Vegan Meatloaf

Ever since I became vegan, I've been craving meatloaf. I used to love meatloaf with mashed potatoes and corn. It was always a comfort meal for me. I found the recipe for a Vegan Chickpea Meatloaf on Pinterest and made it for my hubby and I. 

The recipe required a blender or food processor and ended up being incredibly tasty. It had the consistency and flavor of meatloaf and had a maple glaze on top that was very similar to ketchup. 

The recipe requires you to take all of the ingredients for the meatloaf portion and put it all into a blender and blend it all together. You put the mixture into a baking dish and cover it for 30 minutes and then take it back out to put the glaze on and then leave it uncovered while the glaze is on and cook for another 20 minutes, so the recipe does take a while, but it's worth it. 

If you are ever in the mood for meatloaf, I suggest this recipe for sure! 

Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes

I love making pancakes on a Saturday morning and these were

fantastic! They had a great flavor and a great fluffy texture. We followed the recipe from Pinterest for Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes, except I used Vanilla flavored soy milk and added more of the soy milk then suggested because I felt like the batter was too thick. I probably added at least a cup more. I also added a small amount of pumpkin pie spice. Otherwise the recipe was followed precisely. We used the brand of vanilla soy milk in the picture, if you were curious, but any brand would work just fine. 

When putting the batter onto the griddle it didn't lay out like normal batter, it was kind of sticky. I used the spatula to try and flatten out the batter every time I dropped some of the batter on the pan. The directions say to put vegan buttery spread down first, which I did about half the time, both the flapjacks in the butter and not turned out well. After dropping each amount of batter, I would put dairy free mini chocolate chips on top. They worked out very well and tasted great with the pumpkin taste of the pancakes. The recipe only

requires 3 tablespoons of pumpkin puree, so I would suggest that if you make this recipe, make sure that you have another use for the remainder of the pumpkin puree. There are tons of pumpkin vegan recipes out there. 

All in all, this was a delicious Saturday morning breakfast. It was thoroughly enjoyed by both my husband and I with vegan buttery spread and pure maple syrup. It's definitely a recipe that I will make again and again as it was easy and delicious and a great October treat. 

Vegan Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta

My hubby and I were trying to figure out what to make for dinner

tonight. We were lacking in the vegetable department and we were at a point that required some creativity. I went to my trusty pinterest and looked up this Vegan Butternut Squash Pasta because we knew we had butternut squash and pasta that home and just needed a sauce. 

It turned out pretty well. The sauce required a blender or food processor and we ended up with far too much sauce because we used the entire Butternut squash instead of following the recipe's measurement of three cups. 

The flavor was kind of plain. So we added some garlic salt to the top as well as some more of the dried italian herbs that are a part of the recipe. This did help a little. We also used a type of almond cheese on top that was purchased from whole foods. It was great because it melted really well. 

I'd also suggest using a fettuccine pasta like in the picture in the recipe. We only used the pasta that you see in this picture because we had two bags of half pasta that needed to be used. 

The broccoli florets was my favorite part of this pasta and I'd say adding more veggies like maybe some kale, corn, or carrots would add some more flavor to it. 

We have enough sauce leftover to feed an army for a week, so we saved it and are planning to make it into a butternut squash soup. I'll keep track of what we do with it so I can pass along that recipe as well.