Vegan German Potato Salad

Vegan German Potato Salad PinThis Vegan German Potato Salad recipe tastes a lot like the potato salad my German grandmother made when I was a kid. It’s very vinegary and flavorful.

Traditional German Potato Salad is made with bacon so we simply omitted that and didn’t notice its absence. However, you may be able to simulate that flavor by adding some liquid smoke into the dressing. Bacon gets most of its flavor from the liquid smoke it’s bathed in, so adding a little of it to this recipe might do the trick.

Or you could use some bacon bits, which are vegan because they aren’t made of bacon. They’re not healthy, either, but they do taste like bacon. If you try either of these options, please let us know what you think.

Amelia liked the crunch of the raw celery and green onion, but I would prefer it slightly sautéed so there’s not as much difference in texture between the raw veggies and the cooked soft potatoes. It’s a weird texture thing for me to bite into a soft potato and then hit a crunchy piece of celery. If you’re like me, you might want to sauté the celery and onion in a little veggie broth to soften them up.

This recipe pairs well with any vegan burger, corn-on-the-cob, green beans or your favorite vegan 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.

Ginger Vinaigrette Beets

Ginger Vinaigrette Beets PinWe finally bought a pressure cooker! And this delicious Ginger Vinaigrette Beets recipe was our first creation!

Pressure cookers are great way to reduce the time it takes to cook beans and dense vegetables. Since we eat lots of both, we decided to break down and fork over the dough to buy one. So far, so good.

This recipe was in the manual that came with our Presto pressure cooker (we couldn’t find an Instapot) and it didn’t disappoint. Although, we love beets in just about any form, so we may be a little biased.

The original recipe called for 1/4 cup of sugar. Yikes! We rarely add sugar to recipes, but we decided to add 1 tbsp just in case the vinaigrette was too sour. Personally, I think it would taste fine without any added sugar since the beets are already very sweet. Depending on your taste preferences, you may want more sugar because it is pretty tangy.

These Ginger Vinaigrette Beets would go well diced on your Hearty Side Salad or your Spinach Salad, or as a standalone side dish with your Broccoli Mushroom Stir Fry or Baked Tempeh and Broccoli.

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.

Thai Style Sweet and Spicy Sauce

Thai Style Sweet and Spicy Sauce PinAmelia was making some Jackfruit Crab Cakes and I asked what we were going to use for a dipping sauce since tarter sauce and most crabcake sauces have dairy and/or eggs. In her typical creativeness, she whipped up some of this Thai Style Sweet and Spicy Sauce, and it was great!

This Thai Style Sweet and Spicy Sauce recipe is the perfect sauce for dipping or to add more flavor to your rice, noodle and potato dishes. The combination of sweet and spicy makes for some mouthwatering goodness.

It was very tasty with our Jackfruit Crab Cakes, but we also liked it with our Oven Fried Okra and I love it over plain rice. It’s a great sauce to have on-hand for when you need to jazz up a dish.

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 Apple Pie Stuffed Apples

Vegan Apple Pie Stuffed Apples PinThis Vegan Apple Pie Stuffed Apples recipe is a real treat and the perfect fall dessert. I spotted this dessert on Delish and decided to surprise Amelia and her family with a veganized version of it. I didn’t tell them what I was cooking, but the delicious aroma of the apples baking in the oven kind of gave it away.

By far the hardest part of this recipe is scooping out the apples. I started out using a spoon, but that was taking too long so I switched to a melon baller, which was much easier.

You start by slicing off the top of the apple. I threw the tops away, but next time I make this recipe, I’m going to save the tops and use them instead of the pie dough lattice.

I didn’t feel like the dough added much flavor…it was just for the visual appeal. It was also hard to find a vegan pie crust as most contain lard. Yuck! We had to go to 3 different stores to find the crust and it was the most expensive part of this recipe. I think using the apple tops will taste just as good while reducing the cost and waste.

After slicing off the top, I recommend coring the apples with an apple corer first before scooping them out. You can go all the way through the bottom to make it easier. I tried to core the apples without piercing the bottom, but it was a real pain and I accidently went through two of them, but it didn’t affect the baking. When you set them in the baking dish, the apple and juices form a seal as they bake preventing the yummy deliciousness from draining out the bottom.

