Taco Salad

Last night was a busy night for us, we had classes to teach, meetings to attend, and various other things going on. So, I knew in advance I'd need to prepare something quick and easy for dinner, as it was going to be late before we actually made it home. Rob brought the girls home when he got off work and made quesadillas for them before taking them to the sitter. He and I attended our various functions and arrived home with the girls about 8:00.

By that time the girls were asking for snacks again, and Rob and I were starving. So, we fixed the girls up with some snacks and set forth making this taco salad. Really a very simple method. I used prewashed and chopped bagged romaine salad mix, surrounded by lightly salted tortilla chips. I topped the lettuce with 1/2 can each of Amy's spicy vegetarian chili. On top of that I put on some sliced black olives, diced onion, and avocado slices. I gave it all a good squeeze of lime juice and topped it off with a few spoonfuls of medium salsa. I served it with a wedge of lime for an extra drizzle.

In the past we would have loaded this salad with cheese and sour cream. It was very delicious without the dairy products!!

Banana Bread

For weeks the girls have been eating bananas like they are going out of style. I haven't been able to keep enough bananas in the house. So, last week, I bought 16 bananas!! I went to the store Saturday and bought 10 more, and when I got home to put them away I see that our banana consumption has slowed, and I have 4 bananas sitting in the fruit bowl that are on their last leg.

What to do with almost cashed bananas???? Banana bread of course. So, I searched the web today for a vegan version, and found this on the PPK. I altered the recipe slightly, leaving out about 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of margarine. I can't imagine this bread would have been any better with the extra fat. What I love most about this bread is that the soft, moist inside is surrounded by this hard, crunchy, sweet crust......delicious.

Vegan Banana Bread

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup margarine, softened

1/4 cup organic unsweetened applesauce

3 very ripe bananas, mashed

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup + 2 TBS vanilla rice milk, mixed with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly oil bottom of a bread pan. Cream together sugars, margarine, and applesauce. Add in flour, baking soda, spices and salt and mix to combine. Pour in rice milk mixture and continue mixing until batter forms. Finally add in banana and mix to combine well. Pour inot pan and bake for 1 hour. Let cool for 30 minutes or so before removing from pan. Best served warm, but darn good at room temperature too.

I encourage everyone to try this bread. And more importantly to try making all of your goodies free of eggs and milk. You will be surprised at how delicious vegan treats can be!

My Sweet Veggie Girls

No new food to blog about yet this morning.....we were running late getting Mairin to school, and it was Weetabix and banana's for breakfast. And of course, a nice big cup of joe with Silk creamer (for mommy).

I just wanted to share a few "proud of my veggie girls" moments. The first moment came last week when a friend was watching the girls for me, and as a treat was going to get the kids Happy Meals for dinner. Mairin proudly proclaimed that she didn't want a Happy Meal because she was vegetarian!!

The second moment came today when I dropped Mairin off for school. Every morning they have a question that they must answer by printing their name in the appropriate column, and this is how they take attendence, as well as practice spelling their names. So, we get to school this morning and I look at the question and kind of chuckle to myself wondering how Mairin will answer. Then I read her the question: "Which do you like best........bacon or sausage". She looked at me, then she looked at the teacher, then she said "where do I put my name, I'm a vegetarian and I don't eat bacon or sausage". The teacher replied "well, good for you, we'll make a special spot just for you".

We of course haven't had any proud veggie moments with Stella just yet, as she's not really big enough to voice her opinion, and we more or less make her food choices for her. However, I'm sure we'll have MANY proud veggie moments with her, as she's had the advantage of being veg for almost all of her life.

It's so heartwarming to see your children reflecting your values, and to see them clearly making the difficult decision to be different (as I'm sure it was hard for her to turn down a Happy Meal when other kids were eating them, just as it was no doubt hard to have to be the only kiddo who needed a "special" spot on the attendence chart). I made the decision that I wasn't going to force my family to be veg (although, since I do the cooking they don't get much choice at home), and I can't tell you how proud I am to see that all of them have followed my lead and remained veg outside the home as well.......even Rob's given up chicken at restaurants.

Collard Wraps

Inspired by the V-con kick over at Chez Mama, I decided to cook up these yummy black eyed pea-collard green wraps tonight. These are really just my interpretation of the recipe, as I don't actually own the cookbook. The Dalai Mama gave me her version of the recipe and I just kind of winged it from there.

For my wraps. I boiled the 5 largest collard leaves I had for about 10 minutes, until they were soft but still a nice bright green. Then I drained them and set them aside to cool. In a large skillet I sauted one diced onion, one minced shallot, and two cloves of minced garlic, and 8 oz of sliced crimini mushrooms. Once that was softened I added in about 2 cups of cooked black eyed peas and about 2 cups of chopped collard greens. Then, I added about 1.5 cups of barbeque sauce and heated it through. Once the mixture was heated I put about 1/4 cup of the black eyed pea mixture in the center of one of the boiled collard leaves and rolled it up like a burrito. I lined them all in a baking dish, drizzled about another 1/2 cup of barbeque sauce on top and baked them for about 30 minutes at 350.

These collard wraps are REALLY, REALLY good. Rob has always said that he does not like black eyed peas.......he ate seconds of these collard wraps!!

I made the coffee barbeque sauce from the recipe in the March issue of Vegetarian Times. However, knowing that I was serving these at dinner time, I omitted the coffee and used 1/2 of water instead. This sauce has a very strong flavor, and I can't imagine using 1/2 cup of coffee in it, I think it was great the way it was.

To go alongside the collard wraps I made the "Less Dressed Potato Salad with Fennel and Chives" from Vegan Planet. It was so good, and so easy to make. I omitted the olives and instead used a handful of rinsed capers. This was a recipe I was taste testing for our Easter meal, and it definitely made the cut!! In addition to the potato salad we also had some of the vegan cornbread I've blogged about a few times before.

And, finally, for dessert, I made Non Dairy "plain vanilla" Ice Cream, also from Vegan Planet. The recipe calls for soy milk, but we drink rice milk, so that's what I used.......I'm dubbing this treat "rice cream". I crushed some cinnamon graham sticks and sprinkled on top......YUM!! The ice cream needs a little longer to set than I anticipated and so ours was actually more like a creamy vanilla slush, but still very good.

It was so nice to actually be in the kitchen cooking dinner again. Hopefully this week will be full of nice meals to share with you all!