Three Homemade Vegan Meals Today!

Today I'm home from work, "sick" with an eye infection.  The thing about having an eye infection is that you can't go anywhere because you have to go to the doctor and you're contagious, but you don't feel sick so you have all day to do fun things you normally don't have time to do... like split your pancake batter into six separate bowls to dye each pancake a different color.

So I made a stack of rainbow pancakes for breakfast, I refurbished some Mexican leftovers into a new and improved Mexican meal for lunch, I cooked some Thai red curry tofu and vegetables with brown rice and skillet corn on the cob, and somewhere in there I also found the time to bake a bread pudding (made from Seeduction bread, the best bread there is) and drench it in coconut caramel sauce!

For the pancakes, I followed this recipe to the tee, but I separated the batch into 6 different bowls and added food coloring to each one to make a rainbow!  The food coloring made a few of the bowls a little watery, so I ended up adding a pinch of flour to thicken them back up.  Normally I use cooking spray when I make pancakes, but I confess, today I pan‐fried them in Earth Balance butter, and they were sooooooooo good.  There's just something special and inimitable about crispy, butter‐fried pancake edges, and I won't apologize for them!


Last night my girlfriend had a presentation on the other end of town (and I really mean the OTHER END OF TOWN), so we had to find something to eat over in that neck of the woods.  We ended up at a Mexican restaurant and shared the Vegetarian Fajitas for One, which must have meant "vegetarian fajitas for one brontosaurus" or "vegetarian fajitas for one village of giants" because holy hell, a lot of food ended up on our table.  We brought the leftovers home of course, and for lunch I sauteed the vegetables (the only part that we actually had leftovers of) with a little water and the juice of some leftover limes to remoisten them, made some of my favorite go‐to refried beans, whipped up this delicious nutritional yeast queso sauce, and munched on tortilla chips we had in the pantry.  Look, I'm not saying it was healthy, but calories don't count when you're sick.  It's science.  

What's interesting about these beans is the buffalo sauce.  Years ago when I was making refried beans, on a whim I threw in a splash of buffalo sauce, and I've never looked back!  I didn't take a picture of my lunch; must have been so hungry I forgot!

Buffalo Refried Beans


1 14oz can organic pinto beans (do NOT drain)
2 tsp bottled buffalo wing sauce (not Tabasco or a similar hot sauce; it needs to be the buffalo flavor)
Salt and pepper to taste


Heat all ingredients over medium heat in a medium saucepan.  When the beans are nice and hot, mash them with a bean masher (or a potato masher).  Don't try to mash them in the beginning ‐ it's much easier when they're warm.  At this point you'll have a runny, soupy pot of mashed beans, but let the beans cook until they're at your desired thickness.  Personally, I like mine a little runny, but that's just me.  Remember, they'll thicken up a little after you take them off the stovetop.  Whenever they get to your ideal texture, remove the beans from the heat and eat them!


Between lunch and dinner I flipped through all my cookbooks to find a dessert to make.  Honestly, the major reason I chose to make the bread pudding was that I had almost all the ingredients, though at a young age my mom instilled in me a deep love for bread pudding.  I based my recipe off the Old Fashioned Apricot Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce from Big Vegan by Robin Asbell, but I changed the recipe considerably to suit what I already had in my pantry.  The reason my bread pudding came out so spectacularly is the Seeduction bread I used; it's sold at Whole Foods and just cannot be beat in terms of taste, texture, and quality.  I LOVE SEEDUCTION BREAD, and if you've never had any, why the hell not?

Seeduction Bread Pudding 

with Sweet Coconut Reduction

Pudding:
Cooking spray
1 box (12.3oz) silken tofu
1 cup organic unsweetened soymilk
1/2 cup agave syrup, plus an extra squirt
2 tbsp cornstarch
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch ground nutmeg
Pinch salt
5 cups cubed Seeduction bread


Coconut Reduction:
1/4 cup water
1 cup organic sugar
1/2 cup full‐fat canned coconut milk
Pinch salt


Preheat the oven to 350F.  Coat the inside of a 9x9inch pan with cooking spray.


