Tag Archives: egg-free

Jul 11 2012
6 Comments
Main Dishes, Thoughts

Vegan cheesy toast, scramble and bacon!

This is just a different assembly of some of our favorites which we casually call “the Heart Attack-Free, All-American Breakfast”. Side note: we’re really lucky to have located a bakery that will make custom gluten-free vegan bread for us. I find that most store bought varieties of gluten-free bread aren’t always vegan and even when they are, they taste like cardboard and sawdust. Below is Karin’s awesome multi-grain and -seed bread with Follow Your Heart mozzarella melted on top.

I sincerely hope that you don’t have to work too hard to find someone who can make awesome bread for you too! We toasted some vegan bread in our oven while scrambling some tofu and smoky maple bacon tempeh.

Above is our finished breakfast. It’s pretty kid friendly and I imagine that even a few non-vegans might be interested. The cheese, bread and tempeh were pre-made so we’ll just talk about the tofu.

Our standard tofu scramble is as follows:

1 carton of silken tofu

1 pinch of turmeric

1 pinch of paprika

1 tsp garlic salt

2 tsp onion powder

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

garlic salt and flake red pepper to taste.

a touch of black (sulfurous) salt is a great addition but isn’t necessary

Sometimes I add chopped tomato, as I did in this case. We just throw everything into a pan and mix until it’s hot and awesome (Brent is in the background working on the tempeh). 

Sauteed mushrooms or chopped basil also make a great addition to any tofu scramble. I see a lot of variations on this theme, so I encourage you to experiment: adding scallions, chopped tomato, sun dried tomato, minced onions or garlic, chopped bell peppers, or whatever blows your hair back. I also know a lot of people use Chinese style tofu. I prefer silken tofu… it reminds me of runny eggs. If you’re a tofu scramble pro, I’d love to hear what you do.

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!

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Jun 26 2012
9 Comments
Main Dishes

Wild Morel and Fiddlehead Risotto!

I love foraged foods. Mushrooms are one of those things that I can’t trust myself to do so I left this to the professionals and got some excellent results.

Be really careful if you decide to forage for yourself: poisonous mushrooms are everywhere and usually they don’t cause anything more serious than some heinous stomach upset but even that isn’t worth it. Morels have a very distinctive features: a hollow core, stem attached at the rim of the cap and a honeycombed cap surface.

Whether you forage yourself or not, clean your morels carefully. Because they’re hollow inside and intricate on the outside, it’s not uncommon for them to be gritty before washing and to harbor… surprises… inside. Slugs, spiders and other critters might be taking a nap, so be careful to cut each one open before cooking.

My next caveat about morels is that they need to be cooked thoroughly. They do contain compounds that can cause gastric upset if they’re not cooked well enough or you might have an unpleasant evening. That being said, some people are just sensitive to the compounds in morels, especially if they are trying them for the first time so consider using them sparingly and using conventional mushrooms for the bulk of the dish. I sauteed mine in some olive oil with a chopped onion, 4 minced cloves of garlic and after the morels started t reduce, I added a cup of frozen edamame, peas are a great alternative if you’ve got a soy allergy.

The risotto was prepared by putting a half cup of arborio rice into a saucepan along with a teaspoon of herbes de provence and a cup of white wine. I’m using chardonnay in this batch because I think the oak and vanilla flavors in the wine will bring out the earthy flavors in the morels.I added some whole Japanese hot red peppers to the broth I used to prepare the risotto. I combined a liter of water with a veggie bouillon cube and brought it to a boil. I added it one ladle at a time until I liked the texture. I fished the peppers out of the remaining broth and mixed in 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast and a tablespoon of Eat in the Raw vegan parmesan (omit this if you’re sensitive to nuts, it won’t affect the outcome of the dish significantly). This makes the risotto creamy and cheesy… like you’d expect comfort food to be… just without the fat and cholesterol.

