Category: Breakfast

Sweet Potato and Bean Hash

1/15/2017

I love cooking a big breakfast on the weekend because there are so many ways to mix and match ingredients to come up with a different twist and flavor each time. This recipe is so colorful and nutritious, full of veggies, carbs, and protein it's sure to be a satisfying breakfast!

This is a fully satisfying dish if you eat it on its own or makes a great side as part of a larger brunch menu.

Ingredients:
1/2 Tablespoon Olive Oil
2 Cloves Garlic
3 Small Leeks
2 Medium Sweet Potatoes
1 Green Pepper
1 15 oz can of Beans
1 teaspoon Turmeric
1 teaspoon Paprika

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Servings: 4

Instructions:
Mince the garlic. Finely chop the white and light green parts of the leeks - once you have sliced the leeks go back over the leek rings with your knife to chop them up even smaller. Rinse the leeks underwater as they can get dirt within the rings of the leeks. Heat the garlic and leeks in a skillet over medium heat with the olive oil.

Chop the sweet potatoes and green pepper to about the size of the beans, so that everything is a uniform size. Add the sweet potatoes to the skillet and stir them around to let them get a bit of a crisp on the end. Add the green peppers and cook until the sweet potatoes are soft, about 10 minutes.

Add the beans, turmeric, and paprika. Stir to combine. Once the beans are warm enough to your liking, serve and eat. You can top with your favorite sauce - ketchup, sriracha, vegan ranch dressing - or avocado if you have some.

Enjoy!

0 Comments

Banana Blueberry and Peanut Butter Ice Cream

7/26/2015

1 Comment

Banana Blueberry Peanut Butter Ice Cream

Last Sunday was probably the hottest day of the summer. At 9am it was already close to 90 degrees. As I contemplated what to have for breakfast I knew I needed something cold. So I made some ice cream.

Yep that's right - last Sunday I had ice cream for breakfast.

Now before you judge me, let me just tell you what was in that ice cream - bananas, blueberries, peanut butter, and some vegan dark chocolate chips. Basically health food.

I froze a batch of bananas a few months ago when I first starting seeing recipes for making ice cream out of frozen bananas. I'd also had vegan ice cream in the freezer, so I never got around it making it. Big mistake. This is some of the best stuff I've ever had. As you can see from my picture above I wasted no time eating it and just used the spatula I had been preparing it with as a spoon.

I made the mistake of sharing it with Jay towards the beginning of the meal and had to fend him off the whole rest of the time as he kept on stealing it from me when I wasn't looking. This stuff was that good.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 Frozen Bananas
1/3 Cup Frozen Blueberries
2 Tablespoons Peanut Butter
1/4 Cup Vegan Chocolate Chips

I had heard that ice cream made this way tastes a lot like banana. I'm not gonna tell you that it didn't taste like banana, but it tasted more like peanut butter and blueberry to me. If you don't particularly like banana just add some other strong flavored ingredients and you're good to go.

To make this recipe you need to have already frozen bananas and some other type of fruit. I think berries go best with peanut butter. I've starting freezing any bananas I have that get too ripe for my tastes. Peel them and rip them into 4-5 pieces depending on how big of a banana it is and put them in the freezer. When you're ready to use them just grab a couple pieces and drop them in a food processor.

Some recipes say to put the mixture back in the freezer after you've blended it all together to let it harden a little bit. This is probably a good idea. I was hot and hungry and inpatient, so I ate mine right away, but it well melting in the 90 degree heat.

Prep Time: 3 minutes

Cook Time: 0 minutes

Servings: 1

Instructions:
Add about 6 pieces of frozen banana (about a banana and a half) to a food processor and blend until smooth. Add blueberries and peanut butter, blend until smooth.

Pour mixture into a bowl. Add chocolate chips as desired (and any other toppings) fold into the ice cream.

Place in the freezer until it reaches the desired consistency (1-5 minutes).

Serve and enjoy!

1 Comment

Veggie and Tofu Quiche

7/18/2015

0 Comments

We spent the 4th of July weekend with some friends up in Maine. It was a great weekend getting out into nature and hanging out with friends. There were 10 of us and rest of the group was getting eggs and bacon to have for the breakfasts. Since that would take up a lot of space on the stove, I looked for something that didn't need the stove and didn't add too many cooks in the kitchen all at once, plus it had to be delicious and tempting to all the meat eaters. I decided to make a quiche - I could make it ahead of time and just heat it up in the oven, it was self-contained to one dish, and it was delicious and shareable.

