2011 Vegan Awards

Here are the winners of my personal Vegan Awards for 2011:

Best legume/bean :

Chickpeas

Chickpeas are amazing and so versatile! I love roasted chickpeas in quinoa, spinach and cranberry salad, roasted chickpeas as a snack, or sauteed chickpeas with vegetables. I love falafel, hummus and The Sexy Vegan's mock tuna salad , and chickpea mock crab cakes.

Best Vegan Sausage:

Field Roast Frankfurters (picture courtesy of Field Roast)

These sausages are addictive! I can eat them hot or cold and never get tired of them. They remind me of my favorite Czech sausages.

Best Cookbook:

The Happy Herbivore by Lindsay S. Nixon

This was the most frequently used vegan cookbook in my kitchen in 2011. The recipes are low in fat or fat free, yet very flavorful, delightful and easy to make. I made almost all recipes from that cookbook, many of them multiple times.

Best Chocolate:

Chocolove xoxox (Orange peel in Dark Chocolate)

and Whole Foods Dark Chocolate with Coconut

Best Tea:

The Republic of Tea Apricot Decaf Black Tea

and Rishi Cinnamon Plum

Best Plant-Based Milk:

Whole Foods Unsweetened Almond milk

This milk is amazing! It has only 40 calories a cup and I use it for everything from Overnight Oats, puddings, creamy soups and sauces, baked goods to smoothies. I also enjoy a splash of this milk in my tea.

Best Meat Alternative:
Gardein's Mandarin Orange Crispy Chick'n
A tasty chicken alternative, with fantastic texture and seasonings.

Best snack:
Marinated Collard Greens! I make these very often and when I don't make them, I buy them at Whole Foods's deli bar. Here is my recipe.

My personal best recipe of 2011:
Vegan paella with Sophie's Kitchen vegan prawns. This recipe won me a Kindle in a recipe contest :-) I am very proud of this recipe and I make it quite often. I made the recipe pretty simple so everyone can make it at home. You can leave out the vegan sausages and the vegan prawns if you don't have them, but the recipe will miss them.

Best vegan pizza:

Mellow Mushroom pizza with some many options-I still haven't tried them all :-)

Best vegan friendly grocery store:

Sevananda Natural Foods Market because they only sell vegetarian and vegan products (with the exception of cat and dog food). They also make awesome baked goods and have delicious hot and cold bar options everyday.

Best drink:
Caffeine-free and decaffeinated tea :-) I have quite a collection and love them all for different reasons.

Best grain:
Quinoa (a delicious, versatile and nutritious grain with funny "tails")

Here is my favorite way to enjoy quinoa, in a roasted chickpea salad with raw spinach and dried cranberries.

I also love my quinoa tabbouleh salad

Best vegan friendly restaurant:
World Peace Cafe is a vegetarian restaurant that is run by volunteers. They offer a great selection of vegan and vegetarian foods, wide assortment of teas and delicious vegan cakes. I love volunteering in the kitchen there. The staff is very nice and when I volunteer there I learn so much about cooking and food and ways to keep my mind calm and peaceful.

And their Peace burger is the best vegan burger that I have EVER had! Here is a picture of the burger from their website. They offer meditation classes every Thursday evening. More info here.

Best vegetable:

Kale

I became a kale addict overnight. I used to hate kale and then one day I had some kale salad at Whole Foods and boom! A new kale addict was born :-)

I love my kale raw, but I do enjoy it cooked as well (or baked into kale chips)

Not sure what to do with kale?

Try my kale recipes:

Garlicky Cheezy Kale

Winter bulgur & vegetable medley

Lemon kale pesto

Kale with creamy avocado and lime dressing

Kale salad three ways

What are your 2011 winners?

Sophie's Kitchen Vegan Seafood Giveaway winner

Sophie's Kitchen Vegan Seafood Giveaway winner is a comment number 25 (via www.random.org). Congratulations to Tammy with the comment "I Follow Sophie's Kitchen on Twitter babymasongrant"

Tammy, you won 2 coupons for Sophie's Vegan Seafood of your choice. I will contact you via Twitter to get your address.

Thank you everyone who entered my giveaway. Stay tuned for a new giveaway next week.

Sophie's Kitchen Vegan Seafood Review and Giveaway

Breaded Vegan Fish Fillets with boiled potatoes, caraway seeds and fresh parsley

Vegan Prawns with cocktail sauce and lemon

Vegan Calamari with homemade vegan tartar sauce

When I first saw the selection of vegan seafood on Sophie's Kitchen website, I was thinking "No, way! This "seafood" looks way too real for it to be vegan......"

I grew up in a country that is so far away from the sea that we never have any fresh seafood. Seafood in Czech Republic is something foreign and we only serve it at fancy restaurants, or you can buy it frozen at specialty grocery stores. I had many opportunities to try seafood when I traveled around Europe as a child and as a teenager, but I never dared to eat any "creepy ocean crawlers".

