Vegan Garlic Enchiladas

1 lb. ground crumbles (Boca or Morning Star)
1 medium onion
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
1t olive oil
2T flour
1T chili powder
1t salt
1t garlic powder
1/2t ground cumin
1/4t rubbed sage
1 can 14 1/2 ounces stewed tomatoes (I use a quart of stewed tomatoes)

SAUCE

4-6 garlic cloves, minced
1/3 cup butter (I use Earth Balance)
1/2 cup flour
15 oz. vegetable broth
15 oz. tomato sauce
2 T chili powder
2 t ground cumin
2 t rubbed sage
1/2 salt

10 flour tortillas (I use the large burrito size)
1 can refried black bean

Hint: I'll get my spices ready while my veggies are sauteing

In a saucepan over medium heat saute onions and bell pepper in olive oil till soft. Add flour, seasonings and tomatoes... mix well. Add crumbles. Bring to boil, reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 min.

Meanwhile in another saucepan, saute garlic in butter until tender. Stir in flour until blended.

Gradually stir in broth, bring to boil. Cook and stir for 2 min. or until thick and bubbly.

Stir in tomato sauce and seasonings. Heat thoroughly.

Cover the bottom of your baking dish with sauce. I use my 10.5 x 14.5 pan but a 9 x 13 would work great too.

Spread some refried beans and top with crumble mixture down the center of your tortilla.

Roll up tightly, place seam side down in your baking dish. Put remaining sauce on top of your enchiladas. Cover and Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 mins. Remove cover and bake an additional 10 mins.

Enjoy! :)

Smoothies - It's what's for breakfast.

My son and I started the new year by having smoothies for breakfast. This was my creation.

1 healthy cup of spinach, a kale leaf (torn up) 1/2 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup frozen fruit blend (mango, pineapple, strawberry, peach) 1 cup vanilla soy milk and I added a splash of aloe after the first blend.

It's unbelievable how you can't taste the veggies that are in there. I've been drinking different versions of this every morning but I do take the weekends off if I cook for the boys. :) More recipes soon!

My dinner...

When Jim and Seth have macaroni and cheese, Mommy has something she thinks the boys won't like...so this is what I came up with and it was amazing!

I just bought a box of Thai Peanut, Thai kitchen brand rice noodles, which you can find them about anywhere these days for about $2.50 box. I made the noodles and put them aside and went out to the garden and picked:

1 small zucchini

1 small squash

1 hungarian hot pepper

1 small fingerling eggplant

Diced them up kind of small and sauteed them in some soy garden butter. I sprinkled garlic, salt and pepper and continued cooking until soft. Placed the noodles on my plate and then sprinkled the veggies over and enjoyed. It was sooooo good. (Sorry the picture looks a bit blurry, I'm using my sister in law's awesome camera and I'm still getting use to it.)

Zucchini Sweet Relish...

Zucchini Sweet Relish

10 cups zucchini (about 4 large ones)

4 cups onion (about 5)

2 green peppers

4T salt

Cut zucchini in half and take out seeds, don't peel. Using food processor, or small side of shredder, grind 10 cups zucchini. Mix and let stand overnight in refridgerator.

Rinse in cold water gently. Squeeze out excess water and then add...

2 1/2 c. white vinegar

6 cups sugar

1 T dry mustard

2 T cornstarch

2 t celery seed

1/4 t. pepper

1 t tumeric

Mix well, cook at a low boil for 30 min. put into jars. 1 batch makes about 8 pints.

This recipe is really yummy if you like to make your own tarter sauce.

Left over night...

I made chickpea cutlets (veganomicon) the other night and had some leftovers so I came up with this...

Hummus, chickpea cutlets, lettuce, sweet hot pickles (that I canned last year) and shredded carrot. Rolled up in a whole wheat tortilla and then placed on the George Foreman for some awesome grill marks :0)

It was a big hit with my family, although, Seth does NOT like hummus but he ate the wrap anyway, so it must not of been too bad. :0)

Garden Medley!

This is one of my most favorite meals.

I used 2 med. zucchini

2 med. squash

2 hungarian hot peppers

3 green tomatoes

green onions

put all ingredients in a frying pan with about a tablespoon of oil and fry until soft...

I love being able to walk out to my garden and just pick what I need and make dinner.

My nine year old has already informed me that he doesn't like squash and zucchini and I told that it's really early in the season to start complaining...I make this alot in the summer!

Sorry I've not posted in awhile.

This is just a collection of photos that I had from the last couple months. I haven't posted in awhile and I have been making some awesome food, just not been taking pictures of it. Bad me. But I've borrowed my sister-in-laws camera and I'm motivated to making great food and taking awesome pictures so you've been warned. :0) These pictures are from my camera.

Sauteed portabella mushroom with olive oil and soysauce, spring mix lettuce, cucumber, carrot, Veganaise and some Gray Poupon on flat bread. My lunch the other day. (Fancy)

Extreme Closeup...mmmmm.

Asparagus from the yard! Yummy. It does look like to much Soy Garden butter but I was mixing it with angelhair pasta so I need all the juice and butter (added like 3 garlic cloves) for the noodles. I also added some broccoli and mushrooms, but forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Whoops.

When everyone was coming next door to visit Mamaw and Papaw, I made a batch of these. I made the Chickpea cutlet recipe from Veganomicon and just made them into nuggets...it was alittle time consuming but it was a huge hit.

