Libre Nachos!

Free your nachos from the enslavement of meat.
Revolutionize your snackage with toppings of the thoughtful man.
Eat like you mean it. 

Nachos, you can do it.

 Okay, I don't think I really need to post a recipe for this one. It's more of a reminder that it is actually possible to eat good old fashion "bad for you" food without killing anything (except yourself I suppose) in the process.

In case you need a recipe...well.. I'm a nice guy here you go:

Yves Veggie Ground Round, OR T.V.P
Taco Seasoning (available in the "Mexican" aisle of your grocer)
Tomatos, Lettuce, Green or Red (or both) Peppers
Salsa (choose your demon)
Daiya Cheddar "Cheese"
Tortilla Chips. (find vegan ones, you know you can)

Prepare the "meat" per the package.
Line your OVEN SAFE plate with tortilla chips.
Place meat on chips, top with fake cheese.
Throw in your oven on BROIL. Keep an eye on it. Till the cheese melts.
Top with salsa, vegetables, and whatever else you can imagine.
Watch the election.
If you're in the U.S.A. do all this AFTER you go vote.
If you're American and you didn't vote...no nachos for you.

I have eaten this for 2 meals in a row. I'm sure my co-workers are wishing I didn't.

LIBRE NACHO!

VVP - Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes!

It's Virtual Vegan Potluck time!
This time around I have connected with the fine folks at Virtual Vegan Potluck who are putting on a fantastic recipe share. There's everything imaginable, from all over the world.

Finished product.

I decided to try a completely new-to-me recipe. Now to warn you, it's Hallowe'en when I'm writing this (to meet my cross-world time zone deadline) so since I usually try to help you "set the mood", well this time it's a little weird.

1. Grab a smoke machine.
2. Dim the lights.
3. Here's your music link, Bauhaus (of course, it's Hallowe'en) Bela Lugosi's Dead
4. Your drink of choice is a CC & G. (in canada) otherwise, whiskey & gingerale. The ginger helps set the tone of this fall recipe.

Enough rambling, get your stuff out of the cupboards, here we go.
1 1/2 Cup All-purpose Flour (no, ALL!)
1 Tsp Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp All-spice (or 1/8tsp ginger, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/4tsp cinnamon)
1/2 Tsp Salt
1 Cup White Sugar
1/2 Cup Vegan Margarine (I use becel)
1/2 Cup Soy Milk
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Ripe Banana, mashed very well
1 Can Pumpkin Puree

Organize your stuff. Yes that's a smoke detector.

Preheat your oven to 425º
Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well.
Add wet ingredients, combine until thoroughly mixed and there's no chunks of banana! Honestly, I screwed that up on my first batch, not so awesome.
Once everything is thoroughly mixed, line your cupcake pan with liners. You can also use margarine & flour, but I have no luck with that. If you do...you're awesome.
Fill pan and toss in oven. Bake for about 18 minutes, or until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

In the meantime that drink won't drink itself and your song ended. Here's another song, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQSpJfpVHmg&feature=related

While the cupcakes cool, like make a glaze. I wish I could make icing, my wife can make icing, me, I'm lucky to make a glaze, here we go:
2 Cups Icing Sugar
1/4 Cup Soy milk
1/4 Cup Vegan Margarine
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp Vanilla
In a small mixing bowl, mix dry, then carefully add wet ingredients. Cool in the fridge to achieve some firmness.

Once the cupcakes have fully cooled, dip them in the glaze, or drizzle some on top.

Garnish (optional) with some shredded dark chocolate...just because you can and frankly you want to.

My wife isn't a huge pumpkin fan, and she liked these, they are pretty awesome, I hope you like!

***As soon as I can get my phone to connect to my computer, I will upload pics!***

Now, feel free to click "Go Forward" or "Go Back" to see the other awesome offerings on the potluck table!

Tomatillo Calzones

These are good. Now, in the spirit of "full transparency", I'm wearing cling wrap as I write this.
Also, this recipe was inspired by Meg over at Spark People. Now the problem I faced was 1) The recipe THEY had wasn't vegan, and 2) my kids won't try this. They would probably love it if they did, but sometimes you need to make two meals to make people happy.

Below is the Vegan Calzone recipe, for the kids, I just put in pizza sauce, cheese, and a deli meat of their choice. Boom, they are happy.

Calzone's and Empanada's are very similar, in fact, I'm a little unsure of where this one really should be categorized. So I'm calling it a calzone, because it's less "weird" sounding to those who are a little afraid to try something different.

For cooking music, I dunno about you, but it's time to turn up your speakers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVFOAKREWAA

 As much as I like cooking things from scratch, I had to make this dish in under 30 minutes...so I bought a lot of this pre-made. Also, I'm trying to be at least a little bit healthy here, so you'll notice..no oil.

