Meatless Monday: Tortilla Pizza from Scratch

I have been lazy these past few days.

I'm making excuses to not do much work and read my days away (or watch season 5 of Grey's Anatomy) because it's my "birthday week" and all. But then again, I'm making massive amounts of banana ice cream that could count as testing for my next ebook...

On the other hand, I really don't think having a few days "off" is a bad idea at all. We all have this mentality drilled into us that always being busy is good and means we're being productive. Down time is a necessity and I have been working 6-7 days a week lately. Off days usually involve going to the market and the odd beach day. I'm definitely planning on taking more days to enjoy this amazing country.

What do you do to unwind?

I like to sleep in (which now means anytime past 7) and take my sweeeet time getting out of bed. An easy breakfast before a short yoga session, then either reading a book, taking a walk or lazing around watching a movie. The day just continues this way. I make easy simple meals, or if I feel like it's an "indulge" day, I'll make 3 recipes in a day. Sometimes my lazy days mean eating days. In comes the tortilla pizza.

This is one recipe that would fit in nicely between either of my favorite lazy days. It isn't too complex and doesn't take very long, but it tastes indulgent and makes for a great movie meal. I can easily eat 5-6 of them... Pizza doesn't have to be junk food! Make it in a  tortilla and it becomes an easy meal to whip up any day of the week.

I made this one south-american themed, but you can easily make it more traditional with your toppings of choice.

Tortilla Pizza

Fixings:

-       Crust:

o   1 cup masa harina

o   ½ cup water

-       Toppings:

o   Steamed kale

o   Roasted red peppers

o   Fresh tomatoes

o   Refried Beans

Mix the crust ingredients together until a firm dough is formed. Separate the ball into two roughly even ones and roll them out with the method detailed here, but thicker and with a tiny crust if desired. Also, leave it on until crisp instead of still soft, you want that crunch for your pizza.

You can also use store bought tortillas to make this extra fast and convenient.

Add on your toppings of choice, I used refried beans topped with sautéed kale and red peppers plus fresh tomatoes and a sprinkle of nooch.

Put the assembled deliciousness back into the pan or into the over to crisp up and heat the toppings up.

*** SIDENOTE***

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Meatless Monday's: Mushroom Gravy

I've come to realize that making otherwise non-vegan friendly comfort foods into healthy vibrant dishes is sort of becoming my thing. I'm loving that I can eat all these things without a deep-fryer, excess salt and all that jazz. That being said, I don't really want to box this blog into just being that one thing.

Challenges could also be considered my thing.

Although this gravy is barely a challenge since it's been around in the standard diet for quite some time and probably one of the easiest things to make without oil or animal products. I've had it over a million different dishes and now it's always a pleasant surprise to find many restaurants using mushroom gravy instead of their meat based counterparts.

Since I'll be reembarking onto the raw fruity wagon as of my birthday on the 7th of March, I'll be posting many more raw recipes: smoothies, salads, dishes, snacks... However I do have many recipes still in reserve so those will be popping up now and again as well.

Onto the food!

Mushroom Gravy

Ingredients:

- 4 cups sliced or diced mushrooms (I used portobellos)

- 1 medium onion, minced.

- 2.5 cups broth or water

- 2-3 tbsp gluten-free flour

- 2-3 tbsp Braggs Soy seasoning or tamari

- Generous pinch black pepper

In a deep pan, sauté the onion with a bit of water until translucent, add the mushrooms and cook until they start releasing juicy goodness.

Add in the broth/water, braggs and black pepper. Then whisk the flour in a bit of water until well combined and add it a bit at a time to the pan while whisking it continuously and waiting a bit between each addition until you've reached the consistency that you enjoy.

Serve it over mashed potatoes, rice, veggies... Whatever feels right!

Enjoy!

ALSO: as I have mentioned I have some plans to grow the blog. I would LOVE your input and have put together a short 2 minute survey. I would be eternally grateful if you could fill it out.
Here's the link. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YJ6PH75

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Meatless Monday's: Lentil Sloppy Joe's

Lately I've been spending far too much time looking at party foods. Appetizers and mains of this kind were definitely my kryptonite, until I found sneaky ways to make them healthy. Not just kinda healthy, but follow all my guidelines healthy. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.

I mean, yeah, there is a place for a little indulgence of a different kind now and again, but if you can make it just as tasty (or better) without the oils, salt and questionable ingredients, then why not?

And thinking of all this awesome food without being able to make any of it really sucks.

We've been having issues with keeping food stocks up. The place we're renting at the moment is literally at the top of a mountain, and we use our bike to get around. Since the road up here is getting more and more dangerous, bringing up 30-50lbs of fruit and veggies for dinner is not exactly easy. Thankfully, we are moving at the end of the month!

