Oven Baked Bean and Cheese Taquitos- Vegan, Wheat, and Soy Free

  This is such a simple recipe that I debated for a long time if I should even post it. It's sort of like posting a recipe for cereal. But these were so tasty and I did learn one little trick (adding oil to the tops so they don't crack right open) so I decided to post it anyway.
  Also, at Central Market they have an enormous bulk foods section (I mean bulk like you scoop it from bins into bags, not bulk like Costco size stuff), including instant soup mixes, a lot of which, like the corn chowder and split pea, are free of dairy, wheat, rice, soy, etc. etc. Last time we were there we found "Instant Refried Beans" which sounded weird but was Jack-friendly so we bought them. OMG they were amazing! But you can make your own 'refried' beans, I'll include my recipe, or buy pre-made vegan refried beans.
  These were crispy enough for my 17 month old and 3 year old to eat without them falling apart, so that was a total plus.
  Anyway, here goes!

Vegan Baked Bean and Cheese Taquitos

We served ours with chipotle lime sunflower sour cream. Mmm!

12 small corn tortillas
1 cup (or so) vegan refried beans*
1/2 cup Daiya Pepper Jack or Cheddar cheese shreds
1 Tbl olive oil

Preheat oven to 400.
Wet a paper towel and squeeze out most of the water. Wrap 2-3 tortillas at a time in the damp paper towel and microwave for 15-20 seconds. On a flat surface, plop about a tablespoon of beans onto one half of a warmed tortilla and minimally spread it. You don't want it to go all the way to the edges but you also don't want a big ball of beans. Sprinkle with a big pinch of cheese shreds and roll the tortilla up, starting with the bean side. Lay the taquito on a cookie sheet with the free edge down. Repeat with remaining tortillas.
Lightly brush the tops with olive oil.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the tops begin to turn golden brown.
Roll them over so now the free edge is up (though it shouldn't try to unroll anymore) and brush again with olive oil. Return to oven for another 8-10 minutes or so.

*"Refried" Black Beans
1 can black beans, drained
1 can garbonzo beans, drained
1 Tbl Earth Balance Soy Free buttery Spread
1 tsp ground cummin
1 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp salt

In a medium saucepan, heat beans. Remove from heat. Add butter and seasonings and stir well. Using a potato masher, mash to desired consistency. I prefer some larger pieces of beans in mine so I don't use a food processor, but you could use one if you like smooth beans.

Quinoa and Black Bean "Taco" Burgers - Wheat and Soy Free and Vegan

 When I set out to make these I was sort of picturing something like a flat taco flavored falafel eaten in a tortilla with shredded lettuce and other taco toppings. Well it didn't quite work like that, what I ended up making were black bean/quinoa burgers that were flavored spectacularly and topped with Daiya pepper jack shreds and a (now Jack friendly) dairy free chipotle sour cream that was absolutely fantastic. These would have been great topped with fresh salsa and shredded lettuce also, and we certainly will be making these again.

Vegan Quinoa and Black Bean Taco Burgers

2 cups cooked quinoa (cooked in vegetable broth instead of water)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, diced
2 tsp olive oil
1 Tbl chili powder
1/4 tsp oregeno
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 cup Daiya Pepper Jack Shreds (plus more for topping, optional)
2 Tbl ground flax meal
3 Tbl cold water

In a medium skillet, heat olive oil. Saute onion, bell pepper, and garlic until onion is transparent and bell pepper begins to lose it's vibrant green color, about 5-7 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a measuring cup or ramekin, mix flax meal and cold water and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, mash black beans with a fork or potato masher. It's not necessary to smash up every one but get a good amount of them smooshed. Stir in quinoa, sauted onion mixture, seasonings, Daiya cheese shreds, and flax gel, making sure to evenly mix everything. Refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.
Heat a griddle to 375. Form dough into ping pong size balls and them flatten to form patties. Grill about 5 minutes on each side.

Serve with 1 Tbl Sunflower Seed Sour Cream mixed with 1/4 tsp chipotle powder and 1 tsp lime juice.

Sunflower Seed Sour Cream

3/4 cup raw sunflower seeds (you can use roasted unsalted seeds, the flavor will be a tad nuttier though)
1/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder

Blend until completely smooth (if you have a Blentec, the "Sauces" button works perfectly for this.) Keep refrgerated in a tightly sealed container for up to a week.

Bacon Cheeseburger Macaroni - Wheat, Dairy, and Soy Free

  So let me preface this post by saying that I have tried for quite some time to find a reasonable tasting 'cheese' sauce to make vegan macaroni and cheese. I've found recipes calling for tofu, I've found recipes calling for heaps of nutritional yeast flakes and flour, I've found recipes that call for copious amounts of mustard and it all tastes terrible. And even those in which the flavor is at least decent, it's nothing like cheese.
  Today I was making lunch for the boys and this just came to me. It's so simple... this recipe surely must already exist but if it does I have never come across it in all my vegan cheese searches. AND IT ACTUALLY TASTED LIKE CHEESE!

