Vegan MoFo Day 11/ Cheesy Sauce quick post

 Whew this week has just been flying by!  I don't have any recipes for you today this is just a quick post. 

Keaton went back to school today.  He still can't hear out of both ears but he made it through.

Carrots, celery, golden beet, apples, cucumber juice

For dinner I made something really quick.  Didn't feel like cooking.

I made a cheezy sauce (the nacho recipe subbed roasted bell pepper for the pimentos).

I poured the sauce over an organic russet potato and organic broccoli.

The cool thing about this sauce is that the only fat comes from the cashews(high in magnesium), nutritional yeast( is a complete protein and full of b-vitamins).  So you can have what may look like a non-nutritional, fat laden, artery clogging sauce... but it isn't!  Yum!

Back tomorrow with a GF-chocolate chip cookie

Vegan MoFo#9/ Light Gumbo with Seitan Sausages

Happy Tuesday!  Today is going to be a quick post.  I have to clean up around here and I'm going to watch a movie with Keaton.  Yes he's home from school again. I went to go get his ears checked out and come to find out not only does he have fluid in the ears but he has strep!  He came home from school yesterday with a sunburn type rash and his hands/feet were sore.  The doctor said his throat looked red but that was it.  According to his other symptoms...strep. 
Food?

Yesterday's lunch.

Ezekiel English Muffin w/mashed white beans, avocado and tomato





 



Light Gumbo with Seitan Sausage

To get my recipe for my gumbo click here.  In making this gumbo lower in fat it also was a bit more runny than thick. I just used 2T. Olive oil and 3T. flour for the roux.  I only used 4 Cups of water and 1/2 a cup of pale ale(not dark) and 2 fresh tomatoes chopped.  I sauteed seitan sausage, chopped them and browned them in the skillet using olive oil spray.  The seitan sausage recipe was based on the steamed white seitan from Viva Vegan.  I just adjusted the spices accordingly and made 6 small loaves.

 

Enjoy your evening!





Ladybugs!!! Grilled Bok Choy and Veggies with Lemon Marinade

 It must be the effects of Summer getting to me because I haven't been updating my blogs as much as I would like.  I hope you all are enjoying your summer.

Last week during our hike we stumbled upon something pretty amazing.  I've never seen anything like it.

There were thousands of ladybugs right by a stream coming down from the mountain.  It was crazy at how many there were!

While we were standing there looking in awe of them, they started to fly onto us.   That was a bit weird.

I don't know what kind of plant this is that they were on.  Do any of you? 

Moving on to something with the same color scheme. hee hee 

Here is a juice with celery, kale, parsley, apple and beets. 

We pretty much grill everything during the summer but this was my first time grilling bok choy. I just cut them in halves and poured a lemon marinade over them and all of the other veggies.  I then let them marinade for a couple of hours before I grilled them.

 

Veggies served over brown rice. 

A great book I bought myself a couple of years ago called The New Vegetarian Grill is a must have for summer months.  It's because of this book that I tried grilling the brocolli and bok choy!  The key is to marinate the veggies really well, especially the brocolli.  Anyways, it's easy to adapt the recipes to vegan too! The marinade I made consisted of soy sauce, lemon, garlic, olive oil, sesame oil, water and maple syrup.

Cheers!

Carmelized Onion and Kale Quiche

Happy Wednesday!  Four more episodes of LOST!  For those of you who are fellow LOST fans,

are any of you going to have a party for the finaly?    I still can't believe it's going to end.  Oh well, I just hope the writers don't let us down!

So here is another juice.  Another pretty pic, it looks like sherbert doesn't it?

I juiced carrots, celery, pink lady apple and a beet.

The other night I made another quiche/tart but instead of using firm water packed tofu I used silken firm tofu.  The results are more of any eggy, custard texture which I must say was really, really, really good.  This is a carmelized onion and kale quiche.  I love onions anyways, especially carmelized, yum!  What's so great about these quiches are that everyone loves them and they can't tell it's missing the eggs.  I thought it would be fun to make a nutritional comparisan between a vegan quiche and a non-vegan one. I found a carmelized onion tart online that seems to be on alot of different sites so I went with that one.   The cool thing is on this particular site they already had the nutritional info, easier for me because I only had to calculate  my quiche. The one I found is a carmelized onion tarte  and it's here at http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/caramelized-onion-tart-recipe.  I added kale to mine. 

I actually got 6 servings from my quiche but the one on delish.com says 4 servings so I adjusted my nutritional info accordingly to 4 servings.

                                       Nutritional Information

Egg and dairy version          My recipe                                                    
                                                                 
by delish.com                                                                          
(per serving)

Calories 495                                        Calories 306.25
Total Fat 32g                                       Total Fat  18g
Saturated Fat 13g                                Sat. Fat  2.75g
Cholesterol 204mg                               Cholesterol    0
Sodium 510mg                                     Sodium 444mg
Total Carbohydrate 36g                       Carbs  21g
Dietary Fiber 3g                                  Dietary Fiber 4.75g
Sugars --                                             Sugars --
Protein 15g                                          Protein 15.5 g
Calcium  268                                      Calcium  237

So you can see the difference here, the vegan quiche has 0 cholesterol and less fat. I tried to calculate the calcium content of the egg/dairy tart and came up with 268g of calcium.  The body actually absorbs more calcium from plant foods than from animal products so even though the egg/dairy version has a bit more you are absorbing more from the vegan quiche.  Down below is my recipe.

