Original Recipe: Nearly-Instant Taco Wrap

So, this is a really basic, simple recipe. I'm pretty sure a 5-year-old could make it without even making that much of a mess. I don't know why, but I've been craving tacos a lot recently. And so I make them. And I keep on wanting them. Does that mean they're my favorite food? I don't even know. Maybe it's because these are actually pretty good for you, and they're so ridiculously filling. I make them gluten-free and vegan, (obviously,) and they're super-easy to make free of whatever else you need it to be free of. They could be a snack, or a meal. That all depends on how hungry you are, and how much you make.

What you will need:

soft tortillas
vegan taco filling (as in fake meat)
vegan sour cream
vegan cheese
fresh spinach

What I use:

Food for Life (Ezekiel Bread) Brown Rice Tortillas

Tofurkey Chorizo Grounds

Tofutti sour cream

Daiya Cheddar Shreds

And spinach. 

What to do:

Place a tortilla on a microwave-safe plate. Spread desired amount of vegan cheese out over one side of the tortilla. Add desired amount of taco filling in a column on the center of the tortilla, leaving about 1.5 inches of space from the end on one side. Microwave for 30 seconds to a minute. Add desired amount of spinach on top of the column of taco filling. Add desired amount of sour cream to the column as well. Fold the end with space up and the sides in so that you can eat it with your hands. Enjoy!

Here's what mine looked like:

Words. Cannot. Describe. (And I will proceed at an attempt at verbal description anyway.) This is really super-amazing. I still don't know if it counts as a recipe. . . Because You aren't really COOKING anything. . . Whatever. This counts. So good. I said it was pretty good for you at the beginning of my post. It is. veggie crumbles / taco filling has a TON of protein. Fake cheese also has lots of protein. I'm pretty sure even vegan sour cream has a decent amount of protein. And let's face it, as delicious as iceberg lettuce is, spinach has way more goodness in it, like iron, calcium, antioxidants, etc. 

I'd love to see pictures of your own taco wraps! If you made these, let me know how it went! What did you think? Did you like it? Is it your new favorite thing? Did you make any awesome changes? Hit me up! Leave a comment. Can't wait to hear how things went!

Food Finds Friday: Chocolate Edition

As I've mentioned recently, I've found some pretty impressive things in grocery stores recently. REALLY impressive. For any chocolate lovers out there, (this should be just about everyone in existence,) I've found some absolutely DELICIOUS ready-made chocolatey desserts. (Are you drooling yet?) I'm going to be sharing 2 items that are both gluten-free, and vegan. Both can be found for sure at Whole Foods, and probably several other health food stores. Are you ready?

Set?

LET'S GO!

1. Zen Pudding



This pudding if so rich, you'll forget you're a poor college student. Or maybe that's just me. This stuff is really great though. I totally enjoyed it. I had to make myself ration it out, or I would have eaten the whole pack of four in one sitting. They have several flavors, including chocolate, vanilla, chocolate and vanilla, and chocolate almond milk (depicted above.) It is a tiny bit more on the expensive side though. While I really enjoyed it, I probably won't buy it often, especially when there are several Vegan College Cookbook recipes for chocolate pudding, such as Break-Up Pudding! If you make the pudding yourself, there's more to go around. So, my final verdict is: it tastes great, but the price is not right.

2. The Piping Gourmets Whoopie Pies

For the love of everything beautiful in this world, thank you for existing. So far, I've been able to try the first 3 flavors from the left. Let me tell you: they are amazing. If I had to choose between being rich and famous and having a lifetime supply of these, it would be a pretty tough toss-up. They come frozen, and personally, I think they taste best thawed, but they taste fine frozen too if you really cannot wait. If you're cooking dinner though, and you get one out to thaw while you're cooking, it'll be ready for dessert. These are so rich, and so yummy. It's very difficult to describe them with words. If you spoke whoopie pie, I'd get one out and roll it around on the keyboard so you'd know. . . These taste perfectly real, except for that they're so good, it's unreal. They don't have that I'm-an-allergen-free-version-of-a-delicious-food taste to them. I have no idea how to make something this delicious! I'm perfectly happy to buy them. I think this is love. Final verdict: Oh, kale yeah.

