Quick and Easy Black Bean Soup

Easy Black Bean Soup PinThis Quick and Easy Black Bean Soup is just what it says, quick and easy. Amelia’s mom, Jane, got this recipe from the AARP Magazine and gave it to us. Amelia’s dad told us he LOVED it! We were just as impressed!

After we went vegan and started eating a whole-food plant-based (WFPB) diet, Jane was legitimately concerned. Like most American’s and western dieters, she was raised to believe that we need meat, dairy and eggs to be healthy. She voiced her concern about our dietary changes, but trusted that her daughter had done the research and knew what she was talking about.

Rather than becoming judgmental and insisting that we were wrong and she was right, Jane decided to educate herself by first reading How Not To Die by Dr. Michael Greger. Then she watched What The Health on Netflix and started looking at more information from the WFPB doctors and scientists.

It took her a little while to come to terms with the unhealthy food marketing myths that we were all raised to believe, but now she often tells us how right we are. She even bought Dr. Greger’s How Not To Die Cookbook and cooked several of his recipes for us!

I have immense respect for anyone who will look at new information with an open mind, and be willing to change their stance when presented with new, credible information. It was certainly difficult for me to change my mind and I sometimes still think to myself, “It’s been over 2 years and I still haven’t died yet!” In reality, I’m far healthier, my cholesterol is down and I’ve lost nearly 30 pounds without trying.

Back to the recipe at hand… This Quick and Easy Black Bean Soup recipe couldn’t be much easier. It literally took a couple of minutes to prepare and less than 10 minutes to cook. You just add two cans of black beans to a pot with a cup of salsa and a teaspoon of cumin. Stir it up and heat it until it simmers.

The original AARP recipe didn’t call for salt, but we thought it needed some so Amelia added 1/2 tsp and that seemed to bring out the flavors more. We also used our Grandpa’s Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce as the salsa, but you can use store-bought to save time. Just make sure it doesn’t have added oils.

It would also be delicious with some sautéed chopped peppers, jalapeños, garlic and/or onions. You can sauté them first with some veggie broth or water in the same pot (covered) for about 5 minutes. This is called steam frying. Then pour the other ingredients in on top and stir. Continue heating it until it’s bubbly.

You can serve this Quick and Easy Black Bean Soup plain in a bowl, or serve it over brown rice, yellow potatoes or sweet potatoes. Yum!

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.

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.

Vegan Mexican Lasagna

Vegan Mexican Lasagna PinWe love our vegan comfort food, and it doesn’t get any better than this Vegan Mexican Lasagna! It’s savory, satisfying and muy delicioso!

Amelia found a recipe using tofu, salsa and a few other ingredients mixed together to make a crumbled tofu Mexican dish, but it had one major flaw. While it tasted delicious, it wasn’t very appetizing to look at. In fact, it looked a little gross.

After a few comments from the peanut gallery (me) about its lack of visual appeal, Amelia had the brilliant idea to use it as the “cheese” filling for a Mexican Lasagna. It kind of has a ricotta-y texture and tons of flavor, so that seemed like a good use for it.

Using our Vegan Overnight Lasagna as a guide, we created this super delicious Vegan Mexican Lasagna. In place of tomato sauce, we used salsa. In place of lasagna noodles, we used torn up corn tortillas. In place of cashew ricotta, we used Mexican tofu ricotta. And in place of Beyond Meat’s Beefy Crumbles, we used refried beans. We also didn’t let it sit overnight since the tortillas were soft and didn’t need to absorb the liquid like the lasagna noodles do.

We cooked it covered with aluminum foil for 30 minutes and uncovered for another 20 minutes and that seemed to work fine. It would be great topped with some vegan shredded cheese, but we wanted it to be an oil-free recipe so we skipped it and just added a little extra salsa when we dished it out.

Serve it with some diced tomatoes, avocado or a small side salad. Maybe even some extra refried beans. This is a great recipe to feed to friends and family. They won’t know it’s vegan.

Vegan Mexican Lasagna 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.

Tex-Mex Jackfruit

Tex-Mex Jackfruit PinThis Tex-Mex Jackfruit recipe is a veganized version of the old standard Tex-Mex Pulled Chicken. We served it over rice but it would go great wrapped up in a tortilla. It’s savory, satisfying and delicious!

