Spaghetti and Sauce

I know tonight's meal does not look to appealing but it really was good. Just whole wheat pasta and I added some spinach and ground up veg sausage to some pasta sauce. Served with whole grain bread on the side.

Cardamom Peanut Butter Cupcakes

I got this recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. We are going to a potluck tonight so I wanted to make something a little special (for all of the non-believers out there who think that vegan desserts do not exist). Ran into a little problem with the frosting...it was way too thick so we took it out of the pipping bag and just spread it on thickly onto the cupcakes. I love the combination of cardamom and peanut butter. I hope these are a hit!

Pizza

Made a pizza tonight. Nothing fabulous. Just trying to use up stuff from the fridge. Thin crust with spaghetti sauce, black and green olives, ground up veggie sausage and a cheeze sauce on top. Turned out good (although it is lacking veggies!)

Chickpea Nuggets, mashed potatoes and broccoli

For some odd reason I cannot seem to get enough of the chickpea patties lately. I find if they are shaped into little nuggets they are amazing and fry up beautifully. I made a double batch of these and this will be what we are eating for the next few days. I am going to try freezing them next. Mashed a few yellow potatoes and steamed some broccoli. Served it with agave nectar and a dijon-maple syrup dipping sauce.

Sweet and Sour Seitan with Green Beans and Rice

Sorry for the crappy picture. I did not realize it had not focused at all. I had some leftover seitan and was craving a sort of sweet and sour sauce so I put this together. It satisfied my craving. I looked for a sweet and sour sauce online and came up with this one from Vegan Yum Yum. Served it over some brown rice and it was great.

Peirogis, Sausages and Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies

Supper tonight was homemade pierogies and sun-dried tomato sausages with some tofutti sour "cream".

For dessert I made these babies which taste like a little piece of heaven. I will edit and add the recipe very soon.

Sushi

We are going to my parents house for dinner tonight where I am sure my mother will be making a great meal. So...tonight I do not have to cook. Yeah! I did make some sushi this afternoon though because I have been craving it for a while now. I mixed some steamed tempeh with some veganaise and Tabasco sauce and sliced up an avocado for a creamy centre. Turned out pretty good and cut my craving.

Blueberry-Chocolate Chip Pancakes

What happens when you cannot decide if you want pancakes with blueberries or chocolate chips? Well the answer is simple...use them both. These pancakes were very sweet. Recipe came from In the Garden of Vegan I think. Pretty easy, flour, banana, soymilk, baking powder, chocolate chips and blueberries. Drizzle with maple syrup and we have a nice lazy dinner.

Leftovers for Supper

Nothing new and exciting to report tonight. Tonight's supper looked just like last night's supper. If you need a picture please look at the previous post :) This seitan ham warms up so nicely and tastes amazing the second day.

Seitan "Ham" with all the Trimmings

I am not sure why but I have been craving a nice slow cooked meal all week and this was the first day I had enough time to commit to it. This seitan turned out perfect and I love this recipe. I got it from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Vegan Feast Newsletter. It slices perfectly and even turns out a little stringy which I like. It takes a while to cook in the oven though...around 4 1/2 hours. I paired it with roasted potatoes, edemame, stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce.

The roast when it came out of the oven.

Homemade Cranberry Sauce

once you make it from scratch you will never go back to canned again!

1 bag cranberries

1 cup water or cranberry juice

3/4 cup maple syrup

1 tbsp orange zest

Mix all ingredients in a pot and simmer until cranberries explode and it thickens (15-30 minutes). Cool down and serve.

Stir-Fry and Raspberry Rooibus Iced Tea

We had to make a quick super tonight so it was just mixed veggies, teriyaki sauce, fake chick'n from Superstore over shanghai noodles. It was good.

With spring almost upon us I broke out the iced tea bags I bought from SBS teas last year. I especially love this one...Raspberry Rooibos Iced Tea. It is so simple to make, throw the bag in, hot water on top, let it sit, then add cold water. I added a bit of agave to mine to sweeten it up. Nice alternative to water or sugary juices.

Ravioli

We needed something quick for dinner tonight so I parted with some of the homemade ravioli I had in the freezer. I want to make more of this (try to make it every 2 weeks) but we are at a Sheese shortage here in Winnipeg. Everyone is waiting for shipments. I will have to stock up big time when they do come in. Sorry for the crappy picture.

