Shells n Cheese please.

This dish was a result of a fortunate accident that happened at work. We make raw vegan kale chips covered in "cheezy" sauce and then dehydrate them, package them and sell them to health food stores (like Whole Foods!). Anyway, I was in charge of making the cheez sauce when I overheated the VitaMix and turned the raw sauce into a hot soup! So obviously the cooked sauce was unusable. So into two cartons it went and my coworker and I could do as we please with this cheez. I heated it up and cooked some pasta shells, tossed it all together and topped it with panko. It got baked for about 10 minutes and put under a broiler for a few. It was yuuuuuummy! (sorry can't give away recipe for cheez sauce!)

When in doubt, make a sandwich.

I couldn't figure out what I wanted for dinner so I made a sandwich. Well two actually...


This is a sunflower seed paté wrap (recipe from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen) with lettuce and red bell peppers on a tomato/basil tortilla. Really good but I was still hungry afterwards and craving sweet...


Peanut butter and jelly on the left, peanut butter and agave syrup on the right. Just right on sesame toast.

Spanakopita and Scones.

My husband requested these delightfully flaky spinach pies for today so I woke up real early to make them in time for the Dodger game at 11am. Really early for baseball but our boys are playing in Milwaukee so time zones and all... I'm not going to lie, to prep these pies and bake them took me about 2 hours. It's quite a process. But in the end it's all worth it. The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance.


Out of the oven.


Since the oven was on, I whipped up another batch of cranberry-raisin scones. Here's a shot looking down a ziploc bag full of scones. Breakfast and tea snacks for the next few days!

Curry & Scones.

I have Brian McCarthy's book 'The Vegan Family Cookbook' and I've only made a few things from it which have been absolutely stellar. I decided to try another one today. This is the "Tomato Garam Masala with Garbanzo Beans" which is kind of a saucier version of channa masala. It's very tomatoey and a little light on the spices so I upped the garam masala and added cumin, cayenne, coriander, ginger, cumin seed and mustard seed. I also added potatoes which was a good idea. Very yummy, saucy and comfort foody.


Really good cranberry and raisin scones. An easy easy recipe that I got from Vegweb.com. I love this site. You'll find the recipe here. I used half whole wheat flour and half white flour. Yum yum. I want to eat these all the time! They are great with a cuppa tea.


A pat of Earth Balance margarine make it even better.

Healthy Chimichangas.

These are the "Gimme Chimis" from a book called 'Eat Drink & Be Vegan'. They are not really chimichangas because they are not deep fried. I kind of wish I deep fried them but I'm not that crazy. I followed directions to pan fry them in olive oil and they came out very pretty looking. These were okay. I am pretty sure they would have been better had I not deviated from the written recipe. I used black beans instead of pinto, tofu instead of tempeh, omitted the cinnamon and cloves and used a tomato and basil flavored tortilla. I changed way too many things. If you're curious as to what's in them: black beans, zucchini, green pepper, red pepper, onions, garlic, tofu, chipotle hot sauce, oregano, cumin, chili powder, salt. I will probably try them again following the recipe exactly. The book looks great though. There are a ton of recipes that I want to try.

Easy Peach Pita Tart

A scoop of Trader Joe's Soy Vanilla ice cream would have made this dessert perfect. I was dying for something sweet today and my mind was thinking "cake" but I wasn't about to bake a cake from scratch so I came up with this simple summer treat. It is a whole wheat pita spread with margarine, sprinkled with about a tablespoon or so of brown sugar, adorned with thinly sliced ripe peaches, brushed with marmalade jam and sprinkled with cinnamon. It went in the oven on a baking sheet for 10 minutes at 350 F degrees. The result was really nice. Soft and tender peaches on a sweet buttery base and crispy shell.

Thai Karee Curry and a Frozen Banana Treat.

What to do with fresh asparagus, red bell peppers, zucchini, potatoes and tofu? Make a thai curry. I fall back on curry all the time when I have lots of vegetables to use up. I made a thai curry today using coconut milk and karee curry paste. It's super spicy and perfect with some white jasmine rice. I might turn this into a soup later in the week by adding water and lime juice.


To cool down from the furious heat of the curry I had this delightful treat for dessert. It's frozen banana chunks (that I froze last night in little ziploc bags) topped with warm unsalted peanut butter, a sprinkle of chocolate chips and a drizzle of agave syrup. Really really good.