Wild rice business – BAM!

Growing up the only time we ate wild rice was in stuffing during the holidays.  That’s it.  It was far too precious a commodity to have for everyday events.

Well, now I’m a grown up and I’ll wild rice whenever I want, thank you very much.

This dish is excellent hot or cold.  You can eat it in a box or with a fox.  You serve it with some greens or while playing on a team.  It’ll keep in your fridge for 4 – 5 days.

Cranberry-almond wild rice pilaf

1 cup wild rice, cooked

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cup almonds, chopped or slivered

1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)

1 tsp rice wine vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

1 Tbsp oil (I used Vega EFA Oil because I’d just stocked up)

Follow the directions you have for preparing your wild rice; you’re more than welcome to cook it the traditional way, prepare it the raw food way, or use another method that you like.

Mix rice (cold for a cold dish or warm for a warm dish), cranberries, almonds, cilantro, rice wine vinegar, oil, and salt and pepper together.

Either enjoy immediately or allow to chill and enjoy in a few hours/days!

Another cabbage dish – cabbage casserole

I’m not going to lie: this casserole is not as amazing as the cabbage au gratin but it is still really good and doesn’t require soy cream, which I don’t normally have kicking around.

Cabbage Casserole

1/2 – 3/4 cup onion, chopped

2 -3 cloves garlic, minced

3 Tbsp oil

5 cups shredded cabbage

3 cups veggie broth

pepper and salt to taste

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

4 cups cubed bread, dried

In a Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat; fry onion and garlic until onion is softened – approximately 5 minutes.  Add cabbage, salt and pepper; cook, stirring often, until wilted and golden, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile – if you haven’t done this in advance – cut bread into 2 cm thick slices and cube, place on a baking sheet.  Toast in  a 400ºF oven, turning once or twice, until golden and dry – approximately 10 minutes.  DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM YOUR OVEN – I swear that the minute you stop looking at your bread will be the very minute that it burns.  Don’t do it that to yourself.  Seriously, watch your bread.  Anyway, once it’s done, let is cool.

Line a 9 x 9 baking dish with a third of he bread, sprinkle 1/2 the nutritional yeast on top of the bread.  Top with 1/2 the cabbage mixture.  Repeat with one more layer and then finish the dish off with bread on top.

Carefully pour in 1 cup of broth, cover and bake for 20 minutes at 350ºF.  Remove cover and continue baking for 10 more minutes.

Cabbage au gratin

It might be February, but I have some groceries from broke-ass January still kicking around in my fridge.

I was flipping through a cookbook and stumbled across a cheese laden, milk sodden cabbage au gratin and thought I might be able to veganize it.  I know you haven’t tasted it yet, but I’m pretty certain I was successful… thanks to some help from nutritional yeast.

Cabbage au gratin

5-6 cups savoy cabbage, sliced

2 Tbsp oil

1/3 cup chopped onion

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup vegetable broth

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 Tbsp flour

1/2 cup soy cream

Topping

3 sliced of dried bread (or toast)

1/2 cup almonds

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

1 tsp dried thyme

2 Tbsp oil

Quarter your cabbage and start sliving and measuring until you’ve gor 5 – 6 cups of sliced cabbage, then stop.

In a Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat: fry onion and garlic, stirring occasionally, until softened but not brown, about 10 minutes.  Add cabbage, broth, salt, pepper and nutmeg; cook, covered and stirring occastionally, until wilted, or about 15 minutes.

Stir in flour; cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.  Stir in cream and then reduce heat and simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes.  Spread in a greased 11 x 7 baking dish.

Topping: Grab your food processor!  Combine dried bread, almonds, nutritional yeast and thyme, blend until you have a crumb mixture.  Add oil and then sprinkle mixture over cabbage in pan.

Bake at 400ºF until bubbly and topping is golden – approximately 20 minutes.

A thought about black-eyed pea cakes

Remember when I made black-eyed pea cakes?  Well, I made another batch and they waited in the fridge for a few days and, when I went to eat them, they were a little on the dry side.

Sadness.

Then I had a genius idea: I climbed onto the counter and dragged my bamboo steamer out from hiding and used it to reheat my black-eyed pea cakes.

The results were tremendous.

I really wanted to share that and feel the need to repeat myself: the results were tremendous.  The cakes were moist and fluffy, but still dense and filling.

Broke-ass January Broccoli Slaw Soup

It’s still January and I’m still a little broke.  Broccoli slaw was on sale at Loblaws and I thought it would make for great stir fries for a lazy girl.

