Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Seriously. You wouldn't know unless I told you!

Fall is in the air! Some of my favorite foods are associated with this weather. One of Robert's favorites is Pumpkin Pie. Now, I'm not going to tell you that by veganizing this pie it becomes healthy; rest assured, it's still loaded with fat and sugar! And taste!

NOTE: You could certainly take a lot of time and effort out of this pie by using store bought crust and canned pumpkin, and I'm not going to tell you not to. But from scratch cooking is my thing, and at 99 cents for a pie pumpkin, it certainly was less expensive to do so. 

Step One:Assemble your Ingredients

For the crust, you will need:

1 cup whole wheat flour (you can go with the regular stuff if you like, but the whole wheat adds a nuttiness to the pie that I am fond of)

1/3 cup vegetable shortening (see? unhealthy!)

1/2 t salt

2 - 3 T ice water

For the pie, you will need:

1 medium pie pumpkin (or 1-16 oz can of pumpkin)

1 - 16 oz package of silken tofu

1 cu brown sugar

1/2 t salt

1 T pumpkin pie seasoning (Robert brought this home for me, otherwise, I would've used cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, in whatever increments you like!)

 Step Two:Roast your Pumpkin

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Quarter your pie pumpkin and remove seeds. (I doubled this recipe to freeze half of the pumpkin puree for Thanksgiving!) Save those seeds for roasting! (Sort and wash seeds. Mix with 2 T olive oil and roast at 375 for 20 - 30 minutes until golden brown. Delish!)

Place your pumpkin cut side down on a lined baking sheet and bake for 1 hour.

When cooled, remove skins and puree in food processor. While this is roasting, you may want to move on to step three.

Step Three:Make your Crust

In a food processor, add whole wheat flour, salt, and shortening. Pulse until the mixture forms pea sized balls:

Turn on processor and slowly add ice water until mixture just comes together. Form into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. 

Store in fridge for 30 minutes. Place a metal baking sheet in the freezer. In the meantime, you can skip to step four and press your tofu.

Once your 30 minutes are up, place your chilled disc into a gallon sized zip lock back. Use scissors to open the bag all around so you have the dough between two separate sheets., as shown.

 Roll out with rolling pin until it is just bigger than the bag, like this:

 Take the baking sheet out of the freezer and place it on top of the flattened crust. This will help to absorb any heat you gave it while rolling and make for easier transfer. Flip the crust over (still on the baking sheet) and peel off the bottom layer of plastic. Take your pie tin (that you sprayed with non-stick spray, right?) and place it face down on the crust. Flip this contraption over and remove the baking sheet and the final layer of plastic. While you don't have to, I'd recommend that you blind bake your pie crust for at 350° F20 minutes. So, it goes from looking like this:

To this:

Make sure you poke it with a fork and anchor it with something (I used dry black eyed peas) to keep it from bubbling.

Step Four:Press your tofu

Silken tofu is perfect for this recipe, but if you don't press it, you won't get a firm pumpkin pie. Pressing is easy. Just remove tofu from package:

And build a contraption like this:

Press for 15 minutes. Time to:

Step Five:Assemble Your Pie!

In a food processor, combine pumpkin puree, pressed tofu, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and brown sugar. Puree until smooth and pour into prepared pie crust. Bake for 20 - 30 minutes at 350° F until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and it goes from looking like this:

To this:

Robert ate a quarter of this pie last night! I supposed for all of the unhealthy comments, you can at least feel good about getting your veggies, whole wheat, and protein from tofu! :) Enjoy!

