Daiya released their monthly Recipe Roundup– their Top 5 FAVORITE recipes from May… And guess who made the list?
I’ll give you a hint…

“Deliciously dairy free” indeed!
Daiya released their monthly Recipe Roundup– their Top 5 FAVORITE recipes from May… And guess who made the list?
I’ll give you a hint…
“Deliciously dairy free” indeed!
These were simple to make, delicious, and as an added bonus were very cheap to make. My favorite part? The smokey heat provided by the chipotle peppers and adobo sauce was the perfect accompaniment to the crisp lettuce and creamy sour cream. Yum. The recipe below is enough for 3 burritos… I actually made two and took the rest to work with me for lunch.
Spicy Rice & Bean Burritos (Makes 3 burritos )
Ingredients:
Directions:
Enjoy!
One of the things I missed the most when I first went vegan was bar food. You know the kind: fried and greasy and horrible for you? I was always especially fond of the random beer-battered dishes that have become pretty popular… beer-battered pickles, beer-battered asparagus, and so on. I could go on for days. I realize that many bars have vegan options, but where I live there are few. And there were even fewer just a couple years back when I first became awesome vegan!
I saw my first vegan beer batter recipe in American Vegan Kitchen which is a great book, I highly recommend it. Lots of veganized “diner foods” to enjoy! I made her onion rings recipe and loved it, and then decided to branch out.
I added different spices to the beer batter itself, which I think is exceptionally yummy. A hint of spice, a hint of heat. But I still needed the perfect vegetable to envelope in all that batter-y goodness. Onions are great, and pickles are an obvious choice… but today, we’re focusing on my personal favorite, the humble sweet potato.
OhhhhMyGosh it’s so good, sweet and almost creamy when you bite into it. Well, you know what sweet potatoes taste like… just imagine them surrounded in a thick layer of pillowy beer batter.
And the dipping sauce? Well, that was a no brainer… Agave Mustard Sauce! A friendlier version of honey mustard sauce, if you will. I’ve also used this batter to make corn dogs, and the sauce was amazing with those as well. I’m actually not sure what this sauce wouldn‘t taste good with.
Beer Battered Sweet Potatoes (serves 4-5 as appetizer)
Recipe adapted from American Vegan Kitchen
Ingredients:
Directions:
Agave-Mustard Dipping Sauce
Ingredients:
Directions:
Enjoy!
(and some other pretty great stuff, too)
I got to enjoy a long weekend in Asheville with my Mom- a girls weekend, if you will, and it was faaabulous. I have so much to share, so I’ve decided to break it into 2 posts: Food, and Everything-But-Food. This is the food one, but I have to warn you… not all my pictures are pretty. You know how it is, bad lighting, beer… 😉
My mom and I live pretty far away from each other (Colorado and NH), and I miss her terribly, so we try to get together as often as possible. Sometimes I fly to NH, sometimes she comes here, and sometimes we meet in the middle (except the year we chose Hawaii… that was most certainly not in the middle).
This year we chose Asheville, NC based partly on it’s artsy community, partly on it’s beautiful mountain scenery, and mostly on it’s plethora of vegan and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. Seriously! We’re a couple of very hungry girls!
We arrived on a Friday afternoon, checked into our hotel, and immediately hit the streets in search of some Happy Hour drinks and noshes. We ended up at a pub close to our hotel with a full bar and a couple of items on their menu that looked vegan-friendly. My mama was about to pass out from starvation at this point, so food was a necessity! As we were being seated the server broke the (what she thought was) bad news to us: “Our kitchen is closed for renovations, but I can let you order from the Vegetarian restaurant next door.” We jumped all over that of course, and while I don’t have a picture of the food (Crispy Asian Dumplings with sauteed cabbage, seasoned tempeh, garlic and ginger root), I do have one of my beer. Blogger fail.
But take my word for it, the dumplings were delicious- very light and fresh. We had two rounds of drinks, then headed over to Plant where we had dinner reservations.
I cannot tell you how much I was looking forward to eating at Plant! Asheville’s only all-vegan restaurant (they do have an all-vegan food truck, but it wasn’t in town that weekend), they have a menu that can only be described as gourmet. We skipped the appetizers, going straight for the main course- mom chose the Jerk Charbroiled Seitan which came with smashed sweet potatoes and sauteed kale (and a blurry picture :() and I had what was the (for me) best dish of the weekend: The Raw Enchiladas, made with jicama “noodles” and cashew cheese. If you’ve never eaten a raw dish like this, I’m not sure I can adequately describe it for you. It was light, and there were so many different flavors going on… it was probably the best thing I’ve eaten. Ever.
If only I had a picture that could actually do it justice… And I wish we had time to eat there again, but it just wasn’t in the cards. But, moving on!
