Vegan waffle pizza

Okay, I got my daughter a waffle maker for Christmas and she loves it.  In fact I probably shouldn't tell people this but, we went on a waffle eating binge that may have lasted about a month.  We have discovered that waffles are a great way to use left overs.  We have even eaten waffles with mushroom stroganoff on them.  One of our many waffle creations was pizza waffles.  That is what we had for dinner tonight.  This pizza waffle has left over pizza sauce, left over ricotta and vegan mozzorella cheese on it.  The recipe is as follows...

Vegan Waffles

2cups flour
1 TBSP baking powder
1 TBSP egg replacer
2 TBSP sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups water
6 TBSP oil

1. Combine dry ingredients.
2. Make a well and add water and oil.
3. Whisk together, then let it sit for 5 minutes.
4. Cook in waffle iron on low setting.

Pizza Sauce

1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
2-3 cloves garlic
basil, oregano, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes
 1 TBSP olive oil

1. Saute garlic in olive oil.
2. Add tomatoes and tomato paste
3. Add other seasonings and simmer about 20 minutes, I like everything spicy so I add red pepper flakes to my sauce.

The ricotta is the same ricotta as was in the megarolis recipe previously.
To assemble coat waffle with sauce and the toppings of your choice and bake at 400 for about 6-7 minutes.  Okay, not the classiest of meals but it's good really!  When making pizza on pizza crust instead of waffles I use the pizza crust in Vegan with a Vengeance.

Vegan Megaroli, Over sized ravioli made from scratch...

 Vegan megarolis are over-sized raviolis we made from scratch filled with tofu ricotta cheese, toasted walnuts, and spinach topped with a cream sauce of almond milk, fresh tomatoes, and white wine.  We sprinkled them with parmesan and had asparagus sauteed in olive oil and orange juice on the side.  We made this a few days ago and I did not write it all down so these are kind of ball park figures. The ricotta recipe is based on the tofu ricotta recipe in the Veganomicon.  The recipe is as follows...

The Pasta

1 cup Semolina flour
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
2 TBSP olive oil
3/4 cup water

1. Combine dry ingredients in bowl, then empty on to clean surface and make a well.
2. Pour water and olive oil into well.
3. Combine and knead dry and wet ingredients until smooth and a little elastic.  You may have to add a little more flour or water so that it is not to dry or to wet.
4. Let rest beneath damp cloth for at least a 1/2 an hour.

The Filling

1 package of tofu
3 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP Basil
1-2 tsp sugar
2 TBSP brewers yeast
Squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
1 bunch wilted spinach
1/4 cup toasted walnuts chopped

1. Toast walnuts, then pulse in food processor a few times.
2. Wilt spinach in hot water, cool and ring it out.

3. Drain tofu, then mash it in a bowl.
4. Combine tofu, oil, basil, sugar, yeast, and lemon well, but also still a little chunky.
5. Fold in walnuts and spinach gently.  Adjust seasonings add salt and pepper.

Making raviolis is easiest with a pasta maker but my daughter actually rolled these out by hand because we thought most people don't have a pasta maker and we wanted to see how they would come out.  Cut the dough into about 6 pieces and shape each piece into a rectangle.  Roll them out as thin as you can aiming for a little thinner then 1 16th of inch.  Place several  piles of filling on one 1/2 of the rectangle.  Make a slurry with flour and water and coat the area between fillings. Fold your rectangle over.  Press seams together.  Cut them with a knife or pizza cutter.


The Sauce

3 TBSP olive oil
3 TBSP flour
1 cup of almond milk
2 fresh tomatoes diced
2-3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup white wine
salt and pepper to taste

*  It is best to have all the ingredients ready for this so that you can throw them all in really fast.

1. Saute  mashed garlic in olive oil briefly
2. Add flour and stir until smooth.
3. Pour in almond milk while stirring constantly.
4. Add white wine and salt and pepper.
5. Add tomatoes and reduce briefly until thick enough to cling to pasta.

For Asparagus

1. Slice asparagus into 3 inch long pieces at an angle.
2. Get olive oil hot in pan.
3. Add asparagus salt and pepper.
4. Saute briefly until just getting bright green.
5. Splash with orange juice and saute until it is not juice but more a coating on  the asparagus.


For the parmesan I just pulsed some left over baguette with a handful of toasted walnuts and brewers yeast.

To assemble boil raviolis for 10 to 12 minutes, drain, cover with sauce and parmesan and serve with asparagus on the side.  You can freeze any left over ravioli and I had the sauce on bow ties the next day.

