Raw Vegan Cheesecake

I'm posting this a little late, but this recipe was the pièce de résistance of Vegan Week! Every year on Good Friday, my church choir has a party to celebrate the hard work we put into the Easter season. This year, I searched online for days to find a dessert recipe that would be both delicious, vegan, and as all natural as possible. I wasn't interested in using silken tofu or any of that crap, so I was thrilled to find a recipe for a raw vegan cheesecake that actually sounded delicious! Here's the recipe for Lemony Cheesecake with berry sauce.

The "cheese" section of this cheesecake is made up of cashews! Soaking them for a couple hours makes them soft enough to process in a food processor. You have to process them for a while, but it's amazing how they come together into a cheesecake-esque consistency!

Instead of making this into one cheesecake, I figured cheesecake bites would be better for a cocktail party. Buy the little baking papers and fill with your batter.

Instead of the berry sauce the recipe calls out, I just finely diced some strawberries and tossed them with a little freshly squeezed lemon juice and some agave nectar. A delicious addition!

These cheesecake bites were a HUGE hit at the party! You really have to try making these... they're easier than "real" cheesecake and much healthier!

Vegan Chili: What a Crock!

This recipe is from the Crockpot 365 website. If you haven't been there, you need to check it out. If you've never cooked in your crockpot, you are truly missing out because there is no cheaper or easier way to feed the hungry mouths in your home. Nothing beats coming home from work and having the house already smell like dinner. Anyway, the woman who runs the site decided to make every meal for a year in her crockpot, which turned into a Julie and Julia-esque book deal (if only that fate were possible for the fallible foodies...). I've made other crock meals from from this website before, but this one came recommended to me by a very awesome vegetarian.


Click here to find the recipe.


I made a few alterations, kind of one and a halving the recipe. I added some green pepper, another sweet potato, some black beans, and a little more orange juice. That's the beauty of the crock. You throw almost anything into it and what comes out will usually be edible! (Some recipes on the cRock blog are fails and it's really funny to read what she says about them).

Before, circa 7:30 am. Look at that beautiful morning sunshine gleaming off those veggies! Note: I would cut the sweet potatoes and peppers a little smaller next time.

After! It smells like magic. Just don't forget the Chipotle Chili powder!

And the end result! I served it over some brown rice made in my rice cooker (another magical machine, just like the crock pot). This meal is warm, hearty, and delicious. You won't miss the meat at all, I promise! You might miss the cheese and sour cream, though... I made this for an impromptu dinner party of 5 and it was a smash hit!


Enjoy!

Roasted Veggies

Roasted carrots, parsnips, and Brussels sprouts

Roasted veggies are a staple in our kitchen. When I'm unsure of what to make for dinner, roasted veggies are usually my default dish. Or when I've perhaps over-indulged a bit on desserts or fried foods one weekend, a couple of dinners of roasted veggies can turn it all around. Roasting in the oven at a high temperature is bound to make any veggie taste good - even ones you thought you hated. Just go to the store, pick out what looks fresh, chop it up, toss in some olive oil, sprinkle with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper et voila! You've got a delicious meal. Adding potatoes always helps make it more hearty and feel like a main dish rather than a side.

A few tips to keep in mind when roasting veggies:

1) Roast at 400 to 425 degrees to achieve that yummy caramelization.

2) Be sure to use plenty of olive oil and toss to make sure each veggie is coated - don't want them sticking to the pan!

3) Don't chop them too small - they will shrink when roasting, so err on the larger side.

4) Root veggies will take a bit longer than, say green beans and asparagus. Start the root veggies first (including potatoes, if you desire), then after about 15 minutes or so, add the green veggies and roast for 10 minutes more (or until all is tender). For the veggies pictured below, I roasted them all together for about 20 minutes, shaking the pan a few times during roasting to make sure they didn't stick.

