Mini Vegan Lasagna's

I love my husband! I seriously bagged one of the good ones and I say a little prayer every day that I have him in my life. Not only does he love me for who I am, he also understands me and accepts me for the way I live my life. And I couldn’t be more grateful for that because it is truly one of the hardest things in life to find.

One of the most recent examples of his awesomeness is on Sunday the Riders were playing and we were going over to our friends house to watch the game. Devon had gone golfing in the morning and I had gone to get groceries for the week. While I was there I called him and asked if he wanted any game time snacks, and usually its just chips of some sort or a drink. However this time he asked if I would pick him up dry ribs….dun dun dunnn. As the main grocery-getter in the family and a vegan he knows that I do not pick up meat or eggs unless asked, I might get cheese for him but that’s where I draw the line. Most of the times he come with me to pick out what he wants for meat products (which is rare), so I don’t have too.

So I reluctantly say yes and go to the death (meat) section to find them and get out ASAP. Well with my luck they are no where to be found and I am caught in the viscous cycle of wandering around trying to find them. With no one around to help me, I start to have an slight anxiety attack and got that feeling of just wanting to get the hell out of the section. So I grabbed chicken wings instead and literally run to the living (produce) section.

When I got home one of the first things I said was “Please understand how difficult it was for me to pick these up…” then I started to cry my eyes out (I'm a crier!!)  Instead of him asking why I was crying or telling me to stop, he just pulled me in for a hug and said “I will never ask you to get those again, I can pick them next time” THIS IS WHY I LOVE THIS MAN! He is understanding and loves me! So thank you to the powers that be for bringing him into my life.

So in light of this event I thought it was time for something amazingly vegan, and one of Devon’s favourite meals. Mini Vegan Lasagnas! Every time I make my vegan lasagna he so kindly reminds me that it is amazing and that it can hold up to any meaty lasagna out there. Another great reason why I love him, he knows how to compliment a lady!

I have been meaning to make these for about two months now but I just haven’t been inspired to do so, until this weekend. They are cute individual sized lasagnas that are cooked in a muffin tin and enjoyed by all! I'm not too sure what was drawing me to make these but they seemed so much fun to make and it was a fun twist on a traditional meal. Plus I wanted to see how the quinoa tasted instead of using regular lasagna noodles.

I was a little wary because I wasn’t sure if they would hold their shape after they were removed from the tin, and that was one of the reasons why I liked them. They were mini lasagnas! Basically anything mini is so much better! And as you can see by the pictures they came out beautifully and tasted amazing!

I truly and utterly feel that the reason why these taste so great is because of the cashew cheese. If you plan on altering my recipe please do not omit the cashew cheese, trust me when I say that it is worth the extra step!

Mini Vegan Lasagna’s

2 cups quinoa, cooked

1 jar of vegan pasta sauce

2 medium zucchini, sliced thinly lengthwise, for 12 servings you will need 24 slices
1 tbsp of coconut oil

½ of medium onion, diced

1 cups of mushrooms, diced

2 red bell pepper, diced

4 cups of fresh spinach

2 cups of Daiya Cheese, mozzarella flavour (optional).

Cashew Cheese

1 cup of cashews, soaked overnight

1/2 cup of fresh basil

¼ cup of fresh lemon juice

2 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp of nutritional yeast

¼ cup of water or vegan broth

Place all of the ingredients into a blender or a food processor and blend until smooth.

**While you are cutting up and cooking your veggies and making the cashew cheese, place the sliced zucchini on a baking sheet and put in the oven on the lowest temperature. That way you can cook off some of the excess water that they contain. I happened to do a load of dishes while cooking these so I would say I left them in for about 25 mins and they turned out perfect. If you don’t have time for this step, don’t worry because the quinoa will absorb some of the moisture too!

Sauté all of the veggie in a large frying pan until fork tender. Grease the muffin tins with some coconut oil so they are easier to remove. Then layer each muffin tin like so:

1)    2 zucchini slices
2)    1 large tbsp of Quinoa
3)    1 large tbsp of veggies
4)    1 large tbsp of sauce
5)    1 large tbsp of cashew cheese
6)    Optional - top with some Daiya

Take the ends of the zucchini and fold over until completely covered. I used some cashew cheese to secure the ends down if they kept popping up. Heat up the remainder of the pasta sauce and put aside.

