Friday Favorite: In which I highlight one of my favorite experiences from the previous week. No description, no commentary; just a simple photo. Enjoy!
:)
Archives for August 2015
Crock-Pot Thursday: Vegan Chili Java.
With tai chi being out for summer break, we can move our Crock-Pot weekday around to suit the rest of our busy schedules in a way we normally don’t during tai chi season itself! I knew I was going to the animal shelter after work tonight (speaking of, did you know that Saturday, Aug. 15, is Clear the Shelters Day? Go visit your local shelter to find your new best friend!), and I also knew I would be ravenously hungry by the time I got home afterward. So a quick pot of chili java was easy to put together before work this morning – and it was the perfect welcome-home meal after a long day away this evening!
I’ve written about chili java plenty of times before – the recipe comes from Robin Robertson’s wonderful One-Dish Vegan – and it never gets old around these parts. I mean, c’mon. Vegan “beef,” with red beans and spicy chili powder, mixed with coffee, of all things? How could I not be in love?
So this morning I put all the ingredients together (the above, plus some others as well – Ms. Robertson has a book to sell, so I won’t get into all the details here!), flipped the slow cooker to Low, and left for work. By the time I got home tonight, the house had taken on a wonderfully rich smell of simmering chili, and LeeLee was circling the Crock-Pot like a shark, waiting for the dinner bell.
He didn’t have to wait long. Ding ding! We dug in straightaway, topping our chili with some vegan sour cream and Daiya pepperjack for good measure.
Y’all already know how this is going to end. Two helpings apiece later, we were stuffed to the gills and loving it. The coffee melds beautifully into the rest of the dish, leaving behind an earthy richness that can’t be beat. And some diced green chilies really give the chili some extra pep in its step, as well! To say nothing of the veggie-beef and beans. (And furthermore, this is a chili that even tomato haters will like – there’s nary a nightshade in the bunch!)
I’m thrilled to know that we’ve got plenty of chili left for lunch tomorrow. Something tells me that it will go quite quickly!
:)
Taco Tuesday: Vegan Fish Tacos.
I doubt this will be a weekly feature on these pages, but tonight we certainly got into the spirit of Taco Tuesday with some fabulous vegan “fish” tacos with all the fixins! We wanted a meal that would be hearty yet healthy, light yet filling – and these tacos checked off all the boxes and then some.
Often, we serve rice alongside our tacos, but tonight we decided to make the tacos the one-and-only star of the show and eschewed the rice. Neither of us were in particularly ricey mood, anyway, and we figured we didn’t need the extra calories. (Remember: Road to Fitness, people!) So when I got home from work, I put a package of vegan fish in the oven to bake, and then when they had almost finished cooking added in six taco shells to cook too. As they warmed, I heated up a can of refried beans on the stovetop – and as that cooked, I brought out some lettuce, washed some cherry tomatoes, sliced an avocado, and diced half an onion for add-ins. By the time I was finished with all that, dinner was ready!
We topped our tacos with all of the above, plus some homemade salsa that I canned this weekend as well as some vegan sour cream and Daiya pepperjack cheese. And then we dug right in!
Now, let’s get one thing straight: These tacos are not elegant to eat. But they’re so incredibly tasty that who cares about the mess we made in the interim? (That’s what plates are for, right?) The smoothness of the beans with the oceanic (really!) flavor of the fish blended so very well with the creamy avocado and fresh-from-the-farm cherry tomatoes. Top everything off with a little hot sauce and you’ve got yourself a winner.
The only drawback is that we’ve got no fish, nor beans, left for lunch tomorrow! But that’s OK, I suppose. We’ve still got plenty of yesterday’s pizzadillas (oh, I didn’t tell you about the pizzadillas? I’ll fill you in tomorrow!) to work through. I think we’ll be OK!
:)
Sunday Cookout: Grilled Eggplant Subs With Sausage-and-Squash and Couscous.
After two weeks away from my beloved grill, tonight I hopped-to and fired it right on up again! On the menu tonight: Grilled eggplant subs with a vegetarian sausage-and-squash dish I hadn’t tried before, plus some couscous cooked inside on the stovetop.
About an hour before I fired up the grill, I sliced a large eggplant into rounds, placed the rounds in a zip-top bag, and then added a nice dose of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, minced onion, and garlic powder. Then I shook the bag around for a minute or two and then placed said bag back in the fridge to wait until dinnertime. (While it waited, I finished canning five pints of salsa – which is another story altogether!)
Just before I lit the charcoal, I sliced up a huge zucchini from Great Country Farms into rounds, placed them atop a sheet of aluminum foil, and then added a pat of butter and some salt and pepper. But I wasn’t done yet! Next, I heated up four links of vegetarian breakfast sausage in the microwave, sliced them up, and added them to the foil as well, topping everything with a liberal amount of panko bread crumbs for good measure. Then I wrapped the foil over to make a packet (and added a second sheet of foil for strength, if we’re being honest here), and then set it aside until after the fire died down on the grill.
