Frosting: a recipe February 14, 2012

I recently read on the Internet that you could use vegetable shortening in place of butter to make buttercream frosting. I thought about it for a while and came up with this coffee flavored frosting.

ingredients:
- 1 cup vegetable shortening, I used crisco brand I don’t know if brands make a difference
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 bag of confectioners sugar, I used about half the bag as I didn’t want tons of frosting left over.
- about a 1/2 of coffee, cooled
- about 1-2 tsp of instant coffee flakes

notes:
I didn’t use all that coffee or coffee flakes, nor did I use the whole bag of sugar. I’m just giving these amounts as you shouldn’t need more than these amounts for a couple dozen cupcakes.

directions:

Cream together the shortening and vanilla for about 3 minutes until its fluffy.

Add in the sugar 1 cup at a time. I it gets too thick for your mixer add a few tablespoons of the cooled coffee. I also added a bit of the coffee flakes at this point.

After adding at least 4 cups of the sugar, taste it to see if it is coffee flavored enough for you – at this point it wasn’t for me, so I added an extra shake of coffee flakes out of the container directly into the mixing bowl and I also added more cooled coffee. Did I mention that I love coffee?

Basically you want to have a thick and smooth frosting. This frosting was perfect for my piping bag. And formed a nice buttercream crust when it dried a bit.

And, my husband said (and I agree) that the frosting was so good that there was no need for cake.*

* I’m not giving the cake recipe because it isn’t vegan. But if you have a good vegan cake recipe you’d like to share, I’m listening.

Chickpea “Meatballs” February 11, 2012

Caught this recipe on Youtube and loved it. Just replace the egg with Ener-G Egg Replacer.

Enjoy!

Vegan Stuffed Peppers February 1, 2012

Just went to Whole Foods last night and swung by the buffet hoping for a good vegan dish.  Scooped up a vegan stuffed pepper thinking they looked pretty good.  Holy crap!  I can’t tell you how much flavor was in every bite!  Maybe I was just really hungry but that was the BEST stuffed pepper I ever had!  As far as I can tell it was stuffed with wild brown rice, tofu, black eyed peas, onions, parsley and possibly some other leafy green vegetable I’m not too sure what.  Looks like I have a new recipe to try!

New favorite food January 17, 2012

I picked up some of this coconut creamed kale a Wegman’s the other day. I didn’t get a lot because I didn’t know if I’d like it. Well, it was so good, I forced my husband into going back for more – twice!! I know how to have an obsession.

Anyone know how I could go about making this at home?

updated to add:
I just called my friend google and asked about coconut creamed kale and check out the first recipe that popped up. I think we all know where I will be going tomorrow and what I will be buying.

I suppose there are worse foods to be obsessed with…

It Ain’t Healthy, It Ain’t Low Fat, But It IS Vegan January 14, 2012

There IS a Heaven!

So for all those who crave some of that “sugar poppin”, “carb overload”, processed snack food there ARE a quite a few foods that we can still indulge in on a plant-based diet.  Some of my faves are Double Stuff Oreos, Nutter Butters, Walmart brand chocolate chip cookies, Vortmans Lemon Wafers…

Well, here is a list compiled by PETA:

Accidentally Vegan

Have fun!  Just don’t tell ‘em we told you to do it!

Slight break January 12, 2012

I took an unplanned break from the vegan mean plan book.

I got the flu. Ugh.

But, long story short, I’m starting to feel like myself again – yay! My husband took me out for some veggie sushi. There’s a place here that’s $20 for all you can eat sushi, probably not the best idea for someone who’d just spent the last week not eating, but it worked out in my favor. And it was so good!

We’re going back on the vegan meal plan so expect more posts on the soon.

WTF?! Wednesday: I Won’t Eat Anything That Casts a Shadow! January 11, 2012

Welcome to WTF?! Wednesday, a weekly feature here at Dos Veganos where we will highlight the absurd, humorous, and downright “DUH!” moments in the realm of nutrition and health.

Counting sheep or questioning the sense of it all?

Love me some Lisa Simpson.  Between her and Huey Freeman from the Boondocks I don’t know which precocious, antiestablishment little 2D twerp I like best!  Here she is meeting her hero, Jessie, a post progressive hippie douche bag:

Lisa Simpson Meets Jessie

Hilarious! I suspect there’s a Level 5 Vegan Douche Bag in all of us!

Vegan meal planning: day 3 January 5, 2012

It’s day three in the meal plan book and things are going good. Tonight we finally tried the black bean and butternut squash chili – its so good!! As you can see above, i ate most of it before i remembered to snap a picture. Here’s the recipe, we modified it to make it more child friendly and had the babies taste test it and they liked it too.

Black bean and butternut squash chili*

Ingredients:
1 chopped onion
3 cloves garlic
1 medium butternut squash
2 (15 oz) cans black beans, drained
1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
3/4 cup water or veg broth
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp paprika
Black pepper to taste

Directions

1. In a large stockpot, sauté the onion and garlic in oil until soft.
2. Reduce heat and add the remaining ingredients.
3. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Uncover and summer for another 5 minutes. (I’m going to note here that it took a bit longer than 25 minutes for our squash to be cooked).

* adapted from the daily vegan planner

Vegan meal planning: day 1 January 3, 2012

Today was the first day that my husband and I would be using the vegan meal plan book that he’d gotten me. It’s always easy to eat vegan on the first day. But, with the meal plans given in the book, it’s way more food than I normally eat in a day.

Breakfast was a bagel with peanut butter and a banana. And, no, I didn’t give up my coffee.

Lunch was a veggie burger on whole wheat bread with lettuce, sprouts, mustard, ketchup, and a slice of fake cheeze. And a cup of vegetarian baked beans.

Dinner, pictured above, should’ve been pasta and sauce with a giant salad. I didn’t want straight up pasta so I made a thick pasta soup. I combined sliced red onion, chopped carrots, celery, some leftover mini pasta stars, and chick peas. I then added some tomato sauce, and lots of spices. It turned out pretty good. Our salad was romaine hearts, cucumber, orange, sunflower seeds, sprouts and a strawberry vinegarette. The drink is a (hot) black cherry tea, it is cold tonight! Oh, for dessert I had a small cup of applesauce that was an apple/pineapple/passion fruit blend, it was really good.

But yeah, the meal plan book had a snack of raw veggies an hummus planned out and my husband and I never ate them. Maybe as a snack during baby-less tv time?

Vegan meal planning December 29, 2011

My husband bought me a vegan meal planning book for Christmas. I think because I struggle with what to make for us and the babies that we’d all eat. In this book, which covers 12 weeks, each meal and snack is covered for the day. We’re starting it this coming Monday. We’ve already gone through next weeks recipes and figured out things we definitely wouldn’t eat – like the sun-dried tomato risotto (I never eat tomatoes). I’m pretty excited to start and I’ll definitely be posting about it along the way, along with what recipes are keepers (I suspect the butternut squash and black bean chili will be a keeper).

How do you plan your meals? Do you even plan or do you just decide on what sounds good when your hungry?