Category Archives: vegan

Nov 02 0 comments
in my kitchen, life in general, pregnancy, vegan

Vegan pregnancy

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:

  • tofu
  • soy milk
  • almond or peanut butter
  • gluten (also known as seitan)
  • textured vegetable protein (TVP) and soy curls and other similar foods
  • nuts and nut-based things (cheese, etc).
  • Legumes/ beans (garbanzos, black beans, Great Northern beans, lentils, etc.)
  • I’d eat more soy cheese and soy yogurt, but on our island that stuff doesn’t exist. Or if it does, I haven’t found it.

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?

Nov 01 0 comments
in my kitchen, life in general, vegan

I’m back!

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!

May 05 1 comments
in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

Make Your Own Biscuit Mix

Continuing our series on easy, healthy, frugal convenience food mixes, today we’re going to talk about biscuits.

You may or may not have a good use for biscuits. At our home, we enjoy biscuits and gravy for breakfast. That’s how we eat biscuits most frequently. Occasionally, I make a pot pie and put biscuits as the pie crust layer. And sometimes, I make strawberry shortcake and I use biscuits cut in half for the shortcake. Mmmm!

Today, I have two biscuit recipes for you. Try them out and see which you like better — they’re both yummy. The whole wheat version is obviously healthier, but you can select which one your family will like better. Or you can make some of both!

Remember: decide how you want to remind yourself of the remaining ingredients to add on the day that you bake the cornbread or muffins, along with the baking directions. Here are a few ideas:

  • Write on the Ziplock bag. However, that could be a serious nuisance if you decide to reuse the Ziplock bag, and say, decide to put pancake mix in there next time around. I have to admit, I have been doing this lately, but I have also come up with some other ideas for you to try.
  • Print off labels with the “wet” ingredients and baking instructions listed, and stick them to the bag and hope that they stay stuck in the freezer.
  • Print off a paper with multiple directions per sheet of paper, and cut the paper apart. Place one little directions sheet either inside the mix or tape it to the outside. {Did that make sense?}
  • Make a “master directions cheat sheet” for ALL your mixes on some cute paper, print it off, and tape it to the inside of the door of, say, your spices cupboard. The cupboard should be close to wherever you would assemble the mix. And SHHH! don’t tell anyone it’s there. They’ll think you have a magnificent memory, and it’ll be our little secret.

And now, the recipes!

Whole Wheat Biscuits Mix

  • 1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 tbsp. sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 1/2 tsp aluminum-free baking powder (such as Ener-G, Featherweight or Rumford)

Place each of these ingredients together in your Ziplock bags, assembly line style.

Write on the bag or type on your “cheat sheet” the following directions:

Mix together 2 tbsp oil, 2/3 cup nondairy milk, and 1 tbsp lemon juice and add to the biscuit mix. Use ice cream scoop to make biscuit mounds on a greased cookie sheet. Bake in a preheated oven at 425° for 15-18 minutes or until lightly browned.

Wanna-Be-Bisquick Biscuit Mix

  • 2 cups flour (either all white flour, or half white and half whole wheat if you’re trying to make a healthier mix)
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp aluminum-free baking powder (such as Ener-G, Rumford, or Featherweight
  • 1 tsp. salt

Place ingredients in your ziplock bags, assembly-line style.

On your cheat sheet or bag, write (or type):

Mix 1/2 cup oil and 3/4 cup nondairy milk together and add to the biscuit mix. Mix well and then use an ice cream scoop to squeeze biscuit portions onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake in a preheated oven at 450° for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned.

Mmm… now I need to go find some biscuit mix! Homemade biscuit mix certainly works for me!

May 04 3 comments
gifts, in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

Easy, Delicious, Inexpensive Soup Mixes

Today I’ll be sharing three soup mixes that are easy, delicious, and inexpensive to make. If you missed my post about the benefits of making a mix, click here to catch up.

Before the recipes, here’s how you’ll make the mixes. You’ll put the mix ingredients into a ziplock bag. Then, choose one of these options to write the rest of the directions or ingredients:

  • Write on the Ziplock bag. However, that could be a serious nuisance if you decide to reuse the Ziplock bag, and say, decide to put brown gravy mix in there next time around. I have to admit, I have been doing this lately, but I have also come up with some other ideas for you to try.
  • Print off labels with the “wet” ingredients and baking instructions listed, and stick them to the bag and hope that they stay stuck in the freezer.
  • Print off a paper with multiple directions per sheet of paper, and cut the paper apart. Place one little directions sheet either inside the mix or tape it to the outside. {Did that make sense?}
  • Make a “master directions cheat sheet” for ALL your mixes on some cute paper, print it off, and tape it to the inside of the door of, say, your spices cupboard. The cupboard should be close to wherever you would assemble the mix. And SHHH! don’t tell anyone it’s there. They’ll think you have a magnificent memory, and it’ll be our little secret.

