Veggie Enchiladas

I love this style of enchilada, with a cream of mushroom base.  My step mom would make them from time to time and the family would devour them!  And you can easily substitute other veggies to stuff the enchiladas depending on the season.

Start by making a cream of mushroom soup

½ pound mushrooms, diced

1 small red onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 TBSP vegan butter

1 ½ CUP veggie broth

Sautee mushrooms, onion, garlic in vegan butter until onions are soft and translucent.

Add veggie broth, cover and simmer for 30 minutes

Add:

1 TBSP flour

1 CUP vegan sour cream

½ CUP almond / rice / soy milk

1 can diced green chiles (4 – 7 oz can depending on taste)

Salt, Pepper to taste

Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes

Set aside ¾ of the sauce, to remaining ¼ of sauce add:

½ zucchini, cut in strips

1 carrot, cut in strips

4 or 5 mushrooms cut in strips

1 CUP corn

1 Cup Beans

Continue simmering for another 5 minutes, then stir in chopped green onion and cilantro to taste

Stuff 10 tortillas with veggie mix

Add another ½ CUP milk to sauce that was set aside and pour over stuffed tortillas

Bake at 350° F for 30- 35 minutes, or until bubbly

Printable Recipe HERE

Stuffed Tofurkey

 

I’ve been vegetarian for over 10 years now and I’ve never made a tofurkey!  So I figured it was about time.  I looked at a bunch of different recipes, combining several but mostly followed this one; it has great pictures of each step.  It’s also an easy recipe to adapt depending on what herbs you have available.

This is a bit of a process, but after tasting the results I may be making it every year!

Basically you are making 3 parts; the “turkey”, stuffing and a marinade.  I started 2 days before Thanksgiving, because I had to drive to Columbus this morning, but you can make it work starting the day before.  And if you’re already out of time, there is always this fabulous beer can tofurkey idea!

 

 

TOFURKEY

INGREDIENTS:

3-4 14 oz containers of extra firm tofu
1-2 TBSP of each of the following herbs:
   Oregano
   Sage
   Rosemary
   Thyme
   Garlic Scapes (/Chives/Green Onions)
Salt and Pepper to taste

 

 
Let the tofu sit out overnight or at least a few hours so it’s at room temperature. 

 

With your hands, squeeze all the liquid you can get out of the tofu.  Then mix in the remaining ingredients.

 

 

Take a clean, wet piece of cheesecloth and drape it over a strainer.  I sprinkled some rosemary and chopped sage leaves down first.  Then scoop the tofu mix into the covered strainer.  Use the excess cheesecloth to wrap the top of the tofu and press any liquid out.  Put a bowl under the strainer and a plate on top of the cloth.  Sit in the fridge overnight and place something heavy (I used a juice bottle) on top of the plate so that the presser will continue to squeeze liquid out of the tofurkey. 

 

 

 

STUFFING

You can make this the day of your meal or before and refrigerate.

INGREDIENTS:

3 CUPS bread cubes
1 TSP or so olive oil
1 small red onion, finely diced
1 celery stick, finely diced
1 small apple, diced
3 TBSP herbs (I used sage, cilantro, rosemary and thyme)
Pinch of cayenne (crushed red pepper)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 TBSP maple syrup
1 TSP balsamic vinegar
½ CUP sunflower seeds or other nut/seed
¼ CUP dried fruit (I used dried goji berries from the garden but you can use cherries, cranberries, etc.)
½ CUP vegetable broth

 

First cut the bread into cubes and dry in the over for 20 minutes or so at 250°F.

 

Heat a pan with a little olive oil and sauté the onion for a few minutes until soft.

 

Add celery, cook another 2 minutes

 

Add apple, herbs and spices and cook 5 more minutes.

 

Add syrup and balsamic vinegar, mix and remove from heat.

 

Combine this mixture with the dried bread cubes, seeds and dried fruit.

 

Put the stuffing into a greased pan and pour the vegetable broth over the top.

 

Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes at 300°F.

 

MARINADE

I also made the marinade the day before and let it soak in all the flavors.

 

INGREDIENTS:

¼ CUP Braggs (/soy sauce/tamari)
¼ CUP olive oil
½ CUP chopped herbs (I used sage, chives, rosemary, thyme, oregano, and parsley)
1 TSP sesame seeds, finely chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

 

 

 

 

Just mix everything together and keep in the refrigerator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASSEMBLY….

