Category Archives: Fun with Food

Yummy Vegan Sloppy Joes – Recipe

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , ,

WHOA! This recipe turned out so good! But it’s an adaptation of this one, so I’d better give credit where it’s due. Thank you, Rachel Ray. Thank you for having a recipe that showed up near the top of my sloppy joe google search. Sloppy Joes are, in my opinion, a traditional suburban ’comfort food’. I don’t remember eating them at home growing up. I also didn’t eat things like tuna casserole or swedish meatballs or quiche lorraine or chicken a la king. I grew up with a culturally curious Mother who liked to try different things. So, I was well versed with sushi and enchilladas and salmon and raw oysters (funny story) and calamari from a very young age. But, my memories of sloppy joes from friends’ houses or school are of this sweet, rich tomatoey sauce and a messy meat wad on a bun that could barely contain it. This recipe brought those memories back…but of course, it’s elevated from the canned joe sauce.

Adapting recipes to their vegan or vegetarian equivalent is quite simple. You just have to remember to read the labels of bottles of anything that has multiple ingredients. I learned last year that worchestershire sauce is not veg-friendly; anchovies, who woulda thunk? But I think the stuff tastes weird, so I never use it anyway (whew). I would say that using Braggs in it’s place, or nothing, is fine. Now, I call this recipe vegan — because it is. But, you’ll see in the picture that we have cheese on our bun. I don’t believe in vegan cheese (why bother, I say)…so, it’s a creamy gouda ;-) But, do as you will.

Ingrediants

  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 pkg of original veggie ground round
  • 1 small eggplant, diced finely (like those bitty diced hashbrowns)
  • 1/8 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon steak seasoning blend, (I used Club House Montreal Steak spice, and was pleased to finally have a recipe that required it, the stuff is kind of harsh on everything…steak included)
  • 1 tsp Italian Seasoning (or oregano)
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic – minced
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tomatoes emulsified with an immersion blender (sounds complicated, but we didn’t have tomato sauce) (or a small can of tomato sauce)
  • 1/2 small can tomato paste
  • 2-4 buns that have enough mmmmph to withstand a pile of saucy goodness when toasted
  • any other toppings you want on a sloppy joe. Keeping in mind that you’ll most likely want to fork and knife this daddy-o. I sliced and fried up a portobello mushroom and melted some cheese on my bun.

Directions

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add oil and onion to the pan. When the onion is translucent, add the eggplant. Within a few minutes, the pan will seem dry, so add a splash of water. Continue to saute for 5 more minutes.

Add the garlic, garlic powder, brown sugar, steak seasoning, italian seasoning. and apple cider vinegar.  Let it go, stirring regularly for 5 minutes.

Add tomatos and paste to pan. Stir to combine. Reduce heat to simmer and cook Sloppy Joe mixture 5-7 minutes longer. Do keep an eye on it, because the sugar will start to burn if left to be for too long.

The mix will thicken turning it into a good slop. It’s ready to serve. Hot!

Veg Sloppy Joe

Holiday Vegan Sausage

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , ,

Over the past several months, I’ve been trying different adaptations of this recipe. Today, while planning my Christmas dinner plate, I wanted to have something to replace the gap of turkey on my fiance’s plate. So, I decided to try to adapt my recipe into a Holiday version.

I went to Whole Foods and read the ingredient list of the Field Roast holiday roast to get inspiration. One thing I should mention about the original recipe, is that it is quite flexible! The only thing you need to consider is texture and moisture. I like tasting the texture of different things in my sausage, so I leave stuff chunky. But, of course, if you want it to be more smooth, try blending or food processing the wet ingredients.

1/2 cup cooked skinned potatoes (1 big potato or a handful of small ones, if you have to use small, peel them after they’re cooked)

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 onion – finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
handful of cranberries, chopped finely (I used fresh cranberries, but I’m sure you could use dry)
1 stalk of celery, finely diced
1/8 cup of dry white wine (it’s on the list twice on purpose)
2 tablespoons Braggs (or soy sauce)

2 teaspoons dried sage
1 teaspoon of thyme (i used fresh)
1/2 teaspoon of dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried ginger
Several dashes fresh black pepper and salt

3/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of dry white wine
1/2 apple, peeled and finely diced
1 nub of candied ginger, finely diced

1 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

I boiled, then peeled the potatoes…then mashed them in a medium sized bowl.

