Food

The Most Competitive Cookie Recipe
I may not give away the recipe, you must buy the book – Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar -

Check out the chocolate chip recipe, it’s incredible. No funky egg replacers (for those who don’t love the extra steps) just light amount of sugar, flour, vanilla and some chocolate chips, etc. Try adding your favorite vegan chips (You know I love Trader Joes, they do not use milk fat)  or dried fruit. Ohmigoodness, even my carnivorous friends and co-workers adore these cookies.

Black Bean Burgers a la Jamessina

-One can of black beans, drain and do quick rinse, then mash them until they are all smushed- or two cups total of cooked dried beans, also smushed.
-Heat up a frying pan and sautee frozen edamame (1/4 cup shelled), thinly sliced then diced zuchini (about a 1/4 cup), add in a few diced sundried tomatoes and get them hot.

Mix the heated veggies in with the black bean mash, and add 1/2 cup bread crumbs. Mix all together and then hand mold them into patties. Then, add a DASH of cumin and salt. Seriously, a dash. Lightly oil a frying pan and brown each side of the patty. Serve on any bread (I just used rye!) with sliced avocado, big piece of lettuce and some ketchup. YUM. And I don’t like beans!

Alternatives and additions: you can add in corn kernals, diced up carrots, whatever you have. I love sauté-ing spinach or swiss chard and mini-prepping and adding to the mixture. This is a great clean out your fridge recipe.

Keith’s Super Simple Chili

Step 1: Large Skillet
Chopped Onions
Chopped peppers
Tomato Paste (2 TBS ONLY!)
Agave
Minced Carrots 2 (chopped in mini-prep)
Chili Powder (1 TBS)
Ancho Chili Powder (1 tsp)

Step 2: Add that stuff to slow-cooker plus:
Black Beans (one can, rinsed, or one cup cooked dried beans)
Kidney Beans, White Beans (one can each or one cup cooked dried beans)
Diced Tomatoes, 1-2 cups or a big can

Let cook in the crockpot until thick and hot, gets better and better after the first two hours.

SOBA noodles in Peanut sauce!

• One package of organic Soba noodles
• 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
• 1/2 cup of soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon of water from Soba noodles
• sesame seeds, 1/2 teaspoon

Cook Soba noodles per package. While cooking, mix together the soy sauce and peanut butter until consistency is smooth. Add sesame oil and the one teaspoon of water from the pot of Soba noodles cooking. This should enable the mixture to be smoother. Stir until it is not lumpy from the peanut butter, if need be add another teaspoon of the boiling water of the Soba noodles to melt the peanut butter.

Mix peanut sauce with cooked and drained soba noodles, then sprinkle sesame seeds and stir to coat. Enjoy with some steamed edamame in the shell, lightly tossed with sea salt and use your chopsticks.

Wildly Delicious Vegan Lasagna (sort-of)

• box of vegan pasta of your choice (I chose Nature’s Promise rotini pasta from Stop and Shop)
• 1 package of firm tofu
• 1/4 cup sundried tomatoes
• 1/4 cup chopped sweet onion
• 1 tblsp oregano
• 1/2 small lemon worth of juice
• 2 cups spinach, chopped
• Tomato sauce of choice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare pasta normally and cook until tender, stirring every now and then to avoid sticking. Lightly swipe a bit of vegan butter/margarine (Earth Balance, Soy Garden) around the lasagna dish (either a rectangle or square baking dish).

In a mini-prep, blend the tofu, onions, oregano and lemon juice until cottage cheese consistency. Stir with fresh chopped spinach in a bowl until mixed.

Once cooked, place one layer of pasta n baking dish and cover with tofu/spinach mixture and layer of tomato sauce. Repeat two more times, leaving tofu/spinach mixture and sauce as the top layer.

Bake for 30-40 minutes and serve! This dish is awesome because unlike lasagna, there are tons of servings in this one dish. Unless your family is like mine, and they eat at dinner and then sneak a dish at 10PM. Enjoy!

Hearty Pasta Night: Bowtie with Sundried Tomato-Almond-Pesto and Sauteed Mushrooms
1 box bowtie pasta, cooked per package
1 jar favorite pasta sauce
1 cup sliced mushrooms (feel free to try variations of mushroom)
1/4 cup chopped onions
tablespoon or so of olive oil to sautee mushrooms and onions
PESTO:
1/2 cup raw almonds, slivered or whole
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes
1/4-1/3 cup olive oil
1 1/2  cups basil leaves
fresh ground pepper to taste
dash of sea salt to taste

In mini-prep, blend together all pesto ingredients until almonds are finely chopped. Pesto should have texture and not be smooth.

• Tip: Drizzle olive oil in through the hole in the cover during processing.
• Another Tip: You can replace half the amount of oilve oil with soy/rice/almond milk to cut fat calories.

Sautee onions until golden and tender, add mushrooms and sautee with olive oil until hot. Toss cooked pasta in large bowl with sauce to taste, pesto mixture and mushrooms/onions. Serve hot with a nice green side dish of sauteed or steamed spinach or asparagus. As a variation, add as many chopped veggies, sauteed or baked to perfection, as you would like.