Susan's Favorite Lasagna! Yum-O!

There are some things that I really miss. Even before going vegan, lasagna was a rare item for me. Even when I was a vegetarian, being allergic to dairy kept me from indulging in this all time favorite. The allergic reaction was just not worth it. With all that said, I have now found the most wonderful lasagna in the world. Susan's favorite lasagna http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/03/my-favorite-lasagna.html has now earned top billing in my recipe box. The textures and flavors are incredible. I have never made lasagna without boiling the noodles first. In Susan's recipe you assemble the dish with uncooked noodles. I don't know if it just me and my imagination, but the texture of the noodles gave me the feeling of eating mozzarella cheese. It was so cool. I had to change the recipe a bit to what I had on hand and was nervous it would not turn out. I am glad to say that it worked out great.

Susan's recipe calls for 10 oz. of frozen spinach, which I did not have. I did have one of those big, square containers of fresh spinach and thought shoot lets give it a try. I cooked down the spinach in a bit of No-Chicken broth. Once it was done I drained it real well and weighed it, well I only had about 7 oz, but I did have some zucchini. I got out my mandolin and sliced it real thin. I cooked up a batch of homemade spaghetti sauce, sauteed cremini mushrooms with some spring garlic we picked up at Whole Foods, mixed up the filing and got started. As you can see in the picture my tofu filling is quite a beautiful shade of green. Though it looks different than others I have seen the taste is great. I also forgot to mix the mushrooms into my sauce so I just layered them along with the zucchini.

See the pretty green tofu sauce with the zucchini.

Ready to go in the oven as soon as I seal it with foil.

Once I put it in the oven I got out a can of black olives and stared slicing. I prefer to buy whole olives and slice them myself. I also made up a quick batch of *vegan parma substitute* I grind up some nuts, walnuts this time and add some nutritional yeast and salt and there you have it. Yum-o! After 30 min under foil and 30 min without foil it is time to spread the love.

The finished dish of love. Please follow Susan's advice and let it cook at least 15 minutes before cutting. It came out of the pan perfect.

Made up some quick garlic toast on a french roll with a tiny bit of Earth Balance.

Thank you Susan for sharing your great recipe.

Cleaning out the fridge, stir fry, comfort food, and tacos

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who has not given up hope on me and my blog and took the time to stop by. I appreciate you all! The time had come to clean out the fridge. This was a quick stir fry of cabbage, bean sprouts, green onions, red onion, broccoli stems, and a left over baked potato. Toss it around with a bit of no chicken broth, tamari, and some spice and you have a very quick and tasty dinner. This last batch of broccoli I got was as sweet as sugar. You just have to love a quick stir fry.

We are still cleaning out the fridge before shopping day. We had left over *meetloaf*, steamed cabbage with carrots and onions, frozen peas, baked potato with earth balance and a green salad with organic grape tomatoes that are awesome! Can you say comfort food?

Last but not least we had the last of some cooked black beans in tacos. I know it is hard to see them through all the veggies, but the black beans are there. I found these great corn tortillas by "Food for Life" They are sprouted corn tortillas and they have fantastic flavor! The tacos are filled with black beans, tomatoes, shredded carrot, and avocado. I made up some Spanish rice in my rice cooker. I used brown rice added some green bell pepper, tomato, and a can of green chilies. Instead of cooking the rice in water I use the "NO-CHICKEN" broth. This stuff is great, even DH who has never liked Spanish rice enjoyed it!

I cooked today! "Meatloaf, Seitan O'Greatness , Veggies

Hi Everyone,

I want to say thank you to all of you who stopped by and posted me get well wishes and helpful ideas to help backs. I so enjoy the friendships I have made, though most of us are miles apart. This whole back thing has had me in the dumps for too long. Update: The doctor has taken me out of work for 6 weeks, I have pool therapy, spinal manipulations and adjustments along with a load of homeopathic medicines. After a week on the treatment my chriopractor has already seen disc impovement. I am keeping my fingers crossed. He has me set up with a 12 week treatment.

