Daiya Cheese Dinners

I recently bought some Rustic Crust organic pizza crust, Daiya cheese, organic tomato sauce, organic spinach, and Tofurkey Italian sausage.  I made pizza, chicken parm, and cheesy sausage and pasta.

First was the pizza.  The crust was good! It's not hard to make your own crust from scratch, but it is time consuming.  This Rustic Crust was a healthy and quick alternative.

The spinach is hiding under the cheese.

Next was chicken parmesan with stelline organic pasta.  The pasta is not whole wheat, but it is so good with some earth balance and salt!

Again, the spinach is hiding under the Daiya.

 I finished up the un-sausage with some spiral whole wheat pasta and the rest of the sauce.

The Daiya and spinach made the sauce extra fantastic!

 The finished product was hearty and filling.

Raw Pizza and Good Karma

The Good Karma Cafe recently opened up in Red Bank, NJ.  Here's what I've had there so far.

A bacon cheese Earth Burger.  The burger itself was made with tofu, sunflower seeds,  and brown rice. The whole wheat bun was so good.  Of course, it came with vegan mayo, tempeh bacon (which was next level good), and vegan cheese.  I will definitely get it again.

 

The first time I had raw pizza, I thought it was weird.  It really does not taste like pizza, but over the years I've come to love its distinctive crunchy goodness.  Good Karma's raw pizza has sun dried tomato sauce, cashew nut cheese, marinated kale, shredded zucchini and raw parmesan (probably walnuts and nutritional yeast) on raw crackers.  So weird, but so good!

Adventures in Breadmaking

I like to use my bread maker to help me make dough. I don't have the patience to make dough from scratch, so I let the machine do most of the work. Here, I followed a recipe from the bread maker's instruction manual, substituting En-R-G egg replacer, Silk, and Earth Balance margarine for butter, milk, and eggs. After and hour and a half of the bread maker's kneading and rising, I spread the dough out on a cookie sheet, sprinkled margarine, cinnamon, sugar, and chopped walnuts onto it, rolled it, and cut it. After they came out of the oven I drizzled a Silk, vanilla, and confectioner's sugar icing on top. They were AWESOME!!!

Here is a loaf of oatmeal, cinnamon, and walnut bread:

...and here it is sliced with some margarine... ...and sprinkled with more cinnamon!

I also use the bread maker to help me make pizza dough. Here is a white flour pie, half with cremini mushrooms:

I love mushrooms on pizza!

... and here is a whole wheat pie, made easier with my handy bread maker!

Eggplant Parmesan

I bought a delicious, organic eggplant from my local health food store and decided to follow a recipe in The Veggie Works Vegan Cookbook to create vegan eggplant parm. I had all the ingredients I needed: eggplant sliced into thin circles, soy milk, bread crumbs, olive oil, tomato sauce, salt, and vegan mozzarella and parmesan. The first thing I did was let the eggplant slices sit with salt on them for about 20 minutes. Then, I coated each slice with flour, then dipped them into soy milk, and finally the bread crumbs. I fried each of the coated slices, then arranged them in a casserole dish with layers of tomato sauce in between. On the top, I added slices of Follow Your Heart vegan cheese and a generous sprinkling of vegan parmesan.Here's the result, right out of the oven. I found that the cheese a put in between the eggplant melted up really nicely, but I can't say the same for the cheese I put on top. It looks kind of weird, but it was good!

The Jersey Devil!

My recently discovered favorite breakfast treat is super filling and semi-nostalgic. This is a vegan version of a New Jersey classic: a fried egg, porkroll, and cheese sandwich on a hard roll. Kaya's Kitchen, the creators of The Jersey Devil and my favorite vegan restaurant in the whole world, is located in Belmar, NJ. Kaya's Kitchen has a seasonal breakfast menu that includes pancakes, waffles, french toast, all sorts of tofu scramble, breakfast burritos, and the unforgettable Jersey Devil. This vegan breakfast feast consists of fried tofu (the "egg"), veggie ham (the porkroll), and vegan cheese. The hard rolls are locally made by an area bakery. It's admittedly not the healthiest way to start the day, but it is SO DELICIOUS!!!

