Vegan Black Bean Soup

Vegan Black Bean Soup PinThis Vegan Black Bean Soup recipe is like a party in your mouth! It’s loaded with savory flavors and lots of protein. Top it with a little diced avocado for some extra deliciousness and you’ve got one delicious bowl of soup!

Beans are a great source of protein, calcium and fiber. That’s why they’re such an important part of a plant-based diet. It can take your body a few weeks (or months) to adjust to the flatulence caused by beans in some people, but the short-term discomfort is well-worth the long-term health benefits.

Before we transitioned to a whole-food plant-based (WFPB) diet, I never ate beans because of the horrible stomach and intestinal discomfort. Within a few months of switching our diet, I slowly started adding beans into the mix. Now we eat them every day and only occasionally do they cause gas. I’ve found that red beans still seem to be the worst offenders, while black beans, chickpeas and lentils are now fine.

According to the Harvard Health Letter, “A little bit of extra flatulence could be an indication that you’re eating the way you should!” So if you accidentally let one slip while waiting in line at the bank, just smile and say “Hey. I’m plant-based.”

This Vegan Black Bean Soup pairs well with a salad or cornbread.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Cauliflower Quinoa

Cauliflower Quinoa PinThis Cauliflower Quinoa recipe is a real palate pleaser. It’s savory and delicious, with lots of protein and other nutrients, but without many calories. One cup is only about 183 calories. That makes it a great weight loss recipe.

Due to its high protein content and nutritional value, quinoa has risen in popularity over the last few years, which has also led to an increase in its price. Quinoa can be quite expensive now, but Whole Foods has a Super Grains blend that’s much less expensive. Feel free to substitute that for pure quinoa.

This is a great one dish meal for lunch, or paired with a soup or side salad if you have a bigger appetite.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Vegan Shepards Pie

Vegan Shepards Pie PinFeatured On NutritionStudies.org…

This Vegan Shepards Pie Recipe is a savory and satisfying dish for a special occasion or Sunday dinner. It pairs well with green beans or roasted broccoli.

Timing is important so the lentil mixture and Vegan Mashed Potatoes are finished at about the same time. When you’re ready to bake the Shepards Pie, it works best if all the ingredients are close to the same temperature.

You can also prepare the ingredients ahead of time and refrigerate until you’re ready to bake it. You’ll need to remove the casserole dish from the refrigerator about an hour before you’re ready to bake to let it warm up a little. That makes this a perfect dish to take to a friends house.

For even more flavor, top it with some Vegan Brown Gravy.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Coconut Curry Lentil Soup Recipe

Coconut Curry Lentil Soup Recipe PinThis Coconut Curry Lentil Soup recipe is a delicious Indian dish that will fill your kitchen with the savory aroma of curry. We love Indian food, and it’s one of the easier types of cuisines to eat at restaurants since they typically have lots of vegan/vegetarian options.

But if you’re craving some curry, you don’t have to go out to eat. Now you can make your own!

We served it over brown rice to make it a little more filling and to spread out the delicious flavor, but you can eat it plain without the rice to save calories.

If you’re watching your saturated fat intake, you can also skip the coconut milk, but it won’t be as creamy or flavorful. We tried it without, but that seemed to be the missing ingredient.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Fennel Orange Salad with Beets

Fennel Orange Salad PinThis Fennel Orange Salad with Beets is one of Amelia’s fresh and delicious specialties. She loves to make this cold salad for us on a hot summer day.

Fennel is one of my favorite veggies. It smells like liquorice but it’s a vegetable! How is that even possible! Combined with the orange and beets, this salad smells and tastes like candy!

It’s great all by itself, but it’s even better served over arugula or your favorite leafy greens.

The beets are a nice addition and lend more sweetness to the salad. They take about 45 minutes to boil and need to cool for 10 to 15 minutes before you can peel them so keep that in mind when you’re planning your meal time.

Remember to zest the orange before you peel it. That’s a lot easier than trying to zest a peel.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Souper Easy Split Pea Soup

Split Pea Soup PinThis Souper Easy Split Pea Soup recipe comes to us from Kristie Middleton, Senior Director of Food Policy for the Humane Society of the United States. She’s also the author of the widely popular book, “MeatLess: Transform the Way You Eat and Live – One Meal at a Time.”

Amelia and I had the pleasure of meeting Kristie at a Humane League Gala here in Denver, and also at her book signing at the Tattered Cover. Her mission in life and with the Humane Society is to help people transition to a “meatless” diet.

