From the Pantry Pot Pie (Photo by Bill Bettencourt, Property of Fair Winds Press)

Mark your calendars and join me this Tuesday at the Regulator! I’ll be bringing snacks ; )

The Regulator (An Independent Bookstore)
Tuesday , January 31, 2012
7 to 8 pm
720 9th St Durham, NC 27705

Join us for a warm wintertime snack with Durham blogger and cookbook author Kathy Hester who will discuss and sign copies of her new book The Vegan Slow Cooker.

Continuing on my fancy drink exploration – this cocktail combines fresh pear with vanilla vodka and amaretto all tied together with the slightly floral flavor of cardamom.

If you can’t find any vanilla liquor you can make your own. Check on Barnivore to make sure the base vodka you use is vegan and then you just need vanilla beans and vegan sugar. It does take 2 to 3 months to make a usable liqueur, but if you start it tonight you’ll be that much closer to trying it.

Vegan Creamy Pear Cardamom Cocktail

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 medium pear – peeled, cored and chopped
• 1 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk (vanilla if possible)
• ¼ cup vanilla vodka
• ¼ cup amaretto
• ¼ cup vanilla So Delicious Coconut Creamer
• 2 tablespoons vanilla liqueur
• ⅛ teaspoon ground cardamom
• 2 teaspoons vegan sugar (or sweetener of your choice)

Preparation:

Add all ingredients except sweetener into a blender and blend until pear is smooth. Taste and use the amount of sweetener needed. This will depend on how ripe the pear is. Blend again and serve over ice.

You can always add an additional cup of non-dairy milk if you like your drinks a little weaker.

Sometimes I leave the house without dinner in the slow cooker. For days like that this pasta sauce is easy to put together and tastes like you really put a ton of effort into it. In fact, it’s good enough to serve at your next dinner party!

Tip: Hate trying to carve a giant winter squash? Worry about cutting yourself? Some winter squash are huge and cutting them can be intimidating. Next time try softening it up in the oven first. Poke holes in your squash, place on a cookie sheet, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes at 375 degrees. Take it out and let it cool enough that you can touch it. You should be able to slice through it much easier. You can also use pre-cooked purée from your slow cooker!

Quick and Easy Vegan Winter Squash Pasta Sauce
Serves 4

• 2 cups winter squash, peeled seeded and chopped (or pre-cooked purée)
• 1 tablespoon Better Than Bouillon No Chicken Base (or other vegan chick’n base)
• 3 to 4 cups water
• 2 tablespoons fresh sage, chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried sage)
• a few drops to ¼ teaspoon liquid smoke, to taste
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste
• cooked pasta, for serving

In a saucepan with a lid, add the prepared squash, bouillon, and add enough water to completely cover the squash. The amount of water needed will vary on the size of pan you choose to use.

Cook with lid on over medium heat for about 10 to 15 minutes, or until you can pierce the squash easily with a fork.

Remove the lid and turn the heat to medium high. Add the sage and mash the squash with a wooden spoon as you stir. Cook down until the extra water has evaporated and it is a thick sauce. (If it was almost cooked dry in step 2, add ½ to 1 cup extra water, then mash.)

Add the liquid smoke, vinegar, and salt and pepper. Taste and add more salt, pepper, or sage if it doesn’t make you happy yet.

Serve over cooked pasta.

Sometimes you need a treat. A soothing, winter treat that can warm you up. That would be me last night. It’s finally feeling like winter and it’s all too easy to get the blahs. I’m making a warm slow cooker drink or dessert every night to keep my spirits up. Feel free to use natural flavored extracts, zest, or juice in this recipe if you don’t imbibe.

This modified toddy has a Sugar Cookie tea base that has roasted barley and vanilla. The barley makes it not gluten-free. Almond Sunset would be my next choice, but they don’t make it anymore.

You could also use a vanilla or almond tea as your base instead. I like that Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride Tea is caffeine free which is a requirement of mine for a night drink.

Just throw this together right before you serve dinner, and your “dessert” will be ready when you are. This is great to make for a dinner party, just tripe the recipe and use a 4 to 5 quart slow cooker.

Slow Cooker Sugar Cookie Hot Toddy for 2

**Uses a 1 1/2 to 2 quart slow cooker**

Serves 2 (double or triple as needed)

• 1 teabag Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride Tea
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened vanilla or plain non-dairy milk
• 2 tablespoons apple brandy
• 2 teaspoons Amaretto
• 2 teaspoons Grand Marnier
• sweetener of choice, to taste (I used 1 teaspoon agave and 1/4 teaspoon stevia)

Place the teabags, water, and non-dairy milk in the slow cooker. Cook on high for about 1 to 2 hours or until hot. (You could also cook on low for about 3 hours.)