I made the dish the night before we left and it was pretty simple. I chopped up all the veggies and sauteed them on the stove to cook the liquid out. Making the filling is as easy as blending together tofu, non-dairy milk, and spices. I used puff pastry as the dough since that was all I could find last minute. I would recommend a couple other crusts I've used before. The puff pastry did the trick but it was super flaky and messy after it was cooked.

The quiche was a big hit with the group. While they had eggs, bacon, and sausage it eat, everyone went back for seconds on my quiche. After breakfast the first morning there was just enough left for me to eat for breakfast the next day - no more sharing! I'm so glad I decided to make this, it's a great recipe to have in my back pocket and you can put whatever veggies you have on hand. I used kale, onions, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes, but some other great options would be broccoli, peppers, eggplant, squash, the list goes on.

Ingredients:
4 oz Mushrooms
Large Bunch of Kale
1/2 Cup Sun-dried Tomatoes
1 Small Onion
14 oz Tofu
1/2 Cup Non-Dairy Milk
1/2 Cup Nutritional Yeast
1/2 teaspoon Garlic Powder
1/2 teaspoon Sea or Pink Salt (Pink will have more of an egg taste)
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 Cup Vegg Vegan Egg (optional but adds more of an egg taste)
Thawed Puff Pastry

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 50 minutes

Servings: 10

Instructions:
If using a frozen crust (like my puff pastry was) make sure it is defrosted. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Chop your veggies and saute them over medium heat. I started with the onions and let them sweat a bit, them added the sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and kale. In total you should be sauteing for about 10-15 minutes.

Combine the tofu, non-dairy milk, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and Vegg in a food processor and blend until smooth. You can adjust the seasonings to taste.

Turn off the heat on the veggies and add in the tofu filling. Mix until well combined.

Add the puff pastry to a nine-inch pie pan. Pour the filling into the pan. Put in the oven and bake for 50 minutes.

Let cool. Serve and enjoy!

0 Comments

Spicy Mexican Breakfast Sandwich

3/14/2015

0 Comments

Another breakfast sandwich! This is a protein-packed breakfast sandwich with both beans and tofu, plus a ton of greens and whole wheat bread. Look at all those different colors too! If you're trying to add some variety into you diet this sandwich is for you - there's a wide variety of nutrients in this sandwich! In my typical fashion there's a ton of stuff loaded on this sandwich, which makes it a little messy to eat. The thinner you slice your potatoes the better they'll fit on the sandwich.

I was trying to find some oil alternatives to use when cooking my veggies, plus a seasoning for the tofu, so I went with the Alex's Ugly Sauce hot sauce I had in my fridge. It did a great job on both ends but unsurprisingly I ended up with a pretty spicy sandwich! I like combining spicy flavors with tofu because the tofu adds a cool and refreshing texture that helps to temper the spiciness. The Vegg powder adds complexity to the flavor of the tofu, helping to counter-balance the spice and add an egg-like feel.

Ingredients:
1/2 Block of Firm Tofu
1 Small Onion
1/2 Cup Cooked Black Beans
2 Slices of Bread
An inch of Sweet Potato
Handful of Salad Greens
1 teaspoon Tumeric
2 teaspoons Cumin (divided)
1 Tablespoon Vegg Vegan Egg Yolk
2 teaspoons Hot Sauce (divided)
Sriracha (optional)

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Servings: 1

Instructions:
Slice the tofu in half longways and press. Slice onion and sweet potato into thin slices. Heat onion and sweet potato on medium heat with a little bit of water, 1 teaspoon cumin, and 1 teaspoon of hot sauce for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the black beans on one of your slices of bread and mush/spread into the bread using a fork. It's best to add a little bit at a time so that you have room on the bread. Top with some sriracha if you would like (it's a pretty spicy sandwich).

Add the tofu to you pan with the onion and sweet potato. Add the second teaspoon of hot sauce and half of the tumeric, cumin, and Vegg powder. Once the tofu gets a nice crispiness on the bottom, flip the slices over. Sprinkle the second half of the cumin, tumeric, and Vegg powder. Let the other side get crispy and then flip once more.

This is where you have to use all of your coordination skills. Make some room on your pan to add your slice of bread with the black beans on it (make sure there's a little bit of liquid under the bread so it doesn't burn - you can add some cooking spray or a bit of oil if you would like. Add the salad greens. Add the two slices of tofu next to each other. Add the potato slices and onion. Try to spread the potato slices out to make them flat on the sandwich. Top with the other slice of bread.

