Vegan Recipes and Plant Based Cooking

I've been eating super light over the last month or two. Trying to shed a few unwanted pounds. When I lost my job I kinda went into binge mode. It's a good lesson in even if it's vegetarian that doesn't mean you can pig out. Calories are calories regardless of the source. What's been working for me is a big breakfast, followed by lighter lunch and dinner. To that end I've been incorporating a lot of salad into my daily food intake. I've discovered that a hearty salad can be quite filling without the burden of as many calories as other meal choices. A really big salad of romaine, carrots and broccoli will fill me up for hours and hours, yet I've eaten far less calories than I normally would I'll usually sprinkle the salad with some beans or diced roasted potato or vegetarian chili. For dressing hot sauce and vinegar are great. A little sprinkle of nutritional yeast ties it all together. But don't let your salad stagnate. Mix it up. The...

Here's a dilemna I often find myself in. I use half or 3/4 a jar of tomato sauce and don't know what to do with the rest. Freezing it has pretty unsavory results. It loses all flavor. It's not a bad idea to use it as a sandwich condiment. Spread it on bread like you would mayo or mustard. Then add your other sandwich fillers. I find tomato sauce works best with kaiser rolls or toasted wheat bread. Generously lather both sides. Add black beans or kidney or pinto. Season with garlic powder. Drizzle with hot sauce. Finish with lettuce and any other fresh produce you have on hand. Corn, onion, pepper. You can't go wrong with fresh crunchy vegetables to top your sandwich. Another interesting use for left over pasta sauce is to use it as a salad dressing. Assemble your salad as you nomrally would. Crisp lettuce, bell pepper, crunchy carrots, rich olive.s Or whatever makes a good salad in your mind. Add a teaspoon or two of the jar sauce. Then dilute with some hot sauce an...

People like to pretend being vegan or vegetarian is more expensive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Meat is anywhere from $2.99 per pound to upwards of $5.99 per pound. Beans on the other hand are about $0.79 per pound. That's canned beans. Which are higher priced than their dried brethren. Which run around $0.50 a pound. Eating meat is and always will be more costly. The cost of raising animals to slaughter is mind boggling. If we took all the food we allot to feed slaughter animals and simply gave it to people there would be far less hunger. Raising meat animals is a costly busuiness. The thing that often gets overlooked is that eating meat isn't only animal cruelty. It's people cruelty as well. It's a greater strain n the environment. And it wastes resources. Millions of pounds of corn as fed to cows to create only a fraction of that worth of meat. Selling the the stuff the slaughter animals eat directly to humans would save tons of money and feed far ...

The perfect faux meat mixture can't be bought off a store shelf. As with any great food it must be assembled from scratch. But it's easy and entirely worth it. Best of all, because it's mostly beans, it's very low cost. You can use this mix to make burgers, meat balls or a bolognese sauce. Anywhere meat is called for. In a lasagna or a dumpling or on a sandwich cold. The meaty texture is satisfying. The mix of ingredients is exciting. Best of all it's easy to make. Ingredients 1 can rinsed black beans 1 can rinsed garbanzo beans (lentils also work well) 1 tablespoon olive oil 5 cloves fresh minced garlic 1/3 cup diced yellow onion about 2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter 1/2 cup frozen corn nibblets 3 teaspoons soy sauce Nutritional yeast Panko bread crumbs Corn meal hot sauce, paprika, fresh cracked pepper, cumin, coriander, cayenne powder It sounds like a lot of ingredients, but most of them are spices or things you should already have. You can...

