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.

Healthy Red Beans and Rice

Healthy Red Beans and Rice PinThis Healthy Red Beans and Rice recipe is full of color, flavor and texture. With only 209 calories per serving, it packs 12 grams of fiber, 9 grams of protein, 89% RDV of Vitamin A, 174% Vitamin C and 25% Iron. This traditional Creole dish is a nutrition powerhouse!

Amelia’s mom gave us this recipe that she found in the American Diabetes Associations’ Diabetes & Heart Healthy Cookbook. I think it’s interesting that the original recipe calls for sautéing the veggies in olive oil when several studies suggest that added fat such as olive oil is a leading cause of Type II diabetes. Needless-to-say, we replaced the oil with vegetable broth as we generally do to remove the added fat.

This is a nice one-pot recipe that makes a great stand-alone dish, but it also pairs well with a healthy Side Salad or a slice of multigrain bread for dipping.

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.

Sauteed Collard Greens

Sauteed Collard Greens PinSauteed Collard Greens are a new addition to our rotation. In fact, we just ate them for the first time a few weeks ago and fell in love with them! They’re hearty, delicious and extremely nutritious!

Collard greens are another cruciferous vegetable like cabbage, beet greens, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and others. They have numerous health benefits and you should be eating some everyday to for your intestinal tract and overall well-being.

This recipe has a little kick thanks to the red pepper flakes. They’re so flavorful you won’t be able to get enough of them, especially since they cook down. Similar to Beet Greens, they’re a little too bitter to eat without cooking unless you have a super-duper, eat anything green, vegan palette.

If you like this recipe, you might also like our Sauteed Kale, Beet Greens or Boiled Cabbage.

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.

Grandpa’s Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce

Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce PinI was raised on Grandpa’s Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce recipe and loved it! Although he didn’t call it vegan, it didn’t contain any animal products…only delicious veggies straight from his garden.

Yes, this is my Grandpa Gene’s amazing jarred hot sauce recipe, modified to make it a more manageable batch size. He made this hot sauce using 5 quarts of homegrown tomatoes. That’s 160 ounces of tomatoes!

He loved giving them out to friends and family, and we loved eating them! This recipe only makes about 40 ounces and I’ve reduced everything to about 1/4 of the original except the salt and sugar, which I reduced to 1/8 of the original.

Original Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce RecipeHere’s his original recipe card in case you’re uber ambitious and want to make the full batch (click to enlarge). The original recipe calls for a lot of salt and sugar but I cut it in half and it still tastes great. Maybe that’s because our tastebuds have changed and are more sensitive since going vegan.

While most hot sauce recipes are meant to be consumed in small amounts, dripped on your food to add some spice, this recipe is different. You can still use it as a condiment, but it’s superb as a dipping hot sauce. It’s spicy, but not so much that you can eat it with your favorite corn chips. You can also make it spicier or more mild by varying the quantity of jalapeño peppers.

We prefer to make our own Corn Tortilla Corn Chips using organic, oil-free corn tortillas. This Vegan Dipping Hot Sauce also tastes great on Boiled Potatoes, Vegan Baked Potatoes, Tofu Scramble, Vegan Huevos Rancheros, or any other dish that could use a little 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.

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.

Vegan Cabbage Soup

Vegan Cabbage Soup PinThis Vegan Cabbage Soup is fantastic for your weight loss goals. It’s delicious, and two cups has 8 grams of fiber and 6 grams of protein, but only 112 calories! It also has 138% RDV of Vitamin A and 78% RDV of Vitamin C. How can you beat that?!

Cabbage is full of nutritional benefits. It’s often used “as a treatment for constipation, stomach ulcers, headaches, obesity, skin disorders, eczema, jaundice, scurvy, rheumatism, arthritis, gout, eye disorders, heart diseases, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease.” [source]

Everyone could use a little more cabbage in their diets and this recipe is a delicious delivery system for it.

