How to become a vegetarian? part 1

How to become a vegetarian? Well, this isn't an easy journey to become a vegetarian or a vegan. For beginning, i should lay out the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian.
A vegan is a person who doesn't eat any animal products, be that meat, milk, eggs, cheese, honey any other dairy product.
A vegetarian is a person who doesn't eat any meat or fish. They do eat eggs and milk and honey though because no animals were killed in the progress.
First, i should put out that you should become a vegetarian before you become a vegan because it's super easy to get bogged down and totally quit the diet. Veganism is getting more popular in restaurants and you can find vegan restaurants all around cities. Even the small city that i live in has 4 vegan restaurants. It's pretty cool. There are so many resources for people starting a vegan/vegetarian diet. There are fake cheeses (almond and soy), cream cheese, sour cream, and tons and tons of milks. It's so easy to find something at your local whole foods/trader joes and even walmart.
There are also a lot of fake meats. Tofurkey, Loma Linda, Yves, Morning Star, and so many other tofu products that are like turkey, baloney, and other meats. Loma linda and ceder lakes have a very nice collection of fake meats.

Here's a list of products
Silk Yogurt
Silk Milk
Tofutti Sour Cream
Tofutti Cheese
Tofutti
Energ Egg Replacer

I'll write mor elater when i have time. Kind of short on it at the moment. Thankfully, i can put this post into parts.

Dole's Peanut Butter Cookies

I was looking through the dole cookbook and actually found a fairly healthy recipe! Check it out! It uses Adam's natural peanut butter!  I did a few changes but here it is!

1 banana
1/3 c. peanut butter
2 T. apple sauce
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 fake egg
1 1/4 c. all purpose flour
3/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 T. granulated sugar

Set the oven to 350. Mix banana, peanut butter and apple sauce in a bowl. Mix it up really good. Might help to warm the peanut butter. Add sugar, egg and mix. Add the flour, baking soda and salt. Drop by teaspoon fulls onto a baking sheet.. Sprinkle with sugar and press with a fork to make a criss-cross pattern. Bake 10-12 minutes.

makes about 36 cookies
for one cookie
54 calories
1.2g fat

Vegan (no egg) biscotti

It's hard to find a vegan biscotti recipe, but i did find one and made some changes to it. I can't find the recipe any more but here it is.

2 c. flour
3/4 c. ground almonds
3/4 c. whole almonds
3/4 c. sugar or 1/2 c. sugar, depending on what you like
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/3 c. honey
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/3 c. water
1/4 t. almond extract.
Set the oven 350.
Mix together flour, sugar, whole almonds, fine ground almonds baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In a separate bowl blend honey, water and almond extract and add to the dry. Turn dough onto a floured surface. Divide into half and make into logs. Place logs on a greased sheet (i used airbake) and bake for 30 minutes. Take out and let cool 10 minutes. Then cut with a serated knife into slices. Put back on sheet and bake 15 more minutes. Put on racks to cool.

Nutrition Info
83 calories
2.7g fat

Staying Healthy Secret

Here's a little secret that i learned on how to save some oil and time! I love to eat sandwiches that are grilled. I can admit that, totally, but i can't stand how much oil is on them! So what i like to do in the evenings, is to take two pieces of bread that i am going to use for my sandwich and toast them. Then i make it like a regular sandwich. It has the same crunch or hardness to it that grilled sandwiches do but i don't have the oil in it that it takes to fry it! It's a really nice because it takes less time and you can do both 'sides' at once!

Camping Meal Plan

Last weekend, we went camping, and i mean camping, not backpacking. I did the meal plan so i thought i would share with you what i did for the meals.

Friday Supper - i chose to have some pea soup, with cornbread muffins, and cornbread muffins. We had some melon and bananas for our fruit.
Saturday Breakfast - I was lazy and had us eat the good old oatmeal packets for breakfast. We had some bread with it.
Saturday Lunch - when we got back into camp from our 8 mile hike, we were exhausted, so we sat down to some polenta with black beans, lettuce, salsa, olives,  Guacamole , and basicly taco toppings. We had biscotti for our dessert.
Saturday Supper - We had some lettuce wraps with hamburgers filled with the Gardenburger's Black Bean Chipolte burger inside. It was an amazing supper!
Sunday Breakfast - We had pancakes with the normal pancake toppings and some random fruit. we also decided we'd eat up what ever would be acceptable on pancakes that meal too. :D

Hope you found that interesting and tell us about your summer adventures!