When that was done, I stirred the veggies into the risotto including the fiddleheads, which I sauteed lightly along with the morels and the edamame.

This was delicious nutritious comfort food. Usually thost words don’t go together but when you’re vegan, they do.

Here is Brent… showing off his bowl. He’s also wearing a super-ultra-mega-awesome shirt with a unicorn, a rainbow, a castle and a waterfall on it. RECOGNIZE!

This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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Jun 22 2012
6 Comments
Snacks, Thoughts

Move over lunch meat, it’s TEMPEH!

Tempeh is a vegan food product made from fermented soybeans. Before you turn your nose up at the idea of something being fermented, remember you’ve probably eaten a number of other fermented products including all alcohol, leavened bread, yogurt, buttermilk and cheeses. Fermentation adds a number of unique compounds not normally abundant in soy, in particular B vitamins. Vegans don’t always get enough B vitamins so it’s good to know good sources of these crucial nutrients along with protein, iron, calcium and trace nutrients like isoflavones and flavones that studies suggest may have preventative effects for heart disease and cancer.

We’re eating some tempeh that I see at a lot of supermarkets here in South Florida. It’s pre-marinated in a variety of flavors. We especially like this one (shown below)

I usually treat it like bacon except that it’s actually good for you.

I browned it lightly in a non-stick skillet and wrapped it up in a cabbage leaf with greens, bell pepper, and some Follow Your Heart sesame miso dressing that we’ve been enjoying for salads.

I’m a big fan of tempeh and I hope you’ll get to know it a little better if you’re not friendly already. It’s awesome!

This is Christie, signing off.

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Jun 17 2012
4 Comments
Main Dishes

Cucumber and Dill Salad with Cashew Cheese

This was a simple afternoon snack for me and Brent. We’ve tried a lot of commercially available vegan cheeses and our next challenge was to make our own so we did, using a recipe introduced to me by Luminous Vegans and you can find it on the Mighty Vegan’s blog.

We started the ‘cheese’ the evening before and after a visit to the farmers’ market I knew what we had to do. We had the following veggies:

2 cucumbers, chopped into bite sized pieces

1 pint of cherry tomatoes

2-3 sprigs of dill, chopped

1/2 purple onion, chopped into large squares

1 tsp maple syrup

1 pinch of salt

cracked black pepper to taste

juice from 1 lemon

We tossed the ingredients together in a large bowl and set it aside to allow the flavors to blend.

Meanwhile we finished making the cashew cheese. The Mighty Vegan’s recipe is incredible. It’s goat cheese. It’s cheaper than any variety we’ve bought at the store. It’s free of preservatives and you can flavor t however you like. We rolled ours in flake red pepper and sweet paprika. We made the cheese into balls and served it with our cucumber salad.

This salad was a perfect complement to the cheese: creamy and buttery cashews brought out the herbal and vegetal flavors in the salad. I also love when I can identify all of the ingredients, their flavors and their beautiful colors in my meal. Nature makes the most beautiful fruits, herbs and vegetables! Then I eat them.

This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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Jun 15 2012
4 Comments
Main Dishes

Veggie Hash with Spicy Lime Peanut Sauce!

This was another experiment. I’m capricious and easily influenced by how pretty things look. Fortunately, vegetables are also delicious so it has been working in my favor more often than not. To make the hash, assemble the following:
1 generous pinch of chili powder
Earth Balance butter as needed
chipotle pepper as needed
1 1/2 cup corn (frozen is fine)
1 sweet potato, peeled, diced
2-3 tomatillos, diced
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
garlic salt to taste
chipotle pepper to taste
14 ounce can blackeyed peas OR 1 cup of blackeyed peas, soaked
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
Heat a large skillet on medium-high with 1-2 tbsp Earth Balance until it melts. Swirl to coat the pan. Add the corn, sweet potato, scallion, paprika, garlic salt. Stir occasionally until the sweet potato is soft.
Add blackeyed peas and stir to mix well; cook 1 more minute or until sweet potato are soft and blackeyed peas are warm through. Transfer mixture to a casserole dish.
 
