Yesterday I got to learn how to make roti. The cook that taught me cooks with lower-fat (only brushing the roti lightly with oil while cooking), no animal ingredients, and without a recipe. For the bus-up-shut roti, she used some local margarine. If I had access to it, I would use Earth Balance.
Here’s a video I made documenting the experience.
I love traveling. A few years ago, my dad and I were traveling in Milan, Italy doing research and photography. We needed pictures inside a certain church but happened to arrive there around lunchtime, so it was closed for siesta. We decided to make good use of the time and grab a bite to eat nearby.
We entered a bakery and looked for some vegan-looking options. We found a type of bread that looked like it didn’t have cheese. So we bought that. It was delicious. It had tomatoes on top and was seasoned with olive oil and herbs.
A few weeks ago, I was looking through my travel pictures and came across that picture from that day (pictured above). I decided I should reinvent that pizza/ focaccia stuff at home (and make sure it was for sure vegan that way)! What I came up with was yummy. I’m not sure if it qualifies more for pizza or focaccia, but here you have it. Call it whatever you want! (My invention is pictured below.)
Ingredients:
Make your pizza dough according to directions.
Roll it out on your pizza pan or stone. Lay the tomato slices out on the pizza dough and drizzle olive oil over each tomato slice. Sprinkle the tomatoes and crust with the herbs and seasonings.
Bake in the oven at 450° for 10-15 minutes, or just until the crust edges start to brown. Then move it to the top rack and turn on the broiler. Watch carefully so the crust doesn’t burn. I cooked these for about 2 minutes under the broiler to make sure the tomatoes were sufficiently cooked the way I wanted them.
Enjoy! We ate this with pesto on penne pasta and carrot sticks. Yummy.
Hi MoFo-ers!
Today I’m taking part in the Vegan MoFo survey.
1. What is one food you thought you’d miss when you went vegan, but don’t?
Cheese. It actually turns my stomach now if I happen to cross paths with it.
2. What is a food or dish you wouldn’t touch as a child, but enjoy now?
Can’t say I have had this experience. I was a pretty easy eater as a kid.
3. What vegan food or dish do you feel you should like, but don’t?
Um, probably tempeh. I haven’t had a chance to cook with it because I’m not sure it exists in this country. And I just think it’s kind of strange stuff.
4. What beverage do you consume on most any given day?
Water
5. What dish are you famous for making and bringing to gatherings?
I generally try to brainstorm for something different to make every time I have to go to a potluck or something. But if people request me to bring something, generally they assign dessert to me since they generally like whatever I make.
6. Do you have any self-imposed food rules (like no food touching on the plate or no nuts in sweets)?
Yeah. I don’t cook with vinegar. If I need acid, I use lemon juice. I also don’t cook with wine of any type.
7. What’s one food or dish you tend to eat too much when you have it in your home?
Dessert.
8. What ingredient or food do you prefer to make yourself despite it being widely available prepackaged?
Because there aren’t options like vegan cheese or sour cream available for purchase where we live, I have to make those from necessity. I miss Tofutti sour cream and cream cheese… so let’s say I don’t prefer to make it myself, but I do have to make those myself. The same goes for mayo. I love Vegenaise. They don’t have it here and their vegan mayo here is not very delicious in my opinion.
9. What ingredient or food is worth spending extra money to get the good stuff?
Where I live, I have to go to a specialty shop to buy simple things like tahini, dried dill weed, and sage. So all of those ingredients.
10. Are you much of a snacker? What are your favorite snacks?
I didn’t used to be, before I got pregnant. My favorite snack during this pregnancy is red grapes.
11. What are your favorite pizza toppings?
I like olives, mushrooms, green peppers, and vege-cheese of some type.
12. What is your favorite vegetable? Fruit?
I think my favorite vegetable is eggplant, and my favorite fruit is strawberries.