Although, we haven't decided where yet... Seems to be a theme with us. We're off to town today to get it all sorted.

Okay, back to food. I whipped this up a few months ago when I was still in Ottawa, working away at finishing school and in need of an awesome meal to keep me going. 

This is definitely one of those super healthy meals that doesn't look like one, heck I even put kale in these bad boys!

Lentil Sloppy Joe's

Ingredients:

- 1.5 cups dry brown lentils

- 1/2 cup finely chopped kale

- 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes

- 1/3 cup finely diced peppers

- 1/3 cup chopped carrots

- 1 medium onion, minced.

-  2 tbsp tomato paste

- 1/2 cup organic ketchup

- 1/2 tsp chili powder

- 1/2 tsp cumin

- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika

- Sriracha, to taste

- S/P to taste

- 1/4 head chopped cabbage or coleslaw

- Pickles of choice

- 4 ezekiel or GF buns (or cabbage cups)

Cook the lentils according to the instructions on the packaging.

In a large pan, water sauté the onions until translucent, add the carrots and cook about 5-7 mins. Add the peppers, tomatoes and kale.

Add in the spices and hot sauce and let cook for just about a minute, then add in the lentils, tomato paste and ketchup. Let it all cook until thick and saucy.

Assembly time! Bun, sloppy mixture of goodness, coleslaw or cabbage and pickles. I also prefer my bun a little toasted, gives the whole dish that perfect touch.

On nom nom....

Enjoy!


ALSO: as I have mentioned I have some plans to grow the blog. I would LOVE your input and have put together a short 2 minute survey. I would be eternally grateful if you could fill it out.
Here's the link. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YJ6PH75

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Top Ten Game Day Eats

I used to be a huge sports fan. Hockey was my game, but really I'd watch most sports. Nowadays, I usually just use my friends interest in sports to make them awesome vegan food. I even hosted a Grey Cup party before coming to Costa Rica. I just wanted to make chilli cheese fries.

Big game days, like the Superbowl that's imminent, are serious foodie days. People have their staples, or go all gourmet and make feasts worthy of Kings.

I like going ALL out. Bring out the showstoppers people.

Especially when it means showing off your plant-based cooking skills in dishes that will have people taking back their "being vegan is difficult" comments while chowing down on your masterpieces.

While I do take out the foods that I may not always eat, I think that it is 100% possible to make a healthy, decadent spread for all to enjoy. Beats having that stomach ache later.

SO here is my top 10 game day recipes:

1. Buffalo Cauliflower

These babies can be fired up to any spice level you want. They are crunchy delicious bites that can also be made as saucy as you like. Personally, I like drowning them.

2. Chilli

No game day spread is complete without chilli, enough said.

3. Chilli Cheese Fries

While you're at it, might as well make a build your own chilli cheese fries bar. These are so good I could eat nothing else for a week.

4. Guacamole

Mix it up with some salsa for an explosion of flavor.

Another staple of the day, just whip up an extra large batch of the recipe from the Chilli Cheese Fries. Watch as it accomplishes it's inevitable disappearing act!

5. Black Bean Sliders

This recipe is easy to covert to bite-size patties. Serve em up with your favorite toppings.

6. Hummus

This one's not just for the herbivores, I was addicted to hummus way before I switched over to the plant-based ways. There are a million variations, try out roasted red pepper, sundried tomato, or black olive varieties. Apparently, this blog is lacking a recipe for this delicious dip. I will have to rememeber to remedy to that!

7. Hell-Fire Dip

Let's get that mouth burning just a bit more, shall we? This dip has got one hell of a kick, depending on what hot sauce and jerk sauce you use. You can easily tone it down if a fire breathing mouth isn't your thing.

8. Lettuce Wraps

Lettuce wraps are the new burrito. Okay, nothing will ever replace the burrito. This one is easy to whip up and you can vary the fillings to whatever is in season. This is much better than a simple garden salad any day.

9. Melon Citrus Slushies

You've go have something delicious to accompany all those decadent dishes. This one is cool and refreshing, a greta compliment to all the rich food you'll be serving.

10. Black Bean Brownies

Make these bad boys into two-bite brownies by using a small muffin tray. Serve with some banana ice cream!

ENJOY!!

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Meatless Monday's: Quick Black Bean Burgers

Sometimes, there just isn't the time or energy to make dinner, let alone a complex meal.

I find that somedays, if I didn't eat as simply as I do, I'd just be too lazy to make myself food. Or I just get so caught up with whatever it is that I'm doing that once I realize I have to eat, it's a gotta-eat-right-now-omg-starving kind of feeling. During the day, I scarf down some fruit, usually just whatever is ripest and easiest, which 90% of the time means bananas. Fruit is the fastest food around!

But then, on those days days, when dinner comes around and I'm not in the mood for a monster truck size salad, something quick and easy is on my mind.

