Chickpea & Rice Soup

Happy December 23rd! We're having snowy but warmer weather (seems to be becoming the norm now) so it looks like winter and Christmas but being outside it is not as frosty as it has been in previous years. Global climate change is not a myth.


This is an easy soup that is made fairly quickly. Don't make it too far ahead of time unless you only add the cooked rice just before serving or else it will become a mush.

Chickpea & Rice Soup

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, sliced thin
2 carrots, peeled and sliced thin
2 stalks celery, sliced thin
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp rosemary
Cracked black pepper to taste
2 tbsp white wine
6 cups stock
2 cups cooked chickpeas
1 cup shredded kale
1 cup cooked rice
1/3 cup miso
Salt to taste

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Sauté the onions and carrots until they start to soften. Add celery, garlic and herbs/
spices and continue to sauté until the garlic is fragrant.

Deglaze the pan with the white wine.

Add the stock and chickpeas and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer, covered, 10 minutes.

Stir in the kale and leave to cook for another 4 or 5 minutes.

Stir in miso and rice. Don't let the soup boil again once you have added the miso. Let it simmer until the kale is cooked to your desired texture (but it will never become mushy.) Taste and add salt as per your taste.

Voila!

Merry Christmas and peace to you and your family.

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Crockpot lentil quinoa stew

I posted this yesterday but it doesn't seem to want to show up. Maybe now I'll have it twice?

This makes a hearty stew. If you want to make it into a soup, add a couple cups broth once it's done cooking to make it thinner. We ate it with rice and baked tofu.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup quinoa
3/4 cup uncooked small red lentils (masoor dhal)
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced
1 leek, well washed and sliced thin
1 small butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 bay leaf
2 inch piece cinnamon stick
1 tbsp grated ginger or a couple slices of ginger
1 hot pepper, sliced in two and seeded
6 cups water
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp gr coriander
1/2 tsp dried thyme leaf
1 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp salt or to taste
fresh ground black pepper
4 Tbsp minced fresh cilantro
2 cups chopped fresh chard

Wash and check the lentils for little rocks. Add all the ingredients to the crockpot except the greens and cook on low for 5 hours. Add the greens and cook for another 30 minutes or more if needed for the squash.

Easy! This is a modified recipe based on what I had in my fridge. You could replace the squash with cauliflower or sweet potato if you wanted. I find regular potato takes too long to cook. Any greens can replace the chard.


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Authentic Hot and Sour Soup Vegan Style

While Corey and I were in China, Mum found this amazing recipe book called "the food of china" which is as close to authentic as anything we have come across since we have been home. I even had Mum send me some recipes while we were living in Xiangfan so that I could use the ingredients available and loosely replicate some of the amazing dishes we were stuffing into our mouthes.

The recipe book is obviously not vegan but I play with the meat ingredients but keep the spices and flavourings as close to the recipe as possible. In this recipe you need Chinese black rice vinegar which is very hard to find so I found that I could use balsamic and white vinegar as a substitution.
The heat comes from the white pepper so make sure you don't change that flavour. Corey and I decided that an alternate name for this soup is "clear you sinus" soup. Great on a snowy day like we have today.

Hot and Sour Soup

- 8 cups stock (not veggie if it's tomato based)
- 1 block tofu sliced into strips
- bok choy, chinese cabbage, oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, green onion, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts in whatever proportions you want to make about 2 cups of strips
- 1/8 cup dried chinese fungus strips reconstituted in boiling water
- 2 tbsp shaoxing rice wine (or white martini/vermouth)
- 4 tbsp soy sauce
- 3 tbsp chinese black rice vinegar (or 3 tbsp balsamic and 1 tbsp white vinegar)
- 2 tsp ground white pepper
- 2 tbsp cornstarch mixed into cold water to make a paste
- salt

Bring the stock to a boil. Toss in the tofu, veggies, and fungus. Bring back up to a boil and add the wine, soy sauce, and vinegar. Add the cornstarch paste and mix well. Bring back up to a boil to cook the cornstarch then reduce the heat and stir in the pepper. Leave to simmer until you serve it. Taste and add salt as necessary. Corey also added a dollop of toasted sesame oil on top of his bowl.

Stir the soup before serving because the pepper will settle at the bottom. While you eat it, stir it before each mouthful or else the last few mouthfuls will be very spicy!




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Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

I made this in a 8x8 pan but you could make a loaf or muffins too. I suggested adding coconut next time but Corey curled his nose up at the suggestion so I guess not. Nuts would be good too but I am at a nut-free school so I avoid baking with them.

1.5 cups spelt flour (or regular flour)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of salt

2 tbsp flax meal mixed into 6 tbsp water and left to sit (do this first and it will be ready when you need it)
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla

3 bananas mashed
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Make a well in the centre. Fill the well with the wet ingredients and start to stir together with a spoon. Add the mashed bananas and mix everything together. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Pour into the 8x8 pan and bake 45 minutes (or adjust depending on if it's a loaf or muffins.)



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Avocado and Spinach Pasta

When I tell people that I use avocado as a warm ingredient in pasta, their reaction is not always so positive. If you are someone who believes that avocado should only be eaten cold, in sandwiches or in guacamole, you are missing out on the creaminess that it offers in a pasta dish. Try it!

Avocado and Spinach Pasta

454g bag of linguine or other pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
4 large cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup vegetable broth
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp salt
fresh ground black pepper
4 cups chopped fresh spinach
2 tomatoes, cut into chunks
3 avocados, peeled and chopped into chunks (the riper the avocado, the creamier the sauce)

Cook the pasta according to package instructions.

Heat the olive oil over medium heat. Toss in the garlic and red pepper flakes. Stir around for a couple minutes making sure the garlic doesn't burn. Add the wine and let it bubble another couple minutes. Add the broth, lime juice, salt, and pepper and bring up to a boil then reduce the heat to simmer. Toss in the tomato and once it is heated through, add the spinach and mix until it is wilted.

Toss the pasta and sauce together and leave on the heat for a few minutes until it is all hot again. Stir in the avocado and let it heat through. Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving! Pumpkin Pie

As Mum and I cleaned up the garden this morning, I came across a donated pumpkin in the garden shed that had been there for about a week. I decided that it would come home with me and be part of my thanksgiving dinner.

I made my own pumpkin purée with that squash but you can buy 2 cups of purée for this recipe if you prefer. Don't buy the pumpkin pie filling as it already has all the spices and a lot of sugar.

If you do want to make your own pumpkin purée, it's quite easy but not super fast. Wash the outside of the pumpkin. Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds and stringy bits. Cut the halves into 4 pieces each. Place flesh side down on a cookie sheet and put into a pre-heated 400 degree oven. Pour in a cup of water into the cookie sheet. I do that when it's already in the oven to prevent me from spilling water everywhere. Cook 40 minutes until the flesh is tender. Let cool until you can handle the pieces then cut the flesh off the skin and purée in the blender. Put some cheesecloth or a tea-towel into a metal sieve over a deep bowl. Pour the pumpkin purée into the sieve and let the water drip out. I left it about an hour.

Pumpkin Pie

2 vegan pie shells
1 block firm silken tofu (about 350 grams or 3/4 lb)
2 cups pumpkin purée
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tbsp molasses

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the pie shells onto a cookie sheet so that if they bubble over, you don't have a mess in your oven.

Put all the other ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into the pie shells. Bake 1 hour.

After an hour the filling will be bubbling. Take the pies out and let them cool several hours before eating. We left ours about 2-3 hours. The filling firms up enough to cut the pie but it's still quite soft like ricotta cheese.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Tortilla Soup

Not sure where I ever got the taste for tortilla soup but every so often I get a craving for a bowl of this yummy soup. There are many recipes for tortilla soup that just are soup with tortillas in it but I wanted a recipe with tortillas actually as an ingredient. This soup came together quickly and was delicious. Adjust the amount of cilantro depending on how much you like cilantro but don't omit it entirely or else you lose a vital flavour.

