Taco Monday

Lunch today was some tacos. I made a bean filling with some onion, some navy beans and a little leftover hot salsa cooked down in a pan. When this all got a lil mushy I added some red wine, pumpkin seeds and cocoa powder to the pan, and a spoonful of earth balance...then I smashed most of the beans with the back of my spatula. Danny made a creamy sauce with a little vegenaise, lemon juice and fresh chopped cilantro. We put some fresh spinach leaves on tortillas, then the beans, then the sauce :) Yummy lunch

Key Lime Pie

A friend brought an amazing Vegan Key Lime Pie over to our house last week, it was so delicious that I needed the recipe. She shared :) so..I recreated it for this weekend. I forgot to take a picture until there was only one piece left, so it looks a lil crazy, but yummy nonetheless. I used this recipe, this pie is so creamy and decadent, it's really more of a cheesecake than pie.

Recipe notes: I used the exact tofu and pudding mixes asked for and Follow Your Heart Creamcheese (which is yummier and has way less weird ingredients than Tofutti), and a storebought vegan pie crust :)

Curried Tofu Salad

We went to a friend from my work's house for a barbeque on Friday night, when I asked what I could bring to share, she suggested something with tofu. I am usually apprehensive to serve tofu to people to non-vegan/vegetarian eaters. Tofu gets a bad rap for 'being bland,' so I knew I wanted to make something with lots of flavor! Curried tofu salad :) yummy! Good with crackers, and as a sandwich filling.

ingredients:
1 1/2 blocks extra firm tofu (frozen, thawed, squeezed dry and crumbled)
1/4 onion chopped
1/4 cup raisins
1/2-3/4 cup vegenaise
1/4 cup mango chutney
1 tsp turmeric
curry powder and red pepper to taste

Kale Slaw and BBQ Tofu

We've been loving kale lately, I usually steam it, or stir-fry it, but wanted to try kale a different way. I know its full of vitamins, I always see it listed on "healthiest foods" lists. So I decided to experiment with a raw kale dish. I used curly green kale from the greenmarket, shredded it, add some grated carrot and made a creamy spicy peanut dressing. For the dressing, I used peanut butter, water, a lil canola oil, rice vinegar, some garlic and some red pepper flakes. It came out quite well, very healthy and yummy. 'Kale slaw' isn't just coleslaw said with a weird accent :)
For the BBQ tofu, i baked it in the oven, then topped with some homemade BBQ sauce.

Kale and Chickpeas :)

This was a yummy and easy dinner tonight :) We had some Kale that needed to be cooked from last week's farmer's market, and a bunch of chickpeas in the fridge. I took inspiration from Vegan Dad's Spinach and Potatoes. Cooked up the chickpeas with some onion, garlic and ginger...added in the spices and the chopped kale, added some chickpea cooking broth. The broth steamed the kale, and made everything come together. We ate it on top of some rice (mix of wild, white and brown), and with a lil mango chutney.

Danny said "Nutritious and Delicious-tastic!!"

leftovers and yam salad

Tonight's dinner consisted of some jazzed up leftovers and curried yam salad. I had some leftover angel hair pasta w/zucchini and fake chicken, to give it some more life I cooked up a bunch of onion, then added sun dried tomatoes and tomato paste to the pan, I let that simmer for a minute, then I added in my leftover pasta. Came out really yummy the second time around :)

I wanted to use up this gigantic yam I had in the cabinet, so I create this salad:

ingredients:
1 gigantic yam - cubed and steamed
2 Tb chopped onion
1/4 cup raisins
1/8 cup sunflower seeds

toss w/ sauce:
1/4 cup vegenaise
1 tsp curry powder
salt and pepper

came out fantastic :)

biryani rice w/ roasted onion and asparagus

I made some biryani rice with some leftover brown rice I had in the fridge. The first time around, I had cooked the rice with saffron and garlic in the rice cooker. To make the biryani, I simple fried the rice (4 cups) it up with a little olive oil and added biryani-rice-spice-mix (2 Tbl) that I had in the cabinet, I stirred in some frozen peas (1/2 cup) and some chopped cashews (1/4 cup). I thought it needed a little creamy sauce, so I mixed together some mango chutney (1 T), tahini (1 T) Tofutti cream cheese (3 Tb) and a splash of water. I thought it tasted kinda yogurty and yummy.. It balanced out the spicy rice nicely :)

For the veggies, I oven-roasted asparagus and an onion at 350 until they looked browned and yummy.

vegan mac w/ sweet potatoes

Our honeymoon in Mexico was wonderful, we stayed at a fancy resort and ate tons and tons of guacamole :) The food we missed most from home was vegan mac.
So I made it right away when we got home..

Here's the recipe for my standard "cheese" sauce for vegan mac :) This amount of sauce is good for 16 oz box of pasta (shells, noodles, whatever...) I usually add some sort of veggie, this time I added sweet potato cubes

(note: this recipe was inspired by vegweb.com)

ingredients:
1 1/2 c. nutritional yeast
3/4 c. canola oil or earth balance
1 1/2 c. soy milk
1/3 c. Bragg's Liquid Amminos
1/4 block extra firm tofu
1 T paprika
1 T onion powder
1 T garlic powder
1 squirt dijon mustard
lots of fresh ground black pepper

-combine all ingredients together and blend, i like to use the immersion blender and blend until its a thick-creamy cheesey sauce

-stir in with cooked macaroni (1lb), and veggie of choice, top with bread crumbs, bake for 20-30 mins until bubbly and a little browned