Veggie and Bean Burros

So I was telling Lindsay (the Happy Herbivore) yesterday that I should have named my blog 'What Will I Think To Stuff Into A Tortilla Next.' It's so true. Now, we all have our 'things', for some it's pasta, others bread, for me it is tortillas in pretty much any form except those that contain lard or lots of icky preservatives. I am also passionately addicted to guacamole. Who knew what wonder and beauty would come from mixing avocado, garlic, lime and just a couple of spices, it's amazing.

Anyways, I'm done waxing poetic about guacamole, but you shouldn't be surprised that it is an accompaniment to the dinner that is the subject of this post.

Upon reading the ingredients list of this recipe one might find it a bit odd, but trust me, all these veggies work very well together and with the seasoning combination. I would have never thought to put broccoli or cauliflower in Mexican had I not had fajitas with broccoli and cauliflower at a place in Illinois that were out of this world. I think, more than anything, the spice combination is what is important.

Note: Again, if you don't want to use a tortilla, you could always just serve this over rice, quinoa or millet. I also had some left over navy beans so I threw them in here too, you could use just black beans or just navy beans too if preferred.

Veggie and Bean Burros

(Makes enough filling for 4 burros.)

1/2 cup navy beans, cooked

1 cup black beans, cooked

can chopped green chilies, drained

1 zucchini, roasted and sliced

1 cup cauliflower, cooked

1 cup broccoli, cooked

seasoned roasted yams

cumin

Mexican oregano

ground coriander

chili powder

salt

tortillas
guacamole

salsa

In a medium sized bowl, mix together warmed beans, green chilies, and spices to taste.

In a separate bowl, combine all the veggies except the yams.

Layer bean mixture, veggie mixture, and yams in a warmed tortilla. Roll up and fry if you like.

Top with guacamole and salsa.

I hope everyone enjoys their Friday!

'Til next time.

Orange-Agave-Teriyaki Stir-Fry with Adzuki Beans

First off, thank you all for your kind comments on my last entry, they really mean a lot to me; it’s nice to know that people enjoy this blog.

So anyway. When deciding to focus more on whole foods and less on tofu, seitan, faux cheeses, etc., the one food I was having trouble with was Asian. Both of us really like Asian food, and beyond nuts, I was coming up short with ideas for protein sources in stir-fries that weren’t seitan or tofu. Then Lindsay (aka The Happy Herbivore) sent me a link a friend gave her to this small family farm in Idaho that sells all sorts of dry beans and lentils. They sell lots of organic and heirloom varieties of beans. So I had a look around on their site and it was food nerd heaven. Anyways, I ordered 1 lb. each of organic cranberry beans, organic anasazi beans, and organic adzuki beans.

Well, my problem with protein in Asian is no more, there are nuts, there are soy beans, and now there are adzuki beans. These are lovely little beans. I got a picture of them before cooking since they are far prettier before the color is leached out of them in the soaking and cooking process.

So for dinner on Friday nights we generally do something like a frozen pizza, order in or eat leftovers as it has been a long week at work and we go to the store on Friday nights so after lugging home a load of groceries we’re pretty physically tired as well. None of that stuff sounded good last night, so I decided to whip together a quick stir-fry, and I mean quick, I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen, nor did I want to eat crap food. I like to have frozen veggies on hand, as they are convenient, I much prefer fresh veggies, but sometimes it’s nice not to have to chop all sorts of stuff up. So I went the frozen veggie route. You could use whatever veggies you had on hand in this of course, but I used: peas, asparagus, carrots, green beans, cauliflower, yellow squash, celery, onions, and mushrooms. Aside from the peas (I added them in), it was one of those frozen ‘stir-fry’ veggie mixes. Both Brett and I hate celery so I picked that out.

Note: This did make a decent amount of sauce. We had some leftover afterwards, you could always cut the sauce recipe in half if desired.

Orange-Agave-Teriyaki Stir-Fry with Adzuki Beans

Sauce
1 teaspoon coconut oil (it will melt while cooking)
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1/2 cup shoyu
1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
1/4 cup agave
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water
juice of half an orange
pinch cayenne (optional)
cornstarch dissolved in water

Stir-Fry
Mixed veggies
1-2 cups cooked adzuki beans
Hot, cooked short grain brown rice
Sesame seeds (optional)

Have all your other ingredients warming while you make the sauce, this saves a lot of time.

Heat water in small sauce pan. Add garlic and ginger and cook until soft. Add all the other ingredients except the cornstarch and water and bring to a soft boil. Add in the cornstarch mixture and stir frequently as sauce thickens. Remove from heat.

Serve over hot rice, veggies and adzuki beans. Top with sesame seeds (and more cayenne if desired) before serving.

