Virtual Vegan Potluck: Herbed Roasted Potatoes in Cheezy Sauce

For my contribution to this potluck, I chose to make a potato dish, because one Cannot Go Wrong with potatoes. And this is super easy to put together, and also very tasty.

You can see I had a whole meal of sides when I tested these potatoes. Yum.

Begin with:
5 cups red potatoes, skins on, diced into roughly 1″ cubes (you could use russets, but I tested both and the textural results were much better with the red potatoes)

Bring to boil and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat, drain, and set aside.

In a bowl, combine:
2 1/2 T white flour
2 T nutritional yeast
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp basil
1 tsp tarragon
1 tsp garlic powder

Stir in:
1 T  veggie oil
1 1/4 c water

Whisk together until smooth and no lumps remain. Pour into a sprayed 2-qt casserole dish and stir in potatoes to coat.

Roast at 350 for 20-30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes until golden brown and easily pierced with a butter knife.

Return to previous dish * On to the next dish * Start over again at the beginning

Literary Post: The Boxcar Children. Jessie’s Stew.

By the end of last week, I was mostly back to normal, but here are two things that perplex me:

• I have a massive sugar addiction.
• I think Lou Who has a peanut allergy.

Regarding the first thing, I have such bad withdrawal symptoms if I try to just completely stop eating sugar that I’ve yet to make concentrated efforts to completely stop. I can go all morning if I need to. But then I get kind of grouchy and cranky and stuff. So I have a cookie (or two, or ten).

The solution that has worked in the past is to just stop making sweets that go into the freezer, because it’s too easy for me to run out there and grab cookies. I need to make them, take them somewhere, and make sure they don’t come back home with me. And then I’m fine. If it’s not here, I stop feeling like I have to eat it, and the withdrawal symptoms are almost nil. Interesting.

So, that being said, this week’s church potluck is getting a lot of cookies from yours truly, because there are a lot of cookies in the freezer at the moment.

As for the second thing, I have to let the rash around her mouth clear up first and then eat some peanuts again just to make sure it is indeed the peanuts and not something else. I’m bummed because peanut butter-jam sandwiches are about the best thing in the world, and I really just don’t like almond butter. It’s like tasteless paste in my mouth. Bleh. I like the crunchy, chunky, salty flavour/texture of peanut butter. So, I have to keep reminding myself: it could be worse. It could be gluten. I’ll either have to start salting my almond butter or try some other alternatives.

At any rate, it’s time for another LITERARY POST. It should have gone up last week, but I was just too stressed and didn’t have time to prepare it, so here it is today instead.

I was a huge Boxcar Children fan as a child. I read all of the 19 books in the original series, but many of the later ones I only read once. The first 6 or so were my favourites; they seemed to start repeating themselves more and more as the series went on (burning question: did Henry ever make it through college?) My all-time favourites were easily the first book, Mike’s Mystery, The Woodshed Mystery, Mountain Top Mystery, and Snowbound Mystery. I had a stuffed dog I named Jessie and always thought, “What FUN it would be to live in a BOXCAR and have to be INGENIOUSLY CREATIVE.”

No, the irony has not been lost on me.

To me the illustrations in the first book are iconic. I’ve never seen this kind of art in any other book and always was a little sad that this (as I recall) anonymous illustrator did not continue doing the rest of the series. Does anyone know otherwise? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

At any rate, I decided to replicate the stew described in The Boxcar Children.

I didn’t use baby vegetables, although for authenticity you’re welcome to do so if you are lucky enough to have them available. For my “meat” I used some basic gluten steaks chopped up. It had been in the freezer and I just put it into the crockpot frozen, but you could thaw it first if you want to or use it fresh – or substitute whatever your preferred beef sub might be.

Note on crockpots: I used my smallish Rival crockpot that is about 10 cup capacity. If you use a larger one or smaller one, cooking times may vary, but this is what worked for that size.

Stewy stew.

Jessie’s Stew

1 lb faux meat, cut in pieces
2 large turnips, cut in chunks
4 medium carrots, cut in chunks
2-4 green onions – I used 2 because mine are huge
1 tsp salt
1 tsp beef-like seasoning of choice
1 T tapioca flour (or cornstarch)
2 1/2 c  water

Layer the faux meat and veggies in your crockpot in the order given. Sprinkle salt, beaf seasoning, and tapioca flour on top. Pour water over all.

