vegan sausage and pepper spaghetti

For tonight's dinner, I decided to use up some leftovers from yesterday's party, I had made a double batch of vegandad's sausages, there were three links leftover.. just enough for some pasta :)

I made a chunky tomato sauce with the chopped spicy sausage, leftover veggies (grilled peppers, eggplant and one lone mushroom), a box of chopped tomatoes, some onion, garlic, agave and spices.

I stirred the sauce into some whole wheat spaghetti, added some starchy cooking water to coat the pasta, and spinkled on top some Rawmesan (found that stuff up at a health food store in Saratoga, super yummy!). Delicious dinner :) I really liked how the sausages worked in the sauce, chewy and spicy, reminded me of eating out at a Italian restaurant. I'll make this again!

fideo!!!

Today was a nice relaxing sunday spent with my hubby and animals. For dinner, I decided to make fideo again. I made this only last week for the first time ever, and I think it's my new favorite food. I've had a bookmark on this recipe for six months, and only just got around to making this it. Super simple to make, and super delicious. I barely ever eat white pasta, but this recipe is so yummy its worth it. I think I'll try it with whole wheat angel hair, broken into little pieces. Also on tonight's dinner menu, a bbq bean loaf and some noochy snap peas.

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 8- vegan mac w/cauliflower

It's the first slushy snowy day we've had this year. The kinda of day that makes me crave comfort food. While I was at work today, I was thinking about what I wanted for dinner, I knew I wanted some of the cauliflower that we bought at the Greenmarket yesterday....but I wasn't sure what else. Then I realized that vegan mac and cheese sounded super yummy. When I got home from work, the hubby had cookbooks already opened up in the kitchen, one was open to cauliflower, and my cookbook was opened up to vegan mac!!! Talk about a mind-reader! We did a little dinner teamwork. We boiled the cauliflower and tossed them into my standard vegan mac recipe --> here. The hubby had a genius idea to top the casserole with some daiya cheese and breadcrumbs. Satisfying and cozy! Now... its cuddletime.

spinachy fettucini alfredo

This dinner came out yummmmmmmy!!! Sometimes I get really excited about pasta, this was one of those dinners :) This recipe is a combination of a recipe I found on vegweb.com and a little of this, and a little of that.. Super healthy, filling and tasty! Here's what I did:

ingredients:
1 cup raw cashews
3 Tb nutritional yeast
1/2 large onion- chopped
2 cloves garlic- pressed
1 Tb earth balance (butter)
squeeze fresh lemon juice
1 tsp chickpea miso
salt and pepper
1 package frozen chopped spinach
1 lb. whole wheat fettucini
1 cup starchy pasta cooking water

-process cashews in food processor until cashews are in fine pieces, almost to a powder
-cook onions and garlic on stovetop in the earth balance, until slightly tender
-thaw frozen spinach
-add onion, garlic, thawed spinach, nooch, miso, and the pasta water to food processor.
-process until it becomes a thick creamy sauce, season with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon
-stir into pasta, and serve with vegan parmesan

holy yum yum yum

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

vegan mac with horseradish and cauliflower

I made this yummy pasta on sunday when we were feeling lazy and wanted something satisfying. I was inspired by this Rachael Ray recipe, I used my regular vegan mac cheese sauce, but added a whole bunch of prepared horseradish, and a good squirt of horseradish mustard, yummy!!! (hubby laughed at use of "good squirt"). The cauliflower was fresh from the Greenmarket.
It's amazing to me that I bought this huge plant, then once I peeled and took off the stem, only a pretty lil cauliflower was left.
This bread was an afternoon snack! It's a salt-stick, also purchased from the Greenmarket. It's an organic whole wheat and rye loaf with caraway seeds and salt all over it! I sliced it, put a lil olive oil and a lil earth balance, some garlic powder and some fresh parsley and basil inside. I warmed it up in the toaster oven for a few. It got gobbled up with a lil balsamic in about five minutes flat. yummy!

its too hot! lets eat pesto pasta!

It's CRAZY hot today, so I didn't really feel like cooking. But I'm usually a hungry kid, so I knew I had to make something . My husband was feeling junky, and craving some protein. So the original plan for dinner contained some beans. I had some pinto beans in the fridge, that had been thawing out all day. I decided to just fry up some pinto beans and mash em up. I added a lil tomato paste and some chili powder. Creamy and yummy! What the heck else do I want for dinner? How about some pasta?!?! I'm always happy with pasta!
I cooked up these cute squiggly noodles, and tossed them with some homemade pesto (basil, parsley, garlic, olive oil, miso, and almonds). I added in some chopped zucchini from the in-laws garden! (I love free veggies!!!!)

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 :)

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

Kale and Peanut Noodles

I wanted to cook up some kale that I got from the Greenmarket last weekend, so I steamed it, then sprinkled a lil salt, nutritional yeast, grated some nutmeg and ground some black pepper. Delicious! Kale is so nutritious and really yummy!

The peanut noodles are multi-whole grain angel hair tossed with my easy peanut sauce :)

ingredients: (these are estimates, I'm not really into measuring...)
about 1 cup crunchy peanut butter
3 cloves garlic- pressed
1 squirt Siracha sauce
2 Tb brown sugar
2 Tb Bragg's
1 Tb tomato paste
2 Tb fresh chopped cilantro
1 Tb rice vinegar
2 cups hot starchy pasta water (more or less)

-stir it all together and put on pasta, yum yum!

sundried tomato-arugula pesto pasta

It was a nice lazy saturday today :) I made a pesto-pasta for dinner.

ingredients:
1 small onion
1 clove raw garlic
4-6 cloves roasted garlic
1/8-1/4 cup sundried tomatoes
1/4 cup walnuts
1 tsp tomato paste
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 handfuls arugula
salt and pepper
starchy cooking water from pasta

1 batch cooked farfelle pasta
handful bread crumbs

-mix pesto ingredients together in food processor, process until nice and smooth
-mix pesto with pasta in large bowl, add pasta cooking water until moist
-top with some breadcrumbs

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!)

mellow yellow soba noodles w/ tofu

i'm going to get an actually digital camera, so i can have better pictures of my food. these are all with my camera phone, and it doesn't really do justice to the yumminess of dinner.

tonight i tried a variation of a recipe that was in a recent vegetarian times magazine. i made a package of soba noodles, cut up a package of precooked asian-marinated baked tofu, i tossed the noodles and tofu together with a yellow sauce i made. the sauce was: 1 chopped small onion, cooked in a couple tablespoons of oil, then i added in turmeric, brown sugar, salt, pepper, 2 cloves crushed garlic and a scoop of sesame seeds.

cashew alfredo angel hair w/ broccoli

i was hungry for something creamy and easy... so i made cashew alfredo sauce, i found the recipe on vegweb.com, i did some major tweaking, came out delicious and creamy :)
i tossed the sauce w/ multi-whole grain angel hair pasta and frozen broccoli.