Saturday started out with a continental breakfast and starbucks for mom, nothing picture worthy- but lunch was a whole other story! After a morning of walking/shopping/picture taking, I was starved. We chose the Green Light Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant with some serious vegan options. I should also mention here that mom (who is a vegetarian) and I made a pact to split our meals whenever we could, so that we’d each get to try TWO things instead of one. And when we didn’t do that, we still swapped bites… I mean, we HAD to! Too many menus, too little time to try everything 🙂
So I chose the Tempeh Reuben with Daiya (and a side of kimchee salad) (and OMG that bread!):
It was amazing. I never ate a Reuben when I was an omnivore, but since going vegan I’ve become a bit of a connoisseur, and I would say this was probably the best Reuben I’ve had. Mom ordered a veggie burger that was a daily special… I believe it was some kind of Jamaican Jerk flavor, and it was really good too. A little bit, but not too much heat:
After taking pictures, we swapped halves, so we could each eat some of both. Teamwork! This was another restaurant I really would’ve liked to visit again (and was planning to), but never found the time. Well, and they were closed on Monday which was the day I was going to go back… bad planning on my part.
Happy Hour found us sitting on the patio at Mayfel’s enjoying some drinks and the view of a cute little park, right in the middle of downtown. Asheville provides some very amusing people-watching, that’s for sure! (Also- a big YAY! for Highland and all the other local brewing companies creating awesome vegan-friendly beer!)
I think we stayed at Mayfel’s for a long time. I remember the tables around us turning over multiple times, but it was just so nice sitting outside in the fresh air and talking about everything with my mom. Plus, let me just say, that lady is not shy about ordering another round, if you know what I mean 😉
Our thirst satiated, it was time for dinner. We window shopped our way over to the Laughing Seed (the same restaurant we were able to order from during Happy Hour the night before), and were lucky enough to get a table right on the sidewalk. I immediately spotted Jalapeno Onion Fries on the menu, so we started with those. They were exactly what they sound like- the potatoes were fried together with the onions and jalapenos! The fries picked up a little bit of the heat, but the onions were probably my favorite part- they were still sweet, but picked up a TON of the heat. So good!
For her entree, mom chose amazingly well… She went with the Thai Panang Seitan Curry, and HolySweetBuddha was it amazing!
The sauce was light but flavorful (the menu calls it “lively”), and I could just taste a hint of the cumin- and look at all those veggies! Everything was really fresh, and wonderful. I chose the Pecan Crusted Seitan, which was delicious too:
Although, if I had know how BIG it was going to be, I might have gone with something else. Seriously- at home, I’d consider that seitan to be at least 4 servings… and I ate it all at once! Those are shiitake bacon slices on top of it, and that sauce is a maple-porter gravy. I considered asking for more of the gravy on the side, but contented myself with another cocktail 🙂 Also, this was our view across the street- a rock climbing wall!
That was probably our biggest meal, and we pretty much just walked back to the hotel after that and crashed. I think both of our bodies were on calorie-overload at that point… neither one of us is used to having this many food options, so we might have overdone it a teeny bit.
I don’t have any food pics to share from during the day on Sunday- we spent the day at the Biltmore Estate and there wasn’t any exciting vegan food (I had a salad for lunch, mom had a vegetarian veggie burger), but for dinner we headed back to the Laughing Seed. This time, mom went for the raw dish:
This was a Raw Spinach Pesto Manicotti, made with zucchini noodles, cashew ricotta and live sunflower-spinach pesto. It was PHENOMENAL! We split these- I got one manicotti, she got half of my sammich, and I have to say I got the better end of the deal- her meal was much better than mine. Mine was good, of course, but that manicotti was ridiculous. (I’m seeing a trend here, telling me I need to start preparing more raw meals!). I had the Havana Cuban, made with organic tempeh, black beans, onions and a local spicy mustard called The Lusty Monk.
It was very good, but what really sold me on the idea of ordering a sandwich in the first place was the side of Onion Jalapeno Fries that I knew would come with it 🙂 We finished up dinner early, and after walking around for a while decided to stop at another restaurant with a nice sidewalk patio for a drink or two. The weather was perfect, and it was so nice to just sit outside and chat, watch the people walk by with their dogs (everyone in Asheville has at least one dog, which I love!), and just kill time. This was our last evening in Asheville, so we really just didn’t want it to end.
Monday morning we got up early to get mom off to the airport (we were both supposed to fly out in the afternoon, but airlines… ugghhh…), then I headed back to the hotel alone. My flight wasn’t until 2:30 so I had time for one last meal and another stroll around downtown. I actually ended up on a street we hadn’t seen before, and wandered into a few different shops. I spotted a pizza place called the Mellow Mushroom with a nice shady patio, and I knew from Happy Cow that they had Daiya, so that’s where I had lunch (funny enough, while I was there I realized they’re a chain and they even have a location in Denver RIGHT NEAR my office, duh!).
