I recently found this premade whole wheat pizza crust, which is great when you need to whip something up quickly! You can keep them in the freezer and since their already rolled out and thin, they defrost quickly, as opposed to a ball of uncooked dough. 

I've said this before, but I love tacos, pizzas, and sandwiches for their versatility. There's no rule that says that pizza has to always be Italian, tacos Mexican, and so on. They are great blank canvases where you can add whatever flavors you would like! In this pizza I went BBQ style.

 I used BBQ sauce as my base and added veggies that I typically associate with BBQ meals (and had in my freezer) - red onion, corn, broccoli, and edamame. If you have another type of bean on hand, such as pinto, kidney, or black-eyed pea on hand that may be a more authentic BBQ flavor. I did really love the texture of the cooked edamame on the pizza though. Then I topped it off with some guacamole - again not maybe totally BBQ style, but it helped balance out the texture and flavor profile since the BBQ sauce was a thin layer of the pizza. Hope you enjoy it!

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. 

Prep pizza crust as needed. 

Spread BBQ Sauce on pizza dough. Thinly slice red onion and spread evenly across pizza. Top with corn and edamame. Chop up broccoli and spread evenly across pizza. 

Once oven is preheated, cook pizza according to instructions for the dough, approximately 5-15 minutes. Be sure not to over cook or else you'll end up with burnt crust. 

While pizza is cooking, prep your avocado. You could either mash it up and add dollops to your pizza like I did or cut into slices and top the pizza with your slices. 

Once the pizza is ready, top with avocado, serve, and enjoy!

The idea of a homemade tomato sauce may conjure up ideas of sauce slow cooking on the stove all day, letting the flavors marinate and blend. That is not was this recipe is all about. This recipe is for when you get home late from work and are looking for something quick and nourishing to heat up for dinner. If you're lucky, you'll have some of that slow simmer sauce canned and on hand to use in this recipe!  

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The prep work here is fairly minimal, chop up some garlic, onion, and peppers as a base to your sauce. If you have other fresh veggies on hand such as mushrooms or spinach feel free to add those as well! Adding the tempeh adds another element to the texture and some hearty protein.

I had some extra cashew sauce that I had made for the Loaded Baked Potato Pizza, which I added in to my sauce to make it creamy (and add more protein). If you want to keep it as just a basic tomato sauce then you can omit this.  

Instructions:

Dice garlic, onion, and red bell pepper. Add garlic and onion to a non-stick skillet and cook until the onions are translucent. Stir occasionally to prevent them from burning. Add the red bell pepper. Stir to combine.

Crumble the tempeh into the pan. Continue to break apart with a wooden spoon or spatula until it is the desired size and consistently. I like to break it down pretty far so that it is about the same size as the onions and bell pepper. 

​Once the tempeh has been broken down to the desired level, well mixed in with the other ingredients, and has a bit of crispiness, add in the sauces, stir and combine. 

Serve over your favorite pasta, with a side of whole wheat bread and a nice salad. Enjoy!

Pretty much every time I go to Whole Foods I buy some of their whole wheat pizza dough. It's so good and it there are endless options for what you can make with it. At this point I have a bunch of it in my freezer so I decided to finally make some pizza! 

Instructions:
Put the cashews in water to soak.

Slice potatoes thinly using either a knife or a mandolin. Make sure that they are all the same width so that they cook evenly. Place them in a bowl full of luke warm water and salt for at least an hour. After they are done soaking, lay potatoes out on a towel and cover with another one to soak up all the moisture. This process gets some of the starch and liquid out of the potatoes so that they crisp better. 

While the potatoes are soaking slice the onion and red bell pepper into thin strips.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. 
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Roll out the pizza dough to your desired shape based on your cooking surface. If you are using a cookie sheet sprinkle some ground corn meal on the tray or use parchment paper to make sure it doesn't stick. If you have a pizza stone, make sure you put enough flour or corn meal on your pizza peel so that the pizza dough will slide off easily when transferring into the oven (admittedly I have yet to perfect this myself as you can see in the post-oven photo). 

