Your Vegan Mom

Nava Atlas Stops By and Brings Soup

This book is clearly written by a mom.  It is filled with a wildly diverse group of straight-forward one pot meals.  These are not fancy dinner party starters.  These are the sorts of soups and stews that could fill up a family every night of the week.  In the back there are breads and muffins and biscuits to keep the bowls company, and an attractive spread of glossy photos in the middle to inspire you to get cookin'.

I like this book.

And I am delighted that the author chose this blog for a stop on her virtual book tour.  This is the fourth edition of the tome originally published as Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons.  As before, the recipes are organized around what you'll find in the market at any given time of the year, but now they are also blessed with being vegan.

To celebrate, I gathered together some bean sprouts and seitan, cilantro and scallions to whip up some pho bo.  

With it's dark earthy broth and bright fresh herbs, it is a lovely pick me up on a cold winter evening. You might want to try it too.  Here it is, straight from the author - 

Vietnamese “Beef”–Noodle Soup
The classic Pho Bo made faux with seitan
6 servings
This Asian soup is brimming with invigorating flavors and textures. I love it as a change of pace in the winter from thick soups and stews. It’s still every bit as warming. Despite the length of the ingredient list, this is a quick soup—you’ll be eating in about half an hour.

3- to 4-ounce bundle thin rice noodles or bean-thread noodles
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
One 32-ounce carton low-sodium vegetable broth
One 5- to 6-inch piece kombu (sea vegetable), optional
2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger, or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
2 cups water
6 to 8 ounces seitan, cut into thin shreds
1 cup fresh mung bean sprouts
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons lime juice, or more to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Thinly sliced lime sections for garnish

Cook the noodles according to package directions until al dente, then drain and cut into shorter lengths suitable for soup. Set aside until needed.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a soup pot. Add the garlic and shallots and sauté over medium-low heat until both are golden.

Add the broth, optional kombu, soy sauce, ginger, five-spice powder, and water. Bring to a rapid simmer, then lower the heat. Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Add the bean sprouts, half of the scallions, and half of the cilantro. Season with lime juice, pepper, and if desired, some additional soy sauce. Simmer for 3 minutes longer, then remove from the heat.

Serve at once, garnishing the top of each serving with a thin wedge or two of lime, and the remaining cilantro and scallions.

---

Mac 'n Cheese Bites

When we last spoke, I was making dinner.  I had seitan, potatoes, and kale to turn into some sort of meal for the family.  Remember?  It was Friday.  It had been a pretty ho-hum dining week in our house, and I was feeling ready to turn it around with a solid end-of-a-crazy-week meal.

And I did.  Friday night's dinner was so freakin' delicious.  I ditched the potatoes, and boiled some spaghetti.  I tossed it with some butter (Earth Balance), minced garlic, nutritional yeast, a bit of the pasta water, some finely chopped italian parsley, and salt.  Tasty and simple.  I sauteed the kale in olive oil with more garlic and salt, and squeezed in a wedge of lemon at the end.  I browned the seitan cutlets in a bit of olive oil, and heated up the leftover spaghetti sauce.

I served the cutlets drizzled with tomato sauce, next to the simple, cheesy spaghetti, and the garlicky greens.  It was a perfect Friday night meal.

But, in no way related to mac 'n cheese?  I'm getting there.

The next morning, we needed a restorative weekend breakfast to continue cleansing our palates of the preceding five days.  We had odds and ends of the previous night's dinner leftover, and we decided to put them into a frittata.  I whipped up an eggy mixture (inspired, as always when breakfast calls for some sort of structured egg-type dish, by Susan Voisin's mini quiche recipe) and stirred in the leftover pasta and the finely chopped sauteed kale.  I poured this mixture into a well-greased and parchment-lined cake pan and baked it at 375 for about 45 minutes, until it was firm in the middle and browned on top.  

We ate wedges of the frittata drizzled with that never-ending tomato sauce and thick slices of whole grain toast.  Good, good breakfast.

And do you know what it reminded me of?  The baked mac 'n cheese that my dad made when I was a kid.

You know those chewy end bits?  

So the next day we put that action to work on some mac n' cheese, in bite-size form.  You could, and in the future I intend to, add some shredded greens or whatnot, to turn these into little complete meal nuggets.

Not fine dining, but incredibly practical when you have a toddler in the house, or I suppose when you have some sort of big sporting event to watch on the T.V.

And so, so delicious.  

Mac 'n Cheese Bites
I don't use fake cheese a lot, but it's pretty essential here.  I tried to use a nutritional yeast based cheese sauce, but they turned out too creamy, not enough chewy. 

1 1/2 c. elbow macaroni, boiled in salted water, and drained
1 1/2 c. grated cheddar (I used Follow Your Heart)
2 T. minced green onion (yellow onion works too)

eggy mixture:

1 package firm silken tofu
1/4 c. soy milk
2 T. nutritional yeast
1 T. corn starch
1 T. butter (I used Smart Balance Light)
1/2 t. salt

Heat the oven to 375.  Grease two muffin pans with cooking spray.  

Whir all the ingredients for the eggy mixture in the blender or food processor until smooth. 

