Saturday I went to the Green City Market in Chicago with a girlfriend.  I found a lovely mini loaf of ciabatta and a fresh tomato.  When I got home, I grabbed some fresh basil from my patio, threw that in the food processor with garlic olive oil from Old Town Oil, nutritional yeast, sea salt and pepper for a pesto spread.  I smeared that on the both sides of the ciabatta, sliced the tomato, and smashed some avocado.  It was fabulous!  So fresh – great on a hot summer day!  YUM!  (sorry I forgot to take a photo of the sandwich once I put both of the halves together…I guess I was just too excited!

Thanks to Chic Vegan for her post about the Banana Soft Serve!!!  I’ve found my new summer love!  Choosing Raw had this absolutely amazing recipe and I know I’m going to be addicted to this all summer long.  I love that she titled it – “This Post Will Change Your Life” – she was serious!

If you click on the photo you can see the original post and get the recipe.  Essentially it’s just frozen bananas!  I added peanut butter which was amazing.  Also, be sure to give your bananas a little time to warm up – I tossed them directly from the freezer into the food processor and let me tell you, that was CRAZY!  The poor machine went nuts and started bouncing all over!  Winston (my dog) came running wondering what the heck I was doing!  In the recipe she tops it with a chocolate sauce made with agave nectar.  I was out of agave so I ran to Whole Foods and discovered coconut nectar and thus tried that instead – it was great!

I don’t think you can get any healthier of an ice cream than this!  I was skeptical about eating mushed bananas but try it and you’ll be pleasantly surprised!!!

Happy 4th of July!!!

I was craving some all American style food today so I whipped up some vegan mac & cheese which was AWESOME!

I’m not much for measuring when and I like to just throw a bunch of stuff in.  I used a package of rice pasta, elbow macaroni (it’s gluten free and I was curious to try it – didn’t like the texture – it cooks for 17 minutes but even then didn’t seem done, I cooked it a little longer and then it started to fall apart but the center was still slightly uncooked – I think it’s just the way that pasta is – won’t buy it again but if I was celiac then it surely would be better than nothing!)  Anyway, after cooking the pasta I added:

1 heaping tablespoon of miso paste

3/4 package of Daiya shredded cheddar style cheese

1 heaping tablespoon of soy sour cream

1  tablespoon of arrow root starch

2 tablespoons of coconut milk

3 heaping tablespoon of nutritional yeast

1 clove of garlic (smashed through the garlic press)

lots of black pepper

this turned out SUPER CREAMY and delicious!

These are a super yummy, cold, minty treats that actually are good for you! 

For the crust I grabbed the recipe from VegCooking

Crust

1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup gluten flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. fast-rising yeast
2/3 to 3/4 cup very hot tap water (about 130ºF)

• In a food processor fitted with metal “S” blade, combine flours, salt, and yeast. Pulse on and off to mix. With the machine running, pour hot water slowly through the feed tube. Stop adding water as the dough forms a ball.
• Turn off the machine and feel the dough. It should be sticky, stretchy, and quite moist. If the dough is dry, add an additional tablespoon of water; if the dough is water-logged, add flour as needed. Knead the dough for about 40 seconds. Transfer the dough to a well-floured board and let sit for 2 minutes. Then roll out to a diameter of 13 to 14 inches. Top the dough as desired and bake at 450ºF until the crust begins to brown.

Makes 1 14-inch crust

Toppings

Begin caramelizing an onion, red pepper and garlic prior to making the dough so they have time to cook.  Make the dough and roll it out.  Spread on BBQ sauce – keep it light – I put a little too much on – you don’t want to use anywhere close to the amount you’d use if it were pizza sauce.  Sprinkle on the veggies and Daiya vegan mozzarella and bake at 450 – I don’t remember how long I had it in there – it was over 20 minutes I’d say.

Enjoy!!!

ok, even from just reading the name don’t they sound AMAZING?!!?!

I got my recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World.  I used the basic vanilla cupcake recipe and added a few chocolate chips after they’d baked for 10 minutes.  Oh – I was out of vanilla so I used Kahlua which gave them a yummy flavor!  I frosted them with the peanut butter buttercream frosting.  Ugh, they’re absolutely delicious!

We recently got a FABULOUS new grill as an early wedding gift from some very dear friends/family.  Grilled veggies are not only super delicious but HEALTHY – a meal entirely made up of grilled veggies – YUM!  Eric and I could live on this everyday!  One thing we hadn’t tried before was grilling sweet potatoes – what have we been doing all these years keeping them off the grill?!  They were fantastic!  I simply sliced them, then tossed them in olive oil, sea salt and cinnamon.  For the skewers you see, we did half with olive oil and random herbs and the other with BBQ sauce.  It was a wonderful dinner – I’m looking forward to a lot more grilling over the summer.

So I stole this Sweet Potato Bar idea from Eat Well With Janel and now I’ll have to steal her photo as well.  I always get so excited to eat my creations that I forget to take photos for you!  We had this last night and although I thought it was a huge hit, Eric is a little more difficult to please – he’s odd about texture and isn’t a fan of sweet things.  He did eat it, so it wasn’t horrible but I LOVED it and would definitely make it again for myself when he’s not home

The short of it is…baked sweet potato topped with shredded soy cheese (Daiya) for me and regular cheese for Eric, refried beans, home made guacamole and salsa.  Although Janel says to use peach salsa I didn’t get it as I knew Eric wouldn’t eat it.  I did get (from Trader Joe’s) sweet corn salsa, roasted garlic salsa and a traditional red salsa….then just put a scoop of each on top.  For my home made guac, all I really did was mash up an avocado, add a little vegan-aise (vegan mayo) to make it creamy and then a little texas style seasonings – that contains a bit of salt (we have so many bottles of seasoning in our spice cabinet).  I didn’t go all out since it was just a little addition to something that already had tons of flavor.  Also, I baked mine as I try to avoid the microwave as much as possible – I just don’t trust what it does to my food.  Check out Jane’s blog for the full recipe.

 Enjoy – this is DELICIOUS and super healthy!

I loved these ideas from Urban Vegan….when my detox is over I’m going to have to give some of these a try!  I absolutely love baked potatoes and what better way to eat them than with lots of extra yummy goodness piled on top!

Check out the full post from Urban Vegan!  She always has great recipe ideas – whether you follow the full recipe or just use it for inspiration, you’ll love her site so keep it bookmarked!