Before

After

I tried a new method for roasting beets last night, too. I read about this in America's Test Kitchen (where else?) and decided to try it. First you remove the stem parts, scrub the beet, and wrap it in foil. (You can do this with multiple beets as well, I just happened to be roasting one). Place the foil package on a baking sheet in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until a knife slides easily into the beet.

Unwrap (carefully, it's hot!) and let cool for 10 minutes. Using paper towels (to shield your fingers from beet stains), rub off the skin of the beet - it will come off very easily.

Once you've got all the skin off, slice the beet, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper! I find beets delicious all by themselves, but they are also wonderful in salads, such as with arugula and goat cheese.



If you're not a big fan of vegetables, have a go at roasting them. I honestly believe it's a good way to get even the pickiest of eaters to enjoy veggies.

Italian Couscous: An Experiment

I love couscous. LOVE it. When I was thinking of things to make for "Vegan Week," it was one of the first things to pop into my mind, because I didn't want to deal with any of the weird, hard to find, meat imitation junk that a lot of vegans and vegetarians eat. I wanted to keep it simple and easy. Couscous can be made in a ton of different ways, but I didn't find one that was necessarily "Italian" inspired. So what the heck, I figured I'd give it a whirl.

Italian Couscous (my own invention)

1 red onion, diced

1 zucchini, sliced, then quartered into small pieces

1 red pepper, diced

1 cups sun dried tomatoes, diced

2 1/4 cups couscous

3 cups vegetable stock (homemade! hopefully you already have this in your freezer)

Salt, Pepper

Olive Oil

Handful of fresh Basil, julienned

This will easily serve 6 people.

Warm 2 Tbs olive oil in a large pot. Add the onion and zucchini and saute for a few minutes before adding the red pepper. Sautee until the veggies are cooked through, but make sure to not over cook them.

Delicious and Beautiful!

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Add couscous and a teaspoon of salt, remove from heat, Cover, and let sit for 5 minutes.

Stir in the sun dried tomatoes, a little more salt, pepper, and basil. Spoon into deep dishes, and enjoy!

Note: This made a delicious light supper. My one complaint was that it could use a lot more seasoning. Maybe some red pepper flakes thrown in with the couscous? I'm open to suggestions, let me know what you think! (Also, Kaycee thought it could use more zucchini).

Hummus of the Holy Week: Hearts of Palm

First off, I hope my picture isn't offensive to anyone... it's, um... art! When I was trying to come up with a "Hummus of the Holy Week," roommate Emily had the best idea: Hearts of Palm! She's brilliant! Although, I also asked her on Palm Sunday, so I'm sure that had something to do with it...

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 can chick peas, drained

1/2 can hearts of palm (I bought the "salad size")

1/3 cup tahini

Juice of 2 lemons

1.5 tsp salt

pepper

a few dashes of Frank's Red Hot (this may be a little fallible.. but unlike ketchup, it only has a handful of ingredients, all completely pronounceable)

You should know how to turn this into hummus by now (thank you, food processor!). Also, if I haven't mentioned this on past hummus posts, this is just the Barefoot Contessa hummus with a special guest star.

Vegan Week - It's Easy When You're Greek!

Many apologies for my lack of posting last week - I came down with a heinous sinus infection the day after returning from Greece, so it was a bit of a rough week. I pretty much ate scrambled eggs all week, which doesn't make for exciting food blogging. I also made a rather disappointing One Pot Chicken and Rice. I get very mad and pouty when my food doesn't turn out well, despite compliments from the hubs. But anyways, I digress.

Onto the title of this post - eating vegan is truly easy when you're Greek! The Greeks have vegan eating down pat, as they do it several days a week for most of Lent. So I knew I'd have plenty of yummy recipes to draw upon for this week. Fasolakia, a vegetable dish of string beans and potatoes is one of our favorites. It's rich and hearty and you won't miss your meat or dairy with this one!

