A few days ago I was asked by a very sweet gal if I could make a crêpe that was, of course, both vegan and gluten free.
Here’s one variation of a crêpe recipe I have been kickin’ around for a while. It’s a touch lighter and airier than an “eggy”, glutinous crêpe; but, it is still very delicious.
This recipe works great for both sweet and savory filled crêpes.
Out of my crazy cat lady-like obsession with pumpkin (and, who am I kidding? all things orange) during the Autumn months, came this gem of a simple dinner. This pasta/pumpkin combo may not sound too appealing for some folks , but each and every person I served this stuff to absolutely loved it.
Pumpkin. Alfredo.
It is utterly delicious.
I seems like ages ago when my husband and I tilled up a large area of grass in our backyard and transplanted our tiny seedlings into a barren patch of dirt. We tended to each little plant with love and waited all summer long to reap the fruits of our labor. Now, our garden is brimming with peppers, okra, cabbage, kale, cucumbers, herbs, and tomatoes.
Green tomatoes, that is. They are taking their sweet time in ripening; and, although I love nothing more than a ripe garden fresh tomato- a bit of impatience culinary nerve came over me.
In all the years I have grown tomatoes, I had never once considered eating the fruit before it ripened. So early yesterday morning, I decided I should create something delicious with my still green and crunchy tomatoes.
I knew I wanted to try a more unorthodox approach than simply frying them up, so I created these delicious turnovers.
Let me just state that I am extremely impressed with these things. In fact, my husband and I were both so enamored with the taste and texture, that we are already planning on making them again. Soon.
Like, maybe tonight.
The thinly sliced tomatoes and onions melded with the nutritional yeast and cumin inside the crispy pocket to create a treat that smells absolutely wonderful while baking in the oven.
And, they tasted so damned good.
Try them… if you’ve never eaten green tomatoes, this is a great intro recipe. Other fillings can be added or subbed in for the ingredients listed, but I really love the flavor of this exact recipe. Perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Now I wonder if my tomatoes will last long enough to ripen to red? At this point, I couldn’t care less.
My love for Baingan Bharta has turned into a bit of an obsession lately; especially since I mentioned it in my recent post for blueberry salsa. This recipe is an adaption of the link I posted from Manjula’s Kitchen. But, it’s a tad different with the addition of yellow zucchini squash.
The entire dish comes together quite easily, although the mashing of the ingredients while cooking takes a little elbow grease. It works wonders to curb a desperate craving for Baingan Bharta, say… really late at night when everything is closed and the nearest Indian restaurant is 45 miles away.
This cold noodle salad combines a lot of great flavors and textures to make the perfect summertime meal. It also includes my newly discovered friend, the purslane.
These beautiful and nutritious succulent plants are often weeded from folks’ gardens. Last week, as I was weeding my own garden, I came across this little plant that resembled a jade plant. I decided to let it go, as it simply was too beautiful to pull up from the ground. That exact same day, I was researching edible wild plants (one of my fave things to do), and wouldn’t you know it… the plant I left alone turned out to be something that should be in my garden!
Purslanes were apparently one of Ghandi’s favorite foods, and they are quickly becoming one of mine.
I had never heard of them prior to my recent discovery, but the purslane is actually a nutritional powerhouse! Now that I recognize the greatness of this little plant, I have been encouraging it to spread far and wide in my garden. It seems to prefer the company of my kales to any other veggie. Seriously, so would I …
I have never seen a purslane at the grocery store, unlike it’s edible weed friend, the dandelion. Like I said, I had no clue what it was before I almost weeded the poor thing. But, then again, I’m hardly a foodie. Feel free to substitute fresh green peas, spinach or arugula for the purslane. Those veggies aren’t quite as awesome as the humble purslane, but they’ll do.
It’s raining here at my house today. Hard. So, I thought I would send out some sunny vibes by posting my latest “for the grill” creation.
The family and I have been enjoying burgers quite regularly now that official grilling season has begun. We created this burger because we had a tube of soyrizo ( I can’t remember which brand, but I know it’s gluten free and pretty readily available), and we wanted to grill it, but there is absolutely no way to grill that stuff unless it is combined with some additional and pretty sturdy ingredients. It will crumble through even the tightest of grill grates, which can make an otherwise super-fun BBQ… totally suck.