This is a quick and easy chickpeas curry that is extremely versatile. I've used it as a salad topper/salad dressing. As a sandwich filling. As a sandwich condiment. Over rice as a main dish. It can do pretty much any culinary task. It can be a dip. It can be an entree. It probably can't be a dessert. But other than that. You can pretty much use it anywhere you want the sweet and savory flavor of a curry and the meaty bite of the garbanzo bean. It's also very simple to make and requires absolutely no cooking or chopping. Ingredients 1 can rinsed chickpeas 1 can petite cut plain diced tomatoes 2 tbls your favorite curry powder mix zest and juice of 1 lemon 2 tsps soy sauce 3 tsps hot sauce 2 tsps paprika 2 tsps fresh cracked black pepper 2 tsps garlic powder 1 tsp cayenne powder 1 tsp marjoram 1 tsp coriander 1 tsp onion powder 1 tsp olive oil In a medium sized bowl thoroughly stir together all ingredients gently with a spoon. Taste the sauce. Adjust spice...

I love red cabbage. It's a great vegetable. It requires little to no preparation and taste great and is full of nurtients like vitamin c and vitamin a. It's also quite attractive. Red cabbage can be eaten completely raw, which is always convenient. Or it can be cooked or pickled. It's great braised or sauted. Picling really makes it tender and tart. While the raw version is crisp and a unique combination of bitter and sweet. I find red cabbage is a great salad base comparable to any lettuce incarnation. It takes quite a lot of chewing to consume.... so it's ideal for overeaters. It wears me out just trying to finish it. I realy simple and delicious red cabbage salad is easily composed with chooped cabbage, chopped green pepper, chopped carrots and sauted sliced garlic. It's nicely dressed with a little bit of vinaigreette salad dressing thinned with white vinegar. Finish with fresh cracked black pepper. and top with a few generous spoonfuls of black beans. It...

Today I answer the question for myself and everyone else... how many calories are actually in those flavored rice packets. If you eat the Knorr brand, the around 600 for the whole shebang. Not bad. I was more than a little surprise by the numbers. But at about 240 calories per serving and with 2.5 servings per packet that math doesn't lie. Not unless the company is lying. So one third of the total yield should equal around 200 calories. A hefty portion indeed. Although lately I've been less than impressed with Knorr flavored rice mixes. I dunno if they changed things up, but they seem pretty bland recently. I haven't changed the way I've been preparing them. So I'm a little confused. I think Carlonia brand offers the most flavor for your buck. They also have the longest cooking times. They are not parcooked. So at least 20 minutes is required. On the up side that gives you ample time to cook a variety of add ins. Like kale, mustard greens or lentils. Sadly aroun...

This morning I made one of the best sandwiches I've eaten in my whole life. It was just so good. So satisfying. Words fall short on conveying how much I loved this sandwich. I began with two slices of seeded rye bread. The caraway seeds in rye bread just make me love it so much more than the unseeded variety. Caraway seeds are the bomb. I could eat them all day on anything. To both slices of rye I added about 1 tablespoon of Sabra roasted garlic hummus. Sabra makes the best hummus. I love their hummus. I'm not getting compensated to say that. Not at all. I pay way too much for it, just like the rest of you. Or I forebear and wait for a sale. For my sandwich 'meat' I used one sliced hard cooked egg. Then I bedazzled that with a few sprinkles of black beans. Here's the important part: Dust with a light sprinkling of curry powder. I used Simply Organic brand since that is what I had and I also think it's quite a nice blend. No compensation for that either. ...

Here's an easy way to utilize left over tomato sauce. If you're like me you only use half or 3/4 of the jar when you make classic spaghetti with red sauce. What to do with the rest? It's only good in the frige for a week or 2 after. So you best have some other ideas or be comfortable with throwing it in the trash. I hate throwing food away, so I'm always schemeing new uses and methods for using up what's been left over after the fact. Salad with tomato sauce dressing is my newest idea. I just had a regular romaine salad with some carrots and sauted garlic. Instead of adding traditional dressing I used a two teaspoons jar tomato sauce and thinned it out with some white vinegar and a little hot sauce. It worked out beautifully. Salad loves tomatoes in any form. And tomatoes love salad just as much. Another great use is in a sandwich. You'll want toasted or firm bread for this application. Soft bread will not stand up to the sauce. But basically you just use ...