Bean Dip Holiday Wreath

This is a bean dip wreath that I made for the holidays.  I got the idea from the McDougall Forums online.  It is just bean dip with broccoli florets and grape tomatoes stuck in it.  The original had a bow cut from red bell pepper, but mine did not turn out very nicely....

Baked Squash

These went into my oven a little while ago.  I am baking them, then I will cut them open, scoop out the insides, puree the pulp in my VitaMix, and make either pies or soup.  Yum!  There is a blue pumpkin, a pie pumpkin, and a butternut squash.

I used to cut squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and cook face down in a dish with maybe 1/4" of water.  My friend, moonwatcher, suggested a different way when I was preparing a Red Kuri squash a while back.  Now I just put a few cuts in each squash or pumpkin, turn the oven on to 350F, and bake until tender.  Then it is simple to cut and prepare.  moonwatcher wrote a wonderful post about it at Plant Based Slow Motion Miracle.

Hash Browns and Mushrooms

Yesterday was a beautiful day!  The weather was cool, instead of the 90+ degrees that we have been having, and everybody was in a happy mood.  I decided to make hash browns for breakfast, so the picture is of shredded red potatoes cooked in a hot, nonstick pan, with sliced button and portabella mushrooms.  So good!

Fruit and Veggies

I have been snacking on too many high-calorie foods the past couple of weeks, so today I took fresh raspberries and baby carrots to work with me.  They made a great addition to my lunch, which was cold bean soup.

Eggplant Stew With Many Mushrooms

I made this meal a couple of days ago.  It is eggplant stew, which is wonderful, with three kinds of mushrooms in it:  oyster, shiitake, and crimini.  I have to be honest, it was horrible!  I stewed the mushrooms seperately with garlic first, then added them to the stew.  It was like chewing on your nose or something gross.  I have always thought I was a person who LOVED mushrooms, but that changed with this meal.  Blech!

Red Potato and Beets

Sometimes, simpler is better.

Watermelon and Mango

Vegan eating doesn't get any easier than fresh fruit!  Today my family cut up a huge watermelon and a mango to munch on this afternoon and to take for lunch tomorrow.  It has been in the refrigerator for a couple of hours and now tastes sweet and feels cool and wet.  Mmmmm!

Baked Tofu

Last week I found myself with some REALLY short lunches at work and not much to eat.  I had not prepared food and the town I live in is famous for its BBQ places.  I got a plain baked potato one day, but I need to have some things ready to take with me.  So tonight I am making a bunch of baked tofu  that I can stuff wraps with.  I love this stuff!

Just slice the tofu into 8 slices, press as much water out as possible with paper or cloth towels, marinate in your favorite liquids (I like soy sauce, lime juice, ginger, garlic, and a dash of cayenne pepper), then bake in the oven at 350 for an hour, turning once half-way through.

Dinner At Ka-Prow

Dinner at Ka-Prow again--so good!  Steamed tofu and no oil were used.  The chef is wonderful about cooking with no animal products and no oil if asked.  Of course the food tastes different than if it was stir-fried in oil, but it is still wonderful.

Spicy Peanut Tofu Sandwich

This sandwich was the centerpiece of this meal, shown in the bottom right picture.  We enjoyed a spicy peanut tofu sandwich, cantaloupe, corn on the cob, and beer.  So good!  I got the recipe on another site that I was looking at as Vegan MOFO has gotten underway, spicy peanut tofu sandwich. 

I modified the recipe a bit--I only sprayed the pan with oil instead of using a couple of tablespoons and I did not use the vegan mayo.  I did squeeze extra lime juice on the sandwich since the mayo was missing and it was a wonderful substitute.

I ate a cold leftover sandwich for lunch today.  It was so good that I think I am going to fix more of the tofu this weekend to have for lunches next week.  The fresh lime juice and cilantro really make the entire sandwich taste great.

Sushi at Ka-Prow Sushi and Bistro

Sushi—yum!  This sushi came from a restaurant named Ka-Prow.  I love sushi right after it is made.  The one in the picture has steamed tofu and avocado in it.  So good!  I actually ordered two of these….but I did share the first one.

