Vegan Mondays: Week Two

This week was my second attempt at eating exclusively plant-based foods on Monday.   The pictures are not great because they were all taken from my cell phone, and the recipes were not new, but unlike last week, I succeeded in eating only vegan foods.

For breakfast I had peanut butter banana overnight oats.  The ingredients were: organic steel cut oats, vanilla soy yogurt, vanilla soy milk, natural peanut butter, flax seeds, and one banana.  The steel cut oats give the oatmeal a completely different texture than rolled or quick oats.

 

For lunch I had edamame salad over spinach.  Check out a more enticing picture of this recipe in my previous blog post here. The ingredients for this salad were: spinach, onion, edamame, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and green bell pepper.  The dressing was made from: olive oil, miso paste, ginger, garlic, and sesame oil.

And for dinner I made taco salad.  This was probably the most exciting meal of the day.  Again, I've blogged about this dish before, so I won't go into too much detail. You can check it out here.  The ingredients were: whole wheat tortilla, avocado, green bell pepper, black beans, tomato, corn, onion, and fajita seasoning.

 

I think that I did a pretty good job of hitting all of the food groups in this week's vegan adventure.  I got carbs in breakfast and dinner; vegetables in lunch and dinner; fruit at breakfast; and protein in breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I'm not sure if soy milk and yogurt count as dairy products in the food pyramid, but if they do, I had those covered at breakfast too.   What's your favorite vegan dish?

Forget Meatless Mondays, let's try Vegan Mondays

A little while ago I came across some "Meatless Monday" recipes on Food Gawker.  Since I already am almost vegetarian, I decided to step this idea up a little and try out Vegan Mondays.  I thought this would be a good way to be more creative in my cooking while also doing a little bit to help the environment.

Last Monday was my first Vegan Monday.  I plan to make this a weekly post, chronicling my adventures in vegan eating every Monday.

For breakfast I created a vegan version of my overnight oatmeal.  I used traditional oats, a banana, half of a pear, applesauce (instead of yogurt), soy milk (instead of cow's milk), cinnamon and nutmeg.  This turned out absolutely delicious, as always.  It tasted exactly like my usual pear overnight oats.  Next time, I'll remember to add in pecans as well.

 

For lunch, I had packed some focaccia I made over the weekend (see post here).  I thought, that's definitely vegan, it's just yeast, flour, and water.  Plus, I only put vegetables on top.   Once I took it out at work to heat it up, however, I remembered that I also sprinkled cheese on top.  Oops!  Luckily for me, I was prepared and also had some snacks at work.  So, instead of my focaccia, I had hummus, whole wheat pita, carrots and peppers for lunch.  Yum.

As a snack, I had my homemade pumpkin chocolate chip granola bars.  The inspiration for these bars came from this website: http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2010/10/20/pumpkin-cinnamon-chip-pecan-granola-bars/. These bars were made of oats, pecans, pumpkin puree, banana, applesauce, brown sugar, vanilla, and chocolate chips.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure these are really vegan.  I was careful not to use honey, but are chocolate chips vegan? I just checked the bag that I used and the answer is no.  They contain milk.  Oops.  This was my first attempt at Vegan Monday.  I'll do better next week!

For dinner I made a spinach salad with falafel sprinkle on top.  You're probably thinking...falafel sprinkle....what is that?  Well, falafel sprinkle is what happens when you forget how to make falafel and the patties do not stick together.  Instead of having nice balls of chickpeas and onions, you have fried bits of chickpeas and onion.  The taste is exactly the same, but the results are harder to eat.  That's why I put them on a salad.  In this case, the salad had spinach, cucumbers and falafel sprinkle, with some lemon juice. I promise I have made falafel successfully in the past.  I even have pictures.  I'll post an entry on here to prove it.

 

Overall, I think my first Vegan Monday was moderately successful.  I made two mistakes, but was able to catch myself on one before it was too late.  Animal products are in more foods than I had anticipated, but I think this is a great weekly challenge for myself.

Black Bean Burgers

The other day I was craving a veggie burger. I used to eat them all the time with my roommate in college. By all the time, I mean I lived on veggie burgers and fajitas sophomore year. So, while I was at the grocery store last week, I took a look at the frozen veggie burgers.  There is now quite a selection, ranging from vegetable burgers to bean burgers to soy burgers, and on and on.  Each box boasted its positive nutritional facts on the front of the box.  Once I flipped the box over, to look at the nutritional labels and try to narrow down my selection, I realized that all of the burgers were FULL of preservatives and unnatural ingredients that I couldn't pronounce.  Needless to say, I decided to make my own burger.

The inspiration for this particular black bean burger came from another blog, The Bipolar Bon Vivant.  You can find her recipe here: http://bipolarbonvivant.blogspot.com/2012/02/some-like-it-hot-spicy-black-bean.html. 