Ingredients:

1.5 lb string beans, cleaned and ends snipped (I like to use kitchen scissors!)
2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes (Muir Glen Organic brand was on sale this week, yippee!)
2 TBSP tomato paste
1/2 to 1 cup water
1/2 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, diced

Directions:

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a large pot or Dutch Oven. Add the onions and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the string beans and toss to combine with the onions and oil. Saute for another 5 minutes.

Mix your tomato paste with 1/2 cup of water (use a fork - beat like you're doing scrambled eggs). Add the tomato paste/water mixture and your diced tomatoes to the pot. Stir to combine. Add additional water if it looks to dry (you will want there to be a good amount of liquid in the pot, as it will reduce considerably). Add the potatoes and salt and pepper. Cover the pot and let it cook for about 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Check for done-ness of potatoes and beans (a fork should slide easily into a potato, the beans should be quite tender). If need be, recover and cook a bit longer. Let it cook for a few additional minutes uncovered to reduced the sauce (5 minutes or so).





It's seriously so good. And good for you! Post-Vegan Week, I'd serve it with some Feta, and perhaps even as a side-dish to some yummy meat. But it's just as good on its own, I swear! Try it - you won't be disappointed.

Vegan Week Kick-Off: Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

I know what you're thinking..... what kind of omnivore decides to go vegan? Well, the purpose of this challenge was to find more sustainable kitchen methods than we've used in the past. I've already preached about eating higher quality, more humane meats and acknowledged the fact that they're more expensive and less accessible to a large portion of this country. Americans eat a lot of meat, but why? Delicious meals can be prepared not only free of meat, but free of all animal products. So, it was decided to initiate Vegan Week in conjunction with Holy Week, which is potentially crazy for a busy liturgical musician who also works a 9-5.... it'll make that Easter Ham taste even more delightful.

Note: I don't actually like veganism. I think it's just because I can't trust a person who doesn't eat cheese (I drink whole milk for crying out loud!). It's a diet that's simply never going to be the norm in most cultures and for certain individuals it can even cause health problems. But that doesn't mean that vegans don't have an extremely valid argument that I respect. I'm eating vegan for a week... why don't you try it for just one meal a week? This stems from an absolute LOVE of eating meat... I'm just trying to have a greater respect for where that animal flesh comes from.

Anyway:

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup (adapted from Barefoot Contessa: Parties)

4 Tbs olive oil

3 large yellow onions, shopped

2 Tbs curry powder

5 Lbs butternut squash, peeled and cut into chunks

4 large apples (Macintosh... I used Fiji) peeled, cored, and cut into chunks

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground pepper

2 cups apple juice or cider

Warm the olive oil in a stockpot over low heat. Add the onions and curry and cook until the onions are tender, about 15 mins. Be sure to keep scraping the bottom of the pot.

Add the squash, apple, salt, pepper, and 2 cups water. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat to low and cook for 30-40 mins until the squash and apples are squish, but not mushy.

Either process the soup through a food mill, or just use an immersion blender right in the pot to puree the soup. Like so:

Add the apple juice and water (if you want) to get the soup to the consistency you desire. Check for salt and pepper.

Ta-da! You just made a DELICIOUS vegan soup!

Hummus of the Week: Roasted Red Pepper

I know... kind of looks like a 4th grade Thanksgiving Art assignment...

Back! Finally! I apologize to the faithful Fallible fans out there for going so long without a post... what can I say? An impromptu trip to Pennsylvania mixed with a busy personal life have severely limited my internet time. I thought the best choice for a new post would involve those magical little chick peas we all love so much. So here it is: Roasted Red Pepper Hummus.

The first step is to Roast your Red Peppers. I've mentioned this method before for the delicious Vegetarian Lasagna I made a few weeks ago. But this time I've included pictures!!

Take 2 Red Bell Peppers, slice them in half and clean out the seeds. Place them skin side up under your broiler for... as long as it takes until there's no more red. Keep checking until they look like the "After" pictures. Then throw them into a zipped plastic bag (or a tupperware container) and let them steam for 20 minutes. Then remove them and peel off the blackened skin. Ta-da! Roasted Red Peppers!!