Lush of the Irish

I saw these buns on a blog this morning and wanted to try them out. I have been so sad since I lost the paddle from our bread maker so I have had to knead dough by hand which I hate. I tried to make this in the food processor but ended up having to knead a little by hand. They turned out pretty good. I was a little skeptical that they would take on the shape of 4-leaf clovers but they did. I took the recipe from the Bitersweet Blog. Here they are fresh out of the oven and below they are cooling. For supper we had leftover pizza and salad

Homemade Loaded Pizza

Sorry for not posting much everyone but it has been an extremely busy week and weekend. I made a big batch of fridge dough today and made pizza with the the first quarter. The dough spreads so nicely and tasted nice and crisp. On this pizza I put past sauce, black and green olives, pineapples, capers, ground of homemade veggie sausage, Gouda Sheese and a new product that I was trying that is a vegan blue cheeze. Baked it in the oven for 25 minutes at 450 and voila super! This is going to be my staple pizza crust from now on.

Homemade Ravioli and Peanut Butter Cookies

Okay so I managed to get away from having to see curling tonight and had the day to myself and felt like cooking. It has probably been over 3 years since I had ravioli last since I have never been able to find vegan ones in the store and my last attempt to make pasta years ago failed miserably. These turned out beautiful. The dough was so easy to work with and in all made about 80 pieces. Of course it really helped with the little plastic cutters I bought from Value Village on 50% day. They were a little time consuming though. Took me over an hour to make all of them. I would definitely make these again. I used this recipe for the dough from Bryanna Grogan Clark. It is super basic, white flour, water, salt and olive oil. I stuffed a few with some Sheese and the rest with this recipe.

Ravioli Stuffing
1 1/2 veggie sausage (that I made in one of my previous posts) ground up in the blender
1 small onion, finely minced,
1 1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp basil
1 tbsp veg beef bouillon
1 tbsp olive oil

Saute onions in olive oil for a few minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 15 minutes or until all mostly all of the broth has evaporated. Let cool before stuffing your ravioli.


Dinner was homemade ravioli, basic pasta sauce, salad and a few slices of homemade bread. It was delish. The Sheese ones tasted great and the "meaty" ones were nice as well.

I had also been craving peanut butter cookies for a while now and decided to whip these up since I bought a huge jar of Organic Peanut Butter at Costco last week. They were sweet and peanut buttery. I took the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance.

Away for a few days

I will probably not be posting any dinners until at least Sunday. We have tickets to see the Tim Horton's Brier (curling games) for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and we will not be eating at home. I promise to be back on Thursday with something good...well hopefully. See you all then!

Seitan Sunday Dinner

I have been wanting to try out this recipe for Vegan Roast Beef for a while now but used the last of my vital wheat gluten last week. I managed to find about a cups worth so I halved the recipe and hoped for the best. It turned out nice but I wish it could turn out like the very first time I made seitan in the oven, not spongy but stringy. I will definitely make this again but next time make a full recipe. I served it with mashed potatoes (russet potatoes cubed with skin on, boiled for about 10 minutes, mashed and rice milk added), steamed broccoli, homemade bread and gravy. I think I want to start making seitan dinners every Sunday.

Simple Gravy
1 cup "beef" stock
1 tbsp earth balance
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp miso (I used brown rice miso)
1 tbsp tamari
1 tsp dijon mustard

Add all ingredients except earth balance and flour to the stock. Make a roux by melting the earth balance then adding the flour and stirring constantly for a few minutes to cook the flour. Slowly add in the stock mixture whisking vigorously. Voila simple gravy that has a nice taste to it.

Here is a picture of the seitan loaf as it came out of the oven.

Blood Oranges

Oh how I love blood oranges...let me count the ways. If you have never tasted one run out right now and get one. Something about their colour is so appealing and the taste is just so divine. Isn't

it beautiful?