Mother's Cafe and Garden in Austin, TX

Mmmmmmm... Dinner at Mother's Cafe and Garden was so satisfying! I wish we had more than one opportunity to eat there. Their breakfast options looked every bit as tempting as their dinner and dessert, which I was lucky enough to sample. I opted for the TLT: Tempeh, Lettuce, and Tomato. The marinated tempeh was grilled along with the scrumptious whole wheat bread. I also got melted Vegan Rella (the only vegan cheese that actually melts, in my experience), a scoop of home made guacamole, sprouts, and some home made dijon mustard sauce. I was able to eat the whole thing (I was really hungry), but it didn't leave me feeling heavy or gross at all. We also got BBQ Tofu, which was marinated in a tamari-peanut sauce, and served with sage mashed potatoes (they were heavenly) and black eyed peas. We washed this all down with refreshingly tart, home made limeade. We were in a rush, so I didn't get to take pictures of their amazing desserts. We got Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie and Belgian Chocolate Cake. It was a perfect meal at a really cool place!

Vegan Mac and Cheese

When I'm feeling lazy, and I have to go food shopping but don't want to, I usually find that I have on hand the ingredients needed for a decent mac and cheese. I usually use whole wheat pasta, silken tofu (the non-refrigerated kind), nutritional yeast, Braggs Liquid Aminos (basically soy sauce), dried basil, garlic powder, olive oil, and apple cider vinegar. I follow the randomgirl.com recipe from The Garden of Vegan. I put all ingredients except the pasta into the food processor, blend it all together, then just add it to the pasta when it's done. Easy and yummy comfort food.

Organic Salad

I got an organic spring salad mix, organic yellow peppers, organic pre-shredded carrots, and an organic avocado from Whole Foods the other day. I mixed them up with Sunergia Soy Feta in Mediterranean Herb and topped it with a ginger miso dressing. So satisfying!

Vegan Culinary Adventures

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate Mousse FrostingI have just made my first batch of vegan cupcakes from the book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and I am in cupcake heaven! They are light and sweet and the perfect combination of vanilla-chocolatey goodness. And, I didn't even have the proper amount of vanilla (totally ran out mid-recipe) or a sifter, which they recommend to aerate the flour. They still came out awesome!

On an Isa Chandra Moskowitz-authored recipe binge, I also made vegan ricotta cheese (from Vegan with a Vengeance), stuffed it into some shells, topped it with Veganrella and some tomato sauce, and made a delicious dinner.

Not so successful was my first attempt at homemade vegan ice cream the other day. It came out like a thick shake, at best. I didn't really follow any recipes, I kind of made up my own, and I've learned my lesson. I now have some arrowroot powder, and I will try again soon following one of the Vegan Ice Cream Paradise recipes.

My new favorite vegan cheese!!! Plus, a simple vegan pizza recipe.

The finished result...scrumptious!I've finally tasted a vegan cheese that reminded me of the real mozzarella I used to love about 15 years ago, before I went vegan. Follow Your Heart Monterey Jack is my new favorite vegan cheese! I actually liked it plain! I made a yummy vegan pizza with it last night. The bizarre thing with Follow Your Heart cheese (I've tried the mozzarella flavor before) is that it will not melt for me, even though it says, "it melts" on the packaging. My favorite vegan restaurant, Kaya's Kitchen, started using it recently. Apparantly, they are having the same problem because their vegan cheese no longer melts (but their vegan French onion soup is still amazing!).


The vegan pizza I made was delicious and so easy. I started by defrosting frozen, pre-made dough from Whole Foods. I prefer their whole wheat dough, but they only had white the last time I was there. I used Wegmans non stick canola oil cooking spray to prepare my pizza pan, then stretched out the dough to fit the pan. I covered the dough with Muir Glen organic tomato sauce, then liberally sprinkled some dried basil. Then, I added some fresh basil from my kitchen herb garden and half a package of Yves vegan pepperoni. After that, the Monterey Jack went on. I cooked it for about 15 minutes at 450 degrees. Yum!