Vegan Cooking Show!!!!

Happy New Year!

This year has started out crazy with lots of changes.

How is yours starting out?

 

Speaking of changes if you  haven't already heard there is a new vegan cooking show premiering tonight on main stream cable!  How to Live to 100 airing at 8p.m.ET and 5p.m. PST on The Cooking Channel.  I've already set up my DVR.

Check out who the chef is and a little bit about him here.

 

Simple Thai Tofu and Veggies 

It started raining pretty good out last night and it continues so I think I may just whip up this immune building delicious meal that I found at melomeals a while back to warm me up and has become one of our favorites.  It's inexpensive to make and very flavorful.  It's a great recipe if you are starting to add greens such as chard or kale into your diet because the flavors of the spices and coconut milk are what stand out.

A note on the recipe.  I don't always have cumin seeds on hand so I just  add more cumin and if you don't want to use any oil just add the spices when you are sautéing the onion. 

Enjoy the rest of your day! 

Furry Birthdays, GF-pasta and salads...lot's of pic's!

July we have a couple of our furry family birthdays we celebrate.  1st up is Merlin, he is 16 this month!  He

is still a pretty active cat for his age, like last night, he was very noisy running around and wanting in then out.  Errrrr!  He has thinned out quite a bit and is more verbal now.  If you come over for a visit and the dogs try to get all of your attention, well you will hear Merlin loud and clear, while he jumps onto the couch to say "I'm here too"!

Next up is Ace who just turned 2 on the 2nd.  He just wants all of the love, is quiet and loves to try to crawl onto your lap. 

We took a drive the other day and ended up in Cambria.  We had to pick up some of our favorite Italilian pretzels, Taralli, from Allocco's Italian bakery.  The owners are so friendly.  On the way home it started getting cold, especially sitting in the back of a Jeep, so Keaton shared a blanket with Ace.

Dave and I walk back to the Jeep from picking up some burritos and we see Ace with this sweatshirt on and Keaton giggling. Quite funny.

For lunch the other day I had leftover whole wheat pasta noodles and added broccoli, red bell pepper, garlic, drizzled with olive oil and lemon.

 For Keaton I made  Vegan Yum Yum's "Hurry Up Alfredo" sauce and added Gf pasta noodles and a side of broccoli.

Yesterday I went with a friend to our Farmers Market.  It is so busy now with wonderful colors of vegetables, flowers and the smell of all of the fruit!  I know all of you out there love the Farmers Market too.

I was so happy to see Santa Barbara Picstachio Company there.  These are my favorite pistachio's and the flavored ones have a nice and light flavor, slightly salted and they are organic. You won't find a crusty coated pistacio that's loaded with salt here.  These are just perfect and you can order online too!  If you purchase some let me know what you think!

I picked up some lovely golden beets at the Market too.  I roasted some with olive oil and sea salt.

Once they were done I sliced them up and added them to a salad with red lettuce, kale,spinach and pecans. A good way to sneak in dark leafy greens is to chop them up in small pieces and then add them.  I then drizzled a mixture of Blood Orange Balsmic vinegar, olive oil, dijon mustard, agave syrup(you can use maple syrup or honey) salt and pepper to tastse.  I saw a salad like this in The Flying Apron's Gluten Free and Vegan Baking Cookbook.  The dressing called for regular balsamic.

I'm looking forward to trying the bread recipe's from theis cookbook.  Alot of the recipes call for garbanzo flour which I don't like to use in sweets so I'll be subbing in different flours for those.

For lunch I had lightly sauteed swiss chard, with garlic, yellow bell peppers drizzled with a tahini sauce.

Last but not least you can never have too many gf chocolate chip cookie recipes.  I found this recipe from from Eat, drink & Be Vegan

These are soft and yummy!  I of course cut down on the sugar from the recipe and only added 2 T. of sugar and for the flours I used 1/2 C. Sorghum flour, 1/4 millet and 1 T. buckwheat flour. 

Do you have a favorite GF chocolate chip recipe?

Farmers Market Goodies

Farmers market is starting to have an abundance of spring veggies and fruits.  Also beautiful flowers!  I can't help myself, I just can't pass up the gerbera daisies, so many colors to choose from!  What are some of the things you can't pass up at the Farmers Market

and more....

Fava beans anyone?  My goal is to try things I've never tried before and the fava bean is one of them.

With all of the recipes I've seen using fava beans I decided to grill them. First I washed, dried and put them in a bowl.  I drizzled some olive oil, coarse salt, pepper, cilantro and a squeeze of lemon.  It doesn't take long to grill them about 6 or 7 minutes, flipping them once as they grill..  What was the verdict on tasting the finished product?  Not bad, not my favorite, but not bad.  They remind me of lima beans, which I don't like and never have, but better.  I don't know if I'll buy them again but I would eat them if someone had them.

Butter Romaine lettuce that looks like a flower when I opened it to drain the water out.  This has such a nice flavor.

Pea shoots and dried garbanzo beans are also finds at the market.

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Chopped up romaine, tomatoes, green onion, bok choy, garbanzos, pea shoots with ginger miso dressing drizzled on top! 

More goodness to come!

Stir fried rice w/herbs de provence and recipe testing!!!

I love herbs de provence!  Instead of using asian flavors for a stir fried rice this recipe uses herbs de provence.  It so flippen good!  Again very quick to make.  I found the recipe once again at Vegetarian Times

and I added brocolli, of course any veggie you want to throw in would work.  I also used crumbled frozen tofu which was perfect for this.

