Vegan Lasagna

Cooler weather can only mean one thing... comfort food! Here is my new favorite - Vegan Lasagna! No need for fake meat and cheese - this recipe will knock your cozy socks off!

As you can tell, this was my second helping!

Ingredients:

1 - 8 oz box of whole wheat lasagna noodles

2 T nutritional yeast

Spinach Mix: 

4 cups fresh spinach (you can use frozen, but drain it well!)

1 T olive oil

1 t minced garlic

1 t minced shallot

1/2 t white pepper

1/2 t salt

1/4 t nutmeg

Tofu-cotta:

1 block silken tofu

1 T lemon juice

1 T tahini

1 T nutritional yeast

Simple Red Sauce:

1 T olive oil

1 t garlic

1 diced onion

1 diced carrot

4 or 5 large basil leaves (fresh from the garden if you can!)

1/4 t white pepper

1/2 t salt

1 - 12 oz jar of roasted red peppers

1 - 28 oz can of fire roasted tomatoes

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Bring large pasta pot of water to a boil. Add lasagna noodles and cook approximately 12 minutes on a gentle boil. (I've heard that you can assemble lasagna without having to cook the noodles, just make sure you have enough sauce and bake it for at least 45 minutes and the noodles will cook in the oven. Try it and let me know how it works!)

2. Meanwhile, sauté the spinach mix ingredients in skillet over medium high heat until wilted.

3. Add spinach mix to food processor. Add tofu-cotta ingredients and process until well incorporated.

4. Make simple red sauce by heating up olive oil in skillet (I just rinsed out the spinach skillet). Sauté garlic, onion, carrot, basil, salt and white pepper over medium heat until onions are soft. Add ingredients to a blender (you cane use your food processor if you don't want to get two gadgets dirty, but remove the tofu-cotta first!) with the jar of roasted red peppers and the can of fire roasted tomatoes.
5. Make layers! Add 1/4 of the simple sauce to the bottom of a baking dish. (I used 9 X 13, but use what you've got!) Add a layer of noodles and 1/3 of the tofu-cotta filling. Top with noodles, filling, and sauce until your last layer of noodles and sauce. Top with the 2 T of nutritional yeast.
6. Cover with tinfoil and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 15 - 20 minutes until top noodles reach your desired level of crispiness! Enjoy!

Noodles and filling and sauce! Oh my!

Now that you have the basics down, the possibilities are endless. Next time, I think I'll do layers of eggplant. Or zucchini noodles. But I won't change a thing about the tofu-cotta filling. It was the best!

Whole Wheat Buns

No kneading, no resting, no waiting? That's my kind of bun!

Step One: Gather Your Ingredients:
1 cu water (warmed to around 110°F) plus an additional 6 T water
1/3 cu canola oil (I've heard that you can substitute this with apple sauce, but I haven't tried it)
2 packages yeast
1/4 cu honey
2 T ground flax seed
1 t salt
3 & 1/4 cu whole wheat flour
1/4 cu vital wheat gluten
Sesame seeds or other desired toppings
Preheat your oven to 350°.

A Note About Vital Wheat Gluten

As you might be able to read from the picture, vital wheat gluten (which my family can't say without sounding like the Swedish Chef) makes dough doughier. Plus, it has 23 grams of protein per 1/4 cup and only 0.5 grams of fat. You can add it to just about any baked good, and I even used some in my black bean burgers that I served with these buns.

 Step Two: Awaken Your Yeast
Combine 1 cu warm water with 1/4 cu honey and 1/3 cu canola oil. Add two packages of yeast and whisk to combine. Let the concoction rest for 15 minutes. (After all, it's tired - it just woke up!)

Step Three: Make Your "Egg Replacer"
While yeast mixture rests, make your egg replacer. In a skillet over medium heat, whisk together 6 T water with 2 T ground flax seed for 2 or 3 minutes until the two ingredients bind together. Turn off heat and allow to cool slightly.

Step Four: Mix It, Roll It, Cut It, Bake It
Once 15 minutes is up, add 3  1/4 cu flour, 1 t salt, 1/4 cu vital wheat gluten, and the flax seed mixture to your yeast concoction. Stir just until dough forms. Roll out dough on a floured surface to almost 1 inch thick. Use the top of a round glass to cut out bun-sized rounds, keeping in mind that they will expand in all directions in the oven. Brush a little water onto the tops and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, but check your buns after 8 minutes. If you over bake them, they will be too dry.  You can find the recipe for the black bean burgers here. Enjoy!

 

Oh, and I used my leftover dough to make butterfly rolls.

Vegan Black Bean Burgers

According to Robert, this is the "Best One Yet." You can be the judge of that with the recipe below!

This burger has over 10 grams of protein from veggie sources!

Ingredients:

o1 t olive oil

o½ red onion, chopped

o2 carrots, chopped

o½ bell pepper, chopped

o5 mushrooms, chopped

o2 cloves garlic, minced

o2 T ketchup - note, most ketchup contains high fructose corn syrup. I buy the "natural" or "organic" kinds to prevent this!

o2 T mustard

o2 t ground cumin

o2 t ground chili powder

o¼ t salt

o¼ cu breadcrumbs

o1 can black beans, drained and rinsed -or- 1 cu cooked dry black beans, drained

oBuns and other desired toppings



Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 450°F.

2.Heat olive oil in skillet. Saute onions, carrots, peppers, and garlic for 4 – 5 minutes. Season with ketchup, mustard, cumin, chili powder, and salt. Stir, remove from heat and let cool.

3. I made my breadcrumbs by putting the ends of a loaf of whole wheat in the food processor and pulsing on high until it looks like the picture above.