I cooked the zucchini-sausage packet for about half an hour all told, turning it over every 10 minutes or so. I placed the eggplant slices on the grill with about 15 minutes to go until it was time to eat, and flipped them once halfway through the cooking time. I do love the sizzle that eggplant makes when it hits the grill grate! There’s something satisfying about that, you know? Like you’re actually cooking out just like our ancestors did. Oh, what a feeling!
The couscous cooks up in just 5 minutes or so, so when it was ready I tossed it into a bowl and brought it outside to join the party. Next it was just a matter of pulling everything off the grill, toasting two sub rolls, and then compiling our subs!
LeeLee may have done his a little differently (I confess I wasn’t watching), but I put a dollop of Just Mayo on my sub roll, then drizzled it with a little balsamic vinegar. Next I added three slices of eggplant, two slices of tomato, and several slices of goat cheese from a round I purchased today. Then I smooshed the sub closed (it was getting a little unwieldy by this point!) and dug in to eat!
Oh, the sub was the star of the show by far. I mean, don’t get me wrong – we loved my new sausage-squash concoction, and couscous is always a winner. But these subs were just so dang fresh. The mix of the marinated eggplant and the goat cheese, accented by fresh tomato (also from the CSA) and an extra dose of balsamic, really set these sandwiches apart. I don’t know why we don’t have them more often, but we’ll definitely rectify that over the coming months! And who knows, maybe I’ll pull another trick or two out of my sleeve to really send these babies over the top. Stay tuned!
:)
Friday Favorite.
Friday Favorite: In which I highlight one of my favorite experiences from the previous week. No description, no commentary; just a simple photo. Enjoy!
:)
Crock-Pot Thursday: Vegan Low-Country Boil.
I feel like I re-upped my Southern license tonight with this dish, y’all. I’d been wanting to try my hand at a vegan/vegetarian version of a low-country boil for some time, and last week’s CSA box – the one I referred to yesterday, remember, that brought us so many veggies we were woefully outnumbered – gave me just the opportunity. Ears of corn? Potatoes? Supplemented by some beautiful sweet onions from Mr. Lopez’s farm stand? One low-country boil, coming right up!
To me, the low-country boil is the perfect slow-cooker meal. Everything needs to boil till tender in the first place, and the whole point of this recipe is to be an easy one-pot supper that feeds a crowd. It was practically made for the Crock-Pot! So that’s just what I did this morning.
The prep was a snap – 15 minutes of cutting, chopping, and mixing, and I was on my way to work. I sliced three ears of corn into halves, then roughly diced several small potatoes (many low-country boil recipes call for whole potatoes, but these were larger, and we like smaller pieces), then very roughly quartered an onion and let the rings fall where they may, and then sliced four Tofurky Italian sausages into rounds (in perfect honesty I was looking for chorizo, but our grocery store was out – and these sausages worked perfectly!). I added all of the above to the Crock-Pot with a package of vegan shrimp, a very generous helping of Old Bay seasoning, and as much water as I could get to fit, and put the lid on tight.
The crockery cooked on Low for about 9 hours until about 30 minutes before serving, when I texted LeeLee from the animal shelter to ask him to kick it to High, just to get the juices flowing.
Whoa! When I got home from work, the house smelled delightful, and the low-country boil was, well, boiling quite nicely. All that was left to do at that point was pour the ingredients into a colander to drain off all the water, then return the whole kit and caboodle to the crockery for serving. I know, I know – the traditional way is to pour it all out across a sheet of newspapers. But we were dining inside, within pouncing distance of the cat, and I just didn’t want to fool with it, you know?
But newspaper or no, the final product was wonderfully tasty. Each ingredient had slow-cooked to perfection, and the Old Bay seasoning managed to find its way in to each component with aplomb. And if you’re one of those folks who finds Old Bay too heavy for their liking, don’t worry; it’s not in this dish! The water takes care of a lot of the additional seasoning, and it drains right off, leaving you with a great flavor that’s not overpowering.
The shrimp held up perfectly and resembled the real deal; the sausage took on enough of the seasoning to be low-country in nature but yet also maintained some of what it came in with (as in all good relationships, you know?). The potatoes softened perfectly and the onions shone with lovely translucence. And the corn was so tender and so sweet! The perfect summer treat, indeed.
I’m happy to say we have plenty left for lunch tomorrow, which is a relief, because both LeeLee and I loved this dish. I can’t wait to break it out in college-football season for all our friends!
The recipe’s below.
VEGAN LOW-COUNTRY BOIL
Serves 4
What you’ll need:
1 onion, sliced into quarters (don’t fret if the rings begin to separate)
4 medium to small potatoes, sliced to your liking (or left intact)
3 ears of corn, cut in half crosswise
4 vegan sausage links (chorizo or Italian work best)
1 package vegan shrimp
3 tbsp. Old Bay seasoning
Water to fill up the slow cooker
Put all of the above in the slow cooker and stir to combine. You may have to work a bit to get the vegetables to settle in such a way that you can place the lid on tight; that’s OK! Your game of Tetris will be worth it when mealtime comes and you’ve got more veggies than you know what to do with.
Turn the heat to Low and cook for 8-10 hours. In the last half-hour of cooking time, turn the heat to High to let the water really boil.