Tortilla Soup

4 cups veggie stock
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 green onions, sliced with the green parts
8 roma tomatoes, roughly chopped (or one can of diced tomatoes)
a handful of cilantro, chopped
1 tsp chili powder
1.5 tsp cumin
3-4 handfuls of tortilla chips (and more for on top)
salt, to taste
1/2 cup corn kernels
1.5 cups cooked black beans

In a medium stock pot, bring to a boil the stock, onions, garlic and green onions. When it's boiling, add the tomatoes and bring to a boil again. Toss in the cilantro, the chili powder, the cumin and the tortilla chips. Remove from the heat. Once the chips have gone soggy, use an immersion blender to blend it all smooth.

Taste and add salt to taste depending on how salty your chips are.

Add the corn and beans and heat back up to a boil.

Serve with a few crushed tortilla chips on top. You could also add chunks of avocado if you wanted!

Yummy Pesto!

Urban Harvest is selling 1lb bags of organic basil at the moment so I decided to buy a bag and make pesto. I had no idea what 1lb of basil looked like but it is about a bread bag full and ends up being about 12 cups of loosely packed leaves.

I used brazil nuts and almonds but you can experiment with different nuts. Pine nuts are traditional. Lots of recipes call for walnuts but I don't like those.

I freeze my pesto flat in bags and break off pieces when I need it for pasta or as a sauce for a pizza. Apparently it's great as a salad dressing too but I've never tried that. If you keep it in the fridge it will last a few weeks but you need to keep a layer of olive oil on top to keep it fresh.

BASIL PESTO

1 lb bag of basil
4 cloves garlic, crushed with the side of a knife
1 cup raw nuts (mine is brazil and almond)
4 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup water
1 tsp salt or more to taste
Cracked fresh pepper

Fill the sink with water and dump the bag of basil into the cold water to wash it even if it has already been washed. You never know who's hands have touched it! Remove about 3 cups of leaves from the stems.

In a food processor, blend the nuts, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, water, salt, pepper and the 3 cups of basil leaves. Once that has become a paste, add another 3 cups of basil leaves. The leaves will have water on them from being washed so that will add moisture to the pesto. Keep going until you have used all the basil.

Taste. Add more salt, lemon juice, olive oil, water depending on your preference for flavour and consistency.

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Puerto Rican Green Rice with Tomatillos, Beans and Corn

We have two rogue tomatillo plants in our garden so I am trying to find recipes to use up the fruit. Apparently the plants are impossible to get rid of if the fruit splits and spreads the seeds so I need to harvest them and use them soon!

Tomatillos look like tomatoes but they're green and are hiding inside papery husks. The husk splits when the tomatillo is ready to be eaten. You have to cook tomatillos, you can't eat them raw. Not sure if they'd make you sick but they are very sour and gluey.

This recipe is an adaptation from The Tropical Vegan Kitchen

5 large tomatillos
Water
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
1 jalapeño chili chopped fine
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt plus more to taste
1 1/4 cups long grain brown rice
1/4 cup chunky salsa
1 1/2 cups cooked black beans
1 cup corn kernels
2 tbsp lime juice

Remove the tomatillos from their husk, rinse under cold water to remove the stickiness and bring to a boil in a pot of water. Let them boil 5 minutes, pour off the water and mash or blend or purée. Add enough water to make 3 1/2 cups of liquid.

In a skillet with deep sides (or a pot will do I guess), bring the tomatillo liquid, onion, cilantro, garlic, chili, oil and salt to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low, stir in the rice, cover and let simmer for about 30 minutes until almost all the liquid has been absorbed. You'll need to check the doneness of the rice and add more liquid if needed.

Stir in the beans, salsa, and corn. Let stand for 5 minutes then fluff with a fork. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Stir in the 2 tbsp lime juice before serving.

If you want this as a side dish then you can omit the beans and corn.

Happy meatless Monday! And happy new school year!




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Unbelievable Ice Cream

Bananas. That's it. Nothing else.
And this is what you do. Take a banana or three and slice it into 1 inch slices. Freeze the pieces on a cookie sheet. Put the frozen pieces into your blender that is powerful enough to blend frozen fruit. Blend.




The bananas blend into a soft-serve, lightly banana-y flavored ice cream. It is truly unbelievable. Apparently if you can't eat all of your ice cream, you can refreeze it and eat it later. We ate all ours so I can't say how well that would work.
My next try I will add mint flavor and then stir in chocolate chips. Mint chocolate chip ice cream made with just frozen bananas. Mmmmmmm!




If you try adding other flavours that work really well, let me know.

ETA: I made this again and used bananas that were riper than before. I sliced my bananas a little thinner (1/4inch) and let the pieces defrost about 2 minutes before blending them. I added fresh mint leaves while the bananas were being blended and then stirred in chocolate chips. It was a delicious chocolate chip mint icecream!

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Fresh cucumbers, beans, corn and tomatoes! Yum!

I love this time of year when the fresh produce is at its peak. This is the best time to be vegan because the options are limitless and eating local is so simple. My lovely cousin, grand-cousin and I spent the morning at the farmer's market and the summer bounty is all there. The only thing missing is apples but I imagine they will be arriving shortly. I left with two bags filled with cherries, blackberries, peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, and corn.

Yesterday my dear friend Linda gave me a bag of veggies from her garden so I added what I bought at the market to my fridge already filled with cucumbers, beets, and beans. Linda also gave me chard but that went into hottie black eyed peas and greens yesterday.

It's too hot to cook inside and too hot to eat hot food so I put the induction heater outside and cooked the corn then blanched the beans. I have lots of corn for us to eat tonight for dinner and I used some for the corn and green bean salad. I then made cucumber soup in the blender. So easy and yummy.

Corn and Green Bean Salad

1 cup fresh cooked corn kernels (or frozen if you must)
2 cups green beans, trimmed and halved
3 small ripe tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp dried marjoram
1/2 tsp sea salt
Cracked black pepper

Blanch the beans in boiling water for 30 seconds to 2 minutes and then drain and cool quickly under cold water. Mix all the ingredients together. Refrigerate to let the favors mix and then bring to room temperature before eating. Easy!

Cold Cucumber Soup

This gets no easier and it is delicious!

1 lb cucumber, cut into chunks (no need to peel unless the peel is really tough or bitter)
1/4 cup fresh lime juice (about 2 limes)
1 cup cold water
1 tsp veggie stock powder (I use the Gayelord Hauser's brand)
1 tsp sea salt
Cracked black pepper

Put all the ingredients into a blender and purée until smooth. Chill and serve. I will serve it over chunks of tomato. You could also serve it over chunks of avocado if you wanted more unctuousness!

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Greek Salad

When the herbs and produce are fresh out of the garden my favourite for lunch is a Greek salad. I put in a mix of vegetables: tomato, cucumber, red pepper, lettuce, red onion, olives, green onions, carrots etc... Whatever I have on hand that is fresh and tasty.




My dressing consists of the Simon and Garfunkel herbs mix: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (and they always sing it in my head when I make this salad) mixed with garlic, 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp lemon juice, and salt. When I used to eat real feta cheese, I would use some of the brine to salt and flavour the dressing but now we don't eat real feta anymore so I do without.

Corey found this great vegan feta cheese recipe and it was delicious in the Greek salad. Make sure you have enough marinade for the tofu. We added a second cube of tofu to the marinade that was left and there wasn't enough flavour in the second block so we made more marinade.

