baked pasta dish

This one was ok...the Daiya Fake cheese was probably the best part.

Ingredients:
1 box farafelle
1 bag frozen carrots
1 bag frozen peas
1 can diced tomatos
3 TBsp garlic
olive oil
Daiya mozzarella and cheddar cheese

Directions:
Fry the garlic in some olive oil. Then add the tomatos and cook on medium for 5 minutes.
Cook the farafelle as usual.
Boil the carrots and peas until cooked.
Once everything is cooked mix the pasta, tomato mixture, carrots, and peas together.
Put in a baking dish. Cover with Daiya fake mozzarella and cheddar cheese.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Fake BBQ chicken calzones

This one was super easy and delicious.
Ingredients:
1 package of premade pizza dough (I used trader joes this time)
2 packages of gardein fake BBQ chicken strips
1 package of Smart Bacon
Daiya mozzarella cheese
extra BBQ sauce olive oil

Directions: fry the smart bacon as directed on the package in the oil.
Remove the bacon and in the same pan heat the packages of fake BBQ chicken strips. Crumble the bacon in to small pieces and add back to the pan. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes.
Roll out your pizza dough in to a circle. On half the circle pile the fake chicken mixture. Top with some extra BBQ sauce and sprikle with Daiya fake mozzarella cheese. Roll the top part of the circle over on top of the calzone and mold the dough together around the edges. Slice several 1 inch holes in the top of the calzone.
Bake at 400 for 25 minutes.
Makes two VERY large and filling calzones.

banana chocolate chip muffins

Made some tasty banana chocolate chip muffins today. Used an old recipe from my blog: http://crunchyvegan.blogspot.com/2010/12/vegan-banana-bread.html
Basically just used mini chocolate chips and baked as muffins instead of a cake- only took 15 minutes to cook instead of 20.

Tater tot casserole

I am so glad that Lauren showed me the blog Meettheshannons since I have been following them and trying a lot of their dishes. Of course, I can only really try the dishes when I am off as a lot of them take a lot more time then I usually do to cook, but on my days off it is worth it.
And, many of them, like this one, lease you with 4-5 days of leftovers for lunch!
This was one of my favorite meals yet- It had so many perfect flavors, and the little bit of fake melted cheese in it was great. Here is the link:
http://www.meettheshannons.net/2011/09/betty-crocker-project-texas-tater-tot.html

fun with fake fried fish

This was a new experiment for me...made a whole meal of fake fish like stuff, kinda...
First I made fried shitake mushrooms, modified from a recipe online:
For the batter I mixed 1/2 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp sugar, and a splash of pepper mixed with 2 TBsp of water. I used this to coat the mushrooms and fried in 3 cups of olive oil. This was probably the tastiest part of the meal.



For the "fake fish" I literally used the beer batter fake fish recipes from meet the shannons' blog found here:
http://www.meettheshannons.net/2010/08/betty-crocker-project-beer-batter-fried.html
The batter was amazing.
I also made their vegan tartar sauce but that was a little bit wasteful on my part...both Mark and I don't like tartar sauce (which I didn't know Mark didn't like it) so that was a bit of a waste.



But otherwise the meal was quite tasty. Made some corn to go on the side.

vegan potato tacos

So I bought a bunch of potatoes recently for a specific dish, but ended up having a lot of leftovers. I wanted to try to use them up and knew we were having John and Robin over for dinner...I was planning to make my vegan mexican chicken dish with fresh avocados- so I googled "mexican potatoe salad". I ended up finding a couple weird recipes and tried one- it was ok, not great. I forgot to take pictures and decided not to post it as it was relatively boring and I probably won't make it again. but, in my searching I saw a recipe for "potatoe tacos" that looked interesting, so I made some adjustments and tried that this week.