Now, here are the recipes.

Lentil Soup Mix

Place all those goodies above in the ziplock bag. On the label or ziplock bag, write (or type) the following directions:

Place in a crockpot (slow cooker) with 1 quart water, 2 carrots (peeled and sliced), and 2 diced potatoes. Simmer on high for 6-8 hours. Add 1 quart stewed tomatoes just before serving, and serve with cornbread (why not use the cornbread mix!)

Split Pea Soup Mix

On the label or Ziplock bag, write (or type) the following directions:

Place mix in crockpot (or slow cooker) and add the following: 2 quarts water, 1 carrot (chopped and peeled), 1 rib celery (chopped and peeled). Cook in crockpot on high for about 6-8 hours. Serve with cornbread (made from your own mix, of course).

Middle Eastern Red Lentil Soup

  • 1 cup red lentils
  • 1/2 cup dry minced onion
  • 1 tsp. cumin
  • 1 tsp. coriander
  • 2 tbsp. white rice
  • 1 tsp. salt

On the label or bag, write (or type):

Add to a crockpot (slow cooker). Add 8 cups of water. Cook on high for about 4-6 hours.

Happy soup making!

In addition to making my own family happy, I have made these as gifts for coworkers. Especially around Christmastime, people love receiving the gift of an easy, delicious comfort food meal that is homemade!

This post is linked up at Tempt My Tummy Tuesday and Kitchen Tip Tuesdays.

Apr 30 1 comments
frugal living, in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

Unsausage Burgers

Recently, I participated in a financial workshop which had a fun twist: frugal, healthy recipes.

I talked about how to make unsausage burgers. We all know how pricy it can be to eat out at fast food places all the time. With these burgers, however, you can make your own “fast food” at home.

If you are vegetarian, you know that it can be expensive to buy vegeburgers all the time. One link I found online listed Boca Garden Burgers for $5.19 for 10 oz! That’s for only 4 burgers.

This unsausage burger recipe is economical because it is made out of oatmeal, which you can get for great prices. Here’s the recipe for an economical burger that’s also healthy and it tastes good!

  • 4 1/2 cups warm water
  • 1/2 cups soy sauce or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
  • 1/4 cup oil
  • 1 tbsp. onion powder
  • 4 tsp. honey or brown sugar
  • 2 tsp. ground sage
  • 4 tbsp. nutritional yeast flakes
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
  • 4 1/4 cup quick oats

Place water and seasonings in a pot and bring to a boil. When it is boiling, add the quick oats and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes.

Spray a cookie sheet (or two) with nonstick cooking spray. Form into patties, using a canning jar ring (like these) and lid (or spatula) and an ice cream scoop. (The kind with the lever that you squeeze works best.) Here’s how you do it. Scoop the hot oatmeal mixture with an ice cream scoop. Place on the cookie sheet. Place canning ring around the mound of seasoned oatmeal, and press down using a canning lid or even spatula. You may need to wet the spatula with water or spray it with cooking spray to prevent the burger mixture from sticking to it. Continue until you have perhaps 9-12 burgers formed on your cookie sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes, then remove and turn the burgers over, and continue baking for 15 more minutes.

This recipe makes around 15-18 burgers.

I like making bunches of these burgers at once to put in the freezer. It is very easy to take one or two out and microwave them for a quick sandwich. You can also serve these by placing them in a casserole dish and covering them with gravy. It makes a quick and easy casserole.

This post is linked at Frugal Fridays.

Apr 27 1 comments
in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

One super-easy way to fix a love-it-or-hate-it veggie that we know as Brussels sprouts is to roast them.

Here’s how you do it.

  1. Cut your fresh brussels sprouts in half (especially if they are kind of large. The small ones, well, not so much.)
  2. Toss in a bowl with some olive oil. You don’t want them to be drenched/ dripping in olive oil, but you want them to be coated. Sprinkle with salt.
  3. Place them cut-side-down on an oiled cookie sheet.
  4. Bake at 400° for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on them.
  5. During the last 5 minutes of baking, add a minced garlic clove or two and stir the little sprouts around.

