Scrambled Tofu

I went vegetarian in 1992. Back then there weren't very many packaged vegetarian products on the market. There weren't very many vegetarian cookbooks out there either. I got most of my recipes from the Peta Cookbook Please Don't Eat the Animals and Vegetarian Times. I used to buy Green Giant veggie burgers - which tasted a little bit like the box they came in - because they were the only veggie burgers I could find at the grocery store. As a vegetarian I ate lots of cheese and eggs, so in 2001 when I went vegan I had to learn how to cook all over again, and I began trying new foods and recipes. As more people went vegan, lots of good cookbooks were published, and more and more vegan processed foods hit the market. I tried them all, and my diet went from things like veggies, beans and rice to highly processed mock meats and fake cheese. My meals could have been mistaken for those of an omnivore, if one didn't see the package the foods came in. As I learned more about nutrition, I went back to eating more whole foods and I now reserve processed foods for rare occasions. 

During the week, I usually have smoothies or oatmeal for breakfast, but I weekends I really like to have something warm and comforting, and I usually make scrambled tofu. I love scrambled tofu because I can throw whatever is in the fridge in, and no matter what it is, I know the finished product will taste good. Sometimes I splurge and add vegan sausage or cheese. This time I used red bell pepper, onion, lots of mushrooms, nutritional yeast, soy bacon and Daiya cheese. This was the perfect meal to start out a lazy Sunday with!

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Zucchini, Tomato and Eggplant Casserole

This dish is a new version of the Zucchini Tomato Gratin I made a few months ago. It's been a unseasonably good and rainy here in NJ and I felt the need to make some comfort food. I had a cute little eggplant, some pretty green heirloom tomatoes and an interesting looking flying saucer squash. I sliced everything up, layered them in a casserole dish, covered everything with Daiya cheese and olives and baked it in the oven until the cheese was gooey and the veggies were soft. This meal was perfect for a cool rainy evening.

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Green Pizza

This little pizza was inspired by the mini pizzas I made last week.  Once again, I used Mini Rustic Crusts. I wanted to use pesto sauce again.  I didn't have any basil or spinach, but I did have kale. I thought it would be interesting to give kale pesto a try, so I mixed the kale up with some olive oil, nutritional yeast, garlic and cashews. It tasted great, and kale pesto is a great way to get more kale into your diet! I topped the pizza with zucchini, green zebra tomatoes, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and Daiya cheese. It was delicious - even better than last week's! (Although Dennis once again said that the crust reminded him of frozen fish sticks.)

Kale is the most nutrient dense food there is, and his many health benefits, so it's good to have it in your diet on a regular basis. I like to sautée it with olive oil and garlic, but it's also great chopped up into kale slaw, dried into kale chips, blended into smoothies or even used raw in a salad in place of lettuce. 

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Mini Pesto & Tomato Pizzas

It's been a while since I've made pizza, and I felt long over due for one. A few days ago my friend Jenna made pizza with pesto, cashew cheese and tomatoes and posted a photo on Facebook. It looked delicious, so I decided to make something similar.

I used gluten-free Mini Rustic Crusts and topped them with spinach pesto, cashew ricotta, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, heirloom tomatoes and Daiya cheese. The mini crusts are very crumbly, which is why this pizza looks a little lopsided and Dennis said that for some reason the taste reminded him of frozen fish sticks. I don't think they taste like fish sticks, and I don't think they taste as good as Bob's Red Mill pizza crust, but they're a good option when you don't feel like making your own crust. This pizza was really tasty, and I'm sure I'll be using this topping combination again in the near future.


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Gluten-Free Pizza at Rutherford Pancake House

The Rutherford Pancake House in Rutherford NJ has quite a nice selection of vegan items on their menu. They recently added gluten-free vegan pizzas to the list. Several of my friends have tried them and Dennis goes there often for lunch during his work day, so I figured it was time for me taste one for myself.

I'm sure if I hadn't already had amazing gluten-free vegan pizza at Pala Pizza in NYC, I would have liked this more. But Pala is a tough act to follow. The crust at Rutherford Pancake House was premade and a little soggy. They used Daiya cheese, which always tastes good and topped the pie off with spinach, mushrooms and peppers.