Sale in my shop on etsy!

Tonight, Saturday May 21 between 5pm EST and 6am EST shipping is free for all book marks, blank cards and prints in my shop on etsy.  Just enter the coupon code SaturdayNightSpecial when you check out.  Thank you for stopping by!

Dandelions

Good morning.  I am sick so, I am at home trying to rest which isn't going to well because my house is a mess and I have too much to do.  I guess I will just do everything really slowly.  It is a really gorgeous day outside and I wanted to enjoy it so I decided it would be restful to draw the flowering tree in my front yard.  Then my dog came out and walked all over my paper and  I realized I should probably clean up some more before I spend all day drawing.  So instead of the entire tree and the surrounding dandelions and grass I decided to settle for just these few dandelions which I think came out kind of nice.  After I slowly clean up and do some other chores there may be some more art and food later.  My daughter and I decided not to post last nights recipe because it still needs some fine tuning.  We are going to try it again tonight.

Silver eyes elf

Hello again.  Silver eyes elf is an experiment that I drew with my very thin artist pen when I first got it as well as a silver paint pen.  My daughter and I have a great dinner planned for this evening so, you can check back later and there may be some more food and art.

Accidental Black Bean Soup, Easy vegan black bean soup from scratch

Hello again!  I call this soup accidental black bean soup because it is the result of my first attempt to cook dried black beans and  I was not intending to make soup.  I was actually trying to cook dried black beans for something else.  I looked at directions on how to cook a bean and added the required amount of liquid and beans.  Then I thought I'm going to make these really good and add some things for flavor.  So I added a cube of vegetable broth to my water as well as 1/2 a red onion, 2 canned chipotle peppers with sauce, lime and  salt. Possibly there were more vegetables involved.  Any way, I thought the beans would cook and the majority of the liquid would be absorbed and I would end up with really good beans.  What happened instead was very little of the liquid was absorbed but instead became thick and really good broth.  So I looked at the how to cook a bean recipe again and read it all the way to the end where it said "drain access liquid".  Any way it was too good as soup so I decided not to drain them but, eat them like that instead.  Since then I have come up with quite a few bean soups.  This soup takes some time because I make it with dried beans which take 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours to cook. But the time you actually spend preparing things is not long at all.  You could also probably make it with canned beans I haven't actually tried it that way. I would just cook the vegetables and broth maybe about 15 minutes before adding the beans. I like the texture of dried beans better myself.  Dried beans should be soaked over night, drained and rinsed before cooking.  The recipe for my most recent Accidental Black Bean soup is as follows...

-1 cup dried black beans (soak over night and drain before using)

-4 cups vegetable broth

-1 15 oz can of fire roasted tomatoes, diced or crushed

-1 dried ancho chili pepper

-1 jalapeno, minced

-1 yellow onion, diced fine

-1 green pepper, diced

-Juice of 1 lime

-1 carrot peeled and diced very small

-1 potato peeled and cubed

-2 cloves of garlic smashed

-2 celery stalks

-Avocado

-Cilantro

-Green onion

-salt and pepper to taste



1. Add vegetable broth to beans and dried ancho chili pepper to beans and bring to boil.

2. Then add all vegetables, garlic, salt and pepper.

3. Reduce to simmer, cover but leave top slightly propped open with spoon.  I use my wooden spoon.  So that there is a gap of about 1 1/2 inches between lid and pot.

4.  Simmer about 1 hour then add tomatoes and lime juice.  Bring to boil and reduce to simmer again.  Soup is done when beans are tender. 

5. Adjust seasonings.

6. For my presentation I diced a quarter of an avocado and set it in the center and sprinkled the whole thing with lightly shredded cilantro and green onion.

* A not about left over utilization.  I added the left over salsa from Monday's corn chowder to this soup.  Also the left over salsa was good over rice with a little vegan cheese.  You can get pretty creative with this soup using what ever leftover vegetables you have lying around. Thank you for visiting!

Fun and easy, craft project, 4 seasons upcycled can...

Hello again. This was a tea can. As in I bought some fancy tea and this is what it came in. These cans to me are too nice for recycling or throwing away so, I save them. Recently I started decorating them and they come out kind of nice so I thought I might share them with people. This could be a fun project for kids or anyone who likes to make things.

Materials-To make one similar to the one pictured you will need a can, news paper, acrylic paint, colored paper, tacky glue, dried flowers, paint brushes of various sizes and acrylic varnish.
To make it more friendly for small children you could use a more child friendly paint and substitute mod podge for varnish.

