Cumin Quinoa

Cook  1 cup quinoa (2 cups water will be needed)

While quinoa is cooking, in your big frying pan, the one with high walls, heat about 2 tablespoons olive oil.
Add 2 cloves pressed garlic.
1 can corn
1 can chickpeas
1 cup frozen peas
1 carrot, peeled and diced

Add quinoa when it is done.  Add another tbsp olive oil.  If things start drying out, add a little more.

Add spices:
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp coriander
2 tbsp cumin
grind in some pepper, maybe about 10-15 cranks
3 tsp salt, add more to taste

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I got the base for these from the weekly Meatout Monday email I receive and served it at my Winter Solstice Party last Tuesday.  (I'd recommend signing up for the emails to get weekly recipes and news. Vegan outreach is another good place.)

4 cups of grated sweet potatoes, packed  (about 3 or 4 sweet potatoes)
2 Tbsp grated yellow onion, drained of excess juice  (about 1 or 2)
1 Tbsp diced fresh parsley (dried works in a pinch)
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Add all ingredients in a large bowl and mix everything.  Add vegetable oil to a skillet and heat it.  Take approximatley 1/4 cup handfuls and roll/flatten them into disks and then put them into the frying pan.  Press on them with a spatula to help them hold together better.  Cook until brown, flip, and then cook the other side til brown.  If it start to fall apart a little bit, push with the spatula and let it cook a little longer.  Each side takes about 4 minutes.  Repeat until all the mixture is gone.

Christmas Eve Menu 2010

Last night I made Christmas eve dinner for my family (8), neighbor, and 2 friends.  Here's what I made:

Guacamole with tortilla chips
Roasted Garlic on French bread

Lasagna
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Cumin Quinoa

Vegetable Soup
Roasted Brussel Sprouts

Apple Crisps

For  my parents and older attendees, it was their first time having a full vegan meal.  My mom told me she could eat vegan a lot more often if it was like that.  My grandma said she was worried about my nutrition when I first became vegan, and she thought all the food must be bland, but now she changed her mind.  That's why I love sharing my food with everyone.  It makes it fun to surprise people.

Thanksgiving Menu 2010

So I went a little crazy for thanksgiving, and even though only 4 people came I still made enough food for about 25 people.  I sent everyone home with a tupperware of food, and I still had leftovers for about a week.  Here's a list of what I made, with links to recipes I've already posted, and I'll hopefully be posting the rest soon.

Appetizer:
Stuffed Mushrooms
Hot Apple Cider

Entrees:
"Chicken" Pot Pie
Mashed Potatoes
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Quinoa loaf (good with mushroom gravy)
Green Bean Casserole
Candied Squash
Rice Pilaf and Apple Sage Sausage

Desserts:
Blueberry Cheesecake
Apple Crisps
Oreo Pie
Vegan Jello (you can get it at whole foods or vegan websites like veganstore.com or veganessentials.com)

Roasted Brussel Sprouts

So I went with some friends the other day to a restaurant called Old Town Social, and I got these really delicious  roasted Brussel sprouts.  Of course, within a few days I had to figure out how to make them myself.  Here's the recipe I've come up with, which is just as tasty as what we had in the restaurant.

20 brussel sprouts, cut in half (top to bottom)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed.

Add the garlic and the olive oil in a bowl and let the garlic infuse for a little while, while the brussel spouts steam.
Steam the brussel sprouts for about 10-13 minutes (a steamer is a great investment for any cook).  When it is finished, put the brussel sprouts into the oil and mix them around.  Put all of this into a baking pan and put it into the broiler of your oven at 350.  Let it cook for 10 minutes, then rotate or mix it with a spoon and let it cook for another 10 minutes.  Take out, and serve.

Lasagna

Last night was my office Christmas party, which was a blast.  Since it was catered, I decided to bring a veggie option to share (there's 4 of us now!), and also because I like cooking for large groups of people and am starting to be known for my tasty vegan food.  I brought apple crisps, which has been a favorite since I made it at a baking class at work, sausage and stir fried rice, and I wanted to bring some lasagna too.  So this recipe was born, half from something I found online.  It was all gone by the time I came home, and a few people who didn't know I brought it didn't even realize it was vegan, which is usually how I tell it something was a success or not.

Preheat the oven to 350.  Get a square baking pan out and ready.

Sauce:
2 cans tomato sauce 15 oz
1 can tomato paste  6 oz
1 yellow onion, chopped
about 4 oz of fresh mushroom, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped or crushed
1 tbsp basil
1/2 tbsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
dash of cayenne
1/2 a bag of morningstar ground crumbles

Heat this all up together and stir well.  When everything else is heated up and ready to use, take a package of firm tofu and crumble it into the pot.  Stir this in, trying to make sure there are no clumps that are too large.

Take some lasagna noodles and start layering this, the sauce and fresh spinach leaves.  Start with noodles on the bottom, sauce, spinach.  I made the mistake of making the sauce layer too thick, so maybe make it 1/4 inch thick.  Don't put noodles on the top layer because this just burned and I had to pick it off after I baked it.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Peppermint Truffles

Silk has a few holiday flavors that have recently started showing up in stores.  My favorite is the peppermint chocolate milk (they also have nog and pumpkin spice) and I'm going to be very sad when its season is over.  They've got an amazing recipe on the side of the carton for these peppermint truffles, which aren't that much of a pain to make (aside from crushing the candy canes) but taste delicious.

First, finely crush about a dozen candy canes.  I used a hammer and the bottom of a flat bottle.  Then filter it with a sieve.  

If you have a double broiler, great.  If not, what I did was I set a metal mixing bowl on top of a pot of boiling water, which worked reasonably well.  Then you combine:

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I used a bag of vegan chocolate chips from whole foods)

1/2 cup silk mint chocolate

1 TBSP earth balance or other vegan butter.

Once this all melts into a nice, creamy mixture, add:

1 TSP peppermint extract or flavoring

Pour this into a shallow pan and put into the refrigerator for about an hour.  You'll want to check on it every so often so that it doesn't get to solid.  Whatever you do, don't leave for an adventure and let it set for several hours, or it will get too hard and you'll have to reheat it and it will become a mess.

Once its done, scoop out about a teaspoon at a time and roll it into little balls with your hands.  Then roll it in the crushed candy cane (or you can use cocoa powder but that's not sweet enough for my tastes).  Re chill it, and serve.  Super delicious.