Vegan Minestrone

Recently, Robert and I have made an effort to cut animals out of our diet. For a multitude of reasons, most notably because we are reading this book:

And we recently saw this documentary:

The former looks at what we do to the animal industry; the latter examines what the animal industry does to us. Both interesting and eye opening, but be warned, not all that easy to digest.
In the spirit of a new challenge, I am attempting some vegan cuisine. An oxymoron, you say? Well then, challenge accepted! As I help myself to a second bowl-ful, check out this recipe for Vegan Minestrone:

Step One: Gather Your Ingredients (sorry no ingredient pictures here, but halfway through the recipe I decided to blog)
2 T olive oil
4 carrots
1 onion
4 stalks celery
2 zucchini
pinto beans (I cooked these from dry, but you can always use a drained can of pintos)
1 t garlic
fresh ginger (2 or 3 fingers worth - is that how you measure fresh ginger?)
salt & white pepper
1 - 28 oz can diced tomatoes (I used the fire roasted kind - delish!)
herbs of your choosing (I chose sage, basil, and oregano from the garden - you can use fresh or dried!)
1/2 lb pasta (whole wheat orecchiette if you want to be like me!)
water

Step Two: Saute the veggies and make broth at the same time
Most minestrone recipes call for broth of some sort (I even found a few that called for chicken broth - isn't Minestrone classically a vegetarian soup?) but I "just say no" to store-bought broths. They cost too much and trust me you don't want to consume the stuff anyway. Traditionally, you would steep veggies with salt and pepper in water to make a broth before straining and creating your soup. But I combined these two steps with successful results!

Dice 1/2 the onion, 2 carrots, and 2 stalks of celery. In a large pot over high heat, add olive oil, garlic, and diced veggies. Saute for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the remaining onion, and break the carrot and celery in two and add those as well. Add herbs, ginger (no need to peel or chop) and season pot with salt and white pepper.

Cover entire mixture with water (I used about 6 cups). Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium. Simmer for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, cook pasta in a separate pot and drain when al dente.

Remove large veggies, ginger, and any herbs still on the stalk. Add can of tomatoes, pinto beans, diced zucchini, and cooked pasta.

Orecchiette - In Italian it means "little ears." In my minestrone it means delicious!

Simmer an additional 20 minutes if you can stand it. Just make sure the zucchini's cooked. 

Now, I bought Parmesan cheese to go on top. But this was perfect as is. The fire roasted tomatoes and pinto beans give it a smoky flavor and you'll never miss the lack of meat. Enjoy!

The Best Chili You'll Ever Make

... or eat for that matter!


Fall weather is approaching, so it's time to break out the bone-warming cuisine. I can't thing of a better place to start than with a bottle of beer and a bowl of chili!

Step One: Gather Your Ingredients


The great thing about chili is that the ingredients are so versatile. Follow the technique, but add any kind of veggies. If you're pressed for time and money, you could even sub the veggies and hot sauce for a jar of your favorite salsa.

A few notes about the ingredients:
- Most chili recipes call for ground beef or turkey. The stew meat (or any diced beef for that matter) makes all the difference here!
- I like beans. If you don't, you can omit the beans, but you may want to add more meat.
- I love the chili pepper sauce pictured above. So, I try and find reasons to put it in recipes. Trader Joe's sells it. But of course, you could use any hot sauce, chipotle in adobo, or your favorite heat source.
- The beer adds a richness to this recipe, so I highly recommend it! (if not, just add 1 cu of water instead) As you can see, I used Sam Adam's Old Fezziwig Ale - use what you've got, but if you're going to the store, pick up an ale! It not only works well in the chili, it's delicious on the side as well!


Enough chat, let's cook!


Step Two: Brown the Beef

Place a medium sauce pan (enough to hold the finished amount of chili) over medium-high heat. In a small mixing bowl, add your stew meat and 2 T of peanut oil. Toss to coat. Add to pan and brown all sides of meat (you may have to do this in stages). Return  meat to bowl.

Step Three: Veggies

Add your veggies to the now empty pot and sauté for 2 - 3 minutes. Season with S&P.

Step Four: Deglaze, simmer, enjoy!
After sautéing the veggies, deglaze the pan by pouring 2/3 of the bottle of beer into the pan. You'll have a little beer leftover, I'm sure you can figure out what to do with it!

Cheers!

