xybermatthew

It’s been some time since I’ve posted anything here relating to my cooking or vegan diet because I’ve been super busy looking for work.

Anyway, here is a vegan recipe my wife put together. All the credit and cooking goes to my wife — thanks hon.

Tofu Eggplant Green Curry

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb bunch spinach
• 2 teaspoons canola oil
• 1 small onion, roughly chopped
• 1 (13.5 oz) can light coconut milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable broth
• 1 tablespoon green curry paste
• 1 lb tofu, firm
• 1 eggplant cut into cubes
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Instructions:

1. Heat oil and cook onion until softened.
2. Stir in coconut milk, broth, curry paste and salt if you prefer; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 8 minutes.
3. Add eggplant and tofu; bring to a low boil, reduce to a simmer and cook stirring occasionally until eggplant is tender about 8 minutes.
4. Add spinach, stir and cook 1 minute more.
5. Stir in lime juice and serve.

• took the day off so I could bake my heart out for thankgiving – my most favorite holiday, first up apple pie #
• 3 grocery stores later I’m finally ready to start baking #
• First up: fresh organic pumpkin pie (from scratch) #
• Pumpkin pie done; pie crust done; next up: fresh organic apple pie #
• BTW: all of my cooking/baking is vegan!!! Yeah!!! #

So last Sunday night I found myself needing to bake in the kitchen.

Not only did I end up baking some Kingman’s Vegan Zucchini Bread (adjusted for high altitude — I added two tablespoons vegetable oil) but I also made my very own Vanilla Hinted Fresh Strawberry Scones.

Now I have to warn you –these are prototypes and they still need some improvement. However, after many attempts I’ve declared that these are my first successful scones and I wanted to share my recipe for all so as to solicit your suggestions for improvements, especially for high altitude.

Nonetheless, here are my Vanilla Hinted Fresh Strawberry Scones…

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour*
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup plus two tablespoons canola oil
• 1 cup plain soy milk, chilled
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup fresh strawberries, rinsed and quartered
• Turbinado sugar (sugar cane extract – A popular brand name is Sugar in the Raw) for sprinkling**

* I used an all-natural white whole wheat flour but next time I’ll try using a blend of oat flour and pastry flour or white flour and pastry flour or just plain white flour — the white whole wheat was just a bit to "wheaty" for me.

** Plain sugar is fine too — just make sure you’ve purchased a white sugar that is vegan verified.

Directions:

1. Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl with a whisk.
2. Mix wet ingredients in a small bowl with a whisk.
3. Stir in wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix until just combined – resist the urge to over-mix.
4. Gently fold in strawberries.
5. Divide dough into two parts and dump out each section onto a floured work surface, shape into 6 inch circles, cut into triangles using a pizza cuter, and place on a pizza stone or onto parchment paper on cookie sheet.
6. Sprinkle tops with a bit of turbinado sugar.
7. Let dough rest while oven preheats to 425 F.
8. Bake for 13-16 minuets until top is firm to the touch and the bottom is lightly golden.
9. Let cool for about 5 minutes before serving with a hot cup of coffee.

Yum, yum, yum! That’s all I heard from the family Saturday at lunch time.

I served up another quick salad to satisfy everyone’s hunger during a busy day. I made Robertson’s Mixed Baby Greens with Pears, Pecans, and Polenta Strips from her book Quick-Fix Vegetarian, here’s the recipe online.

Last night I didn’t have much time so I opted to whip up a quick salad which turned out to be one of my new favorites dishes. It’s called Quinoa Pilaf with Spinach, Apples, and Walnuts taken from the Quick-Fix Vegetarian cookbook by Robin Robertson.

In my picture here (taken with my iPhone — hence the poor quality) you can see I added a side of watermelon and a bit of extra spinach, steamed; and if you would like to try it for yourself here is the recipe, found online at http://books.google.com/books?id=LiqdDc_5cc8C&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99.

So since leaving the "Dark Side" and going vegan I’ve been cooking like a mad man out of hell. Which has been awesome, because I love to cook and it’s feels good to bring wholesome food to the family table. However, I wouldn’t say that my cooking skills are all that great — and what I’ve learned has been through trial and error. I digress.

Because, as you can imagine, going vegan requires eating more vegetables I decided to get as much as I can in organic form and from our local area to help in the reduction in carbon. Thus I opted to use a local service called Door to Door Organics. These guys are awesome and last week we received our first order. In our order it contained Red Chard, something I’ve never seen nor eaten. But I was determined to give it ago and integrate it somehow into our new diet.

A little about Red Chard. It can be prepared the same as Swiss or Green Chard, it just has more antioxidant value. Red Chard only includes the red stalks and leaves with Red veins. Chard is delicious added to a stir fry since the stalks add a nice crunch and can be used like celery only with color (antioxidants and more nutritious) and the leaves add some nice green to it.

Upon trying it raw it was very bitter and I was a bit worried how it might be used. So I opened my two new vegan cookbooks and found nothing. On to google. As a result I found plenty of recipes but all seem to be exasperating so as a result I came up with my own.