13. What is the best salad dressing?
I like a dressing that I make with olive oil, fresh garlic, yeast flakes, parsley, onion powder, salt, basil, and lemon juice.
14. What are your favorite things to put on toasted bread?
Earth Balance with nutritional yeast flakes melted into it.
15. What kind of soup do you most often turn to on a chilly day or when you aren’t feeling your best?
Potato soup — when I’m in the States, I really like my potato soup with dill weed and Tofutti sour cream. Yum!
16. What is your favorite cupcake flavor? Frosting flavor?
You know, I haven’t really gotten into cupcakes! Is that bad to admit? I’m not opposed to them… I just haven’t arrived, I guess.
Now, if we’re talking muffins, I like lemon poppyseed muffins from Vegan Brunch. And my mom’s recipe for blueberry muffins.
17. What is your favorite kind of cookie?
Carob chip cookies are awesome. I also like lemon bars. And I really wish I could find a recipe for those oatmeal cookies at Real Food Daily bakery in Santa Monica…
18. What is your most-loved weeknight meal?
Hmm. I’m going to give you my favorite weekday meal because our suppers tend to be on the light side. I like a bunch of different things, actually. I like fake-steak glutens. I like lasagna with eggplant in it. I like Asian stir fry with rice noodles. There are to many good things out there!
19. What is one dish or food you enjoy, but can’t get anyone else in your house to eat?
I like watermelon. My hubby hates it.
20. Favorite nondairy milk?
Silk, I guess. Although I really like Trader Joe’s soy milk. But we don’t have Trader Joe’s here.
21. Most disastrous recipe/ meal failure?
I hate it when I forget to put salt in bread when I make it. Disgusting.
22. Favorite pickled item?
I like PA’S Pickles. We can’t get that here, either.
23. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods, what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?
OK, I am stranded on an island! Well, not really, because I can come and go, but I’ll just say that I brought nutritional yeast flakes, soy curls, and TVP with me ’cause I wasn’t sure they’d have such here.
24. Fondest memory from childhood?
I used to bake whole wheat bread and sell it to my parents’ friends and colleagues. Does that count? *shrug* What does this question mean, anyway?
25. Favorite vegan ice cream?
I like Soy Dream strawberry swirl ice cream.
26. Most loved kitchen appliance?
My BlendTec Kitchen Machine, all the way. I use it almost every day! You gotta have a good blender, you know. And in addition, it’s great because it has a mixing bowl with attachments. I use that for kneading bread dough.
27. Spice/ herb you would die without?
Nutritional yeast flakes, basil, vegan chicken-style seasoning, dill, sage…
28. Favorite flavor of jam/ jelly?
Strawberry or blackberry.
29. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
A meal I call haystacks. It is essentially a make-your-own taco salad bar idea.
30. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
Tofu
31. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
I dunno. Breakfast, I guess.
32. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
Frozen strawberries, unsausage burgers, gluten flour (I keep it there so it doesn’t go rancid)
33. What’s on your grocery list?
Fresh fruit. Preferably cantaloupe.
34. Favorite grocery store?
Trader Joe’s. But like I said earlier, they don’t have that here.
35. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.
Vegetable lasagna — you know, the white kind with all the cheese, and no red sauce.
36. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it every day). Or maybe the top 3?
I like Diet Dessert & Dogs, Vegan Dad, and Choosing Raw.
37. Favorite vegan candy/ chocolate?
I don’t like candy. Or chocolate, for that matter.
38. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
Extravagant?! Uh, I’m drawing a blank…
This stroganoff {pictured above, top left on the plate served over brown rice} is super-easy, and can also be used for mushroom gravy, if you substitute a small can of drained mushrooms instead of the gluten or meat substitute.
Blend water, cashew nuts, soy sauce, and cornstarch until very, very smooth. Pour into a pan on the stove and add your vegan meat substitute and bring to a boil over medium high heat, stirring constantly so it won’t stick or burn to the bottom of the pan. Once it has thickened to a gravy consistency, remove from heat and serve.