This recipe comes from: happyherbivore.com

Vegan Feta Cheese

Ingredients

1 pound extra-firm tofu
2 tbsp water
4 tsp yellow miso paste
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt
2 tsp basil, dried
1 tsp oregano or majarom, dried
¼ tsp rosemary, dried
2 tbsp nutritional yeast

Break tofu into a few large pieces in a mixing bowl and set aside. Whisk
all remaining ingredients, except nutritional yeast, together. Pour
over tofu and mix with your hands, crumbing the tofu into smaller pieces
as you go. Set aside and let rest for 10 minutes. Sprinkle 1 tbsp of
nutritional yeast over top and mix. Taste, adding more nutritional yeast
if desired.

I'm off to Uganda later today so there may not be any posts for the next 3 weeks unless I can get chef James to share his bean stew recipe. He also makes amazing chapattis and samosa so maybe I'll get his recipes for those too. Happy July!

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Yam Quinoa Patties with Rhubarb Mango Salsa

This is a multi-step meal but I was pleased with the results. I cooked the yam on the bbq while I was making lunch, I have cooked rice in the freezer, and quinoa is pretty easy to prepare so while it's lots of steps, it's not a difficult meal to make.

Yam Quinoa Patties

4 smallish yams or 2 medium yams
1 cup uncooked quinoa
1 1/4 cups water
1 cup cooked brown/wild rice
1/2 cup green onions, sliced thin
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp fresh herb of choice (I used thyme), chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Bake/boil/steam/bbq the yams as you so wish so that they can be mushed with a fork.

Add the cup of quinoa to the 1 1/4 cups boiling water in a small saucepan with a lid. Cover the saucepan, turn the heat down to medium-low, and leave it for 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave for another 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Use your hands to really get everything well mixed together. Make 8 patties and place on a greased baking sheet (or use a silpat mat). Bake for about 20 minutes until they are steaming hot. The edges will start to brown a little.

These can be eaten hot or cold.

Rhubarb Mango Salsa

2 stalks rhubarb, chopped into small cubes
1 mango peeled and cubed
1 red pepper, chopped into small cubes
3 green onions, sliced thin
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp seasoned rice wine vinegar
 2 tsp minced ginger
1 tbsp lemon juice or the juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp salt

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Let the salsa sit while you are cooking the patties and then serve on top of the patties.

Happy Meatless Monday!

All American Meal

Tonight for dinner we had what seemed to us like a really traditional American meal: salad, potato, vegetable, and BBQ meat. Not our usual fare at all! Of course ours was a vegan version but as we normally eat Asian themed meals, this was as close to American as we get!

I roasted sweet potatoes in the oven at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes. They were smallish so they cooked quite quickly. I just gave the skins a quick scrub, dried them and then plunked them on the oven racks. One burst (be forewarned) but the rest were delicious. If you let them cool a bit before peeling them, the peel just comes right off with a whole cooked yam left on your plate.

The vegetable was the roasted asparagus that I blogged about a few weeks ago. Not enough left for my corn chowder unfortunately.

The salad was with my mother's typical French vinaigrette: 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp vinegar, 1 minced clove of garlic, 2 tsp Dijon mustard, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, chopped parsley. You can replace the vinegar with lemon juice and sometimes I use 2 tbsp vinegar if I am feeling like eating something a little more sour. This is our go-to salad dressing.

Our "meat" was tofu of course. I used extra firm tofu and cooked it in this yummy BBQ sauce from Dreena Burton's new cookbook. Dreena has a vegan blog too and is the Canadian vegan queen, just like Isa is the American vegan queen. Dreena's cookbooks were recently recognized on Michelle Obama's White House website. Quite the coup for a Canadian vegan mom and cookbook writer from Whiterock, BC.

BBQ Tofu (as always, adapted to fit what I have in my pantry)

1/2 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp Italian herb mix
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1 pkg extra firm tofu

In a glass dish (8x12) mix all the sauce ingredients. Pat the tofu dry, cut into 3 slices and into squares. Pat all the pieces dry. Coat the tofu in the sauce and leave in the dish. Cover with foil, bake 20 minutes at 375 degrees, flip the tofu, cover and bake another 10 minutes. You could probably BBQ the tofu too but I like to have some sauce left to dip my tofu into as I eat it. If you BBQ it, it would probably make excellent sandwiches.

For dessert I have strawberry ice-cream setting in the freezer (all american meal eh?) but it's not ready yet so the recipe will have to be posted later when we've decided if it's yummy or not.


Enjoy meatless Monday tomorrow! Lots of yummy fare to eat without using any meat!

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Roasted Asparagus Corn Chowder

This rain is depressing. It's June 7th and I have the fireplace on to warm up because the outside temperature drops to about 6 degrees at night. It shouldn't be time to be making soup but who wants salads and sandwiches when we are wearing scarves and gloves in the morning and at night? Ridiculous!!

I made this chowder in the slow cooker and left it for about 4 hours on low. You could do it in a regular pot and cook it faster. It depends on your time. You could also toss in raw asparagus if you don't want to roast it but I can't guarantee that the flavour will be as good. Play around!

Roasted Asparagus Corn Chowder

2 tbsp canola oil
1 medium leek, sliced thin (see note below)
3 medium carrots, sliced
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 lrg can garbanzo beans or 1 cup cooked garbanzo beans that you have waiting in your freezer
1 red pepper, sliced
1 yellow pepper, sliced
1 tbsp coarse sea salt
2 cups corn kernels, frozen or fresh
1 package powdered coconut milk
5 cups water
1 vegan stock cube
chopped roasted asparagus - however much you have left

If you are making this in a slow cooker, omit the oil and throw all the rest of the ingredients, minus the roasted asparagus, in the slow cooker, mix really well to get the coconut powder to dissolve as much as possible, and leave on low for 4 hours or so. Add the asparagus in the last 30 minutes of cooking. If you are using raw asparagus, add it at the beginning.

If you are doing this in a pot, heat the oil and fry the leek until the pieces start to brown. Add all the other ingredients , minus the roasted asparagus. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and leave to simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes. Toss in the roasted asparagus and leave to simmer another 5 minutes. If the asparagus is raw, toss in with the rest of the ingredients so that it cooks.

Leek Note: Leeks can be full of dirt. To clean them properly, cut off the root end and slice down the length of the leek so that you cut the rings in all the way down. Don't cut all the way through, the knife should go half way through to the core and then slice down. Put the leek under running cold water and use your thumb to separate the layers to wash the grit caught in-between the layers. You can even pull the leek layers apart, wash them, and then put them back together.

Spinach Almond Pesto

We have tried in the sat three years to grow spinach in our community green with no luck. This year we decided to give it one more chance. I threw in all our leftover seeds into one rectangle of space and left it to the gods to decide if we were to grow spinach or not. Well, we did. And did we ever!




Of course it's all ready to be harvested at the same time so now we find outlives with a mass of spinach that needs to be dealt with. Some will be washed and frozen for smoothies but I decided to try a spinach pesto recipe that is in Drena Burton's new vegan cookbook: Let Them Eat Vegan!




Typical me though... I did not have all the ingredients so I modified the recipe somewhat!
Spinach Almond Pesto
5 large handfuls of spinach
1 cup raw almonds
2 cloves garlic cut into quarters
2 tsp sea salt
Cracked ground pepper
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup parsley
1/2 cup basil
1-2 tbsp water unless you have to wash your spinach in which case enough water will stay on the spinach even when you've squeezed it "dry"
In a food processor, blend the almonds, garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil, parsley, and basil. Wile it is blending, add one handful of spinach at a time and let it blend before adding another one. Add water if the mixture is getting too tight. Refrigerate until you use it. You can just toss it into hot pasta. The remainder can be frozen as it makes quite a big batch.
I will be serving this on pasta with cherry tomatoes. You could toss in any other veggies you want as well as long as they aren't too rich because the pesto is already quite rich.
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Huo Guo #3

I forgot to take a photo of the Huo Guo package #2 that we took to my cousin's place for dinner one night. It was yummy but it doesn't matter because Huo Guo #1was better and the one we had for lunch yesterday was incredible. Was it ever spicy!! Lots of dried chilies in there and terrific flavour. It's called Chongqing flavour which is a very large city along the Yangze River. Not sure it tasted like the city but it was certainly delicious.

