The Ultimate Corn Chowder Experience

Day 2 of catching up on my posts! I managed to get to the gym yesterday for Pilates after 2 and a half months of doing nothing and finally got my hair cut and highlighted after 3 months. I usually get my hair cut every 6 weeks; it was the longest it's been in a long time. I'm starting to slowly feel like my old self again. 

This soup recipe comes from Betty Goes Vegan and I think they are a little ambitious in the naming of the recipe. I wouldn't say that this is the "ultimate" in corn chowder experiences. heehee It does have the 'ultimate' use of ingredients: potatoes, creamed corn, corn, peas, green beans, chickpeas, hash browns, plus about a dozen assorted seasonings and spices! I do have to say that it was rather good and the hubby liked it. 

~ The Ultimate Corn Chowder Experience ~ 

Look at the state of my Betty Goes Vegan cookbook! I'm so irritated; the whole section of colored photos started slowly falling apart. I've been using clear strapping tape to hold each page in. Ugh! Now more and more pages are falling out. I bought a 1 1/2 " three ring binder and I'm just about ready to rip the cookbook apart and use my 3 hole punch to put it in the binder. Has anyone else's done this?!

Spring Break and Life Happens

Wow~this is the longest I have gone without posting anything since I started my blog. But life happens. My mom had shoulder replacement surgery the end of April. She was home one day and then had a stroke. So it's been 3 1/2 weeks of hospitals, doctors and rehab facilities. She is home now and on the road to recovery. I am so thankful that myself and my two siblings live close by to take care of our sweet mama. Our meals have consisted of hospital cafeteria food; finding relatively healthy choices at fast food joints and not-so healthy choices!; and making quick meals using Gardein products and pasta dishes. I have just now felt like picking up a cookbook and trying some new recipes. I finally restocked my fridge, which was down to the condiments, with lots of veggies and fruit. I also had a birthday during all of this and my dear friend left me this lovely strawberry plant on my front porch. I didn't know what it was and had to ask her!

~ a cute little strawberry! ~ 

Breakfast; well, since each one was only the size of my pinky I did have something else to eat! 

It's already getting some more strawberries. I hope I get a few more before the heat takes over. We skipped right over cool spring weather and headed right into the heat of summer. 

Blueberry Hemp Cinnamon Crunch Muffins

I made these yummy muffins last month and never posted about them. I even bought another bag of hemp seeds to make them again! Lots of luscious blueberries and not too sweet. Vegan Thyme has the recipe on her blog. 

Wheat Berry Minestrone

I used the last of my wheat berries to make this delicious soup. The wheat berries give it lots of chewy, meaty texture. The recipe is on Dr. Grandma's. 

Roasted Rosemary Potatoes 

from Betty Goes Vegan

My hubby brought me a box of freshly harvested red potatoes straight from the field still covered in dirt. This is a quick and easy recipe to use them. I think they could have roasted a little longer to get more brown but they were still tasty.

Chik'n Enchiladas

This last recipe I whipped up the other night using ingredients I had in my pantry and freezer. I cooked up three Gardein Chik'n Scallopini and chopped them into pieces. I rolled them into six corn tortillas with a little Daiya cheddar sprinkled on top. Topped everything with the Frontera Red Chile Enchilada Sauce and covered that with more Daiya cheddar. Baked for 20 minutes at 400 degrees, added a salad and had dinner ready!  

 Really handy to have in the pantry. Read the ingredients on the different flavors; some of them are not vegan. 

Chik'n Enchiladas

I topped the enchiladas with some chopped cilantro and green onions. 

I'm ready to get back in the kitchen and try some new recipes!

Margherita Pizza and Chik'n-Zucchini Pizza

Vegcookbookclub December 2013 ~ 

from Betty Goes Vegan:

I was hungry for pizza and instead of ordering a dairy cheese laden pizza I got myself up off the couch and whipped these two yummy pizzas together. I used a pre-baked thin pizza crust; there were two crusts in the package so I just made up another pizza to go along with the Margherita Pizza. 

Margherita Pizza

For the second pizza I had some Morning Star Farms Chik'n Strips that I sauteed with some zucchini and sliced onion seasoned with a little Italian seasoning. I layered premade pizza sauce, sprinkled some vegan parmesan, and then added the sauteed chik'n and veggies topped off with Daiya mozzarella.

Chik'n-Zucchini Pizza

I'll have some of each please!

Both of these pizzas were yummy. I loved the thin crust. I liked the Margherita Pizza better and my hubby preferred the Chik'n-Zucchini one. 

Irish Coffee Whoopie Pies & Whiskey Frosting

I bet that title caught your attention. It caught mine when I was skimming through Betty Goes Vegan! My Pilates class was cancelled today so what could I do but bake?! 

I specifically went and bought Bushmill's Irish Whiskey for this recipe:

I've never tried this before; my hubby says it's very smooth! 

Couldn't wait to try out my Whoopie Pie Pan which I found at the outlet store. I want to buy another one so I don't have to bake two batches.

I even bought a frosting gun so I could easily fill the whoopie pie pan and also the middle of the cookies. 

I filled some of the cups with a little too much batter the first go 'round but I got the hang of it the second time.

Irish Coffee Whoopie Pies with Whiskey Frosting 

Whoo-eee! These are scrumptious and definitely an adult treat!

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust & Mexican Stuffed-Crust Pizza

Another great recipe from Betty Goes Vegan. 

Found a pizza stone at the outlet store.

Waiting for the dough to rest after kneading.

The soyrizo, red onion and black bean topping. The recipe called for a whole package of soyrizo but I only had half a pkg. It was plenty for the pizza. 

More toppings-sliced tomato, black olives and sliced jalapeno pepper (with the seeds removed to make it less hot).

My pizza crust with Daiya cheddar "stuffed" into the crust edges.