To make the spicy lime peanut sauce, combine the following:
 1/2 cup almond milk
juice from 1 lime (use a fork to get more of the juice out as shown)
zest from the lime
2 tsp peanut butter

Mix well and adjust the seasonings to taste.

 
I served mine with spinach that I prepared with garlic and jalapeño. I plated the spinach and add the roasted corn, yam, and blackeyed peas mixture to the center of the spinach. Add the spicy peanut lime sauce as desired, sprinkle with cilantro and serve.
We hope you enjoy it!
This is Christie and Brent, signing off!
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Jun 12 2012
2 Comments
Main Dishes

Chocolate Rosepetal Chipotle Tofu!

This was definitely an experiment. I love rose and I’ve got an abundance of rose petals so I decided to give them a go in something savory instead of sweet for a change. You’ll need the following:

4 tbsp rose petals
1 carton of water packed tofu, cut into slabs
1-2 tablespoons Earthbalance or other vegan butter
1 large pinch of chipotle pepper or to taste
salt to taste
4 tbsp slivered almonds, toasted
1 tsp agave or rice nectar
1 generous pinch of chocolate powder
1/2 cup almond or soy milk (more if needed)
a dry white wine to deglaze your pan and that will also compliment your meal, you’ll need about half a cup

I started with some frozen tofu that I sliced into 2 slabs. I covered each side of each slab lightly in Butler’s Chik-Style Seasoning and a gentle sprinkle of cracked black pepper and sauteed them in 1-2 tablespoons of Earth Balance butter until they were lovely golden brown. I set them aside while I began to deglaze the pan.

I added 1 cup of white wine, the rose petals and almonds and swirled it until the almonds started to soften. Then I added the chipotle and chocolate powder. and waited until most of the wine had burned off before adding the almond milk. If it starts to curdle, don’t worry, just add more milk. The almond milk helped to keep the spice of the chipotle from overpowering the rose petals. When it has heated through and you’ve had a chance to adjust the salt pepper and agave nectar, it’s ready.

Pour it over the tofu. Brent made some mushroom wild rice and we steamed some asparagus and had an exotic dinner with some interesting flavors.  Still, something was missing (maybe shallots) and I might leave out the almonds next time (and put them in the rice instead). I’ll let you know what happens if we make this again.

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!

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Jun 10 2012
5 Comments
Desserts, Snacks

Cantaloupe Bowl of Berries!

Summer is here and local fruits are ripe and gorgeous. There aren’t any words for how delicious this was so I’ll let the visuals speak for themselves.

Enjoy your summer bounty!

This is Christie, signing off!

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Jun 08 2012
3 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes

Vegan Rainbow Bake!

I was feeling adventurous today so we made something a little different. I picked my ingredients based on an inexplicable urge to eat more colorful foods: orange sweet potato, indigo blue potato, and vivid green Brussel’s sprouts.

This is what we used:

1 sweet potato, cut into bite sized pieces

8 small blue potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces

1 lb Brussel’s sprouts, cleaned and cut in half

1 tbsp fresh chili paste

2 tbsp capers (optional)

juice from 1 lemon

1/3 cup of veganaise

I put the vegenaise, capers, lemon juice, and chili paste into a bowl and mixed it.

Then I added the potatoes and sprouts and mixed them until everything was evenly coated with veganaise sauce.

I put everything onto a foil lined baking sheet and baked it 45 minutes at 350F/175C.

It came out moist and flavorful and crisp and caramelized around the edges.

We will probably do this again: the spicy lemony sauce went well with the herbal flavors in the sprouts, the creamy sweetness of the sweet potato and the starchy comfort of he blue potato. It was filling and full of vitamins and minerals.

 

This is Christie, signing off!

