Pleasantly Plump Vegan

This week has been one of my hardest weeks in recent memory . . . and it's not even over yet! So far this week, I've had 2 tests, a quiz, 2 chemistry lab experiments with write ups and several homework assignments all in a matter of 3 days, not counting all the studying time this past weekend. I had my 1st college exam in about 6 years AND it was a chemistry test. Ugh! I walked out feeling good about it, like I may have gotten an A, but alas, I ended up with a mid/high B. With my homework assignments, I'm not too far off from an A, but I can't say I'm not a little disappointed and discouraged, especially considering how much I KNOW I studied. Maybe I just needed to warm my brain up with this test???
Anyway, today was probably the 1st time I've cooked in a few weeks (well, thoughtful/not as fast cooking, anyway). This dish kinda reminds me of Pasta Primavera, minus the peas since I'm not a huge fan. All I did was blanch small-diced zucchini, yellow squash and broccoli florets in salted water. I cooked some thin spaghetti and just added my homemade nutritional yeast/garlic dressing over it and tossed in the crisp veggies. The heat from the spaghetti and veggies warmed up the dressing perfectly. It turned out really great compared to the veggie burger, tater tot or cereal meals I have been having. If I make this again, hopefully I'll have some fresh herbs to perk it up a bit.

Now I'm gonna do some much needed laundry and more chemistry crap (sorry to be a baby about this class but you have no idea what I'm dealing with in my classes as far as professor "teaching" styles and obnoxious/disruptive classmates.)

While I haven't been too active in the kitchen with my own recipes, I did get around to testing Grammy's Meatless Balls for Happy Herbivore. Jared and I ate these up really fast and we both think Lindsay is a genius. I see myself making these meatless balls again and again.
Can't you just see the possibilities with these babies!

Although I could have (and did) just eat these straight up, I made a quick and simple spaghetti and meatless ball dish. Awesome!

Our trip to and from Jacksonville was quite the whirlwind. Typically it takes about 4-5 hours from Atlanta to Jacksonville, but because it was a holiday weekend, the drive took closer to 6-7 hours (12-14 hours roundtrip). It was exhausting to say the least. The Tofurky turned out really tasty. I especially liked the wild rice stuffing in the inside of the roast. I will for sure make this roast again, but I think I will experiment with different basting liquids next time.
After all that cooking last week I haven't been really motivated to get back into the kitchen. Luckily, Jared was, and made us some lovely Penne Vodka from Veganomicon (pg.193). I wouldn't say it tasted like the vodka sauce I’m use to BUT it was really, really great as it was. We had the sauce over Whole Grain Penne and guess what???? We actually really loved the pasta over the all white-based kind. I don't think this pasta was 100% whole wheat, so, for now baby steps are being taken towards 100% whole-wheat varieties.
Jared also made garlic toasts and a raspberry vinaigrette spring mix salad with walnuts, grape tomatoes and sprouts. We were so hungry though we inhaled the salad before we could take a picture. It was very pretty and tasty.