I accidentally ate some fried Calamari when I was in Spain. I was about 11 years old and thought that they were fried onion rings or some kind of french fries.......But I liked it :-)

I had always wanted to overcome my fear of eating seafood, but by the time I got to the USA where seafood is plentiful I no longer ate meat and did not want to start eating meat. I make my mock tuna salad with chickpeas, but it does not taste or look like tuna salad. I never thought that there would ever be vegan seafood that would look or taste just like the real stuff. Well, recently, a miracle happened and Sophie's Kitchen revolutionary vegan seafood was born! Thanks to their little daughter Sophie who loves seafood, but unfortunately is allergic to it! Sophie's parents developed a line of delicious vegan seafood for her daughter and for the rest of us who are vegan, allergic to seafood or care about the ocean's resources and the environment (or all of the above). Sophie's Kitchen has the cutest website :-) By the way, they won the Best New Vegan Product award by VegNews magazine at Expo West 2011 :-)

Their line includes: Vegan Calamari, Vegan Shrimp, Vegan Breaded Fish Fillets, Vegan Squid Rings, Vegan Prawns, and Breaded Vegan Shrimp.

I was very fortunate to receive some coupons from Sophie's Kitchen for their awesome vegan seafood. I redeemed the coupons for Vegan Calamari, Breaded Vegan Fish Fillets and Vegan Prawns.

I liked the Breaded Vegan Fish Fillets a lot. I baked half of them at first, but the breading was not as crispy so I fried the other half and it was awesome! I served them with boiled potatoes and a squeeze of lemon juice. Yummy!

The Vegan Prawns had a bit rubbery texture, but a very interesting taste that I could not compare to anything that I ever had. I enjoyed them warm in my Vegan Paella recipe and cold with a cocktail sauce. I love how realistic the prawns look. I even fooled my family with them when I posted pictures of the Paella with vegan prawns on my Facebook wall.

I fried the Vegan Calamari and served them with my homemade vegan tartar sauce. Very good!

Vegan Prawns in my Paella Recipe

I know that you want to try this new vegan phenomenon so Sophie's Kitchen generously offered 2 coupons for their vegan seafood to one lucky reader. Yay!!!

So, who wants to win some cool vegan seafood? You have several ways to enter this giveaway. I will pick one random comment on November 25th, Friday evening. You have to leave a comment for each entry option to count, if you leave one big comment with everything in it, it will only count as one entry. The more comments, the better the chances are to win.

Mandatory entry:

# Leave a comment telling me what would you like to try from Sophie's Kitchen

Extra entries:

# Become a follower (member) of this blog and leave a comment that you did or that you already were a follower

# Follow me on Twitter and leave a comment that you did with your Twitter name

# Follow Sophie's Kitchen on Twitter and leave a comment that you did with your Twitter name

# Tweet about this giveaway and leave me a comment that you did (1 tweet per day is allowed). Include @CzechVegan and @VeganSeafood in the tweets.

# Like Sophie's Kitchen on Facebook and leave a comment that you did

# Mention this giveaway, with the link, in a blog post, and leave a link to the post in a comment

# For extra 5 entries-make any recipe from Czech Vegan blog, and blog about it. Leave 5 separate comments for the entries.

Good luck!

Vegan Paella

I wanted to create a paella recipe for a long time. As a child I visited Spain numerous times and liked this beautiful dish. Sophie's Kitchen, plant-based vegan seafood company, sent me a few coupons for their vegan products just in time for my Paella recipe :-) I used their vegan Prawns, but you can use their vegan Shrimp, or leave the vegan seafood out. The dish looks really cool with the vegan seafood garnish, even my family was freaking out asking me if I started to eat meat again because those prawns look very realistic. The sausages that I used for this recipe were Field Roast Frankfurters which are their newest creation. So far they are my FAVORITE vegan sausages! Nothing beats it! I am seriously in love with these sausages, they are awesome cold (they are fully cooked, ready to eat), or warm in recipes or in hot dogs. They remind me of my favorite Czech salami-sausage. Very flavorful, juicy, a bit smokey, but not too spicy. I can eat these everyday and would not get tired of them. By the way, Field Roast Classic Meatloaf is pretty awesome, too! I eat that stuff cold in sandwiches or hot with mashed potatoes and gravy :-)

Saffron is a very expensive spice that gives paella recipes beautiful yellow color, but you can use turmeric if you don't have saffron. Turmeric will give it a nice yellow color for much cheaper (or free if you have some at home already).

Vegan Paella

1 cup white rice, uncooked

3 cups vegetable broth

1/2 cup white wine (or extra vegetable broth)

2 bay leaves

pinch of saffron or 1/2 tsp turmeric

1 Tbs olive oil

1 small red onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 Field Roast Frankfurters (or other vegan sausages), cut into 1/2 thick rounds

1 medium red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes, drained

1 6-oz jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained and quartered (about 1/2 cup)

1 cup frozen green peas

2 tsp paprika

Sophie's Kitchen Vegan Prawns or Vegan Shrimp (optional)

1 lemon, cut into wedges for garnish

salt and black pepper to taste

Combine rice, 2 cups vegetable broth, saffron (or turmeric) and bay leaves in a medium saucepan with a tight fitting lid. Bring to boil. Turn heat to low, cover with a lid and simmer 15 minutes. Remove from heat. Discard bay leaves and set aside.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet or paella pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook 5 minutes. Add garlic, sausages, paprika, red bell pepper and cook 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook 3 minutes. Add rice, 1 cup vegetable broth and white wine (or more broth), artichoke hearts, frozen peas and vegan prawns (if using). Cook 5 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Garnish with lemon wedges.

NEWS! I won a recipe contest with this dish recently :-) I won a Kindle :-)