Turn the crockpot on high and cook 5 hours. (I stirred mine just once after 3 1/2 hours).

Curried Pumpkin-Acorn Squash-Carrot-Spinach Soup

Well, things have settled a little bit around here. We’re all on the mend. I’ve got a pulled muscle in my ribcage from coughing that hurts pretty badly, and I get tired easily. GooGoo still has a runny nose of epic gloppiness. But otherwise, things aren’t too bad. I spent my entire day pretty much washing laundry. I had a lot more than usual because my washer had some issues last week and Mr Pine Nut got a part just yesterday to fix the issues.

So, I not only washed clothes, but I’m working on washing all our sheets and blankets too, to rid them of the ickies from the flu. Kind of like how they burned everything in the Velveteen Rabbit, except less destructive. Tomorrow I get to wash diapers and more blankets. Woohoo.

In between loads of laundry, I made soup.

This is one of those soups that was born out of an urgent need to Use Things Up. In this case, we had an acorn squash, a pumpkin, some spinach, and some carrots. I decided to make a pumpkin soup. Curried pumpkin soup sounded good. So I asked The Google and The Google found me this recipe.

Squash is generally considered more autumn-y, but I don’t care particularly. One must use what one has, even in February. This soup will kill any bacteria residing in your digestive tract and clean out your sinusi* as well as taste delicious.

I changed it a bit from the original. This is what I did.

In your soup pan, stir together:
2 c chopped green onions
1 T cocoanut oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 T grated fresh ginger
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
1 1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp dried hot red pepper flakes

Saute a few minutes, until oil is melted and onions are tender.

Add:
4 c pumpkin puree
4 c water
1 1/2 c mock chicken or veggie broth
2 c diced carrots

Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and let it cook about 20 minutes. Carrots should be to desired tenderness.

In a separate pan, stir together:
2 T cocoanut oil
2 tsp brown mustard seeds
2-4 c packed spinach (you could also use kale or another leafy green. I used 2 cups and next time would use 4.)

Stir oil and mustard seeds together until seeds begin to pop. Add spinach and continue stirring until wilted. Add to pot of soup right before serving.

Enjoy. I’m looking forward to eating the leftovers from this tomorrow.

——

*Neither of these statements have been validated by the FDA, but I am pretty sure I’m right.

Vegan MoFo #23: Creole Wieners

As I was digging something out of our big freezer the other day I noticed my Tupperware container of homemade vegan sausage that I made several months back was sitting in there, so I decided to ask Betty what to do with sausage. (I usually just completely gloss over the pig section, I must admit.) There were two options that were doable and only one that looked actually like it could be good (and easy, because the other one involved making a sub for cream of mushroom soup). This was it.

I honestly don’t remember what sausage recipe I used; I’m pretty sure it was Vegan Dad’s. Whatever recipe it was, my sausages were a bit larger than the typical hot dog, so I sliced them up to make this. I served it on brown rice with a side of the Creole Lima Beans you read about yesterday.

It was very tasty. My only complaint is regarding the sausages: they simply weren’t flavourful enough, but that’s not directly relevant to this recipe.

This recipe was originally found on page 55 of the 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook.

1 tsp liquid smoke
2 T olive or other veggie oil
3 c finely chopped onions
1 16-oz can whole tomatoes (or 2 cups fresh)
1/2 tsp salt
1 lb vegan sausage, either homemade or purchased
4-6 T bacon crumbles

Fry onions in oil and liquid smoke until tender. Add tomatoes with their liquid and salt. Heat to boiling; reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes. Add sausages and simmer 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve as is or on rice.

Vegan MoFo #22: Creole Lima Beans

I love lima beans.

Mr Pine Nut kindly tolerates my love of lima beans.

I paired these with Creole Wieners for our lunch today, but I’ll share that recipe tomorrow.

5467y <—cat’s contribution to this post

I’m honestly not quite sure what qualifies this to be “Creole” (or tomorrow’s recipe, for that matter). The tomatoes is as close as it gets. There are no special seasonings nor sea creatures called for in either recipe, so I really have no idea. At any rate, I very much enjoyed it. The buttery, melty texture and flavour of lima beans cannot be beat.