 I knew I had to do something with it this very night and so I settled on a version of one of Chris and my favorite dishes from our past life: Cheeseburger Hamburger Helper. How can you go wrong with ground meat, noodles, and cheese??

Bacon Cheeseburger Macaroni



1 small white onion, chopped
1 Tbl olive oil
1 lb lean ground turkey
2 cloves garlic, minced
a few dashes of Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire Sauce (optional)
3/4 cup unsweetened plain almond milk
3 Tbl Soy Free Earth Balance Buttery Spread
1 cup Daiya Cheddar Shreds (plus more for topping)
1 tsp sea salt
a dash of turmeric (optional, mainly just for color)
3 tsp nutritional yeast flakes
1 Tbl cornstarch + 2 Tbl cold water, mixed until there are no lumps
12 oz cooked corn pasta elbows, spirals, or shells
2 slices Food For Life White Rye bread
1/8 tsp sea salt
2 slices turkey bacon, sliced into pieces

Pre Heat oven to 350.
In a large skillet, heat olive oil. Add onions and garlic and saute until onion is transparent, about 3 minutes. Add turkey and Worcestershire sauce, if using, and brown about 6-7 minutes. Remove from heat. Drain if excess fluid remains, though with lean turkey there really shouldn't be much.
Meanwhile in a small sauce pan, heat butter and almond milk over medium heat until steaming and butter is completely melted. Add Daiya and stir frequently until shreds are almost all melted. Add salt, turmeric, and nutritional yeast and stir well. Slowly stir in cornstarch/water mixture and continue to stir until cheese sauce has thickened.
Pour the cheese sauce into the skillet and stir until the turkey and cheese are mixed well. Add pasta and toss to coat everything evenly.
Pour the pasta mixture into a large casserole dish. Set aside.
In a blender or food processor, process bread slices and salt into bread crumbs. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top of pasta mixture, then top with a small handful of Daiya Cheddar Shreds and turkey bacon pieces.
Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes or until turkey bacon is crisp and bread crumbs are toasted. Cool 5 minutes before serving.

Go Raw Super Cookies

 Sorry, this is not a recipe. Yesterday while in Central Market, I was wandering down an isle and saw an area I'd never seen before: the raw food section. Now while I personally think that raw is best, (obviously raw foods contain more nutrients, fiber, and enzymes than cooked foods) we do not actively strive to eat a mostly raw diet or anything because frankly it seems super daunting and all I imagine is carrot sticks and salads. Well, and yummy green smoothies, but I digress.
 So as I'm just casually looking at the raw food area, I see something called "Super Cookies". There were roughly 10 different flavors (Super Chips, too!). What really caught my eye was that they posted the ingredient list in large print right on the front of the package. That's bold and screams to me "We're PROUD of this stuff." There's no hard to pronounce chemical preservatives, no funky fillers that make you scratch your head pondering their presence (like the time we found milk as an ingredient in plain pre-cooked chicken breast strips...wtf?). Just simple organic ingredients, and thankfully no rice, or oat in most flavors.
 But the real question is, how do they taste!? We tried the Masala Chai flavored cookies and first of all, these little things are only about the size of a quarter, and the serving size listed on the package is 18 pieces, yikes! So for my $6 there's really only 3 servings, but thankfully Jack is not interested in eating that much of anything all at once. They taste sweet but not cloyingly so, nowhere near it. They have a spicy, earthy flavor. They are crispy, but both boys seemed not to be put off by that in the least. I'd say that these were a big hit. And another MAJOR plus... they don't crumble, there are no crumbs coming off these babies!
 So for a quick healthy snack that packs a major nutritional punch and that fits in the diaper bag easily and isn't messy, these are well worth the semi-ridiculous price tag, in my opinion. I'm sold!!

Arepas with Chipotle Lime Sauce-Vegan, Soy, Wheat, and Gluten Free

It's Meatless Monday! Arepas is a dish made from cornmeal popular in Columbia. I found a version of this recipe posted on Meatless Monday's FB page and made these but I had to make a lot of substitutions. These were REALLY good. Chris said it's his favorite Meatless Monday recipe so far, however, I don't think these turned out like arepas are really supposed to be. I looked at pictures online and some look almost like pitas, though some looked like ours did as well. Who the heck knows, who cares! All I know is these were yummy!

The chipotle lime sauce was super good on top, but it uses Soy Free Vegenaise which contains rice syrup. Chris and I are just trying to finish off the big container of it we bought before we found out it was not Jack safe.

