Veggie Lasagna

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I love Lasagna. This recipe is based on the Hungry Girl's Lasagna Recipe after I saw the Hungry Girl on Dr. Oz . My version of the recipe, besides being vegan, is a little different. For example, I can't eat nightshades (which includes tomatoes and eggplant, both in her recipe).

This all started today when I went to one of the local Shop-Rites (because I wanted to go to Green Acres, which is a health food store across the road) and I found red cabbage and cauliflower in the organic section and I was telling the cashier what I was planning on using the cabbage and cauliflower for and I found out she was also a vegan, so I told her to look for my blog (if you read this, which means you found it, let me know in the comments and let me know what you think of the recipes here).

So I took pics as I was making the lasagna (which I haven't tasted yet) -- so here goes (sorry about the quality of the pictures):

This is how I sliced up the zucchini on the cutting board

I started up by slicing the zucchini lengthwise into Lasagna Noodles type slices. Then I lined them up on the bottom of a loaf pan.

I sauteed veggies in olive oil (I used sliced fresh red cabbage, frozen and dehydrated organic mushrooms, frozen kale, spinach, and mixed veggies -- cauliflower, broccoli and carrots -- for the most part) 2 teaspoons of my spice combo (into which I mixed 2 teaspoons each of smoked paprika, chili powder, turmeric, coriander, ginger 1 teaspoon of chipotle (ground), cinnamon, cumin, 1/2 teaspoon cloves, all spice, nutmeg but you can create anything you like a lot) and flaked dulse (a red sea vegetable)

Zucchini lined up in a loaf pan

This is the veggies sauteing in the pan

While the veggies were sauteing, I steamed a small to medium head of cauliflower. I steam it until it is very soft

This is cauliflower in a steamer pot

I sprinkled almond meal/flour on the zucchini

I sprinkled almond meal/flour (3 Tablespoons) over the zucchini (to simulate cheese). 

I spooned some of the sauteed veggies on top of the almond meal

When the cauliflower was soft enough, I took the cauliflower and about 2-3 cups of cashew (or almond, if you prefer) "milk" (unsweetened!!!!) in a blender -- I added a teaspoon of my spices and about 3-4 serving (large) spoons full of the sauteed veggies and whirred it all up (stopping and stirring as needed). I then spooned the sauce over the veggie layer. I then added another zucchini layer and another layer of cauliflower and baked in the over at 200 degrees until it was warmed through.

Spoon the Cauliflower sauce over the veggies

If They're Nut Latkes, What are They?

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It's the first night of Hanukka and I wanted to make Latkes, but I can't eat potatoes (they're nightshades). So I took my 3 Tablespoon measure and took 3 Tablespoons each of Ground Sesame, Hazelnut "flour" and Hemp Seed. I added a teaspoon of my spice mix, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of mushroom powder. I added enough filtered water to make a batter. I then added a handful and a half of shredded carrots (multi-colored -- I get it at Shop Rite). I shaped it into 3 patties and fried them in olive oil, flipping once.

I also took an avocado, added 1/4 teaspoon of my spice mix and a bit of lime juice and a sprinkle of olive oil and mashed it all together (I can't eat apple sauce either, right now).

I put the patties on paper towel and put the avocado spread on. They were delicious. I think I may try it again tomorrow night :-)

Low Carb Noshes and "My 600 lb Life"

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I'm sorry if I haven't put in any new recipes in a while. I'm, as usual, on a new diet. A few weeks ago, I was told to, at least temporarily, eat a low carbohydrate high protein diet. Anyone have any idea how hard that is for a vegan??????

So, even though I was told a while back to get off soy for a while, I figured there wasn't much else I could base my meals on, particularly before I was able to procure pea protein. So I was eating tofu for the first week or two. But it seemed to be negatively affecting my gall bladder, so my medical practitioner had me switch to seitan (glutan). (It's ironic that I can't eat wheat but I can eat glutan -- I guess it's something else in the wheat that's an issue for me, but I digress...)