This felt like making Christmas dressing. I sauteed the onions, garlic, cranberries and celery with all of the spices and braggs for 10-12 minutes in 2 tablespoons of oil. Partway through the cooking process, deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine.

I then added the veggie mix to the potatoes, combined well before adding the rest of the ingrediants.

Once mixed together well, it should be a moist, stretchy dough. The stretchy/springiness is caused by the gluten. I don’t know of another product that can recreate this and be gluten free, unfortunately.

Divide the dough into 4 and take 2 or 4 squares of tin foil and shape each dough ball into a sausage shape before rolling it up into the tin foil.

Steam for 45 minutes.

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I came across another recipe today that had a 2-step cooking process, so I decided to give it a shot. After removing from the steamer, I put the tinfoil sausages into the oven at 350 degrees for another 20 minutes.

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These sausages are lighter in texture than ones I’ve made in the past; borderline too light. So, I let them cool and threw them in the freezer. We ended up using 1 sausage for our stuffed squash and when cut down and fried up, it was stellar. My partner in crime used another one in lunch he made yesterday and was able to sing its’ praises. I think the lighter texture was caused by a couple of things: 1 – using potatoes instead of beans. 2 – also liquid. When I do this again, I’ll decrease the water to 1/2 cup and I bet it will make all the difference in the world.

And, did baking them make a difference? Not for these, simply because they were so light. But I would try it again.

Cheers and Happy Holidays!

Bacon!!! Tofu Bacon, that is…

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , ,

First and foremost, I sincerely apologize for there not being a picture to accompany this post. Epic fail, considering I made this for the first and second time this evening. Yep, it was that good.

Tofu bacon was seriously an experiment. I had the following items in my fridge that needed to be used: some iceberg lettuce, a small amount of fingerling potatoes, some extra firm tofu soaking in a bowl. Not even planning to use the tofu, I googled “potatoes and iceberg lettuce and recipe”, and was presented with an array of German potato salad recipes. Bacon.

Bacon. There had to be bacon. In my mind, I could already see the bacon coming together because our pantry had the goods to make it happen. Hickory liquid smoke. Maple syrup. I literally talked myself through making this. Bacon.

Bacon needs fat. Butter. Butter burns. Olive oil. 1 tbsp of each into the pan.

Bacon needs yummy meaty flavour. Onion. I diced half of an onion and added it to the pan (med heat) once the butter melted.

I had about half of a pkg of extra firm tofu. I drained it, patted it dry, finely diced it and added it to the pan with the onions right away. My plan was to brown, to caramelize both the onions and the tofu and let them marry in the pan. I’ve been reading about caramelizing onions lately because I have fantasies of making a vegetarian French onion soup. Apparently, the key to cooking down onions well, is to not have them too hot, and to leave them alone for the first 15 minutes. Patience. The onions don’t need you!

Because there was tofu, I stirred for the first time after about 10 minutes. I add 3 dashes of liquid smoke to the pan and a liberal amount of salt and pepper. Bacon is salty. Bacon can be peppered. Do it.

Your kitchen will now be reaking of hickory smoked bacon. Continue to cook down the mixture until the tofu has a dark golden crispy outside. About 15-20 minutes. Just when you think it’s done, drizzle 2 tbsp of maple syrup into the pan and stir frequently for another few minutes. Bacon.

It’s so good. It is so good, that I made more to add to some pasta lunches that I made.

Spaghetti Squash is awesome

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , , , ,

Spaghetti Squash IS awesome. If you’ve never had it before, it’s a must try. I’m not going to be one of those that say you can fool anyone into believing it’s pasta, because it’s not. It’s a squash. But it’s a squash with a super funky texture that’s easy to make…and quite filling.

So, while it isn’t pasta, I do like to treat it like it is. Olive oil, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese (if you nasty) are really all this needs to be deelish. Do you like something more saucy on your pasta? Do it. Do anything. Tomato sauce is nice. Meat sauce, pesto, cheese sauce…it will all work great because this squash has a mild flavour compared to, say, butternut squash.

