Lunch and Dinner.

I experimented with sandwich filling ideas and came up with this tasty sandwich. Roasted red pepper hummus, thinly sliced carrot, jalapeño havarti Daiya cheese and lettuce. And mayo too!

For dinner I gave into pregnancy cravings for comforting foods. I cooked up some Gardein chick'n nuggets (they come as Mandarin orange chick'n but I just omitted the sauce). Then I tossed them with BBQ sauce and served with mash and peas. Yum!

Bowie Pie & Crack Cookies (with recipes).

Last weekend was glorious. It was David Bowie's birthday weekend. We celebrated by listening to his albums, watched Ziggy Stardust the film and on Sunday January 10th, the new album BLACKSTAR was delivered to my doorstep. Little did I know the same night I was listening to this beautifully dark and complex album, David Bowie would die. I woke up the next morning with no knowledge as I was offline all night and had gone straight to bed. My husband came to me while I was getting ready for work: "Did you hear about Bowie?" I was confused: "No, what about him?" "He died. Last night." I was in disbelief. I stopped putting on my makeup and ran to my room to grab my phone to confirm it for myself. Sure enough, it was true. I looked at my husband with tears streaming down my face. "Oh my god."

"In our madness we burnt one hundred days. Time takes time to pass. And I still hold some ashes to me. An Occasional Dream..."

It was a very emotional week for me. One of our brightest stars is gone. It feels like an end of an era. I'm a big music fan and I am an artist/musician myself so it was a lot to accept. These artists give us so much to hope for, to believe in. Their deaths are more profound somehow. My husband said: "That's life." I know this but how very sad and tragic. Here we were celebrating his life, excited about his new music, his new direction. In the next second, we were mourning his death. He's gone forever. I think of all my other idols. They too will be gone one day. It's just that we are never ready for them to go.

So this weekend, I'm thinking of David and playing his music and spending time with myself. David's favorite dish is Shepherd's Pie so I thought it would be a good dish to make today. And I needed to have some sugar too so I baked some cookies which are called "Crack Cookies". I got the idea from my friend Hope who gave me the recipe that I adapted to make it vegan. They are basically chocolate chip cookies with added oats, coconut and shaved chocolate. What's not to love?

On to the food.

"Bowie Pie". A lentil, vegetable pie with tomato base and a fluffy and crisp mashed potato topping.

Bowie Lentil Pie

1 cup brown lentils
3 TB olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced (or you can sub celery)
1 container of cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 can stewed tomatoes
1/2 to 3/4 cup veggie broth
splash of white wine
3 TB tomato paste
1 TB HP Sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
1-2 tsp dried herbs (I used a poultry herb blend)
2 TB tamari or Braggs
For Mashed potato:
7-8 peeled potatoes boiled until tender
1/2 cup soymilk
2 TB margarine

Preheat oven at 350F.

Cook lentils in a pot of water until tender. Drain and set aside. Boil potatoes for the mash. Heat olive oil in a different pot and saute onions, garlic, carrot, pepper, celery until semi-tender. Add mushrooms and saute for a while to sweat them out. Add the cooked lentils, stewed tomatoes, 1/2 cup broth, wine, tomato paste, HP sauce, salt, pepper, herbs and tamari. Cook on medium to allow all vegetables to cook through and reduce liquid a bit. If it dries out, add a little more broth. Total simmer time should be around 10-15 minutes or so. Longer is fine. Keep it on simmer. Mash the potatoes with soymilk and margarine. Season with salt.
Prepare a baking dish sprayed with oil. Pour the lentil filling into the dish and top with the mashed potatoes. Use a fork to drag lines across the top of the potatoes. This will make the topping crisp up in the oven. Bake for 1 hour at 350F.

Turntable is in full force today.

I adapted my friend Hope's "Crack" cookie recipe by using the "Toll House" recipe from last week as a guide and making little tweaks. They came out really good! They are slightly crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside with yummy things inside!

