Black Bean and Green Chili Tamales

Vegan Brownies

Vegan Brownies (SOOOO GOOD)

served with Vegan Maple Walnut Ice Cream from the book Vice Cream (also SOO GOOD!)

Veggie Patties with Herbed Onion Confit on Cibatta

Veggie Patties with Herbed Onion Confit, Tomato and Basil, on Cibatta

Tabouli on the side

Frying Pan Pizza

Wow! Another fabulous recipe from Donna Klein!

This is from her Vegan Italiano cookbook.

I change the pizza entirely though, using fresh tomatoes (instead of sauce,) onions, fresh basil, and artichoke hearts.

The pizza dough has rosemary, basil and oregano.

We ate the crusts with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar.

Green Beans & New Potatoes

We've been eating more potatos lately.

And this is my new favorite potato salad!

3 minute-steamed green beans and new potatos in olive oil, white wine vinegar and shallots!

YUM!

The recipe is from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein.
Donna Klein has wonderful Vegan cookbooks that do NOT include ANY tofu, substitutes, or nutritional yeast (etc.) with ingredients that any omni would have at home. Every recipe I've tried is awesome.

Sushi and Spring Rolls!!

This is my very first ever homemade sushi!! I know they may look funny... but I think it's pretty good for my first time! Oh, and I even used brown rice to make it healthier! It made up for the fact that I fried the spring rolls.

These are California Rolls with avocado and carrot, rolled in sesame seeds. Inside out rolls are my favorite.

Clockwise (from the top): Avocado Rolls, Bigger Avocado Rolls, Baked Tofu & Carrot Rolls, California Rolls with nori on the outside.

These are Tofu Apple Spring Rolls from Vegan Lunch Box but I didn't have rice paper so I wrapped them in Lumpia wrappers and fried them.
Mmm! GOOD.

On the annoying side the prepared wasabi I purchase turn out to have milk in it!! WTH?! In wasabi?
We used it anyway but next time I will be returning to the, "read every label, every time" policy.

Marinated Broccoli Salad

This was awesomely fabulous!

Chop up some broccoli into bite-size pieces, add some toasted almonds, drained water chestnuts and your favorite Italian or Caesar-style salad dressing (I used Annie's Naturals Goddess Dressing) stir, cover and marinate in the fridge for 24 hours.

Wow, yum!!

Tofu Nuggets and Sweet Cornbread

Homemade tofu nuggets (chicken nuggets,) breaded with flaxseed meal, crushed Nature's Path multi-grain cereal, cornmeal, paprika and other spices. BBQ sauce on the side.

Sweet cornbread recipe from the Vegan Lunch Box Cookbook, which is fast, easy and delicious!

Thin Crust Pizza

Nothing special.

Fresh spinach, onions and jalapenos on a thin crust pizza.

Cheese totally ruins pizza.

I used a nice, easy, no-rise, thin crust dough recipe it only took 5 minutes to make and I will definitely use it again.

**Warning:
I AM pregnant and my taste may become progressively stranger throughout this blog... not that spinach, onions and jalapenos is odd... but I can see a few people raising their eyebrows.

Onion Rings

I made these onion rings a few weeks ago (yeah, I know, I totally blog out of order!)

The batter is blended silken tofu, whole wheat flour, soy milk, lemon juice and pinch of baking powder and salt.

They tasted awesome.
The only problem was they stuck to the pan quite a bit, hence the naked onion spots. I think that was due to my oil temp though.
I am totally going to try subbing beer for the soy milk next time... mmm beer battered...

Isa Chandra can plan my PunkVegan Revolution any day!

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World ROCKS! You must buy it!

http://vegancupcakes.wordpress.com/

I made my first batch of cupcakes from the book... and of course I couldn't just settle for the basic cupcake... I had to go all out for the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Cupcakes... I don't make cupcakes everyday you know!

Let me just say, for having to make:

1. vegan cupcakes, from scratch
2. a vegan custard filling (not an easy feat!)
and 3. a rich chocolate ganache

.... this was insanely easy!!

Here's how they turned out:

The melty looking custard filling is due to my impatience (surprise, surprise...) and need to cut open the cupcake to take a picture before allowing them to fully cool as I was instructed to do. LOL
And yeah, those are ScoobyDoo cupcake liners... you use what you've got!

Anyway, I ate the cut open melty one and it was so good I wanted to die! It tasted so bad and UN-vegan! But it wasn't! Heehee! I'm not even a fan of Boston Cream Pie so I feel kind of bad... like it is just wasted on me.... I wish I had a real BCP lover here to test this out on... I KNOW they'd swoon!

