Going Vegan in Alabama

Posts Tagged ‘Cooking’

Many vegans decide to make one day a week Cooking Day -- like Sunday.

Here are 3 recipes you might want to try on your Cooking Day:

* Chana Masala
* Cranberry Oatmeal Spice Bars
* Impossible Coconut Pie

Reviews of the Recipes:

Chana Masala: A great recipe that is easy to make with ingredients many already have -- except garam masala or curry powder. Even non-vegans like it.

Cranberry Spice Bars: Probably needs cinnamon. You may wish to add more flour and 1/4 cup of vegan margarine, bake for 20 minutes. Texture is good.

Impossible Coconut Pie: The silken tofu may throw some people off -- yet it does bake well. It would be a good chilled spring or summer pie.

When you have more time to cook, you may wish to use more fresh ingredients. Plus, you have more time to experiment. Once you find several good recipes you like, you will know what to buy to keep on hand.

Things like onions, green peppers Tofurky kielbasas are can certainly become vegan "staples."

To buy fresh basil or not? Some may wish to use fresh basil for vegan pizza or vegan italian recipes.

You may not wish to buy it. Ask yourself, will you use ALL of it? Or will it go to waste.

Think about all those specialty flavored products like vinegar. Some people have a big collection of vinegars and oils for special recipes. They use it once or never. They may just sit in your cupboard turning old.

Let's look at spices. Same thing -- alot of spices that are never used. If you can buy spices from a bin it may be a better choice. Buy the unusual spices at just enough for a special recipe.

Trying to figure out what staples that will be used over and over will take time.

There is no need to have a lot of special stuff -- for cookbooks -- there are plenty of good vegan recipes on the internet.

Pizza is probably a huge favorite of a lot people. Unfortunately, for vegans, it may seem off limits (chees). Alot people fail on thier vegan diet because of cravings for pizza (an bacon lol).

When you decide to go vegan, you Can plan for such cravings. When it comes to cheese, though, it has been advised by other experienced vegans to wait a while before trying cheese substitutes (your taste buds may not be ready) -- so you can forget what real cheese taste likes. You may be more happy with it.

So after a time without cheese, you may wish to try a Vegan Pizza with vegan cheese substitute. You may also wish to add strong flavored vegetables -- black olives, onions, garlic, green peppers can increase the taste.

There is an incredible simple Vegan Pizza recipe at VegWeb

For the Pizza Crust, Vegan Guinea Pig posts that the Pillsbury crust in the can is vegan.

The biggest problem is finding a good vegan cheese substitute. Recommendations have been found for Teese Cheese which you can order from Vegan Essentials.
Next I had to find out what a good cheese alternative would be. Most folks seem happy with Teese and Follow Your Heart. I ordered some Teese from VeganEssetials last week and it arrived on Thursday.

A good tip to keep the crust from becoming too soggy with the sauce, is to pre-cook it about 5 minutes before adding the sauce, vegetables and cheese.

You may be surprised how good it turns out! Make sure you put enough vegetables on it and let the cheese brown (after adding sauce, vegetables and cheese, let it bake for 10 minutes or so).

Many NON-vegans love this vegan Pizza too.

If you do not like to cook or have never really done a lot of cooking, becoming vegan may be a bit more of a challenge.

For many that are making a change, it is important that they are able to find "vegan fast food" at a convenient location. Most people hate errands and running around going to a lot of stores. Yet, if you do keep things handy at home, you can usually find something to fix on the fly ...

Here are a few staples to keep on hand for quick fixings:

Organic Potatoes : Chop them up good, dredge in flour and paprika, stir fry in olive oil and have some really fast Hash Browns. (Note: Potatoes are one of the few veggies that it is important to choose Organic -- think root vegetable + lots of pesticides with non-organic)

Onions: Slice them, saute in water and a little tamari, add more water and nutritional yeast and WOW -- super good onion soup. slice 'em, satutee 'em add water, tamari and nutritional yeast and bam! I got kick ass onion soup

Pomi chopped tomatoes and canned or frozen black beans: Add some onion and rice, and have quick Cuban black beans and rice dinner in no time.

Popcorn: Do not use microwave popcorn. Buy the real pop corn popped in a pan kind.

Here are other very "vegan fast food" staples that can usually be found at your local supermarket ...

Amy's non-dairy frozen meals
Boca burgers
Boca Chik patties

Or try Simply Asia Sesame Teriyaki talked about on the Cafe Veg News