Plant Based Thanksgiving Successes and Failures!

As you all know! I'm in love with Pinterest for recipes! I had 3 Thanksgivings this year and I utilized Pinterest for my recipes. I have linked all used recipes below if you are interested in trying any of them!

My Mom and I hosted a plant-based Thanksgiving the Sunday prior. We did a Veggie Loaf, by Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures. This was probably the biggest success! Great flavor! Re-heated well for leftovers and it was so delicious. We also had a Pumpkin Pasta by Forks over knives. This dish flopped, the reason for the failure was because I tried a new gluten free pasta and it ended up being mush. The flavor profile also wasn't the greatest. The one thing I liked about this dish vs other pumpkin pastas I had tried was that it had carrots and asparagus added for more texture. I'm not sure I would make this specific dish again, but I love the idea of adding the carrots and asparagus for more veggies. We also did a Rice Pilaf dish. It was okay. I don't think I'd make it again, but it was made much better by the Mushroom Gravy that we made by Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures! It was sooo good! My husband is still raving about it! Gravy is so important for Thanksgiving as it just adds to all the foods. We also made this amazing Cranberry Sauce! We used it for all 3 Thanksgivings and everyone loved it! Best thing about it! It's sugar free! Lastly, but not leastly, we made Scalloped Potatoes. I thought these were pretty good. My Mom thinks that we should make them again, but add Rosemary and Thyme and of course they were made even better with the amazing Mushroom Gravy we made. All in all, the food was eaten. The winners were the Veggie Loaf, Cranberry Sauce, and the Mushroom Gravy!

Thanksgiving #2 was hosted by my lovely sister. This was not plant-based, so I brought two lovely dishes so I had some food to eat. They were both absolutely delicious. My Mom was also nice enough to bring some delicious green beans with almonds that I could eat as well. The dishes I brought were a Fall Harvest Salad with a Maple Tahini Dressing. Not only was it just a beautiful salad, but it was absolutely delicious. The dressing is creamy and thick and the roasted brussel sprouts, squash, and beets just made it extra delicious. I also made a Spaghetti Pie by Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures and it was so delicious. By the time it was done though, everyone had already filled up on other foods. My husband and uncle tried it and both liked it and I saved some small servings for my sister so she could try it later. It was better fresh, but to reheat it we added more vegetable broth to it and sort of stewed it for a while until it was hot and it tasted really good! I would definitely make it again!

Thanksgiving #3 was hosted by my mother-in-law Cheryl. It was also not plant-based, so I brought some very simple Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, a very simple Vegan Gravy, Leftover Harvest Salad, and a rainbow salad of my own design along with a Tahini Dressing. The rainbow salad consisted of spinach, cruciferous crunch salad mix, red pepper, carrots, yellow pepper, cucumber, blueberries, and purple cabbage. The garlic mashed potatoes turned out very bland, I was kind of surprised since there were two heads of garlic in there. I don't think I'd use that recipe again, they really needed more flavor. However, as always the gravy saved them. So I'm very glad that I made a good amount of gravy because I covered all my food in it. My Mother-in-law made a rice pilaf dish with carrots, mushrooms and wild rice and it was really delicious. It was made more delicious by my gravy!

All in all it was a great Thanksgiving week with lots of love and family! I'm lucky to have such supportive family that support my dietary choices and don't give me any grief about it.

Leftover Thanksgiving! So I had to share, I made my first plant-based Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich and I even took a photo. It's not pretty, but was it delicious! YES! So, the ingredients were leftover veggie loaf re-heated in the oven, garlic mashed potatoes, leftover rice pilaf, a bit of gravy, cranberry sauce, and homemade vegan mayo. The bread is an organic and sugar free bread by a company that I support called Happy Campers. They make healthy, organic, and gluten free breads! And it is also delicious. This is their Hemp Hooray bread.

I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings with your families!

Curried Broccoli Chickpea Salad

This salad is delicious, raw and wonderful. It is the perfect salad for

summer parties or BBQs. The recipe doesn't have apples or peppers in it, but I always add peppers and have considered adding apples. 

If you decide to add a bunch of extra veggies or fruits to the salad. I would recommend making more the of the sauce to make sure that everything gets covered in the delicious sauce.

This has become one of my favorite staples and favorite summer dishes. I give it 5 stars for taste, texture, and look. This is a salad that I crave and this summer, I see it joining us for many events and appearing many times on our dinner table. 

