One of the things I ate a lot as a child was that very yellow Lipton chicken rice. I remember having a curious love-hate relationship with it. It was good, and it was pretty, and yet I got sick of it so quickly. Maybe it was too salty for me. Boxed and packaged food usually is.
GooGoo wanted a picture of her food. I don’t know why she had the grumpface on.
But, I decided it would be fun to try to recreate this in vegan form. So, keep reading for the recipe.
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Today’s musical selection has nothing to do with chickens, rice, or Lipton. It is, however, nostalgic for me, and that is reason enough.
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In a heavy-bottomed pan, stir together:
1 1/2 cups brown rice
1 clove crushed garlic
2 T oil
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 T chicken seasoning
1/8 – 1/4 tsp turmeric
Turn on heat and cook rice for about 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly, to toast rice.
When the oil is beginning to absorb, add:
3 1/3 cups water
Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer. Allow to cook about 35 minutes. Turn off burner. Let stand 10 minutes before removing lid and fluffing with fork.
The first five rice recipes I have to share are rice basics, in a variety of flavours. Some of them will get re-used later on in my ricefest in other dishes, but all can be stand-alone side dishes as well. You will notice that all of them are based on the Brasilian rice method, which is why I shared that first.
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In keeping with today’s Spanish theme, here’s a fine exhibition of tremolo on harp:
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In a heavy-bottomed pan, stir together:
1 1/2 cups brown rice (I use plain long grain brown, but jasmine and basmati work fine too)
1 large clove crushed garlic
2 T oil
3/4 tsp salt
1 small jalapeno, seeded and minced
1 tsp cumin seed
1 T taco seasoning
2 small tomatoes, chopped (or 1/2 cup canned tomatoes, drained)
1 tsp onion powder
Turn on heat and cook all of the above for about 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly, to toast rice.
When the oil is beginning to absorb, add:
3 3/4 cups chicken broth (I stirred 4tsp chicken seasoning with 3 3/4 cups water)
Bring to boil, cover tightly, and reduce to a simmer for 45 minutes. Then let sit covered 10 minutes (do not remove from heat). Fluff with a fork and serve.
We have green beans coming on, and I wanted to think of something to do with them besides, ya know, just steaming them. (Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with just steaming them.)
So here is what I did.
I cooked 1 pound of shell pasta and rinsed it and set it aside.
In my food processor, I ground up:
1 heaping cup green onions
1/4 lb seitan/gluten
1 handful of fresh basil leaves (16 leaves, if you want an exact count)
Then I steamed 3/4 pound of fresh green beans whilst I chopped 2 cups fresh tomatoes.
Then I drained the beans and dumped all of the above components into a big pan, stirred in a little salt and oil and warmed it through.
It was simply delightful and delicious, although neither Lou Who nor GooGoo would touch the green beans.
I was going to take part in Vegan MoFo again this year. I signed up. My theme was going to be Music and Rice, and it was going to be super awesome.
But then I had a reality check. I’m preparing a concert with some friends that we’re intending to have ready by mid-September. I simply don’t have time to commit to MoFo with having to get that much music practise in!
So, I had to un-sign-up. Waaaaaaa. HOWEVER, I’m still planning to do my theme, just not all in one month. And I’m going to start now.
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Among the various treasures preserved from my childhood is a cassette tape on which I’ve written in ballpoint pen: PIANO AND RICE.
Music and I go way back. This tape is a gem, created by my friend Edda and I, on which are some pieces she played from her piano lesson book and a fair number of brilliant original compositions such as “Mother and Me”, “Thunder and Lightning”, and “The Swan”, all of which were made up on the fly whilst our mothers, oblivious to the genius they had managed to gift the world, quietly had a garage sale out front.
Consider the lyrics to “The Swan:”
Gracefully she swims along Down the Yahtzee river. Along came a toad and ate her up, Swimming down the river. Along came a toad and ate her up, Swimming down the river. OH NO! Oh. No.
So, in honour of this ridiculous piece of nostalgia from my childhood, I have a dual, and perhaps wacky, theme this year involving two of my favourite things: music and rice. I will not limit this music to piano, because while I like piano, it’s not my favourite thing in the world any more.