Black Bean Burger and Daikon Carrot Salad

Today is day 2 of Vegan Month of Food!  My lunch is simple and cheap:  daikon carrot salad and a black bean burger.  I put the burger on toasted Ezekiel Sprouted bread.  It is really good with pickles and mustard.

 Who said eating vegan had to be expensive, unhealthy, or difficult?

Vegan Month of Food--Enchilada Casserole

Today is the first day of the Vegan Month of Food.  I will be trying to post some of the meals that my family eats this month and am beginning with this enchilada casserole I made last night. 

It has layers of corn tortillas, onions, mushrooms, baby spinach leaves, shredded potatoes, salt and pepper, ground New Mexico Chilies, and tomatillo sauce on top of it all—and in between the layers.  

This turned out great!  Some of my family liked theirs with Daiya cheese sprinkled on top, but I liked it without.

 My plan is to show quick and inexpensive ways to eat vegan and healthy.  I have been picking up sushi at a couple of restaurants recently and will show some this month, but even then it is inexpensive and in the $6-7 range.  The food tastes great and is usually easy to make.  Dive in and try it!

Spinach Lasagna

Tonight was lasagna night—mmmmmmm!  Here is my version:

Filling:
1 box hard tofu, drained
 2 cups mashed potatoes (I used instant flakes with just water and salt)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons dried basil
Mix it all together as smoothly as possible.

Sauce:
4 cups of your favorite marinara sauce.

Other:
1 box of oven-ready lasagna noodles(the ones that you don't have to boil first)
2 cups of chopped frozen spinach or 3 cups of fresh baby spinach leaves.

Put 1 cup of the sauce in the bottom of the lasagna dish.  Then put one layer of noodles, 4 of them.  Put half of the filling, another 4 noodles, and another cup of sauce.  Put 2 cups of spinach on, then the other half of the filling, a cup of sauce, the last noodles and the last cup of sauce.  Cover with foil and bake in a 375 oven for 40 minutes.

Anasazi Beans & Brown Jasmine Rice; Oatmeal Balls

The top picture is dinner tonight:  beans and rice.

2 cups Anasazi Beans
1 yellow onion, sliced
1 heaping Tablespoon chopped garlic
5 cups water
4 vegetable bouillon cubes
2 bay leaves
2 Tablespoons Hungarian paprika
1 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt

Put it all into a pressure cooker and cook for about 45 minutes.  Serve over brown jasmine rice.

The second picture is Oatmeal Balls that I made for my teenagers to eat with their friends tomorrow.

1.5 cups quick oats
1/4 cup dark cocoa powder
1/4 cup agave nectar
2 teaspoons vanilla
scant 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter, after pouring off the oil
3/4 cup of dark chocolate chips, finely chopped walnuts, and raw sunflower seeds

Mix all together in a bowl, then take a small handful, squeeze into a ball, and put on a plate.

This made 12.

As you can see from the two recipes above, it does not take a lot of money to eat a healthy, vegan, plant-based diet.  The dark cocoa powder could be any cocoa powder, agave nectar could be replaced with maple syrup or honey, Anasazi beans could be any of your favorite dry beans, Himalayan pink salt can be table salt.  It does not have to cost a lot of money or involve hard-to-get ingredients.

Try it!

Red Potato Salad

 

I am on a mailing list for weekly recipes from PCRM.  Today a recipe for Red Potato Salad came in my email.  This is a picture of it.  

Here is the link:

Red Potato Salad

Mushroom Risotto

I made this fabulous mushroom risotto a couple of days ago—no oil, no cheese or cream, just yummy goodness!  Here is a link to the recipe; it calls for oil or margarine, but I just left it out.

Dairy-Free Risotto Recipe

Oatnuts

I found this recipe on this website today:  http://www.thehealthyvegans.com/
 

I was out of applesauce so I used 4 ounces of pureed baby prunes; also did not have any tapioca starch, so I used acorn starch.  They turned out really nice!  Not very sweet, so if you want this to be a substitute for doughnuts, I would add more sugar and maple syrup.