In any case, I've had to totally readjust my eating habits. I've been doing this for about a month or so now and, while I have only lost about 5 pounds, my blood sugar has changed. For those of you who don't know, there are basically three levels of high sugar -- the first level is over 140 -- that makes you diabetic. Between 126 and 139 is high pre-diabetes, between 100 and 125 is sort of low pre-diabetes. Ideally, fasting blood sugar should be under 100. A few days before I started this diet, my blood sugar spiked at 202. When I started with eating the tofu, it went down a bit (mostly 145-185) but since I started with the gluten and no soy, it started coming down. After about 2 weeks, I had four readings under 110 -- two of which were under 100. I hadn't had 4 straight days like that in ages (years, possibly????). Actually, after that, I even had days in the 90s and even in the 80s. It was low enough, in fact, that I decided to give blood last Sunday (Father's Day, also my birthday - My Father's Day Birth on Hubpages ).

So at this point, I hope this way of eating is temporary, but even if it is, I still have to eat now. So while I'm nibbling on nuts (mostly cashews), I have also come up with some ways of adding food to my diet.

Since these things I'm going to list are mostly calorie free, they don't have a lot of carbohydrates. I'm making Gello, Vanilla Pudding, Lemon Pudding (just add grated lemon rind/zest to Vanilla Pudding) and I also started making muffins out of my protein powder (Yellow Pea Protein) and breaded zucchini.

The Gello I'm making from Agar (a sea vegetable that gels), Celestial Seasonings tea (I'm using their new "Watermelon-Lime" flavor) and stevia. I take a 5 cup container and fill it almost to the top (or just measure out 4 cups) with cold filtered water, add 4 tea bags (choose your favorite flavor or flavors) and stevia to taste (I use the equivalent of 1 cup of sugar). Once the tea bags have steeped enough (I use the same ingredients to make 1/2 gallon iced tea except I add 1/2 gallon of water and put it in a pitcher), take the mixture, one cup at a time (approximately), and put it with 1 tablespoon of agar into a blender and blend until I've done this four times, emptying the blended contents into a pot. I then boil it up and simmer for 5 minutes, let it cool and put it into a container in the refrigerator. (It doesn't always gel well, so I sometimes add a bit of konjac -- about 1/2 teaspoon.)

To make the pudding, I use cashew milk instead of iced tea, add stevia, vanilla to taste (I use 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla powder) and I use 1 1/2-2 teaspoons of konjac. If I want lemon, I add about a teaspoon to a tablespoon of grated lemon rind. I blend the konjac little by little, boil it in a pot, let it cool and put it in the refrigerator.

I've been watching "My 600 lb Life" these days and I wish Dr. Younan Nowzaradan, the doctor on the show, would tell these people about the above (making desserts with stevia and making Gello that way) and about my favorite filling food -- Miracle Noodles. (To use the Miracle Noodles, open the package and pour it into a strainer, wash and drain)

I do two major things with Miracle Noodles -- one with the "Rice" and the other with the "Fettuccini". The "rice", I use with my main dishes (for tonight, I made a marinated Hemp Tofu (the marinade is made from Lemon and spices and stevia and cashew butter) with vegetables (mushrooms, shallots, etc.)) -- I put the "rice" on the bottom, then spoon the main dish on top (in a covered loaf pan) and put it in the oven (at about 200 degrees) to warm. 


The Fettuccini, I use for breakfast. I take 1/2 cup cashew milk (almond milk should work, too) and add 1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice, add stevia to taste, sometimes a "shnip" of peppermint extract and boil it up. When it's blended (sometimes you have to "open" the blobs of spice with a fork) and boiling, add the drained miracle noodles to the spiced "milk" and simmer on low for a while. Turn off the stove and let it sit for a few minutes and eat. 


The noodles have no calories, the cashew milk (unsweetened) has 25 calories a cup (so 1/2 cup has 12 1/2 calories), so we're talking VERY few calories.

