Creamy Avocado Pasta

When I was at work the other day my boss mentioned a pasta dish she had recently made involving avocado. She said that the avocado made the dish really creamy, and that it was a super simple meal to make. The more I thought about this dish, the better it sounded! I decided I wanted to try and make it for lunch, and I’m so glad I did. I added chickpeas and feta cheese, the original recipe didn’t call for them. I’m glad I added them though because they made the meal super delicious. It was a really creamy sauce, and even better the only cooking involved was for the pasta (luckily for me I had pre-cooked pasta in the fridge, so I just used that!).

This meal comes together really fast with the help of a food processor, and only serves two but it would be easy to double or even triple the recipe. If you don’t include the feta cheese, the recipe is completely vegan and would be a great recipe to demonstrate to omnivores that vegan food is delicious!

Creamy Avocado Pasta
Oh She Glows 

Ingredients

• 1 medium ripe avocado
• 1/2 a lemon, juiced and zested
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (I used three) 
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup fresh basil (I guestimated) 
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 servings of pasta
• fresh cracked black pepper

Directions

1. Cook your pasta according to directions.
2. While your pasta is cooking, put your olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic cloves into the food processor. Pulse until smooth.
3. Add the avocado, basil, and salt. Process until smooth.
4. Once your pasta is done, drain and toss the sauce on top. Mix until combined. Add your chickpeas and feta cheese (I used a sun-dried tomato and basil feta cheese).
5. Garnish with lemon zest and black pepper.

This meal was so simple, and so tasty. I’ve found I’ve gotten into cooking more whole foods, especially when the dishes are so incredibly simple. This pasta dish was super tasty, and really filling with the addition of chickpeas for protein. I ate my serving for lunch, and Sean had some for dinner. The recipe says to serve immediately, but we found it microwaved relatively well.

My only issue with this recipe was that my food processor had a difficult time making everything smooth. I think it was because there was too much space (i.e. the food processor was a bit too big) but even not 100% smooth it was delicious! Sean found the garlic a wee bit overpowering, but I love garlic so I found this delish!

Coconut Curry Penne

One of my local restaurants makes a chicken coconut curry penne. I used to order it a lot when I wasn’t vegetarian, but now that I am I can no longer eat it! It’s always really tasty, and the curry (which is more on the sweet side) and coconut go really well together. Normally I eat my curry either sans rice or with rice, but sometimes doing it with different things like pasta is a lot of fun. I always eat whole wheat pasta, I find it more texturally pleasing, but you could use white flour pasta.

Coconut Curry Penne

Ingredients

• 1 cup of shredded coconut
• 1/2 an onion, roughly chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 head of broccoli
• 1 cup of snow peas
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 5 tbsp of curry paste
• 4 tbsp of hot curry powder
• 4 cups of cooked penne pasta

Directions

1. In a small pan, toast your shredded coconut until lightly browned and fragrant. Put aside.
2. Saute onion on medium heat for 4-5 minutes, then saute garlic. Add the broccoli and fry for a few more minutes.
3. Add the coconut milk, curry paste, curry powder, and kidney beans. Stir well to combine everything.
4. Add the snow peas, and cook for a 2-3 minutes.
5. Mix the curry and the penne together until combined. Top with the shredded coconut.

This curry was really delicious, and fast! I made it spicy rather than sweet, but it still worked well with the shredded coconut. I found the kidney beans to be a good addition to the curry, and they worked really well in this dish! It was a nice and fast meal, and made a ton of left overs so I was able to eat curry for breakfast for a few days (one of my favourite things to do!).

Black Bean Stir Fry

Sean and I were looking to make a quick Friday night meal that contained a lot of vegetables. It had to be fast, easy, and delicious! So we made this black bean stir fry.

Black Bean Stir Fry

Ingredients

• 1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 an onion, chopped roughly
• 1 cup of snow peas, ends trimmed
• 1 green pepper, sliced into thin strips
• 1 head of broccoli, roughly chopped
• 1 bag of mung bean sprouts
• black bean sauce garlic sauce (we purchased the Lee Kum Kee Black Bean Garlic Sauce)

Directions

1. Saute the onion on medium heat in oil of your choice until heated through. We keep ours crunchy because we prefer it that way.
2. Add the broccoli and black beans. Fry for 5-7 minutes.
3. Add the green pepper, snow peas, and black bean garlic sauce. Stir fry for 2-3 minutes, until softened.
4. Add the mung bean sprouts, take off the heat and stir together.