Return beef to the pot. Add in tomato paste, tomatoes, beans, cumin, and hot sauce. Simmer for 20 - 30 minutes (if you can stand it!). Enjoy with your favorite chili toppings - cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips - what's your favorite?

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!

Roasted Spiced Almonds

Nuts over nuts.
Frustrated with the amount of oil and salt in most roasted almonds out there (not to mention the price), I decided to venture out and make my own. Here are the results:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Step One: The Line-up

You will need:

Don't forget the almonds!

Step Two: Assembly
In a large bowl, add spices. Mix in olive oil until you have a nice, homogeneous paste. Add your raw almonds and mix. It's messy, but hands are really best for this.

Step Three: Roast

Spread your seasoned almonds in a single layer on a baking sheet like this:

Roast in a 350 degree F oven. Be sure to shake the pan or stir the almonds every 5 minutes of cooking. After 20 minutes they should be deliciously roasted and look like this:

I wish you could smell these! The cinnamon and coriander gives them almost a floral aroma, and the taste is heavenly. Be careful, but I encourage you to NOT wait until these are cool to taste them - they are delicious hot.

Once you've got the technique down, you can do just about any nut and any spice mix. Try these:
Keep the recipe above, but add 1/4 t cayenne powder for a spicy version!
2 T Chinese 5 spice powder = Asian Almonds
2 T curry powder = Indian Almonds
1/2 cu sugar and 1 T cinnamon = Candied Almonds (Pecans also work well with this!)
A packet of powdered ranch dip mix or onion soup mix would make interesting hors d'oeuvres!

Use your imagination! But definitely try the first recipe above!

Enjoy!

Sunday Saver - Japanese Curry Rice

Ok, it's not Sunday, but you could be reading this on Sunday. Or planning a meal for Sunday. Or... oh, you get the point. Plus, it doesn't need to be Sunday for you to enjoy this cheap and easy comfort meal.

I lived in Japan one semester of college, and my favorite meal was karerisu. Curry Rice. I must've eaten the stuff 3 or 4 times a week, so it was like going through withdrawls when I returned home. But I dreamed about it. Asked for it at every sushi joint I visited. And then. In the least likely of places, I found it.

Well, least likely would be like the top of the alps or something. But I found it in Disney World. And it was just as good as I remembered. Which inspired me to think I could recreate it. And this is my vegan attempt:

Ingredients:
1 red onion
2 lb potatoes (I prefer white or red new potatoes)
3 large carrots

2 T vegetable oil
2 T whole wheat flour
2 T curry powder (maharajah if you can find it)
8 oz tomato paste (1 small can)
1/2 cu apple sauce (the SECRET ingredient!)

1/2 cu peas
S&P

1 cu brown rice (I used Nishiki brand brown sushi rice)

Mise en place makes me happy.

1. Rinse your rice until the water runs clear. Add 1 cu rice and 2 cu water to a rice cooker and turn on. If you don't have one (why don't you, mine cost $10!) you can make this in a pot; be sure to stir occasionally until all water is absorbed.

2. Dice your carrots, onion, and potatoes into near equal sized chunks.


3. In a pan over medium high heat (make sure this one can hold at least 5 cups of stuff), add 1 T oil, onions and carrots. Cook for 5 minutes.






4. Add your diced potatoes and 3 cu of water. Simmer until potatoes are soft, about 15 minutes.

5. In another pan over medium heat, add the remaining 1 T of oil, 2 T curry powder, 2 T whole wheat flour, 2 T tomato paste, and the 1/2 cu applesauce (the SECRET to delicious curry). Whisk to form a roux. Add water from the potato pot to thin out roux. Once roux is thinned enough to mix with potato pot, add to potato pot. It will be thin at first, but your patience will be rewarded.












Thin.

Thick.

Add your peas and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Serve alongside the rice.

It tasted pretty darn close to the original.

And sure, if you have to invest in curry powder just for this recipe, it might not be budget friendly initially. But you'll thank me later (curry your couscous, your chickpeas, your ramen noodles).


Enjoy!