Living Without Meat

Thanks to everyone who left tips and suggestions in the comments of my recent post “Expanding My Horizons: Attempts at Making Spring Rolls”!

Some of the great ideas shared for making spring rolls include:

* Use a damp tea towel to dry off the wrappers after you rehydrate them.

* When making a big batch, drape a second damp towel over them as you finish rolling them to keep them from drying out while you make more.

* There are two different types of wrappers - the ones that need soaking work best for raw summer rolls while the frozen ones are usually better if you plan to fry them.

* Ingredient suggestions: bean thread noodles and Asian mushrooms, or avocado, snow peas, carrots, cilantro, mint, chopped cashews, and cucumber,

* You can make a goopy paste for holding the rolls shut by cooking a little cornstarch and water until it gels up

Last weekend I stopped in a new corner store called Family Produce. In the middle of the store are tables filled with crates of fresh fruits and vegetables, but around the perimeter are lots of different Asian products - green tea noodles, seaweed, rice, soy sauce, and more. Feeling like trying something new, I grabbed a packet of spring roll wrappers.

When I got home I looked up recipes for veggie spring rolls. Every one started with something along the lines of: if people only knew how easy it is to make spring rolls … but none had very many specific directions. After four attempts now, I have almost figured out the trick to making them.

The first and second try were back to back. I placed the stiff wrappers in some water in a pie pan and started chopping some raw veggies for the inside - carrots and cabbage - and soaking the seaweed too. But when I went to roll them up the wrapper was ripping a lot. I ate the first one raw with a fork. The second one I tried frying, but it turned out as a gooey mess.

Mistake number one: the wrappers shouldn’t be soaked for more than ten seconds or so.

I tried again today, this time adding some sesame noodles in with the veggies. The first worked some what; I was actually able to pick it up finally. But the second one was perfect, and thus I learned mistake number two: after soaking the wrap you need to let it sit for a moment and dry a little.

Next attempt, I will try to make a nicely rolled one and fry it too!

Last week I tried cooking plantains for the first time (read it: Serve It Up: Fried Plantains for Dinner). My post about this stirred up a great response from a regular reader who has her own blog, Marion Silver’s Lux Aeterna.

Marion is Filipino and thus a regular consumer of burro bananas (a short, stocky kind of banana, shown here, often prepared similar to plantains) - and she shared to great recipe ideas in the comment that she left! I didn’t want her show-and-tell to go unnoticed, so here are her suggestions for whipping up a tasty treat with ripe plantains, in her words:

Banana Cue: peel the banana and roll them in brown sugar (vegan brown sugar works best of course!). Fry them in boiling oil until the flesh is caramelized. We call it banana “cue” because it is a popular street food that is cooked in a skewer. You can do this too, I use wooden skewers for this.

Turron: this is basically bananas wrapped in spring roll wrappers. But I love adding sweet and very ripe sliced jackfruit to the stuffing - it adds nice texture and flavor. Once you’ve wrapped the fruits with the spring roll, dip them, once again, in brown sugar. Fry until caramelized and golden brown. It’s very crispy and goes awesome with vanilla ice cream.

Thanks again, Marion! Anyone else have any plantain recipes - or any vegan recipes for that matter - that you want to share? I will always thank you with a link!

Don’t forget to stop my Marion’s site!

Without realizing that it was happening, I have acquired a new regular, quick, stir-fry dinner using cabbage, carrots, and veggie meat crumbles.

Heat some oil in a frying pan. Chop some cabbage up into bite size pieces and toss them into the hot oil over low heat. Shred some carrot with a grater, and add these pieces in with the cabbage. Stir it all together, coating all of the vegetables in oil. Mix in some Morningstar Farms Meal Starters Grillers Recipe Crumbles - the ground beef replacement shown here, and a must-try for everyone, regardless of your opinion about fake meats - and stir everything again so that the meat crumbles get a good oil coating too.

The ingredients have a great flavor all on their own and don’t really need any spices, but sometimes I change it up with some ginger or soy sauce. You can also toss it all into some simmering water or broth to make a delicious soup.

