Breakfast Tofu Stacker

This is a delicious breakfast stacker perfect of a chilly winter day. It is hearty, full of flavor and can be easily adapted for anything that you have in your fridge. Depending on how hearty of a breakfast you want it can make 3+ servings.

Here's what you need

• 1 teaspoon coconut oil
• 4 cloves of garlic - sliced
• 1 medium sweet potato
• 1 package firm tofu - cubed
• 1 can black beans - drained and rinsed
• 1/4 cup Daiya Cheddar Cheese
• 2 tablespoons vegan mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon chipotle powder
• 6 corn tortillas
• Tortilla chip crumbs (if desired)

Here's what to do

1. Scrub down your sweet potato really well, if you want to peel it you can but we leave the skin on. Using a mandolin, slice your sweet potato nice and thin, if you'd like a chunkier sweet potato you can just cube the sweet potato instead. Once fully sliced take about 10 slices at a time and stack them on top of each other, cut 1/4 inch strips in one direction and rotate 90 degrees to cut small squares.
2. Heat a pan over medium heat and add coconut oil. Once slightly warmed add the garlic, and stir. Once slightly caramelized add the sweet potatoes and cook until tender.
3. Add tofu to the pan and cook until it is fully heated through. Finally, add the beans and stir occasionally until the beans are warmed through.
4. Transfer the contents of the pan to a large bowl. Stir in the Daiya cheese until melted. Then, Add the vegan mayonnaise, yeast flakes, curry powder and chipotle powder. Stir to combine.
5. Warm the corn tortillas either in a dry pan on medium heat
6. Place one tortilla on a plate, and add a generous scoop of the tofu mixture. Add another tortilla and then a slightly smaller generous scoop of tofu. If desired, sprinkle on a few crumbs from some tortilla chips.

The filling for this dish is so versatile and delicious. You can easily use this inside of a burrito, tacos, or chill it and use it similar to a tuna/chicken salad for sandwiches. While still warm, mixing in some spinach would be a delicious addition. And, since it is the start of a new year and many people are juicing you can save your juice pulp in the freezer to add to recipes like this one. Some celery, carrot and/or kale pulp would as some nice flavor and additional fiber. Enjoy.

Easy Vegan Sausage Crescent Rolls

We found a package of vegan crescent rolls and I knew that I had to try to make a version of pigs in a blanket. I used to love them when I was growing up and these were absolutely delicious and SO easy to make! 

1 package of crescent rolls(hopefully your local Whole Foods or grocery store will carry some)

1 package of Tofurky sausages

1 package of Daiya cheese slices(we used Provolone & they were on sale at Whole Foods this week!)

So this was extremely simple and pretty quick. I preheated the oven to 350 degrees per the directions on the package of crescent rolls. I used 2 crescent rolls per Tofurky. Place two crescents together to make a larger triangle to wrap around the sausage. Place the sausage on the wider end of the crescent roll. Break the cheese slice in half and place both slices down the length of the sausage and roll the crescents. Bake in the oven per the instructions of the crescent roll package. Take out of the oven when golden and enjoy!

Kale Salad with Black Beans, Polenta & Avocado

1 package of polenta, cut into 1/4 inch slices
6 handfuls of kale leaves (about one bunch)
1 can of black beans
1 avocado, sliced
3 cloves of garlic
Olive oil for pan frying


Sauté the garlic in oil for 3-4 minutes. Add the polenta slices to the pan, frying on medium-high heat. Fry for 4-5 minutes on each side, until they are a golden yellow color. While the polenta is cooking, wash and rip up a few handfuls of kale for each bowl. Add the polenta slices on top of the kale. Drain and rinse the can of black beans and heat the beans in the pan for several minutes. Add the beans and avocado to the salad and serve! We had some Daiya shreds in the fridge so I added those also.

This was a quick and tasty meal and we both enjoyed it. I hope that everyone else is pleased with the results! : )

Cauliflower Puree and Steaks

 Tonight we decided to put a little more effort into dinner than we usually do. We made cauliflower steaks with a cauliflower puree and purple mashed potatoes. This was a surprisingly filling and delicious dinner. The cauliflower puree wasn't completely smooth but it had a great texture to it. As for the potatoes, who doesn't love naturally colored produce? The potatoes came out a nice deep blueish-purple, and when lemon juice is added to the top it becomes a vibrant pink. (Picture to come).

Ingredients

1 large head of cauliflower

1 teaspoon olive oil

½ cup original almond milk

2 ounces pepper-jack shredded Daiya cheese

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes

1.     Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.     Remove any excess lower leaves from the head of the cauliflower and cut in half.

3.     Cut about ¾ of an inch slices of cauliflower from each half of the head. We were able to get two cauliflower steaks out of one head.

4.     In a pan on medium heat add 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Cook each steak for about 3 minutes on each side and place on a baking sheet.

5.      Bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until fork tender, flipping after about 10 minutes.

6.     Cover the top of the steaks with Nutritional Yeast Flake and Avocado sauce and set oven to broil. Leave in oven until the edges of the cauliflower are golden brown.