In a blender, puree all the ingredients for the pudding EXCEPT the bread.  

Combine cubed bread and blender mixture in a large bowl and let soak for 5 minutes.  


Pour soaked bread mixture into the prepared 9x9inch pan and bake 40 minutes, or until the liquid is thickened, but not completely "set."


For the sauce: in a saucepan, boil water and sugar without stirring for about 5 minutes, or until the sugar melts and begins to darken into a brownish amber color.  Remove the pot from the heat and add the coconut milk and salt, stirring as you go along.  Turn the heat down to low and return the pot to the burner, stirring until all the sugar is melted and the sauce has reduced to a thicker version of its former self.


Serve the pudding slightly cooled with the coconut reduction drizzled over the top.  YUM!


For dinner I wanted to use up the rest of the coconut milk in the can left over from the bread pudding, plus I had some vegetables I needed to get rid of in the fridge, so I made a Thai‐inspired (I don't know how the Thai actually make their curries, so I'm gonna call this one Thai‐inspired) red curry with tofu and vegetables.  This curry was so good, and so easy, and definitely rivaled any restaurant curry I've ever had.  I used some celery in mine, which was fine (especially since I didn't want to waste it and needed to use it SOMEHOW), but if I were to make this again I wouldn't use the celery.  I cooked the brown rice according to the directions on the bag, so I won't post a recipe for that.  I served up the curry and rice with a side of skillet "parmesan" corn on the cob.  It was the first time I had ever cooked corn on the cob in any form or fashion, and turned out GREAT!

Since this is a blog about not wasting (vegan) food, and this next recipe has a lot of veggies in it, I feel like I should mention that I always save my vegetable scraps to make vegetable stock (more on that in a future post) and you should too!  Just put them in a tupperware container in the freezer and wait for my further instructions.  :P

Red Coconut Curry with Tofu and Vegetables

Served with Brown Rice


1.5 cups canned full‐fat coconut milk (you don't really need to measure; I just used the leftover coconut milk from the bread pudding)
1 tbsp red curry paste from a jar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 sweet potato, cubed
1/2 jalapeño pepper, diced
1 cup frozen chopped spinach
1/2 large tomato, diced 
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 block extra firm tofu, cubed
1 tbsp olive oil
Garlic salt to taste 


Cook two servings brown rice according to the directions on the bag.


Heat coconut milk and curry paste in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Stir until blended.  Add all vegetables except tomato, cover, and cook until veggies are tender.  I'm not good at timing things ‐ I just check often until the texture of the vegetables is just right.  Salt and pepper to taste.


While the vegetables are cooking in the coconut milk, heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat until it loses its thickness and moves easily across the pan when you tilt it.  Add the tofu cubes and sprinkle with garlic salt.  Shuffle the cubes around, letting them cook for a little while on each side (it's not really important to make sure EVERY side is cooked; just make sure they are golden brown overall by the time you're done).  When the tofu is golden and crispy on the outside, add it to the saucepan of coconut milk and veggies.  

When the vegetables (mainly the sweet potato) are tender, add the diced tomato and stir.  Check the seasonings and add salt and/or pepper if need be.  Serve with rice.


Skillet Corn on the Cob
Sprinkled with vegan Parmesan cheese


Earth Balance vegan margarine
Two ears corn on the cob, shucked
Garlic salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Paprika to taste
Vegan Parmesan cheese (the kind that comes in the sprinkle‐top plastic container; I use Parma)


Heat a dollop of Earth Balance vegan margarine over medium heat in a pan.  When it's melted, add the corn cobs and season with garlic salt, pepper, and paprika.  Turn corn cobs every now and then until they are cooked on all sides with some black marks here and there.  Remove from heat and sprinkle with vegan Parmesan cheese.


I have to say, for my first time ever making corn on the cob by myself, I'm pretty proud!


Today was a fun day for cooking.  I'm grateful for the time I got to spend by myself in the kitchen today, and grateful for the food I'm fortunate enough to have in my kitchen!  I'm proud of myself for using the leftovers from the other night, and for supplementing one meal with a leftover ingredient from what was cooked before it.  My kitchen was a no waste vegan place today!