Vegan BBQ

Now that the weather is warm, people often comment to us about how much we must miss having a bbq. Umm, actually no, we don't miss it at all because we bbq at least  once a week. But what? Tofu dogs? NO WAY! We bbq vegetables and tons of them. It's my favourite way to eat the summer bounty from the local gardens.

This is not a recipe but more of a methods page for bbq-ing a variety of yummy veggies. If you have another favourite, let me know and I will add it to this page.

Forget the meat! Searing meat on a bbq is toxic anyway. Try these yummy vegetables instead. We have a tiny Weber Q100 BBQ that we use on high but if you have a a big bbq, medium will probably be high enough.

Beets
So easy! Cut off the tops (you can eat those greens like spinach or chard), trim the root, give the skin a quick wash and place on a the grill. No need to peel. The size of the beet will determine the amount of time it will take to cook. As the outside blackens and blisters, turn the beet to cook all the way around. It's cooked when a skewer goes through. You can peel them while they are hot or let them cool, leave in the fridge overnight, and then peel them even more easily. They are sugary sweet!

 Asparagus
Corey's favourite way to do asparagus is to give them a quick rinse and dry, snap off the bottom (the thicker the asparagus, the better it will be - thinner asparagus is not better), place in a shallow pan and drizzle olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper on the spears. Place the thicker stems on the bbq first and leave them to cook until they are almost charred - they turn an olive green and get soft. Flip and leave on the other side for a couple minutes. You really want the first side to be well cooked before flipping.

If you ever have leftover grilled asparagus, check out my corn soup which will be posted soon!

Yams
We ate giant yams in China that were cooked inside oil drums filled with coals. These you can do like potatoes on the grill - just leave on the grill and turn as the skin goes black and blistered. Just like the beets!

Eggplant Version 1
If you are making something like Baba Ganouj (an eggplant dip) or an Indian roasted eggplant dish, you just buy a big eggplant and put it on the bbq to blacken and blister (like the beets again!). The eggplant will swell and burst as it cooks and will need to be gently lifted onto a plate or else it'll just ooze a mushy mess onto your grill.


Eggplant Version 2, Zucchini, Pattypan Squash
Cut the veggies in half and toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper. Place on the grill cut side down and leave to grill until soft for the eggplant and al-dente for the summer squashes. You can flip them if you want but I don't always do the flip.

Onions
Peel but don't cut the ends off. Cut the whole onion into 4 pieces. Toss in olive oil, salt and pepper and grill on all three sides. If you do cut the ends off, just put on a skewer to grill or else the pieces will fall apart.

Tomatoes, Green Onions, Mushrooms
Yuck. Hot tomatoes. Why waste them? Eat them raw. Green Onions are just as yucky bbq-ed as they are raw but Corey really likes them. Toss in olive oil and salt and grill whole. Same goes for mushrooms. These will shrivel and become even worse tasting as they cook.

Portobello Mushrooms
These are my yummy exceptions to the yucky brown mushroom rule (they are, after all, just overgrown brown mushrooms.) Remove the stem and scrape out the gills under the cap. You can grill these whole and eat them like a burger or you can slice them. They marinate beautifully and take well to bbq sauce while you are grilling them. If you can press them will a panini cast iron press that you've heated up, that makes them even fleshier.

Garlic
Take a whole head of garlic. Cut off the top to expose the cloves. Place on a piece of foil. Drizzle olive oil over the top into the cloves, sprinkle in coarse salt and pepper. Bring up the sides of the foil and twist it together like a Hershey Kiss. Place on the grill for 30-45 minutes on low to medium. If the grill is too hot the bottom will burn. 

So there you go! You can add sauces, marinades, fresh herbs or flavoured salts to your veggies before or during the grilling time to play with the flavour. You don't need a bbq wok or veggie cage like you see at the local stores, nor do you need to wrap anything in foil except the garlic.

Rhubarb Bars

I love stewed rhubarb poured over ice cream. It's a spring treat for me. Vegan ice cream is yucky however so that limits my indulgence. (If you have a favourite vegan ice cream, please let me know!) I bought rhubarb last week and then realized that I didn't know what to do with it anymore. Rhubarb is not a common ingredient in recipe books but I found this one recipe that I decided to try.

I found it a bit sweet so I will cut the sugar I half next time to see if that makes a difference. It ends up like a fig newton type bar. Don't worry if the dough seems too crumbly to actually become one solid piece; it does come together in the oven.

Rhubarb Bar (adapted from Extra Vegan Za)

3 cups rhubarb cut in 1/2" pieces
3/4 cup organic sugar (I will use only 1/2 cup next time)
2 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups spelt flour (or regular flour if gluten isn't an issue)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (these are not gluten free)
3/4 cups organic sugar (to be reduced again next time)
3/4 cup hard margarine (not the tub - Earth Balance is vegan)

Put the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan and put over medium heat. Stir constantly until the sugar dissolves and the rhubarb becomes mushy. This mixture will become thick. Remove from heat and let cool while you make the dough.

Heat oven to 350.

In a medium bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. Cut the margarine into chunks and drop into the dry ingredients. Using your fingers, work the margarine into the dry ingredients until you have a crumbly dough once all the margarine is mixed in.

Press 1/2 the dough into a greased 9x13 pan. You want to press this dough together as much as possible so that it's like a big flat cookie. Spread the rhubarb mixture on this layer. Crumble the rest of the dough on top to cover the rhubarb. No need to press this down.

Bake for 40 minutes and then let cool completely before cutting.


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Gluten-Free Buckwheat Pancakes

Corey has found that wheat is spiking his blood sugar so I am attempting to try different flours that are gluten-free to see if that helps.

I bought buckwheat flour which is quite a dark flour that the Japanese use for soba noodles. I tried making my muffins with them and they turned out like large sandy dark brown shortbread muffins. They sucked any moisture in our mouth completely out making the muffin rather difficult to swallow. Not the right type of flour to use for baking!

I found a recipe for gluten-free pancakes that uses a variety of flours but I decided to try them with my buckwheat flour. Nothing to lose! They were really yummy and we will have them again. They actually have some flavour and they aren't too sweet either. I'm sure any gluten-free flour would work but you may need to play with the moisture content.

Gluten Free Buckwheat Pancakes

1 cup buckwheat flour
3 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp ground flax seeds
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp vanilla

In a medium bowl mix all the dry ingredients together. Make a well in the middle and add all the wet ingredients. Use a fork and mix the ingredients together for a minute. Leave the batter to rest for about 10 minutes while you get the pan ready.

Pre-heat a frying pan on medium-high heat. Give it a quick spray with cooking spray. Use 1/4 cup batter per pancake. I got 3 pancakes to cook at once in my pan. Turn the heat down to medium. Leave to cook about 3 minutes. The pancakes will bubble a little but not like normal pancakes. Flip and cook the other side for another 3 minutes.

Put the pancakes in a warm oven while you cook the rest of the batter. This recipe made 9 pancakes which was plenty for Corey and I. Eat with fresh raspberries or other berries of choice. I also drowned mine in maple syrup.