While this dessert is perfect for your fresh, fall apples, you can serve it year-round. There’s absolutely no reason you can’t enjoy this delicious and healthy (sans pie crust) dessert whenever you want to!

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 Sloppy Joes

Vegan Sloppy Joes PinThese Vegan Sloppy Joes are loaded with 16g protein thanks to the lentils, and they taste just like the Sloppy Joes I had as a kid. To be honest, though, I didn’t like sloppy joes as a kid. But loved them as an adult.

You could make these with Beyond Meat Beefy Crumbles. That would be delicious, but we prefer to stick to whole-foods whenever possible and the lentils are perfect for this recipe.

We ate ours the old fashioned way: on a bun. But they would taste great over pasta, Spaghetti Squash and especially over some Boiled Potatoes.

As a side dish, some Vegan French Fries and Green Beans would be very tasty!

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 Ketchup

Vegan Ketchup PinThis Vegan Ketchup recipe is easy and cheap. Plus, there’s no high fructose corn syrup or other nasty ingredients. It’s just delicious, healthy ketchup.

The world’s most popular ketchup (starts with an H) is made with high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup. These are the 3rd and 4th ingredients on the label so that tells us they’re primary ingredients. Unless it’s organic, we can assume it’s made with GMO corn, as well. And “natural flavoring” is always a mystery ingredient.

This ketchup recipe only takes a few minutes to prepare and only contains real ingredients. We include 1/2 tbsp organic sugar to cut the acidity of the tomato paste and make it a little sweeter, but you can omit that if you want to. You can also substitute stevia or another non-sugar sweetener.

This recipe makes a full cup (8 oz). If you eat ketchup on everything, you may want to make a double batch so it lasts longer.

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.

Smokey Green Hot Sauce

Smokey Green Hot Sauce PinThis Smokey Green Hot Sauce is a delicious and spicy way to save money. Hot sauce is freaking expensive!

We were spending $10 a week on hot sauce and salsa since we started using them as flavorful and healthy toppings for many of our dishes. A regular 16oz jar of salsa or a 6oz bottle of hot sauce goes for $3 to $5. This recipe makes about 24oz and costs less than 4$ to make!

This smokey green hot sauce is a good topping for your Easy Tofu Scramble, Boiled Potatoes, Baked Potatoes, Vegan Chili or any other dish that needs a little extra spice. You can also use it as a dip for your Corn Tortilla Corn Chips.

If you want to make it extra spicy, add one or two small habanero peppers during Step 1. It might induce a little sweat when you eat it, but it’s absolutely delicious!

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.

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies PinThese Chocolate Peppermint Cookies are perfect for your holiday parties. The sweetness of the chocolate combined with the peppermint give them a refreshing mouth feel. The stark contrast between the dark brown chocolate cookie and the snow white sugar is visually stimulating. They truly are finger licking good.

One trick we learned from My Darling Vegan is to dip the cookies in granulated sugar before the powdered sugar. Somehow, that creates a barrier between the moist cookie dough and the powdered sugar so it doesn’t melt into the dough. Very ingenious.

PLAN AHEAD: The dough needs to be refrigerated for 4 hours before you can bake it. Or, you can also put the dough in the freezer for 1 hour if you’re short on time. We discovered this trick when we forgot to plan ahead while making these cookies with our niece. Necessity is the mother of invention 🙂

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies Prep 1

Bookmark this recipe in your holiday vegan recipes folder so you can find them next year.

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.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip CookiesThese delicious Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies are moist and delicious. It’s impossible to eat just one. They disappear in handfuls.

If you’re like me and you love pumpkin, these really hit the spot. While pumpkin is traditionally a fall/holiday ingredient, there’s nothing stopping you from eating pumpkin all year long.

Amelia is the baker in the house, so I beg and plead with her to make delicious pumpkin recipes all the time. I’m sure she’s sick of pumpkin by now, but I’ve loved it all my life and don’t need an excuse to eat it.

A perfect day for me is capped off with a couple of these amazing Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

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.