Bake in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 mins and serve with the left over sauce! Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Xoxo -N

Vegan Buffalo Pizza

Well its time for another pizza recipe! Yup another amazing vegan pizza recipe for you pizza loving people out there!

One of the best things I have learned recently was that Franks Red Hot Sauce is vegan! Even the Buffalo Flavour, which I thought would have had milk ingredients in it, but thankfully it does not (horay!) I remember before, when I was silly and didn’t read the ingredients, I would just smell the hot sauce and imagine all the wonderful things I could put it on. Like broccoli, potatoes, and cauliflower.

So when I found out that I could eat it I went crazy and started putting it on everything, such as my all time fav - Steamed Cauliflower with Daiya Cheese and Hot Sauce, super creamy and really satisfying. But my newest creation had me blown away! It was spicy, flavorful, surprisingly light, and a total flavour explosion. My Buffalo Pizza!

If love experimenting with different types of pizza, I highly recommend you try this one out. And what nice about it is you can control how spicy it is. Don’t like spice – omit the jalapeno sauce. Love the spice – add jalapenos on top of the pizza too! The world is your oyster!....mmm whats a vegan equivalent to oyster…. Olive? They are salty right?.... I like it!

Okay the world is your olive! Go on and try my awesome pizza! 

 

Pizza Dough

1½ cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp ground flax
2 ¼ tsp quick-rising yeast
½ tsp salt
2/3 cup very warm water
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp. date syrup *recipe below

In a medium bowl, combine flour, flax, yeast and salt. Mix well.
Measure warm water in measuring cup, then stir in olive oil and honey. 

Pour mix over dry ingredients and mix using wooden spoon to form a ball. 

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 2 mins. 

Grease inside of another bowl with olive oil and place dough inside. 

Cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in warm place until double in size (about 20mins).

While the dough is rising I cut up the vegetables to have ready.

Roll out dough over lightly floured surface into a circle. 

Pinch the outer edges up into a crust.

Put on toppings and bake at 425 for 15-20 mins.

Date Syrup - makes 1 cup

10 dates

1/2 cup water

Blend in high speed blender until smooth, store the rest in the fridge!

Buffalo Pizza - Personal Sized Pizza – ¼ of pizza dough batch

¼ pizza dough

1 cup of sliced cremini mushrooms

1 orange pepper, diced

½ yellow onion, diced

¼ cup Franks Red Hot Buffalo Sauce

¼ cup Daiya Mozzarella

Cashew Cheese

1 cup of soaked cashews

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 lemon juiced

1 clove garlic

Pulse in high speed blender or food processor until smooth. If you have time spread out mixture in a metal bowl or on cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 5-10 minutes to reduce some of the moisture. Scrape once or twice to avoid possible burning.

Jalapeño Sauce

1 jalapeno

1 green onion

Small handful of parsley, de stemmed

3 dates, or 3 tbsp of date syrup

Enough water to process

Set to high in a high speed blender or food processor and puree until smooth.

Make your pizza dough and place in the oven on low to rise.

While its rising sauté your vegetables in the hot sauce for 5-10 minutes until they are almost cooked.

Remove dough from oven and divide into quarters.  Take ¼ of the dough and roll it out thinly.

Spread the cashew cheese on the bottom. Then the vegetables and Daiya.

Place in the a 400 degree oven and bake for 10 minutes.

Top with Jalapeno sauce and for added pizza flavor, dip in pizza sauce! Enjoy!!!

Thanks for reading!

Xoxo -N

Vegan Sloppy Joes

Holy moly! These were so good! I had Chelsea and her boyfriend Taylor over the other night for supper to taste test one of my new recipes (now that I look back that was a mistake because I could be eating leftovers right now).As I am typing this I am wishing I made more so I could have one for lunch, silly me, I guess next time I will have to!  When I thought about making these I knew my sister would love them, she is vegan like me, so she appreciates the veganizing of traditional favourites. They were a huge hit with everyone including the meat loving men!

