homemade bagels with roasted garlic and herb cream cheez

When I woke up yesterday morning and looked in my fridge, it looked really sad and empty, so I spent my saturday catching up on a lil cooking. We're a lil broke right now, so going to the grocery store and stocking up wasn't really an option. So I cooked a big pot of chickpeas to last the week, I also saw that we're completely out of bread, and we had some silken tofu and roasted garlic to use up. I decided to make some bagels and  make up some cream cheez.

A couple months ago I found --> this recipe on vegweb.com, I've made these bagels three times now. The first time, I used white flour and chopped up sundried tomatoes, they were AWESOME. The second time, I tried to make them healthy, I used whole wheat flour... and well they were kinda torture bagels, sooo dense and chewy and really not enjoyable at all. So this time, I went with white flour again, and they came out chewy and bagely and perfect :) I added some flaxseeds on the top, mostly because I didn't have any other seeds on hand. Great recipe, but I definitely suggest going with white flour.

For the cream cheese, I looked in The Uncheese Cookbook, I didn't really have all the ingredients for the cream cheez listed in the book, so I took the general idea and created my own cheez. Here's what I did:

Herb and Roasted Garlic Cream Cheez

ingredients:
1 c. silken tofu
1/3 c. raw cashews
1/2 head roasted garlic
1 tsp agave nectar
1 tsp salt
1 Tb rice vinegar
1/4 tsp dried rosemary
1/4 tsp dried dillweed
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried parsley
1 Tb nutritional yeast

-blended all up in a food processor, then chill in fridge 

This has a much lighter texture than vegan cream cheese that you can buy at the store, but quite tasty and I thought it tasted great on the bagels :)

pizza night!!!

It's been so nice to be cooking again :) Tonight we had a pizza night.. although it was definitely too hot and humid to have the oven on, we braved it and enjoyed some yummy pizza with family. This first pizza was a "german pizza," I got the idea from a recipe on vegweb.com (I love that website!), I followed the recipe pretty closely. I used my regular pizza dough recipe, topped it with some mashed potatoes (yukon gold+vegenaise+salt+pepper), sliced homemade sausages (pretty close to this recipe.. I love these sausages, but have added my own flare, of course), sauerkraut and cheddar daiya cheese.
This is a great idea for a pizza, so hearty and yummy. The hubby LOVED and we'll definitely make it again.

This pizza is topped with basil, red onion, garlic, tomato slices and daiya mozzerella. Pretty yummy, but not as good as the german guy :)

i made some cheez!

Last weekend, I decided to make some firm cheez, from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, I've seen other bloggers rave about the Colby Cheez, a firm cheez, good for crackers and grilled cheez sandwiches. I gathered all the necessary groceries for the recipe, the only weird one was agar powder. I've never used agar before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I followed the "Chedda" suggestion, at the bottom of the Colby recipe. The recipe was pretty simple to follow, and didn't take very long. I decided to throw some chopped walnuts in the bottom of the dish, to make the cheez look a bit fancier :) And, it sure looked fancy!

So I brought this cheez to a family party, and served it with some crackers. The flavor was really quite nice and cheezy. The flavor was perfect with crackers, my only complaint was the texture, it wasn't perfect to me, a bit... gelatinous... I'm not sure if this is because I boiled the agar for too long. The directions said cook until completely dissolved, I didn't really see a change in the mixture that would be undissolved/dissolved. Alot of the cheez got eaten (by a bunch of non-vegans for the record). I think I'll attempt another cheez with agar, and see if I like the texture any better.

With the leftover cheez, we decided to make some cheezy-broccoli rice. I made a sauce with some plain almond milk, a splash of bragg's, a squirt of mustard, a lil sriracha and the rest of the cheez, all shredded up. I let the mixture come to a bubble, the cheez melted in completely. Then we added in some chopped frozen broccoli, and leftover white rice from Chinese delivery. This mixture came out GREAT! We definitely preferred the cheez this way :) We served it with some hot sauce glazed tempeh courtesy of The Veganomicon, and some steamed cabbage.

diner-style breakfast

I haven't been inspired to blog much lately, mostly because we've been super busy, and posting little blurbs and pics on facebook is much lazier than posting on here :)

Today's breakfast was quite epic, so I thought I'd share with the blogosphere. Yesterday was the hubby's birthday (we were up late celebrating...) so when we woke up, we were in great need of a big satisfying breakfast. In our pre-vegan days, we would be off to Miss Albany diner on mornings like this. But as vegans in Schenectady, NY, we need to fend for ourselves when it comes to diner-y food.