My final meal in Asheville was a BBQ tofu pizza, and it was really good. They have jerk tofu on their menu as well, along with tons of veggie toppings. The pizza was also really enormous, so I boxed up my leftovers and gave them to a couple of guys I had seen on the sidewalk that morning. They had the most beautiful red nose pit bull who they clearly took very good care of even while maybe not taking such good care of themselves. Anyway, I hate waste and I hate to see people going hungry… and it gave me a good excuse to stop and pet the dog again 🙂
Then it was off to the airport. I was early and wanted a comfy place to read my book, so I enjoyed one last Highland at the airport bar…
And scoped out some vegan snacks…
And I think that was it, food-wise. I did buy a couple vegan cookies at the Laughing Seed as a present for Lauren and Jeremy who were kind enough to pick me up from the airport, and who didn’t even complain after my flight was delayed in Atlanta for hours and didn’t land in CO until almost 9:30 that night (although Jeremy did complain when he had to walk me into the house because no one was home and I’m scared of the dark- but he had already eaten his cookie!)
I’ll be back soon with the Everything-But-Food portion of my review of Asheville, NC!
Before I share the story (reasoning?) behind this recipe, can I please vent just a little? As I’ve mentioned here and there, we’re remodeling our house. Completely. I’m not talking about repainting a few walls, I’m talking about a brand new kitchen and bathrooms and scraping popcorn off ceilings and replacing 2,500 square feet of flooring. Well, mostly I’m talking about watching Jason do all that, but still. Watching someone work hard can be really hard work 😉 Seriously though, it can be tough just living in a construction zone, but we’re almost done. In fact, we’re on our final big project: The stairs. This coming weekend will be (hopefully) the final test… we have to polyurethane the stairs, and then stay off of them for at least 24 48 hours. As in, we have to bring everything we’ll need downstairs and stay down there. For someone as scattered as me, this will be a challenge. Also, the only bathroom on the first floor is a powder room, no shower, so there’s going to be some smart timing involved too. There’s also going to be some serious pet-wrangling, which should be interesting. Wish me luck, and those of you who follow me on Twitter should get some fun updates, haha. The good news is that my gin and the majority of my books (not to mention the big TV) are all already on the first floor, so I should be able to scrape by 🙂
Ok, so you know how sometimes you’re eating one food and you can’t help but think it would be even better packaged up in a different food? For example, my Korean Style BBQ Tacos with Sriracha Pineapples… They’re really good tacos, full of chewy flavorful seitan topped with sweet n’ spicy pineapple chunks. There’s really nothing to complain about! But, as I was eating them, I couldn’t help but think… Wouldn’t these be even better as a pizza!?
Because, why not? What’s wrong with turning a taco into a pizza? Nothing, that’s what. Just like there was nothing wrong with turning a beloved appetizer into a Buffalo Seitan Taco! Basically, what I did was whip up a batch of the Korean BBQ tacos, swap out the tortillas for some pizza dough, and topped the whole shebang with some Daiya Mozzarella.
Do you like how (not) perfectly round it came out?
Korean Pizza (Kogi-Style BBQ Seitan and Sriracha Pineapples) (Makes 2 big personal-sized pizzas)
Ingredients:
Directions:
Enjoy!
I’ve been a terrible blogger the past couple of weeks. It’s not that I don’t love sharing recipes with you all (I do!), there’s just been a crazy confluence of travel, work, home renovations and general busyness lately. Mea Culpa, and I promise to try and do better!
Begging your forgiveness, I offer you this: Ooey gooey Butternut Mac n’ Cheese served up, piping hot, in a chewy sourdough bread bowl.
Just pop over to your local bakery (I chose Panera) and pick up 2 bread bowls, then go home and whip up a half batch of my B’nut Mac n’ Cheese (or do what I did- make a whole batch and use the rest for another meal!). Make a circular cut in the top of the loaves and scoop out some of the bread, fill ‘er up, and there you go- Dinner for you and your best friend! (Unless your best friend is a dog, because dogs can’t have onions!)
I’ll be back on schedule starting tomorrow- see ya then!
Enjoy!
Those of you who follow me on twitter know that I just spent a fabulous weekend in Asheville, NC with my Mom, and I’ll be posting a full review next week, but in the meantime this recipe is dedicated to her. Mom is vegetarian in a not-very-veg-friendly town and she struggles coming up with meal ideas that don’t require much cooking. She’s luckier than many, in that if she drives 30-45 minutes she has access to multiple vegetarian and even an all-vegan restaurant, but sometimes the lady just wants to eat at home, you know? She mentioned over the weekend that she likes to eat salads because the ingredients are readily available and they’re healthy, obvs, but that she gets really bored with them. I mentioned this tofu, and she thought it sounded great, so here it is!
