Garden Gravy

We recently had one of our favorite meals - potatoes and carrots. Hubby and I had our Russets fresh out of the Instant Pot whole, while our son, ever the rebel and picky eater, insisted on the Bob's Red Mill Instant Potato Flakes mashed potatoes.

I usually make the McDougall Golden Gravy (minus the tahini) when I make my spuds, but because this was going to be Sunday dinner I wanted something a wee bit fancier, and decided to try Tim Kaufman's (Fat Man Rants) Garden Gravy. He used to have a load of recipes easily available on his website, but they're now hidden behind blank icons. If you click on every grey square you might find the one you're looking for. A search only takes you to his new blog page, not what you're searching for.

He does demo his recipes on his FaceBook page in his weekly live videos, and here is where he did the mashed potatoes and Garden Gravy, from the book Fat Man's Essential 40 Plant-Based Recipes: Quick and Easy Plant-Based Food (Fat Man's Recipes Book 1). It now looks like he combined his 2 books into one paperback called FatMan's Favorite Recipes instead of the 2 separate Kindle books.

The FaceBook version is slightly different than the book version that I show, but in the video he also says he rarely uses recipes or measures ingredients and prefers to make up recipes as he goes along,

Garden Gravy

3 bell peppers (any color)
2 medium onions
8 ounces sliced mushrooms
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 cup water
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
3 cups unsweetened plant milk
2 tablespoons liquid aminos
1 tablespoon onion powder
3 tablespoons cornstarch

In a non-stick pan, saute onions, peppers and mushrooms with water and the garlic powder on high/medium heat until the veggies are soft and wet, about 10 minutes.
In a blender, combine the cornstarch, nutritional yeast, onion powder, liquid aminos, and milk, and blend on high until mixed thoroughly. Add the mixture to the pan and cook on high, stirring constantly, until a gravy-like consistency is obtained.
Remove from heat and serve over potatoes, noodles or rice.

In the video he uses a bag of frozen peppers. I used a one pound bag of frozen onions and a jar of pimientos, drained, because I had no other peppers around.

In the video he used 2 1/2 cups of water and 1/2 cup of oats to make oat milk because they didn't have any other plant milk in the house at that time. He said near the end that the gravy came out too thick for his liking, most likely from the oat milk acting like a thickener. I used Pacific Oat Milk because I have very little Pacific Almond Milk left and my son prefers to use that in his mac & cheese instead of oat milk. I should have just taken his almond milk.

Another big difference - in the video he puts the onions in a dry skillet, explaining that between the onions and peppers and the mushrooms they make enough liquid as they cook, they didn't need any additional liquid. In the written recipe he adds a cup of water to the pan, and so did I. Another mistake.

In his videos he uses Bragg's Liquid Aminos, so that's what I used.



First off, it took forever (over half an hour on medium-high) for the onions and mushrooms to cook down, and I chopped those mushrooms pretty small. There was hardly any flavor left when all the veggies were finally softened. Add the three cups of milk with its blended-in additions and it took another half hour before it thickened a little bit. It took another 15 minutes before it was thick enough to pass for watery gravy.

And it tasted horrible to me! The oat milk made the whole thing sweet. So here was a slightly thickened batch of sweetened liquid, made lumpy with limp, overcooked vegetables. My husband said it was okay, and he's going to finish the leftovers during the week with his lunches, probably pouring it over some toasted bread slices. He didn't think it was sweet at all. But I couldn't even eat more than a few bites of my potatoes and veggies before I gave up. I scraped off what I could from the potatoes, rinsed off my carrots, and just nibbled a bit before giving up the dish for good. My husband ate it for his "seconds" and I went to the kitchen and grabbed a clean bowl and the half a potato that was left in the pot and another few scoops of clean carrots and ate it all with just some Mrs. Dash Table Blend.

Will I try this recipe again? Only if I can find some Pacific Almond Milk next time we go to Whole Foods. Those stores seem to be the only places within a 50 mile radius that are currently selling it, according to the Pacific web site, and the last time to WF, the store we went to had none of that brand, and others they had of course had oil in them. Hubby is on vacation next week, so we'll give the store a call later this week and ask them to get a case of the milk and one of those baby Brussels sprouts. Hopefully they'll be able to get at least one of the items - last time they said they were unable to get an extra case of the sprouts but there was plenty on the shelf we can purchase, so we bought a case worth's but at regular price, not the 10% off they say you get if you order the case. Whole Foods now charges for their paper bags, too. Even though we have a new store that opened a bit closer to home (only 5 miles closer, not even a 15 minute driving difference) I'm finding less and less reasons to make the trip.

Oat milk may be good in sweet dishes, like oatmeal or baked goods, but not in savory things like gravy! Worse comes to worse and I can no longer get almond milk in stores without oil, I may be forced to make my own on an as-needed basis using almond butter. The problem with that, besides the obvious time and trouble it takes to make and clean up after, is having almond butter in the house. You know what AJ says about "if it's in your house, it's in your mouth," right? I can't keep a jar almond butter in this house! Sure, I could buy those tiny packets of Justin brand, but they add oil, so it's as bad as buying almond milk with oil.

Don't mind me - I'm just cranky because I didn't get my Golden Gravy on my potatoes last night.