1. Clean your can.

2. Mix a little water with some tacky glue and brush it on strips of news paper. Apply them to the can kind of like wall paper and allow to dry.

3. When it is dry you can paint whatever design you want with acrylic paint. I chose 4 seasons because this can is actually 4 cans that stack. Allow paint to dry.

4. I made some leaves and used dried flowers to add interest to mine using card stock decorated with color pencil and chamomile flowers. These I put on the same way as the newspaper.

5. After those dry you can apply the varnish which makes it uv proof, glossy and you can dust it. They are not water proof so, should only be used for dry goods or pencils and things like that.

Hey! Has any one tried to make one of these yet? I would be very interested to hear about how it came out!

Persephone, Demeter and outer space

     Hello again!  No recipes right now but I found some art work I like that I wanted to show people.  So here it is...This first one is kind of an abstract picture of the cosmos that unfortunately got wet.  I was kind of depressed about it but after staring at it a bit decided that the water made it look more like outer space then it had before and, I decided to finish it anyway.  I think it came out kind of interesting so, I thought I might show it to people.     This second one is called Persephone after the Greek Goddess who is Queen of the under world and whose return to earth for 6 months every year according to Greek mythology  brought about spring and summer.

This last one is Demeter the Greek Goddess of corn who is Persephone's mother.  I did not set out to draw Persephone or Demeter specifically when I drew these however, I read the story roughly at the same time and realized that they fit so that is what I decided to call them.

Really easy vegan spicy corn chowder

This recipe is for a creamy spicy corn chowder that I came up with the other day basically because, there was not much available to eat in the house.  I didn't feel like going to the store so, I just made do with what I had. Lucky for me I have a lot of spices and other condiments.  I have discovered that with a lot of interesting seasonings you can make pretty much anything taste good.  The first attempt did not include the salsa or measuring anything.  Tonight I decided to elaborate on it as well as measure everything so, that I would be able to duplicate it. The recipe is as follows...
-For the soup...                              

-2 cups fresh or frozen sweet corn                         
-5 TBSP flour                                                             
-3 TBSP olive oil                            
-1 cup vegetable broth
-2 cups almond milk
-1 TBSP red chili oil
-1 tsp hot sauce

For the Salsa...

-2 tomatoes diced
-1/2 cup and 1 TBSP cooked and drained black beans
-1/2 a bunch of cilantro chopped
-2 cloves garlic minced
-the juice of 1/2 a medium lime
-1/2 a yellow onion minced
-salt and pepper to taste
-1 jalapeno diced very fine

Directions...

-For the salsa combine all ingredients and adjust seasonings.
  *a note about salsa if you are in a hurry and don't care how it looks you can rough chop everything and  pulse it a few times in the food processor. ( Minus the black beans of course.)

-For the soup cook and drain 2 cups of fresh or frozen super sweet white corn and return to pan.
-Saute in olive oil briefly then add flour and stir until everything is coated.
-Add vegetable broth and water slowly  while stirring constantly.
  *a note about veggie broth I use vegetable bullion cubes with salt but no herbs because they keep in the refrigerator for a very long time.
-add chili oil and hot sauce, stir and simmer until it is thick.

Our crackers are home made following a recipe from cook book 101 which you can get at this link http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/olive-oil-crackers-recipe.html  we added a little seasoning which was coriander plus more salt and ground black pepper.

For our presentation place about 2 TBSP of salsa in the center of the bowl of soup and garnish with a dash of chili oil, hot sauce,  a few lightly shredded cilantro leaves and crackers.

Creative Vegan Crostini

This is a recipe that my daughter invented this afternoon that I am calling creative vegan crostini. I thought her choice of seasonings was kind of unusual but they really taste great.  We ate them with hummus and vegan spinach dip.  The recipe is as follows...   
            3 TBSP olive oil
            1 tsp red chili oil
            1 tsp dried garlic granules
            salt to taste
            a generous pinch of cloves
            about a tsp of dried basil. 
-Preheat oven to 435.
-Slice baguette into 1/4 inch slices at an angle and arrange on cookie sheet.
-Combine olive and chili oil.
-Sprinkle baguette with oil and seasonings.
-Bake at 435 for 5 minutes.
  

Check back later for spicy corn chowder.

Collage

Here is another sample of some of my work.  These are 2 mixed media/collage works.

Horse back riding last Thursday

These are some sketches from my sketch book that I drew at my daughter's horse back riding lesson last Thursday.  A cat from my imagination, a dandelion and some gesture drawings of 2 of the horses.