Tag Archives: vegetarian

Jan 10 2012
6 Comments
Main Dishes, Recipes, Snacks

Salad rolls… kinda like a sandwich without the bread, meat and cheese.

Now that Melissa is talking about how much she loves to cook, I’m going to post about more things I make when I don’t want to cook. This is a little snack that’s low calorie, high fiber, and full of nutrients. Here’s what you need to start: a sheet of nori (like for sushi rolls), mixed salad greens, and your favorite dressing.  Additional fillings can include sprouts, avocado, shredded carrots, tomato, hummus, baba ghanouj or some other spread. Get creative! If you’re using a soft spread like hummus, sprouts or shredded carrots will keep things from getting too messy. Put the nori on your sushi roller (you can get one for $5 on eBay or at your local specialty market. I covered mine with cling wrap for easier clean up.), add a generous fistful of greens, and put your toppings onto that along with a few tablespoons of hummus or whatever spread you like.

Afterward roll it gently. This part gets easier with practice. Moisten the far edge of the nori with a wedge of lemon or slice of tomato to seal the roll.

I like to slice it for presentation and dip into my favorite salad dressing. Lately it’s been a tough call between “herb tahini” and “spicy tomato basil”. There are so many possible combinations: mango and pesto hummus, garlic hummus and avocado, whatever!

Some day soon, I’ll share my recipe for home-made hummus. So many flavors: black olive, roasted red pepper, cucumber&dill, roasted artichoke heart, pesto, chipotle, extra garlic, sun-dried tomato, whatever. Let me know what combination you dream up! I want to nom them!!!

 

This is Christie, signing off.

 

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Jan 09 2012
3 Comments
Cooking, Thoughts

NEWSFLASH: I Love to Cook!

I have learned a lot about myself since changing my lifestyle. One of them is this: I love to cook. Food is so much a part of our lives, yet it amazes me how many of us take cooking for granted. Ingredients and what you put into your body are important. Just as important is how those foods are cooked or prepared.

Thanks in large part to Christie, I knew that going vegan would mean getting into the habit of cooking. Here is an exercise for anyone who is a carnivore or even a vegetarian: pick your top three favorite restaurants and look through the menu for items that are truly vegan. Now cross out any that are salads. You likely are left with zero options (excluding those that you can substitute or from which you can remove ingredients, such as cheese). Restaurants are no longer as fun to go to, and I have found myself eating a LOT of potatoes–none mashed nor baked.

Cooking more often has opened my eyes to many new things and has made me more creative. Adding balsamic or red wine vinegar can bring out flavors in simple dishes. Garlic does wonders. There is more than one way to cook broccoli or cauliflower or beans. Recipes don’t need to be followed to the letter.

I am at a place now where I lament not having time to cook, or not having certain ingredients around the house to play with. The act of cooking a vegan meal is just as satisfying as eating the meal itself. I have dabbled with the idea of learning new skills such as painting or music or sewing. Now, I am looking into taking a cooking class, specifically a chopping or knife class, which is a skill I know I will put to good and practical use. I even want to start baking, which is major for me. The best part? I see how my cooking skills are improving. Few things in life are better than the empirical knowledge that you are getting better at something.

I used to be a lazy cook. Making an omelette was as adventurous as I would get. I am so happy that I have embraced cooking. Anyone who is committed to being vegan or vegetarian should make time to cook. We all gotta eat, right? You won’t be sorry and it will help you stay true to your lifestyle.

Looking forward to sharing more recipes and cooking adventures with you! –Melissa

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Jan 07 2012
8 Comments
Thoughts

Isoflavones vs. Steroids. Vegetables vs. Animals.

“Doesn’t soy contain estrogen?” People ask me this question a lot, especially when I mention that I don’t eat dairy. I call this “the milk talk”.
I’ll apologize in advance – I’m a biochemist so that will color my explanation… or maybe make it so colorless that you fall asleep. Anyways, what people are talking about when they say soy has estrogen in it is that soy contains compounds called isoflavones and flavones. All plants have them. These compounds are ‘estrogen-like’. This is what isoflavones and flavones look like in a simple chemist’s line drawing (think: stick figures for molecules, they don’t actually look like that). You don’t need to know what any of this means, just note the similarities and differences between all 4 drawings in this post.