My only complaint-The recipe said to cook for 15 to 20 minutes. I cooked the pizza for 20 minutes and the crust was still raw in the middle; added another 5 and then another 5! This whole wheat crust was very dense and hearty. Next time I'll use a different pizza dough recipe. I also should try heating the pizza stone up in the oven which might help.

Mexican Stuffed-Crust Pizza topped with avocado and cilantro. I also topped it with some Pace Picante sauce. Very tasty but I wasn't too thrilled with the crust. 

Citrus, Black Pepper and Cheese Cauliflower

I love when I  search my cookbooks for a recipe to use up a veggie or another ingredient I have on hand; I feel so resourceful and economical. So I had exactly one cup of cauliflower florets in the fridge and this recipe from Betty Goes Vegan called for one cup of cauliflower florets. I probably never would have tried this recipe because it sounds so weird. 

Ingredients for the roasted cauliflower

 Everything but the cheese, nutritional yeast and fresh basil gets tossed together and roasted. The cheese is sprinkled on top and after baking, the nutritional yeast and basil are added. It calls for lemon and orange zest but I didn't have a fresh orange so I used some dried orange peel that I ground up finer in my coffee grinder. It worked perfectly! Ooh, being resourceful again. 

I'm going to double this recipe next time. I could have eaten the whole pan of this but I decided I better save half for the hubby!

Cheezburger Pie

I've still got a few recipes I want to try out of Betty Goes Vegan.

 This one took me right back to my childhood! 

Getting ready to make the pie. I used Amy's quarter pound veggie burgers. They didn't hold together as well as a Gardein burger or Boca burger would but still had great flavor. I haven't used Bisquick in a long time; glad to see it's vegan.

My veggie burgers kind of disintegrated. I only used half of a red onion. Her red onions must be really small because half an onion is alot!

I tested this after 25 minutes like the recipe said and thought it was done. But after cutting into the pie it needed to cook another 10-15 minutes. 

Cheezburger Pie with ketchup, mustard and pickles. 

Minestrone ~ pg. 64

VegCookbookClub August recipes from Betty Goes Vegan by Annie & Dan Shannon:

Can't believe I'm finishing up August's recipes for VegCookbookClub and starting September already. I'm going to try the Vegan MoFo this year. It's a little intimidating because I don't really know much about the blogging world and all the technicalities but I'll give it a go. I thought about a theme I might try since I'm not following the VegCookbookClub this month. I have pages of recipes I've printed out that I have yet to try; this would be a good time to get all those recipes made. I linked the banner to the website.

This soup from Betty Goes Vegan is a trial run for my future daughter-in-law's bridal shower next month. We are serving three kinds of soup and I volunteered to make a minestrone. This is super easy because everything goes into the slow cooker (I used my large 6 quart slow cooker.)

Fresh veggies for the soup~kale, zucchini, red onion, celery, carrots, basil and garlic

I chose to pre-cook my pasta so I would be sure it was cooked and also that it didn't get too mushy. I just added it into the soup at the end. The recipe calls for 1 Tbsp olive oil of which the directions didn't say when to add it in so I didn't use it; totally fat-free soup! This soup cooked in about 4 hours.

This passed the taste test; it just needed some salt and pepper. I'll be serving this at the bridal shower. I'm going to use mini shell pasta instead of the elbow macaroni though.

Smoky Collard Greens (Chard) with Vegan Bacon ~ pg. 281

VegCookbookClub August recipes from Betty Goes Vegan by Annie & Dan Shannon:

Aww~I missed posting on my 2nd year blog anniversary yesterday. Well Happy Anniversary to me today! I know I just have a basic simple blog but it serves my purposes well. I originally started it to join in the La Dolce Vegan Challenge and cook through that cookbook in a year. I made almost all of the recipes! Now I use the blog as a way to keep track of what I've cooked and to easily find a recipe by looking up an ingredient and what cookbook it came from. It also helps me stay accountable to what I put into my mouth! So, here's to another year of great vegan cooking! 

I was so excited to try this recipe because I love collard greens. Well, I had all my ingredients ready and grabbed the bag of greens out of the fridge. After unwrapping them I discovered I had inadvertently picked up green chard at the store instead of the collard greens. Duh! I decided to try this anyway and I had great results. Of course the chard doesn't need to boil for 30 minutes like the collard greens so I adjusted the recipe directions. 

I sauteed the onion, spices and my Pig Out Bacony Bits in the olive oil first and then added the chard and 1 tsp. lemon juice (I didn't have any white wine). 

These are crunchy little bacony tasting bits!

Since the chard didn't have the bulk of the collard greens there was plenty of seasoning on these. I didn't need to add any more salt or pepper. I'm glad I had chard instead of the collard greens. What a happy mistake. I found a new way to cook chard now! Delicious!

Smoky Green Chard with Vegan Bacon, roasted asparagus, Gardein Chik'n Scallopini and loaded baked potatoes (Earth Balance margarine, Daiya cheddar, vegan sour cream, chopped green onions and Bac-o's.)

I used this awesome seasoning on my roasted asparagus. This is made locally here in Arizona. The Slavo Salt tastes great on everything! 

Toffee Bars ~ pg. 309

VegCookbookClub August recipes from Betty Goes Vegan by Annie & Dan Shannon:

I'm a sucker for anything that has the word 'toffee' in it! These won't disappoint. The recipe calls for dark chocolate chips but I had vegan semi-sweet chips I used instead. I think I needed to chill these out in the fridge before I tried cutting them but I couldn't wait! Also, the recipe states that it makes 6 bars; that's a typo. I believe it should say 16 bars because I cut mine up into 8 bars and they were still quite large. 

Buttery, sweet, salty, crunchy, chewy, chocolatey~what more could you want?!