…an old standby:
Vegan Veggie “Pizza” — one of our favorite go-to warm-weather dinners…
…which isn’t really pizza, I guess…more like whole grain flatbread crust topped with refried beans, garlic, and veggie goodness drizzled with olive oil…
…mmmmmm…
Lately I’ve been experimenting a lot with making summery beverages. I started making a pitcher of (decaf) iced tea every morning, all different kinds, experimenting with blending teas and herbs and flavors… a spoonful of honey here, a squeeze of lemon or a splash of orange there.
One of my favorite beverage treats is ginger brew, or ginger ale. My favorite one on the market is Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew. It is so spicy and gingery and refreshing — you can feel the bite of the ginger in your throat. Last week when I went to the NYC restaurant Candle 79 for my birthday dinner (a whole post on that coming soon), I had this amazing homemade ginger soda. It was like the best, gingeriest, pungentest, mintiest ginger ale you ever had. I loved it, and am trying to re-create it at home. So far I haven’t quite got it right — my experiments don’t seem to have the gingery-ness of the C79 beverage. But I have produced some pretty tasty results.
My most successful attempt was a loose following of this recipe, which involves making a ginger syrup and mixing it with soda water or club soda. I’m a bit intimidated by the whole “brewing” business, which involves fermentation, so I don’t know how far I’ll go with that. But I definitely have to figure out how to get the strong ginger bite into the flavor of the soda. I know Reed’s adds some pineapple to their flavorings so I’ll try that too.
Making kombucha tea soda is also on my agenda for this summer. That will likely be my first foray into fermentation. Until then, I’ll keep experimenting with strong ginger syrups. If you know how Candle 79 does it, leave a comment and let me know!
Hubs and I got hungry for spaghetti. As a nutritionist, it irks me to only eat carbs in any one meal, so spaghetti with marinara sauce and vegetables, while tasty, just doesn’t cut it. Which is why I rarely make spaghetti — I can’t ever come up with a protein food I like to eat with it. I don’t eat much soy, and in the past I have tried making faux meatballs out of kidney beans, which is apparently the classic non-soy meatball replacement, but I find them dull.
So I decided to take the bean-balls to the next level.
I took the classic kidney-bean-and-breadcrumb concept and zinged it up with artichoke hearts, oats, and Italian olive salad (a.k.a. muffaletta mix). Hubs and I thought they turned out great, much better than plain bean balls. Here’s what I did:
The What:
1/2 cup dried kidney beans, soaked, then cooked and drained
1 can, minus a few (just eat them, I did.), quartered artichoke hearts.
2 heaping tbsp Italian olive salad mix (the kind with olives and veggies, marinated in olive oil)
rolled oats
millet flour or other flour
oregano (maybe 1.5 tsp)
thyme (maybe 1/2 tsp)
salt and pepper to taste
The How:
Mash the kidney beans. Process the artichoke hearts and the olive salad in a food processor or chopper till finely chopped. Mix kidney beans, and artichoke/olive mix in a bowl. Add 1/4 rolled oats. Next, process 1/4 cup rolled oats in the food processor till finely ground (slightly coarser than flour). Mix all that up along with the spices and check the consistency. Add flour till the consistency feels kindof doughy and you’re able to roll it into soft walnut-sized balls. Grease a pan. Put the balls on the pan, giving each one a brief spray with oil. Bake at 375, 25 – 30 mins. You should watch them closely once they’ve been in about 20 minutes. They stay pretty soft on the inside, but should be nice and golden on the outside. Douse these babies in marinara and serve over whole wheat spaghetti.
If you make these, leave me a comment and tell me what you think. Happy Vegeating.
I am back from all my many travels, and I am happy to report that my comp is behind me. I don’t know yet if I passed, but I am surely glad to be done studying for it. Now I have brain-space and time for blogging and cooking. I hate it when I don’t have time to cook.
And boy have I been cooking since I got home. I started off on Thursday with this awesome potato salad (not vegan).
As I mentioned, this salad is not vegan (although most things I cook and recipes I invent are). Not even technically vegetarian, as it contains salmon. Hubs is a good vegeater, but he likes fish occasionally, so we occasionally eat it. It could easily be made vegan with a couple tweaks and the omission of the salmon. It sure is tasty, and filling – a whole meal in a bowl. Here’s what I did:
1 – 1.5 lb small red potatoes, boiled whole for 20 mins, then diced into bite-sized chunks. I left skin on cause peeling potatoes is a waste of time.
approx 1/2 red onion (maybe a little less than half), finely diced. You do not want big hunks of onion.
1/2 package (8-ish oz) frozen peas, thawed (not cooked, just rinsed in warm water till thawed)
fresh flatleaf parsley, chopped (maybe 1/4 cup?)
fresh dill (same as parsley)
1 5-oz package of salmon (or canned)
1 whole head of roasted garlic, peel then slice the cloves up (to do this, I just lop off the top of the head so the cloves are exposed, then put in toaster oven on 375 until the whole thing is soft and fragrant — maybe 20 mins. If you cook it longer, it gets really soft and you can spread it on bread, yum.)
dressing:
1/3 (ish) cup sour cream
1/3 – 1/2 cup ranch-style dressing
splash apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
a generous squirt of dijon or brown mustard
juice of 1/2 lemon
cayenne to taste
salt and pepper to taste
The How:
Toss all together gently. once everthing is all mixed up, finish with juice from the other half of the lemon, then chill for a while. If I were making this again, I might add some chopped broccoli florets, lightly steamed. As I said, this stuff is like a whole meal all in one bowl. Remember to salt the boiling water for the potatoes well — they will absorb salt and be more flavorful.
