Back from Blogger Limbo; Vegan Blueberry Banana Waffles March 25, 2012

Dream Geek, here.  My partner in crime, Chantal, has been carrying Dos Veganos for a little over a month now.  Bless her for not making me feel any worse than I did that I wasn’t contributing!  I was so swamped with family and car issues.  And for the last two weeks I’ve been sick with some weird mutant virus!  Today is the first day I actually feel humanoid!

So I was excited to be feeling better and have my appetite back that I made whole grain Vegan Blueberry Banana Waffles!  I used Very Vanilla Silk Milk instead of milk, honey for sweetener, and mashed banana for  a binder.  Yummy!  It was the perfect meal to greet me back to the land of the living!  And my picky niece even wanted to have one made for her after she tasted the batter (which tasted like cake batter).

Here’s what they looked like:

Quick & Easy: mashed sweet potato & apple March 13, 2012

I bought Isa Chandra’s Appetite for Reduction book back when it came out. I’ve made a couple recipes – the babies, J and I love the mango BBQ beans recipe. I pulled it out this week when I was doing our meal plan for the week. The babies love sweet potatoes and they love apples, so I thought I’d try this recipe.

Here’s how I made it, I changed a few things from the recipe – of course.

Ingredients:
2 apples, peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes. I used the cheapest ones that my grocery store had.
2 sweet potatoes, also peeled and in 1/2″ cubes
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp salt

note: this is literally all I use in my recipe. Isa Chandra’s recipe also called for agave, ginger and cinnamon.

Directions:

While you’re cutting the sweet potatoes and apples, put a 4 quart pan on the stove to preheat in low. Right before you put in the sweet potatoes, apples, and water, spray the pan with cooking spray. Then put in the sweet potatoes, apples and water. Cover and cook for 20 minutes on low, stirring often.

After the 20 minutes, increase the heat to med-low and recover and stir often for another 20 minutes (you might also want to add more water at this point, I didn’t).

Now, check and see how the sweet potatoes are cooking. I found that they weren’t cooking enough so I turned up the heat to medium, and cooked it covered for another 20 minutes, stirring often.

After the 20 minute round on medium everything was cooked. I then used my potato masher and mashed it together. I couldn’t find the cinnamon or the ginger. I thought about adding some maple syrup, but didn’t.

The verdict:

I didn’t actually try it as I don’t like sweet potatoes (gasp! Weird, I know. While I’m admitting things, I absolutely hate tomatoes). The babies however, they would’ve eaten all of it if I hadn’t cut them off. They loved it! So, this recipe is a keeper. I’m going to have my husband taste it when he gets home tonight. I’ll update with what he thinks of it.

Recipe: peppery fake ricotta March 11, 2012

So, a while back I saw a recipe for fake ricotta cheese that involved raw cashews and tofu. I tried it and wrote about it back in september.

Tonight I made pretty much the same recipe, but changed one thing. I used about three quarters of a container of salt & pepper cashews instead of raw.

Holy cow! It was so good!! It had a kick of pepper, but the tofu cooled it so it wasn’t so spicy. But, wow, both my husband and I loved it!!

We had it with pasta for dinner, but I think it would make a good dip or sandwich spread. I’m so happy we have some leftovers.

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.

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?

Red onion marmalade December 23, 2011

As part of my plan to make homemade Christmas gifts this year, I made some red onion marmalade. It was kind of a pain because it didn’t set properly the first time and I had to open up all the jars to re-cook and add more pectin. The result is a sweet and kind of vinegary jam. My husband and I like it, a lot, but feel that a little bit goes a long way. We think it would be good on a bagel with cream cheeze (the fake stuff).