This recipe was originally found on page 167 of the 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook.

1 8-oz can stewed tomatoes
10 oz frozen lima beans (I just used the full 16-oz bag – I don’t think they sell 10 oz bags any more. Your call.)
3/4 c chopped celery
1/2 tsp salt

Heat ingredients to boiling, separating beans with a fork; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until beans are tender, about 5 minutes.

Vegan Mofo #21: Savoury Rice Blend

Today it’s raining, sunny, cloudy, and windy. Not usually all at the same time, but with some definite overlap. Fall and its fickle weather is here for sure. We had fun this morning watching a squirrel who apparently has decided to winter underneath our unfinished house. He was stuffing his face with nuts and whatever else he could find and then darting up under our bay window (it’s not closed off yet) to get under the house. I anticipate Mr Pine Nut will be finding nut hoards galore when he goes under there to install our radiant floor heating.

This is a green onion. Not a leek. A green onion. Pretty much all my green onions are about this size or bigger.

At any rate, I decided to try this recipe. I’m getting a little burned out on the Betty Crocker MoFo project, quite honestly. Fortunately, I have made most all of the recipes that I originally planned to do; this one was one I chose after the fact because some of the ones I originally chose seemed blah. So, you may or may not see any further MoFo posts from me this month, now that I’ve done the minimum of 20 that is req’d.

So, the recipe. I was very much pleased with the earthy savouriness of this dish. It seems to whisper “Thanksgiving dinner side dish” to me. It tastes very much like a storebought Rice-a-Roni type deal, just minus all the extra junk or animal-derived ingredients they might throw in. This is definitely something I’m going to make again.

My only beef with the recipe was the length of time it took to cook, because Betty Crocker says to bake it for a total of close to 2 hours. Next time, I’m going to just cook it in a skillet until almost done (maybe 20-30 minutes?) and then pop it in the oven for 15 minutes rather than the other way around, just to add that extra baked dimension. I had it in the oven for at least 50 minutes after cooking it in the electric skillet for 15 minutes or so and it was still chewy: edible, but the wild rice especially was still not fully cooked. (Just by the way, I’ve rewritten the instructions below to reflect these changes that I’ll make next time.) Also, Mr Pine Nut and I demolished the entire pan; if you’re wanting to feed more than two double the recipe. This single recipe really didn’t make very much.

I served it with curried zucchini and freshly-made flatbread.

This recipe was originally found on page 228 of the 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook.

1/4 c uncooked wild rice
1/2 c chopped celery
1/4 c chopped onion
1 T olive oil
2 1/2 c chickenlike broth
1 T dried parsley flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Kitchen Bouquet
1/4 tsp ground sage
1/4 tsp dried basil leaves
3/4 c uncooked brown rice

Cook and stir wild rice, celery, and onion in oil in a pan (I used my electric skillet) until onion is tender. Add broth and heat to boiling. Stir in remaining ingredients and cook until liquid is almost completely absorbed, perhaps 20-30 minutes.

Transfer into ungreased 2-qt casserole and bake at 350 until liquid is completely absorbed and rice is tender, about 15 minutes.

Vegan MoFo #20: Split Pea Soup… or Chunky Baby Poop?

When I was growing up, my mom used to buy cans of split pea soup because she liked it. I didn’t like peas of any kind, especially from a can*, and I declined to ever eat that green slop until I got older.

Like a lot older.

Like, probably not until I even left home older. I think I was 24 when I left home. (Math is not my strong point.)

AT ANY RATE, I like it now, even though there’s really no way to make it NOT look like chunky baby poop.

We both really enjoyed this soup; GooGoo just picked the fakey bacon off the top and asked for carrot sticks instead. I’m not really going to force poop soup on a child who’s willing to eat raw carrots, so she had about 3 carrots for lunch instead. And some bread.

Split Pea Soup

This recipe was originally found on page 125 of the 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook.

8 c water
1 lb dried split peas (about 2 1/4 c)
1 T liquid smoke
1/2 c chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1 c chopped carrots
1 c sliced celery

Heat peas and water to boiling; reduce heat.

Stir liquid smoke, onion, and salt into peas. Cover and simmer until peas are tender. (An hour, give or take.)

Stir carrots and celery into soup and simmer until they reach desired tenderness.