I had blood work done for the first time since becoming vegan. I got mostly positive results back including a 40-POINT DROP in my overall cholesterol levels!!! The only real negative was an elevated triglyceride level . . . so, I was asked by my doctor to go on a lower fat diet, exercise more and from the advice of my father, who is a RN, to cut sugars down in my diet.
I am a plump girl and have been for a while. Like a lot of women, I would like to be thinner, but for the most part I had settled into my curvy physique. I love fatty foods like avocados and French fries, have an enormous sweet tooth and love too many comfort foods. Even before I knew my triglycerides were high, I decided this would be the year I got healthier by eating better and exercising more. I started a health journal and was doing a great job at going to yoga, the gym and taking long walks with Sweetpea. Then, I broke my arm about a week and a half ago and the exercise stopped. Shortly after I found out my blood work results and decided to get back on track . . . at least with my diet (the gym will have to wait until my arm is a little better). So, I have been changing what and how I eat by cutting out a lot of white foods such as white breads (so long biscuits), white rice and white pasta and despite my dislike for brown rice, I started eating it. I have been trying different pastas made from quinoa and corn, haven't been adding extra sugars to my recipes, eating more fruits and veggies, switched to light soymilk and started eating breakfast everyday, which was actually kind of hard. I also started tracking my food consumption on Nutrition Data to make sure my carbs and fat levels are in check (I am totally hooked on this website, by the way).
I will always be pleasantly plump, but the fatty, sweet and comforting foods will be scaled down a lot. I'm sure I will occasionally make a naughty treat or two for special occasions (I do have to use my new cookbook, My Sweet Vegan), but hopefully, from here on out, I hope to stay on track with healthier choices.
Healthy meal #1- Fresh sage brown rice with seared lite tofu and roasted asparagus. The tofu and rice are topped with a fresh thyme and shallot sauce made from veggie stock and a splash of soy creamer. This big plate of food was only 295 calories, 4 grams of fat, and had 13 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber. Not bad!

Healthy meal #2- Quinoa pasta with tomato sauce and nutritional yeast, roasted cauliflower with dried Herbes de Provence and a salad with kidney beans and fat-free Italian dressing. This plate of food was only 312 calories, 3 grams of fat and had 15 grams of protein and 12 grams of fiber. Awesome!

We had lots of yummy food today. We started off with a scramble with soy sauce-marinated tofu, fingerling potatoes, red pepper, onions, and fresh herbs.

Then, one of the best things I have had in a while. The Chile Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu Po' Boy from V-con. Holy crap was this good. It was a bit labor intensive but well worth it. We made a tartar sauce to go with the fried tofu, cole slaw and pickles.

Bonus pic of the endless sandwich.

For din din, we made some Spaghetti & Beanballs, also from V-con. Lori helped out with these quite a bit. We just made the beanballs and used a jarred sauce. Ours turned out a bit mushy, but they were still delicious. I think we will bake them next time instead of frying.

I made desert, too. Once again, from V-con (I love that book, btw), we had the Lemon Bars. Lori just walked by and said how good they were as I writing this. And she is right; they were super good.

Could it be??? Yes, I made a meal that had lots of mushrooms and actually liked it. I'm not ready to cross mushrooms off my dislike list but this dish was very good. This recipe came from Yellow Rose Recipes, a book I am totally addicted to. At first I thought the Marsala marinated tofu was going to be too "boozy" but once I added the tofu to the sauce, it all made sense. It was a bit labor intensive but Jared loves mushrooms so it was worth the effort. We had our Marsala over angel hair pasta that I added olive oil and sea salt to. If you like Marsala and have this cookbook, this is a pretty good recipe to try out.

Tonight I was in the mood for soup so I quickly diced up onion, celery, carrots, red potatoes and sautéed them in a little olive oil with sea salt, black pepper, dried oregano, dried thyme and a bay leaf. I added some veggie stock, a can of diced tomatoes and a can of light red kidney beans. Man, do I ever love kidney beans in soups. They bring such a richness to a soup that cannot be beat. At the last minute, I added in a handful of fresh parsley to brighten things up.

Also from Yellow Rose Recipes, I tried out the Buttermilk Biscuit recipe. SO GOOD! I like that she uses canola oil instead of vegan shortening, which is what I always used. I love (and had already discovered) using lemon juice (or vinegar) in the soymilk to make it thicken like buttermilk for the wet ingredients in the dough. It makes for a fluffy, tangy and downright Southern biscuit!

