I ate a rainbow today

Rainbow Tacos
Red: Canned diced tomatoes blended with chili powder, garlic, cayenne, and lime juice
Orange: shredded carrot
Green-yellow: avocado + mango + pinch cayenne + black pepper + lime juice + salt
Dark green: green leaf lettuce (from the CSA box, it's so good I eat it as a snack!)
Blackish-purple: taco meat, inspiration here
Purple: beets, roasted in 375 degree oven with skins on
Browns: homemade wheat tortillas and brown rice (not shown)

Layer on tacos in this order: Blackish-purple, brown rice, red, green-yellow, orange, dark green.

Next time notes: I might use taco seasoning in the tomato sauce instead of making it taste like enchi sauce.  I will also plan ahead so I can prepare some gluten-free tortillas ahead of time (maybe my bean tortillas that I made a while back!)

Omni Notes:  A hungry omnivore who came back from bikram yoga (usually he's craving a huge steak after bikram) was satisfied after eating four of these tacos.  I know he was satisfied because he didn't go make himself a protein shake an hour later, which is what he does when we eat my more typical light, clean meals.  Sometimes when I'm cooking for the omni I add something "bad".  Like, for instance if I had made my bean tortillas I would have made some flour ones as well.  I try to meet him halfway so that I don't completely turn him off to my cooking ; )  Other things I do: add more fat, add margarine, use processed junk from the store like vegan sausages, use pre-made canned stuff (hey, he likes the flavors of those probably because they remind him of grandma's cookin').  The important thing is that I balance this stuff out with lots of colorful and hopefully raw ingredients on the plate.

Time to feed the fur-faces.

Vegan Pot Pie (aka Shrek Pie!)

Why is it's nickname Shrek Pie?

• My lack of pie skills caused the top layer of the pie shell to have many mounds and dips that closely resembled Shrek's face.
• When you process green vegetables in your gravy using your Vita-Mix, guess what color the gravy turns?  

(Is there really something called Shrek Pie? I googled it to make sure there was not but the results were confusing...)

I made this pie because my husband and I went to Whole Foods to buy dinner for the evening.  He bought a chicken pot pie and I noticed they had a vegetable one, but it had butter in it.  I thought, I made a vegan version once, I'll do it again.  It took about an hour start to finish, kitchen cleaning included.

As I ate it, I kept saying to my husband, "This is so good.  This is so amazing.  Oh my goodness, how did this turn out so good?"  He assured me that the slower I ate it, the longer I could enjoy it.  I assured him that there was a whole pie that I could grub on when I was done with my first helping.

Isn't she pretty, with her tan complexion and green teeth?

Shrek Pie

Adapted from my first version

Ingredients:

2 thawed spelt pie crusts (hey, I know my limitations and pie crusts are one of them)

3 cups of cooked vegetables

vegetable broth, about 3 cups

gravy (recipe follows)

Lightly saute the vegetables in your style of choice.  I used:

1/2 medium red onion

3 cloves garlic

5 fingerling potatoes

2 celery stalks

1 cup cubed tofu

3 kale leaves (chopped fine)

1 collard leaf (chopped fine)

1/4 cup frozen peas (added at end)

1/4 cup frozen corn (added at end)

Add vegetable broth and cook until potatoes are just soft.  Strain out most of the liquid and make a gravy out of it. 

Gravy Filling 

(adapted from the New Farm Cookbook, a classic that I love)

1/3 cup nutritional yeast

1/2 cup brown rice flour or other flour of choice

2 teaspoons herbs de provence

1/2 teaspoon tarragon

1/2 teaspoon thyme

salt and black pepper to taste

Lightly toast your flour over medium heat.  When it is aromatic, add nutritional yeast and spices.  Stir once, lower heat to medium-low, and then whisk in reserved vegetable broth from veggies.  (Be careful when adding the water because it may bubble and sputter and flour will fly up out of your pan.  To avoid this, you can add 1/4 cup of oil or Earth Balance and mix it in until crumbly, then add the liquid).  Continue whisking until gravy thickens, just a couple of minutes.  If needed, put in blender to make smooth.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Add gravy mixture to vegetables and fold in.  Use this mixture to fill one pie tin.  Use your pie skills to cover the pie with the other pie shell and slice the top a few times to let steam escape.  Bake at 375 for 25 minutes.