____

*We visited an elderly lady one time for dinner and she served us canned green peas as part of the meal. I was really fascinated by the way they squished so easily with a fork. My mom leaned over and whispered to me that it was really rude to squish my peas. I couldn’t comprehend how it could possibly be wrong to squish** peas.

**Squish is a fun word to say. It also starts to look weird after you’ve typed it three times.

Vegan MoFo #18: Bulgur Pilaf

It’s been an insanely busy day today. (I’m writing this about a week before you’ll read it.) We’ve been halfway living between trailer and house since Lou Who was born: Mr Pine Nut has been working and we’ve been sleeping over at the house, while we eat and cook over here in the trailer.

The problem is, it’s starting to get pretty cold over there at night, and doesn’t warm up at all until afternoon, so Mr Pine Nut isn’t too happy working over there and I don’t think it’s good for Lou Who to sleep in such a cold environment. So, this morning we rather out of the blue decided it was Time to Move Back Into the Trailer Full-Time. This involved rethinking a lot of things, because now we have four of us to get in beds. We set up the dinette bed for Lou Who and me, and Mr Pine Nut and GooGoo will be on the twin beds he and I used to sleep in before. It’s going to be interesting. But, I’m okay with it. I know that it needs to be this way and I’m going to try to make the best of it. (Remind me of this in a couple months.)

So now, let’s discuss food.

Yum.

This was a seriously easy dish to make. It’s all done in one pan and it doesn’t call for very many ingredients. And it’s amazingly tasty. GooGoo usually won’t touch food with green pepper and onion, but she had three helpings. I’m pretty sure this will become a staple around here.

This recipe was originally found on page 228 of the 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook.

2 T finely chopped onion
2 T chopped green pepper
1 T olive oil
2  c chickenlike broth
1 c uncooked bulgur wheat
1/2 tsp salt

Cook and stir onion and pepper in oil until tender. Stir in remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer about 15 minutes.

Vegan MoFo #17: Hearty Vegetable Soup

This is a cheap, easy soup. Particularly cheap for me because most of what was in it came out of my garden and I didn’t make the effort to purchase veggie juice: I just reconstituted tomato powder to about the same consistency. I’m still using up the bunch of organic celery I got at the beginning of the month specifically for MoFo.

I enjoyed it a lot because it was just really basic, and sometimes it’s nice to not be all exotic and just get down to basics. Mr Pine Nut liked it too.

This recipe was originally found on page 171 of the 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook.

2 12-oz cans vegetable juice cocktail (I used dilute tomato sauce)
2 c water
1 lb green cabbage, finely chopped
1 medium onion, sliced
1 c sliced carrots
1/2 c chopped celery
2 T beeflike seasoning such as Beaf or mock chicken seasoning
1/2 tsp salt (if using unsalted tomato sauce like I did as opposed to veg juice)

Heat all ingredients to boiling. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until veggies reach desired tenderness. (The original recipe says an hour. I think not. I did 10 minutes.)

Vegan MoFo #15: Noodles Alfredo

I’m kind of obsessed with pasta. It was amplified while pregnant with Lou Who. It was like I was overcompensating with pasta for all the lentils I wasn’t eating.

So, you’re lucky (I guess) that I don’t inflict more pasta recipes on you.

This recipe for Noodles Alfredo called for a stick of butter, and I cut that in half. What is with Betty Crocker and going so heavy on the butter, anyway? I think you could probably use olive oil or another oil to good effect here as well and avoid the saturated fat all together. That’s what I’ll do next time I make it.

I liked the nutty texture of the almond “parmesan” and the flavour in general very much.

Noodles Alfredo with Spinach

This recipe was originally found on page 222 of the 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook.

8 oz uncooked pasta
1/4 c vegan margarine
1/4 c water blended with 1/4 c cashews (add extra water as needed to make sure it’s 1/2 cup total)
1 c “parmesan” (this links to my favourite parm substitute recipe, but use whichever one you like)
1 T parsley flakes
1/4 tsp salt (I’d omit this next time, because the parmesan had plenty of salt already)

Cook noodles according to package directions. Heat margarine and cashew cream over low heat until margarine is melted. Stir in remaining ingredients; keep warm over low heat. Add noodles and stir gently until well-coated.