Next, drain the slow-cooker contents into a colander and place the drained vegetables and protein in the Crock-Pot again. Serve, and enjoy!
:)
Vegetarian Pasta Primavera.
Friends, we have got CSA veggies from Great Country Farms coming out our ears! Green beans, squash, cherry tomatoes, corn, potatoes … we are vastly outnumbered here at Chez Recessionista by all of these goodies. And they won’t stay good forever, you know – so I knew that tonight I had to get to work putting last week’s shipment to good use.
The corn and potatoes will be employed in tomorrow’s dish — a Crock-Pot creation I’ll surprise you with when the time comes. But the green beans, squash, and tomatoes? They went straight into the Le Creuset tonight as part of a long-overdue pasta primavera.
I’ve made this dish quite a few times, with various and sundry veggie combinations employing whatever I’ve got on hand. Tonight I called the aforementioned trio into service, along with half a bag of frozen peas, a bag of frozen chik’n strips, an onion from Mr. Lopez’s stand at the Saturday market, and plenty of salt, pepper, and garlic powder to boot. The result was a concerto of flavors and textures that really sang!
The most fun part is the creation of the cream sauce. It never ceases to amaze me how a couple of pats of butter and two tablespoons of flour, blended with 2-3 cups of almond milk (and a splash of balsamic vinegar for fun), can become this wonderfully rich sauce that can coat an entire pot of pasta! But it does, every time, making even more than we really need.
I must say, this primavera turned out even prettier than normal – in large part due to the extensive palette of colors the vegetables brought to the table (so to speak). And it turned out wonderfully tasty, as well! The cream sauce was rich and thick, the vegetables were crisp-tender and translucent, the chik’n strips added some much-needed protein to the dish, and the salt, pepper, and garlic powder really brought all of the flavors together. A little nutritional yeast on top at the table, and it was a perfect meal! And now our fridge is back to normal vegetable levels – until tomorrow’s CSA shipment, that is!
:)
Vegetarian Fried Rice With Seitan.
Our travels along the Road to Fitness continued tonight with a healthy version of a takeout favorite: Fried rice!
I pulled a page out of Christy Jordan’s playbook over at Southern Plate and did a veggie version of her chicken fried brown rice, substituting seitan for the chicken, of course. (And can I just say that when it comes to meat substitutes, you could do a lot worse than a batch of seitan! Its texture and flavor are great, and like many “real” meats it soaks up whatever you cook it with. Hooray for seitan!)
Instead of using instant rice, I used two microwaveable pouches of Uncle Ben’s brown rice instead, and heated them up for the requisite time before adding them to the seitan in my trusty Le Creuset. Then I added a generous helping of frozen peas, then some shredded carrots and green onions, and then the two eggs I’d scrambled at the start of the meal (I didn’t mention that, did I), and then finally some soy sauce and garlic powder. Just like that, a one-pot meal was ready for consumption!
We paired the fried rice with some frozen veggie spring rolls (well, they were frozen; we baked them, ahem) and had a perfect takeout meal for the eating right at home! No MSG in this kitchen, y’all. And plenty of great home-cooked flavor!
As advertised, the seitan picked up the rest of the flavors of the dish without yielding any texture or inherent goodness in return, and the brown rice did a great job of soaking up the oil and soy sauce evenly. The veggies made the dish downright virtuous! Road to Fitness, indeed. We’re rolling down the highway now!
:)
Vegetarian Gourmet Spinach Salad.
Well, I must confess to you that this weekend was not my caloric finest hour. I know, I know, a week ago LeeLee and I had gotten back on the straight and narrow, but we were led astray this weekend by a housewarming party, an evening out to eat to watch the Ronda Rousey fight (which we ended up abandoning before it even began because we didn’t know said fight was actually going to start after midnight!), and a picnic of epic proportions yesterday evening to see David Sedaris with about a dozen friends. Big Fun all the way around, mind you – but not calorically virtuous.
So tonight we decided to start the week off on a healthy foot! I pulled out an old favorite – the Pioneer Woman’s spinach salad recipe – from my arsenal and got to cooking. First, I boiled two eggs, and as they cooked I chopped up an onion and plunked it into a pan that was coated with cooking spray. I heated the pan to Medium and cooked the onions until they were translucent and slightly brown.
Next, I put a generous helping of baby spinach leaves on both of our plates, then added a layer of fresh sliced white button mushrooms. Then I went outside, clipped some dill from the garden, and added it to a bowl along with some Just Mayo, lemon juice, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper, and whisked like a madwoman to make a fresh salad dressing.
By the time I was done with the dressing, the eggs had boiled, and I took them off the heat and let them cool while I heated up several strips of veggie bacon. Then I peeled the eggs, sliced them into five slices apiece, and put them on our plates, topping them with the onions, the bacon (cut into pieces), and, as the cherry on top, some leftover cheese curds from our picnic yesterday (we used them in a beet salad).
Then it was time to chow down! LeeLee and I mowed down every shred of our spinach (to say nothing of the toppings!) and left nothing on our plates to show for it. And when we finished our meal, we reveled in our good dietary choices! We’re back on the Road to Fitness, people. And we’re putting the pedal to the metal!
:)