Cupcakes

The hardest part for the cupcakes was searching for a non-dairy cake mix. The only Betty Crocker/Pillsbury mix we found without dairy was the Spice cake, which is not Ashley's cup of tea. So we had to dig in our pockets for Dr. Oetker's vanilla Organic cake mix from the Co-Op. All that was needed after that was Egg-replacer and margarine.
The frosting was also Dr. Oetker, and was just as expensive. And it turned out to be powdered sugar! On the package it was disguised as "organic icing sugar". BUMMER. All that was needed to whip up the frosting was soy milk.
These were okay. The best part was the strawberries.
And the cupcakes didn't stay well. The next day the frosting soaked through the cake and left juice around the base of the cupcake.

The B.L.T.

We've been craving the Turtle Island Smoky Maple Bacon Tempeh for the past few days. We fry the tempeh in vegetable oil for a couple minutes, which smells just like bacon.

Spread some Vegenaise (yes, vegan mayonnaise) on the bread.
Slice a tomato, avocado, onion, and a leaf of lettuce.

 Delicious.

Pizza Pizza

This is the first of many vegan pizza's and Ashley loves to load up the toppings, which makes them fork and knife pizza's. So, the dough is the whole wheat master ABin5 recipe. And there is no rising/waiting time because it's a flat bread!
For the pizza sauce we started using tomato paste. For an individual pizza the small 6 oz. can is the perfect amount, and only 70 cents. Cover the rolled out dough with the paste, then spread Italian seasoning and minced garlic over the paste.
This pizza has asparagus, mushrooms, zucchini, orange bell pepper, and tomato. Lastly, drizzle olive oil over everything before putting it in the blazing 550*F oven. Baking only takes 15 minutes.
The ABin5 books suggest a baking stone, but we don't use one. We cook the pizza on a cookie sheet.

This is a Brad pizza, i.e., minimal toppings. This pizza has the same Italian spice, garlic, and tomato paste sauce. This pizza is topped with spinach, onion, and mushroom. Saute the spinach in some olive oil until the spinach becomes dark and wet. Then spread the spinach out over the pizza.

Homemade Chickenless Chicken Noodle Soup

This one is Ashley's own creation. You start with 7 1/2 cups water and 3 tbs. Better Than Bouillon Vegetarian No Chicken Base or Vegetable Stock.
Once it boils add chopped veggies. We add carrots, yellow and green zucchini, and celery. But you really can add any vegetables you want. Add 1/2 an onion and 1 or 2 cloves of garlic then let it all boil for 30ish minutes with a lid.
Add the noodles last. What's great is that Top Ramen noodles are vegan! The salt flavor packets are not, except Oriental flavor, so toss them out.
This makes about 4 servings.
Caution: if you refrigerate the leftovers, clear out the noodles or they'll soak up the broth.
Yum. Great on those cold days.

Everything Bagels

We've taken liberties with the ABin5 raisin bagel recipe and made our favorite EVERYTHING bagel. These are made with the master dough (flour, salt, yeast, wheat gluten). After forming them and letting them rise, you put them in a pot of boiling water and baking soda for that bagel chewy-ness. Then put everything (dried garlic and onion, sesame and poppy seeds) on top. Then bake them for a bit.
The bagels keep for much less time than other ABin5 recipes because of the water bath. But still, fresh bagels for 3-4 days!

Avocado Sushi, Teriyaki Tofu and Broccoli, Miso Soup

Sushi! We've been spending about 20 dollars a week at our favorite sushi joint, then decided to try our hand at it. Bed, Bath, & Beyond sells a rolling kit with instructions for a few dollars. 

 

We used jasmine rice without the vinegar mixture. Wet a piece of seaweed, throw some avocado in there...

roll it on up. Then cut it.

Miso soup is easy. Get the right miso paste, throw in some tofu cubes, sliced up seaweed, and green onions. Simple.

This is Tofu Teriyaki with broccoli and mushrooms. Saute them all together with a lid.
This was quite a large meal. Way too much for two.

