Vegan Hearty Lentil Stew

Keri at I Eat Trees blog is doing a great cookbook giveaway. I really want to win this so I decided to make a recipe from her blog to get extra 5 entries in this contest. I checked out her recipes and many of them looked very good, but I didn't have all the ingredients. After a lot of research I found a recipe that I had all the important ingredients for. Vegan Hearty Lentil Stew was the winner. I love lentils! Unlike most beans and legumes they don't require presoaking and they taste great!

I had to improvise a bit since I didn't have baby carrots (I used regular carrots instead) and I didn't have a crockpot (or 6-7 hours until dinner for that matter). I used a regular pot instead. I simmered the stew covered for one hour and it turned out great.

Getting all the stuff ready....

Everything in the pot getting ready for cooking.....

Delicious, healthy and protein packed dinner....

My afternoon snack and the winner of Vegan Pate contest

I was craving something sweet and salty and the same time. In my pre-vegan days I liked Flipz- Chocolate covered pretzels. I used to eat them in Czech Republic, too.

Sometimes I melt some chocolate chips and use it as a dip for pretzels, but I didn't have any pretzels at home today. However, I had some salty popcorn in the pantry. I thought that it would be a brilliant idea to drizzle some melted chocolate chips over the popcorn and eat it that way. I was imagining a cool looking popcorn with little chocolate ribbons drizzled over so it would look like a gourmet chocolate popcorn. Well, my idea was far from the reality. While I was drizzling the little ribbons of chocolate over the bowl of popcorn, my Ziplock bag busted and made a huge mess, covering the popcorn and the bowl in one big pile of chocolate. It didn't look very appetizing, but it tasted great despite the horrible look. A lesson for today: next time I will not push so hard on the Ziplock bag.

To balance this not so healthy snack I bought a freshly made green smoothie (Mango, Pineapple and Spinach).

I used a true random number generator at www.random.org to pick the Vegan Pate Contest winner. The generated number-comment was 5 (April / Knightime Creations). Congratulations! April, email me your address at czech.vegan (at) yahoo.com so I can send you your prize.

By the way, thanks for noticing the numbers, I messed up :-) I had a third question but it was too complicated (name one American movie that was filmed in Prague), since many American movies that were made in Prague were also made in other places during the filming process....When I deleted the question I forgot to change the numbers.....I promise that my next giveaways and contests will not be so complicated.

Coconut Cake

Coconut Cake

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup finely shredded coconut

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 Tbs apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup oil

1 1/3 cups cold almond or soy milk

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly oil and flour 9-inch cake pan.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Mix all the wet ingredients in a small bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until blended, adding more milk if necessary. Pour into the cake pan. Bake for 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I made a rum chocolate coconut frosting by combining vegan instant coconut pudding, melted chocolate chips and dark rum.

Beanylicious Dip

I got a giant (5 pounds) bag of organic carrots and about 3 pounds of celery yesterday. I decided to have some for a dinner tonight and juice the rest later. Since I ran out of hummus I had to make my own dip. I wanted to do something different then hummus so I left out the usual sesame tahini, added some fresh parsley and swapped the chickpeas for white beans.

Beanylicious Dip

1 15-oz can cannellini beans or other white beans, drained

1-2 cloves garlic, chopped

1/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1 Tbs olive oil

3 Tbs fresh lemon juice

1-2 Tbs water

salt to taste (optional)

Place all ingredients in a blender or a food processor and puree until smooth.

Quick dinner and a giveaway prize

I was quite lucky and won one of the daily giveaways from Miso for Breakfast blog. The prize was a coupon for one FREE Tofutti product (limited by max $3.99 value). I ended up using it for a box of frozen "Cuties". I haven't had those in a long time so I was happy to get them again.

I also bought my Thanksgiving Tofurky that was on sale at Whole Foods. I didn't buy the whole feast this year since I am on a budget and I didn't care that much about the chocolate cake that came in the feast box.

My sweet prize

I whipped up a quick dinner tonight. Nothing special, red beet & onion salad, BBQ seitan strips and potatoes with bell pepper. The simple dinner didn't turn out so great though. The potatoes were undercooked and the bell peppers were overcooked......What a mess! At least the BBQ seitan and the salad were good.

A contest reminder

You have few more days before the Vegan Pate contest is over. So far your chances to win are very high. The pate is delicious and you cannot get it in USA, so there is your chance to try it :-)

Olive pizza with blue cheese and walnuts

I was craving some gourmet pizza and since I had some delicious vegan blue cheese (Blue Style Sheese from Scotland), fresh thyme and olive tapenade in the fridge I though that I could combine them to create a unique pizza. Until today I never made my own pizza dough from scratch. I was always afraid to make it from scratch and I didn't want to make a mess in the kitchen. I would buy a pre-made pizza crust or a frozen pizza dough from Whole Foods since they have vegan pizza dough and pizza crust in stock most of the time. Unfortunately when I was going to buy a pizza dough or pizza crust this time, they were out. They only had cheese pizza crust and gluten-free frozen pizza dough (I don't mess around with gluten-free stuff). So I went to Publix and they didn't even have a frozen pizza dough, just some pre-made stuff that was hanging next to the freezer. They had about four varieties, even whole wheat crust. I flipped the package to see the ingredients and big bald letters with whey and mozzarella were laughing in my face. All varieties had the same unwanted ingredients. Why the heck do they have to put cheese in all of their crusts? Don't people put cheese on top? That made me so angry so I left the store without buying anything. When I got home I decided to make my very own pizza dough. I was pleased with the results and I must say I might even open a pizzeria soon :-) Here is my creation. Feel free to use any vegan cheese, but this one is the best blue cheese that I found. It truly mimics the taste of blue cheese like no other vegan cheese. I have been buying it for about two years now.

My dough before rising

For pizza dough:

2 1/2 cups flour

2 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp. salt

1 Tbs instant yeast

1 cup water

1 Tbs fresh thyme, chopped (optional)

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients together. Beat with an electric mixer (with dough hooks) on medium speed for about 5 minutes. Transfer the dough into a medium size bowl that was coated with cooking spray. Cover and let rise for about 30 minutes. Prepare the toppings while the dough is rising.

Part of the toppings

For topping:

1 Tbs olive oil

1 large red onion, peeled and cut into circles

1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

5-6 Tbs kalamata or black olive tapenade (I used a mixture of both, plus green olives)

1/4 package of Blue Style Sheese (about 2 oz), grated

1 tsp. dried thyme

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook 5 minutes, or until soft, stirring occasionally. Add the dried thyme and cook 1 more minute.

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Coat a round baking sheet with cooking spray, or brush with olive oil. Place the dough in the middle of the baking sheet and punch it down to create a pizza crust that is about 1/2-inch thick. Prick the crust with a fork several times.

Spread the tapenade over the crust, scatter onions evenly over the tapenade and sprinkle with walnuts.

Bake 10 minutes. Sprinkle the grated Sheese over the pizza and bake 10 more minutes.

Pizza before baking

Pizza after baking