Recipes

Recipes of the Week: “To Make” Recipes

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This week I am not featuring one of my recipes (I am working on some new ones), rather I am featuring recipes that I want to make.

Roasted Tomato Basil Pesto by Oh She Glows

(I want to veganize this) Harvest Cake with Vanilla by Roost 

Plum Yummy Galette by My New Roots

Ginger Lime Edamame Hummus by Choosing Raw

Coriander Tartines with Coconut-Cilantro Cream Cheese by Golubka

Q: What recipes do you want to try?

{Guest Post} Recipe: Kale & Sweet Potato Brown Rice Bowls

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Hi, I’m Brittany from over at Eating Bird Food where I blog about eating healthy and staying fit while still having fun and not feeling deprived. I’m honored to be guest posting for Lindsay today as I’ve been a fan of Cook Vegan Lover for quite some time. Although Lindsay and I haven’t met (yet!), we’ve had fun connecting over the fact that we both attended IIN and are health coaches.Today I want to share with you all one of my favorite recipes, which just so happens to be vegan and super tasty!
Kale and Sweet Potato Brown Rice Bowls
Serves 3 to 4, Print Recipe

Besides waiting for the rice and potatoes to cook, these bowls are super easy to toss together and taste amazing. Even your non-vegan friends will be amazed at how delicious and filling this meal is.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup uncooked long grain brown rice
  • 1 bunch of fresh kale, cleaned and de-stemmed
  • 1 cup cooked chickpeas,  or 1 15 oz. can
  • 2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into bite size chunks
  • sea salt
  • creamy peanut sauce, recipe below

Preparation:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 400°, chop sweet potatoes into 1/4 inch chunks, sprinkle with sea salt and bake for 30 minutes.
  2. While sweet potatoes are baking, cook brown rice according to the instructions on the package.
  3. Blanch kale in boiling water for 3 minutes, remove kale from water with a slotted spoon and place kale in an ice water bath so it stops cooking. Drain and squeeze the water out, chopped and set the kale aside.
  4. Prepare creamy sauce (recipe below)
  5. When the rice and sweet potatoes are done you can start compiling your bowls. Each bowl should contain 1/2 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup blanched kale, 1/4 cup chickpeas, 1/2 cup roasted sweet potato chunks.
  6. Drizzle each bowl with some of the creamy peanut sauce and enjoy!

Creamy Peanut Sauce

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • 1/2 tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped
  • 1/8 cup rice vinegar
  • 1/8 cup tamari, shoyu or soy sauce
  • 1/8 cup brown rice syrup
  • a pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
  • water, to thin

Preparation:

  1. Simply put all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend. Then add as much water as necessary to make the consistency that you like. It makes quite a bit so store any leftovers in the fridge for later. (It tastes good on everything!)

If you like this recipe, be sure to check out my blog. I’m always posting new and delicious recipes. 🙂

{Recipe} Guest Post: Brownie Muffins

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I’m so excited to be doing a guest post for Lindsay. Her and I have a lot in common, besides the fact we both love healthy delicious food, we both work as health coaches. Although I’ve been working as a health coach for awhile, I’m just getting into it full time because I just quit my teaching job! Now I have lots of time to spend working with my clients AND cooking & baking in the kitchen. Since I know you all love delicious vegan recipes, I figured why not share one of my favorite recipes….brownie muffins!

These brownie muffins are made with spelt flour, which has higher protein and is easier on your stomach to digest. Make them just like this, or swap out a flour you have in your cabinet, like whole wheat or unbleached white flour and that’ll work just fine too.
Brownie Muffins
Yield: 14 muffin tops or 16 regular sized muffins
Ingredients:
  • 2 cups spelt flour
  • 1/2 cup turbinado sugar (or white sugar will do too)
  • 1/4 cup agave nectar
  • 3/4 cup pumpkin (or unsweetened applesauce)
  • 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp unsweetened vanilla almond milk
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
  • 1/4 cup ground flax
  • 1/4 cup chia seeds
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 cup dark or semi sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In 2 small bowls, add the ground flax to one and the chia seeds to the other. Add 1/2 cup water to each cup and mix well. Set aside. Add spelt flour, turbinado sugar and cocoa to a large mixing bowl and mix. Then add wet ingredients: agave nectar, pumpkin, vanilla extract and almond milk. Mix again.
Make sure that your ground flax & chia egg have “set” (it will be a gel like consistency) and then add both bowls to batter and stir. Take 1/2 cup of the chocolate chips and melt it either on a double boiler, or in the microwave at 50% of power for 45 seconds. Mix into batter when melted. Add baking soda and baking powder and mix to combine. Lastly, add remaining 1/2 cup of chocolate chips.
Spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray or use paper liners. Spoon batter into muffin pan and sprinkle tops of muffin with a bit of turbinado sugar. Bake for 22-25 minutes and enjoy!
You’ve got yourself a healthy breakfast or dessert! You can have your muffin without the guilt! I hope you come over to my blog to visit!
Thanks Lindsay for letting me guest post! 
—
Nicole Culver, M.A.