In a large bowl stir together the macaroni, the grated cheese, the minced onion, and the eggy mixture.  Spoon into the prepared muffin pans.  

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes or until the edges are nicely browned and the middle is firm.  

Cool in pan for a few minutes before you gently dump them out.  

Makes 18 smallish muffin-size macaroni bites or 48 tiny mini-muffin bites.  

And if you would like to turn this into a whole big trashy finger food buffet, you might add:

onion dip

meatballs

tater tots

What the Jaconi Bierys Ate for Dinner

besides chocolate chip cookies

I do not write about everything we eat.  The mundane, the emergency sustenance, the unattractive* do not generally get photographed.  And that is really for the best.  You do not need to know how many tofurkey sandwiches and tangerines we eat in a week, but the thing is, maybe every once in awhile there is value in jotting down just exactly what a normal vegan family eats in a normal harried week.  Not the pretty ideal.  No complicated recipes to follow.  Here is simply what we had for dinner - 

Saturday: This pasta, but cleaning-out-the-kitchen style with the dregs of a bag of frozen spinach and the same of corn in place of the swiss chard.  Also, I skipped the garlic, and added about 2 - 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast at the end to help bring it all together.  

Sunday: BBQ seitan and fried potatoes (but there was Italian parsley in the aioli dipping sauce I made - does that count as a green vegetable?) 

Monday: stir-fried chickeny seitan with thai basil from Hot Sour Salty Sweet and brown rice (This was really good and simple, and used a whole cup of thai basil, and a ton of garlic.  Yum.  Also, this book is just a pleasure to visit.)

(The boy had brown rice balls, plain seitan, and frozen berries.)

Tuesday: Take-out burritos at my mom's house

Wednesday: Rigatoni with jarred sauce, I threw in about a 1/4 cup nutritional yeast to make myself feel a tiny bit better about the near absence of nutritional value in this "meal"

Thursday: Burgers (Amy's Bistro  - I don't like these.) with grilled onions, barbecue sauce, and avocado on toasted sourdough

(The boy had chunks of burger with sauce to dip, chunks of avocado, and a piece of wheat toast.)

Friday: Well, that's today.  As you can see, this has not been a super exciting or incredibly nutritious week on the dinner front.  So who know, maybe I'll make up for it tonight?  I have red potatoes, russian kale, and seitan cutlets, so we'll be cooking that up in some fashion.  

Let's share.  What was the tastiest real-live, un-photographed dinner you ate this week?   

*Yes, I do realize that the last thing I wrote about was a slab of oatmeal.  I said generally.

Fried Oatmeal

I'm sorry.  I feel like I am always leading you astray.  If I'm not beckoning you to come sit down and have a cocktail, then I'm taunting you with a cookie, or suggesting you take the most innocent and wholesome of food stuffs and fry it.  I will do better.  There will be some food of nutritive value this year.  Though to be honest this breakfast is not nearly as naughty as I'm making it out to be.  It's filled with good stuff like oats and flax seeds and just lightly grilled until it has a nice little crisp crust.  You need just enough butter (Earth Balance) to keep it from sticking to the pan.  In a well seasoned cast iron skillet, that is practically none.  I just love how perfectly wrong the words fried and oatmeal sound together, but if it makes you feel better you could certainly call them oatmeal griddle cakes.  Because in short, you are treating left-over oatmeal like a pancake. 

We have been eating oatmeal like this for several weeks now for the following reasons:

1. The toddler can eat it with his hands.  True, he can and will eat the bowl variety with his hands as well, but this pan-fried preparation results in way more oats in his belly than on his pajamas and in his hair.  This is a benefit.  
2. Paul bought steel cut oats which take way too long to cook on an average Tuesday.  This way I make the pot of oats one morning and we dine for three. 
3. Trina doesn't like oatmeal.  

There I said it.  In order to call myself your mom, I feel as if I should really enjoy a cinnamony bowl of oats in the morning, but I don't.  I would prefer toast and coffee, and then a sandwich a couple hours later please.  Or quiche with some breakfast potatoes would be nice.  Or pie and coffee around 7:30, followed by a big bowl of spicy posole around 9.  But I keep trying to like the oatmeal.  I don't consider not liking something an acceptable state.  So I'm treating the griddled stuff as my gateway breakfast.  Who knows?  Maybe it will lead to full-fledged porridge-filled mornings in my future.  How cozy.      

Fried Oatmeal

1 batch oatmeal (1 cup steel-cut oats cooked with 4 cups water)

A small handful of chopped nuts (Maybe 1/4 cup?  I like toasted pecans.)

About a tablespoon black strap molasses (To taste, don't get the measuring spoons dirty.)

About 2 tablespoons sugar (Or skip the molasses and just use brown sugar.)

About 1/2 cup flax meal (This is not essential for structural integrity, just an easy way to eat some healthy seeds.) 

A scant tablespoon butter

• Stir your favored add-ins into the pot of cooked oatmeal.  Pour into a pie plate.  Smooth out the surface.  Cover and refrigerate over night.  
• The next morning, heat the butter in a large non-stick or cast iron skillet.  Cut oatmeal into wedges and fry on each side for a couple minutes until crisp and golden brown.  
• Pass the maple syrup, please.

Happy New Year!