Some Things Vegans Eat - pasta

Pasta is a quick and easy meal, and can be done as simply or as fancy as you feel like.

Once, when I was young, I had dinner at a family friend's house and she served Spaghetti Pie.  It was wonderful - crunchy on the bottom and sauce on the top, with all the starchy goodness of pasta in the middle.  I tried to recreate this pie, based on vague memories.  But Andy baulked at the idea of a sauce-less layer of pasta, so I tossed some Spag-Bol sauce through the pasta, and then poured extra sauce on top before baking.  It did get crunchy around the edges, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.  Good, anyways, and a good way to use up leftover sauce.

 Store-bought gnocchi is one of the quickest dinners there is.  This one is topped with a jar of sauce which we jazzed up with some eggplant and capsicum.  Next to the gnocchi is some leftover cauliflower-in-cream sauce, and fresh tomatoes.  Perfect for those days when I'm teaching until 5pm.

Andy made this light, summery pasta dish when it started to warm up and we decided we needed to shift our meals to reflect the change in seasons.  Tomato, green beans, cannellini beans, lemon juice and fresh dill lifted this pasta to light and tangy heights.

Some Things Vegans Eat - Beans, beans...

Beans are one of the cheapest sources of protein around, especially if you buy dried and cook them up in a pressure cooker.  They are also versatile, and (I think) delicious.

 Andy made chickpea cakes from Vegan Dad's recipe, but changed it around to incorporate okara.  We had some leftover from dinner, so he made a big salad with spinach, tomato, grated carrot, cucumber and more chickpeas.  This was a delicious and huge Sunday lunch.

 Kidney bean patties are very hearty to eat, and went great with what I think are risotto balls, quick-wilted ceylon spinach, and tomato.

Beans are also a key ingredient for every fiesta!  This colourful burrito filling has black beans, kidney beans, corn, red & green capsicum, seitan, and tomatoes.  Ole!

Some Things Vegans Eat - Baked Yums!

Vegans don't only eat tofu and veggies.  We also love cake - at least, I do.  Cake, and muffins, cookies, bagels, and pretty much anything sweet and/or chocolatey.  This edition of Some Things Vegans Eat is dedicated to delicious, delicious baked goods.

 Carrot-pineapple muffins, each with a little pineapple chunk in the top.  These were more cake than muffin and made a fantastic snack at uni.

 This is an improvised marmalade cake, which was only okay.  To be honest, the only reason I made it at all is because I had a severe craving for Macho Fudge Sauce, from Urban Vegan.  This sauce is rich and hearty, and I thought I should probably put it on something, rather than just eating it alone.  The cake made an excellent vessel for the still-warm fudge sauce.

 Once refrigerated, Macho Fudge Sauce thickens right up, making it dollop-able.

 But when you leave it at room temperature it become spreadable, so we cut the cake in half and sandwiched some Macho Fudge Sauce in the middle.  And spread some on top.  Sure, this is a bit of a cheat - I just showed you the same cake with the same topping three times.  But it was gooood, so it deserves it.

 Andy made this chocolate-orange cake, with okara, and topped it off with a spiced orange glaze.  This was really good.

Bagels with sultanas and sunflower seed - great for breakfast, or a perfect afternoon snack.

Some Things Vegans Eat - the Seitan edition

Seitan is a cheap and easy mock meat made from wheat gluten (sorry, gluten free-gans, you should avert your eyes for this post).  You can mix in a range of flavours into the dough, so when it is cooked it will taste delicious.  It also marinates really well.

 Andy wanted souvlaki, so I looked up some recipes and made a batch of seitan with lots of lemon and herbs in it.  Then I marinated it in more lemon & herbs, and olive oil.  Here it is, at the top/back of the plate, with a little bit of cucumber/yogurt sauce, bulgur, a greek salad with tofetta, and ratatouille.  This was gooood.

These are unbaked chicken-style strips.  I followed the recipe from Real Food Daily except instead of baking in a big block using a double-boiler style cooking technique, I formed them into little blobs and baked straight up.  They got really puffy but were yummy with sauce.

 

 This seitan was marinated in jerk sauce and fried up alongside some quick stir-fried veggies.  We also served with coconut rice, and coriander-corn-tomato relish.

This seitan was marinated in a barbecue-style sauce and baked until it absorbed most of the sauce.  Served here with cauliflower popcorn, roasted potatoes and a stuffed capsicum.

Seitan also makes a great vessel for gravy, as seen here on this pile of mashed potatoes.

Some Things Vegans Eat - the Tofu edition

I am a tofu-loving vegan.  We now make our own (wonderful, amazing, fabulous) tofu for about 20 cents a block, but even when we were buying tofu it was still heaps cheaper than animal proteins.  And much more versatile.

 

 Tofu cut into strips, marinatd in some kind of soy sauce concoction, and then stir fried with veggies makes a quick and summery meal -- perfect for the warm weather we've been having lately.

I don't mind my tofu rather bland, however.  This was not marinated, but did have some kind of sweet chilli-style sauce on it.  

 Who can go past a tofu scramble for brekky?  Tofu, grated carrot, spices and tomato served with toast is hearty and healthy and a perfect way to start the weekend.

These were really yummy spanikopita-inspired pastries.  A filling of tofu, silverbeet and mushrooms wrapped up in puff pasty and shaped in various ways.  I remember making the dipping sauce -- a squeeze of mayo, a squeeze of tomato sauce, a squeeze of sweet chilli, a spoon of mustard, a spoon of tahini... Surprisingly, it worked and was a delicious dip for the tofu & veggie filled pastries.

Some things vegans eat...

In the course of getting very busy and becoming a fairly inconsistent blogger, I have managed to amass a large number of photos of meals from weeks and months ago.  I don't want to just throw them away, but I can't blog meaningfully about any of them, individually, any more -- I just don't remember enough about them.  So I'm going to start a semi-regular blog series of Some Things Vegans Eat.  This is partially to answer the age-old question that all herbivores get -- "What do you eat if you don't eat meat and cheese and eggs?!" But mainly, this is a way for me to clear my backlog of photos.

So without further ado, the first installment of Some Things Vegans Eat begins now...

 

Mini Quiches.  The filling is a combination of tofu and chickpea flour, along with veggies.  The crust on these was actually pasta dough, following a recipe from Vegan.  

 I can't remember if this was breakfast or brinner, but on the plate are creamy mushrooms, potatoes, a grilled tomato, wilted spinach and toast.

Tomatoey beans & greens with rice.

  Deconstructed sushi -- sushi rice, nori pieces, avocado, capsicum and cucumber, dressed with pickled ginger and soy sauce.  A perfect Sunday lunch, when we've got time to mess around in the kitchen making sushi rice and arranging salad plates.