Pumpkin Gnocchi with Mushroom-Chestnut Sauce

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I like to watch the cooking shows even though I can't really eat anything they feature. But watching these programs gets my creative juices flowing. So, this past week, when I was catching up on "The Taste" and someone make gnocchi.

Right now, I'm trying to eat a diet low in oxalic acid (it seems to be helping to some degree, my blood pressure and blood sugar, both of which were sky-high, have come down a bit). So, potatoes and sweet potatoes, both of which are high in oxalic acid, are out, but pumpkin, which is low in oxalic acid, is in.

Most grains are out, oats are medium, though, and oat bran is low. So, when I remembered that our local Shop-Rite sold oat bran flour, I started stocking up. I've tried it in cakes (dense but delicious) and bread (lighter, but not terribly tasty, unfortunately).

So, when the spirit moved me to try gnocchi, I took a container of pumpkin puree, added my favorite spices (chili powder, smoked paprika, coriander, cumin, ginger) and added oat bran flour. I made a somewhat sticky dough (using a spoon, not my hands) and remembered that oats have a tendency to get denser the longer they sit. So I let the dough sit for a few hours.

When I got back to the dough, it was a good consistency. I boiled up some filtered water (with the above mentioned spices and a pinch of himalayan salt), wet my hand so the dough wouldn't stick too much, and shaped the dough into rounds, put a thumbprint in the center, and dropped them into the boiling water. Making sure they didn't stick to the bottom of the pot, I boiled them until they floated to the top, then cooked them for one more minute. I used a small strainer to remove them from the pot (you can also use a slotted spoon). I repeated this until I had used all the dough.

For the sauce, I sauteed up lot of different kinds of mushrooms with a bad of pre-cooked chestnuts (also with the same spiced). I then put the well sauteed mushroom mix with 1/4 cup cashew "milk" in the food processor and add filtered water as it's processing until it gets processed and to the consistency that you like (I like it thick).

It tastes best when they are both warm, but I like to nibble on it cold also.

Healthy Vegan Chocolate Cake

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I love chocolate. But it's hard for me to find chocolate things without sugar (or artificial sweetener). And my doc has been encouraging me to eat more protein. So I came up with this:

Put dry ingredients in a bowl:

1 cup soy flour
1 1/2 cups hazelnut of almond flour
1-3 Tablespoons of cacao powder (to taste)
1/2 cup cacao nibs (if you want a "chocolate chip" sort of cake)
stevia equivalent to 1 1/2 cups sugar (my powder takes 3/8 of a teaspoon for this)
2 teaspoons maca powder (optional, but I like the way it plays with the chocolate flavor)
2 teaspoons chopped nuts (I use a mix of almonds, walnuts, pecans and cashews) (optional)

Then add:

2-3 Tablespoons of nut butter
Almond milk (start with 1 cup and add more as needed to blend everything together)

Put this all into an 8 inch square pan (I line mine with first aluminum foil then parchment paper) and bake about 45-60 minutes, until it's baked through, at 350 degrees.

For the icing -- put:

2-3 Tablespoons of nut butter
Almond milk (start with 1/4 cup and add more as needed to blend everything together)
1-3 Tablespoons of cacao powder (to taste)
stevia equivalent to 1 cup sugar (my powder takes 1/4 of a teaspoon for this)

into a food processor and whirr around until blended. Taste and add more of the above ingredients as needed.

The icing does best if you smooth it on the hot cake (it'll melt a bit, but when you refrigerate the cake, the icing will get to a better consistency.

If You Love Animals, Don't Eat Them

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What Is the Best Thing You Can Do for Animals?

When I was younger, my Mom had a pair of rabbit fur slippers. I asked her how she could wear slippers made out of the skins of murdered rabbits and she said to me, "What about the dead chickens and cows on your plate?" (We keep kosher, so those are the most common animals I ate -- and I never liked fish.) I had never thought of things in quite that way before. I decided she was right and I should stop eating animals. That was about 33 years ago.

