Hey @ckaricai, @DianeHB and @Delphi, I went to my local Asian Food Store and I although I couldn't find the Lian How Black Bean paste (they only allowed one person in the store at once due to Covid-19 restrictions in place and I had to find about 7 specialist food items so I didn't want to take heaps of time), but I found the Lee Kum Kee Black Bean Paste. Thanks @DianeHB I can now make Mapo Tofu with some integrity .

The last pic that @DianeHB has taken a photo of is a fairly standard brand. I will give it a look! By the way, black bean sauce is also commonly used to cook fish and vegetables like choy sum at times as well.

@Delphi, thanks for that. Do you have any douchi at home that you could take a photo of and post it here? As you are in Oz it might be more similar to NZ douchi products, perhaps? I appreciate your offer

@AnnaD or anyone else - you can ask me about Chinese stuff anytime too and I’ll try to answer if I know how to! Maybe you can check out Buddhist vegetarian food as well, theres certainly a rich corpus there (and different regions and countries will have their own takes)

Yes those are Chinese characters. You’re welcome!

@DianeHB I was hoping that you would know which brands and substitutes that I could use, thank you! Is the Lian How Brand Sauce written in Chinese characters? If it is, I can show it to the local Asian food store owner here. I can show her any of these! This is really helpful, thanks Diane

Have fun experimenting! Any Asian market that carries Chinese sauces should have fermented black bean paste. There are some different kinds, but they should all taste similar in a mapo tofu dish and should all be naturally vegan. Here’s what I have in my fridge: This is plain black bean paste. Spicy black bean sauce, often used in place of the above. This is more of a ready made stir fry sauce with a soy sauce and fermented black bean base, but can be used in a pinch if you can’t find the right stuff.

I don’t know if there is an equivalent to H Mart where you are in NZ but I can get most Asian ingredients from the nearest H Mart. They even deliver. I bet if you went into an Asian market and asked, someone would have an answer and you could buy it right there.

I am wanting to learn and make Chinese Vegan food. It is one of my Vegan food cooking goals. I have made Dan Dan noodles (my favourite), including the recipe for Szechuan Chilli Oil (next level depth and deliciousness), which we will eat tomorrow. I am familiar with Italian Vegan food cooking, but learning Chinese Vegan food cooking is another world which I am very excited about. And I resonate more with China, Japan and Korea in general than I do with Europe. And cooking is the next best thing to travelling, which even though a lot more people are now vaccinated, we are still paying a mortgage ahead of travelling internationally. I was also following Liziqi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Jx2pB7OZg . I hope that Liziqi can return to making her inspiring gardening and cooking shows for Youtube, which has been interrupted by some political strife with her employer? Thanks @ckaricai for introducing me to her show. I am using non Vegan cook Shannon Martinez' "Vegan with bite" cookbook, and she develops very sophisticated/complex flavour profiles so that Vegans do not miss out on a deep umami flavour profile commonly associated with carnist food. So I am wanting to make Mapo Tofu. In Aotearoa/NZ a lot of chinese sauces/pastes that are Vegan and high quality are the brand Lee Kum Kee. I have asked my local Vegan cooking groups what they use for douchi/fermented black bean paste, and where they find it. I ask here because I know that there is a lot of Vegan and non Vegan cooking talent in TLE spanning multiple cultures, which is why I am asking which brands of Vegan douchi/fermented black bean paste you may use, because, I may find it here, but under another or a different name than what I might be expecting. Here is the recipe for Mapo Tofu that I am using. Also some Helenium flowers from my garden (my favourite flower that I have grown the first time this year). They almost look like chrysanthemums. Thanks in advance.

Below is a short (1 minute, 18 seconds) recipe video. It is from staff member Angela at nutritionfacts.org They look yummy!

“When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that’s why I can’t eat it. Simple as that.” -Paul McCartney

“Why are vegans made fun of while the inhumane factory farming process regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit?” -Ellen Page

These can be eaten anytime you want. Found the recipe a few years ago. They can be made easily enough. They are very tasty too! Can be for breakfast or anytime. Healthy vegan cookies packed with whole grains, spices, and fruit! INGREDIENTS: 1 ½ cups oat flour ½ teaspoon ceylon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon nutmeg ⅛ teaspoon allspice ⅛ teaspoon cardamom ¼ -1 teaspoon turmeric (optional) 2 tablespoons ground flaxseed 2 ripe bananas ½ cup unsweetened applesauce 1 apple, diced 1 cup frozen blueberries, or more as desired METHOD: 1. Preheat oven to 350F. In a blender or a food processor, combine the bananas, applesauce, ground flaxseed, and spices. Blend until smooth. Pour liquid into a large mixing bowl. 2. Add diced apples and frozen blueberries to the bowl and mix by hand. Add in the oat flour and mix until well combined. 3. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Drop cookies by large spoonfuls onto the paper (about 6-8 cookies) Bake the cookies for 25 minutes. Then remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool. Serve the cookies warm. Store leftover cookies in the refrigerator or freezer.

@KurtisM My Mashed Potatoes for your taste bud delight !!! 2/3 thirds potatoes ( I like the purple ones) 1/3 " apples cook em together garlic cloves, as many as you can master 1 onion ( I like the purple ones) fresh ground black pepper, nutmeg, Cayenne pepper, and salt orange juice black olives on top and fresh parsley

Omg it's so nice to see you guys respond to this. I love your idea Ingun. I have some of both lying around. If I ever get a dehydrator or air fryer I could do that frying thing Evelin, before I went vegan fried potatoes are what my parents made me. I do like the idea of herbs and onions. Maybe even hummus too!