If you decide to add peppers or apples, I would suggest making them about the size of the other veggies in the bowl. I made the mistake of cutting the peppers into kind of big pieces which didn't quite go along with the texture of the salad. 

My favorite part of this salad is how colorful it is. It is often said that to be healthy, eat the rainbow. Well this salad has many colors in it. It could almost be called a rainbow salad. :) 

Try this wonderful recipe, by clicking here. 

Vegan Indian Vegetable Korma

This is by far one of my favorite vegan meals. I used to have issues with Indian dishes, but I have since gotten over that and now enjoy dishes like this one. Vegetable Korma is normally made with the Indian version of cheese called Paneer and also has cream in it. For this version of the dish you use coconut cream to replace the cream and of course skip the cheese. I like to add cauliflower to add another vegetable to replace the cheese. The result is a flavorful creamy curried dish that is served over basmati rice. 

I 100% recommend this recipe to anyone who enjoys Indian food. My meat eater husband loves this stuff as well. He likes to add hot sauce for a little more flavor. 

If you want to make this delicious recipe, just follow the link below. 

http://www.lifemadefull.com/vegetarian-korma-recipe/

A Work Week of Vegan Dinners

My husband agreed to go Vegan for 2 weeks, so I decided it would

be best to plan out our meals so that he could see how delicious being a vegan really can be. I think that hardest part for him and for many vegans is giving up cheese. We found a great Daiya brand block of "Cheddar Cheese" that was gluten free at Cub Foods of all places and it actually tastes like Cheddar Cheese. I was surprised and delighted and recommend it if you are having a cheese craving. 

Monday: We started out the week with our famous Vegan and

Gluten Free Wild Rice Corn Chowder. You can click on the link to view the previous blog we did about this delicious soup. We skipped the mushrooms this time around, and I thought it was just as good and tasty, my husband thought it could use more flavor. All in all, it's very good stuff, it's very nutritious and makes enough for a big family meal or plenty of leftovers for lunches. 

Tuesday: We enjoyed a completely plant-based and gluten free Lasagna created by a recipe by Tasty. Feel free to click on the link for the recipe and try it for yourself. It was actually pretty delicious, we ended up cutting the recipe in half and had plenty for the two of us to eat along with leftovers. It truly does taste like it has meat and ricotta cheese in it and it's delicious. They have you buy your favorite sauce for the sauce part of it, but I suggest either making your own or buying two jars, because I didn't end up having enough sauce for layering which left portions of my noodles uncooked. Also, we used brown rice lasagna noodles found at Cub Foods. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of this recipe because every time I tried to plate it, it fell apart and didn't look very pretty. 

Wednesday: I was on my own on Wednesday and had eaten too

much early in the day, so I made myself a very small meal to give my stomach a break. I washed some berries that I had gotten from Whole Foods (raspberries) and Trader Joes (blueberries) and made some Peanut butter toast with Schar brand gluten free multigrain bread with banana and Trader Joes brand peanut butter that had no added sugar. Just peanuts and salt. 

Thursday: We enjoyed a favorite dish of ours. It's an Indian dish called Vegetable Korma. Normally it's made with cream, but I found a wonderful vegan recipe for it and now it's become a staple in our household. It has a tomato base for the sauce and is very tangy and flavorful and is served over rice. I strongly suggest this recipe especially if you love Indian food. Also, it's a pretty easy one to make! 

Friday: Personal flatbread pizzas. I found these little gluten free

flat-breads at cub foods that were also vegan, so we decided to try them. I've always been a fan of just pineapple on my pizza, so that's what I had along with tomato sauce and vegan "cheese". My husband piled vegetables on his and also had the tomato sauce and vegan cheese. They turned out better than expected. We were trying the Trader Joes Vegan Mozzerella that I had heard good things about and I can definitely say that it tastes better than Daiya brand shreds. Compared to some of the other meals I make. These pizzas were an nice and easy friday night treat. 

I don't know about you, but I've been trying to decrease the amount of sugar I intake. I recently watched the documentary Fed Up on Netflix and they really focus on sugar and it's link to disease. The reason I bring this up here is because whenever I used to have pizza nights, they would always include a tube of chocolate chip cookies. Now that I'm Vegan and trying to avoid sugar as much as possible, I try to curb my sweet tooth by eating a handful of berries or a piece of fruit. If I'm really having a tough time, I might add some coconut whipped cream to my fruit. I just wanted to share this, because I know that other people struggle with sugar cravings and this has helped me. 

