Cookie Dough Hummus - Vegan, Wheat Free, and Deeelicious!

Close your eyes and imagine chocolate chip cookie dough, will you? The perfect balance of sweet and salty, crunchy and soft, awesome and delicious. But then there's the wheat, butter, eggs, milk chocolate part... yeah, super bummer.

We recently found a Bob's Red Mill chocolate chip cookie mix that, once baked is pretty darn good, but the dough is icky icky icky. Can't a girl just get some cookie dough?!

Enter: Cookie Dough Hummus! Whoa, who the heck woulda thought? It's raw, it's vegan, it's no bake, and it only takes (drum roll please....) 5 minutes to make!

Cookie Dough Hummus

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed thoroughly
1/4 cup cashew butter (or almond or peanut butter if you don't have cashew and need to try this recipe tonight and can't wait to run to the store... not that anyone would do that or anything)
1/4 cup vanilla almond milk
1/4 cup agave nectar (more if desired)
1 Tbl organic cane sugar
3 Tbs flax meal (finely ground flax seed)
1 Tbs vanilla extract
dash of sea salt
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup vegan chocolate chips (such as Enjoy Life brand)

Place all ingredients except chocolate chips in a food processor and blend until as smooth as possible. Scoop it into a large bowl, fold in chocolate chips, and serve!! This might be yummy on slices of apple, we just ate it with a spoon, but it's very rich. A little goes a long way!

Quick Minestrone Soup - Vegan and Wheat Free

 It's Meatless Monday! Today I actually got a call from a project director of Meatless Monday. She wanted to interview me about how going meatless has changed and enriched our lives. I know, as the mom of a child with multiple food allergies, it seems almost stupid to commit to restricting our diets even more one night a week. But for us, realizing that not every meal had to follow the meat/veggies/carb model really opened my eyes. I started looking at and adapting vegan and vegetarian recipes and a whole new world was suddenly made visible to me. I discovered polenta, all the ways chickpeas can be used, and that you can create whole meals that satisfy everyone for half the price of a recipe including meat. Allergies suck, but even though we've removed whole food groups from our diet, we eat more varied and nutritionally complete foods than the typical american diet, and for that I am (almost) thankful for multiple food allergies.

  Anyway, I would like to make minestrone from scratch soon, the kind you simmer on the stove for 5-6 hours. But in the meantime, here is a super fast and tasty version to make on busy nights :)

Quick and Easy Minestrone Soup

28oz vegetable stock 
1 can italian seasoned stewed tomatoes, drained
1 can black beans (or kidney beans), drained and rinsed
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen mixed vegetables, such as italian style or country mix
2 tsp italian seasoning, crushed
1 1/2 tsp onion powder
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp sea salt
a few cracks of fresh ground black pepper
3 Tbl marinara sauce (optional)
14 oz corn-quinoa pasta elbows or other shapes

In a medium/large stock pot over high high heat, add vegetable stock, tomatoes, beans and chickpeas, and bring to a boil, about 4 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and add the rest of the ingredients except pasta. Return to a boil, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Add pasta and cover, simmering for 6-9 minutes, or until pasta is tender. Remove from heat, adjust seasonings to taste, and serve with nutritional yeast flakes sprinkled on top and yummy garlic toast to dip in it!

Soy Free Homemade 'Tofu' (Burmese Chickpea Nofu)

  With so few options for meats, I find myself looking to vegan recipes alot lately (since they don't include eggs or milk either). Invariably, they call for some form of tofu or textured vegetable protein, and with soy now off the table that was posing a problem for us. But then I found out that there are actually many types of 'tofu'. Tofu is made from soy bean curd, but there is also Nofu (or Tohu) made from chickpeas, Goma-Dofu made from sesame seed, and even some made from peanuts, peas, and even rice.