Some people don’t like to rinse and drain their canned beans, but we always do. I find the water mixture a tad frightening, but also if you rinse the beans you can eliminate a lot of gas problems! Just be careful with the bean sprouts because they wither really fast, so we add them at the end and then mix so there are fewer casualties haha. This is super simple, but really tasty especially when you’re looking for a vegetable fix. We didn’t serve it with rice because all the vegetables contain a lot of fibre, which is really filling, but you could serve this along with some brown rice if you wanted.

Quinoa with Toasted Almonds, Cucumber, Dill, and Chickpeas

I went to a workshop on a Sunday, and during the lunch break the hostess put out quite a spread. There was a bunch of delicious food, but there was a quinoa salad that really stood out for me. It had toasted almonds, cucumber, and fresh dill. Dill is one of my favourite herbs. I always eat a ton of dill pickles, but also dill pickle pretzels, popcorn, and I used to eat dill pickle chips (but I gave them up over a year ago). This salad was super special to me because it had so much fresh, delicious dill.

Quinoa is really a super grain. It’s gluten free, and and it’s an ancient grain. It’s also a complete protein, which means that it has all the essential amino acids necessary for life, and it’s very filling. I ended up finding the recipe online and I decided to make it for dinner!

Quina with Toasted Almonds, Cucumber, Dill, and Chickpeas
Quinoa 365 by Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of chopped raw almonds
• 1 cup of quinoa
• 2 cups of vegetable broth (or chicken broth)
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tbsp of white wine vinegar (or rice wine vinegar)
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 2 cups of English cucumber, chopped
• 1/2 cup of green onion, sliced
• 1/4 cup of fresh dill, roughly chopped sans stem
• 1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Place almonds on a pan and toast for 5-7 minutes, until lightly brown and fragrant.
2. In a pot, toast quinoa on medium heat for 3-5 minutes until fragrant. Shake it side to side to make sure all the quinoa is toasted.
3. Add the broth to the quinoa and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and cover. Cook for 10 minutes, or until broth is absorbed.
4. While quinoa cooks, mix together the olive oil, vinegar, and salt. Set aside.
5. Allow quinoa to cool. Then add the chickpeas, oil mixture, cucumber, dill, and green onions.
6. Top with toasted almonds.

This salad is super tasty and filling! The original recipe doesn’t call for chickpeas, but since I knew this was going to be my main dinner I decided to up the protein with chickpeas. Plus the chickpeas give it a nice texture, and they seem to work quite well together. It’s a little bit of work to toast the almonds and quinoa, but totally worth it.

This can be refrigerated up to 4 days! With time I imagine the green onion and dill flavour will be absorbed by the quinoa making it even more tasty. This would be a great salad to bring to someone’s house for dinner, and would be great for a picnic/outdoor lunch since it’s supposed to be served at room temperature.

Easter Dinner 2012

Easter was my first major holiday as a vegetarian, and it was a different experience. In previous years I’ve cooked ham and whatnot, so it was difficult to think of something to make that was vegetarian and that was still hearty, delicious, and everyone would like. I decided to go with a Shepherd’s Pie for Easter Dinner, and I’m really glad I did. Shepherd’s pie is a big thing in my house, my dad makes it a lot so it was a bit intense to see if I could create a Shepherd’s pie that out-did his. I used the recipe for the bottom from Appetite for Reduction which was completely vegan, but instead of making an upside down Shepherd’s pie, I made a right-side up one. I also used mashed potatoes for the topping, complete with tons of butter and milk. I then grated some cheese, and browned it under the broiler. It was divine. Lentils made a great base for this Shepherd’s pie, and it tasted so good. I ended up having enough for two pies, so we ate one and froze the other.

