Butternut Squash Pumpkin Curry VeganMoFo #1

I wasn’t really sure I was going to sign up to participate in VeganMofo this year. The thing is, October-April is my busiest time of year. I work in the employee benefits industry, and this is the time of year when everyone meets about their benefits and decides what they’re going to do for the upcoming year. For me, this means traveling and a lot of public speaking. However, I’ve been working on changing my eating habits, and I’ve found that tracking my food and blogging really helps keep me on top of things. My theme this year is going to be along the lines of eating Whole Foods. It’s not going to focus on living without oil or salt, but I will focus on consuming whole foods. Over the weekend, I experimented with making a curry without adding oil. I don’t have a lot of curry experience because my husband is not a fan of curry in general. (Yes, he’s crazy.)
Ingredients:
one medium butternut squash, seeded, quartered, and thinly sliced
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 medium sized sweet onions, halved and sliced
1 15 OZ can full fat OR light coconut milk
2 cups water
1 vegetable broth cube (not-chicken is a favorite)
4 tablespoons of panang curry paste (I like Arroyo D, it’s oil free) If you’re not a fan of spicy foods, reduce the curry paste to 2T and add more to taste.
Saute onions and butternut squash in a bit of water until they soften, for about 10 minutes. Add in curry paste, and stir to coat all veggies. Then add coconut milk, water, and pumpkin puree. Stir to combine and simmer of medium heat, covered, for 20 minutes. Uncover, and simmer for an additional 15-20 minutes.

Serve over quinoa. Makes 5 servings.
I tend to start the quinoa right as the first round of simmering finishes. I always make quinoa the same way, I rinse the quinoa, then dry cook it until the water has cooked off and the quinoa toasts a bit, then add double the amount of vegetable broth (or water+broth cube), and cook the quinoa, covered, for 20 minutes. I never add any seasonings until it’s cooked, and typically I ONLY add black pepper to it.

Quinoa Wraps with Sweet Potato, Tofu Feta and a Sweet Tahini Dipping Sauce

Reblogged from the taste space - steam, bake, boil, shake!:

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This is the story of a picnic that didn't happen, twice.

We had full intentions of getting together with friends, having a picnic together on the island.  However, after a weather forecast of 100% rain, the plans were abandoned. Rob and I stayed at home and relished in a relaxing afternoon together.

Together, we still continued with our picnic menu: Quinoa Salad with Sweet Potatoes and Dried Iranian Limes.

Read more… 976 more words

Some pre MoFo Pictures.

Picture post

Veggie breakfast sandwich.

Veggie breakfast burrito topped with vegan chili

Random breakfast: quinoa, tomatoes, onions, cactus, corn and zucchini. This was immediately doused in hot sauce. Because hot sauce goes on everything.

An extremely dark picture of a pumpkin sandwich cookie with butter cream.

Milagro silver tequila margarita from Rose Pepper

Ribbon zucchini salad

Nut-Free Raw Lasagna

Reblogged from the taste space - steam, bake, boil, shake!:

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The summer is winding down and this will be the last of my Raw Thursdays. Not because I won't be cooking, or uncooking raw foods. Because I feel I like be concentrating a bit more on work and three posts a week seems better for now.

One reason why I started adding an extra raw recipe each week was because I wanted to highlight how easy and tasty they can be.

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Kasha Salad with Roasted Beets and Green Beans in a Lemon-Dill Vinaigrette

Reblogged from the taste space - steam, bake, boil, shake!:

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This weekend boasts both the Polish Festival and the Ukrainian festival.

For those keeping score. Rob = Polish. Me = Ukrainian and German.

As a bonus, both sets of our parents will be coming to Toronto to check out the festivals. I mean, they are coming to see us.

How will we manage? Which one to attend? They are reasonably close to each other, so we’ll likely hit up both festivals.

Read more… 545 more words

Yum.