These are SO good, you just won’t believe it! I couldn’t believe how good they were when I tried them for the first time. I’d been a Brussels sprouts tolerator. But this converted me into a Brussels sprouts lover!

I’m linking this post up at Tempt My Tummy Tuesday and the Ultimate Recipe Swap, where you can discover more yummy recipes!

Apr 14 1 comments
in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

Corn Bread/ Muffin Mix

Now that you’re convinced of the merits of making your own convenience food mixes at home, let’s talk recipes.

Cornbread mix

Corn bread is a family favorite. It’s the perfect accompaniment for soup or chili, and it’s also great in my Black Bean Tamale Pie.

You’ll want to stock up on Ziplock bags – preferably the quart size.

Into each quart-sized bag, you’ll place the following ingredients:

  • 1 cup cornmeal
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2-4 tablespoons sugar (I use unrefined cane sugar—in the States you’d find it called Florida Crystals)
  • 2 teaspoons non-aluminum baking powder such as Rumford or Featherweight
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon egg replacer powder (I use Ener-G brand egg replacer)

I find that if I am making multiple mixes at once, I use an “assembly line” process. I line several bags up at once. First, I place 1 cup of cornmeal in each bag. Then I follow up with 1 cup of flour per bag, and so on.

You’ll need to decide how you want to remind yourself of the remaining ingredients to add on the day that you bake the cornbread or muffins, along with the baking directions. Here are a few ideas:

  • Write on the Ziplock bag. However, that could be a serious nuisance if you decide to reuse the Ziplock bag, and say, decide to put pancake mix in there next time around. I have to admit, I have been doing this lately, but I have also come up with some other ideas for you to try.
  • Print off labels with the “wet” ingredients and baking instructions listed, and stick them to the bag and hope that they stay stuck in the freezer.
  • Print off a paper with multiple directions per sheet of paper, and cut the paper apart. Place one little directions sheet either inside the mix or tape it to the outside. {Did that make sense?}
  • Make a “master directions cheat sheet” for ALL your mixes on some cute paper, print it off, and tape it to the inside of the door of, say, your spices cupboard. The cupboard should be close to wherever you would assemble the mix. And SHHH! don’t tell anyone it’s there. They’ll think you have a magnificent memory, and it’ll be our little secret.

Now, for what you would actually write on the bag, the label, or the cheat sheet about the cornbread or muffins:

Cornbread/ Muffins Mix (Don’t forget to label somehow, even if you decide to go the “cheat sheet route”!)

Add:

  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons nondairy milk
  • 2 tablespoons oil

Mix thoroughly with dry ingredients, place in 8x8x2″ glass pyrex dish that has been sprayed with nonstick cooking spray, and bake. Bake at 400° in a glass pan for 25-30 minutes for cornbread (425° if another pan) or 12-15 minutes at 425° for corn muffins.

I don’t know about you, but I usually write in short-hand to some extent when I’m in the kitchen. “Mix. Bake at 400° for 25-30 minutes.” But some people need the directions written out completely. Do what works for you!

Making cornbread mix ahead of time sure works for me!

Apr 08 3 comments
in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

Black Bean Tamale Pie

black bean tamale pie closeup

I found the original for this recipe in one of my neglected cookbooks last week and thought I should give it a try. (It was on my menu plan as Cowboy tamale pie.) But I made several changes to the recipe, so really, it’s not much like the original any more.

I have always enjoyed beans (whether it’s chili, or whatever…) and cornbread together. This dish makes a delicious combo of the two, using cornbread as the “crust” on the “pie”. My husband doesn’t like Mexican food, but he thought this was pretty good (although I suspect he probably wouldn’t want to see it on the menu every week). But he did say it it was repeatable… yay!

We don’t like very spicy food although we generally enjoy the flavors of spicy food. This recipe uses cumin, oregano and paprika to highlight the flavors without the heat. If you wish, you could add chili pepper.

Black bean tamale pie

Filling ingredients:

● 1 small onion, chopped

● 1 carrot, diced

● 1 garlic clove, minced

● 1 red bell pepper, chopped

● 1 tbsp McKay’s chicken seasoning (a vegetarian Chicken-style seasoning)

● 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes

● 1 tsp cumin

● 1/2-1 tsp paprika

● 2 tsp oregano

● 4 cups cooked black beans (I cooked my own in the slow cooker overnight after soaking for several hours. You could also use canned beans) plus a little bit of liquid, either add water or use a little of the liquid from cooking them.