 

Scoop out the center of the tofurkey, leaving an inch or so on the sides.

 

Fill hole with stuffing, and recover with scooped out tofu.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then very carefully flip the whole tofurkey into a cooking pan (I just sort of picked up the whole cheesecloth, placed the baking pan on top of the tofu and flipped).

 

Baste with the marinade, and cook for 1 to 1 ½ hours at 350°F.  Baste the tofurkey as much as you want throughout the baking.

 

I had some extra stuffing, so I reheated it separately and added it in around my tofurkey!

 

Beautiful and tastes amazing!  Much better than eating something this cute…..

 

BBQ Seitan Sandwich Recipe

 

This is one of my favorite things to make.  And it’s so easy!  The past few months I’ve been trying to get away from eating so many packaged foods.  As a vegetarian it’s easy to fall into the habit of just substituting meat for fake meat.   It’s amazing what they can create these days out of veggies!  While it’s fine once in a while, I found I was eating way too much soy.   So I’ve begun to experiment with seitan, which comes from wheat and is high in protein. 

I love BBQ sauce too!  I can eat it in spoonfuls.  And why should BBQ sauce be reserved for smothering over carcasses?!   These sandwiches are so good you can fool a meat eater!  And really when it comes to BBQ, it’s all about the sauce.  So pick something good and flavorful, or make your own.  This recipe makes 3-4 sandwiches depending on size.

8 oz. package of seitan strips, roughly chopped

2 or more cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Half an onion, diced

1 cup BBQ sauce

Dash of oil

 

Heat a frying pan up; add your onion, garlic, seitan and enough oil to coat.  Cook for a couple minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are translucent and the seitan is slightly browned.

 

 

 

 

 

Then add the BBQ sauce and let simmer about a half hour or so until the BBQ sauce has soaked into the seitan creating a thick, “meaty” spread.

 

Slice up some fresh bread, spread your BBQ seitan and serve.  It’s great with vegan mayo, tomato and lettuce; or just plain. 

 

Next step… make my own seitan from vital wheat gluten!

Chunky Ketchup Sauce

 

I’ve wanted to make ketchup for awhile now and we have so many cherry tomatoes!  We put them in everything; salads, pizzas, sandwiches, wraps, eggs, bread and we still can’t keep up with the garden!  So I went out and collected every ripe cherry tomato we had (mostly Peacevine Cherrys, which have been awesome!), plus all the Casady's Follys.  Also known as psychedelic tomatoes, and while they look beautiful; they just don’t have that juicy, flavorful bite that I love in tomatoes.  But I figured they would still be good in ketchup!

 

I used this recipe as my base, changing it slightly by adding more spices and sugar instead of agave since I didn’t have any.  This ketchup is amazing!  It’s not the super sugary, corn syrup filled ketchup we are used to in the US.  It reminds me of the ketchup in Europe, a more naturally sweet tomato sauce, only it’s chunky because you leave the skins on.  They soften up enough while cooking them, adding extra flavor, texture and nutrients!

 

I learned a good rule of thumb the other day for measuring produce.  1 pound equals 3 medium apples.  I figured I had a little over 2 pounds of tomatoes.  I pulled the stems off the tomatoes and sliced the bigger ones into chucks.  I threw them all in a pan, added enough olive oil to coat them and roasted them until they were tender.

 

I put them through a food processor, blending till smooth and returning the mixture back to the pan. I added:

1 tbsp white sugar

4 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp brown sugar

5 cloves garlic chopped finely

1 tbsp or so dried basil

1 tbsp or so dried oregano

1 tbsp cayenne pepper powder

1 tbsp turmeric

1 tsp cinnamon

Sea salt and pepper

Then cook the sauce over medium heat for half an hour or so, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens up to the consistency you like.  Put it in a Mason jar and store in your refrigerator.  I assume you could process it too, just like you would pasta sauce, but I knew this batch wouldn’t last long enough to need that!

 

 

 

 

With all the work of making homemade ketchup I had to make some fries to go with it.  Making your own fries is so easy, it just takes a while.  I just slice up a couple potatoes into fry shape.  Throw them in a bowl and coat with oil.  Then add spices… I like to add sea salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne pepper.  My boyfriend is from Maryland, so he always adds Old Bay spices, and here in Cincinnati we add Grippos bbq spice… there are many ways to spice up fries. 

