baked potato pizza and buffalo tofu nuggets!!!

For our Friday night dinner, I decided to make pizza. For some reason, I can't get enough of potatoes on pizza, so this is a baked potato pizza with onions, sliced potatoes, daiya cheese and bacon bits, yum yum yum! As I was making the pizza, my hubby was very concerned that there wouldn't be enough protein in dinner, I think he was over-hungry and a lil grumpy, but I do love him with all my heart ... so I decided to make him some spicy proteiny nuggets to keep him happy and grump-free.

All in all, this was super yummy and satisfying for a Friday night. It came together quickly and was nice and junk-foody. We thought the only thing that could possibly have made it better was some ranch dressing for dipping, so maybe next time I'll do that. The Buffalo nuggets were very easy, they might become a regular snacky food for us.

oh hello yummy pizza time

Here's what I did:


Baked Potato Pizza
ingredients:
  
1 package of pizza dough (I usually make dough, but prepared is cheap and super convenient)
1 sweet onion, sauteed with a little olive oil
1 potato, sliced thinly
Daiya Pepperjack "cheese"
Bacon bits (storebrand is vegan around here)

-Preheat pizza stone in oven @ 500 degrees
-Roll out dough, top with onions, then potato, then "cheese."
-Bake on pizza stone until nice and golden... maybe 13 mins?
-Top with bacon bits!

Buffalo Tofu Nuggets
ingredients:

1 block extra firm tofu, drained
Cornstarch
Earth Balance
Frank's Red Hot

-Cut tofu into little chunks, I sliced widthwise into 8, then in 1/2 again
-Coat tofu in cornstarch
-Fry in big cast-iron skillet with some earth balance, until all the nuggets are nice and brown
-Put in big bowl and coat with Frank's Red Hot   

thai lettuce wraps and massaman curry

So.. I made this yummy dinner and I thought I would share with y'all. I have been less than motivated to blog recently. Mostly... when I cook yummy dinners, I just want to eat them and I'm too lazy to take pictures :)

This is a very Thai inspired dinner... authentic? Of course not! The lettuce wraps were a memory from a dinner at PF Changs. I looked on vegweb.com for a recipe.. found this one --> here, but definitely didn't follow it very closely. Here's what I did: (Came out DELICOUS!!!!!)


Thai Lettuce Wrap:

ingredients:

2 packages of mushrooms (white button and porcini)-chopped
1 package tempeh-cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic- minced
1 small chunk ginger- minced
1/2 c. lemongrass broth (2 tb dried lemongrass soaked in hot water, then strained)
good squirt sriracha
2 Tb peanut butter
2 Tb Bragg's- more to taste
1 head Boston lettuce 
sprouts

-In castiron skillet, med heat, add lemongrass broth, then garlic and ginger. Cook for a couple minutes then add mushrooms and tempeh and other ingredients. Cook until mushrooms are soft and mixture is moist.
-Serve in crispy lettuce leaves. We topped ours with some sprouts for added crunch

massaman curry

Massaman curry is my ABSOLUTE favorite Thai curry to get at restaurants (potatoes, peanuts and tofu? hell yes!). I got an email from VegNews with a homemade version and decided to try it. Here's a link to the --> recipe. It was definitely yummy, but needs some work. My hubby realized that there were no red peppers in the recipe, but there usually are at our favorite Thai restaurant, and I think it would have benefited from some. Since I made this for guests, I doubled the recipe... and ended up added 4 limes worth of juice to it.. The lime was way overwhelming, still tasty curry, but really really tangy. So, I think I'm going to have to tweak this recipe for a perfect at home Massaman curry.

Dinner was enjoyed by all, and the Hubby would like Thai lettuce wraps everyday.

clothes swap party, with lots of vegan yummy treats **peppermint patties**

  

hummus platter, with chips, crackers and salsa

 Yesterday, I hosted a bunch of my ladies for a clothes swap. Swap parties are a lot of fun, its a great way to get rid of cute clothes, jewelry, bags, shoes and other stuff, and you get cool stuff from your friends :) My friends always dress so cute, and I love to grab the stuff they don't want anymore. I had a blast yesterday hanging out with wonderful ladies, adorable new (to me) clothes and eating yummy treats. I made a lil snack station with goodies to keep everyone full and happy.