I was home alone today and wanted so badly to cook. It has been like 3 weeks. I figured just go for it! It took me 5 hours to make dinner, but it was finally something other than PB&J or avo sammies. DH, my omni man, called me and said he wanted meatloaf. (the real kind) Well, that is his choice, but for me I figured I would make a vegan version. I popped over to Jen at veganlunchbox.com and used her meatloaf maker. I have tried it before and the family loves it. Today I wanted millet and black bean. I used walnuts, no-chicken broth, onion, lots of garlic, celery, black beans, millet flaxseed meal, cumin, yeast flakes, vegan worcestershire sauce, and vegan chicken-style seasoning. It tastes really good. I kept tasting before it was cooked. Don't you just love how you can do that being vegan since there are no nasties. :o) This recipe stayed together so well, that I think you could make patties and fry them. I will up some of the seasonings next time. I also made some of Bryanna's Fat Free Vegan Rich Brown Gravy,(which you have to get from her newsletter) sorry I don't remember which one, along with steamed broccoli, yellow squash, frozen green peas and a baked potato to finish the meal off.

I was such a happy camper today that I didn't stop there. The simple things in life, like getting in the kitchen, make me so happy. I just love to cook.

I was visiting blogs and found many of you have made the Seitan O'greatness or versions thereof. Tex over at http://eatnvegn.blogspot.com/ made a wonderful looking Seitan O'Greatness and then I found Laura had made it too, http://myedenkitchen.blogspot.com/ . Of course my journey did not end there. I found that Susan over http://blog.fatfreevegan.com has made her version of Veggeroni (Seitan Pepperoni) http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/04/veggeroni-seitan-pepperoni.html, which I intend to make very soon. Here is the one I baked today. It seems darker in color than most, DH and I both enjoyed it. I can't wait to try it in different ways. Sorry the picture is not great, but the flavor is. I was wondering if I could change the seasonings a bit to make a "chic'n" flavored seitan log. I am gonna try. :o)

Last buy not least I want to thank Brandie and her sweetheart for being such a important part of my life. They make me smile and feel good. Thanks kids for doing all that you have done.

Here is their Easter picture that we took after church. They make a great couple!

This is Brandie's favorite picture.

This is my favorite, but actually who can pick, they make such a neat couple.

Bad back and Happy Feet

Hi everyone! I am so sorry I have disappered. My back is giving me so much grief that my inspiration, desire and ability to stand and cook pretty much flew right out the window. Today I cooked for the first time in what seems like eternity. I made some steamed squash, broccoli, and roasted some yams, yukon golds, carrots with onion and garlic. Sorry no pictures, cuz it is pretty boring stuff. My back has to get better or I don't know what I will do. I have been living on chips (oh so healthy), the stero-type vegan PB&J, and avocado sandwiches. Not healthy, making me feel yucky, and oh so depressed. I am sure no one wants to hear my sad story. But I wanted everyone to know I was alive. I have been reading a bunch of blogs and getting really hungry for real food.



The good news, my mom bought us the DVD Happy Feet. It is a really good movie. I am happy to have a movie out there that did not hurt animals during the making and one that promotes taking care of Mother Earth. Brandie sent me this picture and I think it is so cute and creative. Amazing what you can do with eggplant. Brandie sent me some other ones that I will post every now and then to give cuteness to my rather dry blog. I will try this weekend to get some serious cooking done. Thanks for visiting!

Falafel, veggies, and wierd weather

I want to tell everyone thank you for all the kind words you have posted. Everyone made Brandie feel so good! It is awesome to have blogging buddies.

We had the freakiest weather today. I know that most of you live where you have been buried in snow this winter, but here in southern California we live in very boring weather. We had an unusual storm hit us. Winds hit 35mph on the coast and up to 75mph in the mountains. Our family happens to live very close to the mountains so we get a little bit of variation in our weather. Well the winds were a blowing and we were in for a very blustery day. All of a sudden the Heavens opened up and the hail came down. It came down in buckets. By the time I thought to get the camera it started to melt, but I did get this shot. I know it doesn't look like much, but it is now documented that we had hail. :o)

Ok, enough weather news.

On to food.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I have pool therapy for my back and after therapy I am done for the day. I am sore, tired, and just wiped out. Dinner tends to be a struggle for me on these days.

