Chili and Cornbread

On Sunday I was very busy so I decided to adapt a favorite chili recipe for my crock pot. It worked well with a few modifications. My husband noted that it would have only taken 40 minutes to cook on the stove yet I decided to let it cook for 5 hours instead. At least I did not have to babysit the chili and I was able to get my errands completed while it cooked. I found this chili recipe in one of the Hannaford's Fresh magazines that they give you free if you spend $25. I seem to find a lot of little gems in this little known publication-Thank you Hannaford's! Anyhow, I discovered in writing this blog today that they have the recipes on their website so I will no longer need to cut them out and save in my very messy Recipe Book.

Vegetarian Three-Bean Chipotle Chili is very yummy although I reduced the amount of chili powder and chipotle since last time I made it the family thought it was too hot. I disagree but I am not the only one eating it so I adjusted it this time and added my own Chipotle Tabasco to my portion. To cook in the Crockpot, you will need to reduce the broth to about 2 cups instead of three. I did not have enough bulgur which may have made the difference too. I added some cooked brown rice at the end to absorb the excess liquid. I bet you could simply add 1/2 cup or so of uncooked rice to the recipe instead of the bulgur which can be harder to find. This would also make it a gluten free recipe as far I can see.

I also made Grandma's Cornbread Made Vegan from Vegweb.com. I've made this several times and it always comes out great!

I am really enjoying writing this blog. Great Idea Anu!

I plan to make one last burger tonight if I have time. This is the one I am considering-Get Your Groove on Veggie Burgers

Cup cakes and Glaze

My brother and sister-in-law were in town for a long weekend (and we spent a day with them in Chicago too) - they requested a few dishes. None were vegan, though. So for a sweet treat, I decided to make vegan chocolate cup cakes with glaze.
The recipe for the cupcakes are from this recipe in the New York Times. I got the recipe for the glaze from a friend. I know she got it from 'the web', but I don't have the link... sorry to the original author!
Here is the recipe for the glaze-



Ingredients:
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup cocoa powder, sifted
1/4 cup water
1/4 t cider vinegar
1/8 t salt
1 T Kalhua (Optional)
2 t Vanilla

Heat maple syrup and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and whisk in cocoa powder, water, vinegar and salt. Cook for additional 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and add Kalhua (the original recipe called for Coffee liquer, but I only had Kalhua) and vanilla. Cool for 5-10 minutes.

In the day that we had access to the cupcakes and glaze, half of them were eaten by the non-vegans around me - a testament to how good they tasted!!

Donut Success

We made some mini donuts as planned and my daughter decorated them for a "Twilight" DVD release party with her girlfriends. M and I saved the regular sized donuts for us although we did not decorate them quite so cheerily. The glaze that is recommended at The Mini Donut Test Kitchen worked well and, surprisingly, was much better this morning after drying out for the night. It absorbed nicely into the donuts and made a yummy little shell (for lack of a better word). MMMMMmmmmm. I will try not to eat another one today.

Working with the batter was complicated. It is a thick, sticky batter (similar to instant oatmeal that has been sitting in a bowl for a bit). My pans are very shallow so you can only put a tiny bit in or they overflow while cooking. The larger donuts pan was much easier to use. I just cooked them 2-3 minutes longer than the mini donuts. I think I will make these again-definitely for Anu's visit!

They tasted great and I bet you could make these into mini muffins easily or donut holes (not sure how) so you do not need the special pan. As you can see, they were not beautifully shaped. Fun and delicious must count for something, right?

Fake sugar - yuck!

Ok, this is not necessarily a vegan issue but it is on my mind. I have been trying to help my family eat better-more whole foods, fewer packaged foods, no hydrogenated oils, no high fructose corn syrup, etc. and I recently have noticed aspartame and sucralose infiltrating many of the foods I buy! Now, I am a Diet Pepsi addict so I obviously ingest the stuff but I really don't want to find it in my cereal. As I poured a bowl of Fiber One the other day I noticed that there was aspartame in the list on ingredients. Similarly, I found several "Whole Grain" breads that contained sucralose while food shopping the other day. I was just trying to avoid honey and HFCS but now I have to look for artificial sweeteners too! When did it become acceptable to add these to products? Many of the kids yogurts have Splenda now to reduce the sugar content. I wish people could open their eyes and realize that milk and fruit have natural sugars in them! The final straw for me was soy milk. I generally buy Silk Light Vanilla Soy Milk but they were all out at Hannaford so I bought 8th continent assuming it was comparable. Well, I poured a bit in my coffee and it was so sickenly sweet that I nearly gagged. There was an overwhelming medicine-y aftertaste. Flipped it over and guess what it contained- sucralose and artificial flavors. Since when does "vanilla" need to be improved upon? Look at all the different sweeteners... Uggh!

Oatmeal

I made Oatmeal for breakfast and realized that as a vegan, when I have gone out to brunch, I tend to eat oatmeal. So, oatmeal deserves its own post.

Here's a Cinnamon - Nutty Quinoa recipe from 101cookbooks. I have made it before and really like it.

Here's what I add to my oatmeal - maple syrup, raisins, bananas, peanut butter (I know I have some weird combinations - see my previous post using Tofu Cream cheese with ketchup!) and slivered almonds. I use Trader Joe's hot multigrain cereal or Steel Cut Oats.Velu's oatmeal (the darker one to the right) is a dessert dish, really. It contains maple syrup, brown sugar, raisins and bananas!

Enjoy!!

Vegan Donuts?

Just a quick note to say that I am VERY excited that I found a donut pan set yesterday! As you see, we enjoy junk food over here, at least occasionally. I have found a link for a vegan donut recipe (Mini Donut Test Kitchen on Vegan Yum Yum) that I will try this weekend. My pan makes mini donuts, full sized donuts and also can make the cream filled type. So very excited! Hope they work.....

Black Bean Burgers and Cole Slaw

Ok, so it is not REALLY a cook-off but it makes me feel all domestic-like I should be wearing an apron or holding a giant grill spatula or something. Please don't lose any sleep over it! Tonight I made the Bush's Backyard Black Bean Burgers which just happen to be vegan. We cooked them in a pan but I think these may actually hold together on the grill. The recipe, as I made it, made 7 burgers and they were large in my opinion. Maybe you could even stretch 8 burgers out of the recipe. They were delicious as directed but I think I will stir in 1/4 cup of corn kernels, some chopped cilantro, and a tsp or two of chili powder next time to make them even better. The recipe says to refrigerate for 1-4 hours before cooking but we put them in the fridge for maybe 10 minutes while we started some fries in the oven and it worked just fine. M pan fried the burgers and I put a few into the over at 425 degrees for 15 minutes to see how that works. I did not eat the baked burgers yet, but they look great. I will try freezing and see how they fare also.

I also made some Vegan Cole Slaw. I guess the only differences from the traditional recipe were that I used Vegenaise instead of mayo and decided on Agave Nectar instead of table sugar.

Cole Slaw

Ingredients:

• 1/2 bag of pre-shredded cole slaw mix
• 1/2 cup shredded carrots (unless this is in your cole slaw mix, mine was just cabbage)
• 1/4 cup Vegenaise
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar (this was a little too much for us, adjust based on your tastes)
• 3 TB agave nectar
• 1 tsp celery seed

Directions:
Whisk together vinegar, agave, vegenaise, and celery seed. Pour over slaw mix and carrots and stir. Refrigerate for an hour (if possible, we ate it immediately).

I am very full now. I hope you like them too!