Au Gratin Potatoes n Beets and Chia Pudding

Au gratin potato and beets with sunflower beet cheese –

5 Thinly sliced white potatoes

5 thinly sliced small beets

mix with sunflower cheese recipe from yesterday add juice of 1 more lime and 2 pinches of salt

I just put the potatoes and the beets into a food processor with the slicing attachment, it makes it super easy. I then put the sliced vegetables into a pan, and smothered it with the sunflower cheese recipe -- what was leftover over from the other day after having falafels. A full recipe could also work too, and you could slice up more potatoes so it's not too wet.

Something about me, I'm terrible at having a fixed plan in terms of having things in the oven. I would recommend something like 200 C for 1 hour, perhaps, but do check it midway to see if they are done, Also covering the potatoes may help, I didn't have a cover when I made this, so they were slightly crunchy, but it didn't seem to matter because everyone ate them up regardless, including myself. 

Chia Chocolate Pudding:

2 tbsp of sugar

4 tbsp of chia seeds

2 tbsp of soy milk powder

1-2 tbsp of oats

enough water to cover all ingredients

Let sit for 5 minutes, mix and enjoy.

For the most part, I try to avoid sugar, but at times.. it's almost impossible, so well just enjoy in those moments :) 

Apart from eating this today, I was bad, I had popcorn and acai for dinner. 

and a mango for a snack in the afternoon. 

Acai is a super popular food here in brazil and it's basically like a sorbet but made with acai.. so i like to consider it like a meal ;P because it's super rich in omega 3's and loads of other vitamins. It's hard to know how much is retained of that when processed and sugar added.. but it's amazing. Make sure to try it if you ever come to Brazil :) 

Falafels and sunflower beet cheese

I've started this thing, since new years, to write down my goals the night before every day, and list out ways that I can lower my ecological footprint. One way to do this is through food. 

Where I am currently living -- Brazil -- there isn't a compost collection. However where I am staying there is a small garden, but composting isn't an always. One goal that I have is to stop throwing organic material away and finding a way to always compost the material. 

The other goal, at least in the coming future is to become more and more plastic free, here in Curitiba, I have not found sources of non packaged organic foods -- like grains, beans and nuts. This is something that I would like to research more and find out how I could obtain them in something like cloth bags. However in the meantime before I figure out either how to live without foods that come in plastic or find a way to obtain healthy package free foods, I'm making use of the foods in the cupboard already available. 

Falafels 

3-4 cups of soaked chickpeas

3 tbsp flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp alho (garlic) powder (portuguese popped out for a second ;))

1 red onion chopped.

Put all ingedients into a food processor and process until finer than couscous and almost a paste, but not quite. 

Shape into balls and put into the oven 200 C for 30 minutes – roughly estimated. They should be well cooked and not taste raw on the inside and slightly browned on the outside.

Sunflower Beet Cheese – 

1 cup of raw unsalted sunflowers soaked for atleast an hour

1 small beet chopped

½ tsp turmeric

 ½ tsp curry powder

2 garlic cloves

½ tsp salt

juice of 1 and ½ limes

enough water to reach the top of the ingredients in a blender, 1 tsp of agave.

Blend until smooth.

Serve falafels with cheese and can add some cilantro and sliced limes as garnish :)) 

Cooking in Brazil

Ola,

It's been a crazy year with lots of big changes.

I recently moved to Brazil.

And started cooking a lot.

The ingredients are a bit different here, however more or less similar.

I've taken a stronger stance against packaged foods. Hence have started making more foods from scratch.

I've been making cakes almost every day. I know sugar isn't the best, however it seems that people here are enjoying it, and have been requesting them :) So, any chance to make vegan sweets for people who otherwise aren't vegan, I think is a good thing.

Some of the foods I have made this week are:

Lasagna -- home made whole wheat pasta -- found a recipe here http://minimalistbaker.com/homemade-vegan-pasta/, for the ones I made, I only used whole wheat.
Tofu Ricotta -- http://allrecipes.com/recipe/229285/tofu-ricotta/ I used the juice of one whole lime, plus some agave for sweetness and a few cloves of garlic.
Lentils -- I cooked lentils in the bare amount of water so they remained al dente, and added some smoked paprika along with this middle east seasoning mix that I have from India, which has cumin , coriander and a few other spices.
10 tomatoes -- I boiled these tomatoes down, plus 1-2 tbsp of basil, 2 tsp oregano, 1 tsp salt, a little bit of agave, and juice of half of a lemon, plus I added a vegetable here called chuchu, otherwise known as chayote in English. I hadn't seen this vegetable before coming here, also a zucchini could be substituted.
brazilian pumpkin (a small regular pumpkin could be substituted) pumpkins here are a blackish color and the quality of them when they are baked is unbelievable, they are creamy and super tasty.
I cut into 1 " pieces and baked for 30 minutes

I wanted to make a sunflower cheese for the top, however I ran out of time and I was starving.

After cooking the pasta, I layered pumpkin, lentils, tofu and then the tomato sauce, followed by more pasta, pumpkin, tofu and another layer of tomato sauce. I would have liked to put some cashew or sunflower cheese on top, but ran out of time.

The recipe I would have gone for would have been.

1/2 cup ground cashews or sunflower seeds, 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of veggie broth, 1-2 tbsp of tapioca starch, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp lemon juice-- I probably would have played with the flavorings.. but this is roughly what I would have tried to do. And then topped the lasagna.

I baked the lasagna for 20 minutes at something like 250 celcius.

Some things that I miss quite a bit here, okay one thing that I miss a lot is nutritional yeast. They have their own version of nutritional yeast here, it tastes like beer. It's okay, however I really miss the kind that is easily found in the states.

