Vegan Mofo: Crockpot Soup

If you've read my blog before, you know that I love my crockpot.  It's so easy to throw things in, push a button and leave it.  You come back a few hours later and dinner is ready.  Easy-peasy!

I used my crockpot before I was vegan, but I think I use it more now.  Soup is one of my favourite things to make, especially on days like today--it was a rainy, dark day and soup would hit the spot.  We also had a chiropractor appointment that meant that we'd have to leave as soon as the kids came home from school.  By the time we were able to get home, I knew the kids would be hungry and cranky, so I made soup in the crockpot.

I don't usually follow a recipe when I make soup.  When I say that I throw things in the crockpot, I'm not kidding.  I start with a vegetable broth cube and water.  Then I open the fridge and see what vegetables I have available.  Today I had some cauliflower and carrots.  I also tossed in some frozen mixed vegetables and a can of beans. Now that I think about it, I should have added some potatoes as well. Oh well, there's always next time.

I had planned to make some vegan dumplings, but I was out of non-dairy milk and almost out of margarine, so I didn't get my dumplings tonight.  I'll just have to make some soup again soon because I love dumplings.  My kids can't stand them, so I don't get them too often as it is.

Vegan Mofo: Banana Loaf

Monday is Thanksgiving here in Canada and my extended family had our Thanksgiving dinner tonight.  Sometimes it's hard to be vegan at an Italian gathering.  I love pasta, but it was canaloni, so it was stuffed with cheese.  No pasta for me.  But that's OK because I had lots of great veggies to eat.  I even ate some rapini even though it's not my favourite vegetable.  I find it very bitter, but it wasn't too bad tonight. 

Anyway, even though I'm one of the kids and I'm not "supposed" to bring anything, I wanted to bring some dessert.  You know if there is one thing we Italians do not have enough of, it's dessert.  (sarcasm intended, people!).  I bought some bananas that were marked for discount this week because they were veeeerrrry ripe--so perfect for banana bread.  I looked at some banana bread recipes, but alas, I forgot to pick up vanilla when I was shopping and I ran out last week.  Not to worry, I found a recipe.

I made this Banana Loaf.  It was really easy to make.  I was all set to put it in my loaf pan when I read in the recipe that it needed a cake pan.  Surprise for me!  It was more of a cake than a bread, and that was fine.  I really liked how it turned out.  The cake was very moist and quite tasty.  One thing I learned is that it's probably better to cut the loaf into pieces before the sugar on the top crystalizes.  It's really hard to slice the loaf without cracking the topping once it has cooled, and it makes it look a little messy.

I didn't mention that it was a vegan dessert.  I figured I'd just say it was dessert.  I did make sure that the diabetics knew it wasn't a good option for them to have it.  Too much sugar!  My aunt told me she quite enjoyed the sugar coating on the top.  I quite enjoyed it too!

I've got another Thanksgiving dinner on Monday with my husband's family.  I get to bring the veggies, so I know that I'll have plenty to eat, even without the turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Vegan Mofo: Buckwheat Pancakes

It's been a crazy week and today was another crazy day. I had a lot of running around to do, so by the time I got home with two hungry kids in tow (and a hungry hubby), I needed a quick dinner. We've had pasta twice this week (I love leftover sauce!), so that was out. So, I went with quick and easy and made pancakes tonight. Apparently I make pancakes a lot, because on my Klout score, pancakes is my highest ranked topic of influence--sad, I know.

There are a couple of recipes on Veg Web that I've tried and really like, so I chose the one I hadn't made for awhile. Grandma's Buckwheat Pancakes were delicious! I just realized that I forgot to put in the regular flour. I only used the buckwheat. Hmm...that may explain why the pancakes where thinner than I expected. Oh well, they still tasted great! Normally, I'd serve them with fruit, but tonight we just had pancakes. Now, the recipe says that it feeds 2-4, and I'd say that you'd want to double the recipe if you are serving more than 2 people. Only the kids and I ate the pancakes and we had 2 1/2 small pancakes each. They definitely would have eaten more if I had made more.

I enjoy using Veg Web for new recipes because they are uploaded by regular folks and you can read reviews before you try to make anything. The reviews are helpful because sometimes other cooks will say, "This was good, but I made these slight changes and then it was great!" It's a good place to get some good basic recipes and some more complex ones too. You can read more about how I use Veg Web here. If you like pancakes, give them a try!
 

Vegan Mofo: Carrot Fries

I thought I'd try something new tonight.  I had been looking for recipes last week to use some of the carrots that I had on hand, and this one caught my eye.  I started with a recipe from www.vegweb.com.  You can find it here:  http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=15346.0.  I didn't have everything listed in the recipe, so I winged it.

I peeled and cut the carrots using a Pampered Chef tool that I never get to use to make them crinkly.  I tried to cut the pieces fairly thin so that they would cook.  Put them on the baking sheet and sprayed them with olive oil.  I sprinkled them with a spice mix that I made in an empty spice jar.  I used some paprika, garlic salt, parsley and oregano.  Popped them in the oven and let them bake.

I did not take a picture, but I thought they looked pretty good!

The verdict:

I really thought the kids would like these, especially since they are like regular fries.  They did not.  On the other hand, I really liked them and I will make them again for me.  I'll try them out on my hubby when he gets home tonight.

Vegan Mofo is Back! Pasta & What's in the Fridge Sauce

October is the Vegan Month of Food, also known as Vegan MoFo!  Last year was my first year participating.  You can find a blog roll of all of this year's participants at www.veganmofo.com.

