Life has been a little crazy lately. <–When has it not been?

Anyway, crazy in this case is good, because I have been working!

(PHEW!)

I decided to stop waiting around for employers to give me a job, and start making something happen for myself. I’m doing freelance writing (legal and food-related) as well as working as a research attorney for a law firm. I’m still trying to fill up my time since freelance/contract work means that you only work when someone needs your services, but I’m off to a good start, and I’m feeling proud of myself for making this happen. I would prefer to have a more stable job with benefits and a steady salary, but for now I’m doing okay.

The other crazy thing is that Mex just accepted a new job! He’s loving it so far and his employer seems great. He doesn’t work from home anymore, and his commute to work has been crazy (the 405 is not your friend), so we’re actually moving! To the beach! Details to come.

So there are a lot of crazy things going on in my life lately, but they are all good things and I’m excited to get out of the funk I have been in. To deal with the craziness, I’ve been trying to use my free time to make big batches of food to freeze or refrigerate so that even if we’re tired at the end of the day we can still have a great homemade meal.

This Vegetable Baked Ziti is a great make ahead meal because it’s comforting, healthy, and super easy to put together. It’s very versatile, and you can customize it to what you like.

Swap out the vegetables with whatever you like or whatever you have on hand. Use fresh, frozen, canned, leftover veggies in any combination that sounds good to you. Just shoot for about 4 total cups of veg.

The cream cheese in the sauce makes it creamy and almost makes it taste like penne ala vodka or a cheater version of vegetable lasagna. You could omit it, substitute ricotta cheese or cottage cheese, or even some mashed tofu if you’d like. Or use a creamy tomato sauce in place of the marinara.

This healthy baked ziti is also a complete meal, because it covers all your food groups in one dish. A salad on the side certainly wouldn’t hurt, but if you’re running  short on time, just warm up a serving of this ziti and dinner is ready.

Vegetable Baked Ziti

Makes about 6 servings. Freezes well.

• 4 cups cooked pasta (I used bowties)
• 2 medium zucchini, medium dice (about 2 cups chopped)
• 2 cups shredded broccoli
• 1 1/2 cups marinara sauce
• 2 tbsp cream cheese
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp Parmesan cheese
• 2 handfuls shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
• pinch red pepper flakes
• olive oil

Preheat oven to 375°.

Cook the pasta according to package directions in your largest pot. When done, drain and set aside. Return the pot to the stove and add a splash of olive oil. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant. Add the zucchini and broccoli and stir. Season with salt and pepper and cook until softened. Add the marinara sauce and cream cheese and stir thoroughly to combine. Add the cooked pasta to the pot and stir well.

Transfer the pasta mixture to an 8×8 glass pan. Top with Parmesan, mozzarella, and panko bread crumbs.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the topping is golden brown. Makes about 6 servings.

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For the first meal of the clean out the cupboards challenge, I made Spaghetti and Vegetarian Meatballs.  I usually use the “Beanball” recipe from Veganomicon, but I was out of a lot of the ingredients called for in the recipe, so I modified it quite a bit.  The result was really good, so I’m going to share the recipe.

The pasta was whole wheat spaghetti and the sauce was from a jar and was doctored up a bit with dried oregano, basil, and crushed red pepper flakes.

NotMeat Balls

Adapted from Veganomicon

These come together really quickly and the whole meal, including the pasta and sauce, can be on the table in less than 45 minutes.  If you don’t have the Better Than Bullion, you can just up the amount of salt in the recipe, or add a splash of soy sauce.

• 1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 cup rolled oats (see method)
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp mushroom Better Than Bullion
• 1 tbsp ketchup
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
• 1 tsp sea salt

Method:

In a blender, pulse the oatmeal several times until it is the same size as breadcrumbs.  Measure out 1/2 cup to use in the recipe.

In a large mixing bowl use a fork to mash the kidney beans until all the beans are mashed.  Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well until everything is incorporated. The resulting mixture should be slightly sticky, but not wet.  If the mixture is too wet, add another tbsp of vital wheat gluten.

Form the mixture into walnut sized balls and place in the baking dish.  Spray the tops of the balls with olive oil.  Bake for 20 minutes, flip, then bake another 10 minutes.

Use the notmeat balls on top of a plate of spaghetti or stuff into a roll for an awesome dinner!

Mac and cheese is the ultimate comfort food for lots of folks in the US.  It certainly is for me.  And you’ll find an extremely decadent and very NOT vegan recipe for it on my blog.  But going without dairy does not mean that you have to go without mac and cheese.

In fact, this recipe is even quicker than my non-vegan recipe is.  Hence, I eat it more often.

But the real question is whether it really tastes like cheese.  And I don’t really have an answer for you, unfortunately.  The cheese sauce is made with nutritional yeast, which many vegans use for a cheesy flavor.  For the most part, the nutritional yeast based sauces I’ve made taste like gooey movie theater cheese sauce.  In a good way.  But it definitely has a bit of an after taste to it that others may not be down with.  Mex, for example, passed on this lunch.

“It’s okay, but it doesn’t taste like cheese,” he said.

So, I don’t know.  I like it.  It reminds me of the blue box mac and cheese I ate as a kid.  And heck, the nutritional yeast is nearly the same color as that cheese flavored powder that comes in the blue box.  Except nutritional yeast is naturally that color.

ZING!

My vegan cheese sauce is a bit of a pared down version of the Cheezy Sauce recipe from Veganomicon.  I omit some of the ingredients from the original recipe and scaled it down for just 2 servings, or so.  It’s great in mac and cheese, but it’s also good as a dip or a sandwich spread.