So I put a big pot of brown rice on, which I cooked with No-Chicken broth . I steamed some green beans, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and peppers), and some frozen green peas. I quickly made some falafel patties and fried them in my non-stick pan with a tsp of olive oil. It was a very good meal. I heated up some BBQ sauce to use as a dipping sauce for mine, which I loved and Brandie used some leftover Caulifredo sauce on hers. Dinner was a hit and I got to teach Brandie how to make falafel patties. Thanks to everyone for stopping by and I hope I didn't bore you with my less than fantastic weather report.

Caulifredo and veggies

Comfort food was in the plan, but what to make. I searched and searched and came across Susan's Fettuccine No-Fredo with Broccoli and Sautéed Mushrooms. After reading the comments Brandie and I decided to make a creamier version of the sauce and then just adapted Susan's wonderful dish to our comfort needs. We fell in love with it. DH tasted it, (not knowing what was in it) and he even loved it. We are not going to tell him it is made with cauliflower. :o)

Caulifredo sauce

adapted from Susan's recipe Fettuccine No-Fredo

1 head of cauliflower

4 cups of water (next time I might try No-Chicken broth)

7 cloves of garlic (peeled, but left whole)

1 tsp of dried basil

1/2 tsp of dried oregano

pinch of cayenne pepper

1 tsp sea salt

pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

1 tsp of butter flavor extract

2 1/2 Tablespoons of Nutritional yeast

1 cup plain lite soymilk

Pour water or broth into a large pot. Cut up the cauliflower into small pieces and add to the pot. Next add the garlic cloves, basil, oregano, cayenne pepper, and salt. Cover and cook until the cauliflower is completely cooked. The softer the better. When the cauliflower is done, blend it until smooth. I used Susan's recommendation and used my hand blender (moat boater) in this house. That's an Emeril joke! Once it is smooth add the nutritional yeast, flavoring, and soymilk. YUM-O! We served ours over Eden's Parsley Garlic Ribbons with steamed broccoli, green beans, grape tomatoes, and a "chik'n" patty from Gardenburger.

We sprinkle paprika on the noodles to give it some color.

Brandie says, "It's all about plating mom!"

Thanks Susan! Be sure to check out another great recipe by Susan. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/04/fettuccine-no-fredo-with-broccoli-and.html

Brandie took 2 pictures so I wanted to give her credit. This is the one without the tomatoes, but you can see the noodles a bit better. Good job, BJ :o)

Leftover Aloo Mutter Gobi and Brandie makes lifetime!

Anyone who has not tried Aloo Mutter Gobi is missing out. This dish gets better everyday. I turned the leftovers into a yummy pita sandwich. We heated up some 9 grain pitas, split them, and stuffed them with leftover Aloo. Oh my goodness is it good. I have eaten this for 3 days and can't get enough. Using up what was in the fridge before shopping this weekend gave us steamed cabbage, green beans with toasted almonds, and yellow squash. I can't tell you what a comfort meal this is!



I know many of you don't know that we are a Weight Watcher family. DH, DD, myself, and my mother are all on the program. DH is quiet about his weight loss (he wants to surprise everyone), but my mom has lost 28 lbs, I have lost 58 lbs, and our daughter, Brandie, made lifetime this past Thursday. We are so proud of her. She lost 32 lbs and looks great. We took pictures at her final weigh in, but they are so dark you can't see her. We had her quickly pose for this shot before the leader started talking. She lost 3.6 lbs this week and she was doing the happy dance in front of everyone. She said, "Mom, was I red? I was smiling so much, but couldn't stop. My smile was uncontrollable." We were happy, smiling parents too! We are so happy that she is striving to live a healthy life while she is still young. Congratulations to our baby girl!!

Organic food, potato pancake, Aloo Mutter Gobi

My parents gave us this care package for our anniversary. Costco warehouse has started carrying organic products and my parents bought us some as a gift. The frozen green beans, frozen corn, and the salad mix are all organic. The cantelopes are huge as are the Fuji apples. The bag in the back is a big-o bag of Texas ruby red grapefruit, which I loveto eat. I have one for breakfast almost everyday. Look at the size of that lemon! My mom says her neighbors tree is loaded with them. Thanks Mom and Dad! We love you!

