Crunchy Chia Cole Slaw

Cole slaw is a great dish that works well as a side for many meals. The way we make ours, it's nice and crunchy and is tasty enough for more than just burgers and hot dogs. Sometimes it is the main dish (or only dish) for a quick and light dinner. Far too many times people will deliver a cole slaw that is so laden with mayonnaise that its soggy and literally dripping. Instead we use a small amount of vegannaise an some vegan cream cheese to keep the mix crunchy and yet coated.

- 1 tablespoon vegannaise
- 2 tablespoons vegan cream cheese
- 2 tablespoons Daiya Havarti Wedge Style Cheese
- 1 tablespoon unsweetened almond milk
- 4 cups of cole slaw mix (or mixed shredded cabbage and carrots)
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes (or more)

1. Add the Daiya cheese and cream cheese to a small bowl and mash together with a fork.
2. Add vegannaise and mix together.
3. Add almond milk and stir to combine all ingredients. Some lumps are fine (who doesn't like chunks of Daiya cheese?).
4. In a mixing bowl add 2 cups of cole slaw mix. Add the Daiya-milk-vegannaise mixture to the cole slaw and mix together.
5. Add the chia seeds and mix together again.
6. Add the rest of the cole slaw mix and fold everything together.
7. Serve immediately or store in fridge for the opportune time. Sprinkle the nutritional on top of the bowl, or individual bowls (if you're like Nicole you can sprinkle them directly onto each serving and in your mouth).

Easy Vegan Chicken Wraps

And our final throwback to last June for the evening. A quick chicken wrap great for lunch.

"Easy vegan chicken wraps

• 1 serving of Vegan frozen chicken
• handful of cole slaw mix
• Handful of organic spring mix
• Veganaise
• Hot sauce
• BBQ sauce
• Earth Balance coconut spread(or margarine/oil of your choice)
• 1 wrap

1. Add about two teaspoons of EB spread or oil to a frying pan or small pot. Turn the stove top to medium-high heat.

2. After two-three minutes, add the vegan chicken. Cook for two minutes and then add your desired amount of hot sauce and BBQ sauce. Stir the chicken around a bit while it cooks so it does not stick to the bottom to much.

3. Cook the chicken for about five more minutes and then add the colslaw mix and spring mix to the pan/pot. Let these cook with the chicken for about two minutes while still stirring. Turn the stove top off. Add a small amount of Veganaise to the mixture and stir so that everything is coated evenly.

4. You are now ready to scoop this mixture onto your wrap. Fold the wrap and enjoy!"

Cheesy Kale Spring Rolls

Here is another amazingly delicious dish from last May. Daiya cheese wrapped up with kale, how could that possibly be bad?

"The following recipe is for some delicious baked spring rolls we made just last night. They were cheesy and warm and delicious. Though they were slightly messy as the vegan cheese oozed out during the cooking process.

Here is what you will need for ingredients:

• 14 spring roll wrappers (rice paper wrappers)
• 5 kale leaves
• 2 cups of spring mix salad
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce
• 1 package of Daiya wedge style jack cheese (or your favorite flavor)
• About 1 tablespoon of oil

Here are the tools you'll need:

• A cookie sheet
• A rack that fits on the cookie sheet
• A plate or wooden cutting board for wrapping your tasty treats
• A food processor (we used Ninja)
• A large bowl of hot water to soften the wrappers.
• A brush to spread the oil

1. First thing you need to do is break your kale up into manageable chunks for your food processor or blender so it is easier for it to rip your tasty greens to shreds. We used curly green kale, but any style you choose will be delicious. Chop that up for a few seconds.
2. Next, douse your chopped up kale with the hot sauce (if you're like us you'll add even more, smoked chipotle powder would also be a great addition here). And stuff the spring mix in next. Give this a couple pulses to break down the greens and mix in the hot sauce.
3. Now the good part: cut up the wedge style Daiya. We used an entire container of the delicious cheese, but you could use half of the container and still have the same effect. This is a super cheesy recipe though, so you're going to toss all of those cut up wedges into your food processor and give it a few more whirls until everything is incorporated together.
4. Now you're going to assemble everything. At this point you should set your oven at 350 degrees, put the rack on the cookie sheet and use your brush to oil up the rack so nothing sticks. Fill your bowl with hot water (we just used tap water that was as hot as possible) and get ready.
5. The wrappers just need to soak for a minute or less depending on how hot your water is. Going one at a time just take your wrapper and soak it in water holding it submerged until it becomes translucent and hydrated. After being "cooked" by the warm water, spread the wrapper out on your plate or wooden cutting board. Take one spoon (probably about a tablespoon) of your filling and put it just off center in the wrapper.
6. Now proceed by rolling these like a burrito (well, at least how we roll a burrito). Fold the closest edge over the filling. Then fold the left side over, followed by the right side and then roll. *At this point it is probably important to tell you not to wrap them too tight, if you do some cheese will explode out during the baking process. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you should leave a little room for expansion.*
7. After you finish wrapping your rolls you should place them on the rack. We were able to get 14 rolls out of our filling which filled up our rack as well. Next, lightly brush each roll with the oil and set in the middle of the oven. The only thing that stands between you and those deliciously cheesy kale rolls now is ten minutes. Let these little guys bake for ten minutes, remove them and let them cool for a few seconds before you eat them.