My Vegan Cheese Sauce

• 1 1/4 cups water
• 2 heaping tbsp flour (wheat, ap, it all works)
• 3 heaping tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• salt
• black pepper
• dijon mustard to taste
• 1 tsp Earth Balance (optional, makes for a more rich tasting sauce)

In a pot, combine the water and flour until dissolved.  Turn on the heat to boiling, whisking constantly, then quickly turn down to a very slow simmer.  Add the nutritional yeast, cumin, garlic powder, salt, and pepper to taste.  Continue whisking.  Add the dijon mustard, starting with 1 teaspoon, and gradually adding more until you like the flavor.  At this point you can add more salt and pepper if you like.  At the very end, add the Earth Balance, if using.

Stir in cooked pasta, any shape you like, and you have vegan mac and cheese!  I usually add raw baby spinach or broccoli to the pot at the very end of the cooking process to up the nutrition.

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Notes:

• You can find nutritional yeast in the bulk bins at many large supermarkets, or at health food stores.  It’s pretty cheap, so it’s fun to play around with.

• If the sauce starts to get too thick, add some non-dairy milk and whisk away like crazy.  This is a very forgiving sauce and it won’t break on you like dairy-based cheese sauces will if you over cook it.

• On other blogs you might see nutritional yeast referred to as “nooch” for short.

• Play around with the seasonings!  Add some lemon or lime juice to give it more tang.  Turn this into more of a queso-style dip with the addition of some hot sauce, Ro-Tel canned tomatoes w/ chiles, or some salsa.  Or go crazy and add it to your favorite jarred pasta sauce for a cheesy pasta experience.

I wanted to do a bit of an overview of the types of things I cook normally.  As you will see, my style of cooking is pretty varied, and I like to try new things.  All of these meals were made during the week as well, so they were pretty quick and didn’t require much advanced preparation.

Here we go!

These are tofu lettuce wraps.

I got the idea for the tofu + almond butter sauce + soba noodles from this post on Serious Eats.

Instead of just making a noodle and tofu dish, I decided to use up some leaf lettuce with the tofu and soba noodle filling.  I added raw edamame, onions, and carrots before rolling them up.  Yum.

Next up we have “Not Chicken Riggies.” Chicken Riggies is a really popular dish in the Utica area of NY and people there go nuts over it.  It’s a pasta dish with chicken, peppers and onions, and a creamy spicy tomato sauce.

I don’t know why I started thinking of this dish, but I couldn’t get it out of my head so I decided to make my own version.  The people in Utica will probably shoot me for even comparing this to the original.  I’m sorry Uticans.  I couldn’t help myself.

Here’s how I made it:  First I boiled the bowtie pasta (again, I’m sorry Uticans!).  Next, I cooked 2 Gardein Chick’n scallopini pieces in a bit of olive oil and removed them from the pan.  Then I sauteed onions and garlic in olive oil in a large skillet, seasoned with salt, pepper, oregano and crushed red pepper flakes (a lot of them).  Next I added some chopped asparagus (again, I apologize) and some defrosted chopped spinach.  Then I added crushed tomatoes and a bit of soy creamer.  I added the chick’n back to the pan with the cooked pasta and let it simmer for a few minutes.

This was amazingly good.  I ate way too much and then wanted more.  Best thing I’ve made in a while.

Here’s some pretty standard vegetarian chili.  I make this a lot when I want to use up ingredients.  The base is almost always onions, garlic, carrots, tomatoes, and beans.  This one used up a bit of creamy tomato soup I had in the fridge so it had a creamy texture to it that was really nice.  I added avocado and cilantro to the top and served it with nearly stale bread to dip.  It was tasty!

This last meal was a totally crazy thought that worked out so well!  Stuffed Mexican Portobello Burgers.  I roasted a portobello mushroom in the toaster oven (would have been better on a grill).  Then stuffed it with a mixture of refried beans, salsa, minced onion, lime juice, hot sauce, and cilantro.  I popped that back in the oven so the filling would get hot, then topped it with vegan diaya cheddar style cheese (aka the only vegan cheese worth buying) and broiled it until it melted.  I finished it off with diced avocado, chopped tomatoes, and cilantro.  Served with corn tortilla chips, this was a winner of a meal if I do say so myself.

So there you go!  4 really easy, delicious, and inexpensive meals made during the week.  No more excuses not to cook!

I needed some serious comfort food the other night, and baked pasta was on my mind.  It wasn’t the most photogenic dish I’ve ever made, but it was delicious and hit the spot.

I almost always make my own sauce because it’s easy and usually tastes better than jarred.  This time I was out of onions (the horror!) so I made a basic sauce by heating olive oil in a pot, adding 3 cloves of garlic and some crushed red pepper, cooking until it smelled fragrant, adding dried oregano, s&p, a big can of crushed tomatoes, and a small splash of leftover red wine.  I usually just cover it and let it simmer while I make the rest of the dish.

Next, I mixed about a cup or two of the sauce with the remains of a container of cottage cheese (maybe 1/2 a cup), about 1/4 of a brick of extra firm tofu (crumbled), and some cooked macaroni.  Any short-cut pasta will work here, I had a small amount of elbows on hand for far too long so I took the chance to use it up.  Topped it off with some steamed broccoli, grated cheese and baked it at 350 until the top was browned and crunchy.  A few fresh basil leaves on top made it feel a little classier than it really was.