Tonight, I had a couple of small eggplants that I had to cook. So, when roasting the squash, I diced up the eggplant, tossed it in some olive oil and balsamic, and roasted them right alongside the squash. I then added the eggplant to a homemade marinara. They both take pretty much the same cook time, so you’re golden.

How to cook spaghetti squash: please note that a recipe telling you to do this in any other way is lying. I’ve seen recipes calling for water baths…FAIL. Higher temps and much longer cooking time will cause this squash to burn or get mushy. The texture is the fun part!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cut squash in half lengthwise (heavy chopping cleaver = best gift EVER)
Scoop out the seeds n gunk from each half
Rub a bit of olive oil on the flesh. Gently season with salt and pepper, then roast cut side down for 30 minutes.

After those 30 minutes, remove from oven and let it sit for a couple more before you use a fork to remove the flesh from the sides and scoop into a bowl. I’ll hold the half in my oven-mitted hand, then scrape and scoop.

My partner thought the fork created the spaghetti-esque strands…nope, that is the essence of this squash. It’s pretty cool when doing it for the first time.

Once in the bowl, I like to drizzle a bit more olive oil then toss with seasoning.

Then serve, with whatever else you’ve made with it.

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A Warm Hug – Vegan/Vegetarian Asian Corn Soup

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food, Musings and tagged with , , , , , ,

I bought myself a new laptop…2 months ago. Blogging hasn’t been striking a chord with me lately. Interestingly enough, a LOT has been going on in my life since I last wrote. Busy Busy, exciting times. With all of this fun madness, the one thing that inspired me to ‘Add New Post’ is corn soup.

Corn Soup. I was sitting in the passenger seat of our little white snowflake driving the Coquihalla and I wanted corn soup. I wanted to feel the thick warmth, sweetness and crunchiness of corn soup.

Do I have a recipe? Of course not. I looked up a recipe once, likely at age 18, when I lived in my first basement apartment and bought 1 Chinese Cookery recipe book with magazine sized photos of chow fun, chow mein and young chow fried rice gracing its pages.

1 large can of creamed corn
some frozen corn
3-4 cups of broth
sliced shitaake mushrooms
corn starch slurry with soya sauce and cooking wine
white pepper, salt, sesame oil
chopped green onion
swirl one beaten egg at the end (optional, but of course, this won’t be vegan anymore)

The recipe I was looking at was likely crab and chicken…or something fancy/incredible asian funky. But, besides that, it looked possible for my teenage brain to recreate and turned out oh so yummy. Ridiculously memorable. And now, I regurgitate this recipe at random, and evolve it to my current level of culinary matureness/mood/contents of my cupboard.

When I made corn soup last night, I added some minced garlic and ginger and diced celery and carrot into the base. I tossed in some chopped green beans, and chilli flakes/coriander/cinnamon/rice wine vinegar. I made broth out of dried porcini mushrooms (by the way, I’m never buying veggie broth again. EVER. and I’m always getting dried porcini mushrooms from the Farmer’s Market, not Whole Foods where they’re 6-8X more expensive) ps – I just wondered if creamed corn is vegan.

When I made corn soup last night, I made it for my future husband. I gave him one of my fond memories in a pot. He loved it. He liked the mushrooms. He picked all of the shiitake bits out of the pot when we’d eaten our fill. He enjoyed the crunch of the green beans and loudly slurped the soupy sweet corn goodness.

#beam

I Pity The Fool…that doesn’t love avocado (recipe included)

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food, Musings and tagged with , , , , ,

I truly believe that avocado is the most perfect…uhmmm…fruit? Well, I’m going to call it a fruit for the purpose of this blog entry.

It’s Friday night, and I had a big bowl of mushy kidney beans that I’d cooked up on a whim, needing to be turned into a meal. We decided, while lounging at the beach, that we’d do bean and rice burritos tonight- and that I’d head home to start cooking, and he’d run to Safeway to grab wraps, tomatoes, and whatever else I figured we’d need (an onion)

While in the kitchen making guacamole and salsa, I was thrust into a childhood memory wave of happiness. I have made salsa and guacamole SO many times since I was quite young and the thought of it reminds me of summer and fresh foods and so much fun!

Making salsa with my Mom was a mini-event, because, while we were only 2, we always would make a huge vat of salsa that would easily feed 20! Hahaha…why? Because we always shared, salsa goes good in pretty much anything AND, because salsa is always better on Day 2, Day 3!

