Beanball Sub and product review

This delicious meal was the beanball sub recipe from Veganomicon on fresh ciabatta bread. If you look in the corner of the photo you can see that this meal also included a romaine lettuce salad. I do eat salad sometimes!

Also, here is my product review of Kenzoil, a yummy basil-based flavoured oil that was sent to me to try: it's fab. I ate it on pasta.. it was like instant pesto.. but more lemon-y. I think one of the secret ingredients is lemon.

Ps- I got The Conscious Cook, Vegan Soul Kitchen, and Vegan Yum Yum for xmas prezzies! What should I make?? I want to make everything from VYY, but the other two are more out of my comfort zone so I need suggestions.

Sloppy Joes

Last night was sloppy joe night. Strangely, there is a lack of sloppy joe nights in the vegan comfort food household, considering how perfectly comfort-food-y this meal is! These are made with brown lentils, and the recipe is the "Snobby Joes" recipe from Veganomicon.

Spinach-Chickpea-Sundried Tomato Quinoa Bake

Sorry, the pic sucks, it was too dark and I had to photo-shop it- I promise this meal tastes better than it looks!

I actually wrote it down the ingredents for once:
2 cups raw quinoa
approx. 3 tbs chopped sundried tomatoes in oil
1 tbs oil from the sundried tomatoes (or other oil)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
3 1/2 cups veg broth
1 package frozen chopped spinach, defrosted
1 19oz can chickpeas
a pinch of garlic powder
a pinch of salt

Stir together and cook in a big baking dish, covered, for 45 mins or until it looks good.
I saw a non-vegan recipe like this with egg- I wonder what I could use to make this stick together..

Mexican-inspired Baked Pasta

Ingredients: cooked whole wheat rotini, salsa, red beans, frozen corn, and some orange cheez sauce (tofu, roasted red pepper, nutritional yeast, tahini, garlic powder, salt), bread crumbs. I mixed everything up and baked at 400 for 20 minutes- just to crisp up the top a bit.

Balsamic Collards and Portabello Mushrooms on Cheezy Pasta Spirals

The pasta sauce is a white-bean cheez sauce from the Uncheese Cookbook. It's pretty much white beans, nutritional yeast, soy milk.. salt, spices, whatever. Creamy goodness.

On top is sliced portabello mushrooms and collard greens cooked with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I don't like collard greens as much as chard because collards are more bitter, but they are in season right now and are perfectly yummy!

Cauliflower-Leek Pie with Chickpea Crust

I used the pie crust from the 'Curried Vegetable Pie with Chickpea Crust' recipe from The Garden of Vegan: (1/2 cup mashed chickpeas, 1 1/2 cup chickpea flour, 1/3 cup margarine).

Ingredients for the filling, food processed:
2 chopped leeks and two minced garlic cloves sautéd in olive oil
1 blanched cauliflower
a few tbs of vegan parmesan
1/2 cup soft tofu
black pepper
sea salt

topped with:
tamari-roasted pepitas and more vegan parmesan

PS- You have to hear this CBC session that Steven Page did with an orchestra! His cover of 'Paranoid Android' is amazing.

De Puy Lentil Crepes and Butternut Squash Crepes with Cashew Cream

Crepes for dinner!
The crepe recipe is from Veganomicon.
The filling: 1- de puy lentils with dashes of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. 2- cubed butternut squash (from frozen) with herbs and a touch of olive oil.
They are topped with cashew sour cream.

Bonus photo:
My vegetarian cookbook collection (started 10 years ago and going strong..)

Vegan Tuna/Egg Salad

Vegan tofu salad! Actually mine turned out more egg-salad-ish because it was very saucy. This is the recipe I used, so if you want your less saucy .. make less sauce.

1 can chickpeas
1/3 package silken tofu
2 pickles, sliced
1 tbs whole grain mustard
juice of half a lemon (or more)
some green onions, including while bit
salt + pepper

Mush chickpeas in a food processor until they are mashed up. Remove the chickpeas from the processor and put them in a big bowl. Then put tofu, pickles, mustard, tofu and lemon in the food processor and process. Add to chickpeas. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

Koshary

A friend of mine's parents are Egyptian, and she told me about this delicious and very popular Egyptian meal. Basically you need pasta, green lentils, rice, and tomato sauce. There are variations. I added some cinnamon and cumin to my pasta sauce because I found that in one recipe on the net. I also added red bell pepper, which sort of took away from the traditional-ness of the recipe.. next time I'll leave it out and I'll use macaroni instead of rotini.
It was great, though!

Red Lentil Dhal

Indian lentil soup is amazing. I'm not sure about the best recipe/method yet, so I won't give you the recipe I used, especially since I can't really remember.

Chilli lunch!

This is a cute new lunch container set that I got when I was in Alexandria, VA. I love the bento-style boxes that have click-y tops, they seal so much better.

Tomorrow's lunch is leftover chili with corn, fruit juice gel hearts (made with agar, in an Ikea silicone ice cube tray), raw red pepper and roasted chickpeas. If you've never had/made roasted chickpeas, do it now! They are best right out of the oven. Here is a basic recipe. I like them best with curry powder, but here I used nutritional yeast and salt.

Chili

Chili adapted from the Vegan Lunchbox cookbook. She uses dry beans but I used canned. I also added organic local kale for extra calcium and iron. It's a great recipe and a great cookbook! I start a new job tomorrow and therefore lunch pictures start tomorrow, yay!

Roasted Eggplant with Red Wine-enhanced Pasta Sauce and Bows

I had some red wine because I am going to put it in my henna mix, so I decided to put some in a tomato sauce as well. The baby eggplants were roasted in the oven with olive oil, dried basil and minced garlic.
The pasta sauce: onion, can of chopped tomatoes, red wine, basil, salt, mashed chickpeas.