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Slow Cooker Spicy Tofu and Mushrooms

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post... School is keeping me busy as is general life for some strange reason! Maybe it's because it's getting sunnier and warmer and I want to be outside or in the garden instead of inside! I can see that some of my posts may be done sitting in the park with my iPad on my lap. Sounds lovely eh?

I made this last week for dinner and it was yummy. The recipe is called MaPo Tofu but it reminds me nothing of the MaPo Tofu we ate in China so this is my modified recipe for:

Spicy Tofu and Mushrooms

1 can of straw mushrooms or a handful of any fresh mushrooms you like
2 packages of medium/firm tofu cut into cubes
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 1/2 tbsp black bean paste or red bean chili paste
2 tsp sriracha or sambal oelek or other hot sauce of your choice
1/2 tsp red chili flakes
3 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 cup water
1/4 cup white wine

Mix all the sauce ingredients in the slow cooker then stir in the tofu and mushrooms. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. If you want to thicken the sauce, turn the heat up to high 30 minutes before the end and mix 3 tbsp of cornstarch with 1/2 cup of the sauce then stir it into the slow cooker. Cover and leave it for the 30 minutes left. You can also add broccoli or green beans or peas at this point as well to add some green.

Happy meatless Victoria Day Monday tomorrow!


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Yummy Fiddleheads

Fiddleheads are a sure sign of spring for me. I always look forward to my one feast of fiddleheads which usually coincides with the start of local asparagus. Last week Urban Harvest offered fiddleheads and this week is the first fresh local organic asparagus. I LOVE spring!!

Fiddleheads are unfurled fern tops that look like the top of a violin. In French they are called tête de violon or violin heads.

Fiddleheads are very toxic if not prepared properly. If you eat them al dente or worse yet, raw, you will have an upset tummy, you will vomit and all sorts of other gastric nasties will befall you. Trust me, you do not want to go there and there is even a health warning by the Canadian Health Bureau about fiddleheads. It's serious!

That being said, fiddleheads are easy to prepare and yummy to eat. When you buy them, think of them in the same line as asparagus. You want them to be green and crispy, not limp. They must be unfurled. Another warning... they are expensive!

Fill your sink with cold water and dump in the fiddleheads. Cut off the stem to the point where the fern is curled. Rub off the brown beard that these ferns have to leave only green (some brown is okay but the cleaner the better.) Empty out the water in the sink and rinse the fiddleheads again in another bath of cold water.




You can see the brown beards on these unwashed fiddleheads. That long stem will be cut off completely.

Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Toss in the fiddleheads and leave to boil for 10-15 minutes until they are soft. Not mush but not al dente (see note above about health issues!)

At this point I just toss them with some margarine
and eat them like that. Sometimes I toss in a bit of reduced sodium soy sauce. You can also toss the fiddleheads into pasta or make a stirfry with them after they are boiled I just like to enjoy the nutty flavour of them without anything else.

Yum!


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Meatless Monday goes East Indian

Here are a couple easy recipes for Meatless Monday. I find Indian food always tastes better the next day but these recipes are fast to make and don't use a lot of unusual spices so you can make them as a last minute meal as well. You should have a a good gram masala in your cupboard anyway for any Indian cooking. It's a blend of various spices.

These are one pot recipes too which is always an added bonus as far as I'm concerned.

Saag Paneer uses Indian cheese but in my recipe I use medium firm tofu to replicate the texture of the cheese. Don't mix it too much once you've added the tofu or else it'll just be a mess. Still yummy but not as appetizing to look at!

Vegan Saag Paneer

1 tbsp canola oil
1 large onion chopped into big chunks
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 heaping tsp minced ginger (I buy mine in jars and keep it in the fridge. So much easier and convenient! You can also freeze ginger to always have it on hand.)
1/2 large box or bag of spinach or more as desired
1 cup hot water
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp garam masala
1 pkg medium tofu cut into 1" cubes

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Fry the onion, garlic and ginger until it starts to brown. Toss in the spinach, stir and cover for a minutes to let the spinach start to wilt. Add the cup of water, puts the lid on again and let the mixture cook until all the spinach is soft and wilted. Using an immersion blender, blend it all to a green pulp. Add the spices and stir to combine. Lastly, gently add the cubes of tofu and mix them into the spinach. Heat it through. Voilà!


No Indian meal is complete without a lentil dish. These are Corey's favourite part of the meal.

Parippu

1 1/2 cup red lentils
1 onion roughly chopped
1 tomato roughly chopped
1 cup coconut milk (I buy the 50g packages of powdered coconut and add that with an extra cup of water)
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander

Check your lentils carefully. Pour a single layer onto a plate and swish them around, looking for debris like little pebbles or seeds. I always check my lentils and find a pebble that needs to be removed. Add all the ingredients into a saucepan. Bring up to a boil, turn down heat to low and leave to simmer about 25 minutes. Stir occasionally. Watch because the mixture may suddenly become dry. If that's happens, add a bit more water. That's it!


For an extra treat, you can make your own chai latté too. This recipe comes from a cooking lesson at a little Indian restaurant on Vancouver Island that Mum gave to Corey for Christmas one year. What a great gift!

Chai

For every cup of chai that you are preparing, put in a saucepan:
1 inch cinnamon stick
1 star anise
2 green cardamon pods, cracked
4 black peppercorns
1 clove
1 tsp rock sugar
Plus
1 black tea bag per batch (not per cup)

Add equal parts water and "milk" into the pan with the spices and tea bag. Simmer but don't boil or else you'll scald the milk. Strain. Serve immediately!



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Drunken Beans

I like my slow cooker. I like finding recipes that are vegan for my slow cooker. No matter how lousy I feel, it takes little effort to throw things into the pot and turn it on for a cooked meal later in the day. That way if I feel better then the food is cooked and if I still feel lousy the food is cooked. Win-win situation.

This makes a small portion so next time I would double the recipe. That would require a lot of rum but never mind! We ate this on noodles but you could serve it on any starch or even have it on a salad to make like a taco salad or in lettuce wraps or in tacos. It's not very soupy so it won't drip everywhere if you do eat it with your hands.

Drunken Beans (adapted from The Vegan Slow Cooker by Kathy Hester)

1 small onion, chopped
3 cups cooked beans pinto-black-garbanzo etc (or 2 cans of  beans if you don't have your own in the freezer)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup rum
1/2 tsp cumin
1 cube "chicken" stock
1 tbsp tomato paste
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

Throw it all in the crockpot! Mix, cook on low 6-8 hours and enjoy.

Mum's "Meatless Monday" Mac and Cheese

This recipe is for tomorrow's Meatless Monday. I'll eat the leftovers of what I made today tomorrow for my lunch.

When I was growing up, Mum made an amazing mac and cheese using bacon, wine, and tons of Velveeta cheese on top of ravioli or tortellini. It was creamy heavenly artery-clogging goodness. I made it quite often for guests and some requested it when they were going to come over for a meal.

That recipe obviously does not lend itself well to a vegan lifestyle but today I made a cheese sauce that is almost identical. Still not good for us but oh-so-tasty!

Mum's Mac and Cheese

1 pkg (340g) uncooked rice (or not) macaroni
1tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small onion, chopped
4 cups unsweetened non-dairy milk
1/4 cup white wine or sherry
3 cups grated "cheese" (I used vegan cheddar and monteray jack)
1 "chicken" stock cube
1/2 tsp cajun spice or chili powder or paprika
a few drops liquid smoke (Corey also suggested trying small cubes of smoked tofu to be like bacon)
pinch of crushed chili flakes
salt and pepper to taste

You can do this two ways:
1. Cook the macaroni. Meanwhile, fry the onion and garlic in the heated olive oil in a large saucepan. When they are fragrant, add all the other sauce ingredients and bring to a very light boil. Turn down the heat and leave to simmer while the pasta cooks. The sauce will thicken. Add more smoke, salt, pepper,chili flakes to taste as needed. Pour onto the cooked macaroni.

