Wednesday 30 November 2011

It only takes one thought...

When I became vegan, food took on a completely new meaning for me. And I started paying more attention to nature and animals. It's like a whole different world opened up and I could see things in a much brighter light. I believe everyone should be given a chance to change and make things right. And so this song was born, out of thinking it's never too late to make it good.

Saturday 26 November 2011

Mom's vegan lasagna





I went spinning this morning and when I came back home, the house was smelling delicious. My mom was in the kitchen making a veggie lasagna. She roasted some vegetables before adding them to the dish, so each layer had a nice flavour. It was really good and I hope you make this, because it's good and good for you :)

Ingredients:
1 package of spinach lasagna
1 eggplant

5 zucchinis

2 bell peppers (red and yellow - or whatever you have handy)
1/2 pint of cherry tomatoes
2 cups shredded collards


 tomato sauce (you can make your own or buy it ready)

bechamel sauce ( 1 cup vegan butter, 1/2 cup wholewheat flour, about 3 cups of almond milk, 1/c cup nutritional yeast, salt and pepper. Melt the butter, add the flour until blended. Start adding the milk until it's like a sauce, careful you don't add too much. When it's done, add the nutritional yeast for some yummy cheese flavour and the salt and pepper. )


Boil water and cook the noodles for about 13 minutes. Then you can start assembling the lasagna.
Put tomato sauce in the bottom of the baking pan (we used this one). Then the noodles, eggplant, more sauce, noodles, zucchini, sauce, bell peppers, noodles, bechamel sauce, collards, noodles, sauce, zucchini, noodles sauce and some cherry tomatoes on top if you'd like.
Bake for 40 minutes at 370F.
Here's the final product:


YUM!

Thursday 3 November 2011

Gluten-free Vegan Esfihas

I watched my mom make this a bunch of times. It looks complicated at first, but it's not so bad.
She usually uses whole wheat flour, but we decided to try to make it gluten-free. We used a mix of brown rice flour and teff flour. After mixing and letting it rest for about one hour, the dough was still a bit wet so we added some more brown rice flour and it was okay. The end result was great, so we were pretty happy. And my dad liked them, so we know we were successful. Here's the recipe:

Dough:  1 tbsp yeast
              1 cup warm water
              1/2 cup olive oil
              1 tbsp ground flax seed and 3 tbsp water (substituting one egg)
              1 1/2 tsp vegan sugar
              1 1/2 tsp salt
              1 1/2 flour (teff and brown rice)


the dough after we let it rest and worked with some extra brown rice flour

Topping : 1 package Yves Meatless Ground Round
                1 small red onion (chopped)
                1 cup chopped olives
                drizzle olive oil

Work the dough and make some mini pizza discs:

Put them in a 350F oven for 20 minutes. Check if the dough is cooked and if not give it another 5 minutes.
They are great with some hot sauce or lemon juice. Enjoy!