Black Bean Tacos!!

I didn't get a picture of the actual tacos I ate, but I love taking pictures of veggies so that's the best I've got today. :) And I only have a rough estimate on what I put in it, but yeah... Here you go!

I sauteed about half an onion, half a jalapeno, about 2TB garlic and some mushrooms together in a bit of olive oil until the mushrooms and onions were a little soft.

Added some salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, a bit of cumin(my new favorite spice) and a dash of red pepper flakes. Then added a can of cooked semi mashed black beans and mixed it all together.

Served on a flour tortilla with some diced tomato, cheese, sliced avocado and Tapatio sauce. Was super yum and just spicy enough!! It might be my new favorite thing!

Vegan Jalapeno Cookies

Back in August last year I posted a recipe for jalapeno chip cookies, which was a spin-off of my Potato Chip Cookie recipe.

Why I thought it was okay to recreate them with jalapeno chips, I'm not sure... but it turns out they aren't so bad. Even then though, they needed some tweaking and they needed to be made vegan friendly.

So keep in mind with these cookies that they aren't meant to be eaten in bulk, and would probably be good for something like a BBQ type meal. They aren't really a dessert cookie... I don't know how to explain them. So after all of that... Here is the updated vegan version...

Jalapeno Chip Cookies

1/2c butter
approx 6oz vegan cream cheese
1/2c sugar
1 1/2c flour
1tsp vanilla
1/2c crushed jalapeno potato chips (I used Kettle brand)
1 jalapeno finely minced.

blend your butter, cream cheese and sugar together until smooth, then add everything else. If they seem a little on the sticky side you might need to add a little more flour.

Roll into little balls, then push them down with a cup that has sugar on the bottom of it.

Bake at 350 for 8-10min

makes between 30-40 cookies

Cheesy Potato Soup for One!!

So I don't eat soup often, I think it usually tastes good, it just isn't my favorite thing, but every once in a while it sounds really good and up until now I've never attempted to make any kind of soup.... This particular soup would be awesome in a bread bowl if you happen to have one! Sadly I didn't, but a slice of bread on the side worked just fine. :)

Tonight though I had just a single potato and a carrot that have been in my fridge that I needed to use soon and wasn't sure what to do with them. A friend of mine had mentioned bread bowl soup earlier today and for some reason it stuck with me. So I decided to turn my one potato and carrot into soup for one! If I had an onion I probably would have added 1/4c of sauteed onion to it as well, but will make sure to do that next time. Also I don't have one of those fancy immersion blender things so I just used an old fashioned potato masher.

Cheesy Potato Soup

Boil:
1 white potato-peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 carrot-peeled and chopped

Drain and put back in your pot. Mash with a fork or potato masher to your liking then add


2/3c milk (I used vanilla soymilk because it is what was on hand)
1 tbs butter (I used vegan margarine)
1/4 tsp Cayennne pepper (less if you don't want it super spicy)
1/4 tsp Oregano and Basil
1 tbs garlic
1/4c onion finely chopped (again was out of onion, but am sure it is a must!)
1/4-1/2c shredded cheese (I would've used Daiya if I had any)

salt and pepper to taste

While your potato and carrot are boiling saute your garlic and onion and set aside until after your potato/carrot are mashed.

keep your pot on medium heat
add the rest of your ingredients and stir until your cheese is melted, mash a bit more with a fork if you need to, salt and pepper to taste, serve and enjoy!

St.Patrick's Day! (a little late)

So I try and eat only green food on St.Patrick's Day every year. This year we had a work party though, so I wasn't able to make a green dinner, but thought I'd share some things I have done in the past and a list of random green veggies/food I like to eat.

One of my favorite things to make is green cornbread!

Last year I made green mashed potatoes!!


Other things, make a white/yellow cake mix and add green food coloring and/or green frosting. Add green food coloring to sugar cookie dough or bread dough.

Artichokes are a favorite as well as broccoli, green beans, peas, avocados, pistachio's, green jello... I could go on and on! Anyway, next year if you're feeling like being adventurous, try and go the entire day with only eating green food. :)

It's fun and showing up to work with random green treats always makes people smile!

Amazingly Awesome Vegan Taquitos!!

Okay, so on Monday my friend/coworker Jordan over at Militant Vegan Cooking made some awesome vegan taquitos inspired by my buddy Meagan over at The Snarky Chickpea. I'm not going to lie, Jordan did the majority of the work and made sure to take all the pictures needed and everything for the post. So instead of trying to write a third post, I am just going to post the link to his post about them.

We made them for our coworkers and even the non vegans LOVED them!! They were gone almost instantly. Sooo yummy! And really, to my non vegan friends.. change the ingredients if you'd like to things you have on hand, I'm sure they'll still be good.

So after all of that... Rice and Bean Taquitos Go check them out, because they are the beset taquitos I've ever had!

I've come a long way in a year...

Almost exactly a year ago I started this blog to track my 40days of vegan-ism I was doing for lent. It didn't go well, I only made it about 21 days in before I got really sick and needed to stop, but in the last year I have come a long in way changing almost all of my baking over to being vegan friendly and other then Thanksgiving cut out a lot of meat.

In December I made the conscience effort to give up meat completely and as of right now am extremely happy with the decision I have made. Watching Earthlings (I have previous posts on watching it and how I felt about it that you can go check out) is what finally made me take the final step I needed to not eating meat. I have my dear friend Jordan to thank for that.

With that being said I haven't taken the leap back into vegan-ism yet, one transition at a time. I can say that I have cut out a lot of animal products though. I haven't bought cow milk since December even though there are days I crave it. I am still trying to find milk that I like, but am okay with not drinking it. I've also kept with my staying away from eggs as much as possible, but that has been the case for ages.

My downfall... Cheese, I feel like my Italian blood needs it. With that being said, I am well aware of plenty of vegan cheeses that you can buy, I just need to make more of an effort to buy them and replace regular cheese all the time.

I've also made an effort to stop buying junk food for no other reason then I know it isn't healthy and I shouldn't be eating it. I still have some, but not much and try to only in small amounts.

It has only been about 2.5months of the change in diet, but I can already see the changes and am really happy about it. :) I know a lot of my friends think I am crazy and have continued to give me crap about it, but this is good for me and I know that because of me less animals are suffering. At the end of the day… That feels pretty darn good. :)

So to my meat eating friends, yes I get it, you like meat… So do I, but I can’t handle the thought of eating something that has suffered for no other reason then so I can enjoy it. It makes me sad, with that said, I won’t tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t, I am just letting you know where I stand on things.

Vegan Pot Pie....

The other day a friend of mine posted a blog for potpie... I haven't ever been able to find a recipe that turned out well. Hers looked awesome so I thought I'd give it a shot... Turns out it rocked!

It is from The Snarky Chickpea (previously Meg's Cooking Addiction that I mentioned in December)

My Veggie Potpie (can kick your potpie's ass) Is her post on it. I only tweaked it a tiny bit. Changed the veggies to ones I had around my house and didn't put in coriander because I didn't have any and didn't feel the need to go buy some.



I ran out of flour and had to use cornmeal to roll out my crust so It didn't stay in one piece... not the best thing to use but it worked better then nothing. :)