I also ordered a salad to go with my pizza, primarily because I've been eating so much raw food lately, and I felt I needed to get a little raw into my otherwise cooked meal. Interestingly, I fell asleep as soon as I got home. Was it the pizza? Or the hot weather? Maybe I should have another pizza on a cool day and see what happens!

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Baked Ziti with Zucchini and Olives

Like I've said before, the weather has been a little erratic in NJ lately. I made this baked ziti a few days ago when it was chilly. The recipe is from the Supermarket Vegan. It's made with tomatoes, zucchini, olives, rice pasta and herbed breadcrumbs (gluten-free, of course!). I topped it off with a little Daiya cheese. I think I made too much pasta, because after I mixed everything together it seemed a little light on veggies. It was super tasty though! Served with a salad, this is a perfect meal!

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Rice Pasta Shells with Aspargus and Peas

I found this recipe in Vegetarian Times, and altered it to my liking. I used rice pasta shells instead of whole wheat, omitted the mint, swapped garlic oil for fresh garlic and used Daiya cheese instead of feta. It was quite tasty! My only regret is that I didn't have a bed of kale to serve it on.

You'll notice that quite often I don't follow the recipe to the letter. Some people can be intimidated by certain recipes, and are afraid of cooking with new foods. I say try it! Experiment, try new things, play with your food. Don't be afraid to cook something new or mix things up. It's pretty much impossible to "break" a recipe. And if it you don't like the way it tastes, just remember that it's only one meal and you get to try again with another meal in a few hours.


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Mini Pizzas

I've been really busy this week, and as a consequence, I've been very tired and haven't felt like cooking much. I was wandering through Whole Foods looking for something quick and easy to make for dinner, and I found these mini pizza crusts from Rustic Crust. I've never seen them before, so they must be new. There are two in a package, and they're about 7" wide. Mini pizzas for dinner suddenly seemed like a great idea! I also bought some pre-cut kale, mushrooms and Daiya cheese. I quickly sautéed the veggies with garlic when I got home and I piled the crusts high with them, sprinkled on some cheese and cooked them for about 20 minutes. The crusts were a little crumbly and had a bit of a strange taste to them, but since they were covered in veggies and cheese, I didn't mind so much. It was a nice, quick and tasty dinner!



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Zucchini Tomato Gratin

I found this recipe on the Vegetarian Times website and immediately wanted to try it. It was easy to veganize with Daiya cheese. I bought some beautiful heirloom tomatoes to use in this dish. The recipe says to salt and drain the veggies and then roast the zucchini, but I didn't have that kind of time, so I just layered it all together. As a result, the dish was a little watery, but it was still tasty.



This meal marks the return of garlic to my cooking!! As I said last week, I'm going to start adding things that I didn't have bad allergic reactions to into my diet to see how I do on them. I've already had black tea and asparagus with no problem. I used to cook with garlic every chance I had so it was a shock to my system when I had to give it up. It was strange using it again. I crushed it and my eyes immediately began to water. But soon my mouth was watering too, because it's so delicious!



Garlic was first used in ancient times by the Egyptians to treat wounds, infections, tumors and intestinal parasites. It has the ability to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, as well as aid digestion, relieve earaches and act as an expectorant. Garlic is also a powerful antibiotic It is the sulphur-containing compounds of garlic that are responsible for many of its healing properties. Garlic’s sulphur compounds are potent antioxidants which protect cell membranes and DNA from damage.



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Eggplant Parmesan

This wasn't a planned meal. There wasn't too much in the fridge, and I didn't feel like going shopping. I had an eggplant, some mushrooms, a red pepper, some kale and a little Daiya cheese. I had rice noodles and tomato sauce in the cabinet. After some thought, I decided on eggplant parmesan.

I chopped up the mushrooms and red pepper and added them to the tomato sauce. I thinly sliced the eggplant, brushed it with a little olive oil and placed in the oven to roast. Once the eggplant was tender, I dabbed slice with tomato sauce and topped them with Daiya cheese. I sautéed the kale with a little olive oil, cooked the rice noodles and assembled the dish with the kale on the bottom, then the noodles, the sauce and the eggplant. Yum!!