4. Place veggies in a food processor with black beans and breadcrumbs. Pulse 5 times to combine.

5. Form mixture into 3 - 200gram patties. Chill for 30 minutes in fridge.

6. Place on a lined baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.

I served these with whole wheat and sesame seed flatbread. But that's another show!

Enjoy!

Honey Wheat Bagels

Discouraged by a lack of whole wheat everything bagels in the market, I decided to venture out to make my own. Turns out they are not all that time consuming, expensive, or difficult. Give yourself an hour and you'll be wondering why you haven't been making these all along.

On a personal note: It's been awhile since I've posted. It's been a busy couple of weeks for me as we've renovated the kitchen.

I've also planted some fall veggies - red cabbage and white cauliflower. So, expect my favorite recipes for those two in about 55 days!

Now, let's get to the bagels!

Step One: Gather Your Ingredients

Oh and if you want to make everything bagels, like I did, you'll need:

You could also use onion and garlic powder, but I prefer the real thing. So, dice 1/2 an onion (Vidalias are still in season) and cook in 1 t of olive oil until they look like this:

 Drain on a paper towel. I tried to put this on my bagels after the seasonings but had trouble getting it to stick. So, next time, I am going to simply mix the sauteed onions into my cream cheese! Yum!

Now, to the bagels!



Step Two: Bagel Dough

Mix together 2 cu of the whole wheat flour, the salt, and the dry yeast. Slowly add in the warm water and 3 T of the honey and mix well. Gradually add in the remaining flour. Note: my dough only needed an additional 2 cu - it should have a sticky texture but form into a single ball of dough.

Flour your hands and the surface you plan to knead on. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Form it into a ball and return it to the bowl:

Cover with a towel and let it rest for 10 minutes.

When the 10 minute nap is up, divide your dough into 12 equal parts. Shape each part into a ball and stick your finger in the middle to create the bagel shape.

Assemble your formed bagels on 2 sheet pans doctored with your favorite method of nonstickery (butter, nonstick spray, parchment paper, silicon, etc). Let the bagels sit, uncovered for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, start a large pot of water to boil.



Step Three: Broil, Boil, & Bake

After the 20 minute rest is up, turn on your broiler. Broil your bagels for 2 minutes on each side. You will need to do this for each sheet, so that they sit on the uppermost rack. Keep an eye on these, the second round may not need a full 2 minutes as the oven is quite hot by then. If they start to turn in color, they are ready to come out!

Post Broiler

Stir the last 1 T of honey into your now boiling water.Add enough bagels to the pot to cover the surface. Turn the heat down and simmer for 3 minutes. Flip the bagels over and simmer for 4 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 375˚ F.

Once done, return your bagels to the sheet pan. When they are just cool enough to touch, but still a little sticky, dip the tops of the bagels into the seasoning mixture:

I made 6 of my bagels everything and 6 plain honey whole wheat.

Bake at 375˚ F for 20 - 25 minutes until the tops are golden brown. You can put both sheet pans in the oven at once this time, but you may want to rotate and flip the pans 1/2 through.

While they don't have quite the chewiness of a lye-cooked bagel, they are still darn good. And you know what's in them! And while the initial investment of the ingredients (especially the seasonings if you don't have them) might be a bit more than the average bagel, per recipe they work out to about 23 cents a bagel!

The Everything Bagels were made for onion cream cheese and the honey whole wheat ones go great with Trader Joe's Valencia Peanut Butter with Roasted Flaxseeds.

Make these but be warned - if you share, everyone will be asking you to make more!

Enjoy!

Whole Wheat Banana Applesauce Muffins

It may be a mouthful to say, but they are very easy to make!

It was a long and not always tasty (read: hockey pucks) journey to create a whole wheat muffin recipe that tastes this good!

Save yourself time and don't bother sifting or lugging out the stand mixer. You won't need to do either for this one!

Robert & I love to have these for breakfast - they take the guesswork out of getting the day started. Pop 'em in the microwave for 20 seconds and they are good to go!

Step One: Assemble Your Ingredients

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and gather the following:

A few notes on the ingredients:
- Applesauce: I keep the little applesauce containers in my fridge at all times. They are the perfect 1/2 cup portion and stay fresh a lot longer than a large open jar. Wholefoods sells unsweetened all natural applesauce in these containers.
- Yogurt: I prefer 2% plain greek yogurt in all things.
- Vanilla Extract: Make your own; it's inexpensive and easy! In a mason jar, add 3 vanilla beans sliced in half lengthwise. Top with vodka. Cap and give a good shake. Keep in a cool, dark place (a cupboard will do) and give a shake every day or so. In a few weeks once it's turned deep brown, you're extract is ready to go! The best part is that once it gets low, you can simply top with more vodka and shake! It's a neverending supply as long as you have vodka... and who doesn't? :)
- The nuts and spices are up to you. Add as little or as much as you'd like.

Let's bake!

Step two: Wet and Dry

In a large bowl, add your dry ingredients. In a smaller bowl, add your wet ingredients, as pictured below.

Note that the sugar counts as a wet ingredients (this is almost always true in baking). I also added the spices into the wet ingredients. They go either way, really. Also note, I have not added the pecans yet.

Step Three: Wet into Dry

Add the wet intgredients into the dry bowl and stir until just mixed and consistency looks like this:

Scoop into your prelined muffin tins. You can fill 2/3 of the way up and make about 18 muffins, OR do what I did and make 12 mega muffins. Whole wheat flour does not rise as well as white flour, so you can fill your muffin tins to the top!

Top with chopped pecan pieces. Other nuts are acceptable, but I'm a good Georgia pecan girl. Bake for 20 - 35 minutes (depending on your oven and how big you made your muffins). Check on them after 15 minutes and rotate the pan.

Store these in a sealed container in the fridge and they will last for about a week. Or if you're like me, they'll last about 2 days.

Enjoy!