Once the bottom slice is toasted flip the sandwich over. You may have to use two hands so be careful not to burn yourself.

Slice in half and enjoy!

0 Comments

Butternut Squash Latkes

12/21/2014

0 Comments

Happy Chanukkah! Latkes, potato pancakes, fritters, whatever you want to call them, they're delicious. Unfortunately, most recipes call for egg as a binding agent, making them not vegan.

I had a lot of squash that I needed to cook, so I thought since it was Hanukkah I would make a vegan version! This is decidedly not a healthy recipe. I made them the old fashioned way - cooking them on the stove with a ton of oil. It's my first time making vegan latkes so I wanted to make sure I had the ingredient ratio down before I started messing with the cooking method.

Jay thought that the big pile of latkes looked more appetizing than the single latke so he had me take this pic as well

I used Ener G Egg Replacer and was a bit nervous about how good of a job it would do since it normally seems pretty liquidy to me, but it worked great! You could also use flax or chia seeds. I'm interested in how well quinoa or beans would work in place of the bread crumbs and egg replacer as a binding agent. Stay tuned for a recipe using those ingredients! What's your favorite way to make latkes?

Ingredients:
1 Butternut Squash
1 Onion
4 eggs-worth of Egg Replacer
1 Cup Bread Crumbs
Olive oil

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Servings: 4

Instructions:
Grate butternut squash into a large bowl. Dice onion and add to the bowl. Prepare egg replacer and combine with squash and onion. Add bread crumbs and mix all the ingredients together well.

Heat a small amount of oil in a pan over medium heat. Grab about a quarter to a half cup of the squash mixture and form into a patty-like shape in your hands. Place on the pan. I was able to get three latkes on my pan at a time, but put whatever fits so that you have room to flip them. Cover and let sit for about 3 minutes. Check the latkes to make sure they are not sticking and are getting crispy on the bottom. Depending on the thickness of your latke you may need to adjust the heat of your stove so that the inside can cook without burning the bottom of your latke. Once you have gotten a desired about of crispness, flip over and do the same on the other side.

Continue until all of your batter has been cooked. Top with some apple sauce or vegan sour cream and enjoy!

0 Comments

Scrambled Tofu

11/23/2014

0 Comments

Scrambled Tofu is a quick and easy breakfast dish, especially if you have Vegg vegan egg yolk replacer. Vegg has both an egg yolk replacer and a egg replacer for baking. I've only used the egg yolk version in pretty basic ways, mainly sprinkling it on tofu. It's main ingredient is nutritional yeast, which is high in B12 (the only essential nutrient that vegans do not get naturally in their diet).

Ingredients:
1 Package Firm Tofu
4 Tablespoons Vegg Vegan Egg Yolk
1/2 teaspoon salt (if you have Himalayan Pink Salt that will add a sulfery taste)
1 teaspoon pepper
Tomato
Spinach
Avocado

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Servings: 4 as a side or 2 as a main dish

Pressing my tofu

Instructions:
Wrap and press all the water out of the tofu. This is not essential, but will produce a better product. Because tofu comes in water, it helps to press the tofu out so that it can absorb whatever flavors you are adding to it. I wrapped my tofu in paper towels and a dish cloth and then put something heavy on it, like the inside of my slow cooker. If anyone is looking for a Christmas gift a Tofu Press would be awesome. I pressed my tofu for 10-15 minutes, but however much time you have is good. If you're pressed for time, you can still have a good scrambled tofu without it.

Add a little bit of water to your pan and crumble the tofu into the pan so that it resembles the texture of scrambled eggs. You can continue to break up the tofu as you cook it. Add 1 tablespoon of Vegg for every quarter of your tofu. In these pictures I made half of my tofu with two tablespoons of Vegg. Continue to cook, mix, and add a little bit of water until all the Vegg is absorbed and the tofu is yellow. Add salt and pepper to taste. I generally top mine with some tomatoes and avocado and my favorite condiments - Heinz Ketchup and Sriracha. Eat on it's own or serve with some bean and/or potato hash.

0 Comments

Sweet Potato and Bean Hash

Banana Blueberry and Peanut Butter Ice Cream

Veggie and Tofu Quiche

Spicy Mexican Breakfast Sandwich

Butternut Squash Latkes

Scrambled Tofu

Author

Categories

Archives