Tuscan Sandwiches

I feel like I haven't posted in forever! It felt nice to be back in the kitchen cooking today. More like baking. I made French baguettes from Garden of Vegan to use for sandwiches. For dinner, I made Tuscan white bean pate sandwiches with spinach and tomato. The recipe is from Candle Cafe and its supposed to be with arugula, but there was none at the store. Since I'm tracking my food intake, the amount of bread I used was probably less than desirable for what the authors had in mind. Its very filling though. The pate is made with navy beans, garlic and a few other ingredients. Its kind of liquidy, but that can be fixed by leaving out the water next time. I had the sandwich with some corn and broiled asparagus.

I'm back to school tomorrow to start my placement, so I'll be packing lunches and post pictures of them, if they're fun.

Nacho bean pizza

I had cheese and refried beans leftover so I thawed my last individual size pizza dough (from Vegan Lunchbox) and made pizza. I just put refried beans instead of pizza sauce and topped it with the nacho flavoured cheese. This turned out to be really good! I haven't made much else this week. I've been eating the Lick's veggie burgers in my freezer and some canned goods.

I went on a shopping spree today and spent more money than I have...what fun!

Comfort Food

Sometimes, its fun to just wing it and not use a recipe. As I mentioned before, I didn't do many groceries for the week, since I want to just eat whatever I already have on hand and save some money. I decided to have a downright comfort food meal for dinner last night. I had mashed potatoes, peas and corn and my own version of shake and bake. For that, I thawed some "beef" seitan I made from La Dolce Vegan, coated it in a breading and baked it for ten minutes. This meal really hit the spot.

It was my friend's birthday yesterday and she had a potluck. I brought a 5 layer dip and guacamole along with some tortilla chips. The dip is from Garden of Vegan and is yummy. Refried beans, sour cream, salsa and nacho cheese. Everyone loved the guacamole, although I've had better. I got the recipe from the simple little vegan slow cooker.

Burning my books!

Just kidding, they're worth more than I am, haha. Alright, so school is done. I now have one short week to party until I start my teaching placement, haha. Bonfires and dancing for me :) And maybe some cooking. I really wanted to try my hand at sushi, but the financial situation at the moment is a little pathetic so I'll probably just be cleaning out the freezer and pantry.

For lunch yesterday, I made some rice paper veggie wraps from How It All Vegan. They took some time, but were simple to make. They've got hummus (from HIAV also), cabbage, radish, carrots, and marinated mushrooms, with some other things too. The hummus makes the wrap, otherwise it would be pretty bland.

I tend to have more unhealthy meals on the weekend, and this one is no exception. After I got home from work last night, I whipped up a quick beef stroganoff recipe that I adapted from the Healthy College Cookbook. It was good, with lots of mushrooms and some sour cream. Nowhere near healthy though, unless you count the vitamins and minerals from the PC beef strips. It looks a bit bland, from the mushrooms and white sauce, but its good.

Beef Stroganoff
Serves 4
Enough pasta for 4 (I used brown rice shells)
"beef" strips or seitan, cut into chunks
1/2 small onion, chopped or sliced
1 tbsp. flour
1 clove garlic, minced
8 fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 vegetable or "chicken" broth (or 3/4 cup if you want more sauce)
1/2 cup Tofutti sour cream
salt and pepper to taste

Cook pasta according to package directions, set aside.
In a skillet over medium heat, cook the beef and onions. As the beef starts to brown, stir in the flour and stir to coat the beef.
Stir in garlic, mushrooms, broth, and sour cream. Cook til sauce is an even consistency and the mushrooms are soft. Add salt and pepper to taste, serve over pasta.

Nutritional Information (without pasta) per serving:
Calories 200
Fat 6.7 g
Carbs 17.4 g
Protein17.8 g

Quick Fix

As horrible as my studying went yesterday (read: almost non-existant), I was in a state of studying most of the day. Therefore, dinner had to be quick. In comes the "Beef" Burrito Skillet. Its basically a burrito filling with the tortilla chopped up and stirred in. It was very good. Spicy too, since I used seasoned ground round and nacho soy cheese. The heat could be cut down by changing both or either one.