Guacamole, on the other hand, curse of the sensi green fruit- is not a sustainable treat. I’m not fond of the brown skin that covers the top if left overnight. Others don’t care and just stir it up again, but…meh.

Anyways, being thrust into a wave of happiness over food inspired me to take some quick photos while prepping. I’m pleased to share my simple quick guacamole recipe. This will serve 2-3 people as it only uses 1 avocado.

1 ripe avocado! Please please don’t use it of it isn’t ripe!!!! Any good Asian corner produce shop will have ripe avocados hiding behind the register. They don’t want them squeezed!!

Score then scoop the avocado into the small serving bowl.

Juice half of a lime
1/2 tsp ground coriander
Dash of salt and pepper
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 tbsp finely chopped onion

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Mush it all together with a fork in the bowl. Presto! Serve immediately!20120629-212946.jpg

Mama’s salsa recipe is too much for our small home. I make a quick salsa that I think is moreso known as pico di gallo. It’s made pretty much the same as guacamole but with tomatoes instead of avocado!

I used 2 tomatoes in this one to ensure we’d have some leftover for breakfast tomorrow.

Happy Canada Day!!!!

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Vancouver Farmer’s Market Chopped Basket Ingredient: Sea Asparagus

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , , , , ,

It’s an unwritten rule in my home that when we have hollendaise and alcohol for brunch, we should plan to have something a tad lighter for dinner. Well yesterday I went on a shopping bonanza at The Farmer’s Market. Such a spree, in fact, that I visited two markets: my neighbourhood West End Market and the always stellar Trout Lake. Here are some goodies I bought:

Sea Asparagus

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And garlic scapes!

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we also got great tomatoes, strawberries, collard greens, mushrooms, arugula, cheese curds, snap peas, kale. I think that’s it! Haha

I like to cook my purchases while they are still fresh, so buying a lot of veggies on a Saturday encourages at home meals for most of the weekend and into the beginning of the work week! Good stuff!

As with all new ingredients, I googled recipe ideas for sea asparagus and found a common thread: fish. Makes sense. Sea asparagus is quite salty and has this deep essence of the ocean and shorelines it is harvested from. Our friend made hers with salmon and I bet hers tasted better than ours. But I did learn from her to soak them in water for about an hour before cooking, as the sea salty sensation intensifies through cooking.

I’ve made garlic scapes before. Garlic scape pesto! But I decided to grill them along with the eggplant and tomato I was going to grill up.

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Indoor grills ROCK! I quickly marinaded the eggplant with a splash of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and oregano before putting it onto the grill on high heat so I could get the yummy char marks. Eggplant will dry out- especially if you make thick slices like I did (3/4 inch) – so splash water onto it throughout the cooking process. In total it should take about 15 minutes on the grill (375 degrees)

To prepare the sea asparagus, I ended up going with a similar cooking method that I’ve used for kale. Sauté half of a large onion over medium heat with about a tbsp of butter for a few minutes, then add the asparagus and squeeze a whole lemon over it. The asparagus only takes a few minutes to cook. This needs to retain its bite!! At the end, I had the idea of adding dill, but my spice rack was stuck behind my hot grill…rats. Next time!

I also quickly grilled a couple of cherry tomatoes and the garlic scapes. Darn google, you aren’t always right. The scapes were a fail. I should have probably sautéed them with the asparagus. Oh well. I’m making pesto next time!

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Dinner was yummy!!!

Blog Challenge: My Fav Place to Eat…in Kelowna

Posted by Freedom Fro in 30 Day Blog Challenge, Fun with Food and tagged with , , ,

I can’t do it! I simply cannot choose my favourite restaurant in Vancouver. I have a whole bunch of favs and I hope to keep discovering more.

On my phone, I do have one picture that I took of my brunch in Kelowna. I thought to myself, yeah- this is my favourite restaurant in Kelowna. Whenever we go, I’m in a perma-grin state for the entire meal. The Bohemian Cafe is a funky spot that has tasty breakfast and brunch. The only downside is that they aren’t licensed, but the food is sooo good, the caesar can wait till when you’re walking it off.

This pic is of their huevos rancheros! Yep, there are poached eggs hiding underneath all of that goodness. So So Good…I can’t wait to go back soon!

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