 

Toss your potatoes in the oil and spices, spread them on a baking tray and cook at 400° until they are crispy and golden brown, flipping them occasionally.  When I first went vegetarian I ate way too many fries!  But when you make them yourself with fresh ketchup from the garden, they’re not soo bad :)

Refrigerator Dill Pickles

It’s been a couple weeks since my first try at making pickles and we had 2 more monster cucumbers ready to go.  So I decided to try a slightly more complex pickle recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. 

First I rinsed and rubbed the little spikes off the cucumbers, then sliced and quartered them.   I threw a few Mini Red Bell Peppers and Thai Hot Peppers in too.  I cut the peppers in half, mainly just so I could save those precious seeds! I put all the veggies in a big plastic bowl and set it aside.

I added 2 cups of water, 2 cups white vinegar, 3 tbsp pickling salt, ¼ cup sugar and 2 tbsp pickling mix in a stainless steel pot.  I bought a traditional old world pickling spice from a spice shop, but here is a recipe that's pretty standard.  I brought this mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally until the sugar and salt dissolved.  Then cover the pot and boil for an additional 10 minutes.

 

I poured this liquid over my veggies, covered it with a plastic bag (the recipe recommended wax paper, but I was out of it) and let it sit until it cooled to room temperature.

 

 

 

While cooling I sterilized 4 pint size mason jars and lids by washing them with soap and then boiling in water for a few minutes.  I added about a tbsp of vinegar to the water, because I read somewhere along the way that this helps keep the jars from getting cloudy.  I think it worked!  In each jar I added: 1 ½ tsp dill seeds plus a few dried dill flower heads from the garden, 1 tsp mustard seed, ¼ tsp pepper corns and a large garlic clove chopped in big chunks. 

Once the veggies cooled, I stuffed them into the jars and filled with the pickling mixture leaving ½ inch of space at the top of the jar.  I put the lids on and put them in the refrigerator.  Now we have to wait 3 weeks and the pickles should be good for at least 3 months.  I love pickles!  And my house smells amazing right now form all those spices!

Tabasco Sauce Recipe

While at our neighborhood farmer’s market I noticed a friend selling a bag of tabasco peppers.  I really wanted to make tabasco sauce this year, but my plants are still about 5 inches tall so sadly I don’t expect to get any peppers from them.  But since the market was almost over and no one else showed any interest in the peppers, my friend gave them to me and in return I would make us some hot sauce.

While looking around for recipes I stumbled upon this site that has several different tabasco pepper recipes.  Apparently the real Tabasco sauce is still made by taking tabasco peppers and salt and letting the mixture ferment for 3 years in oak barrels.  It’s pretty cool they still use this technique, and don’t have to add anything else except some vinegar, so you can really taste the pepper.

I didn’t want to wait 3 years for our sauce so I went with the 1947 Tabasco Sauce Recipe.  I can’t remember what tabasco sauce tastes like exactly, but mine turned out sweet and spicy.  I’ve been putting it on all kinds of food; veggie burgers, eggs, soups, etc.  I would definitely use this recipe again.  Here is what I did…

To start, I had way more peppers than the recipe called for so I adjusted the recipe accordingly.  I ended up with about 150 peppers.  I pulled the little green caps off them, and I saved the seeds from the largest peppers by slicing them down the middle and scooping the seeds into a bowl.

 

 

 

Then I peeled 4 big garlic cloves and put them in a pot with my peppers and 4 cups of water.  I let the peppers and garlic simmer until they were tender.  Maybe there is a better way to do this, but this stage was pretty intense.  The hot pepper fumes filled the house and made our eyes water.  Once I put a lid on the pot and got all the fans going it became bearable, so I would recommend doing this from the beginning.

 

Once everything was nice and tender I put the mixture in a blender.  Then I dumped the pepper mash through a strainer over a bowl in order to keep the seeds and skins out of my sauce.  I put the liquid back into the pot and added: 4 tbsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, 4 tsp wasabi powder, and 4 cups of white vinegar.  The recipe calls for horseradish and hot vinegar, I didn’t have either so I substituted these ingredients for wasabi (since it’s similar to horseradish) and white distilled vinegar.  I let this mixture simmer for a while until all the ingredients were blended together.  Then I poured the sauce into mason jars and immediately through some on a sandwich!  Adds great flavor, I just don’t know how long it’s going to last because we can’t stop eating it!