Alright, well I'm going to wrap this post up now, because I want to go eat another whoopie pie after talking about them so much. I hope these product reviews were helpful! If you have any products to suggest for review, leave a comment saying what I should try!

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CTTVCC: Pink Princess Pie

This cool, refreshing, summery dessert, found on page 314, is absolutely to die for. The combination of flavors is just phenomenal! It's tangy, yet sweet; soft, yet crunchy; ice cream, yet pie. It has a scrumptious flavor that makes every single bite delicious, yet a single slice was satisfying. I mean, how does this cookbook do that? Most of the time, cooking dessert goes down like this: Cook dessert. Eat entire thing. What's up with this? I mean, is it trying to show you that portion control might actually work? Sneaky, sneaky.

The recipe calls for:

• 1 (12-ounce) can pink lemonade concentrate
• 2 1/2 cups soy ice crream
• vegan graham cracker pie crust

I couldn't find pink lemonade concentrate for the life of me. Finally, I just gave up and bought regular, store-brand, lemonade concentrate. When I was mixing all the filling ingredients together, I added two packets of pink raspberry crystal light water-mix-in-powder-stuff to the filling to make it pink. Now, one of the coolest part about this recipe, is that you could mix in whatever flavor of water-mix-in-stuff that you want. You could put fruit punch, grape (which would be awesome, because grape lemonade is delicious,) or whatever your heart desired. You could also use orange juice concentrate instead of lemonade concentrate, or whatever flavor of concentrate that you wanted! I am actually thinking about experimenting with different concentrates in this recipe.

I did use soy ice cream for this recipe, simply because the containers for the soy ice cream at my grocery store are bigger than the containers of coconut ice cream. In my opinion, coconut ice cream tastes closer to regular un-vegan ice cream. By the way you all, I think the recipe means for you to assume vanilla ice cream. Which, yes. Use vanilla ice cream, unless you wanted to experiment with flavors such as chocolate with orange juice concentrate. Would it taste like chocolate oranges that people always buy at Christmas? Hmmm. . . it's a good thing that this recipe is so simple, because I have a feeling that I will be making a lot of it in the future. Anyway, I used So Delicious Creamy Vanilla.

Alright. I was completely unable to find gluten-free, vegan graham cracker pie crust. I couldn't even find gluten-free, vegan graham crackers to make my own pie crust! I ended up using cookies to make my own pie crust. I used a combination of Enjoy Life Sugar Crisp cookies and Dr. Lucy's Cinnamon Thins, but I would have bought the Dr. Lucy's sugar cookies if I'd been able to find them. I also used Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks to make the crust. 

Here is my finished pie:

The crust got a little bit crispy as you can see. Oops! It still tasted great. When you accidentally burn sugar, it just tastes like caramel.

Don't you just wish I could hand you a bite of this through your screen? Mmmmmmmmm. So yummy.

This recipe is now gong to be one of my "go-to" recipes. It's so delicious and easy (especially if you don't have to make your own crust.) You absolutely have to store it in the freezer though. My dad moved the last slice of mine into the refrigerator, and it turned into a puddle and disintegrated the crust. So sad. Really. It was very sad. Rest in peace, piece of pink princess pie. (Try saying that 5 times, fast.) This stuff is great. I will definitely make it again, for any excuse I can come up with. Got your tonsils taken out? Here. I'll bring over one of these pies, and I'll eat most of it for you. How does that sound? Great!

CTTVCC: Fake Blondes

The natural habitat of this phenomenal recipe is page 294 of TVCC. How many girls wouldn't kill for instant brownies? Guys, I'm sure you can win the heart of any girl with these babies. Girls, I'm betting this recipe will be going on your list of favorites. This is pretty much as close as I've ever seen anyone come to successful instant brownies. Not to mention vegan, gluten-free (I'm my case anyway) brownies. These were a delicious, satisfying, easy, don't-have-to-have-much-patience, rich, relatively not bad for you, amazing chocolate fix. They were good enough to eat the entire batch, yet rich enough to be perfectly satisfied with one serving. When has that ever happened before? How about NEVER.