To make this vegan, use vegan sour cream and a vegan salad dressing, and omit the salmon. If you make it, post a comment and let me know what you think!
Stay tuned for more of what I’ve been making and baking, as well as photos from my latest vegan restaurant adventures.
Hey friends,
As you probably realize, I’m taking a break from my vegblog for now. A number of things have happened:
a) Hubs was offered a job in SAN FRANCISCO, out-of-the-blue, and it was too cool not to accept. So I’m moving. Which means putting my house on the market and all that moving entails…
b) including selling half of our stuff so we can downsize to a small apartment.
c) I’m studying for my big comprehensive exam that determines whether or not I get my Master’s degree. This test happens on April 17. Until then, I have no brain space or time to blog.
Hopefully I’ll be back to my regular doings in a couple of weeks. Wish me luck!
Averie has done it again. She’s made another recipe I have actually made twice. Not only is the Chocolate Chia Pudding delicious and reminiscent of tapioca, it contains a whopping (approximately) 12 grams of fiber per serving (each recipe makes one serving). I and many other nutritionists recommend that adults consume 35-40 grams of fiber per day. To do this, we must necessarily eat foods like whole grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, and seeds.
This is my first experience with using Chia seeds. I happened to have a bag of black chia in my pantry that I haven’t known what to do with. After making this pudding, I will definitely keep a stock of it on hand.
Chia seeds are very nutritious — they contain omega 3 fatty acids, which we need for healthy cell membranes and to combat inflammation, and, as I mentioned, are very high in fiber. One serving of this stuff and you’re a third of the way to meeting your daily fiber needs. I’m gobbling it up for dessert.
Oh Wow. Wowowowowow. My new favorite thing.
Avery created this recipe for Vegan Coconut Oil Chocolate Bars. They only take a few minutes to make, then you stick them in the freezer. I added some shredded coconut and chopped pecans to mine. mmmmmmmm….. Hubs was flipping out over this stuff, too. I want to try them with cranberries, pepitas, almonds, and other goodies…
Some folks go crazy for lemon-poppyseed. Not me. I go for almond. Yesterday, as part of my Simple Pleasures Initiative (which I’ll discuss in a later post), I bought some poppyseeds in the bulk section of the local natural foods store. Today we’re having these muffins for lunch. I couldn’t find a recipe for vegan almond poppyseed muffins online, so I adapted this one from a recipe for lemon-poppyseed ones from Altered Plates. Here’s what I did:
The Dry:
4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed (for added fiber)
1 cup unbleached sugar (demerara) (next time I will use only 3/4 cup sugar)
The Wet:
1 3/4 cup unsweetened plain rice milk (almond would have been better, but I was out)
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup grapeseed oil (next time I will use all coconut oil. I only added some grapeseed cause I’m running low on coconut)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons almond extract
1/4 cup almond butter
5 teaspoons poppyseeds
The How-To:
1. Grease muffin pans (or you can line them with paper cups. I didn’t have any.)
2. Preheat oven to 350 F
3. Combine flour, baking powder, salt, flax, and sugar in a large bowl.
4. On the stove over low heat, melt coconut oil and grapeseed oil together with the rice milk. Then add the extracts
5. Pour the warmed oil/milk mixture into the dry ingredients gradually, until combined. You may need to add a bit of milk if the mixture seems too dry or doughy.
6. Generously fill muffin tins.
8. Bake 18 minutes, or until done.
9. Cool thoroughly. (Note: Deb at Altered Plates recommends not covering or wrapping her lemon-poppyseed muffins for at least 12 hours. I don’t know why, or if that still applies, given that I’ve changed the recipe so much. Maybe she will tell us.)
The Loveliness:
I just saw the Chubby Vegetarian’s post with a photo of his newly-organized baking cabinet. Which made me cringe to think about my own pantry, and all the other wintry-clutter-filled crannies of my home. I have not had the gumption to deal with any of them, but today, the sun is shining and I have the windows open to let in the (46-degree!) fresh air. I think the spring-cleaning bug just bit me. Maybe I will bake something to celebrate turning the corner.
The other day I was having a really bad day. Actually a series of bad days. The kind where you don’t even want to get out of bed and if you don’t have to, you don’t. Hubs was being nice to me and trying to help me out of my pit of despair, and I was trying to think of something to cheer myself up. And I realized that the only thing that could possibly do it was fruit. ‘Hubs’, I said, ‘You must take me to the market (the one in town with the most beautiful fruit displays and widest selection of all manner of exotic produce and therefore the highest prices, where they play classical music and serve complimentary coffee) so that I can look at fruit. It is the only thing to do in this situation.’
And it was. We looked at gorgeous piles of fruit, touched, smelled, put a few choice pieces in our basket. A mango. A starfruit. An enormous Asian pear. Two bananas (which I rarely buy). A Meyer lemon. Pluots. Olives. I have never needed fruit so much in my life.
We brought the bounty home, along with a loaf of crusty whole grain bread and some roasted garlic, and had a fruit feast on the floor. We both felt better.