Lazy Girl Easy Vegan Enchiladas

Easy Vegan Enchiladas PinThis Easy Vegan Enchiladas recipe is fast and easy to make. Why spend time trying to wrap and bake tricky enchiladas when you can do them open-faced?

I love our Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas recipe, but we never have it because it’s such a pain to make. When we first made them for the website, it took us 3 tries to get them to come out good enough to be photographed. And we haven’t made them since!

So I asked Amelia if we could do them a different way that would be easier. After all, it’s the ingredients that taste good; not the shape. I suggested we sauté the filling in our cast iron skillet and then bake it covered in our Vegan Enchilada Sauce, but Amelia’s way was even easier. We served them open-faced on corn tortillas and poured the enchilada sauce over them. Then we topped them with some baked corn tortilla strips.

These “lazy girl” enchiladas, as Amelia calls them, are by far the easiest and fastest way to make delicious enchiladas.

Easy Vegan Enchiladas

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.

Easy Garden Salad

Easy Garden Salad PinI make this Easy Garden Salad every 3 to 4 days. It makes enough for 6 to 8 large salads so it saves a lot of time in salad prep. It’s also highly nutritious and checks off several of Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen boxes.

We used to make our salads individually, but we found that life often got in the way and we didn’t have time to make them. That’s when I came up with the idea to make a giant salad when I did have time, and store the ingredients in the fridge so they were ready when we wanted to eat them.

Save the scraps in a sealable container that you can keep in the freezer to make your Easy Vegetable Broth from Scraps. We have found that making our own veggie broth not only tastes better than store bought, it doesn’t contain oil or other preservatives, saves the packaging and makes great use of the scraps we were throwing away. We were using at least one veggie broth container per week so it saves us about $20/month.

Until recently, I put the greens and the toppings in the same container, but I found that all the tasty parts migrated to the bottom of the container making it difficult to dish out. To fix that issue, I now store the greens in a separate container from the colorful toppings.

When we’re ready to eat this delicious garden salad, we put a bunch of greens (spinach, kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, arugula, mixed greens, lettuce, etc.) in a large bowl and then scoop out a cup of the rainbow and put that on top of the greens.

Our rainbow usually consists of carrots, cucumber, peppers, corn, beets, red cabbage, artichoke hearts (in water), hearts of palm, garbanzo beans, red onion and tomatoes. We also like Golden Berries (Uvillas or Peruvian Ground Cherries) that we get here in Ecuador. They’re a little yellow cherry tomato sized fruit with a citrus flavor.

Easy Garden Salad

Then we top the salad with nuts, seeds, olives and/or avocado for some healthy fats to help us get at all those fat soluble nutrients in the salad. You can also top your salad with some Tahini Salad Dressing or other nut or avocado based homemade salad dressings, but it’s best to avoid oil-based salad dressings because oil isn’t a whole food; it’s a processed refined fat.

We usually eat our salads with lime juice and some form of vinegar (rice wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, white balsamic vinegar). Sometimes we use soy sauce, tamari or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos.

Then we sprinkle our Easy Garden Salad with a generous amount of oregano and sometimes red pepper flakes and/or fennel seeds to get even more antioxidants.

Try different dark leafy greens, veggies and dressings in your salad to keep things interesting. According to Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Greger, Dr. Barnard, Dr. Kahn, Dr. Fuhrman and other plant-based doctors, we should all eat at least one large dark leafy green salad — every — single — day. So find things you like and try new things, too.

This recipe pairs well with any of our soups or sandwiches.

Easy Garden Salad Cooking Video on Vegans Abroad

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 Enchilada Sauce

Vegan Enchilada Sauce PinThis Vegan Enchilada Sauce recipe is mildly spicy with delicious depth of flavor. It’s designed to go with our Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas, but it tastes great on lots of things!

Amelia makes us a large batch and we keep it in the fridge for up to a week. I like to heat up some leftover sweet potatoes and pour this sauce over them. You could also use this enchilada sauce on Vegan Nachos or as a dip for corn chips.

As with almost everything we make these days, this recipe is oil-free. There’s just no need for oil in most recipes except some desserts.

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 Tortilla Soup

Vegan Tortilla Soup PinEven though I just finished eating lunch, my mouth is watering just thinking about this Vegan Tortilla Soup recipe! It’s that good!

While conventional tortilla soup typically uses chicken as the protein, we used white beans instead. Beans are loaded with protein and fiber, but contain no cholesterol nor measurable saturated fat. They’re also a good source of iron, magnesium and potassium.

There are several different types of white beans: navy beans, great northern beans, cannellini beans and butterbeans. We like navy beans in our soups because the starch gets released during cooking, making the soup creamier. However, you can use whichever beans you prefer or have on-hand for this recipe.

For the tortilla strips, we used two small corn tortillas made with only two ingredients: whole corn and water. Whole Foods carries organic corn tortillas that are made with corn, water and a hint of lime. When eating a whole-food plant-based (WFPB) no-oil diet, it’s important to look for minimally processed foods without added oils and sugars (or other mystery ingredients).

We cubed some avocado as a topping for our vegan tortilla soup, but if you’re trying to lose weight or lower your cholesterol, you may want to skip the avocado until you’ve reached your goal. Saturated fat, regardless of whether it comes from a plant or animal, will raise your cholesterol and can contribute to heart disease and weight gain.

This recipe pairs well with a nice Side Salad or some Corn Tortilla Corn Chips and Salsa.

Vegan Tortilla Soup Cooking Video

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 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.