The recipe calls for:

• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips

I used Earth Fare brand sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and Earth Fare brand sugar-free applesauce. I would advise trying to find applesauce without high fructose corn syrup. A lot of name brand apple sauce sneaks that in there and it makes your food not as good for you. Just a tip, I have found that when you use applesauce as an ingredient in baking, your food won't stick to the sides of the container you bake them in. In fact, there's always a bit of a gap between the edge, and the baked item. My super-scientific guess is that the water in the applesauce mostly evaporates, and when it does so, the food slightly shrinks, pulling it away from the edge of the pan/bowl/whatever. It makes sense to me, but hey, I'm not a chemist . . or a professional chef.

My mother absolutely detests canola oil, so I didn't have any around the house. Instead I used Earth Fare brand extra-virgin olive oil. I was a bit nervous when I was putting the mixed batter in the microwave because I could still smell the olive oil a bit, but once they were completely cooked, I couldn't smell it or taste it.

Since I'm gluten-free, I obviously didn't use whole wheat flour. I used Jules all-purpose gluten-free flour. I think the gluten-free flour made my fake blondes a bit chewier than normal brownies, so anyone who used normal flour (you non-gluten-free humans out there,) please let me know how the consistency turned out. I am super-curious, but obviously, I can't try it out myself.

For the coca powder, I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder because I LOVE dark chocolate. I'm sure non-dark chocolate works great too though.

Lastly, I used Enjoy Life semi-sweet mini chocolate chips, and I cannot tell a lie, I didn't measure them. I had a mostly used up bag of them, and I figured there was at least half a cup, and that if my brownies had extra chocolate, then Vive La Chocolat! (Pardon my french.)

Here is my delicious finished product:

This is actually the surface of the moon. They lied. It's not made of cheese. It's made of Fake Blondes. Just kidding. But seriously, the moon would be a lot cooler if it was made of this and not fancy rocks.

Ahhhhh! Don't you just want to bite your screen? Mmmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmake these now. They're so yummy.

One thing I must say is that they weren't very blonde. Perhaps they have gone back to their natural color? Haha! I was expecting blondies though, because of the name, but these were definitely brownies. Or maybe that's why they're "fake" blondes. . . because they're really brunettes? Eh. . . I don't know. I do want to make blondies with this recipe now though. (As soon as I'm done not sharing the other 3 servings of these things.) By the way, these taste best when they're at least warm, if not hot, with a side of your favorite vegan vanilla ice cream.

P.S. I like your natural hair color best!

CTTVCC: Not-Just-For-Hippies Granola

Welcome to the first recipe of my cook-through of the Vegan College Cookbook! You can find it on page 36. As you can see from the title, this is a breakfast recipe. Or a snack or dessert too, I suppose. The book calls it breakfast though.

The recipe calls for:

• 1/2 cup vegan granola
• 3 tablespoons rasins or chopped dates (optional)
• 1 tablespoon almonds or nut of your choice (optional)
• 1 (6 oz container) soy yogurt (your fave flavor)

For the granola, I used Peace Cereal brand in french vanilla, which already has almond slivers in it, so I didn't add any additional nuts. It's gluten-free for those who have that limitation.

I don't really like raisins, and I didn't have dates, (except for tonight! ;P just kidding.) Anyway, so I used craisins. which I do like. Very much. Though, to be honest, I didn't measure them. I just kind of tossed them on top. But that's the thing about this recipe, It's super-customizable, and because it's not actually baking anything, the proportions don't matter quite as much.

For the yogurt, I used blueberry flavored Amande brand vegan yogurt, which is made from almonds instead of soy, but like I said, who cares? I've kind of been watching the amount of soy I eat anyway because too much soy can cause problems, kind of like too much of anything can cause problems, and sooooooo much vegan food is soy-based. (Besides, my favorite health-food grocery store has been running sales on the almond yogurt.) Amande Yogurt has live culture bacteria, (which are NOT animals, don't worry. They're in a totally different scientific kingdom.) Anyway, the live cultures are really good for your digestive system, and supposedly consuming live culture bacteria helps your body respond better to stress and recover from stress faster.