Vegan Vanilla Nut Granola and Cashew-Hemp Milk

I've been doing really well with limiting (almost cutting out completely) sugar from my diet.  I find that when I eat too much sugar causes me to feel ill (any amount of sugar almost inevitably leads to eating too much so even in moderation it's a slippery slope).  However, sometimes it's nice to have a midnight snack for those nights that I wake up with a hankering (and with work stress that keeps me awake!).  I haven't gone grocery shopping for a while so I thought I'd prepare my fridge with convenient edibles.  This happens to be way cheaper than buying the stuff pre-made, too.

Cashew-Hemp Milk


Ingredients:
1 cup cashews (preferably soaked for at least four hours and then rinsed)
1/4 cup hemp seeds
pinch of salt
1/2 vanilla bean scraped or a dash of extract
dash of agave if desired

Blend in Vita Mix for 2-3 minutes until ultra smooth.  If you have a nut milk bag, use it.  If not, expect extra thick milk.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

I read on Wikipedia that hemp seeds have all of the essential amino acids.  I'm not sure if that's true, but I wanted to add it to my nut milk to give it a nutritional boost.  Making nut milk without straining results in a very pulpy final product, but I tend not to mind it as long as I'm using it with cereal.  You may want to de-pulp it.  Even straining it through several layers of cheese cloth doesn't rid the milk of its pulp.  I think a nut bag is required.  [Edit: You can also blend it less thoroughly and strain out the pieces.  If it is too liquidy you can add xanthan gum.]

Vanilla Nut Granola


Ingredients:
2 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup dried coconut, unsweetened
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup hemp seeds
1/8 cup flax seed meal
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
3/4 cup chopped almonds (I used a nut chopper so the pieces were finer)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup grapeseed or other oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/8 cup brown rice syrup
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl, mix wet ingredients well.  In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients.  Add half of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and blend well.  Continue to add dry ingredients, stirring well, until the desired consistency is achieved.  Save the remainder for another  batch of granola or just toss it in a have a little drier granola.  Spread granola mixture onto parchment lined cookie sheets and put them in the oven on 300 degrees.  After fifteen minutes, rotate trays and stir granola.  Bake a total of about 30 minutes but check every ten minutes to stir and ensure the mixture does not burn.  The color will darken to golden brown when it is done.  It will harden as it cools.  Once cool, store in an airtight container.

What I like about granola is that 1. it is an alternative to over-processed cereals, and 2. it can be made with a huge variety of ingredients (including cleaning-out-the-pantry ingredients).  I once made granola from a recipe with soy nuts and soy flour.  I would love to make this granola with less sugar and oil, but I don't really know what else to add so I guess I'll just be eating sugar if I eat granola!

A one dish wonder--Quinoa!

I don't know about you, but I always feel great after eating quinoa.  Must be the iron, amino acids, and migraine-reducing magnesium content.

[Hey! I just had a small revelation.  I only get headaches a day before my period--sorry, gentlemen--and isn't that when women often crave chocolate? And don't we crave chocolate because of it's magnesium? I wonder if that's why I get headaches before my per'd...magnesium shortage?  It's worth investigating...]

This combination of random ingredients is what I had left after my kitchen debacle this weekend, but they sure came together perfectly.  This dish paired wonderfully with The Real Housewives of Atlanta (yes, I said that).

It's peppy.  It's sassy.  It's tangy and sweet.  The aroma is rich and the flavor is light and playful.

I will post the recipe but I am bewildered how it turned out so well considering my use of the "a little of this, a little of that" approach.  There may be an element of divine intervention so I hope that if you try it it will turn out as well as it did for me : )

That's the sampe-size portion.  I ate about, oh, ten times this much!