"Crack" Cookies, Vegan Style

In a small bowl stir together:
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups quick oatmeal

In a larger bowl cream together:
1/2 cup margarine (Earth Balance), softened
1/2 cup shortening, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp vanilla

Then add 1/2 cup of unsweetened apple sauce and stir.

Add in the flour mixture little by little and stir as you go to incorporate all ingredients.
Add 12 oz. chocolate chips
Add 1 cup shredded coconut
Add 1/4 of a bar of grated chocolate (I used 70% dark). Grate the chocolate right into the bowl. (EDIT: USE A FULL BAR OF CHOCOLATE! IT WILL TASTE BETTER!)
Stir together all ingredients and drop by the Tablespoon onto parchment papered cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 375 F or until golden brown. Remove cookie sheet from oven and slap it down on the counter. This will flatten cookie a bit. Let stand for a few minutes and then transfer to cooling rack.

Lentil Stew & Mash.

Lovely lovely lentil stew. This happens to be Ina Garten's lentil and sausage soup, veganized and instead of sausages I used cut up pieces of Field Roast. It's a really good recipe. You must try it. I was originally going to accompany it with colcannon but I realized while boiling up the potatoes that my kale had gone bad. So I ended up throwing some spinach in the mashed potato along with the soymilk, margarine and green onions. Delicious!

Vegan Shepherd's Pie

Vegan Shepherd's Pie

Posted by Tasty on Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Saw this video on Facebook and loved the simplicity of it. I already know how to make shepherd's pie but thought I'd try to go by this recipe.

I feel like the liquid is too much for this pie. Maybe it was because my veggies were smaller, I don't know. But no mind, I made it work.

I used the last of the Thanksgiving mashed potatoes. Just added a couple more boiled potatoes and mashed them all fluffy.

Came out beautiful and very tasty!

Mashed Potatoes and Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy

Tonight I was in the mood for comfort food so I pulled out the vegan bible.

I'm ashamed to say that I've had this book for 8 years and I have never made this. Bad mouse!

It turned out beautiful. I made a few adjustments. I used a tsp of whole grain mustard because I did not have mustard seeds. When it was done, I found it to be too tart possibly because my lemon was too big. So I added a tsp of miso paste, a pinch of sugar, a squirt or two of Bragg's liquid aminos to counterbalance the lemon. It worked.

I was so happy to finally taste this amazing gravy. Going to make it again and again. The texture of the chickpeas was nice because it felt like my meal was a little more rounded with protein, veg and carb. The recipe is posted online here.

"Meatloaf" dinner, Banana Jello, vintage "Radio Pudding".

Even though we're having a pretty uncomfortable heat spell this weekend, I still wanted to use my oven to make this meatloaf dinner. The recipe was made by using the Magical Loaf Studio. Mine was black bean based and I also added tofu. The vegetables I used were celery, onions, carrot and cauliflower, basically what was in the fridge that needed to be used!

So good! Don't forget the ketchup on top before baking!

Banana flavored jelly (Ahmed brand) that is vegan!

Love the colors.

I have an old vintage cookbook that I inherited from my Canadian mother in law that has this recipe in it. Don't know why it's called Radio pudding but the recipe is similar to a french canadian dessert called "pouding chomeur" that my mother in law always made.

It has a cake/biscuit topping and a caramel/brown sugar sauce underneath.

What made this recipe different is that it called for cream of tartar. And this cake is thinner than the pouding chomeur recipe.

To serve, scoop out a slice and invert into a bowl, add more sauce!

Paul McCartney Teaches You How To Make Mashed Potatoes.

Cutest thing on youtube! Oh Paul, how I love you so...

Food, food, wonderful Christmas food!

A tradition at christmas eve with our friends Hope and Gary: samosas from India's Sweets and Spices.

A Christmas Feast. I brought the Tofurky and gravy. Gary made the beautiful veg and Hope made her killer mash with soymilk and Earth Balance.

Tofurky roast, mash, gravy, roasted veg, piccalili.