Vegan Wild Rice Corn Chowder

My husband makes this really amazing Wild Rice Chowder that

used to have meat in it and we were talking one night about how we could make it Vegan and I'm proud to say that we found a way. This incredibly delicious recipe comes to you from our house to yours. 

To make it creamy we add coconut cream. You would think this would make it taste coconutty, but it really doesn't. You can't even taste the coconut and it does a great job of making it seem just as creamy as if you added regular cream. Also, to add a bit of a meaty texture we add Shitake mushrooms chopped up into small bits. The end result is a creamy and flavorful soup that is great any time of year. The recipe serves about 6 people or you have plenty for leftovers so cut in half or smaller if you just want enough for one meal. 

Ingredients:

1 Head of Cauliflower chopped into bite size pieces

4 Medium to Large Sized Carrots

1 Can of corn or a small bag of frozen corn

1 4 oz package of shiitake mushrooms

1 can of coconut cream

1 bushel of Kale

1-2 cups wild rice

4-6 cups vegetable broth

1 large yellow onion

Salt, Pepper, Thyme, Garlic, Smoked Paprika, Onion Powder, Chili Powder and any Other Spices to taste. 
Coconut Aminos or Gluten Free Tamari
Liquid Smoke
1/2 cup Wine (Optional)
1-2 Yukon Potatoes chopped (optional)
1 Red Pepper Chopped (Optional)

Directions:

Cook wild rice to specifications on the package

Pour vegetable broth into a large soup pan or crockpot

Chop onions and saute until soft in a large frying pan add to broth

Chop carrots and saute until soft in frying pan, add to broth

Chop shiitake mushrooms into small pieces, saute in 1 Tbsp coconut aminos or tamari, add a few drops of liquid smoke, and saute until soft and add to broth

Chop cauliflower into small bite size pieces, saute until soft, add to broth

Rip kale into small pieces removing the stems and add to broth

Add can of corn to broth

Add wild rice and coconut cream to broth. 

Add spices to broth to taste

Let simmer for 30 minutes

Serve Hot. We sometimes serve this with toast or Schar brand french loaf toasted in the oven. 

If using optional ingredients: Saute peppers until soft and add to broth, cook the potatoes before adding to the soup, if you decide to use wine, you will want to add it to the mushrooms or one of the other vegetables while sauteing to cook off the alcohol before adding it to the soup. This just adds a different flavor profile. 

Vegan Broccoli Salad

Have you ever tried that broccoli salad that they have at holiday

gatherings or potlucks? It usually has a mayonnaise based creamy dressing and if I remember correctly, it also has bacon in it. I thought it would be interesting when I saw a vegan recipe for this kind of salad online, so I tried it out. It was really easy to make. the most complicated part of it was that in order to make the dressing you had to soak cashews for 2 hours and then blend them with the remainder of the dressing ingredients. I had heard of using cashews before for sauces, but this was the first time I had tried it. I had purchased raw cashews for this purpose a while back and figured why not try it out. 

The dressing turned out really creamy and did have a nutty flavor, but that almost made it taste even more like the original salad. I would suggest this Vegan Broccoli Salad for holiday gatherings and potlucks with friends and family. My husband, who is not a vegan enjoyed this salad and felt that it had a good amount of flavor and he's the kind of person that tries to add spice to everything. 

You could also add apples to this salad to make it more of a waldorf type salad. It was very tasty and easy and totally worth making again sometime. 

Hope you enjoyed reading! See ya next time. 

Vegan Quinoa Stuffed Squash

This is a wonderfully flavorful Thanksgiving and fall treat. This Vegan Quinoa Stuffed Squash wasn't difficult to make, but it did take about an hour to cook everything. The recipe called for walnuts, but we didn't have any so we used cashews which I think tasted just as good. My husband and I have been enjoying trying these new vegan recipes, and I have been educating my husband on why I chose to be vegan and why I think it's important for the world to eventually trend this way. If you are curious about some of the health benefits or benefits to the environment to go vegan, check out the documentary called "What the Health?" and Vegucated on Netflix. They do a great job of explaining the health benefits and showing scientific evidence to prove what they are talking about. I can't think of a better way to spread the word.

I would suggest this acorn squash is a delicious main dish for any holiday meal or just as a weeknight dish. Please enjoy and I hope that these blogs have given you some ideas to eat a plant-based diet.