There are more delicious sounding and looking vegan and raw recipes out there than I will ever be able to try out. I am constantly coming across new ones before I even have time to taste the previous ones. Here are some of the online recipes that I have stumbled upon recently and have added to my “I want to make this” list:

* Chef Ani Phyo put together a raw vegan donut hole using nuts, vanilla bean, coconut, pineapple, and dates. The FatFree Vegan Kitchen also whipped up another donut option. These fat-free mini donuts are vegan, but not raw.

* VegNews award-winning blog Vegan Yum Yum created some homemade vegetable tempura that looks exactly what you’d order at a restaurant, except you can be sure that yours wasn’t cooked in the same oil as the meat tempura!

* The Living and Raw Foods Community has hundreds of raw vegan versions of all the classics, including soups, breads, cereal, desserts, and so much more. The Best of Raw Food also have a fairly extensive collection of basic raw vegan ideas.

* Rawmazing has cacao vanilla banana walnut crepes that look so good I would happily eat them for dessert, and I imagine any dairy lover would just as easily flip for them.

* Hello Veggie blog has its own new list of 20 great vegan meals.

* I figured out the Happy Vegetarian’s secret - she’s clearly in a good mood because of her no-bake peanut butter tartelettes, which has a similar concept as my own raw apple pie.

Summer is quickly approaching - are you armed and ready to make your own deliciously cooling treats? Homemade soy ice cream, fruit sorbet, popsicles, and more?

I own one soy dessert recipe book that includes some icy goodness, but the majority of the book is baked goods. But now the veg world has a new, all ice cream recipe book to turn to this summer: Lick It: Creamy Dreamy Vegan Ice Creams Your Mouth Will Love by Cathe Olson.

Olson, author of Simply Natural Baby Food and The Vegetarian Mother’s Cookbook, has now specialized in sweet, cold, vegan yumminess in her newest recipe collection, which will be on sale May 1.

Check out Olson’s blog for a wide variety of her recipes, including Mango Tango Sorbet, a sneak peak recipe from Lick It.

I cooked with a plantain for the first time ever this weekend, after letting the tropical fruit ripen and turn black for almost two weeks in my fruit basket. Plantains, while they are a type of bananas, are more firm that what America and Europe are used to. When the peel is green or yellow, the fruit is more starchy; when black, it is very sweet and savory.

My first plantain creation was a basic fried one, served over brown rice and with a side of cooked spinach. Since it was the first time that I was cooking one I wanted to get the basic taste of the fruit itself, so I didn’t add many spices. I just made a basic batter, coated it, and fried it.

Fried Plantains for Beginners

* Peel the plantain and cut it into quarters - cut once lengthwise and once widthwise - or whatever size you desire. The smaller the pieces, the more fried batter; the bigger, the more soft, warm fruit.

* Mix a pancake-like batter out of flour, sesame seeds, orange juice, cinnamon, and a little sea salt.

* Heat oil in a frying pan.

* Coat the plantain pieces in the batter, adding liquid or flour as needed to thin out or thicken the consistency.

* Carefully set the pieces in the hot oil. Let them fry a few minutes until the underside is brown. Flip them over and equally fry the other side.

* Let cool for a minute. Serve. Enjoy. Fall in love.

They’re like banana pancakes only with the fruit-to-batter ratio reversed. I loved them as a dinner with rice and spinach, and can imagine a bit of cayenne pepper or other spiciness being delicious. But I am pretty sure they would be just as awesome for dessert, topped with chocolate or syrup.

From Sad to Raw has one of the best collections of free raw recipes that I have found online. This past Sunday, while my bread maker was baking my latest cooked carb creation, I decided to make a raw counterpart in my dehydrator. This site has a section called “Crackers, Chips, Bread” that I poured over before, of course, making up my own mixture based on what I had in the pantry.

Spicy Sesame Crackers

In a food processor of Vita-Mix, create a dry dough-like mixture by blending:
1 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup ground flax seeds
1 Tbsp. oil
1 Tbsp. nutritional yeast
Small amount of sea salt
2 small or one very large garlic clove
1 tsp. ground cayenne pepper
Water as needed to make a pasty texture

Spread the mixture on a dehydrator sheet and dehydrate at 110 degrees. When it starts to harden, after about 4 hours, break it into cracker-size pieces and flip them. Continue dehydrating until crisp.