To boost up the calories and make it a little heartier, try adding 3 or 4 diced potatoes when you add the cabbage. This soup will also go well with a nice Side Salad or a Vegan Baked Potato.

Vegan Cabbage Soup Cooking Video

Note: We increased the seasonings to improve the flavor after we published the video. We recommend using the recipe instead of the 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 Mushroom Stroganoff

Vegan Mushroom Stroganoff PinThis Vegan Mushroom Stroganoff is rich, creamy and absolutely delicious! The portobello mushrooms and the seitan give it a nice meaty texture while the Vegan Cashew Sour Cream lends the richness. No one will know it’s vegan!

Mushroom Stroganoff has long been one of my favorite guilty pleasures. The rich, brown gravy loaded with hearty mushrooms and poured over a bed of pasta is hard to beat.

That’s why I was so happy when Amelia concocted this recipe after months of me nagging her about it. And let me tell you…it does NOT disappoint! Feed this to your non-vegan friends and they’ll never know! Woohahahaha!!!

Remember to make the Vegan Cashew Sour Cream ahead of time.

Corn Starch Trick

Corn starch has long been a pain in the rear in my cooking. It doesn’t seem to matter how you do it. We even looked online for the best way and everyone said the same thing: slowly add the corn starch to your broth mixture over medium heat and whisk continuously to combine. One said to combine it with cold water first and then slowly add the cold water mixture to the broth. Well, it doesn’t combine, dry or wet. It clumps!

I was really unhappy with the clumping and after 10 minutes of trying to break up the clumps, I threw it in the sink and told Amelia there had to be a better way. Here’s what I figured out and it didn’t clump!

Whisk the corn starch into cold vegetable broth before heating it up. The corn starch completely dissolves in the broth so when you heat it, there are no clumps to bust up.

I’m sure someone has figured this out already, however, it doesn’t appear to be the standard way of doing it, but it works 100 times better.

Vegan Mushroom Stroganoff Instructional 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.

Cauliflower Couscous Tex-Mex Tacos

Cauliflower Couscous Tex-Mex TacosThese Cauliflower Couscous Tex-Mex Tacos are a favorite in our household. They’re not only super fast and easy to prepare, but their also filling and nutritious with 10 grams of fiber and 8 grams of protein.

You can eat the cauliflower couscous mixture as a side dish without the corn tortilla. It would pair well with a Mexican Salad, Roasted Green Beans or Roasted Asparagus.

Some diced avocado would also be a delicious topping for these tacos. We were trying to shed a few pounds when we made this recipe so we skipped the avocados to reduce the fat calories.

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.

Sweet Potato Hash

Sweet Potato Hash PinThis Sweet Potato Hash recipe is a great main dish or side dish for your Tofu Scramble or in a breakfast burrito. The black beans and veggie sausage give it a little more flavor, texture and protein.

We really like the fat-free Gimme Lean Sausage from Lightlife, but it’s not available here in Cuenca, Ecuador so we used Vegan Chorizo Sausage that we bought from Fratello Vegan. Rene, the owner, makes his chorizo oil-free with black beans.

We had some extra kale a few weeks ago and thought it might go bad so we froze it. About 30 minutes before Amelia cooked this dish, she pulled it out of the freezer and let it warm up a bit. It worked perfectly in this dish. Kale is so durable that freezing doesn’t damage it. It has almost the same texture as fresh cooked kale, but maybe a tiny bit softer. This recipe is a great way to get some extra dark leafy greens in your diet.

Sweet potatoes are considered a super food by many because of their high fiber and vitamin content. In fact, this sweet potato hash recipe has 8 grams of fiber and 9 grams of protein, as well as 240% RDA of Vitamin A. Eating this dish for breakfast is a great way to start your day.

Pair it with some warm corn tortillas, salsa and avocado to make it even more amazing! Vitamin A is fat soluble, so eating this dish with avocado will help your body get at all those healthy phytonutrients.

Sweet Potato Hash

This makes 4 servings as a side dish, but if you want to eat it as a main dish, it’s really only 2 servings.

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.