I first made this for a dinner party, and since then have been making a batch nearly every Sunday to cube and sprinkle on my lunch salads. It lasts at least a week if you keep it refrigerated in an airtight tupperware (not that you can go that long without eating it!)
A special thanks also has to go to Lauren, who- after laughing her ass off at me and my sad attempts- shared some insight on the best way to bake tofu 🙂
Sriracha-Agave Baked Tofu (2 servings served with a veggie – more if you’re cubing for salads)
The sriracha and agave measurements are approximate- if you make 3 slices you might need a little more, but if you end up with extra I recommend just slathering it on there- it’s REALLY good! You could also make this in advance and marinate, but it’s not necessary if you’re pressed for time.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Enjoy!
I made these for dinner a few weeks ago. I actually made the beanballs on a Sunday afternoon, and reheated them in some sauce one night after work for a quick meal. The rolls were left over from when I made my Korean BBQ Subs, which, if you haven’t checked them out yet, you really should!
I followed the recipe from Melomeals for “3-ingredient veggie burgers“, made into beanballs. As I noted below, I added crushed red pepper flakes and sea salt to the mix, and the flavor was great! The only problem I had with the recipe was the microwaving-until-inedible stage. I did the 10 minutes, and they were pretty hard, but not the rock-hard she specifies in the original recipe. I ended up adding another 5 minutes in the ‘wave until they were truly inedible (just following instructions!). But even after simmering in sauce for almost 20 minutes they were still a little hard, so my recommendation would be to only microwave for 10 minutes, even if they’re not completely hard at that point.
But anyway, once I got them softened back up again the flavor was really great, and went perfectly with some fries on the side! And I loved being able to make the beanballs over the weekend, throw them in the fridge (or freezer!), and have them on hand. Another quick, easy dinner idea from me to you!
Simply let the beanballs simmer in your favorite red sauce until they’re thoroughly softened (at least 10 minutes), spoon into a roll and serve with a side of fries. Or, if you’re feeling virtuous, a Massaged Kale Salad 🙂
Enjoy!
Psst! I announced the winner of the Beanfields giveaway!
This soup was created and blogged by the talented Virtually Vegan Mama, and this was actually the 2nd time I made it. It’s a wonderful soup full of sweet crispy veggies with a mild curry flavor, surrounded by rich coconut milk. It’s a really light soup too- perfect for the warmer days of spring and summer. I’ve enjoyed it hot, and I’ve also enjoyed it at room temperature. I’ve made four or five modifications, which are below. If you want a richer, more coconut-y flavor, be sure to check out the original recipe. One of the biggest changes I made was to swap out a can of coconut milk with regular So Delicious coconut milk to make it a little lighter in the tummy. I also upped the curry content 🙂
And, just because she’s super cute… a gratuitous kitty cat picture! Miss Olivia, hanging out on the stairs. That’s one of her favorite spots- she can see what’s going on, but she can also run away really fast if she thinks one of us might be inclined to try and pick her up 😉
Thai Corn Soup (6 servings)
Adapted from a Virtually Vegan Mama Recipe
Ingredients:
Directions:
Enjoy!
I made this casserole last Sunday, and it fed us for nearly a week. Not every meal, of course, but we had it for dinner twice and for lunch three times. That’s the beauty of casseroles; besides being (generally) easy and economical to make, they provide multiple meals which can really free up some time for you during the week. I have a pretty crazy work-week schedule and there are plenty of nights when I absolutely do not want/have time to make dinner so I really appreciate recipes like this. As an added bonus, this heats up really well in the microwave, making it perfect for a packed lunch too!
The inspiration came from a casserole recipe over at Healthy Girl’s Kitchen. I saw it and thought it looked delicious, although in the end I changed it up a bit. I really didn’t have the energy to make cashew cheese, I’m sure you understand. I made a few other changes… overall I don’t think I made it any less healthy, really. I did make it a little more SPICY though… and of course added some Daiya!
If you’re a fan of the whole sweet potato/black bean/corn mexican combo, you should really give this casserole a try! It’s not the quickest recipe, but most of the time you’re able to multi-task… Boil the taters while prepping the other ingredients, bake the casserole while cleaning everything up… you know how it goes. While I was multi-tasking, Santa Jason came home from a trip to Albuquerque with the goods from Trader Joe’s!
We’re getting our very own TJ’s in Colorado next year, but until then I have to continue to stock up when I get the chance!