East Meets West Veg

Holiday Breakfast Casserole (If you make this, I recommend using shredded Daiya Cheese, available at Kroger and health food stores like Whole Foods Market)

Potato Latkes


Pecan Crusted French Toast


Banana and Oatmeal Pancakes

Oatmeal with Nuts and Raisins

Dinner :

Celebration Roast


Vegan Pot Pie (sub extra vegetables for the Gardein 'chicken' to avoid anything that even pretends to be meat)


Posole


Garlic and Chive Mashed Potato


Vegan Creamed Spinach with Peas


Roasted Butternut Squash and Yams with Caramelized Leeks



Dessert:

Pecan Chocolate Chip Magic Bars


Holiday Spice Cupcakes


Peanut Butter Pie



Drinks:

Cranberry Elixir Tea


Virgin Pomegranate and Cranberry Belinis


Spiced Coffee with Cinnamon


For more Holiday Recipe Ideas and inspiration, please see my post Vegan Thanksgiving Recipes from Ellen's Chef Roberto Martin or Creating a Vegan Thanksgiving or Holiday Meal with the Compassionate Cook.

I love when she says "just because we've always done something, doesn't mean we have to keep doing it."

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau is so much more than just a cookbook author. She has a podcast, makes videos (one of which I found at a local library), runs the 30 Day Vegan Challenge and more. She is an advocate for animals and makes veganism delicious and easy for all of us. Browse her site, where you can also get my favorite of her books, The Joy of Vegan Baking.

It's TV Tuesday and I have a recipe I discovered on the food network. This recipe is loaded with goodness. Chickpeas, tomatoes, spinach, garlic, onion, spices . . . It's a nutritional powerhouse. There's not much prep work and not much hands-on time. It's no wonder that it has a 5 star rating with over 150 reviews on the food network website. I knew the first time I made it that this recipe was a keeper. It bridges the divide between east and west because it has some of the spices of the east, but also familiar ingredients to westerners.

I might be partial to soups and stews, but I can't help it. I think it's in my DNA. When I was growing up, we ate a lot of soups and stews. I would say they were our favorite meals. My dad's brother and sister used to laugh about the fact that my dad loved eating soup for breakfast! I didn't realize that this was abnormal. I remember my dad's sister asking if my dad still ate soup for breakfast and laughing when the answer was yes. I made a mental note of that. Huh, this is somehow amusing. Maybe people don't normally have soup for breakfast?

My mom told me just recently that when she was younger, she also wanted to eat soup all the time and was sometimes teased for this. She said that when she met my dad, they knew that it was meant to be because the two ridiculed soup-lovers finally found someone share their passion for soup with. Okay, they weren't really ridiculed - more like lovingly teased from time to time.

I remember being home on weekends and smelling the savory aroma of a fresh, homemade soup or stew cooking on the stove. I can still smell the tomatoes, the vegetables, noodles, beans . . . Both of my parents were great cooks, but I looked forward to the weekends when my dad cooked. I don't know why but it seemed special to have something made by my dad.

I was honestly a little skeptical about the cinnamon in this stew, but I tried it without and it's just not the same. It's also not nearly as good without the spinach either. When I tasted this before and after the spinach, there was a huge difference.

This is a really great meal to warm you up on a chilly day, but I could enjoy it any time of the year.

Recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/dave-lieberman/moroccan-spiced-chickpea-soup-recipe/index.html

So, rewind to 2009, the first year of my marriage. I had been thinking for a few days that we needed to incorporate more greens into our diet. I know, I know, we're vegan but we weren't really eating many greens. We hardly even ate salad. That's weird because when I was a kid, I ate (and really looked forward to eating) salad almost every single day! Plus, when I was old enough, I was the one entrusted with the responsibility of making the salads and I loved decorating them and making them beautiful. I took pride in my work. Maybe I got sick of all those years of doing the same job? Or maybe I'm waiting until I have a child of my own so I can employ a family salad maker?
At any rate, I was really concentrating on this - how to incorporate more greens into our diet and how to keep it interesting. Then, I happened to turn on the Food Network and catch an episode of 'Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller.' Lo and behold, she was cooking bok choy - a green I had never worked with before! Sure, I had eaten it in Chinese restaurants. At least I thought that's what it was I had eaten! But I never dreamed of cooking it. Here it was, the answer to my prayers (or, at least, my concentrated contemplations), a new AND EASY way to incorporate greens into our diet! Hooray!