● salt to taste

Cornbread:

● 1 cup cornmeal

● 1 cup flour

● 2 tbsp sugar

● 2 tsp baking powder

● 1/2 tsp salt

● 1 cup +2 tbsp nondairy milk

● 1 tbsp lemon juice

● 1 tbsp egg replacer

● 2 tbsp oil

Directions:

Sauté the onions in a little olive oil, and add carrots, garlic, and bell pepper for a few minutes. Add canned tomatoes and continue cooking. Add the remaining ingredients for black bean mixture and mix well. Simmer for about 10 minutes while you make the cornbread mixture. Do keep an eye on it and don’t let it burn.

Preheat oven to 400°. Spray a 2 qt glass pyrex dish with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, mixing thoroughly. Stir in milk, lemon juice, egg replacer powder, and oil in another small bowl or large measuring cup. Add liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring for about 30 seconds.

Pour black bean combination into the pyrex dish, and spoon cornbread mixture over the top, covering the black bean mixture.

Bake at 400° for 25-30 minutes, until cornbread begins to brown a bit. Makes 1 2-quart pyrex casserole dish.

This post is linked up at Life As Mom’s Ultimate Recipe Swap.

Apr 08 0 comments
in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

Apricot Jam

Apricot Jam

Here is a quick, easy recipe that you can feel completely guilt-free about! It only uses natural sweetening, and it is pretty inexpensive because you can make quite a bit of jam with few ingredients.

1 to 1 1/2 cups dried apricots

1 can pineapple juice (about 2 1/2 cups)

Place apricots in a bowl that has a lid or that you can easily cover. Soak apricots in pineapple juice and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, the apricots should be plump and juicy, having absorbed some of the pineapple juice.

Blend the apricots until completely smooth. And that’s all! Enjoy on warm bread. Or whatever you like to eat jam with.

Tip: This jam freezes easily. If you have extra after blending and putting in your jam jar, just put in another container and freeze it.

Note on quantity: This jam is pretty flexible and you can make a lot of jam with it. If you wish to make it with one of those tall cans of pineapple juice, simply make sure that you have plenty of juice to cover your quantity of apricots. There should be enough juice still in the bowl the next morning after soaking the apricots to be able to blend them easily. If not, just add a little more juice while you are blending the apricots.

Apr 06 3 comments
frugal living, homemaking, in my kitchen, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

How to make vegetable broth

I love Trader Joe’s hearty vegetable broth. But with the nearest Trader Joe’s thousands of miles away, I figured it was high time to make my own vegetable broth. (Not to mention that I never, ever succeeded in using the entire aseptic container of broth at once and I had to freeze the remainder anyway!) Plus, making my own broth is just so… healthy and frugal!

I looked at a few vegetable broth recipes to get an idea of what to do, and then I ventured out and created my own because I didn’t quite have all the ingredients that you would have access to if you were making this in the U.S. Here’s what I added:

  • 10 cups water
  • 3 small onions, quartered
  • 2 large potatoes, chopped in large pieces {I peeled them but you can leave the skin on if you like.}
  • 4 green onions, chopped in big pieces
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
  • a bunch of baby carrots
  • 3 celery sticks, chopped coarsely
  • 1 tbsp. soy sauce
  • salt to taste

before cooking broth

Uncooked veggies that I used to make this broth.

The recipes I was looking at suggested adding:

  • a bunch of parsley leaves, coarsely chopped
  • a couple of leeks, cleaned and chopped
  • parsnips
  • they suggested regular carrots, but I only had baby carrots on hand
  • 2 bay leaves instead of one
  • mushrooms
  • celery root (celeriac)

Basically, you sauté the onions in a little olive oil and add the veggies. Add water and seasonings and simmer on low for 1 – 1 1/2 hours.
cooked broth

The broth after 1 1/2 hours—veggies are all cooked down!

Then you strain the stock through a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth. You can either use it right away, or what I’m going to do is freeze mine in ice cube trays so I’ll have it easily accessible for use in future recipes.

broth making process

This picture may look slightly confusing. I didn’t have cheesecloth or a sieve so I used a produce bag that I got from ReusableBags.com. It had been a bigger bag but I accidentally shrunk it when I put it in the dryer once. So it was almost like a sieve or cheesecloth, until the potatoes began squishing through. :)

If you’d like ideas of other goodies you can add to your homemade vegetable broth, visit Lolo’s site. She has an awesome photo tutorial on broth-making!

This post is linked to Kitchen Tip Tuesday and Works for Me Wednesday.