Vegan Stuffed Eggplant

Vegan Stuffed Eggplant PinAmelia whipped up this Vegan Stuffed Eggplant for us as a low calorie dinner made from veggies we had in the fridge. We wanted to drop a few pounds so she’s been making us some delicious low calorie meals made mostly of fresh veggies, and this is one of my favorites!

Carving out the eggplant is the hardest part of this easy meal. I used a curved grapefruit knife to remove the flesh and that seemed to work well. Then I sliced it up to go with the other veggies that Amelia had prepared.

If you want to lose weight, this is a great recipe. It’s filling with all the fibrous veggies, but very low calorie. In fact, it only has about 140 calories so you can even serve this as a side dish with a Portobello Mushroom Steak. It would also be a really good lunch on a low-cal day or served with a delicious baked or boiled potato.

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.

Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas

These Vegan Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas are so deliciously amazing we can’t get enough of them! They’re sweet, spicy, savory and oh so flavorful!

If you’ve ever cooked your own enchiladas, especially without deep frying the tortillas in oil, you’ll be able to sympathize with us on how challenging it is to get them to look pretty. We had to cook this recipe 3 times to not only perfect the ingredients, but to get the pictures to come out well enough to post on our website.

But it was SOOOO worth it!

The trick was to steam the tortillas in a steamer pot for about 1o to 15 seconds before assembling them. Kind of like how they do it at Chipotle. That made the tortillas very soft and pliable. We also used Mi Rancho Organic Corn Tortillas with Guar Gum, which also helped hold them together through the steaming and assembly process.

We actually took these photos before we baked them, though. So yours might not look the same when they come out of the oven. You can see in the prep photo below what they look like in the casserole dish fresh from the oven.

These Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas pair well with a little shredded lettuce salad on the side, along with some Corn Tortilla Corn Chips  and some of my Grandpa’s Dipping Hot Sauce. We used grandpa’s hot sauce in our enchiladas, too. If you plan to do the same, be sure to make it ahead of time.

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 Lentil Loaf

Vegan Lentil Loaf PinThis Vegan Lentil Loaf is a veganized version of the ever popular meatloaf. The lentils, brown rice and oats make this a hearty and nutritious meal while the generous amount of seasonings give it tons of flavor.

My mom’s meatloaf has always been one of my favorite dishes so after going vegan, it was something I really missed. Thankfully, Amelia figured out how to make a veganized version of meatloaf that tastes a lot like mom’s. That’s one more thing that was easily replaced with a cruelty free, healthy and environmentally friendly alternative!

This recipe pairs well with Green Beans, a Side Salad or Steamed Broccoli for your green dish. To make the meal even more filling without adding a lot of extra calories, try our Easy Polenta recipe, a Vegan Baked Potato or Boiled Potatoes.

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 Jambalaya with Black Beans

Vegan Jambalaya PinThis Vegan Jambalaya with Black Beans recipe is like a little taste of Naw Luns (that’s Cajun for New Orleans). This dish is hearty, filling, a little spicy and oh so flavorful.

This jambalaya is also a great recipe for your weight loss plan. With only 200 calories per serving, it packs 11 grams of fiber and 10 grams of protein, as well as 31% RDA of Iron. With a delicious recipe like this, you don’t need to punish yourself with a bland weight loss diet.

I ate the first bowl plain without any toppings. For the second bowl, I put a dollop (about 1 tbsp) of unsweetened So Delicious Plain Yogurt on top. It tastes a bit like sour cream so it gave it a little extra tanginess. Cashew Cream Cheese would be delicious, too. You can also add some hot sauce (Tabasco or Red Hot) and stir it in to give it more kick.

We originally made this recipe with Beefy Crumbles, but now that we don’t eat oil anymore, we removed them. You could add some oil free Lightlife Gimme Lean Sausage to give it even more flavor, but we don’t have that in Ecuador. Booo! 🙁

This pairs well with our Vegan Cornbread recipe (unless you’re an oil-free eater).

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 Wellington

Vegan WellingtonIt was the first snow of the season here in Denver and the roads were treacherous, but we were determined to get to Whole Foods during rush hour. Amelia read that a plant-based chef, Kelley Williamson at PlantBasedKitchen-Recipes.com, was teaching a holiday cooking class and the main dish was Vegan Wellington.

This being our first vegan Thanksgiving, Amelia wanted to make us a special occasion meal, and the description Kelley wrote fit the bill so we trekked through the snow and only arrived 5 minutes late. It was totally worth it!

This delicious Vegan Wellington recipe is made with eggplant and other veggies in lieu of beef. It’s packed with flavor and plates nicely with your other Holiday Dishes.

Vegan Wellington is a labor of love and took us the better part of a day to make it, but the result was worth the effort. It made our Thanksgiving dinner simply amazing.

This recipe makes 2 Vegan Wellington loaves so you’ll have plenty of servings. Since there was only two of us, we froze one of the loaves to eat in a few weeks. Or you can cut the quantities in half to make one loaf.

Mom’s Famous Pie Crust will make this an extra special treat, but you can also buy frozen vegan pie dough at the store if you can find it. We couldn’t find any. The guy at Whole Foods said they were out.

You’ll need the Flax Egg recipe here. This recipe calls for two flax eggs.

You can make the mushroom mixture ahead of time to save time on the main cooking day. You can also make the Vegan Wellington loaves the day before and refrigerate them overnight so they’re ready for your holiday and you don’t have to spend the whole day cooking. Just pull them out of the refrigerator an hour early and put them in the oven 30 minutes or so before meal time and the loaves will come out piping hot and ready to eat.

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.