Chili Spiced Seitan Recipe

I’ve experimented with seitan several times, but never consistently. I keep telling myself I must be doing something wrong to end up with such lackluster seitan. I mean, I LOVE wheat…so you’d think seitan would be my thing. But it’s just not. I want to like it though, so I’m experimenting. Seitan has a lot of protein and not very many carbohydrates and very little fat. I’m also using myfitnesspal.com to track my calorie consumption because I’m trying to be a healthier person. I love that I can create recipes and then plug them in to see what I’m eating. That’s the only tough part about eating clean-no labels to really tell you what kind of nutritional value you’re taking in! I like knowing what I’m taking in…it keeps me in check. I created a seitan recipe this weekend that’s ‘log’ seitan if you will. It’s baked and sliceable–I even cut some up lunch meat style. My approach this time was to use way more spices than any recipe I’ve seen. I wanted seitan that was flavorful without needing anything to be added to it. I wanted seitan that non-vegans might actually eat and not say ‘this is weird.’

Recipe:
Preheat the oven to 325 and get out a baking sheet and some foil.

Mix your dry ingredients:
2 1/2 c vital wheat gluten
1/2 c nutritional yeast
1 T paprika
1 T granulated garlic (better than fresh in this recipe)
1 T onion powder
1 T ancho chili powder

In a blender combine:
1/2 c cooked lentils
1 T Sambal Oelek (I don’t even buy sriracha anymore!!)
2 T Bragg’s Amino Acids
2 T low sodium Tamari
1.5 T Genmai (brown rice and soy) miso
1 3/4 c water
Blend until the lentils are pureed. Add your liquid ingredients to your dry ingredients and stir with a bamboo or wooden spoon until combined. Turn sticky mixture out onto a large piece of foil and form a log shape. Bake for 90 minutes, flipping the seitan log over once half way through. Unwrap log and allow to cool on a wire rack. This keeps the outside of your seitan from getting soft via condensation that forms within the foil while your seitan cools. This is okay to store in the fridge for a week or you may separate out individual portions and freeze them. A couple of notes:
fee free to swap out spices, but use the same amounts for maximum flavor. the same goes for beans and even the miso; you could make this italian style by swapping spices and using white beans-you could even swap the braggs and miso out for wine. Just keep the dry and wet ingredient amounts the way they are. Let me know if you come up with something great!
Makes 10 servings Nutritional information below:
159 Calories
12 Carbohydrates
1 gram of fat
27 grams of protein

This entire recipe:
1587 calories
115 carbohydrates
10 grams of fat
274 grams of protein (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

p.s. seitan ain’t pretty y’all, no pictures, but I’ll post some photographs of my lunch today which is quinoa, seitan, raw broccoli and fat free homemade green goddess dressing.
In case you haven’t noticed…I am on a huge high protein, eat clean, no sugar, very little oil kick. I have been trying to kick my ass into gear and get healthy for quite a while now, and I lose motivation quickly. Oddly enough, having less spending money and the adoption of a stray dog my husband found has pushed me to be more driven about fitness and eating healthier. I turn 30 this year, and I want to get on track before my metabolism really starts to slow down. I’m still young and I can still take control. Do you guys want to see my new dog? OF COURSE YOU DO! Those that follow me on instagram have already seen my sweet boy.

That’s not the best picture, but there will be many more to come.
Wes and I moved into a house with a fenced in back yard about 7 months ago, and I’ve been begging him to let us adopt a dog since we have a play area outside. He kept saying no and giving very valid reasons, so I let go of the idea. Then he called last week saying a stray had been hanging out around his work for a month or so, and that it had almost gotten hit, so he was bringing him home. He’s about 4 and extremely well behaved. No barking, no jumping, no messing with the cats, no using the bathroom inside (we already had a doggy door installed-what luck!). This dog is wonderful. We haven’t named him yet, but we’re definitely in love! This is the second animal we’ve taken in over the course of the last two weeks. It really makes me mad that people abandon their animals (like literally..come drop them off) in my neighborhood because we have a reputation for being animal lovers and we have a few groups that rescue animals. Ugh. We took in a sweet kitten about 2 weeks ago that didn’t make it…he was only 8 weeks old and in shock from a dislocated leg. Heart breaking. I have a feeling Wes and I will soon be involved with East CAN to start fostering animals until they can have homes because it’s just unbearable seeing so many obviously (once) well taken care of animals being deserted.