Chickpea cutlet nuggets frying in alittle canola oil.

We made 2 sauces to dip them in. Cheezy sauce from the Veganomicon cookbook and a honey mustard sauce (Veganaise, honey substitute and Gray Poupon) We used real honey...sorry, bees.

I have an addiction to these potatoes...Trader Joes brand hash browns. I added some garlic powder, salt and fresh ground pepper....oh my. I may need an intervention.

Last but not least, I was making burritos the other day, had the soyritzo in the pan warming up and looked up in cabinet and no refried beans. I ALWAYS have refried beans in there. After a small panic I found a can of red kidney beans and put them in my small food processor, added some garlic, veggie broth (enough to make a paste), soysauce and pepper. It turned out soooooo good. It won't be the last time I make that. So incredible easy and cheap!

It's fun making sushi!

Dinner at mom's house on Saturday was a blast. William, Dennisa, Jim and I made sushi. No pictures yet of the event, they are still on mom's camera :0). But good news, Seth stayed at William's Saturday and almost all day Sunday so Jim and I decided to make them again at home. We went out looking for all the necessary supplies, had most of the ingredients, but we needed a sushi roller. We couldn't find a "sushi mat" at Walmart but my brilliant husband suggested looking at bamboo placemats which after finding them looked JUST like the roller William and Dennisa had but bigger and a dollar fifty cheaper. Can you believe our luck?? So we came home and started rollin'. Our ingredients were: Avacado, sauteed portabello mushroom in garlic and soysauce, carrot, cucumber, sticky rice and WASABI! and the Nori wraps. We were turning into professionals by the end of the day! We had soooo much fun.


It was suprisingly simple to make, you just lay the Nori paper shiny side down and (wet your fingers, so the rice doesn't stick) then put down a thin layer of your sticky rice leaving an edge so you can wet it and seal it after you place your fillings in. Now I'm wishing I would've taken a picture before we rolled it. You just add a line of each filling on the rice that is closest to you then using your mat start rolling it up away from you, wet the exposed edge, finish rolling it up. We would roll it back and forth for a second or two just to give it time to seal real good.

So Jim was feeling pretty confident and rolled up one with just rice in it, cut it in quarters long ways, placed them on the mat with the rice pointing out making like a square and then put avacado in the center of the 4 corner pieces and rolled them in a nori sheet...and this is what it looked like. I hope that wasn't confusing, it's kinda hard to explain. They came out beautiful and we were soooooo proud of ourselves. They were, out of this world, awesome!

Fancy! Love it!

Sausages!

I finally made Julie Hasson's Spicy Italian Sausages and they were pretty good, I think next time I will add more spices to make them taste more "sausage like" but we ate them for two days and I think the second day was better. They had more time to sit and "get happy" like Emeril would say. The process of making them was easy and fun. They recipe can be found at Julie's website http://www.everydaydish.tv/Recipe%20Pages/Spicy_Italian_Vegetarian_Sausage.html If you wanted to find it. Here's some photos of my sausage adventure...

This is what they look like in the process of rolling them in the aluminum foil...

It made 9 sausages, I steamed them in my metal colander for 30 mins.

This is after 30 mins. and they plumped up to sausage goodness. Some were pretty funny shaped when I unwrapped them. The recipe called for you to measure out 1/2 cup full to mold into a sausage, next time I will be making them with my 1/3 or 1/4 cup. They were pretty big. :0)

I almost forgot to take a picture...shoo wee... I made oven fries to go with it and sauteed up a red, orange pepper (that I got from Trader Joes, they were so pretty.) and onion to put on top also I put some veganaise and roasted red pepper hummus on the bun...mmm.mmm.delish.

Seth loved his dinner. Yippy! He just had ketchup and veganaise on his.

In this recipe she called for a "chicken-like" seasoning and I wanted to share the one that I like that I got from a friend.

Chicken style seasoning

1/4 cup salt (I use 1/2 that)

1/2 cup Nutritional yeast flakes

1/2 t. turmeric

1 t. garlic powder

1 T. onion powder

1/2 t. marjoram

1/2 t. sage or summer savory

1 T. parsley

Blend thoroughly to a powder like consistency. Store in a sealed container in refridgerator. It's great in any of your recipes that call for chicken like seasoning or chicken broth. Use it to season soups, sauces, gravies, burgers, loaves, or other savory dishes. ( I don't put it in the fridge and it's still ok)

Potato Gnocchi Night

I added:
1 med. onion
1/2 package of Soysage
1 can mushrooms
4 garlic cloves (we love garlic)
Fresh basil (I have basil growing and never use it, FINALLY get too!)
1 quart of tomatoes...mmm...probably a large can
1 package of the potato gnocchi

I sauteed up the soysage first, seasoned it with garlic powder, salt and pepper, when that got browned nicely I added the onions, garlic, mushrooms and sauteed that until the onions were looking translucent then I added my tomatoes, (which you can drain if you want, I liked all the tomato juice.) and basil. This is a good time to taste it to see if you need anything like salt, sugar to cut down on acid, pepper....In the meantime you have to boil water for the gnocchi and once it's a rolling boil throw the gnocchi in for 4-5 minutes or until it floats. Then drain and I added right to the pan of tomato goodness! Just let it sit for a minute and then served it. Jim put some cheese on top, of course.

I accidently added to much salt this time around, but it was really good, we both enjoyed it and I'll probably make it again soon.