The menu for our diner breakfast: hash browned potatoes, spicy tofu scramble, guacamole and EB slathered toast :) AND COFFEE!

We started the hash browned potatoes first. I used Adirondack Red potatoes from the Greenmarket. They aren't sweet like sweet potatoes, but have pretty red flesh all the way through. They are quite delicious and cook up a cool dark red/brown color.

for the potatoes:
-2 big potatoes (Adirondack Red for us)
-1/2 onion
-peanut oil
-paprika, s&p
-1 clove garlic

-cut up the potatoes REALLY small so that they don't take forever to cook.
-we started with some oil in a cast-iron skillet over med-high heat. cooked the onion a lil, then added the potatoes and spices (to taste).
-don't stir the potatoes around too much, and you'll get a nice crisp on the potatoes. stir every five minutes or so until they start to be nice and brown
-i think ours took around 2o minutes until i was satisfied. once i turned i heat off, i added the clove of garlic (minced or pressed), then stirred it around.

While this was cooking we got our tofu scramble ready. Tofu scramble only usually takes about 10 minutes to cook... so we overlapped our cooking times.

for the scramble:
-1/2 block extra firm tofu
-onion powder
-garlic powder
-turmeric
-s&p
-1/4 onion, chopped
-2 marinated hot peppers, chopped (we used some leftover peppers that were from the bulk olive bar at the grocery store, use whatever is on hand)
-handful cherry tomatoes, chopped
-2 carrots (we used purple carrots), shredded
-nutritional yeast
-vegan cheese

-in a small bowl, crumble tofu and season up with some with onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and turmeric. i don't really measure, but i am usually pretty conservative with the turmeric (only 1/2 tsp would be enough). stir this mixture around and set to the side.
-in a small frying pan over med heat, add a lil oil, and cook the onion a bit. once onion starts to cook, add in veggies (hot peppers, tomatoes, or anything you want). cook this for a minute then add in tofu mixture, cook this around until bright yellow and it starts to firm up (7-8 min)
-once it looks like firm scrambled eggs, stir in shredded carrot and a handful of nutritional yeast, it should be sticky and almost cheesy.
-we topped ours with some shredded vegan cheese (FYH monterey jack). i put it on top, turned the heat off and put a lid on the pan. the "cheese" was melty in about a minute.

The scramble came out super spicy, so we ate it with some guacamole :) We both gobbled up our breakfast and while we ate, talked about how cool it would be to own a vegan diner of our own some day...

parsnip and sweet potato au gratin!

So a couple weeks ago, I found a recipe online for a Gratin dish--> here. So I went to the farmer's market, and bought a whole load of parsnips, I got home all excited to make the Parsnip Gratin, looked online for the recipe, when I realized it was RUTABAGA gratin! I got all grumpy and was like "what the heck am I gonna do with all these parsnips???" The hubby told me to calm down, and I reluctantly decided to make the dish anyways.

I had lots of second thoughts as I was preparing the sauce and the parsnips, I believe I even canceled dinner once or twice. When it started baking, it started filling up the house with a rich cheesey smell... Then we ate it, it had great texture, and the cashew cream sauce was fantastic as a "gratin." We did agree that parsnips are a pretty strong flavor, and this gratin would be improved upon by adding other veggies. So I decided to improve upon the gratin last night. Here's what I did and, by the way, it came out great!

ingredients:

1 3/4 c. boiling water
1 c. raw cashews
1/2 c. tahini
2 T chickpea (light) miso
1 big parsnip
1 big sweet potato
1/2 small red onion
salt
pepper
thyme
nutmeg

