Veganomicon's scalloped potatoes

Tonight I made a fabulous recipe from Veganomicon. Actually, I made two recipes, and my husband and I enjoyed them both. The first one is called Herb-Scalloped Potatoes. They were delicious. As with the Lemony Roasted Potatoes, I had to play with the oven time a bit, but that's okay. I also realized that I definitely have to make more than the recipe calls for. We ate every bit of it - even the baby ate it! I'll post my revised recipe after I make it again and have time to play with it a bit. They're made from potatoes, soymilk, broth, nooch, and spices.

The other recipe I made was the Southwestern Corn Pudding. It's sweet and chewy and very nice. Unfortunately, only my four year old would eat it, so I won't be making it again. It was a very pretty dish. The picture from my phone does NOT do the dish justice. I used blue corn meal, plus there was red from the red pepper, green from the jalapeno, and yellow from the corn - very colorful!


The peanut butter/banana crepe roll ups were iffy. I screwed them up this morning. I mashed the banana up too much making it very gooey. When I made them for the rest of us for lunch, I just mashed the banana enough to squish it a bit, and the roll ups were good. The kids are willing to give them another shot tomorrow.

Hurry Up Alfredo

I tried a new recipe tonight from a blog I follow: Vegan Yum Yum. Apparently she has a cookbook coming out and this recipe is going to be in it. This recipe is super easy and pretty tasty. It was a little bland for me, but my family chowed down on it. I changed it up a little using Bragg for the tamari. I only had one tablespoon though of Bragg, so I used it and then added one teaspoon of salt. Next time I am going to plan on sauteing some vegetables to add to it. Sorry for the poor picture. My camera isn't working, so I took this on my phone. Here's the recipe Hurry Up Alfredo

I've been trying to brain storm some new ideas for the kidlets lunches. One idea I came up with was to make cornmeal crepes and put some peanut butter, honey, and bananas in the middle. I made the crepes tonight. I used this crepes recipe blueberry crepes. I'm anxious to see how they roll ups turn out.

Tofu and spinach with coconut-peanut sauce

This is the dish I mentioned before. I know I have a habit of saying that I'm going to play with a recipe and then post it, and then I don't! Well, this time I'm actually posting one that I've played with! The original recipe came from Delicious Living, and it's supposed to be for the slow cooker. I haven't made it in the slow cooker yet though. Everyone in my family LOVES this recipe, and eats every bite of it. Here is the delicious recipe:
2 13.5 oz cans coconut milk
2/3 C peanut butter
2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/8 tsp cayenne
2 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp Bragg Liquid Aminos
19 oz firm tofu, drained, pressed, and cubed
3 large handfuls of spinach
2 C brown rice

Cook rice. Put everything but rice and spinach in a big pot. Cook over very low heat for 20 minutes. Add spinach and cook about 5 minutes more. Mix in rice and serve with Bragg and Sriracha. Delicious!!!

How hippies do football food...

Being whole food eating hippies AND massive football fans, I had to figure out some healthy(ish) football food for the NFC championship game. I'm pleased with the spread! We had tempeh hot wings, roasted potatoes, sweet potato fries, a green salad, and fruit kabobs with an orange cashew dip. It was yummy!

I got the recipe for sweet potato fries from a fellow food blogger, and the original recipe is here. I changed it a little to reduce the salt and make it gluten free. So, here's how I made them:
Sweet potato fries
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp gf all purpose flour or amaranth flour
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne
1 tsp salt
Chop sweet potatoes into fries. Put the rest of the ingredients in a big bag. Put the fries in the bag and shake them until they're coated. Bake at 400 degrees for 30-40 minutes until soft and slightly browned.

Here's the recipe for the orange-cashew dip
1 1/2 C raw cashews
1/4 C maple syrup
1/2 C orange juice
1 tsp vanilla
Blend in a high powered blender until smooth and creamy. Chill and serve with fruit!

Gluten free blueberry crepes

There's so much going on lately, that I haven't been keeping up with this blog very well. I've been cooking a lot of great vegetarian, dairy-free, gluten-free food lately though! I just made crepes for the first time ever. A while back I bought a crepe pan, and I never used it. I recently cleaned out my kitchen, and I resolved to either use the pan or get rid of it! Well, the crepes were fabulous, and I'll definitely be making them again, so the pan stays! I got the recipe out of Vegetarian Times. I can't tell you the number of VT recipes that I have tried and liked. Many of them have become regulars are our dinner table. Vegetarian Times is a great resource for vegetarian recipes. This recipe wasn't gluten-free or dairy-free, so I'll post the way I made it. Also, since I am cutting out almost all refined white sugar from my diet, I'll be experimenting with it more in the future, but for now, here's how I made it. These crepes were absolutely delicious, and I did not miss the gluten or dairy AT ALL!

Cornmeal Crepe Batter
1 C gf all-purpose flour
1 C masa
1/2 C sugar
1 tbsp grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp salt
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 C almond milk
1 tsp vanilla

Filling
3 C fresh blueberries
10 oz. all fruit blueberry spread

Cashew Cream
1 1/2 C cashews
1/4 C maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 - 1/2 C water

Whisk together flour, masa, sugar, zest, and salt. Whisk in eggs. Whisk in milk 1/2 C at a time until batter is smooth. Whisk in vanilla. Cover and chill over night (recipe says at least 30 min.). Simmer fruit spread and 1/4 C water for about five minutes. Take off heat and mix in blueberries. Blend ingredients for cashew cream in a heavy duty blender until smooth and chill.

Whisk 1/4 C water into batter to thin. Lightly oil pan and heat over med heat. When skillet is hot, pour 1/4 C batter into it, lifting and turning pan to swirl batter so that it coats bottom of pan. Cook until edges begin to brown and center is dry. Flip and cook 30 seconds to 1 minute more. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve with blueberry mix and cashew cream.

Here's some of the other delicious gf/df food that we've been eating lately:

This dish was absolutely mouth watering! It had two kinds of mushrooms plus tempeh in a mustard/beer sauce. I used a gf beer and amaranth flour, and it was so delicious. I served it over mashed potatoes and with a side of sauteed chard. I may have to make this one every time my husband goes out of town (he doesn't like mushrooms. Weird, I know.)



My son took this picture (note the Luke Skywalker light saber chopsticks!). This was a recipe called breakfast beans (best - beans - ever! out of The Seventh-day Diet) with brown rice. I also put lots of lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, hot sauce, and nooch in mine. Yum! This one is sort of a standard at our house.



This night we had a lentil loaf (out of The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook), balsamic roasted green beans and red peppers, and a huge green salad. Healthy comfort food!



Here's another mushroom dinner that we had when my husband was out of town. It's a mushroom-tomato soup. The kids weren't crazy about it. I guess I'll have to make this one for book club! I love it. It's an old stand by for me. It has lots of onions, mushrooms, parsley and/or basil, and red wine in it. We had a big green salad and rice crackers with it.



This dish was another hit it out of the ballpark meal! We LOVED it. The kids gobbled it up. I am going to experiment with the recipe a little before I post it because it needs a bit more bite to it. It was really fabulous though. It had coconut milk, tofu, spinach, and rice in it. The kids totally chowed down on it!



For this meal, I cooked up some CSA spaghetti squash. I sauteed onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, and fresh basil to put over the top of it. Unfortunately, the whole meal took longer to cook than I had anticipated, so by the time we ate it, it was kind of cold. I need to make that dish last next time because it's not nearly as good when it's cold. The noodle dish was soba noodles with veggies and a peanut/vinegar sauce. I thought it was okay, but everyone else loved it, so it looks like that recipe is here to stay as well!