So, to kick things off, here is some Bach, brilliantly executed on two harps, because Bach. And harps.
And why, you may ask, is the tape titled “Piano and Rice”? Well, the end of the tape is a recording I had running one evening when I was hungry for rice, and so it is a real-time chronicle of the making of a pot of rice for yours truly. I was probably 10 or 11. My dad sings a hit song called “Achy Breaky Rice” and one of the tracks is called “Atom Bombs and a Butt Imprint”.
Yes. I had an interesting childhood.
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I already used this picture in another post, but hey, rice is rice, and kind of boring to look at on its own.
SO ANYWAY. RICE IS KIND OF AWESOME. I’m kicking things off with my go-to rice recipe. It is super simple – just a few extra steps from regular rice cooking – but tastes like a million bucks, and I can’t really go back to plain old rice anymore! GooGoo and Lou Who both love it, even though GooGoo claims, “I don’t like gar-wick.”
This recipe is adapted from Matthew Locricchio’s The 2nd International Cookbook for Kids (this is *not* a vegan cookbook, but worth it for this recipe alone in my opinion!). My changes: reduce the oil, change the water/rice proportions, and use brown rice. And I’ve tripled it – the original calls for 1 cup of rice, but we go through so much rice in our house that it would be just dumb to not cook enough to last a few days all at once.
In a heavy-bottomed pan, stir together:
3 cups brown rice (I use plain long grain brown, but jasmine and basmati work fine too)
3 T crushed garlic (3 large cloves)
1/4 c oil
2 1/4 tsp salt
Turn on heat and cook rice for about 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly, to toast rice.
When the oil is beginning to absorb, add:
6 2/3 cups water
Stir together and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover pot, and allow to simmer 30-45 minutes. Don’t lift the lid until it looks like the water is almost absorbed.
When the water is absorbed (you will know because there will be steam holes in the rice that are no longer bubbling), turn off the heat and leave covered for 10 minutes. Then fluff with a fork and serve.
When I first met Mr Pine Nut, he was more or less constantly engaged in a determined effort to make Really Good Cornbread. Except he didn’t want to use a recipe.
I tried to convince him that Baking is a Science, and Requires Accurate Measurements, but he wouldn’t believe me.
So we had quite a few pans of rather heavy cornbread together, unless I was cooking, in which case I used the recipe on the cornmeal bag, like my mother had always done. It came out okay, though it never seemed to be as nice as when my mom made it.
Eventually I got the recipe my mother-in-law had used when working in a retirement centre kitchen, and I’ve used it ever since with good success and very few adaptations (the original called for eggs, so that was my main change). It always comes out perfectly, except when I try to use flax eggs in it. Flax eggs do NOT work in this recipe. I don’t know why. I’ve tried a number of times and with varying amounts of water. So I stick with the Ener-G egg replacer for this one.
The amount in black give you for either a pie pan or 9×9″ square pan. The amount in red gives you a 13×9″ pan batch.
Corn Bread
1 c (2 c)corn meal (sometimes I use a blend of corn flour and corn meal) 1/2 c (1 c)wheat flour 1/2 c (1 c)white flour 2 T (1/4 c)sugar 1/2 T (1 T)baking powder 1/2 tsp (1 tsp)salt 1/2 T (1 T)Ener-G egg replacer 2 T (1/4 c)water 1/3 c (2/3 c)oil (can do half applesauce) 1 c (2 c) non-dairy milk (any will work, and water will do in a pinch) 1/2 c (1 c)frozen corn (optional)
Now here are the SuperComplicated(tm) instructions!
In bowl #1, combine all dry ingredients.
In bowl #2, combine all wet ingredients.
Transfer contents of bowl #1 to bowl #2 and stir just until combined.
Pour into a sprayed pan and bake at 350. The 8×8″ will take roughly 20-25 minutes, and the 13×9 at least 30 minutes.
The toothpick test works this way for this recipe: at the end of your baking time, if it comes out clean, let it go another couple of minutes.
You can also do this in a cast-iron skillet with excellent results. I’ve been doing it that way a lot lately.
So, Skittles are vegan, if you didn’t know that. No gelatin!