Quinoa Surprise
Surprise! It's great!

Ingredients:
pinch of salt
olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
three small cloves of garlic, minced
1 small carrot, sliced very thin

1 cup quinoa, rinsed

black pepper

two collard leaves, sliced in very thin strips (like threads)

1/2 boullion cube
3/4 cup black beans, drained and rinsed
1 sprig of rosemary
1 teaspoon coriander powder
scant 1/8 teaspoon asefotida
1/4 teaspoon dried ginger
juice of one lemon
pine nuts and nutritional yeast for topping

Set saute pan to medium.  Sprinkle salt in deep saute pan and add a tablespoon of oil.  Add onion.  Saute for 3-5 minutes until soft.  Add garlic and carrots and stir for just a couple minutes.  Add quinoa and stir around for two more minutes.  Add enough water to just cover, along with bullion and collard. Bring to boil.  Add black beans and rosemary and cover and turn medium to very low.  After five minutes, take out rosemary sprig.  Continue to cook on very low until the quinoa is done.  It's okay that the colalrds get a little over-cooked.  They are good that way in this dish.  Remove from heat.

Add coriander, asefotida, and ginger powder.  Stir.

Serve topped with a liberal amount of lemon juice, nutritional yeast and pine nuts.

Happy Valentine's Day...but don't eat too much chocolate!  Remember December? It was awful for the lot of us sugar bingers!

Kitchen Crisis. Breath In. Breath Out.

But don't breath too deeply or you will smell the aroma of food spoiling in my fridge.

You'd think the big overflowing pile of dishes in the kitchen sink would be my biggest kitchen catastrophe of the weekend.  Well, it's not.

The refrigerator is pooping out on us.  And it's not even ours--it's our landlord's.  And apparently he got it on craigslist for $100 so it wouldn't even be worth bringing out a repair person.  The refrigerator side is reading 55 degrees (so at the moment my food is better off in the backyard), and the freezer is at about 40.

Goodbye, entire-batch-of-cashew-hemp-milk-made-just-yesterday (check the blog soon for that one).  Hang in there, produce-that-was-just-delivered-yesterday.  And farewell, leftovers-that-should-have-been-thrown-out-on-Monday-anyway.

Thank goodness I don't have to worry about my dairy products spoiling, LOL.

What an ordeal...

Do you think my vinegars will be okay?  My sesame oil?  My hazelnut oil?

[Sigh.]

To make up for the depressing post, I'm adding a picture of my lovelies.  I'm sure I've posted this one before, but here it is again for your viewing pleasure.  Feel free to kiss the screen (on both sides...don't make one jealous!).

Wild Rice w/Harvest Veggies and Apple Walnut Salad

Most of the recipes that I post are what I consider my most noteworthy meals.  I usually post the first trial, as I'm not what I would consider a "professional" blogger and therefore don't really perfect the recipes before posting (someday...but I dream).  This rice recipe is one of those that can be adapted a hundred different ways but I post it anyway because I hope that it might trigger an idea for someone else.  I often see other recipes on blogs that trigger ideas for me even if I don't follow the exact recipe.  Plus, I often end up with extra squash, apples, greens, and carrots on hand so it's nice to have an idea of how to combine them to create a cohesive dish that is low fat and wheat-free.  I want to thank all of my fellow vegan bloggers for inspiring me almost daily with what you create in your vegan kitchen!

Wild Rice with Harvest Veggies
Inspiration

Ingredients
2 cups wild rice, washed well
2-3 carrots, sliced thin
1 small butternut or other winter squash, diced
1-3 collard leaf, sliced into very short, thin strips
1 apple, diced (optional)
4 cups vegetable broth plus 1 cup water, or 5 cups water
1 small onion, chopped
3 small cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 the needles of small sprig of rosemary, finely chopped
salt to taste
black pepper to taste
pine nuts for garnish

Preheat oven to 400.  Place butternut squash and apple on a parchment lined baking tray and bake until tender.  Mine baked quickly I think because it was very ripe (about 20 or so minutes).