Just before serving add liquors and sweetener.

If you prefer a stronger drink you can double the amount of alcohol called for or add a shot of vanilla vodka.

Last week I was talking with my friend, Kalpana, about “Indian Chinese food”. I had eaten Manchurian dumplings/patties before but wasn’t a huge fan because it was deep-fried and the ones I got were pretty greasy. After hearing her talk about them I really wanted to give them another chance.

So, I did what any modern person would do and searched the internet for a recipe. I found the one I used at Veg Inspirations and it’s even baked instead of fried! I nearly jumped up and down as I realized this would help deplete my cabbage section of the fridge.

I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but I think the recipe was great for a base and you’d do well to follow it for your first batch. The dumplings are made with finely grated veggies and are held together with flour, rice, and a little corn starch.

You can use any veggies you want as long as they are finely minced/shredded. I used a food processor and did my veggies in batches. I also processed my rice in the processor to make it a little more binding. My rice came from the freezer though, and I think if you used fresh rice you could skip this step.

You could also use a different binder if you avoid corn starch and gluten-free flour should work as well as wheat flour. I saw some recipes in my search that called for rice flour.

I cooked mine on 350 for almost twice the amount of time recommended. But I also used more shredded veg than called for. Next time I would try cooking them at 375 and just keep a close eye on them to make sure they don’t burn.  But I thought baking made them nice and crunchy.

In my sauce I used the more water variation suggested. I used Sriracha for red chili sauce, no chilies, and some plain tomato sauce I had in the fridge in addition to a little ketchup. The sauce was thickened with corn starch and I probably could have used less. Again you’d probably be safe if you follow the recipe at Veg Inspirations.

You guys know about my cabbage saga, and it seems like a never-ending one. Because of this yummy dish I am down to one small cabbage!

For those of you not familiar with Southern food this is my (vegan) version of Shrimp and Grits. Traditionally it’s base is a spicy tomato based sauce with bell peppers. I’ve used chickpeas because they don’t break down as much as pinto beans or the like.

Of course there’s bacon in the original version, and doubly of course I have liquid smoke in my version. Big shock, right?

The spiciness often comes from Tabasco, but I like to add chipotle for its smoky notes as well as its heat. You can use either or both depending on your favorite taste.

I serve this over a big portion of grits. It’s a very filling dish and perfect for cold, winter nights. Feel free to add a heaping serving of veggies on the side to make it a well-rounded meal.

Originally I used Muir Glen diced tomatoes with chipotles already added in. Since then, it looks like they have been discontinued. But if you have a can or two of them in your pantry this is a great way to use them up.

Make sure to check out the Wellness Weekend over at Diet, Dessert and Dogs. This recipe is linked there and many more.

Slow Cooker Spicy Southern Chickpeas and Grits
soy-free, gluten-free (make sure the grits are labeled gluten-free!)
Makes 3 to 4 servings (when served over a pile of grits)

**This recipe uses a smaller slow cooker 1 1/2 to 2 quarts – you can double the recipe and use a 3 1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker

• 1/2 cup bell pepper, chopped small
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (can use 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder instead)
• 1 1/2 cup cooked chickpeas (or 1 can rinsed)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 1/2 cups diced tomatoes (or 1 can Muir Glen diced tomatoes)
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon chipolte powder, to taste
• A few dashes liquid smoke or smoked salt, to taste (Start small if you’re not a fan of smoky foods or leave it out altogether.)
• Tabasco or other hot sauce, optional – use instead of chipolte powder or in addition to depending on your taste for heat
• salt and pepper, to taste

The night before: Chop bell pepper, minced garlic and store in fridge.

In the morning: Add all ingredients, except for the salt and pepper, to the slow cooker and cook on low for 6 to 9 hours.

Before serving: Taste, add salt and pepper, then re-season to your liking. You may need to add more liquid smoke or chipotle.

Serve over slow cooker grits – recipe below:

I make a double batch of grits in a larger slow cooker. The first time I made this I had more beans than grits and that didn’t work as well. Also this way you can add in a few people if someone happens to drop by around dinner time.

Slow Cooker Grits

Use a 3 1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker for the grits.