Would be nice to know how to get it here :)

I also made 'tacos'

Chili powder is not available here, but I learned essentially it's paprika, cumin, oregano, and garlic powder maybe some cayenne pepper.. however tastes are fairly mild, people here generally don't eat much spice as I've noticed, at least not the people I've been generally spending time with here in the south.

I used kidney beans, 6 tomatoes, 1 zucchini, the seasonings listed above and lime juice, I would have added cilantro but wasn't available at the store.

I also made a sunflower seed sour cream.
I soaked about 3/4 cup of sunflower seeds, and then blended them with lime juice, garlic powder and some salt. I also chopped up some onion and tomato for a pico de gallo, added some salt, and lime juice.

I tried to make my own tortillas but unfortunately they were a failure, they tasted fine, but they were more like crackers? I used only whole wheat,  maybe they needed a more refined flour to have worked properly? I'm not sure.

Will post cake recipes soon :) 

Bread

My sister in law made dinner for our family last weekend. My husband and I had just finished a four day mostly juice fast.  Our day looked something like this:

Breakfast:
Lemon water
Green tea
Pineapple kale juice
(1/2 pineapple, 6 kale leaves, 10 romaine leaves, 1" ginger)

Lunch:
Cilantro apple cabbage juice
(1/4 cabbage, half bunch cilantro, 2 apples, 10 romaine leaves)

Snack:
Watercress carrot juice
(1/2 bunch watercress, 10 romaine leaves, 5 carrots, 1/2 bunch parsley, 1/2 lemon)

Dinner:
Large salad
romaine lettuce, basil leaves, cilantro, fennel bulb thinly sliced, grapefruit, lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper

Anyway by day 4 I was pretty hungry for more substance.

My sister in law made this amazing bean pasta which I need to get the recipe for.
She also made bread with a red pepper spread, and a beautiful cabbage salad.

Unfortunately I don't have these recipes, but it was pure joy to eat!

I decided to make bread too after this.

Making bread does take some time, but oh is it sooo worth it!
I doubled this recipe...

Sandwich bread:
2 1/4 tsp dry active yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup water
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tbsp oil

Let the active yeast, sugar and the warm water sit for 10 minutes. Then add the rest of the water, salt and oil.  One cup at a time add the flour.  Knead with your hands until it's elastic. Then put into a bowl and let rise for 1 hour. After 1 hour knead the air out of it, and let rise again for 15 minutes.
Oil a tray to put the bread onto, and put some oil on the outside of the bread.  Preheat the oven to 375 F.  Bake the bread for 25 minutes. Cool the bread on a rack for 10-15 minutes.

This bread possibly was a terrible idea, because now it's hard to want to eat anything else!

lol.

Bread plus vegan butter (earthbalance) plus daiya block mozzarella cheese. Is amazing. I never used to like vegan cheese, and then I never used to like any vegan cheese that wasn't thoroughly melted. But
either my taste buds have changed or this cheese is plain amazing.

Bread. butter. cheese. it is so good. lol.
oh also, I've enjoyed it with yellow mustard too, I know that's probably gonna be way too weird for some people, but I guess I just really love mustard.

For breakfast lately I've been having raw granola -- Go Raw: Raisin Crunch, Sprouted Granola
with this almond horchata, that is also pretty amazing.

Anyway, lazy food days that's for sure.

:)

Sloppy Joe Pasta

Okay today I experimented with Sloppy Joes in the Pressure cooker, it came out really good!

1 cup dried lentils
1 chopped onion
3 garlic cloves chopped
2 cups of water
2 tbsp of soy sauce
2 tsp of chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
8oz tempeh roughly sliced /chopped


I mixed all of these ingredients in a pressure cooker on high for 10 minutes. This unfortunately wasn't enough time. So I did another 5 minutes. Still wasn't quite enough time, So I am thinking that 20 minutes in the pressure cooker with unsoaked lentils should be enough.  Fast release.

After the first round of 10 minutes I added

1 can of diced tomato
3-4 dashes of chipotle powder
1/4 c tomato ketchup
1/2 tbsp yellow mustard

That's when I put them back in for 5 minutes.

But I have heard that acidity in tomatoes makes it harder for lentils to get soft.. so maybe it's possible
that the first round could only be like 15 minutes with the lentils, and if you wanted to do a second round you can otherwise, it tasted pretty good after the first round, the only reason I did another was I was thinking maybe the lentils could get a bit softer. They did get a bit softer, but not as soft as maybe I would have preferred. I was so hungry though I ate it anyway :)

I also cooked up a package of spiral noodles... mixed it with the sloppy joe stuff, and sprinkled it with nutritional yeast.

It was amazing.

:) 

Possibly the best vegan breakfast?

Luckily this past week I've been on a homecooking/working out binge daily.

For breakfast a couple of days ago, I made:
Steamed kale
Steamed acorn squash
Scramble tofu (1 tsp of oil, tofu, plus generous dashes of herbs (mixed, basil), nutritional yeast, paprika and a bit of salt and pepper)

I mixed it all up afterwards, I wasn't able to eat the all of it.

And last night, we had family over my mom made a vegan chili full of veggies -- broccoli, bell peppers, sweet potato, beans, corn, tomatoes, and mushrooms.

I made this corn bread recipe, which turned out awesome and everyone loved it!
http://www.food.com/recipe/vegan-cornbread-115929

This morning, I mixed my leftover bfast from the other day, kale, squash, tofu, plus corn bread, and raosted chipotle bean dip (available at natural grocer) Kind of like a scramble, and wow, it is amazing!!

Next bfast with company I am making this for sure! Chipotle beans, cornbread, plus scramble of kale, tofu plus squash!

Different but works sooo well in the morning :)

Just found this gem

Wow I just found this... I liked how they put this together and labelled everything so very nicely :)

http://www.vegan.com/cookbooks/