Happy New Year! I'm still in holiday mode and don't have the motivation to cook anything from scratch, but did want to start off the new year eating healthy things. For dinner, I made these vegan Thai peanut noodles which took 10 minutes to make because everything came from a packet or a bottle.
For the noodles, I used Trader Joe's organic gluten-free, brown rice spaghetti noodles. These noodles are the best gluten-free pasta I've tried. In fact, my folks thought they were eating regular wheat spaghetti noodles. These spaghetti noodles cook in 9 minutes. I made about 2 cooked cups worth.
For the peanut sauce, I used Whole Foods 365 brand organic peanut sauce. This sauce is vegan but not gluten-free. If you can find a bottled peanut sauce that is gluten-free, then you can make this whole dish gluten-free friendly.
While the noodles are cooking, in a wok or medium sauce pan, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil on medium heat.
Add 1/2 cup creamy organic peanut butter, 1/4 cup of organic peanut sauce, two pinches of organic ginger powder, and 1 cup of organic rice milk. The olive oil helps keep the peanut butter from sticking to the pan. Coconut milk would be best but you can use any dairy-free milk. I had rice milk in the fridge.
Continuously stir all the ingredients together well for about 5 minutes until you have a nice smooth heated sauce. Add more milk in if you want a thinner sauce.
Toss in the spaghetti noodles and mix well with the peanut sauce.
From the Whole Foods salad bar, I got shredded beets, carrots, green onions, and chopped cashews which I used to top the noodles.
Voila! Ready to eat in 10 minutes. If you want to make this dish from scratch, here is a recipe I did back in April.
When I took this pizza out of the oven my parents thought the pie was made with real chicken and dairy cheese. Nope, it's vegan! I'm kinda proud of myself for finding a way to make the cheese look like real melted mozzarella. I shall share my secret in a moment.
One of my beefs (no meat pun intended) with most vegan pizza I've tried or seen is that the cheese doesn't look melted or tastes like you would imagine vegan cheese to taste. I've been doing experiments with different vegan cheeses, and this experiment proved successful.
This is only the second time I've ever made pizza at home. The first time was a disaster because the baking pan I used burned the outside of the crust and left the inside a bit gooey. This time I bought a pizza stone, and what a difference. I bought my stone at Cost Plus World Market for $12.99, and what a great investment.
My crust turned out fat because I didn't roll out the dough thin enough, but that's okay. We can be creative and call it fat crust versus thick crust like we did it on purpose. I like my pizza topping heavy, so as you can see I loaded up on the stuff. The crust is a darker brown because it's made with whole wheat.
This entire pizza is made with pre-made ingredients I purchased from two stores: Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.
Daiya also has a Jack Wedge which is another nice looking cheese that is white like mozzarella, but it doesn't have as much flavor as the Havarti. If you like mild, try the Jack. Although the Havarti has Jalapeno, the heat is really mild to almost non-existent, at least to me.
If you don't have a Whole Foods nearby, Trader Joe's also has pre-made pizza dough and vegan chick'n strips. I really like the Beyond Meat Chicken because it shreds like real chicken. With the barbecue sauce, the Beyond Meat Chicken comes very close to the taste and texture of real chicken. Remember my Beyond Meat chicken salads?
I used the coconut flour instead of wheat flour to help roll out the dough and to make shreds with the Daiya Havarti wedge because loose wheat flour can burn. Cornmeal is also recommended.
Here's the secret to making my melty looking vegan cheese. I combined two different vegan cheeses, the Trader Joe's vegan mozzarella and the Daiya Havarti wedge which I turned into shreds. Daiya does make mozzarella shreds, but I do not care for the taste and I don't like how it melts. The Trader Joe's vegan mozzarella by itself doesn't melt that great in my opinion and is not that tasty.
When you mix the Daiya and Trader Joe's cheese together some magic happens!