So here is the finished concoction:

 
I am declaring this rather delicious. I'll probably end up eating the rest of the box of granola this way because I don't love eating granola in just milk without anything else. It's like trying to eat crumbs with a spoon. It doesn't really work for me. Actually, I hadn't even meant to buy granola when I picked this up last week. It was on sale, and I just grabbed it thinking it was flakes with a little bit of granola to make it not boring like the brand's other cereals do. But good thing I had it, that way I could make this recipe, right?

I hope you all enjoy this recipe! Got feedback? I'd love to read your comments!

Gluten-Free, Vegan Cheese Melties

Recently, I have had to go gluten-free for medical reasons. That makes being vegan extra difficult because a lot of psuedo-meats and other vegan proteins are made with wheat. Also, a lot of gluten-free products aren't vegan, so it can get hard to balance. Really though, one of the things I miss the most is just bread. My inner carboholic has a hard time dealing with it, trust me. However, I found a fake sandwich round bread that is really delicious. Amy's Gluten-Free Sandwich Rounds are the perfect size for most veggie burgers, and they taste amazing. They also pair up perfectly with Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella for a delicious snack.
 

 

 

(FYI, when this cheese melts, it really melts. like, it turns to liquid. So, be very careful once you've heated it.) 

Really people, even if you aren't gluten-free, you should really try this stuff. It is so good and it goes perfectly with tomato soup, Ramen, pasta (gluten-free if need be,) or just about anything.

Ditch Dairy

Enough Said. This infographic thoroughly disgusted me. Seriously, this covers all the pro-dairy arguments I've ever come across. I'd say this is pretty convincing. Who ever made this is pure genius. This has a creative commons license, so you can share it with all your friends and family who haven't cut milk out of their diets. The best part of getting rid of milk is the substitutions you can use. There is such an amazing variety of substitution products. I will be posting about my favorite dairy substitutes soon.

Any Comments? Thoughts? Leave a comment!

Quick, Good-For-You Breakfast

It's been awhile since I've posted much of anything, but here's an original recipe that's cheap, vegan, and allergy friendly. No gluten, soy, corn, peanuts, etc. Now, before you turn your nose up at oatmeal for being boring, old-people food, let me tell you this is one of my favorite morning recipes. So yes. Oatmeal.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of oats
1 tablespoon of milled flaxseed
1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
8 oz of very strong brewed tea (flavor variable)
Sweetner to taste (typically 1 packet of 0 calorie stevia sweetner)

Instructions: mix all dry ingredients together in a microwavable bowl. Add tea to bowl, and microwave for 1 minute to 1 minute and 30 seconds. Stir and allow oatmeal to cool enough to eat. Enjoy!

Nearly all of the ingredients can be bought in bulk. Oatmeal, flaxseed, cinnamon, and sweetners can be purchased at stores like Costco. Oats and flaxseed can be bought in bulk from specialty grocery stores. Buying larger quantities reduces the cost significantly.

The oatmeal base has fiber and protein, flaxseed has protein and omega-3, cinnamon has Antioxidants, and tea has vitamins and caffeine in addition to Antioxidants. All of these are essential to a balanced diet and help kick start your day.

Now, my favorite part about this recipe is how variable you can make it. The variation is in the tea. Using a variety of flavors helps to keep this basic food from getting boring. I prefer to steep my tea overnight for oatmeal to get the maximum amount of flavor from the tea. Because it is a morning food, I would suggest black tea because it contains more caffeine than other blends. Some of my favorite teas to make oatmeal with are black chai, black apple chai, black vanilla chai, morning thunder (a black matcha tea,) black Madagascar vanilla, nutcracker sweet (a holiday tea,) and orange black teas. Other non-black teas that are good include sugar cookie sleigh ride (a holiday tea,) green chai, green tea with red Antioxidants (strawberry and orange,) spiced apple herbal tea, raspberry herbal tea and others.

The best part of this easy breakfast is that it is filling; high in protein and fiber; omega-3 rich; full of caffeine, vitamins, and Antioxidants (depending on the tea you use;) and only 100 Calories!