Ingredients:
1 TBsp veggie oil
1 TBsp fajita seasoning
4 peeled, boiled and chopped potatoes
1 container of pre-sliced white mushrooms
Daiya mozzarella and cheddar cheese
1 can vegetarian refried beans
1/2-3/4 cup of salsa
soft taco shells
sliced avocados

Directions:
preheat the oven to 350.
Stir together the oil and fajita seasoning. Then toss the mushrooms and potatoes in them until evenly coated.
Arrange the potatoes and mushrooms on a baking tray. Sprinkle with a layer of mixed vegan cheese. Bake for 15 minutes.

While the potatoes and mushrooms are baking, stir together the refried beans and salsa in a microwave safe bowl. Cover with a paper towel and microwave on high for 3 minutes.
Spon the bean mixture in to the bottom of the taco sheels, then place the potatoe mixture on top of that. Then put whatever taco topping you want on top (I had avocados I needed to use so I tried that).
I thought it was a pretty tasty and unique taco dish- Mark was not a fan, which is ok, not every dish I make is good. Mark thought it was "too much like baby food", so I guess he does not like refried beans.
But I thought it was a good dish, if you want to use up some potatoes in a unique way give it a try!

taco salads

I think I make too much mexican...but it's so easy to convert vegan!!
I made taco salad for several nights in a row this week- initially made tacos but had enough leftovers that I could just break up the tacos in to chip sizes and layer the bottom of a boil with it. Then I placed mornigstar crumbles that had been cooked with red kidney beans and some fajita seasoning in the bowl, then on top of that fresh chopped tomatoes, then on top of the daiya cheese. Then just microwaved and served with some vegan sour cream- so easy and tasty.

Sweet Bean and Potatoe Casserole

Nothing too special about this dish- but it was great for leftovers.

Ingredients:
1 pound of potatoes
Olive oil
3 TBsp margarine
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 TBsp thyme
1 TBsp marjoram
1 can butter beans
1 can chickpeas
1 can kidney beans
1 busshel of chopped green onions
1 container of chopped up portabella mushrooms
1/4 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup apple sauce
1 cup V8 or two small cans of V8
1/4 cup red cooking wine
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar

DIRECTIONS:
Peel and slice the potatoes. Boil until soft. Drain and toss with a small amount of olive oil.
In a large saucepan add the margarine and flour, V8, apple sauce, sugar, ketchup, cooking win, and soy cause. Heat and whick until it thickens and comes to a boil.
Turn the heat down once boiling and add in the beans, chickpeas, onions, mushrooms, and spices. Stir well and keep heated for a couple minutes.
Spoon the mixture in to a casserole dish.
Layer the potatoes on top of the mixture overlapping slightly and completely covering the bean mixture.
Cover and bake at 400 for 1 hours. Remove the foil about 20 minutes prior to finishing to brown the poatotoes.

The Kennedy Tour

Mark has been complaining that we don't do enough together when we have the weekends off together- so when I saw tht livingsocial had a 1/2 historical tour I jumped on it. This past Saturday Mark and I went on "The Kennedy Tour". It sounded a little lame- 90 minutes of a walking tour around Boston pointing out sites famous to the Kennedys, but it was actually quite fun- considering we would have otherwise been in the house being lazy watching TV or reading...the guy giving the tour knew his stuff, and we learned a lot of neat new facts about Boston with regards to its history and links with the Kennedys, it was a lot more fun then we both anticipated.

meat and potatoes vegan style

Thought I would try a traditional meat and poatoes dinner vegan style, it took no time at all to make and was pretty tasty!
I used the new gardein fake chicken...they have a couple flavors but I used this one for this dish- basically just heated it up in the microwave while cooking everything else (I know, lame).


Then I made mashed potatoes from scratch- easy enough- boil some peeled potatoes, then mash and add some soy milk and margarine.
I then took a bag of fresh spinach and steamed it down, then fried it in a little balsalmic vinegar.
I was lazy with the gravy too...just used Han's Vegetarian Brown Gravy (which involves stirring a powder in some boiling water until it thickens, but it is vegan and tasy). And then voila, the vegan version of meat and potatoes was complete- AND TASTY!