7.     While the cauliflower is baking, cut the remainder of the head into smaller pieces and boil until tender.

8.     Strain the cauliflower and add to a food processor.

9.     Add ½ cup original almond milk and blend together until smooth.

10.  Transfer to a bowl and stir in 2 ounces of pepper-jack Daiya (or more if you wish) and 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes.

Kale Pesto

1 small shallot

1 clove of garlic

1/8 cup slivered almonds

2 cups kale

1 cup unsweetened almond milk

8 fresh basil leaves

1/3 cup nutritional yeast flakes

2 ounces Daiya Jack Wedge Style Cheese

1.     Dice the shallot and garlic and add to a dry heated pan on medium-high heat with the slivered almonds. Stir occasionally until the shallots are translucent.

2.     Add the 2 cups of kale and stir occasionally.

3.     Once kale has wilted remove pan from heat and add the almond milk.

4.     Add the mixture to a blender or food processor. Add the fresh basil and pulse until smooth.

5.     Add the mixture back to the pan and stir in the nutritional yeast flakes.

6.     Add the Daiya cheese and stir until melted.

Grape Tomato and Daiya Sauce

1 cup grape tomatoes

1 small shallot

1 clove of garlic

1/8 teaspoon liquid aminos

½ cup almond milk

2 ounces Diaya Jack Wedge Style Cheese

8 fresh basil leaves

1.     Dice shallots and garlic.

2.     Cut the grape tomatoes into quarters.

3.     Add the shallots and garlic to a dry preheated pan on medium heat. Stir occasionally until the shallots are translucent.

4.     Add the tomatoes to the pan and continue to stir occasionally.

5.     Add the liquid aminos when the tomatoes have softened.

6.     Add the almond milk to the pan and stir continuously for 3-5 minutes until the milk has thickened slightly.

7.     Add the Daiya cheese and stir until it has melted.

8.     Roll the fresh basil leaves together, cut into ribbons, and top the sauce. 

Vegan Bacon and Havarti Stuffed Seitan

What’s better than seitan? Stuffed Seitan! This recipe uses our Super Big Batch of Garlicky Seitan or you can use your favorite seitan recipe. Sometimes you can get away with just using nutritional yeast flakes for some cheesy flavor in recipes like soups and sauces. For this kind of recipe you need something that melts into a gooey cheesy mess. And for that we have only one choice; Daiya.

We love the melted goodness of Daiya cheese on almost anything – as you could probably tell from our pancake recipe. Unlike some other cheeses Daiya actually melts instead of staying in little cubes of cheese-ish flavored sponges.


• 1 Batch of seitan
• 4 – 5 slices of Lightlife Smart Bacon
• 3 ounces of Daiya wedge style Havarti Cheese

1. Slice all of the seitan pieces in half – originally we tried to only slice ¾ of the way through so the seitan would be sort of like a sub so it would have a hinge but they just fell apart for the most part.
2. Arrange all of the seitan pieces in a baking dish. Place half of a slice of bacon on one half of each seitan.
3. Slice the Diaya and place a slice on each piece of seitan opposite the bacon.
4. Broil in the oven until the Daiya begins to melt and is golden brown.

We served these with our butternut squash soup – there may have been some dipping of the seitan into the butternut squash soup which only added more flavor.

Pancakes Topped with Bacon and Daiya Cheese

One of our favorite vegan cookbook authors is Isa Chandra Moskowitz. For our breakfast this morning we used her pancake recipe from Vegan Brunch as the starting point. If you have your own favorite pancake recipe you can certainly use that instead (but why not just use this delicious recipe).

Sweet pancakes are tasty. We enjoy chocolate chip pancakes just as much as the next person. We especially enjoy pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes or waffles. Sometimes breakfast just needs to be a little more flavorful and a little less sweet.

We were in the mood for something cheesy this morning. Usually when that mood strikes we will make a tofu scramble or mixed veggie wrap. Today we decided savory pancakes were the way to go. We still had some vegan bacon left from our seitan last night, so why not have some of that too. On the side? Not this time; this time we made cheesy bacon pancakes. And they were great! To make them, you'll need:

• One completed pancake recipe in a mixing bowl
• 8 slices of vegan bacon
• 1/4 package of Daiya wedge style Havarti cheese
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic

1. Put together your pancake recipe of choice and leave in the mixing bowl. Add the 2 tablespoons of minced garlic and stir to combine.
2. Heat up a skillet on medium heat.
3. Dice up bacon slices and cheese. Portion into eight pancake applications (a little more or less depending on how many pancakes your recipe makes, we made eight pancakes).
4. Spray skillet with cooking spray or rub with oil/butter.
5. Spoon pancake mix into skillet and sprinkle bacon and Havarti on top of the pancake.
6. Flip the pancake over when you start to see bubbles forming in the center of the pancake.
7. Cook on the second side for about 2 minutes until golden brown.
8. Serve and enjoy delightful savory pancakes.


If you make these, we hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Let us know if you make something different And deliciously tasty, because we'd love to try it.

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).

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.

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.