We like this stroganoff served over rice or fettucine-style noodles.
To make this into mushroom gravy instead: Simply replace the veggie meat with 1 small can of mushrooms, drained. Also, if I am using this as mushroom soup in a recipe, I typically cut back on the soy sauce and only use 2 tbsp. as I find that the flavor is very strong and the recipe typically has some sort of salt included already.
Welcome to the folks who are stopping by from Vegan MoFo!
This morning, I felt like it was high time to do some experimentation and break out the Vegan Brunch cookbook.
I hadn’t tried the Tofu Omelets recipe yet, and I did. They were awesome! I had to do a little fiddling with the recipe because I ended up using firm water packed tofu instead of silken tofu, but they turned out really well. (This was my second time trying to make vegan omelets in general. Once when I tried it before, let’s just say it was a disaster. And they didn’t taste quite right. These were incredible, of course. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a cookbook by Isa.)
I also wanted to try one of the sausage recipes. However, I had to do quite a bit of adjustment in the seasoning department because I don’t have all the seasonings listed, and well, I just felt like something different. I even made a boo-boo with the quantity of beans that I used. Nonetheless, the sausages turned out really well! Hubby said they were delicious. I’m posting what I did since it’s quite a bit different from the recipes in the book.
Get a big pot of water boiling with a steamer and lid. I don’t actually own a steamer so I use a metal colander with foil around the edges to block off the steam’s escape. It’s ghetto, but it works. (This is what I also do, for some of Vegan Dad’s lunch meat slice recipes, too.)
Mix mashed beans together with the other ingredients in the order listed.
Tear four sheets of tinfoil (I used squarish sheets). Divide the dough into four even quantities. Shape in an oblong type shape and roll up like a Tootsie roll.
Put the rolls in the steamer and steam for 40 minutes. I pan-fried them with some cooking spray when they were done, and they were delish.
I am curious what the difference would have been if I had correctly read the recipe and only added 1/2 cup of beans instead of the whole can. Whoops, oh well. It was fabulous anyway. I’m going to take one of the sausage rolls over to some of our vegan friends’ place later and they can try it out too.
Here is also what I did for the veggies that we ate with the omelet. The cheese was grated Native Chis from the Native Foods cookbook.
Sauté the onions in the oil for a few minutes, then add mushrooms and zucchini. Add seasonings and continue to sauté until the veggies have cooked down a bit and are starting to brown slightly.
Remove from the heat and serve with omelets and cheese of your choice.
I had a bunch of leftover “cheese” sauce from my improv creation of grilled cheese sandwiches earlier this week. I decided that rather than making plain ol’ mac and cheese, I should be a little more creative. The baby needs calcium, after all, so I should add some more nutrition… um, like spinach. Hence, you have today’s recipe.
Boil water for the pasta and drizzle a little olive oil in it to keep pasta from sticking together once you add it to the water. Add pasta to boiling water and cook until tender.
Meanwhile, sauté onion slices in a little olive oil in a skillet. Add mushrooms, spinach, and tomato and continue sautéing until spinach is thawed and vegetables are combined well. Preheat oven to 375°.
Drain pasta, and then mix in cheese sauce, vegetable mixture, salt to taste, and nutritional yeast flakes to taste.
Pour into greased casserole dish and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until pasta is just starting to brown a little bit on top.
Serves 8-10 people.
One of my pregnancy cravings was for a hearty, breakfast-y tofu “egg” gravy. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about a tofu gravy that I ate when I was in high school. (And that one, sad to say, was actually not very delicious. Makes ya wonder why ya wake up craving something that wasn’t that delish.)