Health Counselor

{Hubz Post} Iced Coffee: Doing it Japanese

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I had spent the first 28 or so years of my life absolutely certain that I was not a coffee drinker and that I would never be a coffee drinker.  I didn’t like hot drinks and I had never had a pleasant tasting coffee.  It was odd, because I did like chocolate covered coffee beans, coffee ice cream and other things with coffee flavour, but could never bring myself to like coffee.  That is, until I attended a Green Mountain Coffee tasting event with Lindsay.  It turns out, I had just never had a good cup of coffee in my life.  Apparently, Tim Hortons and Irving convenience store coffees and coffee drinks were not the best that coffee had to offer.  Now, at 30, I find myself to have become a coffee snob and somewhat of a connoisseur.

There’s nothing I love better in the morning than a nice cup of coffee  ( the darker the better! ).  With this hot summer though, hot coffee isn’t always going to hit the spot and that’s where iced coffee comes into play.  Having grown tired of over-spending on iced coffee that I could never guarantee wasn’t just yesterday’s leftovers thrown in the fridge or something entirely overcooked and done too strong, I needed to find out how to make a good cup of iced coffee on the cheap.  I had made cold pressed iced coffee before with a french press, but we are without a french press and that is an overnight/all day process as it is.  After reading some articles and blogs online, I stumbled across the Japanese method of brewing iced coffee.  This method was done in minutes, doesn’t require any fancy equipment and – most importantly – makes a delicious cup of iced coffee.  It’s been a go to of mine as of late and I decided to document the process one night while I was brewing my latest batch of home brewed beer.  Lindsay asked me to share with you, so here is the process in words and pictures.

What You’ll Need

  • A suitable glass container ( I’ve used a wine carafe and water pitcher, but the Chemex seems to be the most popular choice amongst coffee bloggers)
  • A metal conical coffee filter
  • Equal amount ice to boiling water (1 oz weight of ice is equal to 1 fl oz of water)
  • 1.5-1.8 grams of coarse ground coffee to total fluid oz of water (depending on how strong you like it!)

How You Make It

  1. If you have a grinder, grind your beans on the coarse setting.
  2. Boil some water for the coffee
  3. Weigh out your ice and place it in the glass container.
  4. Measure the water.
  5. Place the filter with the ground coffee on the top of the container.
  6. Slowly pour the boiling water through the grinds in the container.
  7. Make your favourite additions to the iced coffee and enjoy! (I love mine black)

When you are done you will have a great iced coffee with a delicious rich and smooth flavour.  Melting the ice with the coffee allows for the iced coffee to be cooled immediately and without weakening or diluting the brew.  Also, with the coffee being cooled immediately, it prevents the oxidization and loss of flavour that you would have if you allowed a normally brewed pot of coffee to chill over a couple of hours.  The coffee should keep a good flavour for a day or so after you brew it, if you decide to brew a bigger batch.

Weekend Granola

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This weekend I have been preparing for a new workshop that I am doing next week on natural sweeteners.  Part of preparing for the workshop is making up some tasty treats for my participants to try out.  This granola is made using maple sugar and brown rice syrup.