This was very tasty, both Brett and I enjoyed it, and it only took me about 20 minutes to throw this together since the beans were already cooked and I had cooked rice on hand.

‘Til next time!

Happy Friday!

So I am really looking forward to this weekend, as I will be using Veganomicon for the first time! I am really excited about it. Stay tuned to see how my first dance with V-Con goes!

Last night’s dinner was a yummy General Tao’s Tofu stir-fry. Something kind of funny about this though. I guess Veggie and I are on the same wavelength, because she made it this week as well too. We even adapted our recipes from the same one on VegWeb. What an interesting world, I guess some of us veg*n’s think alike, eh? Anyways, you might pop over and check hers out as her photography is generally much better than my own, not to mention, I don't have a picture of the stir-fry because of user error.

You see, I often take multiple pictures when I photograph my recipes to make sure that I get a good picture. Well, I was going through them on my computer, found the one I wanted. At least thought I selected the one I had chosen, and then deleted the rest. Well, I went to upload the photo, and it was one of the grainy, bad pictures, and I lost the rest as I had already deleted them. Argh.

But anyways, I went a slightly different direction with this, opting for a spicier, savory sauce, so my recipe for the sauce is quite a bit different from the template I started out with on VegWeb.

Here she be (in the words of Wilbur)!

General Tao’s Sauce
onion chopped (I diced up about a quarter of an onion)
diced red chilies to taste (dry if possible, substitute crushed red pepper if can't find chilies)
cayenne pepper to taste
1-2 tbsp ginger, minced
1-2 tbsp garlic, minced
2/3 cup vegetable broth
2-3 tbsp shoyu (add a bit at a time, and then add more if needed)
3-6 tbsp sugar (more or less depending on your desired level of sweetness)
1-2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1-2 tbsp corn starch
splash of hot chili oil for good measure

Sautee onions, garlic, and ginger. Mix all ingredients together. Add cornstarch to thicken shortly before serving.

General Tao’s Tofu Stir-Fry
Tofu:
1/2 block tofu cut into small cubes that has been marinated in a bit of General Tao's sauce for at least 30 minutes
corn starch
pinch sugar
egg replacer for one egg
peanut or sesame oil

Stir-Fry:
General Tao's Sauce
onion, chopped
broccoli, cooked
cauliflower, cooked
edamame, cooked
Hot, cooked brown Basmati Rice

Mix together egg replacer (mixed with water according to package directions) and coat tofu in it.

In a small bowl, combine corn starch and sugar. Cover tofu in dry mixture. Heat some peanut or sesame oil in skillet and fry tofu until golden brown.

Top hot cooked rice with cooked veggies, tofu and desired amount of sauce.

You know, stir-fries are very good, but I’m a bit stir-fried out. I probably won’t devote an entire week to a particular type of food again, but I got a lot of good recipes to add to my collection.

I want to thank those who gave me suggestions on good vegan cookbooks, it was very helpful. I have placed an order for Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan on Amazon, and will probably look into getting Vegan with a Vengeance in a couple of weeks once I have tried a few things from V-Con and ED&BV.

Well, I am a bit tired after a long week of dealing with data (sounds so fun I know), and lugging a nice, big load of grub home from the store, so I’m off to make a quick dinner and to listen to Democracy Now!

Happy Friday!

More Muffins and Crispy Sweet and Sour Seitan. But First........

Breakfast wasn’t too exciting yesterday morning, I just cut up some fresh fruit (diced apples, diced pear, sliced bananas, sliced kiwi fruit, and orange segments), I splashed the cut fruit with some fresh squeezed lime juice. I use the lime juice for a bit of flavor, but more importantly, it keeps the fruit from oxidizing. I sprinkled on a little sugar and had this yummy fruit with a bowl of vegan granola and soy milk. You know one of the many things I love about fruit? It looks (and tastes) pretty all on its own, you don't have to do anything to it at all, its like one of those women who can roll out of bed, do nothing, and still look amazing - the words of a true fruitaholic.

Moving on. I was excited from my success with muffins on Saturday, I decided to make another batch of a different flavor yesterday. I think I am starting to get this whole muffin making thing down, because these turned out good as well. I ended up making one batch of batter and doing it two ways. Part of the batter was turned into Apple Cinnamon Muffins; the other portion was turned into Apple Cinnamon Raisin Muffins. Nothing really special or different about the two except raisins, but both were very good. The muffins turned out sweet, but not overly so, and were nice and moist. They go very well with coffee for a nice light breakfast (this also happened to be my breakfast this morning).

I usually like to use applesauce in place of oil wherever I can, but yesterday ran out of applesauce and ended up doing half applesauce half oil instead. You could always replace the additional oil in this recipe with applesauce.