It seems like greens are the big thing right now. We just keep hearing more and more about the health benefits of greens. They are full of phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Bok choy in particular is an excellent source of vitamin C and a very good source of vitamin K, which helps with bone strength and alzheimer's disease. It also has many B-complex vitamins including folic acid (great for pregnant women), calcium, phosphorous, potassium, manganese, iron, and magnesium. As a cruciferous veggie, bok choy helps protect against different cancers and reduce LDL, the 'bad' cholesterol. And, I can not forget to mention that bok choy is a great source of fiber. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, this is most likely not an issue for you because you're probably getting adequate fiber since fiber comes from plant foods. Bok choy is also low in calories and can help with weight loss. Need I say more?

Little effort, great taste, great nutrition! This is my kind of recipe! This became a recipe I would make when I'd come home starving after work or running errands! You can certainly make tofu or tempeh with this, but I find it to be a satisfying meal with brown rice alone (or another grain). I have included a simple, easy tempeh recipe, that would go well with this without adding much more cooking time.

Quick & Easy Tempeh:

Ingredients:
1 block tempeh (about 8 ounces)
1 Tbsp canola oil
1&1/2 Tbsp tamari, soy sauce, or Bragg Liquid Aminos

Method:
1. (Optional) Steam or boil the tempeh for 10 minutes. (Many people swear by this. I almost never bother for this recipe, but I really love tempeh, any way you serve it)
2. Cut the tempeh on the diagonal into 1/2" wide slices.
3. Heat the oil and tamari in the pan on medium heat.
4. Add the tempeh. Try to flip the pieces so that more than one side gets tamari.
5. Cook for about 5-10 minutes, stirring a few times, until the tempeh is hot and golden.

Warning: If this is your first time eating tempeh and you do not like it this way (especially if you don't steam or boil it first), try a different method - marinade it, get a chargrilled tempeh burger, get creative. This is just the quickest and easiest method I know and that was the aim of this post.

Wilted Bok Choy:

The recipe calls for reduced-sodium soy sauce, but if you use tamari or Bragg Liquid Aminos (which I do), this becomes a gluten-free recipe.



Recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/robin-miller/wilted-bok-choy-with-soy-sauce-and-cashews-recipe/index.html

I was never really a big ice cream person.  I liked ice cream from time to time, but I don't remember having many cravings for it really.  However, when I became vegan I probably actually started liking ice cream more.  There were so many delicious flavors to try and it seemed to taste better when made with coconut milk, rice milk or soy milk.  Perhaps I was just excited to find out that despite what I had previously believed, there was an easy and delicious substitution. 

But, again, sadly I had to try to eliminate the packaged vegan ice cream from my diet when I decided to attempt to cut out sugar. :-(  That's probably when I really began wanting ice cream, knowing that I couldn't have it.  Much to my surprise, however, I found an ice cream I could eat at a local raw restaurant and I fell in love.  Now, if only I could recreate it (or something like it) at home. . . then one day, hurray! I found a recipe on the Whole Foods Market website.  I know that this is slightly different than the one at the local raw restaurant, but it is so delicious, I can have it in an instant (even when they are closed!) and it's cheap to make.  Plus, it puts those over ripe bananas to good use.

Whole Foods put a nice how-to video on youtube too. :-) When I watched this video, I thought that the 'nice cream' seemed a little too liquidy for my liking, so I put less non-dairy milk and an extra frozen banana (what would I do with that one lonely, left out banana anyway!?)
Since I made this, I have been craving it EVERY DAY - seriously.  I even ran into a psychic yesterday and she said she saw ice cream all around me.  She said, in fact, that she saw me dipped in ice cream.  I almost burst out laughing.  I had been thinking about this ice cream just before she said it.

So here's the recipe.  Feel free to play around with it.  Try almond milk, coconut milk for a super rich treat or any other non-dairy milk.  And, my advice is to add the non-dairy milk a little at a time to get your desired consistency.


Recipe:
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/2739