Isoflavones and flavones aren’t one specific compound: they’re a group of compounds with similar structures, not unlike the group called steroid hormones. Estrogen and testosterone are both steroids.
 
I hope you’ll notice that estrogen and testosterone are much more similar to one another than to the flavone or it’s isomer (OMG you just learned some organic chemistry!). You might also know that estrogen and testosterone have very different effects on the human body: one makes you grow muscles and chest hair and the other makes you grow breasts and smooth skin. If you surmise that flavones and isoflavones have different effects too, then you’re correct: there is interest from the scientific community in flavones and isoflavones as treatments for cancer (and heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis). Research suggests that various compounds in the group of known isoflavones and flavones are effective for treating and preventing the very cancers that estrogen and testosterone are known to promote.
Additional fun fact: withdrawal from estrogen causes PMS. Withdrawal from testosterone causes ‘roid rage. Withdrawal from isoflavones and flavones has no documented symptom.
So you might be asking yourself, “Why is she going on about estrogen?” or maybe even. “well, dairy milk doesn’t have any hormones in it. I buy organic.” Really? Are you sure about that?
Where do you think dairy comes from? Cows.
All cows: male, female, young, old? Female cows.
How do you get a lady cow to make milk: motivational posters? Nope, you impregnate them.Then their levels of estrogen skyrocket, but not just estrogen. Progesterone and eventually prolactin will also show up in a pregnant cow’s secretions: from urine to (you guessed it) milk.
But there isn’t very much hormone in dairy milk, right? The concentration doesn’t matter, you don’t need a lot.
Why? Steroids (and all hormones) operate in something scientists call “signal cascade”. I would describe it as chemical chain letters: each cell that gets the signal (1 hormone molecule), sends copies to all of it’s closest friends and a few not-so-close friends.
If you’re really thinking, you might ask yourself, “Doesn’t pasteurization destroy it?” Well, pasteurization occurs a no more than 72C/160F (Wikipedia). Dessicated estrol begins to break down at 245C/473F (according to my Merck manual). Just throwing that out there.
This is what I’m really getting at: if you’re worried about the estrogen-LIKE compounds in soy, why haven’t you considered the actual estrogen (and progesterone) secreted by the [recently] pregnant cow whose milk you’re drinking? Anyways, I prefer almond milk – fewer calories.
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Jan 06 2012
5 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Lasagna… hold the meat and cheese, please.

I usually use eggplant in place of lasagna noodles because of the whole… alergic to pasta thing but I encourage you to use it if you’re so inclined. The great thing about eggplant is that it’s also low in calories relative to traditional semolina pasta and has a lot of fiber and nutrients that pasta lacks. I’m biased. I dig plants.

For this recipe I took a large sized eggplant (2 medium would do) and sliced it thin. I wouldn’t recommend soaking the eggplant for this recipe since it can get kinda soupy if you do.I leave the skin on but you can remove it if you want. Pre-cooking the eggplant will result in a softer texture, you can do this by pan frying it or baking it until golden brown. This is my recipe for vegan ‘ricotta’. It’s a little more flavorful than regular ricotta cheese but I doubt anyone will complain.  In your blender or food processor, combine the following:

1 16oz. box firm silken tofu (I like Mori-nu for this recipe)

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp Italian seasoning

2 tbsp nutritional yeast (optional but recommended)

1tsp garlic powder

1 2 tsp starch (I used arrowroot)

1 pinch nutmeg

garlic salt to taste

Blend all of this until it’s uniform and creamy. After this mixing step, I added 2 generous handfuls of spinach – this is optional but a girl needs her iron.

I blended it lightly and then spread it on a layer of eggplant that I had positioned on a lightly oiled baking dish.

I put another layer of eggplant on top, (you can make more layers if you want but it’ll take longer to cook) followed by a generous helping of your favorite pasta sauce. I buy whatever is vegan, gluten-free and on sale. Cover with foil and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil, toss on some crushed walnuts, if desired and bake another 20 minutes.