• 1 cup grits, yellow or white (Bob’s Red Mill grits are labeled gluten-free)
• 2 cup unsweetened So Delicious Coconut Milk (or other unsweetened non-dairy milk)
• 2 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vegan chick’n bouillon
• salt and pepper to taste

You may (or may not) wonder what I’m eating when there is a lull here at the blog. Sometimes it means a recipe is being developed and isn’t quite ready to show the world and other times I’m rushing around catching up on housework, bills, and writing.

As much as I want to cook every meal we eat, it’s not always possible. I keep Tasty Bite on hand for a last-minute meal. In my house we call this cheater food since it looks (and tastes) like you actually worked to get the meal on the table. They even have pre-cooked brown rice. They are also great to bring with you when you go camping.

They have 28 vegan dishes that are clearly labeled vegan, as well as some that are kosher and/or gluten-free too. You can see their list on-line. The entrees are usually between 150 to 200 calories a serving and each pack contains 2 servings. At my local stores they run around $3.00 each, which makes them much cheaper than takeout.

If you can’t bear to eat a ready-made dinner they have some wonderful cooking sauces, that can help you get dinner on the table fast. Their Korma, Pad Thai, Rogan Josh, Satay, and Tikka Masala sauces are all vegan. It’s a great way to use up the last of your CSA or just to elevate frozen veggies.

Tasty Bite also has a line they call Meal Inspirations. I keep a few of the Zany Multigrain and   Barley Medley in my desk if I can’t get out to my favorite Indian restaurant, Curry Leaves, for lunch.

The best part about Tasty Bite is that they really are tasty. But I also love the fact that they contain all natural ingredients and no preservatives.

I haven’t tried one of their dishes that I haven’t liked, but Bombay Potatoes, Mushroom Takatak, Bengal Lentils, and  Channa Masala are the favorites at my house.

Follow Tasty Bite on Facebook and /or Twitter to find out about new dishes and recipes.

The That’s It giveaway goes to Janet Wei.

And Linda Watson’s book, Wildly Affordable Organic, goes to Wendy of Healthy Girl’s Kitchen.

Have a great day! More recipes and reviews are coming soon.

Winter CSAs are definitely an adventure. It’s an all you can eat wonderland of kale, chard, bok choy, cabbage, tatsoi, collards and even more healthy green veggies. Of course beets, lettuce, carrots, and even cauliflower are peppered into the mix too.

We didn’t get a CSA the week we got back from vacation, so I innocently bought a cabbage at the market. It was a beautiful one that looked like a cross between a green and red one. I’m sure it has a proper name, but I didn’t ask the variety. Oh, and it was huge. Somehow I didn’t notice that until I got home.

Then 4 days later I opened my CSA box to 2 more cabbages. So even with 3 cabbage recipes down I still have about 2 1/2 cabbage heads in my fridge right now. Prepare yourself for even more cabbage recipes to show up in the next few weeks. The great thing about cabbage is that it does keep well, so it won’t go to waste.

So, it’s a green extravaganza for my picky eater. But she’s actually starting to lose her intense hatred of cabbage. She liked this soup and the piroshki filling I made with tofu and cabbage (recipe coming soon).

This soup isn’t the prettiest, but the taste is really bold and delicious. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Don’t forget that this soup (as many recipes here) can also be made on the stove top instead of the slow cooker for a last minute quick dinner.

Slow Cooker Asian Corn Cabbage Soup
(soy-free and gluten-free if you don’t use the soy sauce)
4 servings

• 1 tablespoon olive oil, optional (water sauté instead if desired)
• 1/2 small onion, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 to 3 teaspoons minced ginger
• 1 1/2 cup minced mushrooms
• pinch salt
• 4 cups chopped cabbage
• 2 cups corn kernels (frozen or fresh)
• 4 cups water
• 2 teaspoons vegan chick’n bouillon
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
• 1 teaspoon coconut aminos or light soy sauce

The night before: Saute the onion in oil until it turns translucent, then add the garlic and cook one more minute. Add mushrooms and a pinch of salt. Cook until the mushrooms have cooked down and released their liquid. Store cooked mixture with cut cabbage and corn in the fridge overnight.

In the morning: Add everything except sesame, sriracha and coconut aminos to the slow cooker. Cook 7 to 9 hours on low.

Before serving: Taste, add sesame, sriracha and coconut aminos. Adjust seasonings if needed.

Join Key Ingredient and make sure to friend me there.