But this post isn’t about Skittles. It’s really about our nonfire. I would have posted about this a long time ago except that I’ve had all kinds of computer issues and then I couldn’t find my card reader to get photos off my camera. So forget that this happened almost two months ago.
As you may recall, last year we had a bonfire. This year, it was kind of wet, and we actually have a house fit to throw a party in, so I decided to have a nonfire instead. I mean, there was a fire in the woodstove, but that hardly counts aside from HEY, IT WAS WARM. And dry. And inside.
We invited a lot of people from church and elsewhere and had a lot of no-shows. All the people who ended up coming were from church. I’m not complaining! Except, yanno, as always, I had way too much food.
It was March, so I went with a St Patrick’s Day kind of theme. So it was all GREEN and RAINBOWS and stuff. My Irish flag veggie tray was a thing of beauty… at least to me. We also had crackers, pretzels, hummus, guacamole, chips… and the star of the meal was the scalloped potatoes. I mean, what’s an Irish themed meal without potatoes?
As with my chickpea potpie, I faced the dilemma of needing it to be soy and nut free. Usually I use a cashew-based sauce. But I decided to try it with an oat milk based sauce, since that worked in the potpie. And it worked for the potatoes too! They were a hit and so delicious. Want the recipe? Well, here it is.
Soy and Nut Free Vegan Scalloped Potatoes
To make the oat milk:
Soak 1 c oats in 5 c water overnight. Add 1/16 tsp salt in the morning.
Blend for a couple minutes and then strain. This makes one quart of milk.
When you’re ready to make your potatoes:
Peel and slice 8 c potatoes. Boil in 3.5 c water until partially cooked (7-10 minutes). Drain potatoes and arrange in a sprayed 13×9 Pyrex-type pan, and set aside.
In a saucepan stir together:
6 T oil
1/2 c onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, crushed or chopped
Add:
6T unbleached flour
1 tsp salt
1-2 tsp of a favourite dried seasoning (I used dill)
3 c oat milk
Stir dry ingredients in first, then add the milk very gradually, stirring thoroughly to prevent lumpage. Stir constantly over medium heat until thick and bubbly. Remove from heat again.
Pour sauce over potatoes. Cover pan tightly with foil. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake 25 more minutes.
Aside from the food, we had good music, good visiting, and an entertaining escapade with some shrimp that mysteriously appeared in someone’s contribution of supposedly vegetarian Chinese takeout. Train Boy climbed high up in a fir tree and didn’t die. Yep, all in all a good evening.
It was very interesting because we had a different group of people than the usual group that comes to our bon-or-non-fires, so the dynamic was totally new. That was fascinating for me to observe. Is that weird?
And, in closing, here’s a picture of rainbow-hued chocolate chip cookies to brighten your day.
So, whilst I am feeling Completely Uninventive, I’m going to share this recipe that is from my growing-up years. We got it from our friend Ruth because I loved these bars SO much, so I have no idea where the recipe originally came from. The problem was, they were so, SO sweet that I’m pretty sure my mom only made them maybe twice.
They really are rather sickeningly sweet. But, if you’re serving a crowd of normal people, that works out because you can cut them into smaller pieces. (This plan doesn’t work so well if you’re serving a crowd of clones of, oh, ME.)
At any rate, because I do care about my health, here’s what I have started to do. I’m posting the recipe with its original full sugar content, but these are the two things I flip between to reduce the content: I either halve the sugar in the dough, or I use smushed-up fresh berries instead of jam. It’s the sugared dough + sugared fruit that is the lethal sugar wallop with these, so reducing one or the other is the key.
(If you want a super healthified version of these, check out my Breakfast Bars from MoFo last year.)
I used cherry jam in this particular batch.
Ruth’s Raspberry Bars
3/4 c vegan margarine
1 c packed brown sugar
1 1/2 c flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 c oatmeal
1 10-oz jar of raspberry preserves (or any berry!) (I usually use more than this – 10oz is a pretty thin layer!)
Cream margarine and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add combined dry ingredients. Mix well.
Press half of the crumb mixture into greased 13×9 pan. Spread preserves. Sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture. Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes.
I made this tasty smoothie a while back. I haven’t posted a recipe in a while, so I’m going to share it, even though some people claim it’s Too Cold for Smoothies. (They are wrong, by the way. It is NEVER too cold for smoothies.)
