Okay, so one afternoon hubby and I were absolutely starving and couldn’t agree on anything, so we decided to head to our local smaller version of Whole Foods.  (I am not mentioning their name because it’s truly a last resort as they are rude, difficult to deal with and slow slow slow…its the opposite of Whole Foods in every way.)  Anywho…hubby got his brown rice sushi and I headed to the frozen section.  Not sure what I ended up with that night, but I decided to grab some Rising Moon Organics ravioli as they make some killer vegan raviolis.  I also LOVE that they label very clearly, with the pretty ‘V’ in a heart on the front of their packages.  This saves me time, and disappointment in shopping.

So, as I was grabbing this, I saw ‘Organic Stuffed Shells: Made with Organic “Primacotta” Soy Ricotta  & Organic Pasta.’  Well let me just say that when I saw the happy pretty little ‘V’ in a heart on the front I snatched that bad boy up.  My hopes were very high, especially since I had not delighted in any kind of ricotta or stuffed shells with ‘cheesy-ness’ since prior to being vegan.  I was super excited, and though they were a bit pricey, I think it was $5.99 and it’s pretty much just a microwave meal, I couldn’t wait to endeavor on these.

One day I was running late for work, days later, and had totally forgotten about my shells.  I grabbed them, along with a Whole Foods Whole Wheat Mini-Pita, and I headed to work.  By lunch time, I was not only hungry, I was anticipating my stuffed shells.  I had serious doubts that the texture, flavor and general truly deliciousness of non-vegan stuffed shells could be replicated.  People…Rising Moon Organics did it.  Oh yeah they did.  Not only was the texture spot on, the flavor was so incredible.  I honestly don’t care if they are $10 each I am having this once a month.  It is SO good.  And the sauce that comes with it, delish.  I am SUPER picky about tomato based sauces, and pasta sauces, because my Mom made THE best sauce and I always felt like any microwave meals or restaurants always disappointed compared.  This did not.  The flavor was fresh and without some chemical aftertaste.  It is more than worthwhile, I am telling you NOW go find this stuff.  Go try out the brand.  I have had everything vegan of theirs that I can find, and it’s all been well worth it!

Now if you’re a skeptic, I encourage you even moreso…go…now…find you some of these shells.  Just look at them.  Oh they are GOOD!

Let me first begin by saying I have a wonderful and passionate romance with Kale.  We are buds.  High up on the ANDI scale, tasty, so many ways to eat it, so wonderful wonderful Kale…

Oh sorry, I got sidetracked.  Right, Kale.  So I found this recipe via Pinterest and it was for Kale butter…it looked easy enough to do and we were getting on the Engine 2 Diet so I needed a plant based, oil free butter substitute.  When I saw kale butter…I said, that’s for me.  Yes sir.  So I went to the website and followed along, roughly, to the recipe.  Now she used a ’bunch’ of kale…I think I may have used about 3…then I added (of course) Louisiana Hot Sauce, additional crushed red pepper, a bit of nutritional yeast…and more water and walnuts than she did.  So essentially I really didn’t follow the recipe much except to get a sense of what was in it.  Something like this I have to taste and have the texture I want.  SO…kale butter was made.  And boy did I love it.  Instead of a few servings though, I had at least 2 pounds.  So…I was putting it on everything.   This particular Saturday morning I was itching for a yummie breakfast scramble, but I didn’t want the same old same old Tofu scramble.

So…I decided to kind of throw in left overs of whatever I found in the fridge.  We had some left over black beans from the Black Bean Burgers, some Gimme Lean sausage that needed eaten, a small amount of tofu and I got to work.  I basically threw it all on in to my lovely and wonderous cast iron skillet.  Added some crushed red pepper, Louisiana hot sauce and then popped two slices of my dear Ezekial Food for Life bread in the toaster, topped those two bad boys with some kale butter and had me an open faced breakfast scramble.  BOY did it taste good.  And when I input all the nutritional info into my loseit app it was also really healthy and low cal!  So, see below, drool away and get to cooking.  I am guessing you can use any combo of beans and seasoning that you prefer.  I tell you, it’s delish.  And filling!  Enjoy!