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Jun 07 2012
10 Comments
Main Dishes

Saag with Sweet Potato

Brent and I really love Indian food. We make several versions of Americanized favorites including saag. Typically saag is a spinach based sauce flavored with cilantro, chili and turmeric and usually includes chunks of potato, mushroom, and/or paneer. Paneer is a bland home-made cheese so we use tofu that we’ve marinated in lime juice instead. Today, however, we’re using cubes of sweet potato because we had a random sweet potato floating around the apartment (I just had a funny mental image). We put the following into the blender for a creamy base:

1 box of MoriNu soft silken tofu (If you’ve got a soy allergy, soak 1/2 cup of cashews overnight, drain them and add to your blender. This actually tastes marginally better but adds a lot of fat)

1 thumb sized piece of turmeric or 1 tsp powdered turmeric

5-7 cloves of garlic

a generous pinch of cinnamon

1 onion, diced

1 jalapeño pepper or generous spoon of chili paste

1 tablespoon of coconut sugar

This mixture was blended until creamy. Then I added the following greens in the following order, blending thoroughly between:

1 bunch cilantro (stems and leaves)

1 bunch of Swiss chard or mustard greens

1 bunch of spinach

The cilantro goes in first because the stems need to get cut finely. The stems have a lot of flavor. Swiss chard will make a milder saag, mustard greens will make it spicier. Spinach is just a wondrous vegetable. EAT IT!!! Frozen greens work fine for this recipe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I transferred the contents of the blender to my big pan and rinsed out the blender with almond milk (use soy if you’ve got a nut allergy) and put the milk into the pan. I started to heat it and added 1 sweet potato cut into bite sized pieces. A carton of water packed tofu or a few handfuls of mushrooms are great veggies to add to your saag.

Heat the saag through and stir frequently until the potato is cooked. It should be thick and make giant messy bubbles if unattended (hence the stirring).

This will take about half an hour. Add water, salt, spices, and pepper as needed. I also use a garam masala spice mix  that an Indian colleague brought me from his home Hyderabad instead of pepper. Cracked black pepper is better for most tastes. It looks like sewage but tastes like awesome!

We served this with quinoa that we prepared in the microwave with several green cardamom pods. I love saag and know it’s not for everyone. It’s very herbal and spicy and is too vegetal for some. That being said, We ate the whole pan and all the quinoa too… I’ve got a blood donation coming up and I need the iron and vitamin K!

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!

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Jun 05 2012
5 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes

Vegan Breakfast Burritos!

I like breakfast. I also like burritos. Whoever thought of the breakfast burrito is on my “AWESOME” list. The word “burrito” means, “little donkey”. I like to make my burritos about the size of a small donkey. Do you see where I’m going with this?

We had some more chili tortillas and decided, “what the heck.” We made a tofu scramble. I prefer silken tofu but otherwise this recipe is pretty standard.
1 box of soft silken tofu

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 pinch of sun dried tomato flakes

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 pinch paprika

1 pinch turmeric

salt and pepper to taste

Stir that up in your non-stick skillet until it’s hot and awesome. More importantly…

We cooked up some black beans. What breakfast burrito would be right without beans? We used the following:

1 onion, diced

6-8 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup of dry black beans, soaked overnight in an excess of water OR 1 can of beans, drained

salt and chili to taste

We heated the onions until they started to turn translucent. Then we added the beans and a jalapeño and just waited until they were hot and tender.

The beans and scramble made their way into the tortilla along with some salsa and cilantro. This was one of the better breakfasts we’ve had in a while. It was savory, spicy and loaded with delicious garlic and cilantro. We forgot the Daiya but neither of us missed it.

This breakfast is loaded with balanced protein to keep you going and a good serving of carbs to get your started. There’s virtually no fat and no cholesterol which is great because the fiber will help you digest all the other deliciousness for a strong body. Happy breakfast!

This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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