I was starving when I got home from work today. I am still only working half days because of my back injury and get to eat lunch at home. I still had left over mashed potatoes so I quickly mixed

up a potato pancake. I took about 1/2 cup of the mashed potatoes added some garlic, salt, pepper, about a Tablespoon of whole wheat pastry flour and about a Tablespoon of plain soy milk. Mixed it good and formed into a nice big patty. Then heated up my pan with a tiny bit of olive oil, lightly fried it, and there you have it, instant potato pancake. I topped it with a tiny bit of avocado dressing (avocado, garlic, salt, pepper, and veganaise) With leftover roasted carrots and friends and some unsweetened applesauce I was in Heaven!

While visiting everyone's blogs today, I stopped by 'Kitchen Ramblings from a Fairly Odd Tofu Mom' and saw a new recipe that sounded wonderful, Aloo Mutter Gobi. I wanted curry last night so this hit the spot. I used less oil than tofu mom, left out the tomatoes, and used lite coconut milk and it was a wonderful meal. I followed her lead and also made quinoa. Hey, guess what you can cook quinoa in your rice cooker just like white rice. Thanks, Marti! Dinner was a hit. DD tasted it and said, "Mom it is spicy, but good." Even DH said it was good. It is not a great picture. I don't know why my camera chooses when to work and when not too. The dish is actually a very vibant yellow orange.

Weight Watchers with 4 servings counts at 3pt.

I got the best yellow squash and zucchini at our Henry's Farmer Market. The yellow squash is just like eating sugar.

Please stop by and visit tofu mom's blog and see the original recipe.

http://tofu-n-sproutz.blogspot.com/ She has some wonderful looking posts and ideas. Her dish has more sauce and it is a much better picture. Thank you very much, Tofu Mom!

Happy 30th Anniversary and St Patricks Day

Today is our 30th wedding anniversary. Wow! It is hard to believe it has been that long. The years have been great. We have so many wonderful memories and more love for each other everyday. Isn't it strange how the longer you are married the more you fall in love?We became sweethearts 31 years ago. I am so glad that my dreams came true. That my knight in shining armor came and took me to be his bride. Our oldest daughter could not be with is as she lives in Texas, but we received a happy phone call wishing us a "Happy Anniversary". Thanks Dana and Jac! Our youngest daughter surprised us with these beautiful flowers along with a homemade gift and card. The words on the card
are perfect. I hope you all can read it. DD loves to wood burn and made this beautiful plaque for us. Around the edges she put the word love, in many different languages. I hope everyone can read it because it is beautiful. She said she ran out of room and had to put the date March 17, 77 instead of March 17, 1977, but we don't mind. Thanks BB! Here me and DH are with our flowers and gift. As you can see in the picture I am a blubbering idiot. Of course if you ask anyone in my family they will tell you that I cry at the drop of a pin. I won't tell anyone, but DH has gotten very tenderhearted over the years and he too, tears up in touching moments. (and commercials, television programs, stories in church.... the list goes on and on) Oops! Sorry Yogi, I guess it isn't a secret anymore.

I am so proud of our girls and thought I would share their happy faces. This is our oldest daughter, Dana. I keep asking for her to send pictures, but her and her sweety are so busy. Hi Dana and Jac! Send momma pictures!

Here is BB, our youngest all dressed up to go to a St Patrick's Day party with her sweetheart. She was very inventive this year. She dyed a white halter top forest green, sewed on stretchy sequence, made matching wrist bands, sprayed her white flip flops green, and cut shamrocks off the tinsel and glued it to her cheeks. You look cute BB, great job!