Leftover Mashed Russets In Lunch Skillet

Lunch today is leftover mashed russets, kale, mushrooms, smokey tempeh, and nutritional yeast with sliced pickled beets on the side.  Yummy!  I just got a non-stick skillet out and put a couple of large spoonfuls of potatoes in the pan, then I added sliced mushrooms, ripped pieces off of several stalks of kale, cut 4 smokey tempeh slices into small pieces, cooked it all together, served and sprinkle on nutritional yeast and added some pickled beets on the side. 

This is so good!  The more you eat vegetables for your meals, the more your taste buds adjust to those flavors, until you crave the tastes. 

Acorn Bread

I made acorn bread this morning for the first time.  I have been reading about foods that are native to Texas and then expanded that to foods that early peoples might have eaten, especially hunter-gather groups.  Acorns came up frequently as a food source.  I read about how to make your own acorn flour, which involves removing the tannic acid from it, but it is a lot of work and I just wanted to try cooking with it. 

I ended up going to a Korean grocery store and buying Acorn Starch.  I am still not sure it is what I want it to be and have found opinions differ widely online, but I tried it and it worked just fine.  In all fairness though, it feels like corn starch and when it was in the bag, it had the "squeaky" feel when I pinched the package together, just like starch.  But I tried it anyway.

The dark color comes from the acorn flour.  I used Korean Acorn Starch, which some people say is the same as flour and some say is not.  I found a place online which quoted a man who teaches cooking with acorn flour who said that the Koreans grind their flour so fine it is as small as starch, but that you could still cook with it if used with some whole wheat flour.  So that is what I did.
 
There is a lot of interesting information on the web about acorn flour and how much it has been used for thousands of years.  I was intrigued and wanted to try it.  It is kind of cool to eat something that human beings have been eating since at least the Mesolithic period.  I watched a documentary by the BBC on YouTube called Wild Food.  It is a five-part show on hunter-gathers in Great Britains' history.

 Here is how I did it:

1 cup acorn flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup white flour
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 eggs worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk

Preheat oven to 400F.  Mix all ingredients in a bowl and put into a loaf pan.  Mine is silicon so I did not have to oil and flour the bottom.  Bake for about 30 minutes.

It has a nice flavor.  Try it!

Rice Pudding, Again

I made rice pudding again last night.  This time I doubled the recipe so the teenagers would not eat ALL of it; I really like it the next day, cold.

Barley, Bean, and Kale Soup

This evening I fixed the family Barley, Bean, and Kale Soup.  One of the girls served herself before the kale went in; she does NOT like kale.  It was really good!

Not sure why my picture says “toast.”  I am playing around with a new program that is supposed to frame your picture as you take it.  Hmmm….

I got this recipe from Dr. McDougall’s Mobile Cookbook.

Nopales Enchiladas with Tomatillo Sauce

Nopales Enchilada with Tomatillo Sauce

This was an amazing meal!  I bought nopales at the grocery store--the flat piece of a prickly pear cactus--already dethorned and sliced into strips.  All I had to do was cook and eat them.  I parboiled them in a pan with an inch or so of water, then put them aside until the tomatillo sauce was ready and I could assemble the enchiladas.

The sauce is amazing.  Take 10 or so fresh tomatillos, 2-4 Jalapeno or Serrano peppers, and put them into an oven-proof skillet.  Put them under the broiler until they are blackened, like in my picture above.  Then run them through the blender and liquify them.  Pour into a pot with 4-6 cups of vegetable broth, bring to a boil, add salt to taste, and it is ready.

Dip 1 or 2 corn tortillas at a time into the hot tomatillo sauce and leave for 20-30 seconds.  Pull out and lay on a plate, fill with nopales and mushrooms (or whatever you like), roll and smother in Tomatillo Sauce.

I like to put fresh cilantro on top, too.  Yummy!!