-cover cashews with boiling water, let sit for 20-30 minutes.
-using immersion blender, blend cashews (with water), tahini and the miso. this should be super creamy and smooth
-prepare veggies! i used the food processor to make thin discs of the parsnip and sweet potato. i also chopped up the onion into lil pieces
-coat baking dish with oil.
-then layer your gratin. i started with one layer of parsnips, then a lil salt, pepper, thyme. then a layer of sweet potato and a lil onion, then more salt, pepper, thyme. then added about 1/3 the cashew cream sauce. then more veggies, spices, etc... until you've used up all the veggies, and topped with the last of the sauce
-cover the dish, and bake at 400 for 50 min. use a knife to check for tenderness. if the dish is almost done, top with garlic breadcrumbs and bake for 10 more min until golden.

Buffalo "Chicken" Dip

Sorry for lack of blogging lately, December always gets so nutty and busy, and truthfully, I was a lil burnt out from Vegan MOFO, but I'm feeling inspired to share my food again, so here goes...

Today we were invited to a New Year's Day party at the hubby's Dad's house. I wanted to share a snacky..

I have never actually eaten Buffalo Chicken dip, but I've seen it brought to many parties, and it sounds like the type of food I'd like, you know.. creamy, spicy, salty. So I decided to attempt to make my own vegan version. Made with processed food, for sure, so not healthy at all.... but I wasn't really going for healthy anyways.

ingredients:
Gardein Frozen Buffalo Wings
Vegenaise
Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
Frank's Red Hot
powdered garlic
powdered onion
Chipotle Parma (vegan parmesan cheese)

-I prepared the buffalo wings, on the stove top, as suggested on the package. I ended up using about 1 and 1/2 packages of wings, as that's what I had in my freezer. Once the wings were all cooked, I added one of the sauce packets that comes with the wings to the pan, then coated the wings. I then put them in the food processor, and pulsed several times, until the "chicken" was shredded.
-I combined the shredded "chicken" with 1 tub of Tofutti, ~1/2 cup of vegenaise, a couple dashes of hot sauce, with garlic, onion and Parma sprinkled in.
-I put this in a baking dish, topped with a lil Parma, and warmed it up in the oven til hot.

So, this was amazing, maybe nothing like other versions of Buffalo Chicken dip, but yum yum yum!

Vegan MOFO day 20- Charbroiled Butternut Squash and Cheezey Spinach Spaghetti

I didn't do the greatest job packing myself lunch today, so by the time I got home, I was starved! I decided to make some Charbroiled Butternut Squash recipe by PPK. This came out super yummy! The squash became super sweet, and very tender. Really easy recipe too!

I also wanted to make some pasta, as I crave it when it's cold and I'm grumpy/hungry (grungry). I cooked up some whole-wheat spinach spaghetti, tasty and nutritious! I topped the pasta with some sauce from 'The Uncheese Cookbook,' this is the Ultimate Mac and Cheez sauce, definitely not my favorite uncheese sauce, but tasty regardless. I think I liked the Melty White Cheez that the hubby made last week better....

Vegan MOFO day 16- Smokey Cheez Sauce, Yellow Cauliflower, Broccoli and Brown Rice

Tonight we really wanted to get some burritos with friends, but they needed to reschedule, so we decided to save money and make ourselves dinner instead of going out just the two of us. The hubby and I had one of those back and forth conversations.... "What do you want for dinner?" "I dunno, What do YOU want for dinner?" UGH! After a completely unproductive 5 minutes, we looked in the fridge and decided to heat up leftover brown rice and eat some vegetables.

We decided to cook up some veggies we got at the Greenmarket, we bought a beautiful head of broccoli and some yellow cauliflower. I've never had yellow cauliflower before, but our farm stand guy said it was creamy and sweet and delicious, so we bought some.

I steamed up the veggies while the hubby whipped up some cheez sauce. He used the Smokey Cheez recipe from 'The Uncheese Cookbook,' this recipe was a variation of the Melty White Cheez. This sauce called for no added oil, so we weren't convinced that it would be cheesey and satisfying, but it totally was. It thickened up and had a nice complex flavor, perfect on the veggies. I told the hubby he is officially the cheesey-sauce cook of the house :) This would be really good on some macaroni. ::hint hint::

Vegan MOFO day 7- Buffalo Chik Pizza and Falafel

So, we celebrated with friends last night and ate MORE junk food! Alot of our recent posts have not been the healthiest food.... we've been eating what we call "fat kid food"... haha.... I promise we're not terrible people!!! But, for real, there were like NO vegetables in this dinner.