I served it garnished with some sliced olives and fresh basil.

This is Christie, signing off… I will probably eat that whole dish of lasagna tonight.

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Jan 05 2012
3 Comments
Snacks

Cheese… vegan style.

You: Don’t you miss cheese?

Me: What, do you think I’m a communist!? Of course I miss cheese. But you want to know why I haven’t gone back to my one wedge of manchego per week habit? Cheese tastes different to me now. It’s bitter. Milk too. When I get coffee and they give me dairy instead of soy, not only do I get pimples the next day but it tastes bitter (I return it, it’s not worth the farts and zits). I suspect I was so used to whatever it was that makes dairy taste weird to me now that I just didn’t notice. It reminds me of when I switched tap water for distilled – now Florida tap water tastes chemical. Weird. Anyways, there are some great cheese substitutes out there. My favorite for cheese and crackers is from Dr. Cow.

This company makes a range of tree nut cheeses. Feel free to make jokes, I do. Macadamia and cashew nuts seasoned with delicious exotic things like dulse (a kind of seaweed), hemp (a relative of hops, like in your beer) and Himalayan sea salt. It’s got a good texture for slicing and putting on crackers and is actually a raw food! I wouldn’t consider it a replacement for any particular type of cheese, it’s really a food all it’s own. You might find it’s a little pricey, usually $8 or so for a 2.6 ounce chunk. It’s about the same as you would pay for a similar chunk of seriously fancy aged Spanish cheese like manchego, just without the lactose and cholesterol. I can rationalize it… easy.

I wouldn’t think twice about serving this to strangers at a cocktail party. I love this cheese that much.

This is Christie, signing off… to finish that little cheese wedge.

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Jan 03 2012
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Main Dishes, Recipes

Tofustek!

When I first thought about starting a vegan-centric blog, I was going to focus on veganizing Filipino dishes. Filipino food isn’t necessarily heavy on meat: my mom can give you a lecture on how she rarely ate meat as a girl growing up in the Philippines. I should ask her to write it down and post it here. Oh, I digress. One of the Filipino dishes that I knew I would really miss is bistek or beef steak. It’s basically meat and onions so how can you possibly veganize it and make it similar to the real thing?

Duh. Tofu is the solution to my bistek problem. However, I still have issues with tofu texture and taste. There is just no getting away from that tofu taste. Anyway, I had leftover tofu in the fridge and decided to try making it into Tofustek! (exclamation point is required). I am 99% happy with the result. It still needs something, but here is the basic recipe with which we can tinker.

1 block extra firm tofu
1/4 c soy sauce
1 tbsp lemon juice or calamansi juice if you’ve got it
1 medium onion, sweet vidalia recommended but any onion will do
ground black pepper
olive oil or safflower oil (my new favorite cooking oil, will post about it soon!)

Double up on the soy sauce and lemon juice if you like your dishes to be more soupy, and use more or less onion if you wish.

1. Slice the tofu into mini-steaks or into chunks — whatever you like! Put the tofu in a shallow bowl or dish so that you only have one layer of it, if possible.

2. In a bowl, mix together the soy sauce and lemon. Taste a drop of it to make sure it’s a flavor you like. If it’s too sour, add a bit more soy sauce. If you can’t taste the lemon or calamansi, add a bit more. Once it’s mixed, sprinkle in some black pepper.

3. Pour the sauce over the tofu, taking care to coat each piece. Let it sit for awhile to marinade. Five minutes or so should be plenty of time.

4. While the tofu is marinading, slice your onion into rings and set aside.

5. Heat up your pan and add oil. Brown the tofu. IMPORTANT: Do NOT add any of the sauce! Some will obviously find its way into the pan, but try to make it as dry as possible.

6. After the tofu is browned, remove it from the pan and place it in a bowl or container, preferably the container in which you plan to serve or store the dish.

7. Add a bit more oil to the pan and then throw in your onions. Brown until they are wilted, or earlier if you like your onions a bit more crisp. Then, add the sauce and remove from heat. Careful: it’s gonna sizzle.

