipes for busy people.

Happy cooking!

Susan Daffron & James Byrd