I've now been vegan for a little over a year and I'm very happy with the decision I made to move to a plant based diet.  I'm still learning as I go.

Tonight's dinner is going to be pasta and "What's in the fridge" Sauce.  This catchy title is something that I ame up with because I generally choose the ingredients in the sauce by opening the refrigerator to see what I have to work with.  Today I scored with zucchini and eggplant.

Not my pasta, but a close facsimilie

I start with a can of crushed tomatoes and add a can of beans.  Tonight I chose lentils because my kids seem to prefer softer beans, so I figured they would be more likely to eat them.  Usually I start with a bit of garlic fried in the pan, but I skipped it today.  I added a little water to the sauce and then chopped up some zucchini and eggplant.  Threw in some spices-orgeano, parsley, garlic salt and set it to simmer.

We'll be eating whole grain pasta tonight for a change.  The kids don't notice a difference in taste and I like being able to give them a healthier option.

I like to make my own sauce because know what is in it then.  When my father became  diabetic we found that many of the prepared sauces have a lot of sugar, so we started to do it ourselves.

Now for my not-so-secret secret: to reduce the acidity of the tomatoes, put a carrot in the sauce.  When it's finished, don't eat the carrot!  Compost it.  Trust me, the carrot will not taste good. And the verdict is in! Whole family enjoyed dinner. The youngest even asked for seconds (she's normally the one who does not like the veggies)!

Vegan Recipes on VegWeb.com

Last year, I found out about a lot of new things as a vegan.  One thing I learned about was the Vegan Month of Food (also known as vegan MOFO).  It was a neat way to join the community of vegan bloggers and find out more about different foods that vegans eat.

One Web site I found during this time was VegWeb.  I like this Web site because it has a lot of great recipes.  There are other features on the site, but I have to be honest and say that I haven't really looked at them.  There are lists of vegan substitutes as well that are very helpful when you might not have all the ingredients on hand.

What I find very helpful are the reviews.  It's nice to see feedback on any given recipe so that you know how it turned out.  Many users will also give suggestions like I changed this and added that or I cut the sugar in half, etc.  It really makes it easier to experiment when other people are willing to let you know how their changes worked out.

The have an iPhone app as well.  It was $2.99 well spent in my opinion.  I like that I can save recipes, browse through dishes and have everything in my hand.  I don't have to haul my laptop into the kitchen and try to find a spot to put it.  Now I can just use my phone to see all the details.

I thought I'd share with you a couple of recipes that I've tried and loved on VegWeb.

I'm a chocoholic and this can be a bit of a problem when you are trying to stay away from milk products.  Enter vegan brownie recipe.  This recipe is so easy to make and tastes delicious.  My kids love when I make these (which I do whenever I need my chocolate fix).

We also like Easy Pancakes.  They are exactly what they say--easy.  They taste great and you wouldn't know that they were made without eggs except for the fact that they are lighter than regular pancakes.  Even my omni-vore husband liked them and that's saying something!  You can add fruit or chocolate chips to these to make something different.  I've enjoyed thawing some frozen fruit and pouring it on top (with the juice from the fruit too) and adding a bit of syrup.

So, there you go, 2 of my favourite recipes from VegWeb.

Vegan MoFo--Vegan Month of Food!

After tossing some ideas around for the last couple of days, I signed up for nanowrimo--National Novel Writing Month today. It starts tomorrow. 50,000 words in 30 days. I actually have a story plot in my head and I think I could go somewhere with this one, so we shall see. Hopefully it will get me better trained to be writing everyday.

Well, today I saw some posts on Twitter for VeganMoFo and had to look it up. It's Vegan Month of Food and it was started by some vegans who were also doing Nano from what I can see. Anyway, I figured, you know, since I'm already going to be writing 50,000 words, what is a blog post or 20 about vegan food? Yeah, I know. I'm really just crazy. I signed up for VeganMoFo too.

So, what can you expect from me this month? Hopefully a daily post about vegan food. It will probably just be about what I've made each day. I'm still fairly new to vegan eating, so I'll share my recipe sources with you and hopefully you'll enjoy what I've found.

We'll start with this weekend. Friday, I made a great vegan banana bread. I used a recipe called Mel's Vegan Banana Bread from vegweb.com. It turned out really well. I usually find that banana breads come out pretty dry, but this one was nice and moist and my kids loved it. They had no idea it was vegan.

Today I made a vegetable stew. I used some mixed canned beans, a can of mushrooms and a can of sliced water chestnuts (the whole ones are too big), some vegetable stock, lots of water, half an eggplant, some potatoes, a sweet potato, a couple of carrots, and I think that was about it. Basically, I used all the veggies I had on hand and threw in some spices--garlic salt, some pepper, some parsley. Pretty standard stuff. Then I made some vegan dumplings. I found a recipe on a blog and it worked out really well! The recipe is Vegan Dumplings for Stew. My youngest wouldn't eat them (she is leery of new foods), but my oldest did and asked me what was in them. If you could have seen her face when she heard I used soy milk! "I can't believe I ate soy and liked it!"

Then this evening, I made some carob chip cookies using a recipe from vegweb.com again. Happy Vegan Cookies were pretty easy to make. I liked that the recipe said to use as much carob or chocolate chips as you wanted too. The cookies did not spread out like traditional chocolate chip cookies and they taste a little strongly of the brown sugar (I didn't have any raw sugar, so I used what was on hand). And, let's face it, carob is not chocolate, but they are still pretty tasty. I might even make them again.

So, that was my weekend in vegan food. I've got two big pumpkins I'm looking forward to cooking up and making into pumpkin bread this week!