So after a few attempts, with the results being rather mediocre burgers, this little gem was born. The real kicker for this recipe is smoking the burgers. It seals in all the “Southwestern” flavor with an extra dose of awesome.
Recently, an overwhelming craving for a “Chicken n’ Rice” dish from my childhood came sweeping back over me. As a child I usually made my own version, which was one of the first dishes I ever loved as a wee person. Obviously it was pretty easy to make, and from what I remember… very addictive.
It literally was some cooked long grain rice mixed with a can of unaltered Cream of Chicken Soup. I distinctly remember it being a lovely pale neon yellow and pretty salty. :)
I guarantee you I ate waaay too much of that stuff as a kid. So, I finagled up a newer, and less scary version of my childhood staple. It brings back memories, but I added some maturity to the whole mix with veggies and stuff.
As we were eating this “new and improved” version … my husband (who has eaten plenty of the canned-soup rice in his lifetime) and I both agreed that it hit the spot for nostalgia. It definitely requires a few more steps than the original dish, but the other way seems a little too easy to me.
I was recently cleaning out my cabinets and discovered a treasure buried deep down underneath my twenty (and a half) cake pans…. my electric George Foreman grill! I rescued it from my sister last summer when she was holding a garage sale. I don’t think it is actually made by George Foreman.. err, his brand name, but it works mighty nice. Its extra big with a temperature control. Very fancy.
These types of grills are cheap and easy to come by (I bought our previous model at the drugstore for 7 dollars). They also make the best tofu ever. Seriously, I could eat my weight in tofu grilled on one of these things. Prior to seeing the magic these humble grills could perform on well drained tofu, I wasn’t a big fan of cooking it myself. Mostly a scramble here and there. But with the grill… anything is possible.
I have been happily serving my family various versions of grilled tofu almost every night since the grill’s re-discovery. This recipe is my favorite so far. Basil infused olive oil lends a spectacular flavor to this crispy and chewy tofu. Served along a melange of red peppers, mushrooms, and okra this tofu becomes part of a wonderfully fragrant and tasty meal.
Guess what?
I made a culinary discovery in my very own backyard!
Let me preface this by saying that we had just moved into a new place in December, and we weren’t sure what to expect from our new patch of land. Since spring first sprung, we have been delightfully watching new baby plants pop up everywhere. And, about two or three weeks ago, we noticed that we had tiny fern babies sprouting up all over the place. While I immediately admired them for their curly adorableness, I never once thought to eat them. What kind of food blogger am I? Shameful…
But yesterday, for some reason, I had an epiphany: those little curly baby ferns sure did look a lot like the one’s on Vegan Yum Yum’s site last year about this time- and they also look very similar to the one’s we saw at Whole Foods last weekend. Hmmm….
A quick Google search (not recommended unless you are totally familiar with wild edibles and/or have a reliable guide) told me that my backyard was full of exactly those gourmet treats: a delicacy referred to as Fiddlehead Ferns. Cool!
It also told me that we were just catching the very end of Fiddlehead season. Damn.
Fiddleheads are the teeny fronds of young ferns before they have unfurled. There are a few varieties, but in our case, we have Ostrich Ferns. They are best enjoyed when just two inches tall. I recommend reading Ms. Yum Yum’s very well written explanation if you are curious about them. Our fern sprouts were a tad bigger than desired, although there were still a few stragglers scattered about. Score!
Despite our late harvest this year, I am excited to know that come this time next year… we will have Fiddleheads a plenty.
Depending on where you live, you may still be able to catch some Fiddleheads in your neck of the woods (literally) or at your local Whole Foods or similar store. If not, top this creamy pasta with your favorite sauteed veggie and get prepared for next year’s forage!
And, if you do decide to go out and hunt for your own Fiddleheads, use common sense and some caution… there are definitely some not so yummy look-a-likes out there. Just warning you…
My niece is on Spring Break from college, and we were talking about the access to good vegan food while living in student housing. She said I was tantalizing her with recipes that she couldn’t make. Poor hungry girl. I admit, most of my recipes would be pretty hard to prepare without an oven. :\
She needed nutritious and delicious food that could be made on a tight budget, with little effort. So, she came over to my kitchen and helped me create a recipe for when she returns to her dorm.