The trick to making Diaya Havarti shreds
I tried making shreds with the Daiya Havarti wedge straight on a handheld cheese shredder and it was a disaster because the havarti is too soft and clumps so you end up with a sticky ball. What works better is to cut about a 1/4 of the whole wedge, coat it with some coconut flour or cornmeal, and put the wedge into the freezer for about 90 minutes so the cheese hardens but is not rock solid.
The semi-frozen havarti will now make some nice shreds that won't stick together. As you shred, periodically stop and sprinkle some of the coconut flour on the shreds and mix them around so the shreds coat with the flour. This will help prevent the shreds from clumping together. In a bowl, blend the Trader Joe's vegan cheese and Daiya Havarti together.
An important point about the cheese
Save the shredding of the Daiya Havarti until the very end. Rolled out your pizza dough to your desired pizza size, and top your pizza with the BBQ sauce, Beyond Meat Chicken, mushrooms, red onion, and basil. Blend the TJ cheese and Daiya Havarti together and top at the very end because the Havarti will warm up fast and start clumping together. The key is to keep the Daiya as frozen as long as possible.
I baked my pizza on the stone for 15 minutes at 450 degrees rotating the pizza about 90 degrees every five minutes. Another good tip is to pre-heat the stone for about 10 minutes before you put your pizza on top of it.
Now that I have discovered a cool way to make melty looking vegan cheese on pizza, I cannot wait to try other flavor combinations. Are there any tricks you've used to make melty and better tasting vegan cheese for pizza?
One of my favorite pre-made salads in the deli section of Whole Foods is their Autumn Couscous salad made with Israeli couscous.
I love the pearled Couscous as it reminds me of Asian pearl tea drinks. I also love the butternut squash and dried cranberries for a sweet flair. I couldn't find a recipe online but the ingredients are basic so you could easily make up a version at home.
At one of my local Whole Foods, they were sampling Fava brand fava bean hummus and I fell in love with their hearty Roasted Red Pepper fava hummus. I've never had a hummus made with fava beans before. I was easy to convince to try it because I have an affinity for Roasted Pepper flavored hummus.
Silence of the Lambs made fava beans with chianti thrilling, but no need to fear here with this hummus. Fava beans are nutrient-dense, high in fiber, and high in protein. From Livestrong, here are some of the health benefits of fava beans.
One of the fastest and easiest ways to make fun taco fillings is to go to your local salad bar at the grocery store like the Whole Foods Salad Bar and create some unique mix of vegetables, protein and grains like you would for a salad, and then dump that mix onto a tortilla.
Whole Foods 365 brand organic corn tortillas are like $1 for a bag of 12 tortillas, a fantastic deal in my book. Plus those corn tortillas are vegan, low fat, and low sodium.
In my fish taco creation above, Whole Foods had in their hot food bar Teriyaki Salmon which I cut up into smaller chunks and coupled the fish with arugula, Cranberry Quinoa salad, red peppers, purple cabbage, shredded beets, and tomato chunks I got from the salad bar.
Seriously, this is how I can make a different kind of taco every day of the week. And the beauty of these salad bar tacos is that no cooking is involved and it is a fun way to eat more vegetables in your day.
In this taco creation, I got roasted butternut squash, black beans, corn, purple cabbage, tomato chunks, and avocado which I bought separately and cut up.
Next time you're at a salad bar, tell me what kind of creative taco filling you can come up with.
You know I'm all about easy. This risotto dish was made entirely from a box and salad bar fixings.
The risotto is Lundberg brand Organic Florentine Risotto. This risotto is vegan. You could easily use another one of the Lundberg risottos to make a vegetarian meal. I would pick the Butternut Squash Risotto.
I followed the instructions on the box except used only 3/4 of the seasoning packet to help cut down the sodium, and used 1-1/2 cup of vegetable stock and 1 cup of rice milk instead of 2-1/2 cups of water. The vegetable stock and rice milk add some flavor and creaminess.
From the salad bar at one of my local Whole Foods, I got about 1/3 cup of mushrooms, 1/3 cup of peas, and a handful of the pea shoots. I love the salad bar because everything is already pre-cut. Trader Joe's also sells pea shoots in their vegetable section. Check you local natural food stores for pea shoots as well.