The key to getting the jackfruit to mimic the look and texture of pulled chicken is to steam fry it until it’s soft, and then use a fork to pull it apart. This will string-a-fy the jackfruit.

Once you add in the remaining ingredients and serve it over rice or in a tortilla with some extra salsa, it’ll fool just about anyone. Our non-vegan family loved it! Amelia’s dad honestly thought it was chicken! He was shocked when we told him it was a fruit!

A lot of vegans don’t like the idea of eating things that mimic meat, but if you’re trying to get someone to taste new cruelty-free foods, or you’re cooking for non-plant-based eaters, these types of recipes really help bridge the gap. They also show people just how tasty and creative plant-based foods can be.

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 Breakfast Burrito

Vegan Breakfast Burrito PinThis Vegan Breakfast Burrito recipe is delicious and filling. If you prepare the tofu scramble and potatoes the night before, all you’ll need to do is reheat them and assemble the burrito for a quick and easy healthy plant-based breakfast.

To make our delicious breakfast burrito, we combined our Easy Tofu Scramble recipe and our Oven Roasted Red Potatoes recipe and wrapped them up in a tortilla. We used flour tortillas since they make better wraps, but you can also use corn tortillas if you avoid gluten. Eat them open-faced, tostada-style if you can’t wrap them without splitting the tortilla.

Our roasted potatoes use a little olive oil to get them to come out crispy and prevent them from sticking to the baking sheet. However, if you prefer to avoid oil altogether, you can roast them without oil but they might be a little mushy and may stick to the pan.

We’ve tried several different oil-free roasted potato recipes and none came out well. That could be due to the high altitude in Denver. They either came out mushy or burned. We’d love to hear your experiences roasting without oil in the comments below.

This is one of our favorite plant-based breakfast recipes! You don’t have to give up your delicious breakfast burritos just because you eat a plant-based diet!

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 Stuffed Peppers

Vegan Stuffed Peppers PinThese Vegan Stuffed Peppers are amazing! Thanks to the lentils, the look, taste and texture are almost identical to traditional stuffed peppers made with ground beef. I bet you can fool people if you don’t tell them it’s vegan.

Stuffed peppers are loved around the world with slight variations in the recipes. If you come from an area that uses cheese, you can melt some Daiya on top of the peppers or sprinkle with some Nutritional Yeast.

You can also make these with Beefy Crumbles from Beyond Meat instead of using lentils. However, Daiya and Beyond Meat are both processed foods so they’re not as healthy as the whole plant alternatives.

This recipe calls for Grandpa’s Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce and Vegan Cashew Cream so you’ll either need to make these ahead of time or substitute them with a prepackaged alternative.

You can make a meal out of these, but they also pair well with Healthy Butternut Squash, a Side Salad, a slice of Whole Grain Bread, Steamed Broccoli or your other favorite side dishes.

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 Fajitas (Oil-Free)

Vegan Fajitas PinThese Vegan Fajitas with roasted portobello mushrooms and sautéed onions and peppers is absolutely delicious, and very nutritious!

Three corn tortillas topped with all the fixin’s has 450 calories, 11 grams of fiber and 17 grams of protein. Add to that: 70% RDA of Vitamin A, 315% Vitamin C, 76% Calcium and 24% Iron. And this doesn’t include the optional avocado, brown rice or refried beans!

Looking at these stats for one vegan dish, it’s hard to understand how the protein and calcium deficiency myths gained traction and continue to be two of the most common questions vegans get asked.

We used corn tortillas in our recipe because they’re made with only corn and water. They contain no refined flour or oil. Most flour tortillas we’ve found here in Ecuador have either oil or lard, and we haven’t found any whole wheat tortillas, so we opted for the healthier non-GMO corn tortillas. If you can find oil and lard free whole wheat flour tortillas, feel free to use those instead of corn.

Vegan Fajitas

We like using my Grandpa’s Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce on our vegan fajitas, but you can use your favorite salsa. Just be sure to get a salsa without oil or a lot of added sugar, as most store-bought brands contain one or both.

The avocado, brown rice and Refried Beans are optional since this is already a filling and high calorie meal without them. However, they make great companions for these Vegan Fajitas! These are also fantastic topped with a little Vegan Cashew Sour Cream!

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.