As squash is baking, heat a small amount of oil (or broth if you want to do a healthy saute) in a deep skillet on medium.  Add onions and cook until tender, about 3-5 minutes.  Add carrots, garlic, and rice and continue to saute, adding broth if needed (for healthy saute) to avoid sticking.  Saute for 2-3 minutes more.  Start by adding 2 cups of broth and stir slowly.  Continue to cook, uncovered, until most of the liquid is absorbed.  While it's cooking, you can tend to your salad.  When most of the liquid is absorbed, add two more cups of liquid along with the rosemary and thyme.  Continue cooking until most of the liquid is absorbed.  The whole cooking time may take up to 40 minutes.  At this time, add the baked squash and apple to the mixture.  The white pieces in the wild rice still have a visible white part inside when they are still needing more cooking time, so test small bites for tenderness.  Add salt and black pepper, if desired.  If the rice is still not done by the time the second batch of broth is absorbed, add the remaining liquid and cook, covered, on low for about ten more minutes.  When the rice is done, add collard and cover for 5 minutes to lightly steam the pieces.

Serve topped with pine nuts.

The result of this cooking process is rice with sweet undertones and a nice dark brown gravy.  Next time, I would add more collard and maybe half of the carrots.  I think a great variation of this dish would be to add cooked green or brown lentils at the end when you add the squash.  Also, adding nutritional yeast might deepen the gravy flavor.

Apple Walnut Salad with Miso Dressing
Salad Dressing Inspiration

Ingredients:
1 head leaf lettuce, chopped
1-2 apples, cubed into small bite sized pieces
1 cup of walnuts, chopped
Miso Dressing (see link above...you won't regret it!)

Combine and serve!

This is a tart and satisfying salad that can go many ways.  I added grapefruit but I do not recommend this...it does not compliment the acidity in the dressing.  Since I added apples to the salad I omitted them from the wild rice dish.  Next time you have green beans and fingerlings lying around, I would definitely check out Chef Ronnen's salad that I linked there!  It's amazing!


[Right after I posted this, I found this recipe...I am going to try it soon!]

Pesto-Stuffed Portabellas

Hi, friends!

I've been totally MIA for a couple of weeks due to food depression.  Yes, food depression.  My husband's lack of willingness to eat my vegan food results in my lack of motivation to blog.  Or read blogs (I'm sorry...I'll catch up with you soon!).

However...that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking.  I think when I'm food depressed, I have as many food fails as I do food successes.  I'll try to share both as I make a reappearance into the blogosphere.

I found these cute little "Stuffing Portabellas" at Trader Joe's and bought them because they looked delicious.  They turned out marvelous-ly.  Food win!

Pesto-Stuffed Portabellas
In a food processor, make pesto by blending
walnuts*
pine nuts
fresh basil or frozen basil cubes
garlic if desired
dollop of olive oil
pinch of salt and black pepper
(use your intuition to get your ratios)

Wash the mushrooms and cut off the stems.  Turn them upside down and place inside:
a small scoop of frozen spinach (it can still be frozen, that's okay)
a handsome scoop of the pesto on top of the spinach
top with fresh cracked black pepper

Place a little Earth Balance or oil in your skillet and set to medium.  When ready, place mushrooms on top and let them brown for just a few minutes.  When you begin to smell the aroma, add 1/4 inch of  vegetable broth and cover your pot.  Let the mushrooms cook until they smell great and are tender, about 15-20 minutes.  If desired, brown them in the oven to dry out the top (I didn't try this but if you want them to have the browned look), but they are great without this step.  They will be very juicy and tender and the aroma will be like heaven.  Save the cooking juices and put them on your rice with your meal.


Comments: Omnivore's Stamp of Approval (he asked for more).  'Nuff said.

I put raw walnuts in almost everything.  I think they are the source of everything good in my diet.

(When I feel like doing something a little less off-the-cuff, I'll try these.)