A little late, but better than never!

Some of my favorite cookbooks

Okay, I am only into the second week of the new year and my blog is already behind schedule.  I had a great idea of trying to write a little everyday and then publishing it all on Sundays but that didn't work out last week and since I'm still working on last week, I guess that won't work for this week either, but I am still committed to being as regular as I can muster.

Over the years, I have had several requests for my French bread recipe.  It is embarrassingly simply and I am planning to finally share it... but not this week.  Keep returning and someday you will find it waiting for you!

Now let's get to last week's menu!

Monday

Monday is a busy day for us.  We usually have piano and violin lessons.  It is our library day.  Monday is grocery shopping day for the week.  All of this to say that I need something quick and easy on Monday nights.  Now on this Monday, piano and group violin were cancelled so I did have time to make French bread. 

Rolling out French bread dough

I had some vegan Italian sausage (Field Roast brand) in the fridge, so I decided to make everyone's favorite quick and easy supper... Spaghetti!

Now, if you want super quick, you can buy a jar of sauce.  I have found how easy it is to make my own sauce so I usually make my own.  I saute some onions and garlic and usually add some fresh mushrooms and saute them for another couple of minutes, then I add a large can of crushed tomatoes and a small can of diced tomatoes (I'll use fresh in the summer), spices (usually thyme and oregano, sometimes basil) and voila! Spaghetti Sauce!  I have priced it and quite frankly, jarred sauce is actually cheaper, but I like knowing exactly what is in my sauce.  I can also vary it with my mood - sometimes adding green pepper, sometimes leaving out the onion or adding black olives or crushed red peppers or red wine.  It's just quick, easy, and fun! I simmered the sauce for awhile, but it works even if you only simmer for 15 minutes.  I add the vegan sausage near the end.  Spaghetti sauce with your favorite pasta (HR likes long and skinny, hubby likes small shapes.)  Add a salad and I have my quick week night meal.  (The French bread is not quick, but I make it regularly so there is usually some around.)

Tuesday

I told you last time about all of the ethnic foods I have been enjoying since going vegan.  Sometimes, you just want comfort food.  Our favorite comfort food meal is Hippie Loaf (meat loaf without the meat,) Mashed potatoes and gravy, and a vegetable.  This week I went with Roasted Brussels Sprouts.  The Hippie Loaf is from the Happy Herbivore Cookbook by Lindsay Nixon but you can also find it here.  This recipe is gluten free but I use whole wheat flour instead of rice flour so I don't make it gluten free, but it is great if you want that option.  Even my 22 yo son who is a committed omnivore and rarely finds time to eat at my table, always shows up for Hippie Loaf.  Honestly, I never liked regular meatloaf but I enjoy this.  I also used the Happy Herbivore's recipe for brown gravy which was great on both the Hippie Loaf and the mashed potatoes.  The Happy Herbivore is not only vegan, but her recipes are also low fat or fat free.  I have two of her three cookbooks and hope to eventually buy the third.  The Brussels Sprouts were a little disappointing because I couldn't find good fresh ones, so I roasted frozen ones.  I'll use fresh next time.

Maple Wheat Dinner Rolls

Wednesday     

Right now we are attending a Bible study on Wednesday nights, so I am learning to cook earlier in the day so we can eat before we go.  (Actually I'm trying to learn to start cooking after lunch so that it is not such a push at night.  Of course that means I need to be here after lunch!)  I made Hungarian Mushroom Soup, this recipe was adapted from the Moosewood Cookbook, which I own, but have lent out.  Something did not go as planned.  The soup, the kitchen, and I wreaked of onion smell!  The recipe used two onions, but the smell was much stronger than that.  Sitting in church for the Bible study, all I could smell was onions!  My husband thought it was onion soup rather than mushroom! I think my onions were overripe.  Can onions be overripe? For sour cream, the Happy Herbivore once again came to the rescue with her vegan sour cream recipe found in the Happy Herbivore cookbook.  I haven't found it on line to share.  We ate the soup with leftover French bread.  Good for dipping!

Thursday

Thursday night ended up being Smorgasbord.  That is Swedish for Leftovers!  I like having the occasional night off!

Friday

Okay, okay, I had two nights off!  2 or so Friday night  a month is date night!  We hire a babysitter for our seven year old and head out for a nice meal and uninterrupted adult conversation.  Our favorite place to eat is probably less than a quarter mile from our home.  It is the local country club.  We live in a small town and the vegan offerings are few, but the chef at our club always prepares something great for us.  My husband sends a text to the chef to let him know we are coming and he and his staff prepare something for us.  We never know what we will be eating until it arrives at our table.  All my life I have wanted to be a regular somewhere - like in Cheers "where everybody knows your name."  We enjoy that at the club.