Upside-Down Shepherd’s Pie

Appetite for Reduction by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Ingredients

• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped finely (I used half an onion)
• 4 oz shitake mushrooms (I omitted this)
• 1 zucchini, diced (I omitted this)
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 tsp dried tarragon
• 2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp salt
• ground black pepper to taste
• 1 cup carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 cup green lentils
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1 tbsp vegan Worcestershire sauce (I couldn’t find any so I used a substitution of soy sauce, lemon juice, and tomato paste)
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1 can of corn, rinsed

Directions

1. Saute the onion on medium heat in a pot until translucent, then add the garlic, tarragon, thyme, salt, pepper, mushrooms and zucchini and saute for 5 minutes.
2. Add the vegetable broth, lentils, and carrots. Cover and bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring to a simmer for 25 minutes. Stir occasionally. Most of the broth should be absorbed by the lentils at this point, if not continue to cook.
3. Once the lentils are tender, add the Worcestershire sauce, peas, and corn. Let it sit for about 10 minutes until the flavours meld.

As I stated, I used this recipe as a base and then just made some delicious mashed potatoes to put on top. I put my lentil mix in a glass pan, covered with mashed potatoes, and then grated some marble cheese on top and broiled it for a minute or so.

For dessert I wanted to do something different. I originally thought of doing cheesecake, but the task seemed rather daunting because I was trying to approach this meal in a simple way. I wanted deliciousness, with minimal effort. I decided to make a peanut butter and chocolate tofu pie, following a recipe from Oh She Glows. The recipe called for making individual sized peanut butter cups, but I just made this in a pie dish and it still turned out great.

Mini Peanut Butter Cups in a Jar

Oh She Glows from Angela Liddon

Ingredients

For the crust

• 10 squares of graham crackers, crumbled
• 1 and 1/2 tbsp of maple syrup
• 1 tbsp coconut oil (I used canola)
• 2 and 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder

For the filling

• 200 grams of silken tofu
• 1/4 cup of peanut butter
• 5 tbsp of icing sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• salt to taste

For the chocolate top

• 1 cup of chocolate chips
• 1 and 1/2 tsp coconut oil (I made a ganache)

Directions

1. In a food processor, process the crust ingredients until moist. Spread evenly in a pan and flatten with fingers.
2. Clean the food processor bowl, and then process the filling ingredients together until silky smooth. Pour the filling onto the crust.
3. Place in the freezer for 30 minutes or so, until it firms up.
4. Make the chocolate topping by melting the chocolate chips either on top of the stove or in the microwave. Pour onto the filling.
5. Refrigerate!

This pie recipe was super easy and super tasty, which is what I was looking for. I made the chocolate topping a bit too thick by accident, but it was still pretty tasty.

Overall I have to say Easter Dinner was a success! It was really tasty, simple, and relatively low maintenance. I’d say I successfully survived my first holiday as a vegetarian, and my family was definitely happy with the dinner.

Snobby Joes

Hey! Long time no see, haha. Well, I’m almost finished my undergraduate degree! I have 3 finals left and then I’m done! Those four years flew by.

I ended up getting my wisdom teeth taken out two weeks ago, so I was really in the market for food that was soft enough for me to eat. These snobby joes really did the trick, and oh. my. god. They were so delicious! They tasted exactly like sloppy joes, if you didn’t tell anyone that you used lentils they probably wouldn’t realize just based on taste alone (the lentils themselves may give it away). I used the Veganomicon for this recipe, but it’s also available online at the PPK.

Snobby Joes
Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked green lentils
• 4 cups water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced small
• 1 red pepper
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 tbsp of chili powder (I used chipotle chili powder)
• 2 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp salt
• 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tbsp yellow mustard (wet)

Directions

1. Put the water and lentils into a pot, cover. Bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes or until the lentils are soft. Drain the water and set aside.
2. 10 minutes into the cooking time for the lentils, saute the onion and pepper in olive oil for about 7 minutes or until they’re soft. Add the garlic and saute for another minute. Add the chili powder, oregano, salt and the lentils. After 1 minute, add the tomato sauce and paste. Cook for 10 minutes.
3. After 10 minutes, add the mustard and maple syrup and allow the mixture to heat through. Afterwards, turn the heat off and let it sit for 10 minutes.