Guacamole

1 large ripe avacado
1-2 T. lemon juice
1 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. salt

Mash the avacado, stir in lemon, garlic powder and salt. Tip: lemon can help the guac from turning brown, and it keeps it nice and green.

Fig Newtons

I made some home made fig newtons from the recipe from seriouseats.com
Homemade Fig Newtons 
it worked so well and i was excited! I made some different kind of fillings like
blueberry sauce
peanut butter and jelly
pumpkin
blackberry jelly

Oh and you will need a kitchen scale. It makes the measurements more accurate to use weight than cups and more universial all together. I veganized the recipe so here is my version, vegan!

8 oz all purpose flour
4 oz apple sauce
3 1/2 oz. sugar
1 oz maple syrup or honey
1/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
2 t. vanilla extract
1/8 t. cinnamon
1 t. orange zest
3 servings of energ egg replacer
1 oz. orange juice

for the filling (from serious eats)
12 oz dried black Mission Figs
2 oz. unsweetened apple sauce
1 1/2 oz honey (for non vegans) or maple syrup
1/4 t. cinnamon

1. to make the newton dough:
sift he flour and set aside.e Using a hand or stand mixer, cream together the apple sauce and sugar, honey or maple syrup, baking soda, vanilla, cinnamon, and orange zest on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the fake egg.
Turn the mixer on low and the sifted flour along with orange juice. Shut of the mixer, the dough will be very soft and wet. Prepare a large shet of plastic wrap and use a rubber spatula to transfer the dough from the bowl to the center of the plastic. Fold the plastic over the dough and flatten into a disc. Wrap with remaining plastic and refrigerate for four hours to overnight.

2. make the filling.
Combine the figs, apple sauce, maple syrup or honey and cinnamon in a food processor. Pulse until smooth. You can either put this in a pastry bag fitted with a large plain basket weave tip or in a ziplock back with the corner snipped off. Set filling aside until needed.

3. Making the cookies. Prehead the oven to 325 faranheigh
have a tray ready.
Warning, the dough will be very soft and hard to work with but hang in there and use flour when rolling it out. Roll to about 1/4 " thickness. Frequently lift and move dough, flipping it to make sure it doesn't stick. Cut strips about 4 1/4" wide. Have no longer than 6" or it will be a pain to work with. Pipe a strip of filling down the center. You want it to be about 1" wide and about 1/4" thick.
Lift one end of the long, exposed dougn strips up and voer filling.Take hold of the other side and fold it over. Repead with the remaining dough.
Bake for about 12 minutes, they will look slightly brown.
4. cutting the cookies:
As soon as they are removed from the oven, use a sharp knife to trim each bar into several 1" long cookies. While the cookies are still warm, transfer them into a plastic container with a lid or large zip top bag. Seal bag tightly. This step will slightly steam the cookies, ensuring they will remain soft and cake like from end to end. Skipping this step will result in Newtons wiht a slightly drier texture, more like a cookie and less like a cake.

My fillings

Peanut butter Jelly - pipe down peanut butter, and ontop pipe down jelly

Pumpkin - take pumpkin from can, sweeten to desired and pipe down the center.

Have fun! 

Jiao Zi Recipe

Today i made Jiao Zi, or Dumplings. We had some guests over so i decided to make some Jiao Zi. I made some golden dumpling wrappers. That's what i am going to tell you about in this recipe.