In true Suzy Homemaker Sunday tradition, I made a loaf of bread today. It could use a touch more sugar or sweetener (the amount listed is how much I used), but other than that today’s carb creation is delicious!

Whole Wheat Carob Coconut Banana Oat Bread

The name gives away most of this bread’s ingredients. Into your bread machine, add:

1 1/2 tsp. yeast
2 tsp. gluten
3 cups flour, any mix of bread flour, white, and wheat
1 cup soy milk
2 large, very ripe, mashed bananas
1/2 cup oats
1 Tbsp. of butter
1 Tbsp. agave nectar

At this point, turn the maker on and select medium. After 15 minutes, when the machine takes the first rising, check the dough. Being a thick dough, mine needed a little hand mixing and then I restarted the machine. When it beeps, at the point when you can add nuts, dried fruit, etc., toss in a little less than 1/2 cup of carob chips and a little more than 1/2 cup of coconut flakes.

Let the machine finish baking. Let the bread cool. Let your taste buds delight in the yumminess!

P.S. Be a true Suzy Homemaker by clicking on the picture of the apron to get a free apron sewing pattern.

Although I am increasing my raw intake, I am not aiming to go 100 percent uncooked. I won’t say never, but at least for now I am still cooking, including this delicious herb potato bread that I baked in my bread maker this weekend.

Herb Potato Bread

Into the bread machine add these ingredients, starting with the yeast and gluten first:
2 1/4 tsp. yeast
1 1/2 tsp. gluten
3 cups flour (I used 1 cup each of bread, rye, and whole wheat flours.)
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. butter
3/4 cup water
1 to 2 Tbsp. fresh or dried herbs, whatever sounds good with potatoes to you. (I used sage, parsley, garlic, and oregano.)
1 med. cooked, peeled potato, or 1 can of pre-cooked and pre-peeled potatoes

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Are you a raw enthusiasts? Please share your favorite raw bread replacement!

I’m having a lot of fun playing around with raw food concoctions! I even created my own nut-based, raw, vegan apple pie (follow my recipe by clicking here).

Today I recreated Kristen’s Raw’s Cheezy Hemp Nacho Sauce, which was one of the featured recipes in the raw prep class that I went to this weekend. Kristen Suzanne is a raw recipe guru who has written a number of raw recipe books that are available in both e-book and printed formats. This recipe is a sample from her all-hemp book Kristen Suzanne’s Ultimate Raw Vegan Hemp Recipes.

The recipe blends red pepper for color, nutritional yeast for a cheesy flavor, chili and other spices for some heat, and hemp for the base. Get the exact recipe from Kristen’s Raw blog.

Answering questions is my favorite! So thanks to reader Becca for leaving this comment for me:

“So, I have a potluck on Monday with my co-workers who are bringing mac and cheese … what is a good veg non-salad accompaniment? (I don’t like being the vegetarian bringing salad, esp. since I rarely eat traditional salad). Thanks!”

I tend to bring a filling appetizer that could stand alone as enough for me to eat if no one else brings a meat-free dish. White bean dip with crudite and toasted pita bread went over very well at my family’s meat-filled Christmas gathering. Dips, in general, work well, too. Hummus, salsa, guacamole, spinach and artichoke … all are usually well received by everyone.

One of my standard, quick, take-along dips is a layered bean one. In a pie pan, spread layers of refried beans, corn, guacamole, salsa or tomatoes, lettuce, and whatever else sounds good to you. Serve with corn chips.

If you want something that is more side dish like, consider a non-traditional salad: curried lentils, corn and bean salad, rice with carrots and raisins, couscous and veggies … basically, pick your favorite grain and prepare it. Then finely chop and cook whatever sounds good - bell peppers, onion, garlic, broccoli, spinach, and don’t forget dried fruit, nuts, or beans. Toss them together with a liquid such as oil, salad dressing, vinegar, etc. Sprinkle in some herbs and spices, taste testing as you go. Serve it cold or hot. No one will accuse your hearty concoction of being “just a salad.”