OR

2. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil in a large saucepan. Add all the other ingredients including the raw macaroni. Reduce heat to low and cover. Cook 20 minutes, stir, cover, cook 20 minutes, stir, cover, etc until the macaroni is cooked. It will take about 1.5 hours depending on your pasta. Don't have it too high or else the sauce will burn. Adjust the seasonings as above.

Kabaka's Koffee Flavoured Kake

I made this cake last weekend and was sitting at the counter enjoying a piece when Kabaka decided that he LOVES coffee cake and wanted to crawl onto the counter to get a bite. This is the first human food he has tried to get. His claws were dug into my thighs and he was using all his 20lbs of weight to push against me as I tried to stop him from getting to my piece. I like the cake too, as does Corey.

Kabaka's Koffee Flavoured Kake

1 cup unsweetened almond milk
2 heaping tbsp instant coffee granules
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 cups flour (mine is whole wheat but I will also try with other types of gluten free flours)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and lightly grease a cake tin/muffin cups/ loaf pan.

Measure out half of the milk and stir in the coffee granules. Once they have almost all dissolved, add the other half of the milk and vinegar. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together. Make a well in the centre and add the oil, milk mixture, and vinegar. Stir together with a metal spoon until just combined.

Pour into the prepared pan and cook until a toothpick comes out clean. Muffins are about 25 minutes. A loaf is about 40 minutes. Set your timer for 5 minutes less and check. My oven is a bit off for temperature so I set it higher and cook for about the same amount of time. You know your oven best.

When the cake is cool, you can make a coffee icing that is 1/2 cup margarine, powdered sugar, and instant coffee dissolved in a tbsp of milk. The amounts vary on the intensity of the sugar/coffee flavour that you want.

I have also made these as chocolate chip muffins and added 1/2 cup chocolate chips after mixing in the dry ingredients.

Meatless Monday Huo Guo

Happy Meatless Monday!

Today I have made a quick soup and we are having Huo Guo which I have been craving for a long time.... Ever since we ate it at Sean and Xiaoli's over the Easter weekend.

Huo Guo is a Chinese fondue. Veggie broth, Szechuan peppercorns, allspice, chili flakes, lotus seeds, some other weird seed that looks like nutmeg but isn't, green onions, and then all sorts of veggies and tofu to cook in the soup. I have made it from scratch but when we were in Calgary, we bought a variety of package soup mixes to try. Sean and Xiaoli like the Little Sheep brand and so we bought one of those but we also bought several other types.



I have made plates of veggies to cook in the soup:
Firm tofu
Bok Choy
Enoki mushrooms
Snap peas
Vermicelli noodles
Carrots
Celery
Black fungus (I added the reconstitution water from the fungus to the soup)

There is also a dipping sauce that consists of:
Sesame oil
Raw garlic
Stinky tofu (I had this in the sauce for the first time at Sean's and it made the sauce more unctuous - it's basically preserved tofu that is almost like a block of cream cheese - also called fermented tofu)

The soup simmers on the induction cooker in the middle, we add what we want to eat, scoop out what we are ready to eat when it's hot and voilà! Huo Guo! Love it!

Friday Morning Scones

I love my Fridays off... it has been awesome to have a three day weekend even if most of my Fridays were spent working on my Master's project. Next year it's back to full time. Sigh...

This morning while Corey went for a run (I ran 60 minutes last night for the first time - yahoo!) I decided to make scones for breakfast for when he returned. I modified a recipe from Vegan Brunch which is the same book that I got the muffin/loaf recipe from. These recipes are always great.

Friday Morning Scones

1 1/4 cup "milk" (I used the new almond/coconut milk but any milk will do)
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
3 cups flour (I used a mix of whole wheat and white)
2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup margarine (the block, not the tub kind)
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet or use a piece of parchment paper. I use my Silpat.

Measure the "milk" in a large measuring cup and add the vinegar. Set aside to curdle while you make the rest of the mixture.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Cut the margarine into small chunks and crumble it with your fingers into the dry ingredients. The mixture will be like little crumbles when it's all mixed together. What you are aiming for is to not have large clumps of margarine in amongst your flour.

Make a well in the centre of the mixture. Pour in the curdled milk, vanilla and canola oil. Using your fingers again, gently mix it all together. You want to be gentle and use just your fingers, not your whole hand that will overwork the batter. The batter will come together but there will be some dry patches, maybe some dry mixture left at the bottom of the bowl but most of it will hold together. Use your hands to divide the batter into 12 pieces and mould them gently into scone shapes.

Place on the cookie sheet and bake about 20 minutes. They will start to brown on the top and a knife stuck into the centre will come out clean. Eat warm!

The scones are fairly large so next time I will make a half-batch for Corey and I. We still have 8 scones left. The advantage of these is that they are not sweet so they can be eaten with soup or stew. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup sugar with extra to put on top but that makes it too sweet for us. You could add cheese into the batter or blueberries or herbs depending on the rest of your meal or your mood!

Meat-free Monday Burgers

We just returned from Calgary where we had a great vegan/vegetarian lunch at a little place called The Coup on 17th Ave SW. There is also a bar next door but it wasn't open. The food was delicious but expensive. Everything is made fresh and the menu items are quite original. I had a tempeh dish which was very tasty. It was busy so plan on arriving before or after the meal rush. You can't make reservations.

Another place we visited was the new Spark Science Centre which had a display about climate change and what we can all do to help slow down climate change. Everyone is invited to write a little card and post it on the metal people. This was mine:

Tonight we are heading to Mum's for dinner. She is making her yummy tacos and for us she makes these awesome re-fried beans. This is not the recipe for the beans but one day I will get it from her and post it here. The burger recipe that I am sharing came from the back of the Urban Harvest Herald that we get each week with our delivery of organic fruits and veggies. If you live in the Kelowna area, I strongly suggest that you get Urban Harvest. If you do, mention my name so that I get a credit on my order! If you live somewhere else, look into this type of service. It's well worth it. I love getting a box of fresh organic fruits and veggies each week delivered to my door.

Dixie Burgers (adapted from the Moosewood Restaurant recipe)

1 tbsp canola oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 pinch salt
2 cups grated raw sweet potato
1/3 cup minced celery
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/2 red pepper, minced
1 cup chard, stemmed and finely chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 cups canned or cooked black beans
4 oz firm tofu
panko or other fine breadcrumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a cookie sheet.

Heat oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Add onions, garlic and salt and cook until translucent. Add sweet potato, celery and thyme and cook for a few minutes, stirring often. Add red pepper and chard, stir, cover and cook on medium-low heat for another 5 minutes until the greens are getting tender. Remove from heat and stir in soy sauce and black pepper.

While the veggies cool a bit, pulse the beans and tofu in a food processor until mashed but not smooth. Mix the veggies into the bean mixture. Add panko or breadcrumbs to make the mixture a bit more solid for shaping into patties. The recipe says to make 4 patties, we made 6 and even they were quite big.

Bake on the cookie sheet for 20 minutes until firm.

Cheese-Free Mexican

While we were in San Diego we enjoyed many Mexican meals but each meal is laden with cheese. One soup I did not find that I have eaten in Mexico is tortilla soup. It is one of my favourites! So tonight I made a cheese-free tortilla soup. I'm not sure if it usually has cheese as some recipes had cheese and others didn't but this one has the flavour that I was looking for. Corey says it's a bit cilantro-y for him so reduce the amount if you don't like a strong cilantro flavour. I love it! There is another recipe that used nutritional yeast to make a cheesy tortilla soup. I'll let you know what that one is like.