My first attempt at Pickling

I wanted to try a super basic pickling recipe my first time and we really only had one huge cucumber ready.  Our pickling cucumbers didn’t do great this year, but we decided to try pickling an 18 inch Nippon Sanjaku Kiuri Cucumber.  I made refrigerator pickles and just used a pack of Ball Dill Pickling mix (found with canning supplies).  The small pack makes 2 quarts, or 4 pints.  I figured our one cucumber would only fill 2 pints, so I grabbed some beets and okra and a couple beans for the other half.  The recipe was super simple.  I boiled the beets for 10 minutes or so until they were tender and washed and sliced the veggies.

Then I just followed the instructions on the pickling mix, which entailed bringing water, vinegar and the pickling mix to a boil.  Then pour that mixture over your sliced veggies in a bowl.  Let the mixture cool to room temperature.  Then I sterilized the jars and lids by placing them in simmering water.  Then stuff the jars with veggies and liquid, store in the refrigerator for at least 3 weeks.  And then they should last for about 3 months.  I will update when we actually get to try them.  Can’t wait!

Harvesting Radish Seeds

Yesterday my boyfriends and I spent the day making art and harvesting radish seeds.  We let about a quarter of our radishes go to seed, but I had no idea how many seeds would come off of one little radish!  I also didn’t realize you can eat the little pods that are produced, at least when they are younger and tenderer.  So I will have to try that with the next planting! 

We ended up mixing the seeds from our 2 varieties of radishes, but oh well, they are both small radishes.  Easter Egg Radish, which look like little round eggs, and Cincinnati Market Radish, which we had to try being from Cincinnati and all!  Plus they are long carrot shaped, which was pretty interesting looking and great for pickling. 

Here is what the pods looked like still on the branches.  Basically we just pulled all the pods off and then started breaking them open.  They have a strange foamy texture and break apart really easy with little mess.  So saving radish seeds is super easy!  And now we have enough seed to plant a whole radish forest!  Hopefully we can get a good fall crop in once the weather cools down a little.

Keeping Up With The Garden - Basil and Upside 2-Liter Containers

It’s so hard to keep up with basil!  If you don’t keep it from flowering it gets all bitter tasting, plus cutting basil back makes the plant grow bigger.  And since I put basil in the top part of over half of our upside down 2-liter containers, we have a lot of basil!  So I had no choice but to take some time and make a huge batch of pesto!  Just look at all that basil.  And that is the biggest bowl I own!

I used my PurpleShisho Pesto Recipe as a base, substituting basil for shisho of course and eliminating the cheese.  I would have added some pine nuts if I had any, and I tried sunflower seeds a couple weeks ago and it turned out great.  But all I had was basil, garlic and olive oil.  I also decided to use a blender this time, which was way easier than a mortar and pestle and creamier.  A chunkier pesto is still awesome though, just more work.  I basically just blended the basil, added garlic and oil till I had the taste and texture I wanted, which means super garlicky!  And I mostly harvest our Spicy Globe Basil which made for an amazing pesto pizza!

Also here is an update on some of our 2-liter containers.  Everything is doing pretty well, other than a couple of the tomatoes that have outgrown their containers.  And I used a natural twine to hang some the 2-liters, which is beginning to rot out (one fell already, but survived!).  So next time I will have to stick with the nylon macramé cord I started out using.  The peppers are doing great; creating a beautiful, spicy canopy over the bench in front of the hoop house.

And I excited about our cucumbers!  I really want to make pickles this year.  So we have Russian pickling cucumbers growing down out of the containers with some dill on top.  And then some massive 18 inch long Japanese slicing cucumbers growing up out of the ground.  They are starting to get intertwined and producing a few baby cucumbers.   We’ve already had some cucumbers come out of the hoop house so I hope these are soon to follow!