I sometimes mix caramelized (or raw if) chopped onions into mashed potatoes. There's also an Estonian dish that mixes (pre-cooked) barley pearls into mashed potatoes (originally also pieces of meat or lard, but let's skip that), it adds some texture but it's rather bland and not to everyone's taste. My mother used to simply stir and fry leftover mashed potatoes until golden crisp, but you'd probably need oil for that. You could also mix the potato mass with herbs and whatever else and use as stuffing for stuffed bell peppers or smth like that.

This is not answering your questions, but I'll share it anyway since it's about mashed potatoes... I 'invented' a new kind of mashed potatoes for myself; so after mashing the potatoes I added green currypaste and coconutmilk and salt. I love that mixture.

Or, for soup, add pureed cooked pumpkin (and your favorite spices) and sprinkle with pumpkin seeds to serve.

Ha! You sure can. :)

Can I come for dinner when I'm in NYC? Jeez gal, you know this shit!!! (I'm fasting, so I am just.so.hungry. right now ?)

Leftover mashed potatoes can be used to make a Shepard's pie. You can substitute the meat with mushrooms and eggplant that you have squeezed moisture out of. To fry fry up some leftover mashed potatoes form them into small patties and place them on a cookie sheet and wrap in Saran Wrap and freeze for a few hours or overnight. The next day use the standard breading procedure (using panko instead of breadcrumbs) and bake them in the oven until golden brown. If you want a little more body add a little bit of flour and either eggs or some sort of vegan ingredient to help it hold together like maybe agar agar or xantham gum. You could also mix them with freshly grated potatoes, freeze them and make tater tots instead of patties. You could add a ton of milk of any kind and cook up some leaks and make potato leak soup. I like turning leftovers into either soups or frittatas, or like a dump pizza. But for soups leftovers work really well with ramen noodles cause you just heat up the food and place it on top of the. noodles and broth. This works great with bibimbop too. You just chop everything up and make a fancy rice bowl.

Leftover potatoes are great on pizza (just slice them up and add them as toppings before baking). I also eat them in salads (green salads, or even quinoa salads, hot or cold). Potatoes make everything better, in my opinion.

I usually warm them up again and add extra plain soy milk and some vegan butter or parmesan.

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post about ideas for food, but I'll try. What do you guys do when you have leftover potatoes. How do you recook them, and reuse them? I recently tried making potato patties from leftover mashed up potatoes, but they didn't come out well- perhaps because I didn't add anything like onions or zucchini to them. And perhaps they were too big to fry as well. I don't use oil and do look for recipes without it, but my expertise is poor. In general I honestly suck right now at recooking leftovers. Only soup has worked well in this regard. So to go further I'd like to ask how you all recook any food. My foods at the moment are often bland (except my salads, they're great), and I'd like to expand my expertise beyond shitty leftovers, occasional oatmeals and fruity salads.

I echo what Troy and DianeHB have said. I am transitioning to becoming Vegan, after being Vegetarian for 25 years. I am finding it easy all except for the dairy. I do not miss eggs, or honey. But the lack of vegan parmesan that I can buy that my girlfriend can eat (she has allergies to cashews, and other nuts), is a very challenging one to get around. I have bought Miyoko Schinners artisan cheese book, and I have made some of the cheeses with nuts that my girlfriend can eat other than the nut that the author has recommended, and the cheese version I made, didn't set as well, because I couldn't use the nut that the author recommended. So I am experimenting with the structure of the vegan cheese recipe but it is a trial and error thing and I have become frustrated by not being able to have success with what I can use as a nut base. Other than that, I have felt that over 2016 my appreciation and ability to put salad and cooked vege flavours together has improved, and more than anything I crave crisp fresh veges with lots of lemon, caramelised garlic, olive oil and herbs. I feel like a bit of a recreational vegan. I continue to buy cow milk parmesan cheese, although in 2016 I made the permanent habit (with the help of Miyoko Schinners excellent book Vegan Pantry Basics I recommend it), of making our own yoghurt and cream analogues with soy and other non dairy milks. I also love anchovies. I am playing around with recreating a vegan anchovy analogue, using Vegemite (Braggs amino flavour, yeast flavour), and I made something with that last night and I was surprised at how well it went. There will be further experimentation along this line. Many countries economies are based on heinous things that make an everyday habit and lifestyle of cruelty and violence with animals. I try not to support cruelty. I have to find a substitute for cow milk parmesan and anchovies because this is one of my final challenges. I have the analogues now for bacon, burgers, and barbeque flavours. It is a process, and people choose it for different reasons. My reasons were always abolishing animal cruelty. You may as well live trying to improve on how you do what you do. And don't beat yourself up if you fall short of your goal. You may as well try to live to your goals and ideals than, with the experience of knowing that perfection is an elusive visitor, than giving up your ideals and goals because perfection cannot be achieved 24/7. As I am learning, pre conceived notions about roles are self limiting, same with ones conceptions about how to become vegan. It is trial and error, and evaluation. I keep on beating myself up because the strategies I have to go vegan, which I naiively thought were perfect, are requiring a whole shitload of consideration, and adaptation. LOL.. but I am happier, much happier supporting animals in this way. It is the biggest middle finger I can give to animal cruelty, and to dismantling those industries. You are doing alright.