So my absentee father, who I hadn’t seen in over 5 years, decided to grace me and my hubby for dinner.  He, along with a lot of other uneducated people, made the comment of ‘so what do you eat?!’ Oh, we eat yummie food…and we won’t die of heart disease because of cholesterol and nonsense in our food.  But oh, I digress.  We decided to be flashy and try the Meet the Shannons Beef(less) Stew with herbed dumplings.  I was craving a meaty delicacy, and since I only do cruelty free, we settled on this delish stew.  It was a lot of work.  And I mean a lot.  I don’t consider an hour of prep and cooking a lot of work…but it was.  Hot kitchen 2 cooks…not enough red wine.  But man oh man was the end result delish.  I haven’t eaten anything yet from Meet the Shannons that I haven’t liked.  Betty Crocker aint got nothing on Annie Shannon.  To take this meat focused recipe and make it vegan, and taste AMAZING I applaud her.

If you want to impress some meat eating friends, I highly suggest the Beef(less) Stew with herbed dumplings.  No one can snub you for this.  It’s just awesome.  And I know that meat eater or vegan you’ll have a satisfied crowd.  It’s worth the work and the wait!  Photos below folks.

oh yeah...it's that good and then some

I will start this post by saying these are the fastest, easiest vegan burgers you will ever make.  For pete’s sake the Happy Herbivore made these in a hotel room using ingredients only from the hotel!  So we eat these often now.  Because they are quick, easy, hearty and healthy.  Oh, and did I mention they’re only 109 calories each…yeah.  So basically amazing.  The first one I ate 1 burger on an Ezekial brand bun, topped with red onion, Koop’s horseradish mustard, 365 Organic Ketchup, avocado, sunflower sprouts and plenty of Louisiana Hot Sauce.  Holy filling and really really tasty.  Something weird to me was this: when I was a carnivore, I loved my meat (red) bloody and nearly alive still.  Thinking about it now is somewhat nauseating, but I liked it rare…the rarer the better.

Well something amazing happens when I put this burger onto a bun, topped as listed above…the hot sauce gives it the red color like a ‘bloody burger’ and the texture is darn near a rare burger…and then my twisted mind makes me feel like I am eating one.  Except my happy heart knows it’s not that of a living being, but that of a bean   That makes me smile.  So ladies and gents, go cook yourself up a wonderful Black Bean Burger courtesy of the lovely Happy Herbivore.  Just click on the link and you will find a wonderous burger recipe…and check out the rest of her recipes.  They are the pretty darn great!

Again…drool worthy photos below!

Seitan Cakes

I was lucky to get a Candle 79 cookbook for Christmas this past year.  My hubby and I ended up having our New Years Eve plans get cancelled on us right before NYE, so we decided to spend some quality time together and just ‘chill’ and have a laid back NYE on our own.  We wanted to do some smaller appetizer type foods & finger foods versus a big dinner.  We decided the Seitan Cakes looked way too good not to try.  So we set out to first make some Seitan, as it is very easy to make yourself (see my post on DIY Seitan,) and then to make these lovely cakes for dinner.

The recipe uses a granny smith coleslaw, as well as a cashew cream sauce to top them, but since we sort of spur of the moment decided to make them, we had to use what we had.  I decided to grab some horseradish from the store and use Veganaise to make a yummie horsie sauce, as I call it.  I determined that we would top with the horsie sauce and some capers.

We didn’t have any breadcrumbs either, so I improvised and used some plain ‘Shake & Bake’ in place of the breadcrumbs.