Toddler Food - Peanut Butter P-Pie

P-Pie is what my son used to call pizza when he was younger.

He wanted pizza day and night.

It was getting ridiculous because he's allergic to dairy, so we'd get a pizza and scrape off all the cheese and throw that out. (We're not sure how ordering a pizza with no cheese would go over at the Italian owned restaurant in our German village yet!) OR I'd make a pizza and he might or might not eat it with nutritional yeast... I know how he feels, nut. yeast still makes me gag sometimes.

I had to come up with something to get him to eat some veg and other things as well. So, I made a five grain pizza dough (with lots of ground flaxseed) in my Vitamix and baked mini pizza crusts. Topped it with organic PB, raisins, carrot slices (isn't it cute they look like pepperoni!) and sunflower seeds (not pictured.)

You can add anything...

PB with jelly spoonfuls (again, like pepperoni), other nut butters, chocolate or carob chips, shredded coconut...

I posted the recipe for pizza dough on a popular veggie recipe site and someone commented that they made it with bananas and honey! (FYI, I have still not decided where I stand on the Vegan Honey Debate.)

If you don't feel like making the pizza dough you can just put all of this on a whole wheat pita!

Toddler Food - Pea Pockets and Grapes

Wow, I take bad pictures.

Anyway......

This was dinner for my not-quite 2.5 year old.

The little pastry pockets are filled with peas. That's it, just frozen peas. He loves peas! He pretty much eats at least 1/2 cup of peas and an apple every day.

The pastry is made with half whole wheat flour. Our family actually prefers half whole wheat pastry for most pies... it adds a yummy harvesty taste.

The recipe is the "Easy Pie Crust" from the Vegan Lunch Box Cookbook with a dash of nutmeg. I used the left over pastry and made larger samosa-like pockets for myself with some left over Chana Masala (with fresh spinach.)

For dessert he had another pastry pocket filled a teaspoon of some nutella-like stuff and part of a chopped up Chocolate Coconut Larabar.

Salad with Chipotle Ranch Dressing

Spring salad mix, with baby spinach.


Tomato and cucumbers.


Steamed broccoli and carrots.


Mix together, cover with the dressing below.


Dressing:
Ranch dressing packet mix,
soymilk,
leftover homemade vegan sour cream,
Ring of Fire Chipotle & Roasted Garlic hot sauce (which I'm fairly positive is vegan.)

Russian Blini

I miss Russia!

I didn't miss it when I when to school there!
But I miss it now!

My landlady used to make me blini for breakfast on special weekends.
Blini is a crepe-like pancake. Mine had a buttery scrambled egg filling.
So yummy!!!

Now, the thought of eating an egg (full of tasty antibiotics and growth hormones) gives me the heebie-jeebies... but I had to have blini!

I adapted a recipe for vegan Austrian Kaiserschmarrn, to result in an even thinner crepe and didn't any use vanilla.

Next, I made a buttery tofu scramble using firm regular tofu. Usually I make a tofu scramble for my husband (he loves it) and I add tons of veggies, onions, and spices... this time I left those all out. I added plenty of buttery earth balance, turmeric, a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar (I swear this makes it very eggy tasting!) and a teeny bit of dried parsley flakes. Then I mutilated the tofu because this is how my landlady always made her eggs. It was PERFECT!!

I have made the adapted Kaiserschmarrn recipe many, many times now. I can even do cool pan flips! I'm really good! They go well with jam, lemon juice and powdered sugar, or anything! My son loves them plain.

I vow to serve these crepes for any breakfast-like event that I host in the future.

Red Bean Burgers and Spicy Fries

These vegan red bean burgers are based on a black bean burger recipe that I thought was a little bland. Mine have a slight salsa taste. Great with avacado! :)

The bean burgers are made with organic kidney beans, bell pepper, whole grain bread crumbs and egg replacer (only if it's a dry day.)

The hamburger buns (in the first photo) I made from scratch... I have to say I was a bit disappointed with them. They are 100% whole grain (good!) but turned out dry and a bit heavy (bad...)
That's what I get from randomly choosing a recipe from the web without checking to see that it had tons of good reviews first. They weren't terrible... it's just that bread making involves a considerable time investment (not to mention the kneading!) I may try these again with some tweaking I think.

We try to not eat too many potatoes, but when we do I make spicy fries. They are soooo good! They are seasoned with a few different things but the killer 'secret ingredient' is dry mustard.

This second photo (more recent) has the same burger recipe but the fries are spicy rutabaga fries.