In a blender, combine:
1 T flaxseed
1 apple (i used 2 tiny ones)
1/2 c vanilla soy milk
1 c frozen strawberries
1 c orange juice
1 tsp fresh grated ginger
Way back in the early days of my blog I posted this potpie recipe, which was good, but not great. I loved Marie Callender’s chicken potpies growing up and I really wanted to recreate that texture and flavour.
My father-in-law is allergic to nuts and soy (with the exception of soy oil, such as Crisco), so I wanted to not just make my potpie better, I wanted to make it better and be something he could eat.
Someone suggested an oat-milk-based bechamel sauce. So we’ll start this recipe with how I made the oat milk. Keep in mind the oats soak overnight, so this requires a little bit of planning ahead.
This makes a single 9″ potpie.
To make the oat milk:
Soak 1 c oats in 5 c water overnight.
Add 1/16 tsp salt in the morning.
Blend for a couple minutes and then strain.
I’m fresh out of cheesecloth, so I used a really classy nylon strainer. (Don’t worry, it’s a clean nylon. I think.)
In a saucepan stir together:Â
6 T oil (I used half olive, half canola)
2 small carrots, chopped
1 stalk celery, thinly sliced
1/2 c onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, crushed or chopped
Add 3 c oat milkvery gradually, stirring thoroughly to prevent lumpage. Stir constantly over medium heat until thick and bubbly. Remove from heat again. Add in:
3 c cooked garbanzo beans, thoroughly drained
3/4 c frozen peas
3/4 c frozen corn
Allow to sit while preparing the pie crust. Preheat oven to 425.
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Pie Crust (note: minus the thyme, this pastry can be used for fruit pies) (note 2: you can really use any pastry recipe, just add the thyme! If you can’t have soy of any stripe, I highly recommend Isa’s olive oil crust from Vegan Pie in the Sky.)
2/3 cup + 2T shortening
1 1/2 c white flour
1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp thyme
4-5 T cold water
Cut shortening into flour mixture until it resembles little peas. Add 1T water at a time, tossing with a fork, just until flour is moistened. Divide pastry evenly in two, shape each lump into a round and roll out on lightly floured board until circle is 2″ larger than pie pan. Press lower crust into pan. Add filling to pie and repeat rolling process with second lump of pastry to cover the pie. Or you can cut out shapes.
I made wedges out of my top crust.
Cover with foil. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove foil and bake another 20 minutes. It should be golden and bubbling.
This potpie was amazing. Today we had it with mashed potatoes, but it would also be amazing with rice (which is how I grew up eating potpie). And it was so good. I finally nailed the taste and texture I wanted. I definitely want to make this more often now.
Part of today’s Thanksgiving repast. We also had cranberry sauce, roasted vegetable stuffing, gravy, and two kinds of apple pie.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Stay tuned, because in the next week or so I have a holiday giveaway coming up.
It’s been pretty cold around here lately. 26 in the morning. Still, I’ve always preferred cold. I’d prefer to cuddle up in blankets and turn up the heater any day over melting in rivers of sweat when it’s summertime.
I’m planning to make a potpie as my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner, so since I needed to cook up garbanzos for that anyway, I was thinking of making Isa’s cabbage soup. But I don’t have any cabbage. Then I saw a thing of red beans sitting out and thought, I WILL MAKE UP A SOUP RECIPE TODAY. I had a bunch of soup-appropriate odds and ends in my fridge, so I pulled all of them out.
Then I cast them into a pot, and there came out this soup.
Start by sauteing the following in a little oil for a few minutes:
2c chopped onion
1 3/4 c chopped celery
4 cloves garlic
1T ginger, grated
Turn off heat and stir in:
3 carrots, cut however you want – I did coins
1.5 c cooked brownrice
2 c red beans
4 c garbanzo beans
8-10 c water (I did 10 but would do 8 next time, because I’m not a huge fan of broth)
2T mock chicken seasoning of choice
Bring to a boil and simmer until carrots reach desired tenderness (or lack thereof, if you’re a cooked carrot-phobe.)
Before serving, add:
1c chopped cilantro Salt as needed
Too Cheap for Pine Nuts 