About 12 years later, I read that it takes a lot less land to grow food for a vegan than it does for an omnivore (one who eats meat and vegetation) but it takes less land to grow food for a vegan than it does even for a vegetarian. I decided right then and there to go vegan.

I still think the best thing people can do for themselves (I've lost close to 100 pounds since my omnivorous days), the animals and the earth.

Vegetarian? Vegan?

Vegetarianism is popularly defined as eating "nothing with a face". That means that vegetarians (also known as "lacto-ovo" or "ovo-lacto" vegetarian -- though, in popular parlance the "lacto-ovo" or "ovo-lacto" is usually dropped and only "vegetarian" is used) eat no meat, poultry of seafood. They do eat eggs and/or dairy.

Veganism is usually defined as eating no animal foods. Many vegetarians and vegans use non-animal source cosmetics, clothing (as in no leather or fur, and for vegans, no wool or silk, etc.) and other items.

I have other blog entries with advice on how to get started:

Why Be Vegetarian
Thinking of going Veg? Start Here
Want to go Veg? Here's how
Quick Vegan Cooking
Creating new recipes from old

This blog also has many recipes (and I add recipes to this blog on a semi-regular basis).

Creating New Recipes from Old

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New to healthy food?

Over the years -- I've been vegetarian for 37 years, 25 of those years as a vegan -- I have discovered, in order to have a large repertoire of vegetarian and vegan recipes, I needed to get recipes from non-vegetarian sources and adjust them to fit the needs of vegetarians and vegans.

Oftentimes, we have comfort foods that we just can't do without but we often need to make changes.

I like to read a lot of magazines, but mostly I like health and nutrition magazines. Prevention is one of my favorites and they generally have some interesting recipes. I even have a loose-leaf binder where I have ripped out pages from old Prevention issues with recipes I liked on them.

This lens is a guide as to how to take a recipe that sounds good, and make it vegan.

Fruit Bars

A number of years ago, one of our local grocery stores switched ownership for the second time in a couple of years. The new chain apparently has some freebie magazines that they give away in the hopes that some of the articles and/or recipes will induce you to buy more of their products. Well, in my case, it worked to some degree.

In the first free magazine I picked up there, I found a recipe for Citrus-Oatmeal bars. With a few minor (or major?) changes, I made the recipe vegan and cut out the added sugar. This is my version of the recipe. First of all, the recipe calls for mixed dried fruit bits. I discovered that Sun-Maid and Sunsweet both make mixed dried fruit bits of differing varieties. The ones I liked were Sun-Maid's tropical flavor and Sunsweet's melon mixture. The only problem with these mixtures is that they have added sugar. To resolve that problem, I took the 1 cup of fruit called for in the recipe and soaked it for a while in filtered water. I then poured off the water and poured more filtered water on. I repeated this procedure until the water stayed clear (and didn't get cloudy). It doesn't usually take too many times.

I took a medium baking pan and lined it with parchment paper (this keeps the batter from sticking without adding fat to the recipe). Then I take out two small mixing bowls -- in one, I put the fruit bits, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (substitute other nuts and seeds if you don't like walnuts) and 1/3 cup orange juice concentrate (or orange juice mixture like orange/pineapple juice concentrate) and 1/2 cup almond, rice or soy milk. In the other bowl, I mix 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 2 cups instant or quick oatmeal, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves, and 1/4-1/2 teaspoon powdered stevia (that would probably be about 60-120 drops of liquid stevia -- if you can use honey or agave nectar, you can substitute 1/3 cup honey or agave nectar, but add that to the fruit and nut mixture instead of 1/4 cup of the rice/soy milk).

Blend the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until the dry ingredients are moistened. Take the batter and put it into the pan, flattening/spreading it with wet hands. Bake it at 350 degrees for about 1/2 hour (it might need a few more minutes -- it needs to be firm). Cut into 16 bars. I then wrap each one in aluminum foil and place in a zipper bag and keep them in the refrigerator (or you can freeze them). These are good as take along snacks for kids or adults (I take them to work).