The ingredients for this burger are very similar to those that went into my taco salad:

• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup frozen corn, thawed
• 1/3 cup onion
• 1 chipotle pepper
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 egg

  

The first step is to mix everything together.  I did this in two stages.  First, I mashed together the beans, onion, corn, and chipotle pepper with a fork.  I did these ingredients separately in order to make sure that most of the beans were mashed. Then I added in the egg and breadcrumbs.

 Just like with any type of burger, the next step is to form patties with the mixture. I ended up with 5 medium-sized patties.

Then I baked the patties in the oven for about 20 minutes, at 375 degrees, flipping the burgers at the ten minute mark. 

While the burgers were cooking, I sauteed some green bell pepper to top my burger.  In college, the sauteed peppers and onions on top of the burgers were my favorite part.

Although they are not pictured, I also made sweet potato fries to go with my burger.  I put them in the oven a few minutes before the burgers, and they came out at the same time. (I love it when timing works out!)  In the end, these burgers were just okay.  They weren't spectacular, and they didn't suck.  They were nice texture but were a little on the boring side. I do not plan on making this particular recipe again.  However, I have not given up on veggie burgers.  Next up on my list is a chickpea lentil burger.

Vegan/Vegetarian Taco Salad

Normally, I am not a huge fan of tacos.  This weekend, however, I tried fish tacos for the first time ever.  After seeing it on the "How many foods have you tried?" app on Facebook, I knew that I had to try them sooner or later.  It turns out it was sooner, and I was impressed.  The fish tacos I had were made with Tilapia and topped with a mango salsa.  The sweet and salty combo really did it for me. 

I was so intrigued by the  tacos that I decided to make my own version of tacos.  They were very simple to make, and the whole process took about fifteen minutes.  For the filling I mixed together:

• 1 can of drained, rinsed black beans
• 1/2-1 cups cooked frozen corn
• 1 diced tomato
• 1 diced avocado
• 1/2 chopped green pepper
•  1 diced jalapeno pepper
• a generous amount of fajita seasoning (I had some leftover homemade mix in the cabinet from fajitas, but a purchased packet would work too.)

Then, because I wanted to be a little creative, I baked tortillas into taco bowls.  The inspiration for the bowls came from the Skinny Bitch cookbook, that it probably seems like I am obsessed with by now.  To bake the shells into a bowl, first I microwaved them for 30 seconds to loosen them up.  Then, I formed them into a bowl shape using a muffin tin.  I baked them in the muffin tin at 350 degrees for ten minutes.  After the bowls were nice and crisp, I took them out of the oven and put my filling (along with a little lettuce) into the bowl.

I made two versions of the taco salad: one vegan, one vegetarian.  Can you guess what the difference is?

 

 

The only difference between the two is a sprinkle of cheese on top.  I ate both versions, and honestly, the cheese made little to no difference in the enjoyment of this meal.  Both versions were fantastic.  I will definitely make this recipe again!

Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook

Since I've been cooking a lot more vegetarian food lately, I decided that I should invest in a vegetarian cookbook.  After much shopping (online and in person), I settled on Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook.  I had heard of this book before--my initial impression is that the author was cocky using a title like that.  It turns out that this book is actually vegan and the author is a nutritionist.  So far I have been very happy with the recipes.  I have made blueberry streusel cake, edamame salad, and daal. 

The blueberry streusel cake was the most traditional of the three recipes I have tried so far.  While not the healthiest thing I have ever made, it was good enough to be my breakfast for a week straight.  (Sorry, no pics of this one).

Next up is the edamame salad.  This is probably my favorite of the three recipes.  This salad, which is served cold, involves edamame, bell pepper, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and an AMAZING miso dressing.  The dressing reminded me of the salad dressing at my favorite Japanese steak house.  This is a must try.  In case you don't know (I only learned about two weeks ago), edamame is soy beans.  It is cold either in pods like peas, or already shelled as pictured above, and is a great source of protein.

Finally, we have daal.  Daal is a traditional Indian dish made from lentils.  Basically, it is lentils--red in this case--cooked with a bunch of spices, onion, and pepper. It was surprisingly easy to make and made great leftovers for lunch.  I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from this book.  I've already flagged about twenty more that I want to try....look for those coming soon!

Bean Salad

 

Right now, my refrigerator is on the empty side (as tends to happen towards the end of the work week), so I went to www.supercook.com to find a recipe to make.  This website is great.  You list the ingredients that you have in your kitchen, and it spits out a list of dishes you can make with them.  Today it gave me a simple bean salad.  Over Thanksgiving, my brother told me that he now eats almost no meat, and tons of beans.  That inspired me to cook more bean dishes, so this was a perfect opportunity to try something new.  It was very easy.  1 can black beans. 1 can chick peas. Balsamic vinegar. Olive oil. Parsley. That's all the recipe called for. I also added in some red pepper that I already had in my fridge.  I was a little skeptical by the simplicity of this recipe at first, but it is surprisingly flavorful! It would be great as a side salad, or served with pita as a dip.