To prepare the cashew sauce place all of the ingredients in a food processor or high quality blender (such as a Vitamix or Ninja) and blend until smooth. The amount of water I used is approximate. Add it a little at a time as needed for the ingredients to blend together well. 

Put the rolled out pizza dough on the pizza peel or cookie sheet. Spread a generous layer of the cashew sauce on the pizza dough. Cover the pizza with potatoes, overlapping them slightly. If you have extra cashew cheese you could put another layer of the sauce over the potatoes. I didn't do this but I think it would be a great addition and help keep the peppers and onions on the pizza. Next evenly distribute the peppers and onions over the pizza. Sprinkle the chives over the pizza. 

Put pizza in the oven and cook for 15 minutes. 

Top with red pepper flakes as desired. Cool, slice, and serve. Enjoy!

A good friend of ours lived in Costa Rica for a couple years after college. Recently we were over at his place and he made us beans and rice for dinner, which he had learned how to make there. It had been on my list of recipes to try that I just never got around to making, but that night inspired me! It was so easy to make, cooking everything in the same pot, and it was delicious! I had worried in the past that the dish was too simple and would leave me unsatisfied, but I was wrong. The rice and beans stick to your ribs, you can add all the veggies you want, and the spices add a ton of flavor. 

It's been a few months since that night, so I was cooking from memory. Onion and peppers are the standard veggies to add, but feel free to include whatever your favorites are. Same goes for the color of pepper, beans, and rice. If you change out the rice, but sure to make sure you have the right amount of water. Check the cooking instructions for your rice. Mine called for 2 cups of liquid for 1 cup of rice, so I decided to split it evenly between water and veggie broth. For some reason I love adding cinnamon into Mexican/Carribbean type dishes. I don't think it's typical in this dish but I love the complexity that it adds (not to mention the health benefits).

Ingredients:
​1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
1 Yellow Onion
2 Red Peppers
3 Cloves Garlic
1 Tablespoon Oregano
2 teaspoons Cumin
1 teaspoon Paprika
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 Cup Brown Rice
1 Can Black Beans
1 Cup Vegetable Broth
1 Cup Water
1 teaspoon Salt 
1 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
1/2 teaspoon Ground Red Pepper
1-2 Avocados
1 Bunch Green Onion
1 Cup Cherry Tomatoes 

Prep Time: 5-10 minutes                                          Cook Time: 40-45 minutes                                                          Servings: 4 

Instructions:
Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Dice onion, peppers, and garlic and add to pot. Add spices - oregano, cumin, paprika, and cinnamon. Stir together. Cook for about 10 minutes or until peppers and onions are soft. 

Add rice and stir for about 2 minutes. 

Add beans, vegetable broth, and water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, add salt and pepper and stir to combine. Cover pot and let sit for 20-25 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender.

While this is cooking, chop the avocado, tomato, and green onions for your garnish.

Turn the heat off. Add the ground red pepper, stir, and let sit for about ten minutes.

​Serve, topped with the avocado, tomato, and rice. 

​Enjoy!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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?

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!

What a winning recipe! I like making slow cooker recipes when I'm home on the weekend. I was looking through my cookbook Vegan Slow Cooker by Kathy Patalsky and was inspired to make a vegan lasagna. I used tofu to make the ricotta and added tempeh to tomato sauce to make it resemble a meat sauce. Jay loved it! Here are some of his quotes while finishing his plate:

• "Definitely Jay Approved!"
• "I can't tell that this is vegan at all!"
• "The tempeh tastes exactly like ground beef!"
• "One of your better ones!"
  

He kept on raving on the texture of the tempeh and how it worked perfectly for ground beef!

This lasagna has tofu and tempeh in it - so it's packed with protein! Definitely a hearty meal. It doesn't serve quite as easily from the slow cooker since your slices will be taller than from a lasagna dish, so not every piece will include every layer. You can also cook this in the oven if you prefer.

