VeganMoFo: Clueless

Do you love Paul Rudd like I love Paul Rudd? He has fantastic taste in movie roles. For the most part. Halloween 6 came out the same year as Clueless, i’m just saying.

How do we even talk about Clueless? I feel like trying to describe it is like trying to describe a unicorn sliding down a rainbow while playing a sweet guitar riff. I also feel like you’ve all seen it so you know, but anyway: high school! Rich kids! Crazy fashions and made up slang! Finding yourself and realizing that you have depth and a big crush on your ex-stepbrother! The best soundtrack of any 90’s movie (tied with Empire Records)!

As a teen in the 90’s, I found Clueless totally unrelatable. I lived in the midwest and dressed (and acted) more like Travis Birkenstock than any of the girls. Shoes and shopping and parties was not my thing at all, but I was still totally obsessed with the movie and watched it not sporadically. Because it’s not about being an accurate depiction of teen life, or teaching us a social lesson. It’s about breaking in your purple clogs.

Beyond the superficial surface, Clueless smartly takes Cher from an almost cartoonish spoiled rich girl to a normal human being. When the movie is starting and she says, “She’s my friend because we both know what it’s like for people to be jealous of us.” you kind of want to choke her. And then after a short while you realize that she’s a lot nicer than most popular girls and by the end you want to be her BFF and let her dye your hair in her jet powered bathtub.

The most important thing that Clueless gave us was the sickest burn of all time that I still use, “You’re a virgin who can’t drive.”

If you love cast reunions as much as I do, check out this one:

This movie launched many careers, including Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, and Jeremy Sisto, and I guess you could say Brittany Murphy if you weren’t a fan of the amazing The Torklesons/Almost Home. Girl was, is, and will always be a star.

Onto the menu!

Entree: If there was a readily available vegan McMuffin available, I would always be tardy for it. There are so many ways you can make one, if you want to make your own English Muffins there’s a recipe in Vegan Brunch or the Ezekiel ones are readily available even where I live. You can make the tofu omelets from the PPK or the fried egg from Betty Goes Vegan, Top with Upton’s seitan bacon or maybe some Tofurkey slices or just the ‘egg’. Normally I am down for homemade cheeses but I think in this case it’s some sliced Tofutti/Go Veggie slices or go home (those Daiya slices are awful, sorry). Be sure to squeeze your VegMuffin while declaring that your buns, they don’t feel nothin’ like steel.

Side: A plateful of popcorn fries (recipe below) is way better than a handful of popcorn and some bacon and peanut butter m&ms and whatever else is in that quote, and they will go great with your VegMuffin!

Dessert? Craving an herbal refreshment, you friggin’ pothead? That’s cool, I support legalizing marijuana and wish that medical marijuana was more widely available. But in the meantime, make some Chocolate Chip Mint Leaf Icebox Cookies (recipe below) instead. Please don’t drop the entire roll of dough into the oven to impress a guy.

And finally the connection to Kevin Bacon from this film is our favorite fashionable vegan herself, Alicia Silverstone. They were in Beauty Shop together! Tune in Monday for a new set of movies.

Popcorn Fries, from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, posted with permission by Dreena Burton

2 1/2 T coconut oil

2 1/2-2/34 lb Russet or white potatoes, washed

1/2 t sea salt

1/2-1/2 t ground turmeric (optional, for color)

2-3 T nutritional yeast (the recipe says optional, but in my opinion nooch is always a must)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut potatoes (peeling optional) into strips 1/2-in think. Add coconut oil to baking sheet and place in oven for 2-3 minutes until oil is just melted, then remove from oven and add potatoes, salt and turmeric and carefully toss to combine. Bake for 60-70 minutes, until potatoes are golden in spots and fully cooked. If desired, toss in nutritional yeast five minutes before end of baking.

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Chocolate Chip Mint Leaf Icebox Cookies, from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, posted with permission by Terry Romero

(As a side note, I want to say that these are some of my favorite cookies ever and a great use of an overactive mint plant, so if you’ve never tried them, please do!)

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, lightly packed

1/2 cup nonhydrogenated margarine, softened

1/2 cup nonhydrogentated shortening

1 cup plus 2 T sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 cup non-dairy milk

1 2/3 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup cornstarch

1/4 t salt

1/2 t baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips (lightly chop chips if they are very large, this will make slicing through the dough much easier)

1. Wash the mint leaves and pat them dry with a towel or spin them in a salad spinner. Remove any stems and with a heavy knife mince the leaves very fine.

2. In a large bowl, using an electric hand mixer, cream together the margarine, shortening, and sugar until light and fluffy, about three minutes. Scrape down the sides often. Beat in the vanilla and mint extracts. Add non-dairy milk and beat until creamy. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda and mix to form a soft dough. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the finely chopped mint and chocolate chips. Dough will be slightly sticky.

3. Scrape the dough, with a rubber spatula, onto a large sheet of wax paper. Form a log about 2 inches wide and 12 inches long, taking hold of the ends of the wax paper and gently tugging to create a rounder log of dough. Wrap and tuck in the ends of the wax paper and chill the dough till very firm, at least 2 hours or overnight.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Slice the dough into 1/2 inch thick slices, place them at least 2 inches apart on the sheets (cookies will spread), and bake 12 to 14 minutes till the edges start to brown. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cook 5 minutes before carefully lifting them with a spatula onto wire racks to cool. Store in a loosely covered container.