Before

After!

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

1 can chick peas

3 cloves garlic, minced*

1/3 cup tahini

Lemons Juice (one or two lemons)

2 Roasted Red Peppers

Salt and Pepper to taste

*A note from Emily: throw your garlic cloves into the food processor before everything else, then pulse until minced. The magic of the food processor NEVER ceases to amaze me!

Throw in everything else and spin it 'til you love it.

Enjoy!

Cooking in Greece Part 2

Things continue to be lovely over on this side of the Atlantic. The hubs and I took a little day trip today to Epidavros, a very cool ancient ruins site with an amazingly preserved, 14,000 seat theater with perfect acoustics. It was quite awesome.



Just thought you might like a little culture with your food. Anyways, I was jonesing for some healthy eats tonight so I decided to make my go-to healthy dish, which just happens to be Greek. Honestly, I can't believe I haven't posted it here yet - I seriously cook this every week or so. It's one of the few things I can make without consulting the recipe, it's ridiculously cheap to make, and I've given out the recipe to many friends who now love it too. So here, it is: Greek Lentil Soup (called Fakes - "fah-kess" in Greek).

Fakes
(taught to me by my husband, whose mother taught him)

Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 or 2 carrots (I like 2, but 1 will suffice)
8 oz brown lentils
1 quart water
dried oregano
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
1 to 2 TBSP tomato paste (to taste)

Directions:
Put lentils in a large, heavy bottom pot and cover with about an inch of water. Bring to the boil and boil for 10 minutes, then strain into colander and set aside.

Dry out the pot and pour in the olive oil. Heat to medium high heat and saute the onions and carrot until soft, about 10 minutes. During the last minute of sauteing, throw in the garlic until fragrant. Add the lentils back to the pot, along with one quart of water, the oregano, bay leaves and salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then cover and boil for 10 minutes.

Uncover the pot and stir in the tomato paste. Re-cover, turn down the heat so that it simmers, and continue cooking for 30 to 40 minutes more, until the lentils are tender.

Serve with Feta and a drizzle of red-wine vinegar over the top.

Who would've thought I'd be a Greek lady when I grew up?

It was neat to cook a meal in my husband's family's kitchen. I never got to meet my mother-in-law, sadly she passed away in 2001. Tonight, standing at her stove, cooking a dish I know she cooked a hundred times before, I felt as though I knew her a little bit. It was really special, one of the many moments in my life where I've been grateful for food and the way it has brought me closer to people I love.

Kalinichta (good night) from Greece!

Cooking in Greece

Greetings, friends! I know this post is a long time in coming, but I assure you, it will be a good one. As many of you know, I have been in Greece visiting my husband's family for the past week, and will be here until next Monday. The weather has been a little bit chilly for Greece at this time of year (55 or so during the day) but today we had a beautiful day, sunny and warm. Here I am at a cafe near the sea where my sister-in-law and I spent the afternoon.

This evening I was lucky enough to get to cook a meal with my sister-in-law at her house. We made Spanikorizo, a very traditional dish usually served as a side to meat. During Lent, Greeks fast on Wednesdays and Fridays (meaning they refrain from animal products), so this is also a common Lenten dish. My sis-in-law and her family don't fast (and neither do we), so we weren't making it for that reason. It's a tasty dish for any time of year, in my opinion, especially when you can get good, fresh garden spinach.

first, you must wash and trim the spinach

Spanikorizo
(I wrote this down as my SIL was cooking, and she doesn't use a recipe, so some amounts are estimates)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup olive oil
about 5 cups fresh spinach, washed and trimmed (do not sub frozen!)
6 scallions, white and light green parts, chopped
1 medium size onion, chopped
1/2 cup dill
lemon juice (to taste - we used the juice of one lemon)
1 cup rice (we used arborio - any long grain white will do)
salt and pepper

Directions:

Clean spinach thoroughly (I recommend using a salad spinner if you have one, or dry it on paper towels). Fill a large saucepan with about an inch of water and bring to the boil. Add the spinach and cook until slightly wilted, just a couple of minutes. Drain in a colander and set aside.