I used
2 c. all purpose flour
3/4 c. boiling water
3/4 t. turmeric powder

Put flour and turmeric powder in a bowl, pour in boiling water. After mixing and kneading, let it sit in a plastic bag with flour in it, for about 30 minutes. It will make it warm and like super soft and easy to work with.

for filling it

divide this up into about 32 pieces and with a light weight chinese bamboo rolling pin, roll them with some flour to make it non-sticky into a circle. Then put about a teaspoon, maybe a little more, into the wrapper and put some water around the edge to make it stick better. Have fun! I'll post some jiao zi filling recipes later. :D

Tofu Egg Salad

From the Deihl cookbook Optimal Diet

1 package of light tofu
1 T. lemon juice
1 t. seasoning, fake chicken, meat rubs, whatever you season egg salad with
1/4 t. garlic powder
1/4 t. onion powder
1/4 t. paprika
2 T. mayo (optional)

Drain and rise the tofu (i do this because the tofu can have a stale water taste to it after sitting in the water for a while. Mash it so it looks like mashed egg. Add other ingredients. Chill 1 hr before serving.

Granola 1

Here is my recipe for perfect and good granola. It makes quite a bit. I fill my two 'towers' of granola. It's nice to put ontop of cereals, frozen yogurt, or soy ice cream.I got it from the November 2010 Family Fun and did a few twists to it to make it healthier and this is what i came up with.

4 cup rolled oats (also called old fashioned oats)
1 cup wheat germ (optional, you can replace with 1 c. rolled or quick oats)
1 cup. chopped walnuts or silvered almonds
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. salt

1/3 c. apple sauce (or apple concentrate)
1/3 c. honey                  or for all three of the 1/3 liquid ingredients, you can
1/3 c. water                  put in about 2/3 c. to 1 cup of apple concentrate. it also counts as the sugar


Heat the oven to 300 degrees. In a large bowl, stir together oats, wheat germ, nuts, cinnamon and salt. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the apple sauce, honey water (apple concentrate if choose to). Toss the mixture until it is well combined, then spread it evenly on a cookie sheet or high rimmed casserole dish. I find it easier to do it in a casserole dish because when you stir it, it won't go over the sides.
Bake the granola until lightly browned, about 1 hr, stirring every 15 minutes. Keep the granola away from the sides of the pan because that makes them burn. If you want to, you can add some dried fruit like:
cranbereries
blueberries
raisins
cheeries
pineapple
papaya
mango

Jump Ice Cream

1 t. vanilla
1 c. milk (soy milk is what i used)
1 T. sugar

add ins
1 T. coconut
1 T. chocolate or carob chips
1 T. raisins

Put the vanilla, milk, sugar and as many as the add ins as you want to in a small zip lock bag. then, fill a big zip lock bag 3/4 the way full with ice. Push the little bag down into the ice into the big bag and ziplock the bag. Then if you want to, you can put some rock salt to make it melt faster. This is up to you. Wrap a dish towel or tea towel around the bags and jump around with them. When the ice cream inside is nice and not liquidy, you can take it out and eat it. Fun and easy ice cream to make.

Topppings

Granola
Raisins
Mini marshmellows
chocolate chips
cheerios
rice krispies
blueberries
other fresh fruit
mochi

Review; Rice Cooker

Rice cookers are so handy! You put them on and then leave them and tadah! Rice! Mine has a cook option and then a keep warm. This is the ratio that i use

• Long grain white rice - 1¾ cups of water per cup of rice
• Medium grain white rice - 1½ cups of water per cup of rice
• Short grain white rice - 1½ cups of water per cup of rice

Brown Rice
The perfect ratio for brown rice is 2¼ cups of water per cup of rice. Brown rice takes longer to cook so this is what i do. I watcht he rice until it boils. Then i turn it off, setting a timer for 30 minutes. When the 30 minutes are up, turn the rice cooker back on cook and then let it do it's thing. Remember to was the brown rice!

Home Made Ketchup

I can tomato paste (mini cans)
3 T. lemon juice
1 t. garlic powder
1 T. brown sugar

Mix it all together and put it with some potato or baked yam sticks. :D

blueberry barbeque sauce

have an overabundance of blueberries over here so i decided to google some blueberry bbq sauce. We had had some over at a friends house and i wanted to make my own. I found one from the blog/site grillingcompanion.com
and it worked great. :D really liked it and will have fun finding stuff to put it on. At the end, i'll give some suggestions for vegans and vegetarians.