I honestly feel that this is something that anyone would love! Don’t tell them what’s in it because they might have some preconceived notions about lentils. Just let them try it before you tell them and I know they will be hooked on my new take on a Sloppy Joe!  

While I was making these I was snacking on my favourite blue corn tortilla chips and Bush’s vegetarian baked beans. I literally cannot keep these in the house because I eat the whole can by myself as soon as I get home. Not the healthiest snack, but something that I treat myself to on occasion. So as I was devouring my snack I realized that these would taste pretty good in the Sloppy Joes, so I used all of my will power and saved half of a can to throw in. I found that the sweetness of the brown sugar really complimented the spiciness of the chili powder. If you don’t have these at home, or dont like them, no worries because they would have tasted just as great without them!

Side note about Bush’s Baked Beans, all of their products are gluten free, do not contain any dairy, casein. And their vegetarian style does not contain any animal or animal by products! Yay! For more info go to their website.

 

I also thought I would bring to your attention a little nutritional information about my Sloppy Joes. I was thinking about this when I was eating them last night. They were not as heavy as I remember and that was because I had switched out the meat for lentils. So I naturally had to do a nutritional comparison between canned lentils and cooked ground beef, and this is what I found.

All the information is approximate depending on the brand and type of product you are using.

Canned Lentils – 250g

160 calories

1 gram fat

6 grams fiber

12 grams protein

Pan Cooked Ground Beef – 250g

445 calories

18 grams fat

0 grams fiber

66 grams protein

As you can see the calories are over double in the ground beef and 18 times more in fat. Plus the kicker as always, there is no fiber in meat which we all know is good for proper digestion. I know you are saying ‘but there is 66 grams of protein in the hamburger’ and to that I say, 'do you really need that much?' In my opinion no you don’t, at least not in one cup of anything. For more information on daily intake of protein for vegans please check out this awesome video by FreeLee.

Vegan Sloppy Joes Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

2 yellow onions, sliced

1 small pkg of cremini mushrooms, diced

2 red peppers, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 can diced tomatoes

1 tbsp chili powder

2 tsp paprika

1 tbsp oregano

1 can organic lentils, rinsed

S&P to taste

Optional - ½ -1 can of Bush's Vegetarian baked beans

Directions:

In a frying pan or pot over medium heat, add ¼ cup of the liquid from the tomatoes. Add one onion, peppers, ½ pkg of mushrooms, sauté for 7-10 minutes. Make sure you stir continuously adding more liquid if needed. Add tomatoes and spices and cook for . Pour mixture into a blender and puree until smooth. Set aside.

Using the same frying pan or pot, add some water and cook the garlic and the rest of the onions and mushrooms until soft. Add the blended mixture and lentils, reduce heat to medium and let simmer until it becomes thick, around 15 minutes.

I didn’t use all of my sauce because my frying pan wasn’t big enough, but that just made it so I could add more sauce to my plate to dip it in!

Serve on any type of bread with a salad and enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

xoxo -N

The New Cauliflower Pizza, Vegan Gluten Free

This weekend we had the pleasure of babysitting our nephews, Brody and Carson. I always look forward to spending time with them because this is the age when they still want to hangout with us and they will still give us hugs and kisses. However, I think the one who benefited the most out of this get together was our dog Lucy. She is an attention whore and can con anyone into giving her a scratch on the head or belly. So when two young boys who love to hug and pet her come over, she is in doggy heaven! 

We had them for a good portion of Sunday, so I had to decide what to make them for supper. The first thing that came to my mind was pizza! What kid doesn’t love pizza? So I asked them what kind they would like and their response was:

Brody: Ordered in pizza

Carson: Cheesy bread.

…..

Well that didn’t get me very far. So I asked again, clarifying that we are making our own and that they could put WHATEVER they wanted on it. Carson still answered cheesy bread and Brody answered pepperoni. Success! I got one of them to answer. Now I just had to explain to Carson that he was going to get cheese pizza instead of the cheesy bread. He took it well and continued to jump off the stairs.