Quick Fix Beef Burrito Skillet
Serves 4

1 package ground round
1/8 cup taco seasoning mix (note, usually high in sodium, can be left out if preferred)
19 oz can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup salsa
1 cup water
4 small flour tortillas, cut into 1.5" squares
1 cup shredded cheese
1/3 cup Tofutti sour cream
1/3 cup chopped green onions

Heat ground round in large skillet on med-high. Add seasoning mix, beans, salsa and water; stir. Bring to boil and simmer on med-low for 5 minutes.
Stir in tortillas and top with cheese. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes or til cheese melted (it may have to be stirred in to really melt). Top with sour cream and green onion.
Optional: top with favourite toppings: tomato, shredded lettuce, or avocados.

Nutritional information:
calories 432
fat 9 g
carbs 59 g
fiber 15.3 g
protein 30 g

Tuscan Stew

Shape Magazine did a piece on beans, and how they're nutritious, etc (all that stuff we already know), and their recipe for Tuscan Bean and Pasta Stew caught my attention. Its actually vegan without any modifications. I would call it more of a pasta dish, or a pasta salad, there wasn't much liquid, but that may be due to using gluten free pasta. I did make a few changes:

Tuscan Bean and Pasta Stew
Makes 5 two cup servings

~12 oz uncooked pasta (I used brown rice shells); approx. 4.75 cup cooked
1 tablespoon olive oil (originally called for 2)
2 cups minced onion
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tsp each dried thyme and sage
1/4 tsp salt (originally called for 3/4 tsp; which in hindsight, I recommend)
6 cups baby spinach (or 10 oz)
28 oz can diced tomatoes
1/4 cup fresh basil, minced
2 14 oz cans cannellini beans
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cook pasta according to package directions, drain and set aside.
Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large saucepan. Add onion, and half the garlic; saute for 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring until onion is translucent. Add the thyme and sage and 1/2 tsp of the salt; saute for 10 minutes more, til the onions just start to brown.
Add the spinach, tomatoes and remaining garlic and salt to the onion mixture. Stir, cover and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring once or twice until spinach has wilted. Add the basil, beans and cooked pasta. Heat on low.
When the pasta is heated throughout, add black pepper and serve.

Per serving:
Calories 435
Total fat 5.9g
Sat .7g
Poly .8g
Mono 2.5
Carbs 80.9g
Fiber 12.9g
Protein 16.1g

4 more sleeps!

Wow, this feels just like Christmas...4 more days, and I'm done exams! Thursday afternoon will be my last science exam EVER! Woot. Until then, I'm stuck inside studying, well, somewhat.

Tracy kindly shared her recipe for sundried tomato pasta with me, and I loved it! Its part of a collection for a possible cookbook, so I won't be posting it, but feel free to drool ;) It was so simple to make too.


That's it for now. I'll post dinner later, which was courtesy of a recipe from Shape Magazine.

Alright, enough about me...

Let's get to the food! Thanks for the congratulations from everyone.

I've heard a lot about Candle Cafe's cornmeal-crusted tempeh...so I tried it. It was very good, although it was too salty. I was expecting there to be extra marinade (which contained about 1/2 cup of tamari) after baking, but the tempeh soaked it all up and all of its salt too. These are fried, but I cut the oil down by half and it was enough to fry them all. I served these with sweet potato smash, also from Candle Cafe. I really enjoyed the potatoes. I slightly undercooked them, but the combination of cinnamon, maple syrup and miso was great.