This was a falafel appetizer, made by Al-Baraki and purchased at Honest Weight Co-op, we toasted them in the oven for a couple minutes. They were super delicious!

We also decided to make some pizza, this is our best pizza recipe, it's super greasy and so amazingly yummy. Oh, and I made whole-wheat pizza crust, so that kinda makes up for the all the grease and lack of veggies, right?


Here's what we did (we made two pizzas):

For the pizza dough:
ingredients:
2 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp sugar
1 1/3 c. very hot water (run the tap for a minute to get it as hot as possible)
3 c. white whole wheat flour
1 T vital wheat gluten
1/2 tsp salt
olive oil

-combine the yeast, sugar and hot water in a bowl, stir to combine, the let sit to activate for 5-10 minutes, until its all foamy
-in a food processor, combine the flour, wheat gluten and salt, turn on and combine
-when the yeast mixture is ready, turn processor on, and pour in the yeast mixture, let the processor run until a dough has formed, it'll turn into a ball, that will start to run around the side of the machine (you'll know)
-take dough out of the machine and knead for 5-7 minutes
-put a lil olive oil in a big bowl, put the dough in the bowl, and turn over until its all coated with the olive oil, cover dough with a clean kitchen towel and let rise for 1 hr.
-punch dough down, knead a lil, return to bowl, cover, let rise another 1/2 hr.
-divide into two pizza, or you could make one really big one i guess, roll out and make your pizza!

We topped our pizza with homemade "blue cheese" dressing, vegan cheese (we used FYH monterey jack & daiya cheddar), sliced red onion and buffalo chicken. For the chicken: we used "chicken" nuggets, cut them up into pieces, tossed them with Frank's red hot, then cooked on stove top until warmed through.

blue cheese dressing: (this makes way more than you need for the pizza)
1 c. vegenaise
1/2 tsp tahini
1 squeeze fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
dash garlic powder
1/4 block firm tofu crumbled- to make it chunky

After assembling the pizzas, they cooked in the oven at 425 for about 15 minutes, until all the cheese was melted. They were super greasy, and totally yummy. One of our very non-vegan guests remarked that it was better than regular buffalo chicken pizza! yay!

Vegan MOFO day 5- Nachos Grande!

Holy wowza! This, ladies and germs, is THE end-all, be-all reason to believe in veganism. "Wait... you don't eat meat or cheese or ANYTHING?" Feed those nay-sayers these super delicious nachos and watch the jaws drop and the plates get licked clean. This was a team effort, Peggy and Danny nacho party night.

We started by putting a bunch of your favorite brand of tortilla chips on a pizza pan. Put some Amy's re-fried beans with mild green chiles all over them chippies, then covered with shredded Daiya cheddar and Follow Your Heart monterey jack. Then covered all of that yummy stuff with half a chopped up red onion and some sliced kalamata olives. Baked in the oven at around 375F until "cheese" was melted. Took out of oven, covered with Follow Your Heart sour "cream" and a chopped up avocado. If anyone needs proof of some kind of higher power, just eat a perfectly ripe avocado. That's right. Nature MADE it! Unbelievable! It's like nature butter. But I digress. Served with a side dish of salsa, but I don't even know if it needed it. Dios mio!

-El Danny

mac n' pepper-cheese

I convinced the hubby to buy me a copy of The Uncheese Cookbook when we were at the NY Vegetarian Expo a couple weeks back. This is the first recipe I tried from the cookbook. The recipe is for Baked Macaroni and Cheeze. I didn't quite follow the recipe exactly, I used more roasted red peppers than the recipe called for, and I didn't have a lemon, so no juice. The sauce consisted mostly of roasted red peppers, raw cashews, nooch and spices--all blended up. I used whole wheat rotini, and sprinkled homemade breadcrumbs on the top. Then it baked til bubbly and golden. I was surprised how orange and cheesey the sauce turned.