Makes 8 Cups

Ingredients:

  • 6 cups quick-cooking oats
  • 1/2 cup maple sugar
  • 1/4 cup golden flax seeds
  • 1/4 cup flax meal (ground flax seeds)
  • 1/4 cup nibs
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
  • 1/2 cup black sesame seeds
  • 1 cup Thompson raisins
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup coconut oil (liquid form)
  • 1/3 cup brown rice syrup
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Spread the oats on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. While the oats are baking combine the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl; stir to combine.  Add the oats to  the dry ingredients and stir to evenly distribute.  Add the wet ingredients to the oat mixture and mix until everything is evenly coated.
Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper (optional). Spread half the mixture on each of the baking sheets and bake for 15 minutes, stir after 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow granola to cool on the baking sheets.  Store in an airtight container.

Tempeh of Sea and Beer Fries

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For last nights dinner I decided to try my hand at beer soaked fries, what seems to be a new foodie trend. We got a bunch of potatoes in our CSA this week so it only seemed fitting that they be made into fries. I also had a bunch of carrots leftover from last weeks CSA so I decided to toss them in as well. To go along with our beer soaked carrot and potato fries I made tempeh of the sea (recipe below).

Garlicky Beer Soaked Potato & Carrot Fries

(Based on Ashley of Edible Perspective’s recipe)

Yields  4 servings

  • 2 bottles of (your husbands homebrewed) pale ale
  • 1.5 lbs Red Norland Potatoes (or new potatoes), scrubbed and sliced into fries
  • 1 bunch of carrots, scrubbed and sliced into fries
  • 2 extra large cloves of garlic (or 3 regular),  finely minced
  • 3T olive oil
  • 1.5 t salt
  • 1t black pepper

Preheat oven to 425F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper (optional).In a large bowl, soak the cut potato and carrot fries in the two bottles of beer for 20-30 minutes, tossing 1-2 times. After 20-30 minutes drain the beer.While the fries are soaking place half of the olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper in a ziplock and place half of the fries in the bag; shake around to fully coat.  Pour out onto one of the baking sheets and spread the fries into a single layer.  Repeat. Bake for 30 minutes and then turn on the broiler and broil for 3-5 minutes until lightly browned and crispy.

Tempeh of the Sea

The umeboshi plum vinegar gives this dish a fishy taste.

Yields 2 servings

  • 1-8oz package tempeh, cut into large chunks
  • 1 small onion, thinly sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, choppped
  • 1 inch ginger, sliced in large rounds
  • 2 t sesame oil
  • 2 t umeboshi plum vinegar
  • 2T tamari
  • 3T water
  • 1 chili, minced
  • 4 cups loosely packed baby spinach

Preheat oven to 425F.

In a bowl created the marinade by combining the onion, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, vinegar, tamari, water and chili.

Place the tempeh in a oven safe baking dish. Pour the marinade over the tempeh.Place in the oven and bake for 15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and place in a large preheated skillet over medium-high heat; saute on for 5 minutes. Stir in the baby spinach and saute for 5 more minutes.

Eggplant Lasagna

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Preheat oven to 375F

For the Eggplant:

  • 1 large eggplant, thinly slice
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper

Heat a 1/2 T in large skillet over medium-high heat and saute the eggplant on each side for 2-3 minutes. Repeat until all the eggplant has been sauteed, adding olive oil as needed. 

For the Sauce:

  • 1 small onion, minced
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1T olive oil
  • 1-15oz can no-salt added diced tomatoes
  • 1-8oz can tomato paste
  • salt and pepper

In a small sauce pan heat the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onion and saute for 3-4 minutes until soft; stir in the garlic- cook one minute.  Stir in the remaining ingredients and simmer on low until ready to use. 

For the Nutty-Bean Parsley Cheeze:

  • 1-15oz can white beans
  • 2 T olive oil
  • 1 bunch flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
  • 1 jalapeno, chopped
  • 2T each of macadamia nuts & cashews
  • 2T nutritional yeast (optional)
  • 1t salt
  • 1/2t pepper

Place everything in a food processor and process until smooth. 

1 large tomato, sliced into 4 rounds

Assembly: 
You will need an 8×8 baking dish.

  1. Spoon in 1/3 of the sauce and evenly distribute across the bottom of the baking dish.
  2. Place one single layer of eggplant over the sauce, some of the eggplant will over lap-that is fine.
  3. On top of the eggplant spread 1/3 of the cheeze mixture in one even layer.
  4. Top the cheeze layer with sauce.
  5. Repeat steps 2-4.
  6. Repeat steps 2 & 3.
  7. Top with the slices of tomato and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake for 30 minutes, until bubbly and lightly browned.