Almond (Pecan) Rolls

This is another ABin5 recipe, made with the vegan challah dough. The only substitution was butter with margarine for the topping and inside goo. The rest is cinnamon, brown sugar, sugar, black pepper, salt, and almonds.
They're not as good as Grandma Jan's, but still satisfying and dangerous.

Baked Yams

We got this recipe from food.com (formerly recipezaar) trying to make something french fry like. The yams were tossed in olive oil, then covered in cinnamon. The results were sweeter and more treat like than we were expecting. So we tried them again later with the Post Punk Kitchen recipe and were very pleased.

Boca Burger, Buns and Corn on the Cob

We made some tofuburger buns with the Artisan Bread in 5 (ABin5) Master whole grain dough recipe. The master recipe is versatile because it can be used in loaf sandwich bread, pizza dough, bagels, baguettes, and focaccia with delicious results. The master recipe includes whole wheat flour, unbleached white flour, yeast, salt, vital wheat gluten, and water. Vegan and simple.

We've been cooking our corn cobs over the stove because we're college students. Even though we have a great yard right now, and the sun has been visiting more often, and grills are on sale at Winco Brad still won't give in. Corn cobs go on ridiculous sales at Safeway occasionally and we jump at the opportunity. We peel back the husk, rub it down with olive oil, apply salt and pepper, then fold the husk back. We cover the corn with a lid and cook at medium heat rotating occasionally. Not as good as a grill, but works about the same.

Pear Tarte Tatin

This is an Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe. We LOVE, and highly recommend, the Artisan Bread in 5 books. It is incredibly easy! You make a large batch of dough and keep it in the fridge, then you make 3 to 4 bread projects during the week.

It's also extremely Vegan friendly. For example the dough we used in this recipe is Challah, which is usually fortified with eggs and honey, but with egg replacer and agave nectar it acts and tastes the same. The rest of the challah is flour, yeast, salt, oil, and vanilla extract.

Check these books out if you're tired of searching the bread aisle for a Vegan option. Did we mention how cost efficient it is too! There's just too much to love about these books...

So anyway, this is the Pear Tarte Tatin. Over the stove we baked the pears in some canola oil, brown sugar, agave nectar (replacement for honey), lemon juice, and cinnamon for 30 minutes. Then placed a rolled out sheet of challah dough over the top of the pears. Then into the oven for 20 min. Then flip it. It's delicious. Brew up some coffee too because it's sort of waffle/pancake like.

Veggie Tamale's

 Here's a photo of our preparation. If you follow the recipe on the back of the Masa bag for tamales and with our substitutions they will be 100% Vegan. :)

 This is our Masa mix. To make it Vegan we used Crisco vegetable shortening instead of lard, you can also substitute with olive oil. Chicken broth is also required so we used chicken-less chicken broth or you can use vegetable stock.

 For the filling we used whatever we had. We threw in black beans, corn, mushrooms, onions, chopped tomatoes, zucchini, garlic, serrano and jalapeno peppers. For additional pow we added chili powder, cummin, salt and pepper. We saute'd all filling ingredients for roughly 30-40 minutes.

 We recommend steaming the corn husks so they don't crack when wrapping. When spreading on the Masa imagine frosting a cake! Make sure to leave space on all sides so that when wrapping it doesn't explode out the sides.

 After the masa's been spread, place a generous portion of filling in the middle. Keep in mind the filling is the best part. But once again it will poop out the sides if you put to much.

When cooking the tamales shove as many as you can into one pot with a good amount of water and a steaming rack. If you don't have a steaming rack you can use anything from forks to aluminum foil. The point is to steam them not boil them. Depending on the size of your tamales, and how many you're cooking will change the time needed for cooking. We cooked ours for an hour and a half.

After unwrapping the tamales we decided to cover ours in store bought verde sauce. yum.
One warning though: one batch makes a lot of tamales. We had 39. Luckily they freeze well.

MM..Food