the vegan ELVIS sandwich :)

this is what i made my hubby for lunch today. an epic elvis-inspired sandwich (served with a lil cup of amy's no-chicken noodle soup!)

Vegan Elvis sandwich:
 
ingredients:

-2 pieces of bread
-crunchy peanut butter
-banana
-tempeh bacon (homemade of course! recipe --> here)

1) fry the tempeh bacon,
2) construct epic sandwich
3) cook in cast iron skillet til crispy and hot
4) eat! yum yum yum

im still vegan and loving it

hello all. i've been neglecting my blog, and feel the need to explain myself a bit....

sometimes keeping up a blog feels a bit overwhelming. i'm definitely still vegan and still cooking lots of yummy food, but i don't necessarily feel like taking pictures and talking about it all the time.

i've noticed that my satisfaction in life has an adverse relationship with the amount of time i spend wasting online. i've officially quit facebook and my short lived relationship with twitter was definitely not satisfying in the least. i realized that i know how to eat super healthy, but haven't always made the best choices in terms of physical fitness, and thats what i've been trying to focus recently... you know, keeping active and trying to lose my chunk.

so i really do get a kick out of people reading about my food and i still love drooling at other people's pictures of food. but haven't felt motivated to share that part of my life recently...

im pretty sure when the winter hits and i can't do stuff outside, i'll come back to blogging and (hopefully) making readers drool over my food creations.

::muah::

peggy

vegan sausages- improved!!

homemade sausage w/ sauteed onion and peppers on a hoagie roll, and curried potato salad

I've really enjoyed vegandad's sausages, I've made them several times and enjoyed the satisfying meaty texture. The past couple times I've made them, I decided to start playing around with some additions/omissions.... (I LOVE playing with recipes) and well, the recipe keeps getting better and better! Today I used garbanzo beans instead of the pinto called for in the original recipe, and added in grated onion, the addition of the onion keeps them moister and allows for a much improved texture. I've definitely also upped the spices considerably. With the garbanzo beans coarse-ness, I think we've found that these are  the best sausages yet. Here's what I did:

homemade sausages

1/2 c. garbanzo beans
1/4 c. nutritional yeast
1 c. bean cooking liquid (or veggie broth or water)
2 Tb soy sauce
1 Tb olive oil
2 cloves garlic-crushed
1/4 c onion- grated
1 1/2 tsp fennel seed- crushed
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp sage
1 tsp rosemary
1 1/4 c. vital wheat gluten

-turn rice cooker onto "steam" setting, allow to heat up
-crush/mash beans until none are left whole, stir in all liquid ingredients, then add spices, then add vital wheat gluten-- dough should be very moist and spongy
-cut 6 square pieces of aluminum foil
-separate dough into 6 even pieces, form log shapes, then wrap up in foil, twist in edges into seal off
-steam for 35 min
-allow to cool in fridge, then cook in variety of ways (in frying pan, on grill, chopped up in stir fries, etc..)

 Tonight I fried the sausages in some onions and peppers, and ate my hoagie with lots of ketchup. The hubby said mustard is only way to go... we agreed to disagree and stuffed our happy faces :) :)

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 :)