For dessert: VCTOW's gingerbread and toasted coconut cupcakes. Heaven. To die for.

Mocha Mama cookies. These are also to die for, especially the next day with a cup of coffee.

Christmas morning, I made the tempeh sausage puffs from Vegan Brunch and waffles.

This is a mushroom and kale lasagna that I made to bring to my aunt's house for another christmas gathering with my cousins.

Mushroom & Sausage Stroganoff with Mashed Potatoes.

This recipe is ridiculously good! I used the "Seitan Portobello Stroganoff" recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance. I used two 8oz. cartons of cremini mushrooms and replaced the seitan with 2 sliced Field Roast smoked apple sausages. The amount of sauce it makes is wonderful! You can use it on top of mash and also on wide noodles which I plan to do tomorrow because it looks like we have quite a lot of leftover sauce.

Fresh russets make the best fluffy mashed potatoes whipped with almond milk and Earth Balance margarine.

View #1. Beautiful stuff. You can see how rich and red it is from the wine and mushrooms.

The Field Roast worked very well and held up in the sauce. I love Field Roast.

Mushrooms on toast, TV dinner and Homemade energy bars!

One of my favorite snacks and comfort foods. Saucy mushrooms and tomatoes on toast. Recipe by Mary McCartney.

Gardein "meatloaf", mash, gravy and peas. Vegan tv dinner! Thumbs up on the Gardein meatloaf by the way. Easy to prepare. I would rather make my own though with beans, grains and vegetables. It wouldn't have all that processed stuff that meat analogues have.

I found a recipe for diy energy bars in Runner's World magazine. Here is my version made with oats, peanut butter, dried fruits, chocolate chips and hemp powder.

Based on the Marronthon bars recipe in Runner's World Magazine.
Ingredients:
1 cup rolled oats (toasted in the oven first)
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1 cup dried fruits chopped (apricots, cranberries etc)
1/4 cup hemp protein powder (Trader Joe's vanilla flavor)
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup plus 2 TB of chunky peanut butter
1/2 cup agave syrup, 1/3 cup brown sugar (next time I will cut back to a smaller amount of agave and leave out the sugar)

Method: Mix the toasted oats, fruit, nuts, powder, seeds and chocolate chips in a large bowl. In a small saucepan, heat the agave, peanut butter and sugar until just boiling and the pb is melted. Take off heat and add to oat mixture. Stir until everything is combined. Spread into a prepared pan that was sprayed with oil. Flatten with wet hands and refrigerate for 4 hours. Cut into bars. Keep in fridge wrapped in foil.

Bangers & Mash and Inari Sushi!

Tofurky "Chicken Apple" sausage is pretty good. I like it with HP sauce. The gravy is St. Huberts.

Homemade inari sushi. My fave. I get the fried tofu pouches from Mitsua Market.

Served with salad, kimchee and curry croquette.

I am in a New Year's Eve Food Coma.

I bought a Field Roast Celebration Roast about a week ago and thought I'd make it today. Never had it before so it was my first time trying it. I roasted it in the oven on a bed of onions and poured over an orange juice/soy sauce/olive oil marinade and let it roast for about 45 minutes.

What a feast! The roast was really really good, it was tender and tasted really flavorful. I prepared the gravy using a tub of Tofurky "giblet" gravy and whisked into it over medium low heat: 2 TB olive oil, 1 TB orange juice concentrate, 1 tsp. soy sauce, 2 tsp. mixed herbs (sage, thyme, rosemary), 1/4 cup red wine and black pepper. I let it simmer until it thickend a bit.

Hello Magical Coconut Cookie Bars from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar! These are before they are cut into bars.

They don't look much like the photo in the book but who cares? These are freaking delicious. The layers go like this: cookie crust (made out of crushed CATS Cookies for People from Trader Joe's), coconut milk/brown sugar concoction, chocolate chips, sweetened coconut and chopped walnuts. Sugar Coma.