Vegan Chili in a Crock Pot

50-mile-per-hour winds?  25-foot waves in Lake Michigan?  It's time for chili!

Vegan Chili in a Crock Pot
 
1 c dry kidney beans
4 small laurel bay leaves
2 t dry thyme or a few sprigs fresh
2 onions, quartered

2 T evoo
1 medium onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1 c bean cooking liquid or veggie stock
2 T tomato paste
1 T cocoa powder
1 T chili powder
1 t cayenne pepper

1 t turmeric
1 t paprika
dash cinnamon
plenty of unrefined sea salt to taste

1 T evoo
1/3 package of Boca crumble

Soak kidney beans overnight or quick soak by bringing to a boil for one minute and letting them sit off the heat for 1 to 2 hours.  Change the water; add bay leaves, thyme, and onions.

Maybe it's just my crockpot, but I need to bring the water and beans to the boil on the stove first, then transfer to the crockpot, otherwise they just never get hot enough to start cooking.  I do this in the morning and leave them on at low until I get home from work.  This makes nice, well-cooked beans for me.  I've also had success leaving them on high for four hours--starting them when I'm home for lunch--and they're ready at 5pm.

When beans are tender, begin the rest of the chili ingredients.  Heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add onion, garlic, celery, carrot, and bell pepper.  Cook until tender.  Add tomatoes, bean cooking liquid, and tomato paste and bring to a low boil.  Add spices, drained beans (save that liquid for soup!), and salt, and return to the crockpot on high for an hour and a half (or low for two or three).

When the chili is almost done, cook Boca crumbles over medium heat in a tablespoon of oil for 12 minutes.  Add to chili.

Serve with a little minced onion and some Daiya shreds, if you like.

Makes 3 or 4 servings.

And here's a pic in memory of the summer...

Parsley lounging in the hammock.  Yes, I have to tie her out in my fenced-in back yard.  She jumps my 6-foot privacy fence and runs around the neighborhood, weaving in and out of yards, and jumping other fences for half an hour, when she gets tired and lets me (or a neighbor) catch her.  I would love to hear any ideas to stop fence jumping!

Some Delicious Brown Food

So I remember, as a kid, that a meal like this was frozen, and quite a treat...Stouffer Turkey Dinner or something.  But at some point, I think Mom made it herself.  We would smother pieces of buttered bread with shredded leftover turkey and lots of gravy...wow.  After Thanksgiving, but also after other workday meals, this was one of my favorite dinners.  I'm telling you, this lived up to my memory.  Try it.

Why, yes, that is the worst food photograph ever blogged.  But it was damn good food.  And, no animals were harmed in the making of this ugly food...

To start, that is homemade whole wheat bread at the bottom there.  I followed the basic recipe from The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown.  The "turkey" is a thick slice of Vegan Dad's Smoked Veggie Turkey Lunchmeat (not just good here--eat it thinly sliced on sandwiches or see just how much your dog loves it as a soft training treat...).  And the gravy is a riff off of a Seventh Day Adventist recipe from an awesome book called Cooking by the Book by Marcella Lynch.  I wish I had made notes, because I changed it a lot and I wanted to post it here, but I didn't.  :(  I know I started with some onion in Earth Balance and made a roux, added homemade veggie stock and a little soy milk, and I know I added some Marmite, some soy sauce..and some other stuff...    But I bet a mushroom gravy would be even better.  What's your favorite vegan gravy?

Refried Beans Two Ways

Refried beans are among my very favorite foods, but these ones, eaten this way,  were magical...  Um...magical...?  Why not?  The ones I made here were "Rosario Guillermo's Frijoles Refritos" from World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey (beautiful and useful book - get it).  But it was a very simple recipe, and the key, I think, is to cook your beans originally to a very soft consistency, then to make sure to add enough liquid when re-frying to make them nice and creamy.

Above, I had them with a baked potato with a dollop of Vegenaise and a handful of snipped chives from my kitchen garden, as well as a scoop of homemade guacamole, just simply done with avocado, lemon juice, and salt.  Yum.

And here they are with some homemade whole grain tortillas, cut up, brushed with oil and sprinkled with salt, and baked until crisp, as well as a salad with romaine, jicama, radish, avocado, and salsa.

The moral of this story is: make your own refried beans and eat them often.  You will be rewarded with perfect health and taste buds that sing your praises...;)

Vegan Spinach Salad

Here is some more proof that vegans don't sacrifice taste and in fact eat as well as anyone else (and much better than those people who hate spices, avocados, beets, or anything new).  I heartily enjoyed this salad for four days in a row; having prepared the vegan bacon and the dressing ahead of time, I just threw them together with some spinach and sliced up a few mushrooms.  Rich, complex flavors, and all those fresh greens.  Yum.  Really.

(That's an awesome picture, huh?  Pure luck.  And look how a few of those mushrooms with a little yellow-ish dressing look like hard boiled eggs...a little freaky, actually.)

I started with the Tempeh Bacon.  It needs to marinate for at least a couple hours, then it's fried.  The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance...which I don't own...but someone has posted it, and I'll link to it here.  (I do plan to buy the book one of these days.)  The person who posted it doesn't like it much, and, no, you're not going to fool anyone into thinking this is pork, but why would you want to?  It's a really savory, slightly crispy, slightly chewy, rich treat.  It's exactly what I was looking for.  The next component to put together is this Spinach Salad Dressing from Toby Jermain on food.com.  It's so thick, it's more like an onion relish.  But, with all the onion already in the dressing, that's one less component for the leftovers' prep work.  Add the bacon and the dressing over some spinach and thickly sliced mushrooms, and there you go.

