Tag: vegetarian

Sweet & Sour Chipotle Tempeh with Sweet Potatoes

It’s been nice cooking lately instead of going out. While we’re lucky enough to have quite a few vegan options here in Atlanta, there is a ceiling. And sometimes you get tired of eating the same stuff all the time. At least I do.

But when you cook at home, your possibilities are almost endless. The Sweet & Sour Chipotle Tempeh with Sweet Potatoes from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan were another excuse to turn on the oven for an hour. Plus, I don’t cook nearly enough tempeh. I forgot to get pineapple and toyed with the idea of using mandarin orange segments but then just left out the ingredient entirely. The dish did not suffer for it. There was plenty of sauce and plenty of sweet and sour goodness.

Tanya’s Asian Creation

Apparently I’ve been revisiting old favorites lately. The piles of Fall squash in the markets always make me think of this dish, Tanya’s Asian Creation from How It All Vegan. Another one that comes together quickly with ingredients that can hang out for a while without going bad. I love to have a few of those up my sleeve for weeks when you don’t really know what you’re doing one night to the next.

This time I used a cute little butternut I had hanging out. Even though it was small, I had extra that I put in the freezer already cubed for later use. Oh, and make the gomashio. It makes the dish and is quick and cheap to make.

For Indian food lovers

If you want to cook something that is about as close to the tastiest Indian food you can get in a restaurant, you’ll want to try these lentils from Dino’s Alternative Vegan cookbook. This is one of those recipes I keep going back to. It’s another one you can whip together with mostly pantry items.

I had a couple of options for something green to eat on the side. Instead of keeping the green beans plain, I used the treatment Dino gives to broccoli and roasted them up in the oven. There might have been just a bit more seasoning than I needed for the amount of green beans I had, but it was amazingly good.

Tarragon scented white bean soup

A lovely bean soup from dried beans doesn’t necessarily mean long hours on the stove top. A pressure cooker will deliver it in about 20 minutes. Lentils are even faster. And it makes risotto super easy. No stirring!

When I’m going to cook beans, whether in the slow cooker or the pressure cooker, I plan ahead and put them in to soak in some water at least 8 hours. If I’m not going to use right after soaking, I just stick them in the fridge until I need them.

If you’re looking for a guide to ease you into pressure cookery, Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure is a great choice. And I think most recipes are either vegan or easily vegan. It comes with handy cook time charts for various beans, grains and vegetables so you can speed up your favorite dish once you get comfortable with pressure cooking.

This is the Tarragon Scented White Bean Soup from this book. In this case, navy beans. It made a great weeknight Fall meal.

New POM Wonderful Juices

You know, apparently I’m just not a big juice drinker. POM sent me two of their new juice blends to try a couple of weeks ago at least and I just today got to the second one. It’s not that I don’t like juice. I’m just more of a fruit eater than drinker.

pom_kiwipom_nectarine

Anyway, first up was the POM Nectarine. A nice blend. The nectarine did a good job of standing up to the assertive pomegranate. The POM Kiwi was much more subtle and it was mostly pomegranate that came through. I found both juices easier for me to drink than straight pomegranate but they were still a bit strong for me. Maybe a little apple juice mixed in would make it more palatable for me. I did drink a full serving of each but there was no way I could drink more than that. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Click through the links to see nutritional information, etc. I know POM has left a bad taste (ha, I’m funny!) in some vegan’s mouths because of their past animal testing. They did stop back in 2007 which is the only reason I agreed to try their products. Oh, and this is not a paid blog post. POM has sent me samples of some of their products but that’s the extent of the schwag I’ve received.

On a side note, I love how Whole Foods got all up in arms and was threatening to pull POM off their shelves over animal testing when they sell animal products. Hello?