This week’s bread was pretty exciting, a hardy cheese & onion loaf. The recipe said you could make it a meal in itself. I opted to do a roast beef sandwich with it & tomorrow for breakfast a toad in the hole is calling!
Author: lynley
meatless monday: a giant pot of pasta
i want it all!!!!
having been snowed in for almost an entire month you start looking around for activities to occupy your day, so why not cooking!! on one of my many recent days off i decided to spend the whole day fussing over a pot of sunday sauce. sunday sauce aka that american-italian tradition of starting a pot of spaghetti sauce, tweaking it and simmering it all day. now of course i have a freezer full of spicy tomato sauce! time to start making up some yummy meals with it. this meatless monday i took one of the larger containers cooked it up with tons and tons of noodles combined all that yum together and i have enough spaghetti to last me the whole week. oh i’m in pasta heaven!
“its a nice an spicy just like mama used to make”
vegan macaroni pie….hey it’s a recipe
when i lived in knoxville, there was a great scottish pub. little did i know that the scots like everything ala pie, my kind of people. one of the more decadent pies to select from was a macaroni pie. now with various allergies, the real shabang is out of the question so i created a vegan version. dudes enjoy……and raise a pint to the macaroni pie!
how can you go wrong when there is pie crust involved
RECIPE: VEGAN MACARONI PIE
serves 4
DOUGH
2.5 cups flour
1/2 cup ice cold water
1 cup vegan butter or all vegetable shortening
1/8 cup applesauce
1 TBSP vodka
MACARONI AND CHEESE
4 cups macaroni noodles
3 cups shredded diaya cheddar cheese
1/2 cup dairy free sour cream or plain yogurt
1 TBSP nutritional yeast
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 TBSP ground mustard
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 TBSP soy or almond milk
olive oil for coating
*set oven to 375 F
* cook macaroni according to package directions, while macaroni noodles are cooking start on your pie dough
*in a large mixing bowl combine flour and butter, the butter needs to be cut into the flour, you do this by using a pastry cutter or forks, cut the butter into the flour until it forms crumbles. mix in applesauce and vodka, use a wooden spoon to mix till dough becomes moist. gradually add in ice cold water, you may not need it all, only add enough till the dough is slightly sticky and is not dry and crumbly. pie dough works best when it’s at room temp!
* when noodles are cooked and drained mix in the rest of the mac & cheese ingredients together with the noodles. stir till nice and creamy, helps to get this effect if the noodles are still nice and hot when you start mixing them.
* oil 4 pot pie pans with a small amount of olive oil, don’t want nothing stickin! roll your dough as if you were making a full size pie. about 18 inches in circumference and 1/4 in thick. cut the rolled dough into four equal squares.
* scoop 1 cup of mac & cheese into each of the pot pie pans. next place one dough square on top of the pie pans filled with mac & cheese. sculpt the extra dough around the edges inward to form the pie crust edge. brush on olive oil on top of pie crust to help it brown
*bake for 25 minutes until crust becomes golden
bread of the week: grant loaves
loads of loaves
week 2’s bread is a grant loaf, the recipe was first published in the 1940s in england. a whole wheat loaf that adds a secret ingredient of raw sugar into it. very hardy bread and it made 3 loaves! perfect for giving away at the potlucks i have on the calendar!
meatless monday: vegan pumpkin ravioli
pasta please!
for christmas presents this year i made up a batch of homemade vegan pumpkin ravioli, the beauty of making ravioli you get all the leftovers and funky looking ravs for yourself. belated merry christmas to me on this meatless monday. to top those ravs i made up a little dairy-free garlic cream sauce, some olive oil, flour and garlic. i know, i just made you hungry didn’t i?
a new year’s eve feast
now that is a lot of yummy comfort to end the year
last year i decided to take back new year’s eve for myself. no more going out and not having fun freezing my butt off, dealing with drunks, and being out way too late. last year consisted of chinese take out and season 2 of downtown abbey…aka the best night at home ever! needless to say i became pretty excited in about october coming up with my plans for this stay-in new year’s eve. on the menu!…….vegan macaroni pie, baked potatoes topped with beans & sausage and one dairy free oreo cheesecake. and to accompany it all season 1 of northern exposure, there is just something so satisfying about hitting play all. oh to plot my stay-in for next year so many choices for just one night!
god bless the invention of dairy-free sour cream and cream cheese
bread of the week: granary cob
whole grain yum
one of my new year’s resolutions is to bake every loaf that is in the bread bible. at one loaf a week it’ll take me a little over a year to accomplish this goal. the first section of the bread bible is british bread and the first bread is a cob. traditionally a hearty wholemeal peasant bread it gets it name of cob from its round shape, aka cob means head. so far one loaf down oh some many more loaves to go.
meatless monday: an experiment of nachos
hit me with that dip!
i had the sudden realization that i hadn’t made much mexican of late, decision made let’s do nachos. note do not make nachos when you are SUPER HUNGRY. your plate turns into this giant mound of chips, beans, avocado, tomaotes, salsa, cheeses. the disappointing factor about the nachos was how the bottom chips became pure sog of beans and cheese. i won’t lie about my solution to the problem, it was to then go get the bag of tortilla chips and scoop up that soggie mess. while the nachos were yummy that blob of a mess they turned into was a real disappoint. i however was not ready to give up. a few days later i took the nacho ingredients i had leftover and created a layered bean dip. now that is the way to go…..dip, no sog of a mess but a well balance of all the fine mexican ingredients into one yummy bite after the other on crisp salty tortilla chips.
meatless monday: ginger-peanut ramen
i’ll admit it i love ramen noodles. in fact i buy them in bulk at sam’s club, when you do the math it comes out 16 cents a package…..hot damn! most the time i cook up what i refer to as “fancy ramen” stir-frying vegetables to toss in. of late i’ve been concocting my own asian inspired sauces and throwing out that packet of flavor that’s jam-packed full of sodium. my favorite sauce so far is peanut sauces. i could eat peanut butter every day. on this meatless monday i made up a ginger-peanut sauce to toss into the ramen noodles. to add a little spice i heated up some morning-star spicy buffalo vegetarian nuggets. its simple its cheap and it satisfies my cravings for the far east.
RECIPE: GINGER-PEANUT SAUCE
1/4 cup peanut butter
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp ginger
1/2 tbsp garlic powder
*in a small saucepan cook peanut butter, olive oil and soy sauce over low to medium heat. you are wanting to just slightly melt the peanut butter, cooking on too hot a temp will fry it into a disastrous paste. once the peanut butter as melted and forms a smooth creamy sauce add in the ginger and garlic powder. the sauce goes great over ramen or as a dipping sauce for crispy tofu! if you are wanted to spice it up add in 2 tsp crushed red pepper, for extra spicy 2 tsp of sarachia as well.
Hearty Eaters 