Vegan on the Cheap: Dan-Dan Style Linguine

Posted on October 31, 2011 by jodie

It’s the last day of VeganMoFo.

I am panning to continue my series on Healthy Weeknight Meals, but it will be much less often. Not that I’ll be eating healthy less often, but I’ll be doing some repeat meals, and well… I live alone. Sometimes I cook small meals for one, but many of the dishes I’ve made lately ahem made lots of leftovers… some of which I’ve not had the chance to eat, so they’ve been thrown out. That’s not good.

But you want to know what was good?

These noodles!

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Made this with soba noodles instead of linguine. Also used TVP instead of Tempeh. Isn’t that cheaper?

This meal comes to us from Vegan on the Cheap.

Now, these could definitely be made on weeknight, but I hesitate to call them “healthy.” Not that they’re unhealthy per se, but there’s a LOT of fat in them. Which is what makes them taste so good!

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Oh-so-tasty!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed VeganMoFo this year!

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My Sweet Vegan Giveaway Winner!

Posted on October 30, 2011 by jodie

We have a winner for My Sweet Vegan!

When I heard that Siri could automatically generate random numbers, I was so set to use it for this giveaway! Turns out you can only get a random number between 1 and 1000, which didn’t quite work. So bummed! So I went all old-fashioned and used random.org.

There seemed to be a little confusion about how to enter, but if you left a comment here, told me you were following me elsewhere in the same comment, or told me elsewhere that you were following me, you got entered, in order. Which makes tonight’s winner…

Jill K, #7 (who might look like #6, but the commenter above her also said he was following me on Twitter, and since I wasn’t clear, I wanted to be as fair as possible).

Congrats, Jill!

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Healthy Weeknight Meals: Macro Mac & Cheese

Posted on October 26, 2011 by jodie

I can’t say that I made this tonight, but I did make this on a weeknight before VeganMoFo started.

This is the Macro Mac & Cheese from Blissful Bites. The stars aligned a few weeks ago: I decided I was tired of vegan cheese substitutes, and then I find out there’s a mac and cheese recipe that uses butternut squash instead!

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Macro Mac & Cheese, served with BBQ Soy Curls. BBQ Soy Curls are the easiest thing in the world to make!

Blissful Bites is a beautiful book, with lots and lots of healthy recipes. The recipes are organized by season, so this is a book where it might make sense to actually try to cook your way through, one season at a time.

The key to making this on a weeknight is preparation: have the squash peeled, cubed and ready to use, and then very little of your time is spent preparing anything- it becomes a matter of turning on a couple of pots, throwing things together in the Vita-Mix, and then tossing it in the oven.

I hope to try some of the other recipes soon!

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My Sweet Vegan Give Away!

Posted on October 25, 2011 by jodie

Like my fellow Vida Vegan Conference Go-ers, I got a copy of My Sweet Vegan in my swag bag. It’s a great cookbook- so great- I already had a copy. 🙂

So, my extra copy becomes yours. I’m happy to ship anywhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. Not sure how I’ll get it there if you’re not somewhere on Earth, but I’ll figure it out. 🙂

Yes, yes, I did just finish a Stargate SG-1 marathon. But I’ll seriously ship it anywhere.

Leave a comment here to enter! If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter and leave a comment for those (here) you can get an extra entry or two!

You must enter by Sunday, 10/30/11 at 5PM Eastern Time to win!

And I’ll be back with more Healthy Weeknight Meals tomorrow!

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Black Bottom Blondie with Raspberry Sauce from My Sweet Vegan.

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Healthy Weeknight Meals: Not Your Mama’s Pot Roast With Roasted Vegetables

Posted on October 24, 2011 by jodie

Another slow cooker recipe, but this one from Vegan Diner. The actual directions for the dish have you cooking on high for 4 hours, but I cooked on low for a couple of hours first. I’m thinking it would work perfectly fine if you wanted to cook on low all day- maybe just add a little extra liquid.

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I added some kabocha squash, too. I think you can add any winter vegetable to this one!

I made this yesterday, but I don’t see any reason why this can’t be one that cooks all day while you’re at work. It makes plenty of food, so you can also do what I did, and make it on a Sunday and have leftovers for the week!

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Vegan Brunch: East Coast Coffee Cake

Posted on October 23, 2011 by jodie

Vegan Brunch is probably my favorite cookbook. I’m sure that I’ve made more from this one than any other cookbook I own. This of course is a little different than what I’ve been doing for the last few days, but sometimes it’s nice to say hi to an old friend, right?

Yesterday I had a hankering for coffee cake (other people know it as “crumb cake.”) Vegan Brunch to the rescue!

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Raspberry-Chocolate version.