Ok, I guess that is enough of the bragging momma for now. On to FOOD! I decided I was going to get a head start on some cooking for the week, but did not accomplish nearly as much as I wanted to. Anyway, nothing real exciting, but tasty for sure. I had some potatoes that were beginning to grow. I usually use organic when ever possible, but we were given 5lbs of russets and they seem to begin growing much faster that our usual organic Yukon Golds. I also had some fresh chives that needed to be use. Our family loves mashed spuds, which is what they will have this week. I added "no-chicken" broth and a tiny bit of plain soy milk and mashed away. Then stirred in some finely chopped chives along with salt and pepper. My next adventure was to use up some veggies that screaming "use me". I diced up 2 pounds of carrots, 3 small sweet potatoes, a cup of onion, about 10 or 12 cloves of garlic, and some red and orange bell pepper. Tossed them with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Roasted them for 30 min covered at 425 degrees, lowered the temp to 375 uncovered them and let them cook another 10 min. or so to get some nice carmelization. They taste like sugar. BB, the youngest, is not crazy about cooked carrots and she said she will be eating these for sure. We go through steamed veggies in this house like crazy. I cooked up 6 pretty good size zucchini and the last 3 tiny, yellow, crookneck squash. I was going to make stuffed acorn squash for dinner, but my mom came over and gave us dinner money from my her and my dad Thanks mom and dad! We don't have any vegan restaurants near us, but I tend to be inventive whereever we go. We all know that it is a hit and miss with most restaurants. We ended up going to Chili's. They have a meatless black bean burger that is really good. I ordered just the patty along with 2 sides of steamed broccoli and corn on the cob, hold the butter. I forgot to take my camera, but I promise it was really good. Omni man had his usual meat and potatoes with corn. Chili's has nothing in the way of desserts for vegans so we came home and I made Chocolate Agave Cupcakes from VCtotW. They call for 1 cup of unbleached flour, but I used half whole wheat pastry flour and they turned out great. In fact, they are too rich for me, but I enjoy savory over sweet 98% of the time. I cut the recipe in half and baked them in my mini-tart pan. Then I frosted them with your typical "butter" cream frosting made out of Earth Balance and vegan sugar. After we took the picture we decided they should at least have something green on them for St. Patrick's Day so we cut more lil shamrocks from the tinsel and decorated a few to be festive.

That is about it for today. Thanks for putting up with my lengthy post. I hope everyone had a fun, safe, and yummy St. Patrick's Day.

Authentic French Bread from The Flying Vegan

I was dying for some French bread when I came across Michelle's blog, The Flying Vegan. I made it right away and we loved it. I had to get a picture before it was gone. I changed the recipe a bit to increase the nutrition value and with fingers crossed I hoped it would work. I am happy to say that it was a great success. I was a little worried when I started making it since all I had to bake in was a toaster over. DH had taken over the kitchen with his film developing, which left me with the end of the counter the kitchen table. With the toaster oven on the end of the counter and bread machine on the kitchen table the French Bread came to life. The recipe says to make slashes across the top of the loaf before letting it rise. My slashes were not deep enough since they pretty much disappeared during the rising. Next time I will have my whole kitchen and oven so I can try my hand at baguettes. My toaster oven barely held the semi-round loaf this time. Below I posted the recipe with the change I made. Bon Appetito!

Authentic French Bread

Adapted from The Flying Vegan

(Bread Machine Magic)

Makes a 1 1/2 pound loaf

1 Cup of water

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 cups of whole wheat bread flour

1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour

2 1/2 tsp of yeast

Add all the ingredients to your breadmaker pan and set on the dough cycle. When the cycle ends remove and form into the shape you desire.

Place dough on cookie sheet ( I always use parchment paper) sprinkled with cornmeal. Make your slash marks on the top of the loaf. Cover and let rise until double. (about 30-40 min) Bake in a 450 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

Make sure to check out Michelle's post for the original recipe, which has more great ideas for this fantastic bread. http://theflyingvegan.blogspot.com/

THANKS MICHELLE!

Carrot Cardamom Donut Cookies by Stephanie

If any of you have not stopped by Stephanie's blog you really should. She is an inspiration to other teens by trying to live a well-balanced healthy Vegan life and writing a cookbook too. Here is her link. http://summerloco.blogspot.com/

A week ago or so she asked if anyone would like to test her recipes. I once again jumped at the chance. I love to test recipes. Today I tested her donut recipe. Remember I said she is living a healthy life and these donuts are just that. Baked not fried and gluten free. In her recipe she gives both the sugar version or powdered stevia version. I used liquid Kal Stevia and probably should have used more than I did. Mine turned out not as sweet as the family would think donuts should be. They are similar to a cake donut and not the puffy ones that many are used to. I mixed together a couple tablespoons of sugar and some cinnamon and dipped them when they came out of the oven. DD would like more cinnamon. She adores the stuff. I also did not have a donut pan, which DH tried to find and buy me so I used a mini-bundt pan and they turned out cute. Overall I think these are going to be a great addition to her ever growing list of recipes for her cookbook. Keep up the good work Stephanie.

