It’s VeganMoFo!  Yup, amazingly it’s been a full year since I got this blog started for MoFo 2011, and it’s time to play again.  This year I even have a theme.  In keeping with the revamping of the blog and moving to the new site, I’m going back to the basics, and I’ll be looking at the A-Zs of being vegan.  We’ll look at tools, tips, and ingredients (mostly ingredients :) ), that you will find helpful, and in some cases indispensable, in the world of vegan cooking  Some are pretty basic (bananas!), and some are not so much (jackfruit!).  Come join me on the ride!  Starting with…

Agave nectar for margaritas!
Picture courtesy of creative commons, original here.

A is for Agave Nectar

Agave nectar is produced from several species of the agave plant, and is known as a natural sweetener that has a low-glycemic index impact. There are some controversies surrounding those claims, which I may delve into another time, but for now I’ll go with saying it is a sweetener, so perhaps not one’s first choice for “health food”.  But what is important for us is that it is a vegan’s most common replacement choice for honey.  It’s again somewhat controversial, but most vegans do not consider honey vegan, because it is of course an animal product, being made by bees.  Therefore most vegans do not use honey, which is where agave nectar comes into play here as a substitution.  :)  You will often also find it used in many healthier baked goods recipes, so it is a definite staple for a vegan pantry.

Recipes:

-My most used agave nectar recipe shows how easy it is to replace honey with agave. My favorite bread recipe uses a small amount of honey – replace with agave, problem solved, and delicious easy bread is had!

-And a bonus recipe – “Not honey cake“.  Traditional Jewish dessert for this new year season is honey cake, and it works kinda perfectly with agave instead.