Vegan Arepas

1 cup cornmeal (grits work in a pinch, it just needs longer to sit and soften up)
1/2 cup Daiya Cheddar Cheese shreds
2 tsp sea salt
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
2 Tbl soy free Earth Balance buttery spread
1/2 cup corn kernals
1 tsp dried cilantro
a dash of smoked chipotle chile powder (optional)
*1/2 cup mashed potato flakes
3 Tbl peanut or other neutral oil for frying

In a bowl mix cornmeal, daiya, and salt. Set aside.
In a small saucepan, heat almond milk on medium-low heat. Once it begins to steam (about 3 minutes), add Earth Balance and allow to melt. Slowly stir in cornmeal mixture and stir until it's pretty thick, 1-2 minutes. Fold in corn, cilantro, and chipotle powder. Allow it to sit about 15 minutes. *If after 15 minutes the mixture is still to thin to be able to roll into balls, add mashed potato flakes.
Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat.
Roll arepas dough into ping pong ball size balls and then flatten. Fry them a few at a time for about 2-3 minutes on each side. Daiya has a tendency to burn easily so keep your eye on them!
Remove to a paper towel lined plate to absord excess oil. Serve alone or chipotle lime sauce drizzled on top!

Chipotle Lime Sauce (CONTAINS RICE)

3 Tbl Soy Free Vegenaise
1 Tbl fresh lime juice
1 tsp smoked chipotle chile powder

Stir all ingredients together. That's it!

Tamale Pie -Dairy, Egg, Wheat, Soy Free

Ok, so don't judge tamale pie on it's lack of photogenicity (yep, I looked it up and that's a real word)! It may not have great presentation but it was very easy and tasted great.
I thought I had enough cornmeal but ended up being about 1/4 of a cup short so I added corn flour and a Tbl of ground flax to make up for it, but you could definitely just use 1 cup of cornmeal.

Tamale Pie

Filling
1 large onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbl olive oil (plus some to grease dish)
1 lb ground turkey
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 tsp salt
a few cracks of fresh ground pepper
1 tsp chili powder (or more... I sort of over did it in our recipe so I made a more conservative estimate of how much might be better)
Crust
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 Tbl flax meal
1/4 cup corn flour
4 cups water, divided
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chili powder
Shredded Daiya cheddar (optional)

Pre heat oven to 350.
In a large skillet, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic and saute until onion is just tender. Add turkey and brown, being sure to break it apart into small bits. Once browned, add tomato, salt and pepper, and chili powder and stir well. Reduce heat to low and simmer about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, add 3 cups water, 1 tsp salt, and 1 tsp chili powder. Bring to a boil. In a bowl or measuring cup, mix cornmeal, corn flour and flax and slowly stir in 1 cup of water until there are no lumps. Whisk the cornmeal mixture into the boiling water. Stir continuously for 5 minutes. The mixture will really thicken up, so bring your muscles! Cover and set aside.

Grease a casserole dish with olive oil. Pour half of the cornmeal mixture into the dish and spread it evenly across the bottom and partway up the sides. Place the casserole dish in the oven for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and pour in the meat mixture, then cover the top with the rest of the cornmeal mixture. I used a spatula lightly oiled with olive oil to spread the top. It does not have to completely cover the top but give it the ol' college try.

Bake for 15 minutes, then sprinkle with Daiya cheddar and return to the oven for another 5-7 minutes until cheese is melted. Allow to sit for about 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

Crispy Quinoa Tots - Vegan, Wheat/Gluten Free

 It's Meatless Monday! I was all set to make quinoa burgers following a version of this recipe from Including Cake, but I just really wasn't feeling it since we had turkey burgers last night. Plus once I saw how nicely the ...uh... dough? allowed itself to be molded, I just HAD to try to make tots. I'm so glad I did!
 While there's nothing necessarily un-allergy friendly about most tater tots, these are much healthier and were so yummy, and I actually had fun making them. They came out perfectly, crisp on the outside but soft and yummy on the inside. Jack and Ben both really enjoyed these, and I think they would very easily freeze to be cooked later. Also, I fried these in our Presto Cool Daddy fryer and peanut oil, but you could probably bake these or pan fry them in olive, peanut, or corn oil. Feel free to leave out the seasonings (except salt!) for a more traditional 'potato-tot' flavor, but the flavor of these was very subtle.

*For those with potato allergies, you can substitute corn starch, arrowroot, tapioca flour, or other starches for the potato starch to make these tots completely potato free.

Crispy Quinoa Tots

2 cups cooked quinoa
1/2 cup canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 rounded Tbs flax meal
dash of Tabasco Chipotle Sauce (optional)
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp sea salt
4 Tbs potato starch*
3 Tbl corn or olive oil if pan frying


If using a fryer, preheat to 375. (If pan frying, heat oil in a large skillet on medium high heat when you are about 3/4 of the way done shaping your tots so the oil doesn't burn but is hot by the time you are ready.)
In a medium/large bowl, mash chickpeas with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. If you cooked the quinoa immediately before starting this process as I did and it's still hot, leave it all to sit until mostly cool. Shape 1/2 Tbs at a time into cylinder shape by rolling them into balls and then pinching the top and bottom slightly and pressing in the sides a little. No need to get fancy unless you are a perfectionist or trying to impress someone ;)
If using fryer, fry in two batches for about 4 minutes each, until golden brown. Remove to a paper towel lined plate. If pan frying, add 1/4 of the tots at a time and roll them in the oil so they brown evenly on all sides. Remove to a paper towel lined plate.