  Anyway, soy free 'tofu' products are not something many people know about, and it's definately hard to find in even the most open minded specialty grocery stores. But that's ok, because I found a recipe on The Republic of Bunny for homemade chickepea nofu, and it is great! Bob's Red Mill sells chickpea/fava bean flour mix that I actually found at Walmart of all places, so it shouldn't be something that is too hard to get ahold of. Bob's also sells a black bean flour that I am really interested in trying with this recipe!

  This recipe takes a day (with only 25 minutes of active time though), but it makes a whole lot so if you start in on Saturday night you'll have at least enough to get you through the week! You can use this in much the same way as you would use regular tofu; I cut some into 1 inch cubes and fried them with olive oil, bell peppers, onions, and a little salt and served them as a protein rich version of country homefries, and it was GOOD! You could also bread and bake it for 'chicken' parmesan, crumble it in fried rice to take place of the egg, use it to replace ricotta in a lasagna, etc. The possibilities are vast!

Burmese Tofu (Nofu)

1 1/2 cup chickpea flour (I used a chickpea/fava bean flour mix from Bob's Red Mill)
4 1/2 cups water
a pinch of tumeric (if you don't have any don't worry, I don't think it's really necessary at all)
1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt
You will also need a 6+ cup container with a lid and a loaf pan.

Mix the flour and water together in the container, stir to combine. Cover and let sit 12 hours. If you used a transparent container, you will see that the mixture has seperated into a light colored liquid on top and an opaque 'sludge' on the bottom.
Lightly oil a large saucepan and your loaf pan. Pour off the liquid part into your saucepan, reserving the sludge for later. Add salt and tumeric, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and stir continuously for 15 minutes. I'm sorry there is so much stirring involved but it really is important to keep this moving or it will get lumpy!
Once the 15 minutes are up, pour the 'sludge' from the container into the saucepan and stir for another 5 minutes. It's going to thicken up quickly and, if you are a wimp like me, near the end it'll take two arms to stir, but keep it moving!
Pour the mixture into your loaf pan and refrigerate for 12 hours to set. Once it's set, slice it and use it as you would regular tofu.

This is only about 1/5 of the amount this recipe makes.

I sliced mine into 'steaks' and put them in a Tupperware container to keep them from drying out.

Dairy Free Ground Turkey and Chickpea Curry with "Yogurt"

  I found a recipe on Kalyn's Kitchen for ground turkey curry tonight that, with a little tweaking, was allergy friendly and super yummy!

Apparently this was already adapted from a Rachel Ray recipe, but here is my final product:

Ground Turkey and Chickpea Curry

1 Tbs + 1 tsp olive oil
1lb ground turkey
1 large onion, chopped
3 Tbs curry powder (we used half sweet, half hot)
1 can petite diced tomatoes with juice
1 can chickpeas (garbonzo beans), drained
12oz sour cream substitute (we used Tofutti Sour Supreme)*
S&P to taste

Heat 1 Tbs olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat and add turkey. Break apart meat and lightly brown, about 7 minutes, drain if necessary. Push the turkey to one side of the pan and in the other side, heat 1 tsp oilive oil. Once hot, add onion and saute about 3-4 minutes. Sprinkle onions wiht curry powder and cook about 2 more minutes (I actually added about 1/2 Tbs of water to the onion-curry mixture as it was just dry powder stuck to onions and I was afraid it would burn). Stir onion and turkey together until well blended. Add tomatoes with juice and chickpeas and bring to a boil, then turn heat to low and simmer about 5 minutes. With heat still on low, stir in sour cream sub and simmer about 3-5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve hot over cooked brown rice or quinoa, or eat it all by itself as a stew! Yum!

It's not the prettiest dish I've ever made, but I take what I can get!

Jack and Ben both really liked this, which is really rare, but so did Chris and my dad which I don't think has ever happened before... Score!

* UPDATED: Now that we are also soy free, we use a soy free (and actually tastier, I think) sour cream substitute that is made with cashews. The recipe can be found here.