When the risotto was done cooking and I took the pan off the burner to cool, I mixed in the peas and mushrooms because they don't really need to be cooked. I added the pea shoots as a decoration when plating the risotto.
Voila! Quick and easy risotto with lots of beautiful vegetables.
One of the fun things you can do with large round eggplant is thinly slice the eggplant, and use those slices to make pasta-free, gluten-free layers in lasagna or make cylindrical shapes to create cannelloni.
I made a vegan, semi-homemade version of this Eggplant Cannelloni recipe on Epicurious. I say semi-homemade because instead of making the pasta sauce from scratch like in the recipe, I used a bottle of Whole Foods 365 organic Marinara sauce and combined that sauce with some roasted tomato, garlic and red onion to make the sauce chunkier.
For my vegan ricotta, I experimented using Daiya Jalapeno Garlic Havarti and extra firm organic tofu. I used half a cup of each ingredient and blended them together in a mini food processor until the mixture had the consistency of ricotta.
My vegan ricotta concoction looked and had the texture almost exactly like real ricotta. I was amazed. The taste of my vegan ricotta however was not awful, but wasn't spectacular. I'm going to have to experiment more.with the taste, but am very excited about the texture success.
Have you made a vegan ricotta? Please share any recipe links.
At one of my local Whole Foods, they had these most delicious looking grilled salmon steaks. They were a little pricey, but still cheaper than buying a salmon dinner at a restaurant.
In the frozen seafood section, Whole Foods 365 seafood brand has frozen salmon steaks you can just thaw and grill or bake at home.
I opted to get a small salmon steak at the hot foods bar because I didn't feel like cooking. I paired the salmon with a kale, avocado, tomato salad and some pearl coucous with cranberries and almonds, all from the Whole Foods hot bars.
What are you having or did have for dinner tonight?
Now that it is Fall, there are plenty of pumpkin foods to enjoy. Besides the meat of the pumpkin also consider eating the seeds.
Pumpkin seeds or Pepitas (in Spanish) are not only tasty especially when slightly toasted, these seeds are loaded with vitamins, minerals, amino acids, carbohydrates and essential fatty acids. Here are some health benefits of pumpkin seeds from Livestrong. Pumpkin seeds are also a dietary source of L-tryptophan which can help aid in the healing of depression.
I eat pumpkin seeds all the time because I like the crunch and the flavor. I'll throw the seeds on salads, yogurt, and ice cream, or eat them plain especially as a post workout snack.
To help spark your creativity, here are some delicious dishes using pumpkin seeds from fabulous food bloggers around the noshosphere:
Homemade Trail mix with autumn flavors - pumpkin seeds, pistachios, cranberries, cinnamon and nutmeg. [Tasty Eats At Home]
Asian-flavored kale and cabbage slaw with pumpkin seeds [Lisa is Cooking]
Shrimp salad with peppery greens, sunflower and pumpkin Seeds [Wishful Chef]
This vegan, gluten-rree Tikka Masala Coconut Curry with Volcano Rice is a semi-homemade dish I made using Sukihi's brand Tikka Masala Curry Sauce in a packet.
Cooking time takes 15-minutes. Easy!
I tweaked the recipe on the back, and used 1 cup of coconut milk instead of whipping cream, and 1/2 cup of water. I added more liquid so my curry was a little thinner. The original liquid mix was a little to thick for me.
The recipe calls for chicken which you could use vegan chicken to keep the dish vegan or use regular chicken if you want to make a meat dish for another night.
To make a vegan curry dish, I used chunks of cauliflower, broccolini, chickpeas, potatoes, and some pan-fried tofu.
I coupled my Tikka Masala Coconut Curry with a side of Volcano Rice and a kale salad massaged with Brianna's Blush Wine Vinaigrette. The cool sweet of the vinaigrette was a nice complement to the spice of the curry sauce.