Instructions:

To make the tempeh meat sauce: Dice onions and cook over medium heat until translucent. Crumble the tempeh and add to the pan. Add the soy sauce and Worcester sauce and stir to coat the tempeh. Combine with the tomato sauce.

To make the tofu ricotta: Press the tofu to remove excess water. Crumble it into a bowl and add the nutritional yeast, minced garlic, and onion powder.

If you're using fresh greens, chop them up and heat them in a pan with a little water just to wilt them a bit.

Oil the bottom of your crock pot and layer the ingredients inside. Start with the tomato sauce, then a layer of noodles, followed by the tofu ricotta and greens and then start over again with the sauce. After you've placed the top layer of noodles pour the rest of the sauce on top. Cook on high for 1.5 hours or on low for 3 hours. Serve and enjoy!

Jay had been saying how he wanted something with peanut sauce after I made the spaghetti squash with peanut sauce the other day. I thought that I would mix it up a bit and use tahini to make a sesame sauce. I wanted a recipe that would use my winter vegetables and all the cooking greens that I had and I thought a stir fry would be great.

I used bean starch noodles, also referred to as cellophane or glass noodles. There are other varieties made with potatoes or starches. You can find them in the Asian food aisle at the grocery store. They are normally packaged in three bundles of dried noodles. I normally use one bundle at a time. The package says it has three servings, but once you add in vegetables that one serving goes a long way. Jay has always been creeped out by them and this time was no different. If you don't like glass noodles you can use any other type of Asian noodle.

I used the rest of the seitan from the stew I made last week, about a half a cup. Jay thought it did a good job of filling in for chicken and was pleasantly surprised by the texture.

Instructions:

Cook the noodles to package directions.

While the noodles are cooking, chop up all your vegetables in the order you'll cook them - garlic, onion, carrot, sweet potato, apple, mushrooms, greens. I like to start cooking the heavier vegetables while I chop the rest. Heat the garlic and onion over medium heat until the onions begin to turn translucent. Add the carrots and sweet potato and cook for about 5 minutes, then add the apples, mushrooms, and seitan. Finally, add the greens and let them wilt.

To make the sauce combine all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together. This makes enough sauce for a light coating, so if you want more you can increase the portion size of each ingredient. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and stir to evenly coat the dish.

I generally find that cellophane noodles tend to be very long, so after I drain them I like to put the whole pile on my cutting board and slice them once or twice. Combine the vegetables with the noddles. Serve and top with cashews. Enjoy!

Purple carrots? yep! Purple is actually carrots original color - orange didn't become the standard color until the late 1600s when the Dutch bred them to be orange in honor of William of Orange. While there are slight difference in flavor based on the color of a carrot, they all generally taste like carrots, so don't be cautious about trying different colors - it'll just add more nutrient variety into your diet, which is something we should all strive for. Since I was using sweet potatoes I thought I would use purple carrots instead of the typical orange to balance out the color in the dish - instead I just turned the whole thing purple.

So you can thank purple carrots for the lovely color of this stew, which turned my sweet potato stew into purple carrot stew. There is something about purple vegetables (I'm looking at you beets) that dyes everything they come in contact with more so than the pigment in any other vegetable.  Next time I prepare purple carrots I'll have to cook them on their own, like grilling or roasting.

I added seitan into this dish as a protein source. If you don't have any, fear not, you can easily use beans, tempeh, tofu, or a grain instead - I actually got them all out and deliberated over which I wanted to use. For those who haven't had it before, seitan is an ancient Chinese protein source made with wheat gluten, water, and spices, in it's most basic sense.

Instructions:

Dice the onion and heat it in a large sauce pan on medium heat with a little bit of water or oil until it becomes translucent. Add the milk, water, carrots, potatoes, and thyme. Cover and cook on low heat for about an hour.

Add the seitan and lentils and cook for another 45 or until the lentils have absorbed enough water to your desired consistency. I prefer stews over soups, which is why I added in the lentils (to absorb the water), so you can add more water or cook for less time if you water it to be soupier.

Add the kale, garlic, and ginger and stir until the kale is wilted. Serve and enjoy! Store any leftovers for lunch!