Apple Cinnamon (Raisin) Muffins
1/4 cup Earth Balance (melted)
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
cinnamon (to taste)
just a dash of nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup soymilk
2 peeled diced apples
Raisins (as many as you like)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients. Add the moist ingredients and then slowly fold in the apples and raisins.

Fill muffin cups (or greased muffin tin) about 2/3 of the way full and bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

For dinner last night, I made a modified version of VeganYumYum’s Crispy Sweet and Sour Seitan and it was so, so, so good. The next time you get an urge for something sweet, sour, crispy, and a bit spicy, give this a try. It satisfied even the “super particular when it comes to vegan food” omni, also known as Brett.

I followed her recipe for preparing the seitan exactly, but deviated on everything else. I made some modifications to the sauce and added some veggies and served it all over brown Basmati rice.

Sweet and Sour Sauce
2/3 cup veggie broth
6 tbsp brown rice vinegar
6+ tbsp sugar (Brett likes things pretty sweet, so I put more than this in there, but for everyone else [who is not a hummingbird] start with this and add more if you need more sweetness)
2-4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp ketchup (next time I am going to try tomato paste)
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 clove garlic, minced
dash cayenne or crushed red pepper flakes
pinch salt
corn starch mixed with water to thicken

Combine all ingredients except for corn starch and water mixture and heat, stirring frequently.

Turn up heat to where sauce is boiling and add corn starch and water mixture to sauce. Stir frequently until at desired consistency. Remove from heat immediately.

Crispy Sweet and Sour Seitan with Veggies over Basmati Rice
VeganYumYum’s Crispy Seitan recipe
Sweet and Sour Sauce
Chopped onions (I cooked them with the seitan)
Broccoli, cooked
Cauliflower, cooked
Hot, cooked brown Basmati rice

Prepare rice according to package directions.

Prepare sweet and sour sauce.

Start cooking broccoli and cauliflower.

Make the crispy seitan and add the onions while cooking.

Serve crispy seitan, veggies, and sauce over brown Basmati rice.

I really liked the way the seitan was done for this recipe. It gave it the flavor of a fried mushroom. I am going to be thinking about other things I can do with this crispy seitan as the flavor and texture are wonderful. It took Brett a little while to grow to like tofu in anything except a scramble, preferably a scramble stuffed into a tortilla, but he has warmed up the seitan very quickly. I can probably thank this recipe for that.

Well, that’s all for now!

Weekends = Lots of Cooking, Pictures, and A Long Post

Well, it's the weekend, which means that I have more time to cook.

Let's start off with Friday. I ended up making some nachos to use up the ingredients I still had on hand. This was a nice, tasty, quick meal, which was much appreciated after a long week at work and lugging home a mighty heavy load from the grocery store. I simply sautéed diced leftover marinated seitan (see the fajita post) in olive oil with some chopped up onion. I heated up the leftover black bean puree (see the flatbread post). I seasoned up some leftover brown rice I had. Then I got out some blue corn chips, spread 'em out on a plate, and topped them with the above stated ingredients. I popped it in the oven (set at 300 degrees) for a few minutes for everything to get nice and warm. Then I topped the nachos with some tofu sour cream, chopped up green onions, sliced black olives, and some salsa (not shown in the picture). It was good.

Yesterday, for breakfast I made some cinnamon raisin oatmeal. It was hearty, sweet and delicious. Oatmeal is very filling, which is something I forgot, since it has been awhile since I've had it. Neither one of us could eat more than about half the amount pictured. I over estimated our oatmeal appetites a bit, but hey, you live and learn, right?

Sweet Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal

2/3 cup regular rolled oats (not instant)

1 1/3 cups plain or vanilla soymilk (or rice, oat, etc)

raisins (as much as you like)

dash nutmeg

pinch salt

cinnamon (to taste)

brown sugar (to taste, but I used lots)

sliced almonds (optional)

Bring oats and soy milk to a boil in a medium sauce pan. Stir in the rest of the ingredients except the almonds. Let boil for five minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, let stand five more minutes. Top with almonds before serving.

I spent the rest of the morning doing a bit of baking, but before I get to that, I just wanted to give a big thanks to Happy Herbivore for so kindly fielding my questions about vegan and healthful baking, it was a big help!

First, I made a vegan apple coffee cake, per Brett's request. Well, he didn't really request it, he won't do that, but he said he thought apple coffee cake would be good, I thought it could be easily veganized, and that someone out there had probably already done it. With a few short minutes of web searching, I happened upon Julie Hasson's recipe for Crumble Coffee Cake. I made only slight modifications to the recipe. For the cake, I used whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose white flour. And I also added up a peeled, diced up apple. This is a delicious recipe, it's not too sweet, and it truly does go well with a nice, warm cup of coffee.

Notice I have small versions of that really cool plate too.

