Tag: vegan

Cornbread-topped Southwestern Pot Pie

Slow cookers are awesome in the summer time because they don’t heat up the house like the oven. And, I know it freaks some people out to leave the house with an appliance on, but they are made for that purpose so I don’t worry about it.

This is the Cornbread-topped Southwestern Pot Pie from Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. Yeah, the title says “vegetarian” but I think all the recipes are actually vegan. Oh wait, she does say “milk or soy milk” in the ingredient list for this recipe, but just forget she said milk, okay?

The pintos I used here were previously dry ones I slow cooked and then squirreled away in the freezer. Cook them off a pound at a time, then you’ll have several recipe’s worth. And it’s way cheaper than buying canned ones.

This was good. The cornbread topping was a little simpler than the ones I make baked alone. There was no sweetness added and it didn’t have any added all purpose flour, just the cornmeal. And I was wondering if it was really going to set up in the crock pot, but it did. It was almost more like a polenta crust than cornbread. No complaints though. Just for fun, I tossed in a fresh jalapeño along with the canned for a little more heat.

Hot dogs without buns

The night before we left town on vacation, we needed dinner and something that wouldn’t create any leftovers and wouldn’t take too much time. We decided to try HD 1 because we’d heard they had some vegan options and it seemed like somewhere we could order the exact right amount of food.

So, there are two vegan “hot dog” options: the Field Roast sausage and the carrot dog. And the chili is vegan and so are a bunch of the sauces. And the waffle fries. But you know what’s not vegan? The fucking buns. We didn’t feel like going somewhere else, so just stuck with it. Behold, bunless dogs:

That’s the South of Chi-Town with the carrot dog.

And that’s the Cubanita, already dug into. We also got some waffle fries and the server kindly gave us some of the chili to try. It was good on the fries.

Sure, the sauces were really nice and all, but I see no point in going back unless the get some freakin’ vegan buns.

Pasta and garlic bread

So next up, let’s use up some of that Teese Mozzarella. I’m also trying to use down some things that have been hanging out in the freezer. In this case, some Gimme Lean Sausage. So I made up a red pasta sauce which started off by frying up onion, garlic and the sausage in a saucepan, then I added a big can of crushed tomatoes, and seasoned with basil, oregano, thyme, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. I pretty much never buy jarred pasta sauce because it’s so easy to make your own and you’re just going to doctor it anyway.

To use the Teese, I made some garlic bread. It was soaked through with garlicky Earth Balance and deliciously bad for us.

At least I used whole wheat pasta. Because that will make up for all the other sins here. Like no veggies. The other half of this Teese tube went into a lasagna, but I didn’t take pictures. It included more Gimme Lean, some Twin Oaks Italian Tofu, the layer of Teese and then Daiya on top. Oh, and both regular and whole wheat lasagna noodles. Can you tell I was using stuff up?

Black Pepper Steak and Noodles

vegeusa black pepper steaksWhy is it when I don’t have time to blog, I get a bunch of folks wanting to send me products to try? No worries, I’ll eventually get to talk about the goodies. This time VegeUSA offered to send me coupons for free product. I got excited cruising their website. I’ve had a few of their products, but they have a ton I haven’t tried. Sadly, when I got to the store, they only carried two I’d already had. So I decided to get a little experimental with one of them, the Vegan Black Pepper Steaks.

So, I took a partial bag of Trader Joe’s stir fry veggies, fried them up with some onion and then added the black pepper steaks and their juice. Then I added maybe a 1/4 cup of stock to make the sauce thinner. Then I mixed it up with some cooked rice noodles.

It was pretty good, but I think the sauce was diluted too much. Here’s what I should have done. Dress the cooked noodles with a little sesame oil and soy sauce, stir fry the veggies as I did and cook the pepper steaks separately according to package directions. Then mixed the veggies and noodles and put the pepper steaks on top rather than trying to make the sauce cover everything. Oh, look, I’m eating kale again.

The steak has a really nice texture. The sauce is asian-inspired, so you’ll want to keep that in mind when using this in a meal. The next product I try will be the Citrus Spareribs.

The laziest Mac & Cheeze

With all the Daiya hype over the last couple of years, poor Teese has kind of been pushed to the side a bit. Now that Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe is closed and Sevananda doesn’t carry it, I don’t think you can even get it in town. But recently I filled in a survey they tweeted about and was chosen to receive Teese as a thank you: the Creamy Cheddar Vegan Sauce, Mozzarella and Cheddar.

The first thing I did was make Mac & Cheeze for a potluck. Boil up pasta, toss with a tube of Teese Cheddar Cheese Sauce, sprinkle top with bread crumbs, vegan parmesan and a little paprika, and bake until less crispy than pictured here. Normally I might mix something else in there like broccoli, but this is lazy mac & cheeze so no veggies, just straight up.

Here it is hanging out with kale salad, spinach salad, tots and I think that’s a chik patty on that bun. It was a tad dry so I either overcooked it or should have used 12oz. of pasta rather than the full pound.

Just a tad though. Still made awesome leftovers, here with a beer brat and kale salad.