I pre-soaked my lentils, just to cut down on the cooking time. I also made a few changes (used red pepper instead of green, used more garlic, etc). This recipe was super tasty (and spicy!) so I really enjoyed it. I think some people don’t like lentils because if they’re overcooked they can become mushy but that was fine for me. I kind of wanted them to be mushy so it would be soft! The recipe makes a lot! I know she says it only makes 4 servings, but I think I ended up getting like 8 servings out of this. I find it legumes to be really filling so I don’t eat a lot of them at a time.

I have to say, this recipe was just delicious. I was pleasantly surprised by how much it reminded me of sloppy joes made with meat, I was afraid the lentils may give it a different taste/texture but it didn’t! We served this on hamburger buns with some cheese (so not completely vegan).

Peanut Noodles

I’d been thinking about peanut udon noodles for a few days before finally deciding to attempt to make it. A few years ago I had a bad experience with one of the processed peanut sauces that you make from a bag and pour over noodles. While it was theoretically good, I discovered the execution didn’t work the way I had planned. The sauce was rock solid and just slimy and disgusting. I hadn’t attempted a recipe similar to that until now!

I did a quick google search and found this recipe on allrecipes.com which was nice. I used the recipe as a general outline but made my own changes/additions.

I intended to use udon noodles in this but found that mine were moldy? I think someone spilled water on the box and didn’t try and clean them, so they were damp and eventually molded… So I used a mix of whole wheat spaghetti and quinoa spaghetti (which is delicious!). This dish can be made vegan and/or gluten free!

Peanut Noodles
Modified from recipe from AllRecipes.com

Ingredients

• 8 oz of noodles (udon, spaghetti, whatever you have!)
• 1/2 cup chicken broth (I used McCormicks chicken bouillon cube made from vegetables so it’s actually vegan!)
• 1 1/2 tbsp soy (recipe called for 3)
• 1 1/2  tbsp of honey (you can use agave nectar and make this vegan)
•  3 tbsp peanut butter (we used chunky peanut butter)
• 1 tbsp fresh minced ginger (recipe called for 1 1/2 tbsp)
• 3 cloves of minced garlic
• 1 tsp hot chile paste (recipe called for 2)
• 1/4 cup of green onions, chopped
• 1 whole red pepper
• 1 cup snow peas, ends trimmed
• 15 pieces of broccoli florets
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

Directions

1. You can prep vegetables/sauce while boiling water but prior to adding noodles. Boil a large pot of water and cook noodles according to directions. Cook until tender then drain the water.
2. While noodles are cooking, make the sauce in a sauce pot and stir fry veggies in a frying pan.
3. For the sauce: combine peanut butter, honey, chile paste, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and broth in a saucepan. Cook on low heat until peanut butter has melted. Stir occasionally.
4. While sauce is on low heat, you can stir fry your veggies. You can use oil or water saute the vegetables.
5. Once noodles and sauce are ready, and water from noodles has been drained, combine. Add vegetables in after and mix until noodles and veggies are well coated in the sauce. Add sesame seeds and green onions then serve.

We added the vegetables to make this meal less carb dense as well as a way to add some more fibre/colour to the dish. The sauce was so good. We found ourselves just sampling it constantly with the spoon. It was the perfect blend of peanut butter, spice, and saltiness.

This dish can be vegan friendly (use vegan chicken broth and agave nectar rather than honey, also make sure pasta doesn’t include any animal products). It can also be gluten free (use a gluten free pasta like quinoa pasta, use tamari sauce rather than soy sauce)!

This dish was a hit. It made a lot so we have left overs which is great. I’m looking forward to eating more of this. I think next time I may make a double batch of the sauce just so it’s really abundant! The flavours definitely shone through this dish.

As a side note: I haven’t been baking very much! I’m planning on doing a bunch of baking soon though because of Valentine’s day coming up. I’m not sure what to make for Sean, he’s had a few requests. A part of me wants to just go crazy with it and make him a bunch of things but another part of me wants to hold onto my sanity. We’ll see which side wins!