Text and photo © Cook for Good 2012, used with permission.

Thanks so much to Kathy for letting me share one of my new favorite recipes with you.

If you’ve been following my Cook for Good project, you’ve seen me use less and less dairy and eggs in 2011. In early December, I went full-fledged vegan. Was it reading The China Study again? Reading Eaarth? Weekly lunches with Kathy, queen of The Vegan Slow Cooker? Probably a combination of those forces.

I’d tried going vegan before, but gave up after three months. This time, it all seems so much easier. The vegan community is much larger, the resources are better, and I’ve already got a wealth of my own vegan recipes to draw on. Here’s one of my favorites: Slow-Cooker Speedy Beans.

Recipe: Slow-Cooker Speedy Baked Beans

Most recipes for baked beans use pork for flavor and long slow cooking to thicken the sauce. After talking about the physics of baking with my Taster, who is an engineer as well as a patient man, I tried to capture the creamy richness of baked beans faster and with less work. The quick and easy recipe below makes beans every bit as tasty as the ones I grew up with, using equal parts peanut butter and tahini instead of pork and a slow cooker instead of an oven.

Bean Physics. Water boils when it reaches 212° F and doesn’t get any hotter except under special conditions, such as in a pressure cooker. So my original thought of baking beans and bread at the same time was a bust: a big pot of beans will drag down the oven temperature. Even alone in the oven, the beans took forever to cook. Why? My Taster says transferring heat through the air, as in an oven, is much less efficient than transferring heat through physical contact, as on a stove or in a slow cooker. The acidity of the tomatoes and molasses makes a slow situation slower even slower by toughening the beans.

Speedy Beans. Beans can’t tell much difference between bubbling along in a slow cooker or an oven, but beans in the slow cooker cook faster. Instead of cooking the beans uncovered in the oven to boil away some of the water, I just added less water in the first place. Don’t let tomatoes and molasses put the brakes on the cooking time either; add them when the beans are already tender, then let the flavors blend overnight.

Slow Cooker Speedy Baked Beans

Active time: 15 minutes. Total time: at least 4 hours, preferably at least 12 hours. Makes 10 servings.

Ingredients

• 1 pound dried pinto beans
• 5 cups water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 onion
• 1/2 cup unsulphured molasses (such as Wholesome Sweeteners’ Organic Molasses)
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons mustard (such as Whole Foods Market’s 365-brand Organic German Mustard)
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon tahini

Method

1. Pick over and rinse pinto beans (see my recipe and video on Cooking Dried Beans). Put beans in a slow cooker with water and cover. Optionally, allow beans to soak for up to 12 hours to reduce cooking time and improve texture.
2. Stir in salt and turn slow cooker to high. Cook beans covered until tender, about 3 hours if soaked and about 4 hours if not. Stir beans if they peek up above the water line, adding hot water if needed to keep them barely covered.
3. When beans are nearly tender, chop onion and stir into beans with remaining ingredients. Continue cooking covered on high until beans and onions are tender.
4. Serve immediately or, better yet, pour into another container to speed cooling, let cool for up to two hours, and then refrigerate overnight so the sauce flavors works their way through the pintos. Reheat and serve over rice, baked potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, toast, or as a side dish.

Tips and Notes

• Try these mild beans for breakfast, especially if you can’t enjoy a hot lunch. I first enjoyed beans for breakfast, along with pan-fried tomato slices, in many English B&Bs.
• If you like this recipe and would like to get a delectable and affordable vegan recipe every week, sign up for the free Cook for Good newsletter.
• And please check out my book, Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet–All on $5 a Day or Less. It’s all vegetarian with a lot of vegan recipes, including an index to vegan recipes in the back. The front half of the book will help you make the best use of your time and money through the whole food-preparation cycle, from planning and shopping to cooking, cleaning, and storing.

Recipe originally published as Vegetarian Un-Baked Beans.

Enter to win a copy of Linda Watson’s Wildly Affordable Organic. As she mentions it is not a vegan book, though it is vegetarian and she even has a list of the Vegan recipes to make it easier to find. You will definitely find some tips and tricks that will make your yummy vegan life easier and cheaper.

To enter the giveaway do one or more of the following. You must leave a separate comment for each one you do to get the extra entry! The winner will be announced Friday.

• like Linda’s fb page
• follow Linda on twitter
• like Wildly Affordable Organic on its Amazon page
• sign up for the free Cook for Good newsletter

Good luck!