Growing up, a weekly meal my dad and I would make was feta cheese pasta. It was a very simple, yet delicious meal of thin spaghetti, feta cheese (sometimes we got the special French variety from our local Middle Eastern grocery store), green onions and garlic cooked in olive oil with salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper. That's it. It was a dish I thought I would never get to have again as a vegan since feta has such a distinct flavor and texture that is hard to match. When I saw Leigh from Raspberry Swirl (Leigh is also co-owner of Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe in Atlanta) had made a pizza with some faux feta cheeze (and had some at at Cosmo's for sale) I got very excited. We ended up going down there soon after and buying a package of the lemon oregano variety with very high expectations. While the faux feta smelled exactly like feta and had a nice crumble to it, the taste and mouth feel of it was not feta like . . . to me anyway. Jared thought it tasted pretty right on, but you have to understand how much feta cheese pasta I ate as a kid (and grown up), so I knew what I was missing. It didn't have that melty but still intact texture I was craving, in fact is was a bit on the grainy side to me. Oh well. It wasn't a complete flop. The green onions, garlic and olive oil with the salt, black pepper and cayenne was exactly as I remember with the pasta. I think a lot of people would really like this faux cheese product, unless they are ex-cheese snobs like I am and have a very delicate palate for that sort of thing. Any way, I hope everyone has a fun but safe New Year's Eve and wonderful start to the New Year!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day filled with loads of good food and great company. Due to Jared's work schedule, we had to stay in Atlanta for Christmas. It is our first Christmas that we have spent just the two of us, unless you count our dog, Sweetpea and our cat, Peeny (which we do). I made lasagna for lunch today, along with some garlic bread. The lasagna was just made with a jarred tomato sauce (I know, it's kinda cheating, but I'm tired!), along with the Cashew Ricotta from Veganomicon (pg. 206), lasagna noodles and homemade toasted bread crumbs for good measure. I made French bread yesterday so I slathered a few slices up with whipped Earth Balance and garlic to go along with the lasagna. Not exactly traditional Christmas fare, but it was still pretty good. For dinner I think we are just going to have salads and maybe some left over lasagna!

I am not a big fan of olives but my dad made some caponata while I was visiting and I discovered that, despite having olives, I love the stuff. I made up my recipe that turned out awesome.

1 medium eggplant (I peel mine, cube it, salt it and let drain for about 30 minutes)
1 medium sweet onion sliced thinly
5 medium cloves fresh garlic finely chopped
14.5 oz can of peeled and petite diced tomatoes
2 tbsp natural sugar (or agave would work)
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup red wine vinegar (more or less to taste)
2 tbsp drained capers roughly chopped
1/4 cup green olives (with pimentos) roughly chopped
2 tbsp fresh parsley roughly chopped
Olive oil for cooking

After the salted eggplant has drained for about 30 minutes, rinse off the salt from the eggplant with cold water. Then with a clean kitchen towel or paper towels squeeze eggplant out so they aren't super wet. In a large skillet (I use non-stick) liberally coat the pan with olive oil and fry the cubes of eggplant until completely cooked through and have a nice color on them. In a seperate medium pan, sautee the onions and garlic in olive oil until translucent. Add the can of tomatoes, sugar and salt and pepper. Once that cooks for a few minutes, add the cooked eggplant, adjust seasonings and turn off the heat. Stir in the red wine vinegar, capers, olives and parsley.
Some people eat this with toasted bread as a dip. Jared and I had the warm caponata over pasta though and it rocked!


I had a few interested people in my pizza dough to use for the pan fried pizza I made a couple posts back.
With the guidance of my awesome dad, here is a really great pizza dough that I now make in the bread machine. If you don't have a bread machine, you'd have to knead it by hand until it was elastic and let it rise until doubled in size.

1 1/4 cup warm water (not too hot or it will kill the yeast)
3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 tsp active dry yeast (or you could just use 1 packet, which is 2 1/4 tsp)
1-2 tsp sea salt (depending on your palate)
2 tsp natural sugar
1-2 tbsp Olive oil (i just do a couple glugs, so this is a guess)

Add the ingredients in order to the bread machine pan. The setting on the bread machine should be PIZZA/PASTA DOUGH (that's what it is called on mine). Once it has risen, you can use it right away or store it in the fridge for a day or two. I shape my pizza by flouring the counter top and roll it out until desired thickness with a rolling pin. I'm sure this pizza dough could be baked in the oven as a traditional pizza but I have only used it in the pan fried method, which is my new favorite way to eat pizza. I made a pizza with some of the left over caponata (reheated).