I have been getting tired of having granola bars for breakfast at work, so I decided to try my hand at muffin making. You know, I'm not sure why anyone would make muffins from a box or package, they are really easy to make from scratch! I made plain 'ol blueberry muffins, and topped a few with some sliced almonds. These turned out so good, I'm not sure they will last long enough to make more than a couple of breakfasts for work. These could also double as a dessert, snack, meal, etc. - hehe. I modified this recipe from Recipe Zaar.

Vegan Blueberry Muffins

1/4 cup Earth Balance (melted)

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup soymilk (plain or vanilla)

fresh or frozen blueberries (thawed if frozen)

sliced almonds (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl.

Combine wet ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Slowly stir the wet ingredients with the dry in the bigger bowl. Fold in the blueberries.

Fill paper muffin cups (or greased muffin pan) 2/3 of the way full with batter. Top with sliced almonds if desired. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until muffins are golden brown.

And for dinner, something completely different. I made a tofu-veggie stir-fry with peanut sauce and served it over rice noodles. I had heard or read somewhere that the reason home made stir-fries never tasted like what you get at the restaurants is because people don't use peanut oil at home. Well I think they were right, I used peanut oil for my stir-fry last night and it turned out much better than anything I've made in the past.

Tofu Peanut Stir-Fry over Rice Noodles

Peanut Sauce:

1/2 cup creamy natural peanut butter (no salt added if possible)

1/2 cup hot water

4-6 tbsp shoyu (or other soy sauce)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1-2 tbsp lime juice (start with one and add more if desired)

4 tbsp brown rice vinegar

4 tbsp brown sugar

a bit of regular sugar if you like it sweeter

pinch of cayenne

Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan on the stove. The peanut butter will melt and ingredients will then blend easily. Keep over low heat, stirring occasionally, adding a bit more water here and there if it starts to get too thick.

Tofu Peanut Stir-Fry:

Peanut Sauce

1/2 block firm tofu cut into small pieces

bell pepper, chopped

onion, chopped

broccoli, cooked

cauliflower, cooked

crushed peanuts

bean sprouts (optional)

green onions (optional)

peanut oil

Hot, cooked rice noodles

Cook rice noodles according to package directions.

Sautee tofu in peanut oil until browned. Add to peanut sauce and simmer while preparing the veggies.

Sautee onion and bell pepper in peanut oil until they begin to caramelize. Add broccoli and cauliflower. Cook a few more minutes.

Layer veggies and tofu with peanut sauce over the rice noodles. Top with bean sprouts, green onions, and crushed peanuts.

That's all for now.

Give Seitan A Chance

I decided to give seitan another try last night. Brett and I had a bad experience with seitan earlier this year, which gave me a bad impression of this “wheat meat”. We had attempted to make BBQ Seitan sandwiches, and tried out a new BBQ sauce, which was perhaps the most disgusting stuff I’ve ever had. After that experience, I decided I didn’t like seitan. Well, while browsing all the many food blogs out there, I kept coming across seitan recipes, so I decided to give it a second chance. When prepared properly, it isn't too bad, just like tofu. Many people don’t like tofu because they have had poorly done tofu dishes - same applies to seitan and probably most anything else.

So I went for a seitan fajita and put a little broccoli and cauliflower in it, along with the more traditional fajita veggies. This might sound odd, but I had a veggie fajita done that way when I was in Illinois recently and it was good. I also marinated the seitan overnight to allow the flavors to really soak in, but it would probably be fine just to marinate it for an hour or so as well. And I didn't have any of those small tortillas, so I used regular sized flour tortillas. I served the fajitas with a basic guacamole and blue corn tortilla chips.

Seitan Fajita Wraps

Basic Fajita Marinade:

juice of 1/2 a lime

1-2 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. white vinegar

1 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp. shoyu

dash cumin

dash cayenne pepper

dash chili powder

pinch salt

pinch sugar

Mix all ingredients.

Pour over thinly sliced seitan and marinate overnight.

Simple Guacamole

1 ripe avocado

juice of half a lime

1 clove garlic, minced

cumin (to taste)

cayenne (to taste)

salt (to taste)

Seitan Fajitas:

marinated seitan strips

thin strips of bell pepper

thin strips of onion

thin strips of fresh jalapeno (optional)

broccoli florets

cauliflower florets

olive oil

flour tortillas
tofu sour cream

salsa

guacamole

Heat olive oil in skillet. Add bell pepper, onion and jalapeno and sautee for a few minutes. Add broccoli, and cauliflower. Cook for a few more minutes until heated through and veggies are done to your liking.

In a seperate pan, heat oil and fry seitan strips for a few minutes.

Heat up tortillas and layer with veggies, seitan, tofu sour cream, guacamole and salsa.

Roll up like a burrito, and if desired, brown on all sides in a skillet.

That about does it!