So I've been doing some recipe testing, which kind of slacked do to the holidays, for the wonderful ladies who just released a cookbook last year called 500 Vegan Recipes and are working on another one.  The very talented Celine-Have Cake Will Travel and Joni Marie Newman- Just the food blog and author of Cozy Inside Cookbook.  It's quite fun and I'm so honored to help out with the recipe testing.   So the salad you see up above is an un-tuna salad(it's not yet named as of yet)consisting of tempeh and lots of goodness!  This is a great salad mix that would be great in a sandwich, on a bed of lettuce(like I did) or with crackers even.  I will definitley be making this again and again.

This here is a breakfast pumpkin muffin bar.  Lovely with coffee or tea in the morning.  It is just sweet enough and is gluten free!  My son loved this bar and I packed one per his request in his lunch until they were gone.  He's pretty excited that I get to test recipes out. lol! I have some more photo's of other recipes i've tried so far but my computer isn't letting me down load them right now.  So I'll share those later.   See ya next post!
Oh for all of you Californians, keep try we should have a break this weekend!!!  yipppeeee!

Pizza, pizza, pizza!

I know it's been quite a few days since I've blogged but I've been catching up on

house and garden work. Last Monday I came down with the stomach flu and it was BRUTAL! It totally screwed my stomach up and I've only just gotten some what of an appetite back.

On to better things. Homemade pizza! (This was actually made before I got sick). In our house homemade pizza is definitely a treat due to it being kind of time consuming(making the dough, cutting and grilling the veggies, making the pesto etc) and it's just a family dinner that is kind of fun! My intentions were to grill the pizza but it was so flippen cold out that I will have to wait until summer. Oh well. We like thin crust and with the recipe dough I can make 3 pizzas from that one pizza dough recipe. So I made 3 different pizzas. I only remembered to take a picture of one, my husband said it was definitely a blog worthy photo. First I grilled the vegetables and set aside. This pizza consists of a basil pesto base layered with zucchini, eggplant, portobello, artichoke, sundried tomato, onion and sprinkled with oregano. This was our favorite out of the three. The other two were a marinade base and a cilantro pesto base. The cilantro one was my second favorite, i'll post more about this one in the summer.

Soba Noodles with Peanut Sauce

Not much to really say just Soba Noodles, peanut butter, oh yum! This was a treat because I haven't made it in so long. The recipe is taken from The Candle Cafe Cookbook. It makes so much sauce that I have to down size it and change it up a bit.

Here our my changes:

Peanut sauce

1 C. organic smooth peanut butter

1/4 C. brown rice vinegar

1 small red onion, finely chopped

1/3 C. cilantro, chopped

1 1/2Tbsp. fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 Lg. garlic clove, chopped

1/2 tsp. crushed red chili flakes

1 T. Ketchup

1/4 C. Braggs Liquid Aminos, soy sauce, or shoyu

1 tsp. hot sauce or more to your liking.

1/4 C. agave or maple syrup or brown rice syrup

1 T. sesame oil

Vegetables:

8 oz. firm tofu, diced andbroiled just to get a bit brown or not /or tempeh

1 Tbsp. Olive oil

2 tsp. minced garlic

2 tsp. minced fresh ginger

1 1/2 C. shredded green cabbage

1 C. Bok Choy, , sliced

1 C. sugar snap peas

1 LG. Red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 1/2 C. chopped brocolli

8 oz. shitake mushrooms, sliced

1/2 C. green onions

2 tsp toasted sesame oil

Prepare soba noodles according to packaging. Once cooked, rinse in cool water to stop cooking and set aside. In a blender, blend all of the sauce ingredients together and set aside. In a small casserole dish I put the diced tofu in and coat with olive oil, then broil on low just until slightly brown. Set aside. In large saute pan heat olive oil then add garlic, ginger and bell peppers for about 2 minutes. Next add the rest of the vegetables and only cook for a couple more minutes, you want the vegetables to still be a bit crisp. Add the tofu or tempeh and peanut sauce and continue to saute for a few more minutes. Next stir in the noodles and take off heat. This is where you can add more soy and sesame oil and serve.

Stir fried brown rice and veggies

If you don't have a lot of time or just don't really feel like cooking but don't want to eat out. Or if your budget is tight, like us, this dish is easy & quick to make, tastes good and you can use whatever veggies that you like or have around.
I made a pot of brown rice. 7 oz. extra firm tofu cut into chunks, I tossed them in some soy, put them in my cast iron skillet and threw them under the broil for a few just to get a bit firmer and slightly brown. Next in a Medium cast iron pan(you can use whatever pan you like) I heated just a small amount of canola oil. I then added 1/2 a yellow onion cooked until soft. The following vegetable took less time to cook, it's nice to keep them somewhat crisp. Once the onion was done I added a large carrot, red bell pepper, 2 cloves fresh garlic and cooked for about 3 minutes. Then added zucchini and peas just until cooked. Next threw in some chopped scallions and turned off heat. The sauce was a mixture of soy sauce, hoison, fresh ginger, brown rice vinegar & a little sesame oil. You can add more hoison or a bit of agave to sweeten up more.
Once veggies are done I add the tofu to the pan, sauce and the rice. Stir to combine. To plate I put a couple of scoops in a bowl, add more scallion to top, a few sprinkles of seaweed gomasio, and a drizzle of sesame oil. Yummy!

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.