As summer is slowly coming to an end, this weekend's meals were comprised of summery goodness. Jared and I went to Marietta, GA to explore the town and visit Harry's Farmers Market. Despite being vegan, I still watch a few shows on Food Network, including Good Eats. I bring this up only because when Alton Brown (host of Good Eats) goes to a grocery store, it usually is this place. So while it is nerdy, I wanted to go check it out. It is actually a really great store. They had organic heirloom tomatoes on sale so we picked up a red one with green and black highlights and a yellow one. Last night, Jared's brilliant idea was to make spaghetti with some of my homemade tomato sauce (which I usually always have in the freezer) with the raw heirloom tomatoes on top. This was so good. I have never had better tomatoes in my whole life and with the spaghetti, homemade sauce and vegan Parmesan sprinkles it was heavenly. I also made some of my crazy bread to help mop up the sauce.

Tonight I made a meal my Grammie would be proud of. I roasted red, yukon and purple potatoes with olive oil, several cloves of garlic, sea salt and fresh thyme. The green beans were boiled to death (the southern way!) with sea salt and black pepper. I also sliced some plain ol' red tomatoes with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. I originally was going to have corn on the cob but the corn wasn't good enough on it's own, so I cut the corn off the cob and put into corn bread. The corn bread recipe I made was from The Damn Tasty Vegan Baking Guide. This was an amazing corn bread recipe, especially if you like a sweeter cornbread like we do. The good thing was the corn bread doubled as our dessert. You must get this book . . . it's awesome!

I make homemade tomato sauce about every 2 weeks. I can usually get about 3 meals out of one batch of sauce. My sauce actually freezes wonderfully. My favorite tomato to use for this sauce is canned Muir Glen Organic Fire Roasted Crushed Tomatoes. I saute sweet onion in olive oil until translucent, then throw in several cloves of garlic. Once the onions and garlic are super soft I add about 1/3 of a bottle of wine (whatever we have in the fridge . . . I have used whites and reds, both great) this time I used a Cabernet Sauvignon. Once the wine cooks down I add the tomatoes, sea salt, black pepper, natural sugar, and the following dried herbs: oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary and marjoram. After everything cooks together for 1-2 hours I blend it all up with my handy immersion blender and throw in tomato paste for richness. This isn't the greatest picture but its tasty!

To use some of the sauce I made this fried eggplant casserole. The eggplant was soaked in salt water to leach out the bitterness. I made a flour coating out of unbleached white flour, corn meal, corn starch and garlic salt. I also made a "eggy" coating with ground golden flax seed and warm water. I dipped the eggplant in the flour coating, then in the "eggy" mixture, back into the flour mixture and then fried in both olive and canola oil. I also boiled up spaghetti and added some of my sauce to it. There was a layer of fried eggplant on the bottom, then a layer of sauced spaghetti and a final layer of fried eggplant which was topped with sauce and Vegan Gourmet Alternative Mozzarella Cheese. Since everything was cooked it was just baked enough to get it bubbly and the cheeze melted.

Translation: garlic and oil. This pasta dish traditionally has anchovy fillets, which was obviously left out in my lunch version. In addition to the garlic and olive oil it also has fresh parsley, sea salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper with angel hair pasta.
Quick, simple and delicious!

We had some asparagus and eggplant that needed to be used up so I grilled them on our grill pan. I also re-hydrated sun dried tomatoes in boiling water and once reconstituted, covered them in olive oil to stay moist. I boiled up some penne rigate and sauteed several cloves a garlic in olive oil. I added the penne, grilled asparagus & eggplant, sun dried tomatoes and fresh parsley to the sauteed garlic. Sea salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper was also added. The dish was topped with pine nuts I toasted. Pretty good way to use up veggies.