9. Top the tofu with the onions and sauce.

Serve Tofustek! with white rice or your favorite grain. Goes well with steamed or broiled Chinese eggplant, or with salted fresh tomatoes. Tofustek! is not quite as delicious as bistek, but it’s a great vegan alternative and super easy to make.

Enjoy! And may you have a Happy New Year! – Melissa

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Dec 27 2011
4 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Chili and Cornbread: the Vegan/ Gluten-Free Way.

This is how most of my cooking adventures with my best travel buddy begin.

We didn’t actually leave the kitchen… except in our mouths… MINDS! I mean our minds. We made chili this particular evening. This recipe includes winter squash. We decided to use canned pumpkin but an equal volume of roasted butternut squash, acorn squash, or whatever you can get your hands on should work perfectly. The squash adds its own unique flavor and balances the acid from the tomato with the heat from the peppers. Normally the lard from ground meat would do that job but this way you don’t have to add a lot of grease to get a delicious bowl of chili. To start, you’ll want to assemble the following ingredients.

3 tins of beans (any variety), include the liquid when you add them to the recipe

28 oz tin crushed tomatoes

1 15 oz tin pumpkin

2 chiles, minced (we used jalapeno)

3 chipotle chiles in adobo, minced

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced (we used 6 but we love garlic)

1 tsp cumin

pinch of cinnamon

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tbsp chili powder

salt to taste

hot sauce to taste

Add the onion and a dash of olive oil to a large pot.  Stir on medium/high heat until the onions begin to turn translucent. Combine the rest of the ingredients except for the beans and liquid. Heat to boiling. Add the beans (we used white, black and kidney but any mix would do) and adjust liquids to desired consistency with bean liquid and possibly water. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Garnish with cilantro. If you like your chili really spicy, include the seeds from the peppers, otherwise, discard them and add a little hot sauce for pep. Wear gloves when mincing the peppers to prevent an evening of burning fingers (sorry, Brent).

3 cups almond flour

1 tsp baking soda

big pinch of salt

1 generous handful of shredded Daiya cheddar cheese

2 peppers, minced (again, we used jalapeno)

3 tbsp starch

1/5 cup almond milk

Preheat oven to 325F/160C. Combine almond flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Mix in grated cheese and serranos. In a separate bowl, mix the starch, almond milk, and water. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until they just come together. Drop batter in large spoonfuls onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until slightly browned on top. If you’re allergic to nuts, try this with ready-made polenta and skip the almond milk and starch.

This recipe (as written) is perfect for 3-4 people to have a generous serving. Brent and I were both stuffed and the floor also had some. Oops. I hope you get to try it!

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Dec 14 2011
2 Comments
Main Dishes, Recipes

Raw sushi… wait, isn’t sushi raw anyways?

A dude at my farmer’s market sold me some parsnips and told me they make great raw sushi. I had to think about it. I don’t make a lot of raw food except for salads, guacamole and salsa. This is one of the reasons I’m fascinated by Melissa’s raw cheesecake.

I’m a little lazy so I skipped Stan’s advice (my farmer’s market friend). He told me to chop these roots coarsely. I put two of them into my food processor with the shredding blade. They’re pretty big, I’m not even sure they’re really parsnips since the ones I grew up with were small, pointy and a little sweet and these weren’t so much. Who knows. I’m not a rocket scientist. They worked fine for what I was using them for. I suspect cauliflower would work well too. I showed the picture to my cousin who is a real farmer and he suggested that they might be a kind of Japanese radish called “Daikon”. Wow, he’s smart. The flavor of the plain root was crisp and clean with a very mild spice. This recipe is loaded with fiber, vitamin A, C, E, omega fatty acids, and essential amino acids to name a few. It’s low in fat, has no cholesterol, no hormones, and no synthetic antibiotics.

I dumped this into a large bowl, added a tablespoon of tahini, half a teaspoon of maple syrup (if you use parsnip, you probably won’t have to add a sweetener), a dash of ponzu sauce and a few dashes of rice wine vinegar. I mixed it with my hands… if you’ve got little kids I bet they’d like that part. I tasted it until it was slightly sweet and slightly salty and with just a hint of tartness, like regular sushi rice. After that, I spread out about 3/4 cup onto a sheet of nori and added the fillings. In this case – carrot, mustard greens (stems removed) and avocado.