As I was driving I thought about the what kind of pizza I wanted and I really didn’t feel like eating all of that dough. I still wanted all of the toppings that comes with pizza, I just wasn’t feeling the bread part. Well, what about the cauliflower pizza crust that everyone is talking about? Meh, I have tried and it wasn’t that successful, plus with two boys in the house I didn’t feel like experimenting with something like that. That’s when an idea so awesome hit me! Like, so genius I had to look it up to see if anyone else had thought of it before, and to my luck I couldn’t find any other example!

Why not just skip making the crust and just put everything on top of the cauliflower?! Instead of making the crust and getting it to stay firm and crispy, just pile it all on a chunk of cauliflower! So I went from eating a whole pizza crust to myself, to eating almost a whole head of cauliflower to myself. What a great idea, and a healthy one too!

 

Okay so now you are thinking how do I do this? Well, you just take a sharp knife and cut out 1’’ steaks from the middle of the cauliflower you can probably get around 3 or 4 ‘steaks’ from each head, depending on how big it is. And yes I know, there are going to be holes in the ‘steaks’, but that’s okay, only some of the sauce will leak through. 

So the next time you are craving pizza, but want to eat a little healthier, try this out and see what you think. I personally loved it and they are really easy to throw together!

Ingredients – 2 servings (4 pizzas)

1 large head of cauliflower

2 tsp coconut oil

1 can of pizza sauce

3 mushrooms, diced

1 red pepper, diced

4 kalamata olives, de stoned, diced

1 cup spinach

1 cup Daiya cheese, mozzarella

Pre heat oven to 375 degrees.

With a sharp knife slice through a whole head of cauliflower and make 1” thick ‘steaks’, about four individual chunks.

Lightly coat bottom of cauliflower with coconut oil and bake in the oven for 10 mins.

Chop up veggies while they are baking.

Remove the cauliflower from the oven. They should be slightly fork tender.

Spread the sauce all over the top of the cauliflower and put on the toppings. Finishing it off with the cheese.

Bake in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Xoxo -N

Vegan Lasagna with Cashew Cheese

I honestly was never a huge fan of pasta… or bread… or pastries… basically any grains for that matter. I would only buy donuts to lick the icing off, or I would only eat a bagel so I could have a one inch layer of cream cheese on it. If it didn’t look weird I would have probably ordered just the icing or just the cream cheese from Tim Horton’s. So ya, breads in general are not my thing, and I do count myself as lucky because according to some women they can be quite addicting.

However, vegan lasagna is something I have wanted to do for a long time. I have always liked lasagna, not loved, but liked. It was never a meal we ate as kids, seeing as my dad had celiac and my sister and I were not that adventurous when we were making meals. They usually consisted of meat and potatoes, rice and stir fry or hot dogs and fries, not a lot of imagination for a couple of teens. But my parents were thankful that they didn’t have to cook meals when they got home from work.

I think the appeal of making vegan lasagna is the fact that it's so not vegan. You have anywhere from 3 to 10 types of cheese and then hamburger or pork as the key ingredients, which of course are everyone’s favourites. So this was kind of a test for me, to make lasagna that super ooey gooey, cheesey, deliciousness that everyone would love. Naturally my inner self yelled, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED and I set out on the net to check out some recipes. Unfortunately, none really caught my attention, so I just took all of my favourite aspects and blended them into one amazing lasagna recipe.
This is probably one of the best things I have EVER made, vegan or non-vegan. My husband even agrees that this is the best vegan thing I have ever made... even better than my chili, SHOCKER I KNOW! Because my chili is fricken fantastic. So I hope some of you are adventurous and try out my recipe, it’s totally worth it and you don’t even have to tell anyone its vegan, just let them decide if they like it or not!

Cashew Cheeze

1 cup of cashews, soaked overnight

1/2 cup of fresh basil

¼ cup of fresh lemon juice

2 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp of nutritional yeast

¼ cup of water or vegan broth

Place all of the ingredients into a blender or a food processor and blend until smooth.

Lasagna - 8 x 8 pan

½ pkg of vegan, ready to cook, lasagna noodles, gluten free or not!

1 jar of vegan tomato sauce

1 medium zucchini, sliced thinly lengthwise
1 tbsp of coconut oil

½ of medium onion, diced

1 pkg of mushrooms, diced

2 red bell pepper, diced

8 cups of fresh spinach

2 cups of Daiya Cheese, mozzarella flavour.   