We hope you will enjoy these tasty treats as much as we did, and hope that you experiment with some more fillings. We normally add garlic, I just forgot this time. Let us know what other delicious variations you try. And expect some more tasty recipes soon."

Fiddleheads with Vegan Pepper Steak

Here is a delicious meal we made this past June, wish we could still get fiddleheads at this time in CT.

There's been one produce item that I've seen on occasion recently that we have never tried before that I've been curious about. Fiddleheads, I've never know what they were and until this year I've never heard of them before. The spiraled green items seemed to be intriguing.

I've talked to many customers that have come through my line and everyone always said they were delicious and amazing. The most common way that I was told to prepare them was a simple wash, boil and sauté. That's exactly what we did.

To start, we rinsed the fiddleheads repeatedly in some cold water changing out the water a few times. And from there simply boiled them for about ten minutes in an inch of water and then straining them. To sauté them I used just a little bit of Earth Balance's coconut spread on a medium heat and added a little bit of minced garlic. After the garlic was nice and toasty I tossed the fiddleheads right on in.

We had a little bit of whole wheat rotini pasta left over from the previous night so that went in with the fiddleheads. After this warmed up a little bit the time came for some Daiya Cheese to make its way into the mix. The havarti style wedge has quickly become our favorite and is a staple in many of our "cheesy" dishes. On the side we had some vegan pepper steak from May Wah with some barbecue sauce. To top off the entire dish we threw some shredded cabbage and carrot on top of the plate. This was a delicious meal and was relatively light because we kept is simple.

Cran-Apple Quinoa Salad

Cran-Apple Quinoa Salad

What do you do when you need to make lunch for the following day but there isn't really anything in the house that is easy to make? You just throw a whole bunch of things together and hope that what comes out at the end is edible... And maybe even a little tasty. Tonight we decided to make quinoa, with a few additions.

1 tsp olive oil
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1 tbs nutritional yeast flakes
2 tbs maple syrup
1 cup fresh halved cranberries
1 diced apple
2 tbs apple jalapeño jelly
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raw shelled unsalted pumpkin seeds

Add olive oil to pot and warm on medium heat. Add quinoa and toast for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Add water and bring to a boil.
Reduce to medium heat and let simmer for about 10 minutes (until all water has been absorbed).
Add maple syrup and cranberries to a pan on medium heat. Stir often and let the cranberries soften and breakdown.
Add apples to pan and continue to cook for about 4 minutes.
Stir in apple jalapeño jelly (hot pepper jelly or cranberry pepper jelly would be equally as good)
Add walnuts and pumpkin seeds.
Combine quinoa and cran-apple mixture.
Transfer to a bowl and let cool in the fridge before serving.

Prep time: About 10 minutes
Cook time: About 15-20 minutes
Serves: About 3-4 servings

A Very Vegan Thanksgiving

For almost every year of the past 24 years that I have been celebrating Thanksgiving my family has made ravioli. When I was younger my great grandmother would actually keep me home from school in order to help her make them. For the past decade or so though I have been a vegetarian, so I’ve only been able to share in the cheese ravioli. And for the past four years I’ve been enjoying a vegan Thanksgiving meal with my girlfriend, which is even more delicious because we make it together.

 

This year my family decided to take the easy round and order a complete cooked dinner from the store that I work at. My girlfriend and myself are the only two vegetarians of the bunch so we make our own separate meal. Normally this would begin with a trip to the store to buy a frozen Tofurkey ball. In past years this was great; earlier in the year however we started attempting to make our own seitan (the top left and top right in the picture) and we love it. So this year we decided to make our main dish instead of letting someone else.

The deliciousness that was this year’s meal began with homemade stuffing (bottome left of picture) made with hearty flax bread, celery, carrots, and shallots as well as diced apple. Making stuffing from a mix is just never the same as using bread that you’ve toasted yourself and then added freshly cooked veggies and stock. Adding diced apple is something that we tried a few months ago that we really enjoyed. After we added the broth and let the bread soak up all of the tastiness we sprinkled some Cheddar Daiya Cheese all over the top and baked it in the oven.

This stuffing was also the amazing interior of our main course – seitan wrapped in filo dough. We laid out a piece of filo dough and placed our seitan pieces that had been sliced in half and then filled with stuffing. These wrapped pieces of warm deliciousness were then baked until golden brown. When we cut into these on Thanksgiving Day there were amazing. Not exactly the same as having Tofurkey as a turkey substitute but that didn’t make them any less delicious.

Mashed potatoes (bottom right of picture) are always a given when it comes to this meal. We tried something new this year for our mashed potatoes. Generally we begin by boiling the potatoes and then adding vegan butter and almond milk until creamy and smooth. This time however, we decided to bake the potatoes instead of boiling them. This kept the entire dish a little bit lighter than usual which was a good change. And the final piece that made this meal complete was the roasted Brussels sprouts and kale. The crunchy pieces of kale tossed with quartered Brussels sprouts that were in no way soggy were a perfect side.

Dessert is something different all together and was an amazing combination of pumpkin and chocolate in the form of a muffin. This is our go-to recipe for dessert greatness and comes from one of our favorite vegan cookbook writers: Isa Chandra Moskowitz. If you haven't made anything that she's written about then you are truly missing out.