In comes the black bean burger.

You can even freeze them, which means even less preparation time come dinner.

Just as a side note, the buns I used are not of the gluten-free variety. I haven't found a store bought (or what I would love is a local bakery) that makes vegan gluten free buns that tastes great, or even just have a non-crumbly texture. If anyone has any suggestions, I am more than open to trying any! Anywho, I used the ezekiel organic flour-free sprouted buns, that I find are the only wheat I can digest just fine.

Quick Black Bean Burgers

Ingredients:

-1 can, or equivalent homecooked, black beans

- 1/3 cup oats

- 1/2 tbsp chili powder

- Hot sauce, to taste

- 1 1/2 tsp dijon mustard

Pre-heat oven to 400F

In a medium bowl, mash the beans until about half are still in bits and pieces, add in the oats and all the seasonings and mix well. 

Form into 4 patties on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake on each side for about 5-7 minutes, until the outside is almost crispy, but not browned.

Using your burger bun of choice, or a lettuce leaf, load on your favorite toppings. I added lettuce, avocado, hot sauce, organic ketchup, mustard and some low fat vegan mayo. Tomatoes would have made it perfect, but I didn't have any at the time.

ENJOY!

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Fiery Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

There is no doubt in my world that soup is the ultimate cold weather food. Seeing as fall has sunk its toes into the ground, and winter is peeking from behind the clouds, I figured now was the perfect time to post this recipe. It used to be a constant in my world this time of year last year, I'm pretty sure I made it at least once every two weeks, always a batch that lasted me a few days.

During my 4 month 100% raw stint, I do have to admit that it one thing that I was missing until I discovered the awesome world of raw soups blended until warm. But that is subject matter for another post!

The greatest part of this soup? I got to eat the whole pot to myself. 

Somebodyyy wasn't the biggest fan of it. Which is fine by me when it comes to this soup. 

This somebody is also leaving for Costa Rica in just over a week, which leaves me with some time to fill until I join him in January. At least I have a few replacements to use as my testers, which is good since I plan to fill up my camera with a bunch of new food porn so that I have a bunch to tide me over this next big move, especially since I plan to eat a whole ton of fruit in Costa Rica, and not too much cooking will be happening so expect a ton of amazing raw food dishes!

I will, however, be working on some books to be released sometime in 2014, so keep an eye out for those.

Now, feast your eyes on this delicious pot of orange gold.

Sweet and spicy, it's simplicity betrays it's delicious flavours from the roasting that caramelizes the squash so that the spice perfectly balances the taste. 

Fiery Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients:

- 1 whole butternut squash

- 2-3 sweet potatoes, diced.

- 1 onion, diced.

- Water or veggie broth, to cover vegetables.

- Hot sauce, to taste.

- S/P

Put your whole squash in the oven at 400F and roast that baby for about 40 mins, or until a fork goes right through.

When that's done and cooled, dice your onion and cook it in a large pot with a bit of water to prevent sticking until translucent.

Add the sweet potatoes and cook for a few minutes, then add water to cover. Bring to a bubbly boil then simmer for 12 minutes or until almost done. Cut your squash in half and scoop the seeds out into the compost. Then scoop the yummy flesh into the pot of simmering goodness. 

Once everything is cooked through, using either a stick blender or in batches in your blender, whirl until smooth.

Back in the pot, season with S/P and hot sauce until it's just as you like it.

Serve nice and hot.

Enjoy!

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Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

Well it seems like fall has officially come to Toronto. We woke up this morning huddling for body heat, since we usually sleep with the window open because this condo has this weird tendency to be warm. Not so great of an idea last night!

It's also our last few days here. Prepping for a move back to Ottawa for a few months, I haven't had plenty of time to cook meals more complex than potatoes and hummus. Or even think much about new ideas. So it's been back to comfort staples, which I really don't mind, since eating simply is what I love best!

It's pretty obvious how much produce we eat around here, when all the boxes that we've used to pack have been from the fruit that we've eaten over the last while. Banana boxes are my favorite to pack with since they seem to be the perfect size for basically anything, are super strong and have handles. Not to mention they stack perfectly. Just another benefit of eating tons of fruit.

Now to the ice cream.

Even though I am not so happy about the cold, it definitely did not stop me from indulging in this treat. After having made pumpkin puree from the awesome local sugar pumpkins my partner got me, I didn't really want to just make the usual pumpkin pie and soup. Also, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to make the pie yet, since I don't use flours of any kind, it's going to be a bit of a challenge unless I make a raw crust.

So this lovely dish came to life. A fat-free, whole food, no-processed-sugar delicacy that everyone can enjoy! It's loaded with sticky good for you ingredients that make this not only a decadent treat, but a healthy one too.

 Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

Ingredients:

- 6 large bananas, peeled, cut and frozen.