Then, for the more ambitious, there’s homemade dinner rolls, roasted veggies, an eggplant dish, dessert, chili, or veg meatballs.

Click on the picture for a similar post on Vegan Soapbox. Any other dishes you would recommend? And, Becca, do come back and tell us what you make!

I’ve been using my bread maker plenty, making loaf after loaf. This week I decided it was time to try something new: dinner rolls. I started by mixing the dough in the machine’s manual mode.

Ingredients

2 tsp. yeast
1 1/4 cups warm water
3 cups flour, a mix of whole wheat and bread flours
2 Tbsp. oil
1 1/2 tsp. salt
Pinch of sugar

By setting the machine to manual, instead of light, medium, or dark, it will mix all of the ingredients, knead it, and let it rise. When it beeps, remove the dough. On a surface sprinkled with flour, knead the dough back down. Divide it into six for medium, veggie burger-sized rolls, or eight for smaller ones. Form each section into a ball. Place them on an oiled baking sheet and let rise for 25 minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees half way through rising. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes.

You must eat one immediately, because nothing beats fresh baked bread. But be warned, it will be hard not to immediately eat them all.

Everyone knows about my love affair with kitchen appliances. I am obsessed with my Vita-Mix, in love with my bread maker, getting to know my dehydrator, and in a long-term relationship with my juicer. A dozen other portable doo-dads also call my kitchen home. So when my friend decided that her Euro Cuisine yogurt maker was too time consuming for her, she passed it along to me.

And that is how I came to making my own soy yogurt last night.

The yogurt maker consists of seven jars similar to baby food ones, and a container that they all fit in. I boiled a pint of soy milk, then let it cool to room temperature. I whipped one small container of store-bought yogurt into the milk and dispensed this mixture evenly into the seven small jars. With the lids off, I arranged the jars into the base and covered it with the large lid, turned on the machine, and walked away.

Twelve hours later, I had yogurt!

When the yogurt was a good consistency, I turned off the machine and put a small lid on each jar, shook them up, and put them in the refrigerator. For lunch today I had one jar with a spoonful of natural raspberry preserves and a sprinkling of granola. (You always make plain yogurt first, but can then add whatever flavor you choose.) It was so delicious!

I’m going to look into buying the cultures so that you don’t need to buy any yogurt to begin the process. However, you can also use one of your homemade containers of yogurt to get the next batch going.

I talk a lot about making my own trail mix, but have never offered step by step tips on how I do it. It makes a great snack, or even a meal. The natural sugars give you an instant burst of energy and the protein follows it up with long-lasting energy. Try making your own:

1. Find the cheapest means available to you to buy bulk nuts, seeds, dried fruit, etc. The Giant grocery store near me has a good selection, as do some of the local co-ops. There are also lots o bulk buying options online, but I haven’t found anything more affordable and convenient than the Philadelphia-based chain Nuts to You. This awesome store sells nuts, dried fruit, grains, flour, candies, granola, and more at inexpensive bulk prices. On top of the low prices, they offer more discounts the more you buy.

2. Pick out your favorites. I usually snag two to three raw, unsalted kinds of nuts, usually almonds, walnuts, and cashews. Brazil, macadamia, and pine nuts, and peanuts are also good ones. For seeds, try pumpkin or sunflower. Cranberries or raisins - or both - are a must in the dried fruit department. I also like chopped up figs, apples, papaya, peaches, pears, and pineapple. Add some heat and flavor with wasabi covered peas or soybeans. Also try dry cereal, pretzels, oats, and chocolate or carob chips.

3. Grab an empty, large container - tupperware, bag, etc. I have a large plastic jar that originally came with peanuts in it that I use and reuse for this purpose. Pour in equal amounts of all the ingredients. Seal the container and shake, roll, toss, turn, and mix it up.

4. If you want more or different flavors, toss in some spices. Toss the nuts and seeds in melted butter and seasoning and roast a little for a rich flavor.

5. Don’t eat out of the large container; it becomes way to easy to eat too much. Split it up now, or as you want some. I eat about 1/2 cup for a snack, and 1 1/2 cups for lunch.

6. Enjoy!