Tortilla Soup

4 cups veggie broth
2 garlic cloves, chopped
4 green onions,sliced
1 can (15oz) diced tomatoes (don't use canned tomatoes - use frozen or fresh ones)
1/4 - 1/2 bunch cilantro
1 tbsp chili powder
1.5 tbsp cumin (fresh ground from Abby's - remember?)
3-4 handfuls of tortilla chips
1 tsp salt or more to taste
1/2 cup frozen corn
1.5 cups cooked black beans (one can or the ones you have cooked and in the freezer)
juice of 1 lime (or about 1tbsp of lime juice)
1 avocado, sliced

Bring the stock, garlic and onion to a boil. Turn down heat and add tomatoes. Allow to simmer for a few minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in cilantro, chili powder, cumin and tortilla chips. The chips will soften (duh) and when they do, blend the soup with an immersion blender. Add salt and adjust seasoning to taste. Return to heat, add corn and beans and bring up to almost a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer until you are ready to eat the soup. Crumble tortillas into the soup and add slices of avocado on top.

I love lasagna!

I used to make lasagna quite often but gave this wonderful one-pot meal up when we became vegan. I really don't like many of the soy cheese products and I try to avoid as much wheat as possible but when I came across this recipe in the Accidental Vegan cookbook I just bought, I could not resist (with a few modifications of course!) I was having good friends over for dinner so I decided they could be my guinea pigs. That's what good friends are for!

There are several steps for this recipe because you make all three sauces but each one is made quickly so the overall time is not a big deal. You could melt soy cheese on top but as we have recently discovered, some brands have casein from milk in them. Check your labels carefully.

I use the instant lasagna noodles because I hate fighting with lasagna noodles that stick in my pot when I am boiling them and then fall apart as I transfer them into the lasagna pan. It limits my options for "flavours" of lasagna noodles but for these rare occasions, I don't mind just eating plain white semolina flour noodles.

Spinach Pesto Lasagna

1. Spinach Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried oregano (been to Abby's yet?)

2 tbsp dried basil
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp pepper
6-8 large tomatoes skinned and chopped or just chopped fine
1 pkg frozen spinach, thawed

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add onions, garlic, herbs, spices and salt. Fry on medium heat until the onions start to become translucent. Add the tomatoes, lower heat, cover and let simmer 30 minutes. (This is when you make the other sauces.) Squeeze the water out of the spinach and mix it into the sauce. Let it heat through.

2. Pesto
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, reconstituted in boiling water
2 cloves garlic
3 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1 cup shelled walnuts
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup fresh parsley
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Put the garlic cloves in the food processor and chop finely. Drain the tomatoes and add all the ingredients to the food processor. Process until finely chopped and well mixed.

3. "Cheese" Sauce - nothing like cheese at all really except the creaminess of a cheese sauce
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (great source of B12 - one of the only sources for vegans)
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp prepared mustard

Gently heat oil over medium-low heat. Add flour and yeast and whisk until it is all mixed together. It will be a combined crumbly mixture. Add the water, raise the heat to medium and whisk continuously until the sauce boils and thickens to the consistency of pea soup. It will burn fast so it is important to whisk it all the time. Remove from heat and whisk in the salt and mustard. 

LASAGNA

1 pkg express lasagna
1 pkg soft tofu, drained and crumbled into a bowl
the 3 sauces above

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix the pesto into the bowl with the crumbled tofu. In a 9x13 pan, spread 1/3 of the tomato-spinach sauce. Layer noodles onto the sauce. Spread 1/2 the tofu-pesto sauce on top. Add another layer of noodles. Spread 1/3 of the tomato-spinach sauce on top then cover with the rest of the tofu-pesto sauce. Another layer of noodles. Cover with the rest of the tomato-spinach sauce. Pour the "cheese" sauce on top, cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes. Take out of the oven and let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Each of the sauces are good on their own for pasta. I boil macaroni then fry onions and tomatoes together, toss in the macaroni, add the "cheese" sauce, put it in a baking dish, cover it with breadcrumbs and bake it for 20 minutes. Makes a great lunch!

Wednesday Morning Pancakes

The advantages of being on Spring Break is that I can cook more and I can blog more recipes as I try them. Corey had this morning off so I decided to make some pancakes. It is a rare morning when we have time or energy for pancakes and I find that recipes are usually too big. I know I can reduce the amount but then that adds another mental step and that makes the task even more onerous! All for silly pancakes.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz to the rescue.Her book Vegan Brunch has great recipes in realistic quantities. This one made 8 small pancakes which was perfect for us. I modified the recipe a little so this is my modification. If you want her real recipe, buy her book!

Wednesday Morning Pancakes

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp canola oil
1/3 cup water
1 1/4 cup unsweetened soy milk
2 tbsp maple syrup

cooking spray

Heat a skillet (or two) over medium heat while you make the batter. You want these to be hot and dry.

Sift the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients. Use a metal spoon to mix the two together until just mixed. A few lumps are okay. Don't over-mix or the pancakes will be tough.

Turn the heat down just a little under the skillets. Lightly spray the skillets with cooking spray. You only need to do this once. Drop a large dollop of batter on the skillet and move the skillet around to get a somewhat circular shape if that matters to you. I used about 1/3 cup of batter per pancake. Leave the pancake to cook about 3 minutes. There will be small bubbles popping on top and the top will seem almost dry. Flip and cook the other side for about 1 minute.

Serve with maple syrup, agave syrup, blueberries, or whatever takes your fancy! 

Chocolate Pudding

This comes as a request from a friend who is apparently turning into a muffin because she is making my "instant yummy muffin" recipe all the time. I love this pudding recipe because it's fast, easy and yummy. I've served it on top of frozen blueberries and raspberries as a dessert for guests and no-one has complained that it tastes like tofu. That's the beauty of silken tofu. I buy mine at Superstore or Save-on-Foods.

Firm or Soft - whatever you can find.

Chocolate Pudding (adapted from Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson)

1 cup semi-sweet vegan chocolate chips
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 12oz package of silken tofu
1 tsp vanilla extract
raspberries and blueberries

Melt the chocolate chips with the maple syrup in the top of a double boiler or in the microwave. Heat 30 seconds, stir, then heat again. Don't let it burn! Stir it and let it cool slightly.

Place the tofu and vanilla in a blender or food processor. Blend until it's smooth. Add the melted chocolate mixture and blend until it's well combined.

Put blueberries and raspberries in the bottom of individual glasses or in a serving bowl. Cover with the pudding and refrigerate for 2 hours until it's firm (or eat it when it's more liquidy if you can't wait!)

Happy Meatless Monday!

Check out this great website!

Even if you only go meatless on Mondays, it makes a huge difference.

Awesome Kale!

Kale is an awesome leafy green that can be added to anything from soups to stews to smoothies. My step-sister chops and freezes it then adds it to her morning protein smoothies. I usually add spinach to mine but Jan swears by kale. I'll try it one day and let you know.

Here is a great article about the advantages of kale by www.organicauthority.com entitled 7 Reasons Kale is the New Beef.

While on our trip, thee was no opportunity to eat vegan unless we had an undressed salad (a rather rude salad but not as rude as these vegetables are...) so we opted for vegetarian as much as we could. If I had really thought about it this would not have come as a surprise as we were just north of Mexico and on the Pacific Ocean where seafood is king. Everything is coated in cheese and creamy sauces. Luckily we walked about 20km per day! We did get vegan food at Disneyland though! We found a cart with hummus and crackers, mango slices, pineapple, giant pickles, and dried fruit and nut mix. It was like a little piece of heaven in a sea of "toxic edibles." We ate, we enjoyed, and we are now thrilled to be back to our plant based diet.

Back to kale!