I was mistaken.

When I use the broccoli stalk, I normally cut the tough outer edges off but apparently when prepared commercially, they don’t always take all the tough edges off.

My remedy was to cook the slaw into soup.

I was uncertain about whether it worked until I tested it on my neighbours who thought the soup was delicious.  Normally I’d be a little hesitant to accept their feedback at face value, but they’re pretty honest with me.

Broccoli Slaw Soup

1 bag broccoli slaw

6 cups of water – at least

2 vegetable stock cubes

1/4 to 1/2 cup soy cream

salt and pepper

In a large pot or dutch oven, empty your bag of broccoli slaw and add 6 cups of water and soup stock cubes – this should cover the broccoli bits.  Turn heat to medium-high and allow to simmer for 30 – 45 minutes.

I’m not joking about that length of time.  With all the really tough bits in the bag, you want to let it simmer, giving the tough bits a chance to break down.

Transfer soup in batches to a food processor or blender, and whiz it around until it’s really smooth.  Return to pot and heat to serving temperature but not to boiling.  Stir in soy cream, season with salt and pepper and voila!

NOTE: Soy milk and soy cream are not huge fans of being boiled, so avoid using high heat to reheat your creamy, delicious, cost effective soup that’ll feed an army.

Snack bars revisited – this time with Millet!

Do other people who blog about the food they make ever feel like “hey, sometimes I wanna revisit stuff I made a while ago and I don’t wanna feel bad about that”?

I made these ages ago and I really loved how complex the flavour was, you were hit with sweetness and bitterness from the agave and the coffee, the molasses adds a nice depth of flavour and then… THEN you taste some chocolate. It’s like a diversity party in your mouth.

Last time I made these with less sauce and with amaranth. It was different this time but it was a good kind of different. (Let’s revisit the diversity party idea, again.)

Millet Snack Bars

1 cup coffee

3 Tbsp molasses

3 Tbsp agave nectar

1 tsp vanilla

3 Tbsp cocoa powder

3/4 cup peanut butter

2 cups puffed millet

1/2 cup almonds, chopped or slivered

1/2 cup pecans, chopped

1/4 cup unsweetened coconut

1 cup dried cranberries

Prepare a 9″ x 9″ pan, either greasing it or lining it with parchment paper. I normally go with greasing the pan because folding parchment paper is a lot like work.

Chop pecans and almonds, then place in a large bowl – I didn’t toast like I did last time. Measure all other dry ingredients (except cocoa powder) into the bowl with chopped nuts: puffed millet, unsweetened coconut, and cranberries.

Heat coffee in a saucepan on medium-high heat in order reduce. You want to have roughly 1/3 cup coffee after reducing. Remove from heat and add molasses, honey, vanilla, cocoa, and peanut butter, stirring until mixed.

Pour coffee-peanut-butter mixture over millet-nuts-n-coconut mixture, stir until all the dry ingredients are lightly coated.

Scoop mixture from saucepan into 9″ x 9″ pan, pressing bar mixture firmly into pan. Place in fridge or freezer and allow to set for at least an hour before cutting into bars and trasferring to an air tight container and storing in the fridge.

Beware: these do not travel well because they have to stay cold, but they are delicious and totally worth having to keep them at home and never share them with your work colleagues. Totally worth it.

Not your mama’s TVP Loaf

I’m going to keep this short because I’m about to head out the door and go cross country skiing.

1.  This is not your standard TVP loaf.

2.  You could turn the mix into burgers instead of loafing it up.

3.  It’s bruschetta inspired.  And you know how much you love bruschetta.

Bruschetta TVP Loaf

1 cup TVP granules

1 cup vegetable broth

1/2 cup  vital wheat gluten flour

1/2 cup tomato paste

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

1 cup Bruschetta topping (here’s a recipe you can use)

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350ºF.  Grease a 9 x 9 pan or prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper if you’re making burgers.

Boil vegetable broth in a pot, remove pot from heat, add TVP granules, and allow to sit for at least 10-minutes so that broth can be absorbed.

Combine the reconstituted TVP, gluten flour, tomato paste, nutritional yeast, Bruschetta, and salt and pepper.  Use your hands to really mush it all together.  Press into 9 x 9 pan or form into 6 patties and place on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake for  45 minutes if you’re making  a loaf.  If you’re making burgers bake for 15 minutes, then flip and bake for another 15 minutes.

Enjoy with more Bruschetta and steamed greens!