Beefless Vegetable Soup

It's the season for comfort food!  This soup reminds me of Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable, which I ate too much of in college, only fresh and tasty!  The tomato sauce gives some thickness--it's not just brothy.  Marmite is a yeast extract that adds a savory, umami flavor.  Really simple, it's also cheap, pantry food without the Gardein.  But I had some Beefless Tips in my freezer for a month and this seemed like a good use for them.  Well, they blew me away.  Great texture, beefy flavor.  If you're used to cooking with meat, I really think you'll find lots of ways to eat those. Add them to this delicious soup to make it heartier.

Beefless Vegetable Soup

2 T evoo
2 onions, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 quarts vegetable stock or bean cooking liquid
14 oz. tomato sauce + water to rinse out can
2 small yukon gold potatoes, in 1/2 inch dice
1 T turmeric (protects your liver, as well as is anti-carcinogenic)
1 t dried thyme
1/2 t cayenne
1/2 t Marmite
plenty of unrefined sea salt to taste
1 pkg Gardein Beefless Tips (optional)

Heat oil over medium heat, and add onions, celery, carrots, and garlic.  Saute until a little softened.  Add stock and tomato sauce (and water to rinse out can) and bring to a boil.  Add potatoes and flavorings, reduce heat to simmer, cover, and cook until potatoes are soft, about 15 minutes.

While potatoes are cooking, saute Gardein according to package directions, if you plan on using it.  Add at the last minute, and season with salt.  If you expect leftovers, consider cooking just enough Gardein for each serving, storing the soup itself separately.

If I hadn't had the Gardein, I would have considered sprinkling veggie parmesan or Dragonfly's Bulk Uncheese on the soup, instead.

Vegan at Papa Vino's?

Well, it can be done, at least.  It's no better than what you get when you eat omni at Papa Vino's...but you can eat a couple reasonably substantive meals at this midwestern Italian chain.  I go to the one on Hilltop in St. Joseph, Michigan. 

You can have pasta: the fettucine and spaghetti are vegan, though not the ravioli dough (but then again, none of the ravioli filling is vegan, either) or the spinach fettucine, which both have egg.  The pizza crust is also vegan.  Then you have your choice of toppings: the primavera veggies or the mixed mushroom (as comes on the Mushroom Fettucine dish).  But if you're going to have a sauce, you're going to have to make it marinara--it's the only vegan sauce.

I had the Mushroom Fettucine with marinara instead of the garlic cream sauce.  It was decent, if a little oily.  And it could have used some Veggie Italian Sausage...I've been taking these to all the barbeques to eat with hot dog fixings (I made them a little thick for this purpose--they're very filling--next time I'll make them more hot-dog-sized) and dicing them up and frying them to add to pizza and pasta, and last night to an excellent lentil salad.

Vegan in St. Joseph, Michigan

Well, it's been a long time since I posted, huh...?  I guess my excuse is that I'm a new vegan--I'm experimenting, figuring out what I'm doing.  I'll tell you, though, I have been eating really, really well.  As in, delicious food, and lots of it.  And spending too much money to do it.  I want to try everything out there.  The vegan pizza, cheeze, fauxsage, Vegenaise (which is basically the greatest food ever found in a jar)--everything I can find in this small town.  Thank god for Apple Valley.

I wanted to write, though, about my experiences eating out.  I am starting to leave behind my initial crutch of relaxing my cheese avoidance at restaurants, and I've had a couple good vegan meals, right here in the middle of meat-and-potatoes Berrien County, Michigan.

Cassava is a new Latin American restaurant in the old Elks Club building in downtown St. Joseph.  Unfortunately, the ambiance is still pretty Elks-Club-ish...but they're just getting started, I'm sure.  I had the Vegetarian Paella, which I confirmed was also vegan.  It was shockingly rich and full of nicely cooked veggies.  I had it with a very good mojito--it was Thursday, $4 mojito night!  I took half the paella home and ate it two mornings in a row for breakfast, and it lived up to my memory both times.

The other meal I'd highly recommend is a sandwich at Clancey's Deli on Niles, also in St. Joseph.  I ordered the Turkey Tabbouleh with "no turkey, salami, provolone or mayo."  The server looked at me like I'd asked her to poke me in the eye with a fork, but shrugged her shoulders and made an excellent sandwich, anyway.  I asked for extra tabbouleh and some other veggies they don't usually add.  I can't wait to eat that again.  I should mention that I don't know the ingredients in the bread.  It was a french bread roll.  I haven't really found a guaranteed, no-question-about-it vegan bread in the supermarkets here, though, either...

The other restaurant at which I've tried to eat vegan is Silver Beach Pizza.  I tried the Margherita Pizza, no cheese, and it was pretty boring--it comes with fresh tomatoes instead of sauce, so it was sort of just tomatoes on bread.  God, I miss Silver Beach Pizza.  I'm pretty sure the crust is vegan (I plan to ask one more time), though, and the marinara sauce is vegan, so next time I will try to come up with something else.  They even serve a "Vegan Lentil Sauce" as a pasta option--now that's a word you don't see often on a menu around here.  I'm sure they can do better than a cheese-less Margherita.

Happy eating.  I'll post again, hopefully sooner than four months from now...