*Yes, that's a paper plate. Please don't email me with nasty things, our faucet is getting replaced.

Baked Seitan "Ribs"

Mmm ribs!!

These are made with kneaded, seasoned, wheat gluten and then baked. Glaze with a your favorite yummy BBQ sauce.
MMM! :)

BBQ sauce is the literally only thing we have in our house right now that has high fructose corn syrup in it. Does anyone know a good brand without it??

High fructose corn syrup is the devil.

I hate HFCS... But these vegan ribbies, they are goooooooood!

Stuffed Mushrooms

Mushrooms are good.
Stuffed mushrooms are great.


I made these up last week and thought that seasoned bread crumbs would be too plain.
So, I added some mashed silken tofu and nutrional yeast.
They were good. But next time I'll just leave them alone. The creamy stuff totally overpowered the mushroom-y goodness.

Yeah... I burned the tops too. :P

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Every week, I make a batch of cookies for my 2 year old (who is allergic to eggs and dairy.)

He loves cookies! And man, can he eat some cookies!

"Every week?" you say, "Cookies? That can't be good!"

AH HA! But it is!

I am a sneaky Mommy, you see! The cookies I usually make are super-filled with great things like fiber, bananas and flax. If I do use chips, they are carob chips. It's really more like breakfast in a cookie.

This week I was in the mood to make some carob chip cookies. Of course, we happened to be out of carob chips. I have to buy ours online, due to where we live... so, it's not like I can just run out and grab some. Instead, I went to the grocery store (with low hopes) that I might find an "accidentally vegan" bag of chocolate chips. To my surprise I did!
Baker's brand, Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunks are vegan! Spread the word!

So here is a (somewhat blurry) photo of our BAD-for-you chocolate chunk cookies from this week.

My husband reminded me, as he had a mouthful of cookie, that they aren't really that bad for you since they're still made with, half whole what flour, Earth Balance, Ener-G egg replacer and flax. He is sort of right... and I just think the vegan chocolate chunks look so nummy! Now, if only they made carob chunks...

Chana Masala

Indian food is seriously my vice...

I love it all!

Vindaloos, Malai Kofta and Ooo Peshawri Naan!
It makes me want to stop blogging right now and run out to get some from our local Indian restaurant!

Indian food is traditionally made with ghee and therefore, quite often not vegan. I do not make my curries with ghee. However, due to the many vegetarian options that Indian cuisine provides, I tend to overlook the ghee factor when eating out.

Anyhow, here we have Chana Masala (Curried Garbanzo Beans)

I make curries quite often and I have to say that this has been my best EVER. I make my garam masala from scratch and I have been perfecting it for some time now. I can never get my hands on cardamon and it's probably the best it's going to be without it.

I am so pleased with the way the Chana Masala turned out. It is so good, in fact, that I made it Sunday for lunch, we had the leftovers for dinner, and then I made an ENTIRE new batch for lunch Monday. Today (Tuesday) both my husband and I will be having those leftovers for lunch. Hmm... 11:30am? Close enough to lunchtime for me!

Simple Salad with Chik'n

This is just a simple salad of baby field greens and some (vegan!) Morningstar Farms® Meal Starters™ Chik'n Strips.

I try to limit packaged food use as much as possible but the Meal Starters are really handy when you want something quick.

They make great chik'n enchilldas! They are VERY chicken like, I'm sure you could fool people with them.

The best way to prepare them is in a non-stick pan. I don't use non-stick anymore so I've had some issues lately getting them to... well, not stick without using too much oil. I'll keep trying. :)

Eggplant Parma

Eggplant is my favorite food!

It is just so yummy! But only went cooked properly! I can understand why people don't like eggplant when they eat a purple, rubbery, squeeky chunk of something.

Eggplant Parmesan is usually fried, then baked.

Instead, I bake mine twice.

I use a ground flax/hot water mixture to bread raw eggplant in seasoned Panko breadcrumbs and nutritional yeast. Then I bake or broil the breaded eggplant slices on both sides.

Finally stack in this order: eggplant, un-cheese & then sauce (Using the mock cheese as a barrier between the eggplant and the sauce helps keep the eggplant crispy!)

Spanakoptia

This is my vegan Spanakopita.

Spanakoptia is a Greek dish traditionally made with, spinach, feta cheese, eggs, phyllo dough, butter, onions and seasonings. It is often served in individual triangles.

My version (with vegan puff pastry) includes, spinach, onions, crumbled firm silken tofu, non-hydrogenated vegan margarine and seasonings.