Susan's Carrot Spice Muffins

Susan's Carrot Spice Muffins

2pts on weight watchers

I have been out of wheat flour for quite awhile. I was just to lazy to get the wheat grinder out and grind the wheat berries. Last time we bought wheat we purchased the white wheat berries, which made it perfect for this recipe. These muffins gave me that yummy nudge to get a move on things. Since I was grinding I ground quite a bit so I should be set for a couple weeks.

Now back to the recipe. I made these muffins yesterday and they are a hit with everyone. DD, Brandie, took one to work for her boss and she loved them and asked for the recipe. DH and I ate them for breakfast along with fruit. I used all white whole wheat flour, dark agave nectar, dried currants instead of raisins, and added an extra tablespoon of the soy yogurt. (that was what was left in the carton and it seemed silly to throw it away). I also had about 1/4 cup of lonely blueberries, that were just past the plump eating stage so I threw them in too. The outcome was fantastic. Oh, I took a pinch of sugar and sprinkled the tops before baking. I really need to use a vanilla bean and make me some vanilla sugar. I have to tell everyone that these muffins are the most amazing whole wheat muffin you will ever eat. I rarely use anything but whole wheat flour and most muffins are dense. These yummies are light, moist, and full of flavor. This recipe is a #1 keeper for sure.

You can see the beautiful orange carrots and the bits of blueberries.

Susan you have done it again! Another fantastic recipe. Here is the link to her recipe and beautiful photos. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/03/carrot-spice-muffins.html

Melody's Far East Spicy Tofu and Green Beans

Hi everyone! I have to talk about Melody's fantastic recipe for her Far East Spicy Tofu and Green Beans! Melody asked if anyone wanted to help her by testing a new recipe. I jumped at the chance. It is so much fun to do this. I love the idea of not having to think about what to cook. It is like opening your cookbook and whatever page you stop on you cook. I love to do that. Anyway back to her dish. The family loved it. It is very easy to prepare and has ingredients that most of us keep on hand. There is Sriracha in it so it is spicy! I used the lesser amount suggested and it was perfect for our family. I had some bean sprouts that needed to be used so I added them to her recipe. The sauce is so good that next time I might double the recipe. DH even ate the tofu! He tries so hard and is doing very well I might add. Sorry I can't give her recipe out, but I can tell you how good it is and show you pictures. Here is the link to Melody's post, her pictures are wonderful as is her dish I am sure. http://melomeals.blogspot.com/2007_02_18_archive.html

First batch of tofu after frying.

Simmering away! Smells so good!

(Sorry this picture is so dull looking. This plate is actually bright yellow, the green beans vibrant green and the tofu is a pretty golden color . Sometimes my camera freaks out. Weird since the same camera took all the pictures)

Served over brown rice with pineapple on the side. The pineapple works perfect with spicy foods. We also had a green salad with a new dressing we found, Follow Your Heart Miso and Sesame Dressing. It worked perfect for this meal.

A big thank you to Melody for including me in this recipe testing.

Great fun, great food!

Eggless "egg" salad, vegetable soup

Hi everyone! First I would like to thank everyone for their congrats to DH for his scholarship. He was so thrilled to see all the post from you. I too am very proud of him. I would also like to thank everyone for their help with seitan recipes. I have had some great tips and hope to try some of them in the next couple weeks.

Thanks to vegan cyclist I found a great site, Compassionate Cooks. You can get some great recipes from Colleen on her site. She also has a blog, which you can link to from her site. You have to pay a small fee for the majority of her recipes, but she does list a few under the DVD site. I tried her Eggless "egg" salad and it is fantastic. I left out some ingredients because I used what I had on hand . I love it. Because this is one of her free recipes I will post it here, but be sure to check out her web page and blog. She has fantastic information on many of the issues we deal with. Below is the recipe. Her essays or papers, or comments are very well written, easy to read, understand, and they are informative.