This was easy to make. However, I did not have any brown sugar, which I’m sure would have made a big difference with the crumb topping. I added some molasses, but it didn’t have quite the same effect (though had I added the molasses directly to the white sugar, maybe it would have?).

At any rate, it still tasted good!

Tomorrow I have a recipe from another cookbook I haven’t tried before!

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Vegan Soul Kitchen: Spicy Smothered Green Cabbage

Posted on October 22, 2011 by jodie

This is what I was going to make Thursday night (but you got to see some awesome pizza instead- with Sci-Fi on the side!). I was again going to make it Friday night, but I was way too tired. But, I made it tonight!

This meal come from Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen. This of course, was yet another cookbook I’ve had forever and never used. It’s is really a side dish, but if you want to go with a mono-vegetable meal, it’s a good one.

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Shredded cabbage with spices.

I liked it. A lot. I shredded the cabbage earlier in the day, but it doesn’t take very long to do that. With the cabbage pre-shred, this comes together in about 10 minutes. Totally do-able for Healthy Weeknight Meals, even if you have to shred the cabbage after work.

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Stargate SG-1 Pizza Marathon!

Posted on October 20, 2011 by jodie

Note: none of the links here will take you to spoilers, unless you consider the kind of summaries they post in things like TV Guide to be spoilers. Which some people do.

I’m taking the night off from Healthy Weeknight Meals, because I was too hungry for what I had planned. I had a burrito from Chipotle instead (with brown rice)! You’ll get the meal I was planning for tonight tomorrow, instead.

Last December, vegan boyfriend and I started watching Stargate SG-1 (well, he had seen it and owned everything on DVD; I had not). In case you’re not an SG-1 fan, it started with the feature film Stargate, and was then made into a TV series, first airing on Showtime and later on SyFy. It lasted for 10 seasons, with two movies afterwards. That’s over 200 episodes in addition to the movies. Well, this past Saturday, our SG-1 marathon came to an end.

We celebrated with pizza!

First pizzas, with the second-to-last episode, Dominion.

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For vegan boyfriend: Veggie Lover’s Pizza- personal sized. Caramelized onions, black olives, sautéed mushrooms, broccoli and green peppers. All of these pizzas use Daiya cheese.

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For the picky vegan who hates things that taste like shrooms: caramelized onions and pineapple, also personal sized. Mmmm.

We took a pizza break for the final episode, Unending.

Second pizza, with the first post-series movie, The Ark of Truth.

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Regular-sized pizza, with Field Roast Italian Sausage. One half has the above veggies lovers with the Field Roast, the other just caramelized onions with the Field Roast.

We took another pizza break after the beginning of the first movie, until the end of the second (final) movie, Continuum.

Towards the end of the second movie, vegan boyfriend paused the movie and said “should we make pizza?” After I replied, “what is this ‘we’ of which you speak?” I made this final pizza. 🙂

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The same pizza as above, but with Yves vegan pepperoni instead of Field Roast. It came out a bit deformed, though some people might call that “rustic.” 🙂

And just like that, Stargate SG-1 was over.

But then we got back to Stargate Atlantis! I figure it won’t be too long before we’re done with that one, either.

And there’s still Stargate Universe to go…

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Healthy Weeknight Meals: Black Bean and Kabocha Squash Stew

Posted on October 19, 2011 by jodie

This recipe comes from Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet. Originally made with black soy beans, I couldn’t find any, so went with black turtle beans instead.

This is not a quick meal to make start to finish after work. In order to make this after work, I had pre-diced the onion, pre-cut the squash and was using beans I had already cooked (and frozen). That all done, it still took an hour. On the other hand, with ingredients prepped ahead of time, the hour it took wasn’t bad. It was mostly just the actual cooking time.

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A rich and hearty stew. Definitely good fall food!

The Kind Diet is another cookbook I’ve owned for awhile yet not cooked from. I did read it (it’s really more of a book than a cookbook, I suppose), but never got around to making anything from it. If you know anything about the book- this is from the “vegan” section, rather than the “superhero” section. I’ll be looking at that in greater detail soon, though!

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Healthy Weeknight Meals: PB&J

Posted on October 18, 2011 by jodie

Biggest cop-out of VeganMoFo.

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Yes, that is peanut butter and jelly. On a wrap. But the peanut butter is organic and the jelly is low-sugar preserves, so that has to count for something, right? Did I mention the wrap is whole wheat?

I left work a bit late, I had a phone call scheduled just before 6, and I was just plain hungry. There’s no shame in PB & J. Perhaps in taking a picture of it and posting it online, but no shame in eating it on a busy night. 🙂

Don’t worry, I have something planned that will be much fancier tomorrow- which of course I promised yesterday. I should stop doing that! 😉

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