I made a lil hummus platter, with assorted chips and rice crackers. I didn't make the hummus, it was store bought Sabra roasted garlic. We love this brand of hummus in my house, so creamy and decadent!

veggie pizza

 I also put together one of my veggie appetizer pizzas. This is super yummy and always a hit. I love how colorful it is. It's basically cresent roll dough, covered with a creamy cheesy topping and veggies. Recipe --> here

lemon squares

I made some lemon squares, recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I feel like I've blogged about this cookbook a lot, but it's so dependable. These tasted just like lemon bar I remember my mom making, buttery cookie layer on the bottom, and tangy gooey lemon filling on top. Yum! I found the recipe posted online --> here. You should probably just buy this book though, if you like vegan desserts, it's the best!

peppermint patties

The snacky that got all my ladies the most excited were these peppermint patties I made. They were very convincingly "york." The recipe is easy and pretty simple. Disclaimer: yes, I actually bought corn syrup to make these, super gmo... but so yummy and I really didn't eat that many!! And everyone who has tried them, loved em. So I think it's okay to use corn syrup once in a blue moon, right?
I found the recipe on vegweb.com, recipe for the patties --> here

p.s. my friend nicole also blogged about the swap --> here

family party time!

I hosted my first ever family party this weekend. I was quite nervous about cooking up a vegan feast, for my non-vegan/gigantic family. I put a lot of work into a family friendly menu and the whole party went off without a hitch.

Vegweb.com is such an amazing resource and I found some great recipes on there for the party. As usual when there are too many people around, I forget to take pictures of food... but I do think I documented the dishes that came out the best :) I've made vegandad's sausages before, and they do NOT disappoint. They got gobbled up, along with lots of other goodies, that I made and were contributed :)

On the menu:
-Potato angels (pictured below).. these came out so yummy and the "deviled egg" job amazingly. The whole platter was cleared within minutes
-Red cabbage asian coleslaw.. I made this with cabbage, carrots, slivered almonds, ramen noodles and a sesame dressing
-Marinated chickpea and artichoke salad
-Spicy sausages
-Grilled veggies (eggplant, red, orange and yellow peppers, and porcini mushrooms)
-Pineapple Upside-down Cake (super easy recipe, SUPER delicious cake, i highly recommend!)
-homebrewed iced tea

vegan crabby patties

There's been a serious lack of posting on here lately, we just moved into our first house, and we've been busy and frazzled. I've been cooking lots of yummy things, but too lazy to take pictures before I eat. I made these crabby patties the other day, and they were too cute and yummy to not share with y'all.

So... back in my pre-veg days, I definitely had a weakness for crab cakes. I've seen lots of recipes online for vegan versions, but hadn't gotten around to making them until this week. I found this recipe , on the super reliably delicious theppk.com. I followed the recipe pretty exactly, and used the suggested kelp flakes, for extra fishy-ness.

These came out super super yummy! The hubby and I are always happy with tempeh, and this is such a great use for it. They came together really easy, and once cooked, they disappeared within minutes. I'll be making them again real soon :)

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 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

veggie pizza appetizer

This is a vegan-ized version of one my family's classic snacks, this was the go-to dish for my parents to bring to work parties,and it was a favorite snack at all our family holiday dinners. I made this for one of my work functions a couple of years ago, in my pre-vegan days. Someone requested that I make it again... so I decided to makeover the recipe. It really didn't taste any different than I remember, and I remember it being TASTY!

Here's what I did:

ingredients:
-2 packages refrigerated crescent rolls (the reduced fat version is vegan, full of weird ingredients, but vegan still)
-1 tub Tofutti cream cheese
-1/3 c. Vegenaise
-1 small red onion- finely diced
-about 1 c. fresh broccoli- cut into really small florets
-about 1 c. grated carrot
-about 1 c. tomato (i used cut up yellow and red cherry tomatoes)
-1/2 c. vegan parmesan cheese (i used 'almesan' from the veganomicon)

Roll out the crescent rolls onto baking sheet, meet end to end to form a pizza crust, bake according to package instructions. Allow to cool completely.

Mix together the creamcheese, vegenaise and onion. Spread mixture on the crust.

Arrange veggies on top, sprinkle with 'cheese.'

Tastes best after being refrigerated overnight.

pizza before being cut up :)

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.