Cheese and crackers please
I feel like the mood is quickly shifting to 2026 new year vibes, so I best slide in with a post on holiday cheese plates before more time goes by!
Isn’t it tiring how vegans always prattle on about all the things they want?
“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me”
Okay well that isn’t me being very nice to myself, is it?
Bottom line is this- I like cheese and crackers. Who doesn’t like cheese and crackers, after all? This does not make me different. What DOES make me different is this- do I ever get to indulge in a good cheese plate when one presents itself? Unless it’s at a fancy (expensive) restaurant with a vegan menu, the answer is no. When the holidays roll around, and everyone is serving cheese and cracker plates left and right, and I can only stand by and watch, a small part of me dies.
Gosh I love being dramatic. I don’t actually DIE. But you know what happens instead? I freaking CRAVE cheese and crackers. I become a woman obsessed, with a hint of a victim complex. This is really not a good look. I’m sure I had a similar meltdown when I was, say…four years old. Here I am, forty years later, and back to that same place. Life is funny this way.
About ten years ago I started experimenting with making vegan cheese. Not just in a sauce form, but hard vegan cheese that can hold its own in the company of water crackers. I’ve tried a variety of recipes and enjoy the variety of them. Miyoko Schinner’s book, “The Homemade Vegan Pantry,” “Minimalist Baker” recipes (online), and recipes from The Almond Cow, which is a kitchen appliance that allows you to make homemade plant-based milks. It’s been fun to experiment with all of these.
Because I went through this holiday season flying by the seat of my pants as they say, I was unable to provide myself with my cheese and cracker plate before Christmas. But as soon as we got to December 27, which was a Sunday, I finally found the time to whip up some cheese and allowed it to set for a few days before enjoying it on New Year’s Eve, three hours after leaving my job of over a decade. What a beautiful scene to transition to immediately after taking such a momentous step.
I used the cashew vegan cheese recipe from The Almond Cow this year, which used the cashew pulp from making cashew milk, along with cashew milk, vinegar and lemon, tapioca starch, and nutritional yeast. It was amazing, truly. We chipped away at it for several days, finally finishing it off yesterday by making Caprese sandwiches- spreading it onto a baguette with tomato and basil. Cheers to finding small joys like this!
My homemade cashew cheese is on the left with the pomegranates on top. The cheese on the right was the herbed feta cheese from the brand Cheeze & Thank you.