Indian Dinner

Saturday

After two nights off, I decided to cook Indian food.  Another cookbook I enjoy is Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.  I made Tamarind Lentils.  They are very good.  You need tamarind paste to make this - not something I can buy in my town.  Thankfully, a dear friend bought some for me when she was visiting the Farmer's Market in Atlanta.  I need more recipes using it.  I like the flavor.  I also made a Chana Masala recipe from Chloe's Kitchen, a cookbook by Chloe Coscarelli.  The Chana Masala was a little bland.  Indian food needs rice so I made Perfect Brown Rice.  Now I know what you are thinking, "A recipe for rice?"  Well, Consumer's Reports, found that arsenic is in most of the rice produced in the US.  In order to limit your exposure, one of the recommendations is to cook your rice like pasta.  However, when I did this my rice ended up being overcooked, so I needed to learn a better way.  This way worked perfectly!  Turnip Greens rounded out the meal, along with Vegan Naan.

Vegan Naan

  Sunday

At least once each week, I want to make a traditional food vegan.  Sometimes I will try to "veganize" an old recipe.  Other times I will try to find a recipe someone else has already made plant strong.  For Sunday dinner, I decided to make Veggie Pot Pie.  This was a great recipe because it allowed for me to be creative with it.  Now pot pie is the ultimate one dish meal, but I still served it with  vegan maple wheat dinner rolls, even though it had a crust on top.  Since Sunday is the day before my shopping day, we were low on fruit so I served applesauce with the pot pie. 

All in all, this was a good week for food.  Thanks for reading.  Tell your friends!

Veggie Pot Pie

One More Thing

I was craving brownies.  Good vegan brownies have been hard for me to find.   I did a web search and found these Incredible Brownies.  The site is veganbaking.net which I have found to be a good place to find recipes that please everyone - vegan or not.  The host, Mattie, approaches recipes scientifically.  How good were the brownies? Let me quote the tweet my husband made, "Oh my. @culpritsmom makes the best fregan vegan brownies ever!!! That woman can vegcook!"  I think he liked them.  Try them, you will too!
Until next time...

It's 2013, y'all!

It's Sunday evening and I'm excited about sharing the first menu of 2013! We had some great meals this week and some "just okay" meals.  Let's dive right in!

New Years Day, 2013

I am a product of many traditions.  I grew up in a family that started each New Year with pork and sauerkraut for good luck.  I now live in the heart of the deep south and black eyed peas and turnip greens are standard New Year's Day fare.  My family loves it all!
Menu for New Year's Day was Black eyed peas, a mixture of turnip and collard greens, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and rye bread.  We were supposed to also have applesauce, but there was only enough for HR, the 7 year old.
I cooked the black eyed peas with Better Than Bouillon vegetable base (everything tastes great with Better Than Bouillon.) The black eyed peas were bought locally this past summer and frozen. 
I stir fried the greens which were purchased fresh from our local CSA.  I used peanut oil, a little garlic, and a pinch of soy sauce.
The sauerkraut was from a jar.  My plan was to doctor it up with caraway seeds but I realized too late that I was out of caraway seeds.
I mashed the potatoes using almond milk and Earth Balance buttery spread.  Everyone enjoyed their New Year's Day meal so 2013 is off to a great start!

Wednesday, January 2

Wednesday was my grocery shopping day.  I had several errands and did not get out as soon as I planned, so I needed something quick and easy for supper.  I try to plan quick meals on shopping days or busy days.  One of our favorite quick meals is homemade personal pizzas.  I buy ready made pizza crusts and jarred marinara sauce although this week I had some leftover sauce I had made so we used that.  Everyone adds their own toppings.  I use whatever I have on hand which was black olives, sliced fresh mushrooms, chopped green and red peppers, some vegan sausage and, for the omnivores, pepperoni.  I used Daiya vegan cheese which is surprisingly good and there was regular mozzarella for the kids.  I planned to have a salad, but since it was later than usual, we simply enjoyed our pizzas.

Thursday, January 3

Thursday we went to Memphis for the day.  I always think I will return earlier than I do.  I again started dinner later than hoped, but Rick was running late as well.  I made one of my favorite Chilies - Chili to Take the Chill Off with Salad and Vegan Sweet Beer Bread.  The day was cold and cloudy so chili really hit the spot!