Carmelized Onion and Kale Quiche
 vegan version

2-3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 medium/lg sweet onions or 2 cups, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups chopped kale, or to your liking (you can skip the kale if it's  not your thing)
1 12.3 oz. box mori-nu extra firm tofu
2 tsp. low sodium white miso
2 tsp. arrowroot powder or 1 T. cornstarch
1/4 c. nutritional yeast
1/4 cup unsweetened soymilk
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of nutmeg

Crust
(This is a crust for one pie but  I only used half of the dough, just so the crust was thin)

1/2 C. +2 T. spelt flour
1/2 C. sorghum flour
1/8 tsp salt
2 T. Earth Balance original whipped(or your choice)
2 T. cold water

I used a 6-inch round stoneware pan so the tart would be thicker.  Oil the pan and I lined mine with parchment paper so when it's done I could take the whole quiche out and then cut into slices.

For the crust:
 In a food processor add the flour, salt and Earth Balance and pulse until crumbly.  Next pour in the cold water and pulse until smooth.  Take out, make a ball, then make a flat disk and wrap in plastic  and put in refrigerator for about an hour. 


Heat oven to 350.

1. When crust is firm, roll out half the dough, or for a thicker crust roll out all of it.  Press into pan, make a few pricks on the bottom and bake for about 10min.  Take out and set aside.

2.  Heat a saute pan and add the olive oil to it.  Next add in the onions and let cook until just beginning to brown, this can take up to half an hour so keep watch and stir every so often.

3.  While onions are carmelizing in a food processor blend until smooth the tofu, garlic, miso, arrowroot, nutritional yeast, soymilk, lemon juice, salt and nutmeg.  Set aside.

4. When the onions are brown and sweet add the kale and cook until tender.

5. Take the onion and kale mixture and spoon it into the processor mixture.  Pulse a few times to combine.
Season to tast with more salt and pepper if wanted.

Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes until firm and lightly brown on top.

Serve warm and along with a crisp salad or cold the next day is really good too.
Enjoy!

gluten free coconut carrot cookies

Happy Tuesday to ya'll!  Well it looks like it's going to rain again.  I'm okay with it, we need it. 

So I got my hair cut (yay)it actually styles now and doesn't lie flat against my head! I quite a bit chopped off, it was pretty dry on those ends.  I was using a citrus conditioner for a while and well, I guess it was stripping

my hair. 

There's nothing like a refreshing(fresh)juice in the morning.  Cucumber, apple, romaine and celery. 

It's time to go grocery shopping again but until that time it was pantry and refrigerator shopping.  So last night it was lentil soup!  Perfect meal actually cuz, dang it was cold out last evening.  Lots of carrots, used up the rest of my fresh spinach and tomatoes.  Wallah, a pretty and satisfying, warm the tummy soup!  

Now for some sweet treats. Gluten free coconut carrot cookies.  I had the taste for carrot cake and coconut cookies so with all the carrots I have for juicing(I buy the 10lb organic bag from Costco) I decided on adding some carrot.  Here is my recipe and just so you know you can minus the spices and carrot and these make fabulous coconut cookies. 

Gluten Free Coconut Carrot Cookies

1/2 C. Sorghum flour

1/3 C. rice flour

1/4 C. oat flour(gluten free) you can make your own by grinding as well

1/4 tsp xanthum gum

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

dash of nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 C. oats (gluten free)

1 Tbsp. Earth Balance + 3 Tbsp canola oil or (just coconut oil melted)

1/3 C. maple syrup*

1 tsp. vanilla

2 tsp rice milk or non dairy milk

1 med. carrots, peeled and grated

1 C. shredded coconut* 

1/4 C. walnuts, chopped(optional)

       Preheat oven to 375.

In a small bowl combine flours, baking powder, salt and oats. Set aside.

In a medium size bowl whisk together Earth balance, canola, maple syrup, rice milk and vanilla.  

Stir dry ingredients to the liquid ingredients until well mixed.  Next stir in the coconut,carrot & walnuts.  Stir until well combined.

Use a tablespoon to drop dough on to cookie sheet.  Bake for about 12 min.

 Makes about 18 small cookies.

*NOTE:  I used sweetened coconut(that's the only kind I had on hand) so if you aren't using sweetened coconut use a bit more maple syrup or add sugar to the cookies to sweeten up more.  

When making these without carrot I used melted coconut oil and these turned out wonderfully. 

Enjoy your beets!

I just used up the last of my beets for this delicious juice. Beets, celery, apples and carrots! My son raved about this one, I think because it was pretty sweet. See it can be sweet without the sugar!

Don't throw out those beet greens, these green leafs are sweet and packed with goodness. Facts about Beet Greens: they contain large amounts of vitamins K and A, along with large amounts of anti-oxidants beta Carotene and Lutein. They are also packed with calcium. So my lunch was loaded with good stuff. Lightly sauteed beet greens, quinoa, fresh grated carrots and walnuts. Dash of salt and herbs.

Berry Smoothie

You know people are always asking where do you get your protein. I know it's frustrating but to you non-vegans who may read this, this shake has about 18 grams of protein. The banana is also good for calcium absorption. More on the protein issue at a later date.

This berry smoothie I made for my husband before he went to work. We usually have fruit smoothies to start the day out. This one consists of 1 lg. banana, 1 cup frozen mixed berries, 3/4 cup soy milk, 1/4 c. organic cranberry juice, 2 T. flaxseed and 2 T. hemp powder.

Juicing

So I've started to use my juicer again that I received as a gift from my brother over a year ago. I'm determined to juice at least once a day. There's nothing like the taste of fresh juice! You can throw so many vegetables and fruits in a juicer and "wallah" you have a glass packed full of vitamins and antioxidants! It also tastes so good. My son asked for a glass the other day when he wasn't feeling well and this is what I made him.
One sweet potato, a large carrot, 4 celery stalks and 2 small apples.