I used moisture from the bottom of the “rice” bowl to seal the edges. The first roll of these fell apart while I was trying to cut it. I started wrapping them up in 2 sheets of nori. I realize my rice was too wet. By the third try, they were pretty enough to get a picture. They took very little time to prepare: no waiting for things to heat or cook. They were also exquisitely tasty with soy sauce.

This is Christie, signing off… to attack that last “parsnip”.

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Dec 01 2011
3 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Penne with Portobello Mushrooms, Artichokes, & Spinach

I enjoy cooking, but I don’t do it very often. My parents always make plenty of food for the entire family. Therefore, I tend to eat a lot of Filipino food, which I LOVE, but Filipino food can be hard to vegetarianize, let alone veganize. Clealy, I need to start cooking to minimize cheating on my vegan diet. I can only eat so much tofu, so I decided to cook some pasta for dinner. I had portobello mushroom caps and a can of artichokes, so I thought about those two ingredients for a bit, and then went online searching for “penne portobello artichoke recipes.”

I don’t often impress myself when it comes to cooking, but I will happily brag that I knocked this out of the park! First, I need to give credit where credit is due, and tell you that I found the original recipe on Tastebook by way of Google.

Ingredients:
8 oz of your favorite penne pasta: I used whole wheat
1 can artichokes in water, drained
2 portobello mushroom caps
handful of walnuts
a bunch of spinach
“balsamic vinegar”: I didn’t have balsamic vinegar so I mixed together 1 tbsp red wine vinegar and 1 tsp sugar and used about half of the mixture
olive oil
minced garlic: I ended up using about 4 cloves
red pepper flakes (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta and drain. Clean and de-rib the mushroom caps and chop (I went to YouTube for a tutorial on cleaning and de-ribbing the mushrooms.) Saute the mushrooms and garlic in olive oil. Add the artichokes, spinach, and walnuts and stir gently until the spinach is wilted. Add the balsamic vinegar and red pepper flakes. Gently mix everything. Add the pasta and stir until it’s heated through. Put some on a plate or in a bowl and pig out.

Some notes: I added a bit of olive oil to the mix two or three times from start to finish, and threw in more garlic after adding the pasta to the sauce. The red pepper flakes actually infused their spicyness into the veggies while cooking, so every bite had a kick. I absolutely LOVED it, but you may want to consider adding at the very end or simply putting it on the table to add as you eat the dish.

I’m really happy because, not only was the end result delicious, I had a LOT of fun cooking this. I had a really good rhythm in the kitchen with this one. Yay!

xoxo and happy cooking… melissa

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Nov 21 2011
1 Comment
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes, Thoughts

Tofu and Mushrooms in Green Curry

For dinner last night, I was in the mood for something with a kick, so I decided to cook some tofu with Trader Joe’s Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce.

I minced 2 large garlic cloves, threw it in a pan with some canola oil (I would have used sesame oil if I had some), and then browned firm tofu cubes. I added some mushrooms and salt, and let it sautee for a bit. When the mushrooms were about halfway where I wanted them to be, I added about a half cup of the curry sauce and coated the tofu and mushrooms. Then, I added about a cup of frozen peas, covered the pan, and let it all simmer. I served it to myself with some white jasmine rice.

I give this dish a B. The sauce does have a kick but is otherwise pretty bland; I had to add more salt as I was eating. The mushrooms took over the dish. I’m thinking that it may work out better if I sautee them a bit in garlic first, drain any liquid, and then add the tofu and more garlic. Fresh chili peppers would have done wonders for the dish, too, as well as some fresh ginger.

The challenge going forward will be to find non-Asian ways to cook tofu. I’m Asian myself, so I can do Asian everyday, but I know tofu is versatile and I’d love to cook it in pesto or something.

Another note on tofu: my sister has a soy allergy and so she avoids tofu, soy bean sprouts, soy milk, and even edamame. So I’d love to find non-tofu and non-meat protein sources so that we can enjoy vegan and vegetarian meals together.

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