When we were in the airport in Portland, I found a wrap that proudly advertised that it was vegan so Corey and I shared one with another pot of hummus and crackers (I need to find those here - they are great even if they do produce a lot of waste. Handy to have when I suddenly need a snack on the go! let me know if you ever see these.) The wrap was delicious. More filling than wrap (my mother's complaint about wraps is that they are always more wrap than filling) and very tasty! The filling was: kale, cabbage, broccoli, pea shoots, red grapes, apple, and hazelnuts all chopped small so that you wouldn't pull big chunks out when you bit into the wrap. The filling was mixed with a soy dressing like Little Creek but it wasn't wet and drippy; only enough dressing to add a bit of moisture. Yum! I think I'll make it as a salad.

When I was growing up, we ate borecole (the dutch word for kale but for us it was the whole dish) which consisted of boiling potatoes with an onion and steaming chopped kale and a sliced rookworst on top at the same time. The juices from the sausage would drip through the kale and into the boiling water to flavour the potatoes. The potatoes and onion were mashed and the kale and rookworst mixed in to make a single dish. Apparently a dish used during hard economic times because one sausage could be used to feed a large family with cheap potatoes and kale. Obviously I don't make borecole anymore because I really don't like meat flavoured artificial sausages but the mixing of kale, onion and potato is delicious as a side dish.

And here is the real recipe for the post...

Egyptian Lentil Soup (adapted from The Accidental Vegan by Devra Gartenstein)

8 cups veggie stock
2 tsp sea salt
2 cups brown/blue/green dried lentils (not red or yellow or else it will be mush)
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried mint (don't omit this or else it's not Egyptian)
1 bunch kale, remove the middle stem and chop the leaves
1 tbsp lemon juice

Check the lentils carefully for rocks or other debris. Trust me - I've seen beans and rice being dried on the side of the road in China - you don't want to skip this step. Combine the veggie stock, salt, lentils, tomatoes, onion, garlic, cumin, and mint in a pot. Bring it up to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes. Add the chopped kale. Stir the greens in and let the soup simmer another 20 minutes. Add more stock if needed and stir often near the end of the cooking time to prevent burning. Check that your lentils are cooked. Stir in the lemon juice and serve hot.

Another avocado recipe

I have been away for the past couple of weeks (well, no not really but over the weekends)so there have been no new posts. Don't despair veganites! I am always thinking about what I am going to post next. That being said, I will be away this week again trying new foods in San Diego. I'll try to get some new yummy recipes.

This is a warm avocado dip that I made that called for the dip to be put back in the avocado shells and then baked. I would skip that step and just put it in a small oven-proof dish and heat it that way. Makes for easier dipping.

Spicy Stuffed Avocados

2 ripe avocados
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped red onion (the smaller the chunks the better for getting it onto your nacho chips or crackers)
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 green onion chopped
1 jalapeño stem and seeds removed and diced
1 red/yellow/orange pepper chopped small like the onion
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup chopped parsley or cilantro
1 tbsp Tabasco or frank's hot sauce or other vinegary hot sauce
1 tbsp lemon or lime juice

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Warm the oil over medium heat in a frying pan. Sauté the red onion, garlic, green onion and jalapeño. When the onions begin to soften, stir in the peppers, salt and cilantro. Slice the avocados and mash the flesh into the frying pan. Add the hot sauces and cook for about 5 minutes until it is all mashed together. Stir in lemon or lime juice. Taste and season more if needed. Return the mixture to the avocado shells or put in a small oven-proof dish. Bake for 15 minutes and then remove and eat with nacho chips or crackers. This would probably be good cold too. I thought it would be a great layer on the 7 layer dip with beans and salsa (so mine would be a 3 layer dip) but easy to take to an appy party or potluck.

Fruit Grunt

Okay - so who came up with this title? Did the first woman who made this only get a grunt from her husband when he tried it after a long day out in the fields? Surely he could have been more appreciative and then it would be called a fruit wow or a fruit yum or even a fruit thanks dear. But no, a fruit grunt it is.

I use whatever fruit I have on hand or in the freezer. If it's frozen fruit, I use 1/4 cup water but if it's fresh fruit then I use a 1/2 cup water.

You can use regular flour for this recipe but this is also a good recipe to try other flours too. I used kamut flour today and have used spelt or oat flour as well. Depending on how fine the flour is, you'll need to add more "milk" to make an actual dough.

Fruit Grunt

4 cups fruit of your choice (peaches, berries, apples, apricots...), in cubes
1/4 - 1/2 cup water (see note above)
maple syrup

1+1/4 cup flour (also see note above!)
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup to 1 cup non-dairy milk (I use unsweetened almond milk - you should check the note above too)
2 tbsp canola oil

In a medium saucepan with a tight fitting lid, heat the fruit and water drizzled with maple syrup (sweetened to your own taste) until it starts to simmer. Turn the heat down, cover and let the fruit simmer while you make the dough.

In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Make a well in the centre and pour in the milk and oil. Start with 1/3 cup milk and stir then add more milk to make a thick dough that holds together. Chunky is fine!

Remove the lid from the fruit and drop large spoonfuls of dough on top of the fruit. I usually get about 10 dollops of dough spread over the fruit. It doesn't matter if there are "un-doughed" areas. Put the lid on and leave it to simmer for 13 minutes. Don't take off the lid to look! After 13 minutes, the dough should be cooked. Test by piercing a dumpling with a skewer. If it comes out clean then the dumplings are ready.

Serve warm and the fruit mixture will be thicker but runny underneath. The following day the dumplings have absorbed most of the liquid but then it is a yummy treat cold or reheated for breakfast!

Thai Coconut Corn Soup

This soup can be as spicy as you want it to be depending on how much cayenne pepper you use and if you add a sliced chili. I used a Thai red chili but you can use a jalapeno. For a milder version but with the flavour of the chili, remove the seeds before adding the chili to the soup. Just make sure to wear gloves when you chop a red chili as the oil burns your fingers and then burns any other skin you may touch!

I used kaffir lime leaves and dried galangal but lime juice and fresh ginger will work just as well.

Thai Coconut Corn Soup

2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 - 3 carrots, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (or more or less)
1 chili pepper, sliced - see note above
1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed or 1 cup cooked garbanzos
1 sweet red pepper, sliced
1 sweet yellow pepper, sliced
2 cups frozen corn
2 cans coconut milk (about 400 ml each)
2 cups water
1/2 tbsp salt
1/2 tbsp lime juice or 2 kaffir lime leaves
1/2 tbsp minced fresh ginger or 2 pieces dried galangal

Heat the oil on medium in a large saucepan. Add the onion, carrots, garlic, and cayenne. Stir and cook until the onions and carrots start to soften. Add all the other ingredients and bring the soup up to a boil. Turn the heat down and let the soup simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings (salt, cayenne pepper, lime juice) as needed.

Yam Fries

Corey can't eat potatoes anymore because they wreak havoc on his blood sugar. However, sweet potatoes are okay. Today I tried making baked sweet potato mojos. These are just thick cut spiced fries that are baked in the oven. They were fast to make and very good.

Here's the way I made them:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Lightly oil a cookie sheet.
3. Peel and quarter small sweet potatoes. (The thick ends are max 1 inch wide so if you have big yams, cut accordingly.) The pieces don't need to be equal in size.
4. Toss the yam fries in a bowl, drizzle olive oil and a spice mix of your choice on top. (I used mama africa which is a bbq rub from elements of spice but any spice like seasoning salt will work.)
5. Use your hands to mix the yams until the pieces are coated in oil and spices.
6. Spread the yam fries on the pan so that they don't touch.
7. Bake for 15 minutes, flip the yams and bake for another 15 minutes.

They don't become crunchy but for them to be really crunchy, yams need to be fried.