My lovely and hilarious friend Missi Pyle continues her vegan adventure! As she shared in her two previous guest blogs, she’s recently adopted a vegan diet. Here is her third blog about her kind journey; she wrote it while she was staying at my house during my Gods Behaving Badly shoot in New York.
Enjoy!
Day 2 or 3 or 4. Possibly 5. Aka. Cheater cheater pumpkin eater… Costarring TV’s Megan Park!
Listen. Blogging is hard to keep up with. Especially when you have to drink red wine while watching back to back episodes of Dexter or are laying in bed playing Angry Birds and have to wait a full hour for the falcon to come back and get you out of a tricky level on your iPhone.
Or if, only on day 3 or 4 of being a vegan, you wake up in the middle of the night and, while standing in front of Alicia’s open refrigerator, in your underwear, you find yourself with a fork digging into the non-vegan chocolate pie your sister evilly brought home last night, and put on the middle shelf, which is eye level, with no cover and homemade non-vegan whipped creme dolloped lovingly on the top.
Oh the shame.
I caved. I didn’t mean to. It all happened so fast. I almost thought it was a dream until I woke up the next day with crusty chocolate on the pillow where my mouth had gently pressed during the night. I felt guilty. The wallowy kind. I mean what kind of an example am I to you? My devoted fans?
But listen, I am an actor and the one thing I have learned as an actor is you can’t wallow. I am constantly being rejected for the “greatest job of my life” and sit moping around all day in my underwear*. But, the thing I learned about the “greatest job in your life”, is, there will always be another one that comes along with shiny opportunity to make you believe again and go put your clothes back on and go out and audition. With the hope that this time, you can stay out of your underwear for good… I mean in pants over your underwear…
It was in this hope, that I woke yesterday morning anddecided to make the greatest, funnest, most delicious recipe in Alicia’s vegan book, The Kind Diet. One that would be so yummy, I would never cheat again. I found it on page 207: Cheesy Oozy Guacamole bean Dip.
As Frank would say, Yum. Or I’m a beagle or both.**
The recipe starts with you mashing up 3 ripe avocados while wearing a long flowy dress in Alicia Silverstone’s kitchen.
Then you have Meredith, who was non-apologetic about her pie because she had gotten it from the people at the Leno Show***, squeeze the juice of one whole lime on the top.
Then you spread a layer of refried beans on the bottom of an 8 x 8 inch glass baking dish. You spread the avocado lime concoction over the top of the beans. Then you stir together two 8oz containers of non-dairy sour cream with a packet of cruelty free taco seasoning and spread over the avocado.
We only had one container of sour cream because I don’t believe in writing down actual quantities while making a grocery list. Oh well, in the end it wasn’t a problem.
Then we sprinkled a can of diced green mild chiles (drained) over the sour cream and layered on top of that 1/2 cup of sliced black olives. Then we added 3 chopped tomatoes. (1 big ass yellow one from Alicia’sgarden and 2 normal sized red ones from a pack we got at trader joe’s.)
Finally you sprinkle 2 cups of shredded vegan cheddar cheese on top. Then you preheat the oven to 350. Actually you should have done that sooner. Oh well.
While we waited for the oven to heat, my friend Megan Park came over to sample our hopefully extremely tasty vegan dish. Megan is a ridiculously talented actress who played my daughter in A Cinderella Story, Once Upon A Song, my opus, and who plays a virginal 16 year old on ABC family’s Secret Life of the American Teenager. She also happens to be my writing partner. (We are writing the world’s greatest, funniest, raunchiest most heart felt female comedy of all time)****
She got here just in time to put the dish in the oven and open up some wine. She’s not really 16. I hope. I wasn’t sure what flavor of wine goes well with vegan bean dip so, just to be safe, I opened both a red and a white.
After 30 minutes, we took out our bean dip and sat down to eat with a bag of organic corn chips. We were just about to dig in when Megan, who is severely lactose intolerant asked if there was milk protein in the soy cheese. I said slightly condescendingly, “Uh no way Megan its SOY cheese.” But she told me in a very non-condescending tone because she is really the adult in our relationship, apparently just because it says it’s soy cheese doesn’t mean they don’t get all sneaky and put in casein.
WHAT???? Who would do something like that?????
I guess you have to read the labels.
This soy cheese has Casein in it! IE NOT VEGAN!!
This vegan Daiya cheese does not! IE TOTALLY VEGAN!!
So we just pulled back the not so fake fake mozzerella for Megan and she ate the yummy goodness below.
It was a truly awesome dish. We were going to make an entree, but we got too full on the chips we ate with the bean dip and the ass load of chips we ate before while the bean dip was in the oven.
In conclusion I say this is a great recipe for anyone who is a cheater like me and wants to make something delicious to redeem themselves.
I give it two “yums” up.
And will try to hold steadfast and not let you, my best friends down ever again.
*i am not ALWAYS in my underwear. just USUALLY.
** watch the video from blog 2. The beagle comment will make more sense
*** Meredith is assisting a very fancy actress named Octavia Spencer who was in The Help and was on “Late Night with Jay Leno” the other night. She made a pie made of poop in the Help so they gave her a pie not made of poop for being on the show. Meredith took one home because it was from Jay Leno. He doesn’t like it when you turn him down. Or so I’ve heard….
****other than Bridesmaids. sigh.
***
Thank you Missi! Stay tuned for Missi’s next installment soon! What’s your favorite dish to make when you want to indulge, kind-style?