- 3/4 cup pumpkin puree

- 10-14 dates, soaked,

- 1/2 cup coconut sugar

- 3 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I made my own, below)

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. 

You can serve immediately which will be more of a soft serve, or you can put into a freezer safe glass container and freeze it for a few hours to scoop it like I did. 

Pumpkin Pie Spice:

- 2 tsp cinnamon

- 1 tsp ginger (I actually used fresh)

- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

- 1/4 tsp ground cloves

Enjoy!

Comfort Food: Very Veggie Shepherds Pie

I've recently discovered the amazing world of reddit. There is such a massive array of topics on there, but as can be expected I went straight for the food. I found a great subreddit called veganrecipes where I occasionally share recipes and find amazing ones as well. I definitely recommend checking it out!

Through that group I found out about a subreddit called 52 weeks of vegan food. Of course I was curious and just had to check it out. Basically there will be a theme for every week for the next 52 weeks and people post recipes. Simple, awesome. Bonus is that I can post about my recipe adventures here and then it gives me less brain work for at least a post a week. Which means more posts! But unlike Vegan MoFo, which is intense, the demand isn't everyday and much much more manageable.

So this week's theme is comfort foods. When I think of comfort foods, two things come to mind: my favorite foods now and my favorite childhood foods. They are quite different from one another.

If this question were asked specifically for now, I would say sushi and a creamy dressing salad, well really mostly any ethnic rice dish tickles my comfort food fancy.

As for childhood foods, shepherd's pie is at the top of the list. Not the prettiest dish, it has many good memories attached of both my mom and grand-mother making them for me and my brothers.

Fortunately veganizing this dish is a cup of tea, although I do love a challenge. Simply replace the bottom layer with lentils and other veggies, a few spices and such. The rest stays the same. I also made this low fat by not using margarine or mylk in the potatoes. Just a little cooking water and god quality potatoes and they are just as creamy.

Very Veggie Shepherd's Pie

Ingredients:

- 5-6 large potatoes, boiled and mashed with 1/2-1 cup cooking water.

- 2-3 cups corn kernels (I used organic frozen corn)

- 1 medium sweet potato, diced.

- 2-3 medium carrots, diced. 

- 1 medium onion, diced.

- 1 bell pepper, diced.

- 2 can brown lentils, or equivalent cooked.

- 1 tbsp tomato paste

- 1 tsp pepper

- 1 tsp paprika

- 1tsp coriander powder

- 1/4 tsp white pepper

- 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Cook all veggies in this order: onions (2-3 mins) add carrots and sweet potato (4-5 mins), add pepper and lentils along with all the spices. Add water as needed to keep the veggies from sticking. 

When all the veggies are done, put them into a large oven safe glass deep dish. Add the corn on top followed by smoothing out the potatoes. Place into the oven on broil just to heat throughout and brown the top slightly.

Serve as is or with organic ketchup! 

Enjoy! 

Vegan MoFo 2013: Sleepy Sunday's Buffalo Cauliflower

When I think of snack food, it's funny that the actual items that I crave and make now are completely different than what they used to be. Although I went through a thousand phases diet-wise before settling into (very comfortably) veganism, there were certain items that I always loved. The realization I come to today, is that those greasy oil-rich foods I was eating weren't loved for what they actually were, but really for the sauces and spices they were made with. Or the dip, I am a big big fan of dipping things.

When I went vegetarian, I discovered the amazing world of spices. I truly found out what it was to cook amazing food, whereas before I mostly relied on packages foods, or easy to make meals. I started discovering an amazing world where I could make even more amazing food! I used to be the person who couldn't even make boxed mac and cheese well haha.

I can only attribute my love of food and making it to changing my lifestyle and discovering the whole foods, plant based way of living.

This recipe is super simple and the flavors can really be adjusted to whatever you want. Want asian inspired bites? Go for a peanuty sauce, or a sticky sweet garlic concoction. Thinking indian? A yellow curry would be delish. Go wherever your imagination takes you.

Buffalo Cauliflower Bites

Ingredients:

- 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets

- 1/4-1/2 cup hot sauce of choice.

- 1 tbsp tamari

- 1/4 cup water

- 1 tbsp paprika

Pre-heat oven to 400F

Spread cauliflower florets onto parchment paper over a cookie sheet. Roast for about 25  minutes.

While the cauliflower is roasting, combine all other ingredient in a large bowl. (you need enough room to toss the cauliflower in as well)

Remove the cauliflower from the over, carefully putting them into the big bowl and toss well to coat all the pieces. Return the cauliflower to the baking sheet and roast another 15-20 minutes, until slightly crispy.

Serve alone or with a dipping sauce of choice!

(The dip pictured didn't turn out as good as I thought it would, so it still needs a few changes)

Enjoy!