I brainstormed, and luckily, I found a gravy that really fits the bill! (SO much more yummy than the gravy that I remembered in high school that triggered the funny craving.) It is this tofu “egg” gravy from Amazing Meals I by LuAnn Bermeo. It has tofu (duh), nutritional yeast flakes, other various seasonings including basil and sage, and she recommends adding some sort of veggie breakfast sausage. I added crumbled unsausages that I had in the freezer, ready to go for spur-of-the-moment needs. I usually serve this gravy over toast or homemade biscuits. Yesterday, I served it over some slightly misshapen veggie burger buns that I made from scratch. The hubby really enjoys this hearty gravy, too!
Side note: If you are in the mood for picking up a new, very practical two-volume cookbook, may I recommend Amazing Meals! Unfortunately, this book is not available from Amazon. I believe it is self-published, but don’t let that stop you from getting a copy. Stop by the Facebook group and get in touch with the author to get your own copy of the two-volume set. I believe they run around $60, last I checked, but this two-volume set is not your skinny cookbook. They are quite large, full-size pages, and chock full of great ideas for vegetarian, plant-based meals and menus. And once you get your copy, you have GOT to try the whipped topping recipe!
Disclosure: I am NOT being paid to write my opinion of this book and am not being compensated in any way, shape or form. I just really like it a lot and thought you should know about it!
Welcome to those who might be stopping by from Vegan MoFo! I’m blogging this month about all sorts of vegan stuff. Yeah, I do plan on sharing some recipes, but today it’s going to be a little more information-based, about what I’ve been doing during my vegan pregnancy.
I’ve pretty much stuck to my vegan ways through this pregnancy. I do a little googling here and there to find good vegan sources for various things (protein, calcium, etc) to make sure that I am getting enough for the baby.
For vitamins, I have been taking Country Life Maxi Prenatals. I buy them on Amazon.com. They don’t smell good, and you have to take six veggie caps per day (hey, at least they are normal sized, not the horse-pill variety!), but they have all the “good stuff” including vitamin B12. They even include healthy red raspberry leaf and ginger.
As I’m trying to work on having a natural birth experience, I have read into the Bradley method. The Brewer diet, suggested by the Bradley method to prevent preeclampsia, suggests very high levels of protein. While I’m not sure I’m getting that high protein, I am trying to make sure I eat plenty of good vegan protein sources:
In addition, I use plenty of nutritional yeast flakes in different recipes which has lots of great nutrition and vitamins.
One web site that I have visited often for info is the Vegetarian Resource Group’s recommendations for vegan pregnancy. I find that it has good suggestions for things to add to my diet.
What about you? Have you done a vegan/ vegetarian pregnancy?
I have taken a way-too-long break from blogging, but I am back, because I decided to participate in Vegan MoFo for the first time ever this month!
I have a really good excuse for being gone, too. It has to do with morning and evening sickness, lack of energy, aversion to food in general, a sudden attraction to cute cloth diapers, and research on natural childbirth. That’s right, we are expecting a little Munchkin to join our family at the end of January! (It’s our first baby.) I haven’t been sick this whole time, but my energy level hasn’t been where it should be, and I just haven’t made blogging a big priority.
But the Vegan MoFo is a good excuse to get back into it, so you’ll see more of me around this month! I just love cooking vegan food. Vegan MoFo is a month of blogging about vegan food. There are lots of bloggers out there participating, and I’m so excited to be able to join this year!
Hi! I'm Joelle. Welcome to my home on an island. I am a missionary's wife, and I have fun homemaking. Hubby and I are Americans. On the island where I live, I have access to many American foods. However, they are quite expensive, so on this blog you'll find the ways that I try to get around and live frugally. You'll find my reflections on faith, frugality, femininity, and of course food.
I love cooking healthfully. I cook vegetarian food and I focus on making food that is easy, healthy, and inexpensive.
This blog started back in 2007, and was called Healthy 'N' Happy Home. I have since imported many of the posts to this blog and hope you will find them useful.
Please browse around my blog and subscribe so you'll know how my homemaking adventures are going!