The recipe itself is fairly easy to make as all you’re doing is chopping up some Seitan, adding egg replacer, leeks, scallions, and some seasoning and rolling them in breadcrumbs then lightly pan frying them.  I have to say, the Old Bay Seasoning smelled heavy of celery, and I absolutely hate celery.  We do not get along at all.  I am no fan of that stuff.  So I was immediately disappointed thinking that I would hate the seasoning and taste of the cakes.  Even though celery is the first, and therefore main, ingredient in the Old Bay Seasoning, these Seitan Cakes did not disappoint.  I was really quite glad I used the horsie sauce and capers as I thought it gave them a great flavor and just added to the already amazing taste.  I believe if you attempted it ‘Candle 79’ style, you would likely have felt they were very comparable to crab cakes, sans death and cruelty.  I will absolutely be making them again, as they were easy and absolutely delish!  I think even non-vegans would enjoy these as an appetizer.  I think they’d also do well as a mock ‘crab’ stuffing to other items…like mushrooms, etc.

First Candle 79 cookbook recipe experience: Success!

First of all, I cannot even imagine life without Amy’s Kitchen.  I have nothing but praise for them.  I was prompted to write this post after going back through emails, cleaning out for 2012 forward, and found an email I sent to Amy’s thanking them for their delish vegan meals.  This email was from June 2010.  Amy’s replied within days, and told me to send them my address and they’d be more than happy to send me some coupons.  Well…I never did.  SO…on December 23^rd, 2011 I replied…a year and a half later.  LOL.  By December 30^th, I received coupons from Amy’s Kitchen.  First of all…WHOA…awesome customer satisfaction and service!  I wanted to thank them in my original email, and they thanked me for my thanks with coupons!  YAY!

Now, back to more praises…but this time food related.  When I first became a vegan, I began to deal with the most fun task of in depth label reading.  There are some foods which put a cute vegan logo on them, or brands which I know are vegan, but Amy’s doesn’t do just vegan foods.   However, they list ‘VEGAN’ in caps at the START of their ingredient list on every product which is vegan.  That is a huge time saver, and I personally really appreciate their consideration in their packaging.  So that is just one thing to LOVE about Amy’s Kitchen as a vegan.  (*They label as ‘true’ vegan which does not list a product with honey as a vegan item.)

Another newly vegan debacle that I encountered was pizza.  I was crushed because I absolutely loved pizza…and now what?!  Well, Amy’s to the rescue!  They make a Roasted Vegetable pizza which is absolutely TO DIE FOR.  Vegan or not, I would call this my very favorite pizza.   You can of course dump some Daiya on if you need cheese…but I just throw on a touch of Galaxy Nutritional Foods’ vegan parmesan and some crushed red pepper and I am in pizza heaven.  Best of all, Target (who hasn’t seemed to catch on to Whole Foods’ and Publix’s ridiculous prices on Amy’s items) sells these amazing pizza’s for $5.79 each in the frozen section.  In fact, Target has THE best prices on all of Amy’s frozen foods.

I lead a busy life, and in that busy life, sometimes lunch doesn’t get made for the next day…or I don’t have time to run out from work to get myself lunch.  SO…I buy Amy’s microwave meals.  I always have at least one Tofu Scramble on hand, in case I don’t have time to make breakfast either, then I have a power packet breakfast which is quick and delish.  And I always take at least one to work with me to leave in the freezer in case of emergency.  My current favorites are the Vegetable Korma and Veggie Loaf.

As if ALL of these things aren’t enough reasons to love Amy’s let me tell you even more!  When I am sick, I am a total comfort food girl.  I had a horrid cold just a few weeks ago, and Amy’s No Chicken Noodle soup soothed my throat and my soul.  It’s absolutely delish and cruelty free J  She’s got soups, pasta sauces, frozen foods and can meet all of your vegan in a hurry needs.  No matter where you are, it’s quick and easy to grab Amy’s cuisine!

I highly recommend stocking up on soups and frozen foods for the coming winter.  And let Amy’s know how much you appreciate them helping you be a vegan a little bit easier by writing them an email.  You never know…maybe you’ll get loads of coupons too!

Below I scanned in what they sent me with my coupons, which just shows, in my opinion, how dedicated they are to their food, their ingredients, and their consumers.  They sent me a detailed list of every single item they offer and listed it by vegan, gluten free, dairy free, etc.  They sure are one fantastic company.  Thank you Amy’s Kitchen for being amazing!

Amy’s Kitchen Flyer

Amy’s Kitchen Dietary Information