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Amy's Mac and Cheese

While browsing the freezer section at Whole Foods, I noticed that Amy's now has a vegan, gluten-free mac and cheese! It's made with rice noodles and Daiya cheese. I was so excited to try it, that Dennis and I heated it up and had it as a snack. The portion was really small, so we only had a tiny bowl each. The cheese sauce was smooth and creamy and rather tasty. I will admit that I prefer the Mac Daddy recipe in Veganomicon, but since that takes an hour or so to cook, and this takes a few minutes, I'll probably be eating this more often.



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Another Lasagna Tart

My friends Jessica and Deana were supposed to come over for a mini lunchtime potluck today but unfortunately, Jessica wasn't feeling well, so it was just me and Deana. I haven't seen Deana in about a month, so it was good to see her again, and she made a delcious chocolate cherry pie for dessert. I decided to make another lasagna tart, like the one I made back at the beginning of January. This time I covered it in Daiya cheese, which made it seem even more lasagna-like. Deana really liked it and she asked for the cashew ricotta recipe so she can make a veggie lasagna next week. The great thing about this recipe is that there are always leftovers, so I know that I'll have a yummy lunch tomorrow.



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Baked Ziti

This is actually baked penne because I haven't been able to find gluten-free ziti. I used multi-grain pasta. I had used it a few weeks ago and said I didn't really like it, but I had another box in the cabinet and didn't want it to go to waste. I must not have cooked it thoroughly last time, because it tasted really good this time and worked really well in this dish. I made up a batch of cashew ricotta and mixed it with chopped mushrooms and tomato sauce. I topped the whole thing off with Daiya tapioca cheese. There's no way to tell from looking at this dish that it was wheat, soy, dairy and meat-free. It looked like any other baked ziti and was absolutely delicious. And as always, I served it with a side of greens.


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Broccoli Cheddar Pizza

When I was in high school, I worked at the CVS in Fair Lawn. After work, my friend Irina and I would walk across the street and get something to eat at the Land and Sea dinner. My favorite dish there was the broccoli cheddar pita melt and it's sort of become a comfort food for me. I've recreated it many times with soy cheddar and whole wheat pitas. I decided to recreate it again in pizza form for dinner last night. Dennis and I made another gluten-free pizza crust with the recipe in The Gluten-Free Vegan. We wanted to make a larger portion than we did last time since it was so thin, but we didn't have enough flour. We baked the crust for a few minutes before we topped it, but still was a little doughy. We topped the pizza with chopped broccoli and mushrooms and then covered it with Daiya cheddar cheese. It definitely satisfied my need for comfort food!

When I first tried Daiya tapioca cheese, I didn't like it. But Dennis likes it, and it's soy-free, so I've been using it here and there lately, and I have to admit that the taste is growing on me, and I do like it now. I've been ordering it from Vegan Essentials and Pangea online, it's becoming more and more popular and I think it will be available in local stores soon. I just found out that the Whole Foods in Paramus carries it, so it's just a matter of time before other Whole Foods start carrying it too. Keep an eye out for it.


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Pizza Night!

Sunday used to be pizza night in our house, but my food allergies have put a halt to that tradition. Dennis and I would buy a pre-made whole wheat crust and top it with veggies and Vegan Gourmet soy cheese. We revived our tradition yesterday and made a gluten-free pizza crust using a recipe in The Gluten-Free Vegan by Susan O'Brien. We topped the crust with tomato sauce, broccoli rabe, mushrooms and Daiya vegan cheese.

The crust was made with Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Gluten-Free flour and potato flour. The recipe doesn't call for pre-heating it before topping it, but I think we will do so the next time we make it because it was a little bit doughy in the middle and it seemed thin. We'll probably make more than one batch the next time we make it so it will be a little thicker too.

Daiya is a new vegan cheese on the market, and currently none of the stores around me carry it, so I had to mail order it. It's becoming more popular, so I think it's just a matter of time before my local Whole Foods carries it. It's made with tapioca and somehow melts like dairy cheese, which most soy cheeses don't do. I have to admit that it's not my favorite vegan cheese, but it is growing on me, and I'm happy to have a soy-free cheese option.

I'm happy to have pizza night back and am looking forward to experimenting with doughs and toppings!



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