1/2 recipe

1 c. blueberries
1/4 c. vinegar (cider preferbly)
1/4 t. salt
1 T. onion, chopped
1/4 t. cayenne pepper or sriracha sauce
1 1/2 T. ketchup
1 1/2 T sugar
1 clove garlic
1 t. hoisin sauce
1 t. chili powder

heat all ingredients over medium/high heat in a saucepan. let boil a bit. if you want to, you can add some (1/2 T.) cornstarch mixed with water to make it thicker if you want to. Blend it if it isn't smooth consistancy.

Full recipe

2 c. blueberries
1/2 c. vinegar
1/2 t. salt
2 T. onion, chopped
1/2 t. caynne pepper
3 T. ketchup
3 T. sugar
2 cloves garlic
2 t. hoisin sauce
2 t. chili powder

use instructions from the half recipe

You can put this on:

Seitan
Worthington Swiss Steak
Worthington Tenderbits
Worthington Big Franks
Be creative and post what you put it on!

Stuffed Seitan

So i got bored today and decided that i would make something like dumplings, but since i didn't have wrappers and were to lazy to make them, i'd make them out of seitan. So the seitan recipe is

1 c. vital wheat gluten flour
1 c. water
1 T. soy sauce
1 T. brewers yeast
1/2 t. garlic powder

Broth
2 C.water
1 C. fry chick broth or what ever is in the can, if you don't have it, just use water
3 T. soy sauce

Mix the dry, add wet, knead and pull to make it nice and soft, pushing out the air, then divide up into small pieces. I got about 20+ from my batch. Knead and press it into a semi round shape and stuff with the stuffing.... Oh, and start to boil your water.

Stuffing:
4 fry chick pieces
1/4 c. onion ground in the ultimate chopper or chopped finely
1 celery stick, medium
handful of bread crumbs
garlic, onion, or mckays chicken seasoning
Mix all together and you can use it for the inside stuffing. It will make more than you need so you can always spread it on the sandwhich.

Don't put too much of the stuffing into the seitan because it will not stick as well if it is super super bulging. As you make them, put them into the boiling water and boil them. Make sure it isn't boiling to hard or else that will make them pop, so bring to a boil and then set to low-medium or low. Let cook for about 20-30 minutes, checking frequently to make sure they haven't exploded.

Enjoy with sauce made from a mixture of sriracha sauce, soy sauce, hoisin sauce and a dash of chinese hot chili oil.

Review : Misto Sprayer

Another review here. The picture above are Misto Sprayers. what they are basicly is do it yourself pam oil spray for like cooking or spraying on salads. You put a bit of oil in them, then you pump it up and down to make the pressure go up, then you spray it out on to the desired item, meat, frying pan, salad, popcorn, whatnot.
For us, it doesnt spray like the aerosol cans do but it does help to cut the oil consumption in half when i put seasoning on popcorn. I use to pour the oil over and then add seasoning but i used a lot of oil, so now that i use the spray oil, i cut the oil consumption i guess into more than half.
I would say this gets a four because it doesn't spray like aerosol, meaning taht when i spray the pan, i have to rub it around with a spatula more than i do with the regular store bought spray oil. They do come in different colors and that makes them fun. :)

Review; Ultimate Chopper

A few years ago we got this ultimate chopper as a christmas gift. It has been an amazing tool in the kitchen because when the blender is too big for your item you want chopped, i just stick it in this little guy and whiz it up! It's very nice and i use it to make pesto, grind up stuff for spreads and usually when i talk about blending small quantities of food in my recipes, this is what I'm talking about. :) 

this is not my picture so i give my credits to amazon.com, where i got the picture. Couldn't take one at the moment, not at the place that has it. 

I am going to give this 5 stars because it is super super handy and i really find it very useful. Easy to clean also. 

Sorry

My apologies here because I went on a week vacation and couldn't have access to a computer I couldn't upload any pictures or recipes but I defiantly will try and do some super super soon! Probably tomorrow! ;) Today I am going to go into the kitchen and start experimenting with making some vegan cheese for you guys! My goal is for it to grate like normal cheese but I doubt i could get it like that so I am going to try and make a log, like you know the fancy logs with crackers all around, anyway that consistency, kinda soft? Yeah, that kind. Not too hard, or it doesn't sound too hard....