This is a simple rice and quinoa blend with a creamy almond sauce. It’s filling too.
The entire dish can be made with just a blender and a microwave, in about 25 minutes. And, it boasts just 10 ingredients that most people will have in their pantry. Okay, maybe not most people, but the ingredients are pretty common vegan staples.
The entire experience was also very helpful for me, because my oven actually broke the other day. (Yes, I totally freaked out). Happily, I have learned that it is possible to cook quinoa and rice in a microwave; therefore, there is no need to panic if you are without a stove.
So, this post is dedicated to all of you wonderful readers -without ovens or rice cookers – who are hungry for a yummy home-cooked meal.
Here’s a super easy and delicious way to use up that bag of cornmeal in your cabinet. It’s fun (and economical) to make your own polenta, and you can add all sorts of mix-ins. I just added the basics for a rich flavor, but feel free to mix in a medley of stuff at the beginning of cooking (sauteed veggies, peppers, herbs, Tabasco sauce, tempeh… you name it).
Looks, feels, and jiggles just like the stuff in the tube-bag from the grocery store.
Since the weather outside is so frightful, (and freezing!) soup is on my mind. This lentil soup is nice and light, yet very satisfying. It is also chock full of warm fuzzy feeling. I created it to emulate a soup I always order at one of my favorite restaurants. Fragranced with lemon and cilantro, and pleasantly mild, even my lentil hating husband loves this stuff.
Here’s to soup, and keeping warm!
Since it is New Year’s Eve, I find it necessary to offer up a nice black-eyed pea recipe. Black eyed peas are traditionally eaten in the United States on New Year’s Day to bring prosperity for the upcoming new year. This recipe is similar to a traditional Hoppin’ John recipe but, it has a few extra goodies. I left out the tomatoes on this one, and of course, there are no animal ingredients.
This is a simple, filling, one dish meal that can be whipped up relatively fast, provided you have many different pots and pans handy. I like to start cooking all the other stuff while the rice and beans are cooking. This saves lots of time, but creates a quite bit of stove top clutter. The ingredients can be subbed out based on what you have on hand. Feel free to use brown rice or quinoa instead of basmati, add or subtract whichever veggies you’d like, and season to taste. Just don’t leave out those black eyed peas!
This is more of a how-to, rather than a recipe. But I would like to share my basic process of creating a dish that has served my family happily for many years. There are so many variations on pierogi… but I find this version to be pretty fool-proof. And, it’s really the only kind I have ever known since I was a wee little thing. (My mother and father were born and raised in West Virginia–tis why I named them “Appalachian Pierogi”) When my mother would make her version of pierogies- the entire family would gather like vultures. In a way, they still do. There are a few steps… but if you get your timing down, they are not at all overwhelming to make. In fact, they are pretty fun!
And, for all of you gluten free folks- try this gluten free pierogi recipe I created : (updated)
Yay! I got some Daiya. I’ve topped pizza, grilled “cheese” sandwiches, eaten it straight from the bag, and each time I have been thoroughly satisfied. But, I wanted to test out its ‘casserole’ abilities -to see if the “cheese” could be crispy and melty at the same time. It has been quite a while since anything remotely close to cheese graced the top of one of my casseroles. It worked great! The Daiya was crispy on top, and the “cheese” directly underneath was ooey and gooey. I am sold, this Daiya stuff rocks!
For those of you who can not, or choose not, to incorporate Daiya into your life, this casserole is very yummy without it. A little bit of nooch would be awesome sprinkled on top. But like I said, I had to try it on a casserole. And, I suggest if you get your hands on Daiya anytime soon, you should too. This dish is perfect to make if you have some leftover mashed potatoes… but if not, whip up half a batch and treat yourself to something different. I’ll give you a basic run-down of how to make mashed potatoes below, if you aren’t quite sure.
I also happened to have corn and peas in my freezer, so that is what this recipe calls for, but some yummy sautéed mushrooms, or any other veggie you can think of would go great mixed in too. Ya know, it’s a casserole– anything goes.