Broccoli Harvest

Our broccoli is producing and it's yummy!  I typically just saute it with onions and vegan field roast sausage.  Although Friday night I made baked tofu and sauted the broccoli with the same marinade as the tofu.  It was good!  (Blog post with that recipe coming soon.)

Tonight I wanted something different so I made this dish from http://www.connoisseurusveg.com/2015/11/vegan-broccoli-cheese-casserole.html.

It's good and I'd make it again, but it doesn't seem as decadent as the author described it.  Four of five of us liked it.  (When our vegan who doesn't like vegetables doesn't like something she can eat beans (which we usually have made up) or hummus (again, we usually have it).) I changed the recipe a bit; here's what I did:

Step 1
3 medium yukon gold potatoes 
2  carrots
(boil them and drain them)

Step 2
In another large pan:
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
(saute them)

Step 3
After you saute the onions add:
Either 

2 cups vegetable broth
½ cup short or medium grain brown rice
Cook up the rice

OR

1.5 cups frozen rice (to save time)
and some broth...I'm not sure how much I added about 1/2 cup at a time and when I felt the rice was done cooking, I added a little so I could add the broccoli to cook (see next step)


Step 4
Add 4 cups of chopped broccoli and cover the the pan and let them steam for a bit to soften

Step 5
In the food processor process the carrots and potatoes.  Add
¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes
¼ cup lemon juice
2-3 tsp. white miso paste (optional, but highly recommended)
and 1- 2 cups plain (unsweetened and unflavored) soy or almond milk

salt and pepper to taste

Step 6
Mix the food processor mixture into the rice/onions/broccoli and stir.  Cook until the broccoli is soft and all of the mixture is nice and hot.

Despite all the steps this wasn't that difficult or time consuming.  (I definitely like the time saving that comes from using frozen rice.)

Note the original author gets full credit for the recipe--go check out her site!  Lots of good things there.  (I re-wrote the directions with what I did 'cause I was a little fuzzy on what I was supposed to do so I made some stuff up.)

Mashed potatoes and gravy

We made these the other night.  The changes I made:

We used garbanzo & fava bean flour instead of rice flour (I had no rice flour and didn't want to buy it. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about rice because of arsenic. A post about that someday!)

I added some cauliflower to the potatoes.

http://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/mashed-potatoes-and-gravy/

We liked them. The gravy was especially good. One thing, I think we don't "love" mashed potatoes as we had a some mashed potatoes leftover and they didn't get eaten.

I would make them for Thanksgiving or a holiday celebration when there are more folks eating, or I'd make a smaller quantity for us.  OH! Next time, I could fry up the left overs.  My Dad used to do that for me when I was a kid and I LOVED that. Next time!

A photo taken in bad lighting with the iPhone. 

Potato Soup

It's Sunday. Since I just declared I'd make a soup a week for simplifying my life, I needed to make a soup. Nothing on my blog jumped out at me so I decided to try my hand at a simple potato soup. Here's what I did:

3 yukon gold potatoes somewhat peeled, but not all the way
1 yellow onion
1 carrot
10 ounces of frozen cauliflower
32 ounces of veggie broth
~2 cups of water
1 cup cashews (to make into cashew cream)
Soy milk (for cashew cream or any type of non-dairy milk)

Cut up the veggies and cook until soft. Don't worry about cutting them small as you'll be pureeing them after they are cooked--just cut them in even sized chunks.  I cooked my large chunks (~1 inch or so) for about 30-40 minutes.

After the veggies are soft put all the veggies in the blender and puree. I had to do two batches of blending. Turn the blender on slow so it the hot vegetable mix doesn't burst out of the blender. Tonight, I didn't have any blender accidents, but I have in the past. The vitamix can be left on high (BAD DESIGN) and then when it's turned on it's going super fast. It's not pretty when that happens! After everything is blended, keep some of the warm, blended soup in the blender and make cashew cream.  Add 1 cup of cashews and ~1 cup of soy milk (could be whatever kind of non-dairy milk you like). I blended and then poured it all back in the pan. If you don't add enough warm soup, your cashew cream will be "lumpy" when you mix it into the pan. You can remedy this by re-blending the soup.

I added ~1 teaspoon of salt and quite a bit of black pepper (didn't measure).

Yum! Simple and delicious. We ate it with baguette and 4 out 5 of us loved it. The vegan who doesn't like vegetables tasted it and said she didn't like it.

I'll be playing with the recipe and potentially adding pepper and corn to the recipe as I think this would make a great base for corn chowder! Or nutritional yeast and broccoli for "cheezey"broccoli soup. I'll keep you posted on what evolves with this one. (Tomorrow, I'll try to get a picture. I forgot tonight.)

oven roasted potatoes

The girls sliced the little potatoes.

We used a little oil (less than two tablespoons) and a little salt and broiled them for 30-ish minutes.

Yum!  So easy, too.