This was a very healthy recipe with barely any fat in the sauce. I think it came out quite yummy, not as cheesey-greasy tasting as my usual Vegan Mac recipe. I would definitely make it again. I think I just won't make this when I want comfort food. I admit.. I added some earth balance to the top when I ate the leftovers, I think I like my mac and cheese a lil greasey :) Cool cookbook though! I can't wait to try one of the firmer cheeze recipes.

pretty baked mac and cheeze

jalapeno poppers and mexican millet

These were some crazy spicy poppers I made the other day. I found a standard popper recipe online, substituted Tofutti cream cheese, used some peppers we bought at the Greenmarket, and one from Nancy's garden. These were crispy and delicious, nice and greasy from the Tofutti. The peppers were super super spicy.. I could only eat one. I remember being able to eat like 8 poppers when I used to order them from a pizza place in my prevegan days. This was a very successful experiment
I also made this Mexican millet from the Veganomicon. yum yum yum. I could eat this stuff everyday. I even put a dollop of Vegenaise on top for creaminess.

adzuki chili w/ cheese sauce!!

This was a cozy weekend dinner :) A couple weeks ago I bought some bulk adzuki beans, I've never cooked with them before. So I made a big batch not really knowing what I was gonna do with it. So early in the week, I made some adzuki bean hummus w/ marinated artichoke hearts in the mix, using my standard hummus procedure. The hummus came out quite delicious, but had a weird brown-grey color from using dark beans. I wanted to make something with adzuki beans that had a bit more visual appeal. I made this chili with carrots, fire-roasted canned tomatoes, roasted red peppers, some frozen corn and a bunch of spices. I let the chili simmer for about an hour, the flavor was wonderful and zippy. Our carni dinner guest said it was the best chili he'd ever eaten :) (thanks ritch!). I made a cheese sauce using this handy recipe to top the chili. We ate it topped with a lil kalamata/cilantro topping and frito chips :)

maple walnut 'cream cheese'

This cream cheese was my contribution to Father's Day brunch :) This is my version of a recipe I've seen many variations of. The cheese base is raw cashews and tofu. Tasted really good on toast and bagels

ingredients:
1 package firm tofu -water squeezed out
1/2 raw cashews
1 Tb extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/8-1/4 cup maple syrup
good dash cinnamon
fresh grated nutmeg
1/4 c. raisins
1/3 c. walnuts

-Using food processor, process tofu, cashews and olive oil until really smooth (this takes several minutes). The consistency should be really creamy and fluffy almost.
-Add in salt and spices, add maple syrup to taste/sweetness level
-Add in the raisins and walnuts, pulse several times until chunks are small, but still there.

I've made a similar cream cheese with added garlic, onion, herbs and veggies. yum yum!

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

sundried tomato alfredo over fettuccini, grilled asparagus and double-garlic bread

It was time for another "Lost" night dinner :) Leah brought over some nice wine and some really yummy garlic bread (the bread had whole cloves of garlic already baked in). I grilled some asparagus on the stove top on a grill pan, just tossed with a lil oil, salt and pepper.

I also made some fettucini alfredo, I cooked up a pound of whole wheat fettuccini, and tossed it with the sauce. Here's the recipe for the sauce:

Ingredients:
1 cup raw cashews
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 box silken tofu
2 Tb nutritional yeast
1 Tb earth balance butter
2 Tb soy milk
salt and pepper
1 chopped onion
2 cloves chopped garlic
2-3 Tb sun dried tomatoes

-In a food processor, place all of the cashews in, and pulse until the nuts are a fine powder. Add in lemon juice, tofu, nooch, butter, process until smooth. Add in the soymilk, process-- this should be a thick paste now (cream cheese texture)
-In small frying pan, cook up the onion and garlic in a little oil, until a little brown.
-Add onion, garlic and sun dried tomatoes into food processor, process again until smooth.
-Transfer sauce into small sauce pan
-While your pasta is cooking, add in some starchy pasta water into the sauce, and whisk until you get the consistency you want, I added about 2-2 1/2 cups of starchy water.
-Combine the pasta with the sauce (yum yum!)