Friday, January 4

Many of you may know that I generally don't cook on Fridays.  I love to cook, but it does take time, so Friday is my day to do other things.  Some Fridays we go out and find a lovely vegan meal and other weeks we eat leftovers.  This week was a leftover week.  We had enough leftovers for a tasty meal.

Saturday, January 5

Indian food is one of our favorites and very easy to make vegan. I had some sweet potatoes to use so I looked for curry recipes using the ingredients I had on hand.  Two sweet potato curry recipes I found sounded good so I decided to use a little from both.  I mainly used Sweet Potato Curry with Spinach and Chickpeas with a few ideas from Sweet Potato and Spinach Curry.  I wanted a curry with coconut milk so I used the first recipe and added a can of coconut milk. The curry was complemented with Basmati rice.  No Indian meal is complete without Naan so I found this vegan version.  The house smelled fabulous, but the flavor of the curry was a little bland.  If I make the recipes again, I will add some more spices.  The Naan was great!

Sunday, January 6

I decided to be a little experimental today.  I wanted to make enchiladas, but I didn't find any recipe that wowed me so I decided to create my own.  I made some red quinoa (a high protein grain) with vegetable broth and combined the cooked quinoa with onions, black beans, roasted green chilies, a few mushrooms and black olives. All of this goodness was then distributed in corn tortillas, which were rolled up and put in my pan.  Corn tortillas are traditional for enchiladas but sometimes I use flour tortillas because they are easier to work with.  I used the Happy Herbivore cookbook for the enchilada sauce, queso sauce, and vegan sour cream.  You could also use canned enchilada sauce and purchased vegan sour cream.  The enchiladas were very good.  I served them with roasted turnips.  I had turnips from our last CSA share. I combined cut turnips with olive oil, chili powder, cumin and a little garlic powder and roasted them in the oven. A salad completed the meal.

Of course a little treat makes the day special, so I made these vegan chocolate bottomed coconut macaroons from the cookbook, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.  These are incredibly tasty and I promise you would never guess they are vegan.

Well, 2013 is off and running.  I hope these menus and recipes will help make 2013 a happy and healthier year!

New Year, New Resolve!

Happy New Year!  Most of us make resolutions as the new year dawns with hope to change one thing or many things about our lives.  Many of you have been kind and have asked me to begin updating the blog again.  I decided that would be my resolution for 2013 - to update the blog more regularly.  For many of the blogs I follow, I notice the blogs are updated nearly daily - that won't happen here.  I will try again for weekly (although I hear Yoda in my brain saying, "Do or do not. There is no try") but I admit that finding the time can sometimes be difficult.

Let's talk about what will be different about the blog and where I've been for most of the last year.

What's different?
October 1, 2011, I decided to take a 30 day Vegan Challenge.  At the time, I did not realize that I would feel so good that it would become a long lasting change. I did have a few blog posts after first becoming vegan, but I was still finding my way.  What I have found is that vegan food is "normal" food.  It is very tasty.  Most of what I cook would appeal to anyone who loves food - not just vegans!  Cooking vegan does take more forethought and more experimentation but my body feels so good and I can eat so much more! (Without gaining weight.)  I have also found that I have learned so much more about flavors and spices.  Ethnic foods tend to lend themselves well to being vegan.  Vegan recipes abound on the web and in cookbooks - so there are many more recipes to try! (For more about how I came to the decision to eat vegan see the November 26, 2011 post.)

Where have I been for most of the last year?
 As I mentioned, cooking vegan took some adjusting.  I love to bake and I had to learn how to bake without eggs or dairy.  The pastries pictured are my version of a Hungarian pastry my grandmother used to make.  (Yes, I made the dough - it is not Pillsbury Crescent rolls.)  I find I actually prefer vegan baking and for most things my family does too.  I promise that you will not miss anything in my breads, cakes and cookies.  If I didn't tell you, you would never know what is not in my baked goods.  I have spent the last year re-working some of my favorite bread and pastry recipes to make them vegan but keep them delicious!





So What Now?
I want to return to the format of giving you a weekly menu including many of the recipes used in the menu.  The only difference is that now there will be no animal products included - no meat, no dairy, no eggs.  I hope the blog continues to be helpful.  I hope that you will give the renewed blog a look and tell your friends.

Happy New Year!  May 2013 be your happiest and healthiest and tastiest year yet!