Here is the "Eggless Egg Salad" with some simple homemade vegetable soup

and fresh fruit salad.

Eggless Egg Salad

1 ½ pounds tofu, firm
½ cup eggless mayonnaise

2 red bell peppers, chopped finely (I left out)
4 scallions (white and green parts), chopped finely
1 small carrot, finely shredded
3 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley (I left out because I forgot to put it in)
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
1 tsp. onion granules
¼ tsp. turmeric
4 tsp. pickle relish
1 ½ Tbsp. prepared mustard
1 ½ tsp. sea salt
1 ½ tsp. garlic powder
Black pepper, to taste

In a large bowl, mash tofu with a fork or potato masher (alternatively, you may wish to finely cube the tofu). Add remaining ingredients and mix well. The resulting savory treat is wonderful as a sandwich spread, served on crackers, or as a side salad.

If you let this sit in the fridge overnight the flavors marry really well. DD loves it too.

Vegetable soup

6 cups of cabbage shredded

2 carrots sliced

2 onions chopped

5 cloves of garlic minced

1 cup fresh or frozen green beans

1 28oz can of tomatoes ( I crushed up the tomatoes and left out the juice)

1tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried oregano

8 cups of "no Chicken Broth"

I sauted the onions, carrots, and garlic. Added the broth, cabbage, tomatoes, green beans, and spices and let simmer for a couple hours. No rules just good eats.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. I will visit all soon!. Thanks for stopping by and saying hi.

Meal in a muffin

I love muffins, expecially those that are made of the good for you ingreadients. I got this recipe for full meal muffins from Jen's veganlunchbox site . Here is the link. http://shmooedfood.blogspot.com/2007/02/full-meal-muffins.html Sorry the picture is not great, but the taste is awesome. I was so excited to get home from work and make those muffins. Got home, started getting all the ingredients out and low and behold no barley flour. Time was short so I did not have time to grind some barley into flour so I improvised. Here are the substitutions I made and the muffins turned out so moist and yummy. I used 1/2 cup of quinoa flour, 1/4 cup amaranth flour, and 1/4 cup of whole wheat pastry flour instead of the barley flour. I also used 1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce in place of the apple juice. The currants are optional, but we love them so they went in too. Even with the substitutions they turned out wonderful. Thanks, Jen! I have these with a piece of fruit for breakfast. Oh and they freezed nicely.

I went to download the picture of the muffins and this picture of one of our fur kids. I guess DH took this picture so I just had to share it. Well it was DD that took the picture. Tilly is our 11 year old calico. She is such a good kid. You can see just a tiy bit of Kelli our other calico.

Scholarship award breakfast

What an exciting day for my DH! He recieved a scholarship award for his photography. He had applied so long ago for this that we had all forgotten about it. He recieved a letter in the mail from the college and he figured it was this semesters class schedule. When he opened it and saw he had won the scholarship it was like Christmas! He was invited to bring a member of his family to the annual scholarship award breakfast. He chose me! What a guy. I was so excited for him, but in the back of my mind I was thinking breakfast. Ahhhh hope they have a fruit platter.

Here is my sweetheart waiting for breakfast and the program to begin.

My DH was in Heaven. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, tons of fried bacon, hash brown potatoes, sour cream coffee cake, and a FRUIT BOWL! I was thrilled to find out that the potatoes were completly vegan and the fruit bowl was wonderful. The potatoes were cooked with red onion, bell peppers, and no animal fat. The fruit bowl had different melons, grapes, and pineapple. I was so excited! They also had salsa on the side along with coffee (which I don't drink) and orange juice.

Here is my breakfast. I was so hungry and this was so great!

Here is my DH getting his award. The woman standing next to him is Mrs. Longstreth. She is the sponser for this award. She had a son who loved photography and to keep his spirit alive she gives a photography scholarship each year. What a blessing she is!

I am so proud of him! My DH has done wonderful things!

You are awesome Yogi!

Curry Vegetables, No knead bread, Blueberry scones, White Bean Stew, Apple Swirl Bread, and Crispi Squares

First I want to thank everyone for their kind words while I have been down in the dumps. Not working on my blog made me feel even worse since people were coming to visit and I was invisible. Yeah, I know it is sweetheart day, but DH is at school, DD is with her sweetheart, so I am home alone with the perfect opportunity to update my blog. Here are some pics of what I

cooked over the weekend.

