Pizza 2 ways

Over the summer Zoey and I tried our hands/ paws at making vegan pizza from scratch. Now that the rainy days of winter are here we decided to give it another try since we liked it so much.


We started with some veggie pepperoni slices for extra protein. Then we added some olives for salt (hooray for pregnancy cravings) and some yellow bell pepper.

We made the dough in the breadmaker with whole wheat flour and baked the whole thing for about 15 minutes. Before I could snap a picture somebody took a little nibble from the corner.


Later in the week I was thinking of pizza again and decided to use the leftover materials to make a personal size pizza for lunch. We used the same toppings and the rest of the pizza sauce.



The secret change is that we used a slice of Flatout bread for the crust. Flatout bread is kind of like a tortilla with fiber and protein. We baked the bread in the over at 350 degrees for about 5 minutes on its own and then added the toppings. We cooked the whole thing for another 10 minutes and then dug in, it was delicious! There is something exciting to me about having my own personal size pizza and this definitely is something that I will be making again.

Barley Berry Breakfast

As morning sickness fades away, Zoey and I are getting back in the habit of eating our old favorite grains. Well, at least I am eating them and Zoey is giving them all a good sniff. Although I will admit that right after I took this picture she grabbed a mouthful of barley and promptly dropped it on the floor when she realized it wasn't a cat-friendly food.

I really love barley because it is a grain that fills me up like no other. So, I wanted to modify the bulgur berry breakfast that I have made before and use barley instead. Now, barley does take about an hour to cook on the stove, so it is better suited for a weekend breakfast.

Barley Berry Breakfast

Ingredients:

1/4 c dry barley
1/4 vanilla light soymilk
3/4 c fresh strawberries
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed (optional)
1 tablespoon sliced almonds (optional)
sprinkle of cinnamon

Directions:

1. Cook the barley in 1/2 c of water for about 1 hour. You can bring the water to a boil and then simmer the barley for the remainder of the time. Check on the barley as it cooks and add more water if needed.
2. Once cooked, add the vanilla soymilk, strawberries, flaxseeds, almonds and cinnamon.
3. Stir it all together and enjoy!


We even had a glimmer of sun for this picture which is a real Oregon treat!

Valentine Surprise

Susan over at Fat Free Vegan is having a special contest for Valentine's Day on her blog and as soon as I saw the theme I was excited for it. Her contest is called Vegetable Love and the idea is to post a vegan low fat recipe that uses vegetables. Well, I knew right away that Zoey's dad and I would be making a dish that we lovingly refer to as "Valentine Surprise".

Zoey's dad has always impressed me with his culinary skills and our first Valentine's Day together he surprised me by making dinner all by himself. It was his first vegan meal that he made by himself and we still love it today. It's an easy dish with simple flavors, but something magical happens when they all come together.

Valentine Surprise Burritos

Ingredients:

1 can vegetarian refried beans (or you can make your own)
2 fresh bell peppers (we used red and orange for the Valentine theme)
1/2 can black olives
6 tortillas
1/2 jar of salsa

Directions:

1. In our house we let Zoey sniff things out first:


2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Arrange 3 tortillas on the bottom of a square glass baking dish.
4. Use 1/2 the refried beans and spread it evenly among the 3 tortillas. Add 1/2 the peppers and olives as seen here:

5. Add some salsa to each burrito and then roll the tops of the tortillas over the filling so that you can create another layer.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for a second layer (reserving some peppers and olives for the top).
7. Flip the tortillas over as seen here so that you have an almost flat surface on top:



8. Add salsa on top to cover the tortillas (this prevents the tortillas from burning).
9. Sprinkle the remaining peppers and olives on top.
10. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes:



Mmmmm... here it is on it's way out of the oven. Since we made this early for the contest, I am hoping that we will get to have it again on Valentine's Day.

Oh and in pregnancy news: tomorrow we are having an ultrasound to hopefully find out the sex of our first baby. We are so excited!

Moosewood Vegetarian Chili

I have been meaning to try a recipe out of my New Moosewood Cookbook for probably close to 8 years now. I may be the only person I know who hordes unused cookbooks in the cupboard while still checking out 2-5 new cookbooks every week at the library.

My desire to cook out of a Moosewood cookbook started when one of my cousins made me the best vegan lasagna I have ever had in my life. My memory is that the recipe came from a Moosewood Cookbook, but after all these years I am starting to think that I may have dreamed up that part of the memory.

Anyway, when I finally decided to explore the recipes that are actually in the cookbook, I found that I had 2 copies in my cupboard! Apparently I had the idea to give this book a try a few times. So tonight we opened it up and made the vegetarian chili.

As always, the first order of business was to let Zoey have a sniff at things. She approved of my tomatoe juice selection.

I boiled 1 cup of the juice and then added 1 cup of bulgur. I took it off the heat and let it sit for 15 minutes. When I opened the lid again I had this and for a moment I considered just eating this for dinner because it looked and smelled so good:

Next, I sauted up some vegetables, there are even onions in there! It seems like my aversion to onions may be fading which is great news.


Okay, so here it is right before simmering. I added some extra vegetable juice at this stage because it looked to dry to "simmer". In the end, it was still more of a grain/bean dish and less of a chili so we ate it in wraps as you can see in the first picture.



On the plus side, this chili was so good! Zoey's dad and I both thought it deserved an "A" so we will be eating this for lunch tomorrow and trying another recipe out of this cookbook soon.

Vegan Nachos

I have been wanting to try this vegan cheesy sauce that I saw over at Vegan Mecca's blog for some time and today I finally took the plunge. Sometimes on the weekends Zoey's dad and I go to one of our favorite restaurants for brunch and Zoey's dad always gets the vegan nachos. Having never made a vegan cheesy sauce myself, I somehow always felt inferior to the chefs at the restaurant and wondered if I could brave the non-dairy cheese sauce on my own.

Figuring that making the nachos at home would be cheaper and possibly healthier than ordering out, I gave it a whirl and the results were actually pretty good.

As you can see I used some baked tortilla chips, smart ground vegetarian crumbles, a red pepper, black olives and the cheesy sauce. We agreed that I went a little overboard with the mustard in the cheesy sauce which was my own fault because I was worried that without the mustard it wouldn't taste like anything.

I will say that it didn't taste like nacho cheese, but it did sort of look like nacho cheese and that is sometimes half the battle. It tasted great blended together with the other ingredients, but I wouldn't eat it plain on chips.

The other cheesey recipe that I am going to try has tofu in it and I am a little afraid of working with tofu so stay tuned to see how that works out.