Here’s the recipe I used:

ingredients :

1.5 cups thinly sliced red onion (I used 3 onions)
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 pack of powdered pectin (I used 2 packs)
2 teaspoons of orange zest
4 cups of unsweetened apple juice

directions:

1. Put the onions, dried cranberries, brown sugar, and cider vinegar in a skillet over med-high heat. Cook until the onions are clear.
2. Combine the onion mixture with the pectin, apple juice, and orange peel in a large stockpot.
3. Bring to a boil over med-high heat.
4. Add the sugar gradually while stirring. Return to a rolling boil and boil hard for 1 minute. Keep stirring.
5. Remove from heat and ladle into jars. Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

(this recipe was in the ball blue book guide to preserving)

Recipe: cranberry infused vinegar November 21, 2011

I made some cranberry infused vinegar tonight. Well, two are cranberry-orange, and two are plain cranberry. I’m excited to taste them.

Here’s how I did it (my recipe is based on the one in the Ball canning guide):

Ingredients:
- 1 cup cranberry juice (the recipe had directions on how to make your own, but I just bought the unsweetened cranberry juice at the grocery store)
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 cups white wine vinegar (we didn’t have any, so I used 2.5 cups of red wine vinegar and .5 cups of regular vinegar because that’s what we had)
- .5 cup cranberries
- an orange

Note: the original recipe also called for a spice bag with cinnamon and clove but I don’t like either of those spices, so I didn’t add them.

Directions:

In a saucepan add the sugar and cranberry juice. Stir and bring to a boil, keep stirring until the sugar dissolves. If you’re adding the spice bags, this would be the time to do it.

Add in the vinegar and cranberries. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for 10 minutes.

Take out the spice bag.

Put on slice of orange in each jar. Then ladle the hot vinegar over it.

Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Note #2: keep in mind I haven’t tasted it yet. It sounded good, but I’ll report back after I’ve tasted it.

Indian food November 14, 2011

I may not have mentioned this yet, but I love love Indian food. I decided a while back that I was going to cook my way through a couple of our Indian cookbooks. I’ve successfully made tofu palak, aloo gobi, various lentil dishes, channa masala, and basmati rice pudding. I think I’m pretty good at making meals, but I’ve had a problem with breads.

The other day while we were at the local Indian grocery, I asked the owner for help on making dosas. He sold me the dosa mix pictured above. About a week or so later, I went in and he asked me how they turned out. I had to confess that I hadn’t tried to make them yet. Long story short, his mom offered to make us some dosas. Turns out, she made us a bunch of dosas, stuffed with spicy potatoes, and two homemade chutneys (corriander-coconut and something spicier).

Holy cow, they were amazing!

It gave me a better idea of how they should look and taste. I finally tried it. The mix was a bit waterier than pancake mix. They told me to use lots of butter, I’m guessing they meant ghee, but I used earth balance. As you can see in the picture, mine came out smaller than usual and a bit thicker than usual dosas. But they taste so good! I just made the outer part to see if it would come out, now that I know I can do it, I’m thinking of making some veggies for the filling and using up some of the leftover chutney from the other night.

I’m so excited that I can now make dosas!

Do you have a favorite Indian food?

Recipe: Maple Almond Butter November 6, 2011

I made some maple almond butter today. I googled a bunch of recipes and ended up winging it. It came out pretty tasty.

Here’s how I did it:

I took what was I took what was left of a bag of raw almonds we’d bought a while ago, maybe 2 cups, and dumped it into a pyrex baking dish (loaf sized). I then mixed in about 3 tablespoons of maple syrup. Then I put it in the over at 350 for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, let it cool.

Once cooled, I threw it all in the food processor until it made a smooth paste. I ended up adding a bit of oil to help it blend, less than 2 tsp. And I also added a bit more maple syrup.

I then stuck it in the fridge. My only problem is that I got too excited when it started coming together that I jarred it too early. I should’ve let it mix some more. What ended up happening with mine is that it hardened slightly. I don’t think this is a bit deal because now it’s more like a maple almond candy – but…I think next time I’ll leave it a bit longer, but this is good. My husband and I have been eating it by the spoonful and feeding to the kids that way. So, I guess the verdict, at my house, is that it’s good.

Have you ever made a nut butter? How did it turn out?