Three Sisters Beds

I just wanted to share how awesome our corn, beans, gourds and amaranth are doing!  Our yard is already filled with a garden where we have herbs, greens, tomatoes, peppers, fruit trees, cucumbers, onions and so on… But not much space for corn.  Luckily a friend down the street has a huge sunny backyard, so we dug a couple beds, mixed a little manure and compost in and planted away.  Everything looks amazing.  The smaller bed was planted about 2 weeks after the first one.  Here is what we planted and where we got our seeds:

Ohio Blue Clarage Corn (Southern Exposure)

Black Iroquois Sweet Corn (Southern Exposure)

Purple Podded Pole Bean (Baker Creek)

Provider Bush Green Bean (Fedco)

Blue Bush Lake 274 Green Bean (Fedco)

Bushel Basket Gourd (Baker Creek)

Opopeo Amaranth (Baker Creek)

Hopi Red Dye Amaranth (Fedco)

I’ve only had the space to do a Three Sisters garden once, and I had to move out before harvesting, so I’m excited to see how these beds do!  Everything can be eaten except the gourds.  I’m not so into squash, so I figured something useful could replace it, like a gourd you can make bowls out of!  The Ohio Blue Corn can be eaten as sweet corn when it’s young, but we plan on trying to make corn meal with it once it’s mature.  You can eat the amaranth greens in salads and whatnot, use the seeds in breads and I definitely plan on experimenting with dying fabric using the Hopi amaranth.

Gardening is so exciting!  And since these are new beds the bugs are pretty minimal. Way different from out house garden, which has been full of plants and bugs for years.  If only we could get some rain! 

Tips For Making Upside Down 2 Liter Planters

You’ve probably seen this idea before, I’ve tried it in years passed and had marginal success.  This year I took some time to research different methods and judging by my tomato plants, I think I got it right!  So I’ve compiled some basic tips to making your planter successful.

MATERIALS: Empty 2 Liter Bottle, String, Scissors, Soil, Plant

The first thing is to wash your 2-liter so that sticky corn syrup doesn’t start to mold around your plant.

Then cut the bottom of the bottle off, leaving as much of the 2-liter as you can.  I found that the simplest way to do this is to take some crappy old scissors, heat the end of the blade over a candle and stab it into the bottle making a hole you can fit your scissors through and then cut the rest of the way.  Using this same method, I then punch 3 holes evenly spaced around the edge that was just cut.  If you are going to make multiple containers it’s easiest to do this to all the bottles at the same time because the scissors stay warmed up.

One of the biggest issues I’ve had in the past was the bottle heating up too fast and drying out the soil.  I’ve tried covering them in burlap and scrap fabric, but it didn’t help much.  This year I spray painted my bottles with a matte white paint and it has worked out wonderfully.  A white fabric covering would probably also work, but be more time consuming.  The key is to have something that reflects the sunlight.

I also learned that starting a plant from seed inside the bottle only confuses the plant.  I put small pickling cucumber seeds in a couple bottle and the leaves grew up into the soil!  So use a small starter plant, even a little more mature plant works.  We had a tray of 2 foot cherry tomato plants sitting around for weeks and since their stems were stronger it was much easier to push the plants through with little damage.  Of course it can be done at either stage. 

You can use any kind plant that has small fruits, like cherry tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, small eggplants, etc.  I strongly recommend putting a companion herb on the top of your planter.  This will not only make your plant healthier, but also help keep the soil from getting scorched.  For the tomatoes I put basil on top and both plants are going wild.  I have dill on the cucumbers, horehound and basil on the peppers. 

 It’s just so cool to watch the plants grow from both directions.  I love watering them too (which you will have to do every day in the summer since the container is so small), you can just watch the water trickle down through the bottle.  You should try an upside down plant, they are great for saving space, you don’t have stake them and they grow in incredible directions.  I will post more about these once I my peppers and cucumbers really get going! (check it out here)

 

*UPDATE* Tuesday October 9^th, 2012

After a summer full of upside down 2-liter experimentation, I’ve learned a lot and would like to update our overall experiences.  Herbs work great!  Cherry tomatoes do well for most of the summer, but eventually the roots fill the bottle.  Peppers did fine as well and they are still producing fruits, but we didn’t get nearly as many peppers in the bottles as in the ground.  Thai Hot Peppers did the best, because they are tiny and high producers; however I’d say the plants in the ground produced at least 5x as many peppers.  Same thing with a huckleberry bush we tried in one, it only produced a few berries.  The cucumbers started out great and then just died, but we harvested plenty of dill from the top of those bottles.

All the containers still have herbs in the top section, so now we are letting them go to seed and planting the perennials in the garden.  I think the upside down 2 liter is great for experimenting with.  And the tomatoes work out alright.  But the space is just too small for most plants to reach their potential.  I guess upside down buckets could be the answer.

Personally I may still use 2 liters for herbs next year, and hang them on our fence.  It’s still a good way to save space, and keep pests out.