Ingredients:
1 bag of pizza dough: you can usually buy pre-made pizza dough in the bakery section of your local grocery store, or you can make your own. I bought the pre-made. It was vegan, it was cheap, and it was already done.
Equivelent of 1 lbs veggie crumbles or "yves" veggie ground round
3/4 cup Salsa Verde : super important, this is made from tomatillos. (which are not green tomatoes)
1 tsp cumin
1.5 tsp chili powder
one small or half a large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
half red bell pepper, diced
salt n pepper are here, and they are in effect
1 tomato diced (optional, I opted out...I should have opted in you win some, you lose some)
Daiya Vegan Cheese
Corn flour
1/4 of water

Method:
1. Turn up speakers
1. B. Now my bag of dough said preheat the oven to 425º... so I did what I was told!
2. Open your pizza dough and let it "breathe" for 20 - 30 minutes at room temperature
3. In your non-stick pan (essential) toss in your onions and garlic, cook till onions soften
4. Add in your veggie crumbles (hydrated of course) tomatoes water cumin and chili powder cook over pretty high heat, you want the water to make a bit of a gravy with the spices, and evaporate off
5. Reduce heat to medium, and add in your salsa verde, stir and simmer for a few minutes
6. Turn off the heat and toss your peppers in, stir. Let the residual heat cook the peppers.

Move over to your pizza dough, my bag of dough had enough to make 6 calzones! Awesome. Cut your dough into 6 as best you can. Now this was the extremely clumsy part for me. Pizza dough and I don't get along. Dust your 1/6th dough in corn flour and stretch into a circle of sorts, clickity click barba split. To make a 10" circle(ish) I grabbed a dinner plate and turned it upside down. I then stretched the dough across the flour dusted plate in a "tuning a drum" fashion, by stretching to opposing sides of the plate.

Spoon your filling onto the stretched dough and toss on some cheese. NOT A LOT OF CHEESE. This isn't pizza folks, you don't want to dominate the flavour with cheese.

It will look a little bit like this!

Now fold over the dough and pinch along the edges. If you went a little crazy with the corn flour, it might be hard to seal it, use a little water if necessary.

The "v" means "vegan", the piece of fake ham means "fake ham"

Place on a baking sheet dusted with corn flour, and cook until golden brown. This doesn't take long, around 10-15 minutes tops, so keep an eye on things!

Once cooked, remove from oven, serve with some extra salsa verde on the side and enjoy!!

Tofu Scramble, and apologies.

I'm sorry I haven't been around updating this for a while. In the past year, I've gotten hella-busy, and that business distracted me. So there's the apology. Now onto FOOD.

This vegan scramble is kind of kick-ass for a couple of reasons, 1) it's vegan 2) it's tasty 3) it should be a "superfood" as it's all good with nothing bad...well except some salt. But you're here for meatless recipe's not salt-free recipe's so shhhhhhhhh.

I made this while listening to George Thorogood. I'm not a George Thorogood fan, so I'm not suggesting you listen to that while you're cooking this, but that's what was on, so if you want to set the mood, find some decent rock music and there you go.

For lunch I had scramble and mashed cauliflower/potatoes.

Ingredients. This is so simple, I love it.
1 package of FIRM tofu. Move past that soft mushy stuff.
1/2 cup of kale, approximately, actually, a "handful of finely diced kale" is more accurate.
1 large tomato, diced
1 small/med onion, diced finely
1 tsp olive oil (honestly, I use a bit more..shhh)
1 1/2 tbsp curry powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 red pepper diced
1/2 green pepper diced
3 cloves garlic
Salt to taste

Put a large skillet on medium heat, toss in your onions, olive oil, and garlic.
While that cooks for a minute, 'till the onions "clear" you want to "crumble" the tofu. Wash your hands, and crumble that tofu. You want a scrambled egg like texture.
When the onions have clarified, add the peppers, tomatoes, 1/2 tbsp Curry Powder, and stir.
Cook that for about a minute, then toss in your  tofu crumbles. Add in the remaining 1tbsp of curry powder and cumin, mix all of  that goodness together until everything is covered in yellow curry madness. Now let it sit, don't touch it, don't stir it, look away, for a few minutes.

In this time, grab a leaf or so of kale and dice it finely. You want a good handful, but not so much as to be over powering.

Go back to your pan, stir it, pat it down, and let it sit again. Put your kale on top of the mix, and let it steam up there. Put a lid over the pan and go do something unrelated for a few minutes. Maybe you can read a chapter of 50 Shades of Grey, or listen to a couple Take Drugs songs.

After about 3 minutes come back to your pan and you can mix in that kale.

Add a dash of salt, and you're ready to serve.

Why do I like this recipe so much? Because it's all things I usually have in the fridge! No peppers? No worries, grab some frozen corn. No kale? Grab some spinach. Now here's the real kicker, you get a lot of nutrients for relatively few calories.

If you divide this recipe in 2 (it should serve 4, but let's face it, you're having seconds.) here's the deets:
437 calories
30 g fat
54 g carbs
56 g protien
75% of your daily iron
60% of your daily B6
230% of your daily calcium
302% of your daily vitamin A
and much much more.