With tons of recipes like this Split Pea Soup in her book, she’s doing a great job of showing people how to eat a more humane diet without sacrificing any of the flavor they’re used to with more traditional, less humane ingredients.

Follow Kristie on Facebook!

We didn’t have Herbs de Provence so Amelia improvised by using a dash of dried oregano, basil, parsley and rosemary. Delicious!

MeatLess by Kristie Middleton

Kristie-Middleton-Meatless_cover_lo A great resource to have in every transitioning vegan kitchen!

This book is loaded with concrete rationale for reducing or eliminating meat from your diet, as well as showing you how to make the transition easier. Kristie provides substitutes for common animal ingredients and dozens of plant-based recipes that will tease the tastebuds of any standard American food eater.

You don't have to sacrifice flavor for compassion. You can have both!

Get It Now!


Carrot Pineapple Salad

Carrot Pineapple Salad PinThis Carrot Pineapple Salad is straight from Amelia’s mom’s kitchen. Amelia loved this recipe as a kid and now I love it, too!

Not only is it full of vibrant colors, it’s deliciously sweet thanks to the pineapple and raisins. In fact, it’s so sweet, you could eat it as dessert. Good luck not eating multiple helpings of it!

Thanks to the walnuts, raisins and pineapple, it does pack quite a few calories at 176 per 3/4 cup. But it also has 168% of your RDV of Vitamin A.

We paired it with our unbelievably delicious Vegan BLT & Avocado Sandwich. The sweetness in the Carrot Pineapple Salad was the perfect compliment to the salty, savory tofu bacon.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Vegan Stir Fry

Vegan Stir FryAmelia cooked this Vegan Stir Fry about 8 times before she was happy with its flavor and veg composition. This one is all hers and it’s delicious!

We used fresh ingredients in this recipe, but if you’re in a hurry or hate chopping up a bunch of veggies, you can use a variety of frozen veggies or a package of mixed veggies. We use frozen mixed veggies quite a bit for this recipe, especially when we’re short on time.

I prefer eating it over brown rice, as this recipe calls for. But we also like it over Tofu Shirataki Spaghetti Noodles, spaghetti squash and spiralized zucchini. Amelia made it a lot, so we tried it with a lot of different things.

Amelia cooks this recipe in a skillet over medium heat covered to keep the veggie broth from evaporating too quickly. If you’re using a wok, the cook time will be less so keep that in mind.

If you want to make this gluten-free, substitute the seitan with sliced mushrooms. That’ll keep it a similar color and texture.

This recipe originally used a teaspoon of sesame oil, but since we’re not eating oil anymore, we removed it. You can add some sesame seeds to this dish to get a similar flavor. It’s a good idea to slightly toast them in a skillet before adding them to your recipe to release the oils and flavors.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Potato and Cabbage Soup

Potato and Cabbage Soup PinThis delicious Potato and Cabbage Soup was created from spare veggies we had lying around our refrigerator. At only 126 calories for roughly 2 cups, this also makes a great weight-loss recipe.

One of Amelia’s pet peeves is the sheer volume of broccoli stalk that comes on a relatively small head of broccoli. For years, we’ve been throwing the stalks in the trash even though they account for almost 70% of the weight charged by the grocery store.

We’re really striving to be less wasteful, so we’ve been figuring out how to eat the parts of veggies we’ve been throwing away, like broccoli stalks and Beet Greens. That’s why Amelia invented this recipe…mainly to use the broccoli stalks we didn’t want to waste.

She cut the tough nubs off the stalk, chopped it up into small pieces and threw them in this tasty Potato and Cabbage Soup. Since broccoli stalks have the same nutritional content as broccoli florets, we’ve been throwing away most of the broccoli’s nutrition! But not anymore!

We also use our spare veggies to make Easy Vegetable Broth from Scraps. That recipe puts our veggie scraps to good use and saves us at least $20/month in store-bought veggie broth.

This recipe is very low calorie, but pretty filling. However, you should still pair it with a Hearty Side Salad, some Steamed Broccoli or a slice of Whole-Grain Bread.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Lentil and Brown Rice Stew

Lentil and Brown Rice Stew PinAmelia’s mom made this Lentil and Brown Rice Stew recipe for us when we went to visit her. She was very excited to integrate more plants into her diet and made good use of the time she had with us. This recipe was absolutely delicious and the whole family thoroughly enjoyed eating it.

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s very filling, but relatively low calorie with only 257 calories per serving. It’s also high protein and high fiber with 20 grams of each. Adding a tbsp of Vegan Cashew Sour Cream gives it a creamier texture and a lot of extra flavor.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.