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This is another book that I have been reading about that I would love to get but cannot justify the cost of it right now. I (like most normal people) love making fresh homemade bread. I love being able to make it and know what ingredients I put in it over having to buy it in the store. However, like most people, I do not always have time and have to plan ahead to make it. Well apparently this book is suppose to solve that problem. I took this recipe from the Every Day Dish TV Blog. When I first put it together I did not think it would work but sure enough as you can see in the picture below it doubled nicely. I was pretty amazed with this bread. It turned out nice and airy and full of holes which made it taste amazing. I cannot wait to use up the remainder of the dough in the next few weeks.

Veggie Sausage and Tofu Scramble

So here was tonight's final dinner. Tofu scramble from Vegan with a Vengeance with sauteed onions and tons of cremini mushrooms, spices, lemon juice, nutritional yeast and freshly made veggie sausage. On the side I made some homemade hash browns that turned out great and reheated very well in a dry frying pan.

I have been wanting to try the veggie sausage recipe that I see floating from blog to blog and finally got some vital wheat gluten so that I could make them. They turned out great and the recipe can be found at the Every Day Dish TV site. You can even watch a video of the sausages being made plus tons of other recipes. So here is the steamer I used for my sausages. I steamed 4 on one rack and 3 on the other.

Finished product cooling on a rack.

Roasted potatoes I made in the oven. Preheat to 450. Dice potatoes, add 1 tbsp olive oil, sea salt, freshly ground pepper and paprika. Toss to coat evenly and then put on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes, flip all of the potatoes and bake for another 20 minutes. These turned out amazing.

Leftover soup and phyllo treats

I was in a hurry again tonight so we had leftover mushroom soup and phyllo treats. I absolutely love these. More for the convenience really. The only thing I miss about being a vegan is being able to cheat every once in a while and buy pre-packaged food. It is so difficult to find good vegan "fast food" when I am in a hurry to make super. These are made by the phillo factory. There are three kinds, mushroom and leaks (my favourite), mixed veggie and potato and spinach and all are wrapped in whole wheat filo dough. Yummy.

Mushroom Soup and Chick'n Breasts Wrap

I was reading someone else's blog who raved about the new chick'n breasts from superstore so I had to try them out. Pretty good deal at 8 large pieces for 9.99. I really liked them. I fried them up in the pan with a little water, sliced them and served them in a wrap with lettuce, tomatoes, cheeze and some random salad dressing. The second thing I made was this amazing Slow Cooker "cream" of Mushroom Soup. I based it on the recipe taken from the blog of "Kitchen Ramblings from a Fairly Odd Tofu Mom". I bought a tray of mixed mushrooms (portabellos, shitakes, white button, crimini and oyster. I pulsed the entire package in the food processor. Sauteed them with diced onions and minced garlic for about 5 minutes. Put boiling "beef" broth into the slow cooker and added the veggie mixture. Let is cook for 3 hours on high. Then mixed in the "sour cream" mixture. It was diving tasting to me. Tastes just like how I remember cream of mushroom soup tasting. This was my first time buying tofutti brand "sour cream" because I usually make my own and I think next time I make this soup I will try omitting it.

Oatmeal-Coconut cookies and Rice pudding

I was craving cookies tonight...cookies and coconut so I whipped these together. They turned out great. Chewy and wholesome. Next time I want to add chocolate chips or raisins to them.

Oatmeal-Coconut Cookies
1 cup white flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup organic cane sugar
1/2 cup rice milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups oats
1 cup shredded coconut.

Preheat oven to 375.
Combing dry ingredients together. Whisk oil with sugar, rice milk, lemon juice and vanilla. Add dry to wet ingredients. Use ice cream scoop to measure these onto 3 cookie sheets. 12 cookies per sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes, let rest on baking sheet for 2 minutes and then transfer to cooling rack. Makes 3 dozen.

I attempted to make rice pudding but to be honest with everyone it stunk. I threw in one can of lite coconut milk with 3 cups brown rice and added cinnamon and cardamom, raisins and a bit of sugar. It turned out way too dry and not what I was expecting. Back to the drawing board with this one.

Veggie Dogs in a Blanket and salad

My husband wants full credit for these creations so he can have them. We wrapped Yves veggie sausages in crescent rolls (which are vegan!) and baked them in the oven. I did not particularly like them. I think the rolls needed to be cooked for longer and it felt quite heavy settling in my stomach.