1) Make a base layer of sauce on the bottom of the pan, followed by a layer of noodles.

2) Spread half of the cashew cheeze across the noodles.

3) Layer of zucchini slices.

4) Layer of sauted vegetables
5) Layer of tomato Sauce, which I had forgot to do, oops!

6) Another layer of noodles

7) The rest of the cashew cheeze!

8) Layer of zucchini slices.

9) Layer of tomato sauce
10) Place the last of the vegetables on top of the sauce.

11) Final layer of Daiya cheese!!

Bake Lasagna at 400 degrees F. for an hour.

For 40 minutes, covered in tin foil, the last 20 minutes to be uncovered. 

Thanks for reading!!
xoxo -N

Mexican Style Quinoa and Black Bean Stuffed Peppers, Gluten Free and Vegan

This month, something was brought to my attention that just made October so much cooler. October is Vegetarian Awareness Month!! For those of you who don’t know me, I love October. And when I say love, I mean LOVE LOVE LOVE. My birthday is in October, thanksgiving, my dogs birthdays and Halloween! Now this just puts the cherry right on top!
One of the main messages that Vegetarian Awareness Month is promoting is Meatless Monday’s. This is where you go all of Monday without eating any meat. I know for those of you who are meat eaters, it sounds hard, but I swear it isn’t. I even bet some of your favourite meals are vegetarian. When you actually start looking for amazing meatless meals, you will find that the options are endless.

Some simple ideas can include:

Taking your favourite Fettuccini Alfredo and instead of adding meat, add mushrooms
Vegetarian Pizza – You could do a mushroom, peppers, tomato, olives, ect. There are a lot of ingredients that go really well on a pizza. Now is the time to be creative.
Do breakfast for supper! Who doesn’t love pancakes for supper? Pair those with some scrambled eggs or omelets and you got a great meal!

Last night for supper I was in the mood for something Mexican inspired. So I checked the fridge and I was in luck, I had red and yellow peppers! And one of my favourite dishes to make is quinoa stuffed peppers. They are quite simple to make, and if you want you can do any flavour of stuffed peppers, such as Italian or Greek.

Ingredients2 yellow peppers
1 cup of cooked quinoa
1 tbsp of coconut oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 cup of zucchini, diced
1 ½ cups of mushrooms, diced
1 medium tomato, diced
1 cup of black beans

1/4 cup of Daiya Cheese
1 tsp of cumin
1 tsp of coriander
2 tsp of chili powder
1 tsp of onion salt

 

Pre heat your oven to 350 degrees and heat up oil in a medium sized frying pan on Medium/High heat. Add the onions and garlic and sauté them for 10 minutes, or until they are soft. Stir in your mushrooms, zucchini and tomatoes until evenly distributed, sauté for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and add your spices, mixing them well into the vegetables. Finally stir in the quinoa and black beans. Continue to cook on low/medium heat for another 5 minutes.

Then take the peppers and cut them in half length wise. This will make them easier to stuff, they will lay more evenly in the pan and they are easier to eat. If your peppers are odd shaped and do not stay upright in the pan, stick toothpicks in the sides of the pepper to stabilize them.

Once your vegetable mix is ready, place your peppers in a baking pan – I used an 8 inch square cake pan. Then spoon the mixture into the peppers, almost to the point of over stuffing them.

This is the point when I remembered that I had just bought a new package of Pepper Jack Daiya Cheese. I love this stuff, it melts like cheese, tastes like cheese and would be the perfect touch to my stuffed peppers.

I took about ¼ cup of the cheese and evenly distributed it on top of the peppers. This is one of the reasons why you should make sure your peppers lay flat in the pan. Because if they didn’t your stuffing and cheese would fall out.

Now they are ready to put in the oven! Now because the inside veggie mixture is already cooked, the bake time isn’t very long. We are only baking the peppers until they are soft, which takes about 15-20 minutes or until the cheese melts. This step is really up to you, the longer you have it in the oven, the softer the pepper. I like my pepper to be a little crunchy, so I only bake it for 15 minutes.

Once your peppers are cooked to your liking, take them out of the oven and let them cool for 5 minutes. Then serve!





Thanks for reading!!

xoxo -N