So here you go, my first recipe, Sautéed Red Chard — with some help on how to clean and prep the vegetable from a few searches in Google:

Sautéed Red Chard

• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 1 bunch Red Chard (or Green or Swiss)
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 tablespoon dried parsley
• 1/4 sea salt
• 1/4 fresh ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
• 1 teaspoon worcestershire (optional)
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock

1. Wash chard by gently submersing in cool water several times.
2. Remove the stems from leaves and chop stems into 1 inch pieces. Set aside.
3. Stack the washed leaves and roll them in to a long scroll. Using a sharp knife, cut the scroll in quarters.
4. Mix nutmeg, paprika, parsley, salt, pepper, sugar, mint and worcestershire. Set aside.
5. Heat a sauce pan over medium-high heat, add the olive oil and chopped stems and saute for about 5 minutes.
6. Add in the onion and cook for an additional 2 minutes.
7. Stir in vegetable stock and mixed ingredients.
8. Add the wet chard leaves, one handful at a time, stirring after each addition.
9. After all the leaves have been added, immediately cover the pan with a tight fitting lid and continue cooking over high heat for about 2 or 3 minutes. Uncover and cook just until most of the liquid has evaporated (another 1 minute or so).

If you try it please let me know what you think.

Came across this article today on going vegan and it goes to say that my choice of going vegan is all that more important in regards to my health.

Angela Stokes, 30, lost 160 pounds in two years after she adopted a raw-vegan diet. She now weighs 138 pounds.

Now I don’t need to lose weight per say but I do want to lose the few extra pounds that has given me a spare tire.

Anyway, I have noticed that I don’t have headaches as often and my joints don’t ache anymore (I suffer from a mild version of arthritis brought on by another ailment of mine). Overall, I feel better!

In addition, my wife the other night decided to have chicken for dinner and she confessed to me that the taste of it wasn’t as appealing as it once had. In fact, she even commented, that to a certain degree, that it just didn’t taste good.

I think it’s her body telling her that chicken, or meat in general, isn’t the best thing for her.

Furthermore, the kids are starting to eat more vegetables on their own and enjoying them and my daughter’s eyes and skin seem to look healthier too — no more black circles under her eyes.

So it’s been just a little over five weeks since I made the health choice of going vegan, see my prior post. And I have to say, it’s been awesome! Really awesome! I feel better, have more energy, and having a great time eating lots of new food — my taste buds are bedazzled. During these past five weeks, I’ve only had one not-so-great meal. In addition, I’ve only had a few salads — there are tons of non-salad options.

Anyway, the overall success rate, has been about 94%. Only 94% because we still have a ton of food that was frozen prior to having our latest baby (mostly Dream Dinner meals); that and friends and church members have been bringing us food too. But we are replacing most of our meals with vegan alternatives and only eating about two non-vegan meals a week.

Also for the record, I’ve been mostly cooking meals out of two vegan cookbooks.

• My favorite one being Quick-Fix Vegetarian: Healthy Home-Cooked Meals in 30 Minutes or Less by Robin Robertson
• And the other Vegan with a Vengeance : Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

The only problem to date is finding all of the ingredients. Not all health stores are created equal and the big suburbia chains that are catering to “the organic movement” don’t care about vegetarians and vegans. They just want to sell you “organically feed and free-range or cage-free grown meat” (which is better then the cloned, genetically altered, or chemically enhanced meat that is on most shelves — I guess). However I have had about 80%-95% success at Wild Oats, now part of Wholefoods.

To bad there isn’t a grocery store chain that serves “organic” foods, to attract the suburban folk, but focuses on vegans and vegetarians as a niche market. Hey if someone can put together a profit and loss statement over a five year period — i’ll be happy to open a store here in Littleton, Colorado.

If you have questions or comments please feel free to let me know.

• enjoying a great cup of kenya coffee ….ummmm…. #
• fyi followers — I’ve been living a vegan lifestyle for over a week now and haven’t felt better (have a look at http://www.goveg.com/) #
• note to self don’t eat banana peppers new the computer — the juice goes everywhere when you bite in to it! #
• in a groove today #

It all started a few weeks back when I saw a show on one of the educational channels; sorry I can’t remember which one it was. But they had a brief history on the cattle industry, specifically the processing of the animal for human consumption.

What concerned me the most was that Mad Cow Disease can’t be removed by any know methods including freezing or cooking and if infected can cause incurable degenerative neurological disorder (brain disease) that is ultimately fatal. Some of the symptoms include dementia, memory loss, and tiredness.

Though it is believed it can only be transmitted to human beings when they eat the brain or spinal cord of infected cows there isn’t enough conclusive evidence to state otherwise and that in itself has scared me. What made it even more scary is a video I saw yesterday on goveg.com where they tell us that cows with other diseases, infections, bruises and other unhealthy issues are deemed fine by the USDA for human consumption — if you saw these animals in person you’d think twice before eating it. Furthermore, the USDA even allows cows that can’t walk off the trucks to be be dragged off into the slaughter house — in other words your eating spoiled food.

Anyway, I’m doing my research and thinking a lot about all the flavors and textures my palette would miss if I did turn vegetarian, but on the other hand discovering how that going vegetarian is so much more healthier as well as very good for the environment.