Dry out the pan and add about a 1/4 cup of olive oil. Saute the scallions and onion until soft. Add the spinach back to the pan and stir to combine. Add the dill and lemon and salt and pepper to taste.

Add a bit more water (about 1 cup or so) and olive oil to taste (another 1/4 cup or so) and add the rice. Cover and cook over medium low heat until rice is tender, stirring occasionally. Serve with feta and bread!

chopping onions

adding the wilted spinach to the sauted onions

Dinner! Side of delicious Feta is a must here in Greece

And I'll leave you with an adorable pic of my nephew eating his dinner (homemade french fries and beef schnitzel - lucky kid!) to make you forget that I haven't cooked posted anything for a week. :)

Stay tuned for a post on the Athens Central Market that we visited this week (not for the weak of stomach). I also got a new Greek cookbook that I'm really excited about - getting so many ideas for when I return!

Hummus of the Week: Sun Dried Tomato

My Hummus is a little late this week, but here it is! The taste of Italy is at your fingertips with a simple pulse of your food processor:

Sun-Dried Tomato Hummus:

1 can chick peas

2 gloves garlic, diced

2 TBSP tahini

the juice of 1/2 a lemon

6 TBSP olive oil

1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes, diced

2-3 fresh basil leaves, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

You know what to do! Dump it all in the food processor and pulse until it's a dip! The actual amounts might need to be modified slightly... I really need to start paying attention more to what I'm doing in the kitchen if I'm going to post recipes online.... maybe next time.

Enjoy!

A Hearty Vegan Lunch

Many of you who know me well may scoff at my advertising a vegan dish, as not too long ago the thought of even a purposely vegetarian dish would make my eyes roll to the back of my bacon and butter filled head. However, as a true omnivore and a great lover of both animals and their meat, I acknowledge the fact that we have to be more aware of how our meat gets to our plate. I'm not a PETA person, and I can't say that I really believe in "animal rights" or anything, I'm just a human who doesn't like to see unnecessary suffering inflicted on animals. I think that they should be treated well for the nourishment they provide, not brutalized in factory farms. I know, I know... I'm going to be a hypocrite about this at some point (hence, fallible), but I'm certainly going to avoid any burger that is selling nation-wide for only $1...

But I digress. Lunch!!! Lunch is probably going to be the easiest part of this challenge, as I try to pack something for work almost every day. And it's really not too much of a hassle to make something in advance that will last for a few days... it's like left-overs of something you never ate in the beginning.

I decided to try a recipe from Cat Cora's Cooking from the Hip (thanks Mom!). This is a great cookbook that strongly encourages recipe tampering. Above is a picture of Curried Lentils with Butternut Squash, and yes it looks like baby food... I think I see why she didn't include a picture of this dish in her book... but it tasted great! It's nice to have a warm filling meal that doesn't weigh you down. This made a good 5 portions, served with a side of brown rice.

1.5 cups lentils

3 lbs butternut squash (I used half a GIANT squash), peeled and chunked

1.5 Tbs EVOO (God Damn you, Rachel Ray!)

1.5 Tbs Curry Powder (or more)

1.5 Tsp Fresh Grated Ginger

1.5 Tsp Chilli Powder (or more)

Salt and Pepper as you like it

In a pot, cover the lentils with water and bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, throw in your squash, cover, and simmer until the squash is squishable (about 25 mins). Drain, then dig out the squash and throw it in a bowl. Mash it up, then add the lentils and the rest of the ingredients. Bake for 20-30 at 375 (or however long you feel like it) in whatever you have lying around... I just used an 8x8 Pyrex.

Below is my tupperware... Taste: 10, Looks: 3. Well!....