While in Ottawa, Billy's mom brought us to the Produce Depot. I need one of these here! They had every imaginable fruit and vegetable in the world! I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about product, but there were many things I'd never seen before. Anyways, they even had vegan products there (Tofutti, etc). I picked up some Shefu Tofu BBQ Bites by Soyarie. I followed their tip on the package and made a wrap with it. A brown rice tortilla with some guacamole, curried mayo, spinach, pineapple, red pepper and the tofu bites. The texture of the tofu was awesome. It was kind of stringy and dry, the way meat can be, and the flavour was good too. Anyways, my picture of the wrap whomps, so I'm using the one from the website.
I have a lot of fruit to use up, and I was in a baking mood so I made some Maui Muffins with Orange Glaze, again from Candle Cafe. These have orange juice, orange zest, coconut, and pineapple and are topped with an orange juice and zest glaze. They are marvelous. If you have the book, I strongly recommend this recipe!

Exciting!

Today was exciting for me. My local Superstore opened up their Natural Foods section. I was like a kid in a candy store! Vegan cheese, Tofurkeys, ice cream, I can pick it all up there. One stop shopping! I picked up a case of Yoso soy yogurt. It came in three flavours: strawberry, vanilla and blueberry. I had the strawberry one today for a snack. Its probably the closest thing to the real thing that I've ever had. Very yummy.

I hope you all had a great Easter if you celebrated. We had a great trip down to Ottawa. We went to Lick's, a burger place. But they also have the greatest veggie burger ever. They even cook it on its own grill, with its own utensils, with a vegan whole wheat bun. I don't have a picture, but it pretty much looks like a burger. I also bought some kid-sized ones to take home with me (portion control, haha).

Easter dinner was great, I got stuffed on stuffed squash, and then for dessert, a mint cream egg! Billy's mom found these smooth dark chocolate eggs with mint fondant centres at Giant Tiger...and they're delish! If you've got a Giant Tiger near you, get over there!

Also, since this post seems to be about a bit of everything...I've now officially lost 20 pounds! I can't count how many times I've blogged about wanting to lose weight, and losing a few pounds here and there. I didn't want to be all talk, so I figured I'd wait til I hit the big 2-0 and then say something. Happy dance!

Oops

It seems I've been revisiting Garden of Vegan a lot lately. I forgot to take a picture, but I made the dragon bowl earlier this week for dinner. Its brown rice with shredded carrot, kale, green onions, and tossed with a delicious dressing. Hit the spot!

Here's a great meal from GOV that will let you get dinner on the table in less than 20 minutes (if you're like me and have the brown rice that cooks in 15 minutes, haha): Curried Lentils with brown rice. This is such a simple meal, but its very flavourful, and its got that great curry taste I love without heat.


Billy, Logan and I are heading to Ottawa for Easter to visit his family. I'm having this for my Easter dinner, since its healthy and quick, and it won't take up the whole kitchen! We're also heading to Lick's for burgers on Saturday, they have the greatest veggie burgers!

Have a great weekend!

Pizza pizza!

To celebrate the end of the semester, I decided to splurge with lunch. I made a mini pizza and a spinach salad. The pizza is 6 inches so it fits perfectly in the lunch box and is topped with pizza sauce, Yves pepperoni and soy cheese. Its baked at 500 and I find that this and broiling for one minute helps the cheese to melt really well.


The spinach salad has baby spinach,pear, dried cranberries, almonds and a raspberry vinaigrette. I didn't get a picture, but its pretty basic, so you get the drift.

I forgot to take a picture of dinner the last two nights, but I'll get one tomorrow.

Birthday Weekend!

Finally, something more exciting than leftovers! :P For Billy's birthday breakfast, I made him apple cinnamon crepes from Garden of Vegan...so good! I took him out to dinner to that restaurant I went to a few weeks back...delicious! Then we headed over to a pub and met with friends. Good times were had. I even brought his cake with me. I felt silly dispensing cake in a bar, but the table next to us was drooling over it, and I gladly shared :) Billy chose the chocolate covered mint cake from Sinfully Vegan. It is so good! Its a chocolate mint batter with a yummy chocolate icing. So worth the calories, haha. I didn't get a nice picture, so I just cropped a picture that someone took of me cutting the cake.




Its my last week of classes, so I'm doing something fun for lunches...you'll see!