Curried vegetables with couscous

I steamed up some potatoes, broccoli, and green peas. Added some garbanzo beans, curry powder, garlic, salt and pepper and a little H20 to keep is moist. I cooked up some couscous too. When everything was done we poured it over the couscous and dinner is served. DD said it was pretty spicy, but loved the couscous. DH was not thrilled due to the fact that cooked broccoli was in it. He is a cooked veggie hater. Loves them raw, tolerates cooked corn, peas, green beans, and spinach, but that's about it. At least he eats them raw. Anyway I have eaten this for 4 days now and love it. You gotta love leftovers.

Here is a recipe that I got from Bryanna's blog. (Sunday, January 28, 2007)http://veganfeastkitchen.blogspot.com/ I was so excited. "NO KNEAD" BREAD! I figured I would follow the recipe to a "T" then if it turned out start tweaking it. This is a picture of the dough after 15 hours of sitting in my oven over night. Looks cool with all the bubbles. That means my yeast it good!

Here the bread dough is after the first fold.

After the fold and getting ready to rise and go into the oven.

( I followed Bryanna's suggestion to use wheat bran)

Here is the final product. The recipe says to bake it in a 6-8 quart cast iron, enamel, or Pyrex pan. WOW!, the biggest pan I have is a glass Pyrex dish that is about 2 quarts. Problem? NOPE, use two smaller pans and here you have it, NO KNEAD BREAD.

Here is it cut. You can see all the tiny holes looks good huh?

Boy, I thought so, as you can see below. This was my lunch. Squash, roasted tomatoes on my newly baked bread and grapefruit supremes. It only took one bite. YUCK! The crust is fabulous. The inside of the bread feels like the fake food you buy your children to play kitchen with. I don't understand how something that looks this good can be sent to the round file so fast.

On to something yummy. These are Jen's Blueberry Lemon Mini-Scones from her book, Vegan Lunch Box. http://veganlunchbox.com/ I did a bit of tweaking with the recipe. I made them with all whole wheat pastry flour, skipped the lemon zest (DD not crazy about lemon) and cut the recipe in half. They turned out good. I think next time I will shorten the baking time a couple minutes. They seemed a bit dry. All and all I will make them again. Next time DD will have to put up with lemon because I love it. 2 Pt's per serving on WW

Before cooking

Fresh out of the oven!

More soup. This is Susan's White Bean Stew, http://www.fatfreevegan.com/beans/white_bean_stew.shtml

I left out the lemon juice and used homemade white beans instead of canned. Fantastic soup. Like Susan says, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE AMOUNT OF GARLIC. I used one whole bulb, 14 cloves and it tasted perfect. I made some 9 grain pita chips to go along with it.

3Pt's per cup on WW



Apple Swirl Loaf from Dreena's book, The Everyday Vegan.

I feel bad because someone recommended this recipe to me and I can't remember who. So who ever it was my DH thanks you, DD thanks you, and I thank you. Of course we thank Dreena too!This bread is awesome. No words to describe how moist and flavorful this bread it. And get this, only 1T. of canola oil. I followed the recipe to the "T" This is definitely a keeper.

OK everyone, last but not least, by any stretch of the imagination are Dreena's Crispi Squares from Vive La Vegan. Yep, you guessed it I finally got my book. Yeepee! Now for the funny part. I had bought organic Crispy Brown Rice cereal by Erewhon just for these squares. I had also bought organic puffed rice for another recipe, which I have now misplaced. Guess which one I ended up using? Yep, you guessed right. Puffed rice. My DH cracked up, but said, "I was expecting rice crispy squares, but these are really good!" They are very tasty, but they stay soft. Not too soft to hold their shape or for little hands to hold them while eating them so no worries. I followed the recipe except I added toasted walnuts instead of almonds. I love that these are made with maple syrup. Great flavor, great recipe! Oh and thanks to this recipe I am not addicted to Hemp seeds. they have a wonderful nutty taste.

16 servings = 3Pt's on ww

Close up shot. See the little puffs? hahahahaha I feel like such a dork.