Hint of India Garbanzos

This was one of those dishes where I was really craving curried garbanzos but didn't have any curry on hand. So, I kind of pushed that aside and decided to get more creative with the spices I already had in my cupboard, especially my poor neglected, underused garam masala. What turned out was a dish a bit on the spicy side but very tasty, definitely deserving of a reappearance.

Hint of India Garbanzos in serving dish

Now nestled on a plate surrounded by goodness

Hint of India Garbanzos

Ingredients:

2 - 15oz. cans of garbanzo beans, undrained
1 yellow bell pepper, diced small
5 garlic cloves, chopped small
1/2 red onion, diced small
2 tsp. garam masala
1 Tbs. garlic powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper

Directions:

Put all of the ingredients in a medium pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil and let boil for five minutes. Lower heat to medium low and continue cooking for 20 more minutes. Complete your meal by serving it over brown rice with steamed veggies on the side. Feeds five hungry vegans.

Sauteed Pasta with Garlic

This is such a shamefully easy recipe, but it's good and quick on a busy night, so I thought I'd share it. Pair it with some yummy veggies, like roasted asparagus, and you've got yourself a complete meal.



Sauteed Pasta with Garlic

Ingredients:

2 Tbs. vegan margarine
1 head of garlic, cloves, peeled and sliced in rounds
1 lb. cooked and cooled, or leftover, pasta (small or medium sized works best)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

In a large skillet, heat the margarine over medium heat. When almost melted completely, add the garlic. Cook for about thirty seconds, or until the garlic releases its fragrance. (Garlic burns easily, so don't cook too long by itself.) Add the pasta and seasonings and stir well. Cook for five to ten more minutes, until the pasta is heated through. I like a bit of crispiness to some of the pasta edges, so I wait until that happens before I remove from heat. Easy and tasty. Feeds five hungry vegans.

Veggie Soup with Rice

Hello, everyone! It's good to be back, and I really hope this posts well, and I can comment on my site and on yours. Thanks to Vegan Flower, we added on Firefox, and that's what I'm using to create this current post. Since this is my first post using Firefox, I have a new question: how do we upload pictures so that they stay in the order we want? I've tried two times so far. The first time, Firefox loaded them alphabetically, not the way I had intended. So, then I went back and changed all my pics names, so that they were alphabetical and in the order I wanted them to upload. But now Firefox hasn't loaded them alphabetically! This will be important when I have a post that has recipe steps involved with photos; I'll need them to be in order. Anyone? Vegan Flower?

I thought I'd give you a very short summary of what's been going on with us in the last couple of months. G's toe's skin has finally healed, but his toe joint and foot are still in pain. SR's wrist is still in pain, even after a cortisone shot. I'm trying to talk her into acupuncture. I pulled a calf muscle, the same one three times now in two years. And, I'm just healing from a back sprain. Ugh. I did earn my certificate to become a birth doula; that was a two and a half year process. We celebrated SR's, JK's, and both my parents' birthdays, as well as their anniversary, so we've been twirling in frosting over here. Both girls graduated from the last and highest level of swimming class, and JK is proud to be a guppy! We've had appliance repairs, auto repairs, and everyone but JK got new glasses, yay. Our garden went kaput. I took pics in June, and very soon after that, the dogs ate the grapevine and most of my nectarine tree, and the almond tree died. Both pups got spayed and had cone hats at the same time, very funny. What about you? What have I missed? I've been offline, not just on blogging, but pretty much everything - just trying to enjoy the summer with my kids.

Below the photos is a simple soup recipe that is a winner every time. You can use it as a guideline to build your own delicious soups. :-)

Veggie Soup with Rice

A simple wrestling cake for JK's 5th birthday

Strawberry Tall Cakes for SR's actual 14th birthday

Cookies 'n Cream Cupcakes for SR's party - GR's grabbing one!

One of our artichoke plants, while it was thriving

Veggie Soup with Rice

Ingredients:

8 to 10 cups of fresh and/or frozen veggies, choppped
We used: broccoli, cauliflower, orange carrots, yellow carrots, red bell peppers, green beans, corn, and celery
1 - 32 oz. box of No Chicken Broth
1 - 15 oz. can of chopped tomatoes
1 - 15 oz. can of tomato sauce
(In a pinch, I'll use spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce V8 or tomato juice)
1 - 15 oz. can of garbanzo beans (or any beans you have on hand)
Water to cover everything by one to two inches
1 Tbs. garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste
1 to 2 cups of leftover rice (your rice should already be cooked, or else it will soak up all the broth)

Directions:

Heat all the ingredients, except for the rice, in a large pot over medium heat for thirty to forty-five minutes. When it is bubbling, and everything is tender, add the rice. Turn down the heat to medium low, and add a bit more water if needed. Simmer for about ten more minutes, until the rice is thoroughly warmed up. Easy squeezy. Delicious and feeds five hungry vegans!

A Message About My Blog

Well, Blogger has done it to me again. For the past few months, most of you know that I've been dealing with a formatting issue, where I can no longer write my posts in Compose mode. I have to go only to html and write and then force all my formatting that you see on the posts: spacing, centering, links, etc. I've learned to live with it and have become very versed in html coding.

But, now I have a new blog problem that's really preventing me from creating new posts: My blog doesn't keep me signed in, and in effect doesn't even recognize me. So, starting on last Tuesday, I was no longer able to respond to comments on my blog nor go to other people's blogs and leave comments for them. To me, if someone leaves a comment for me and I don't acknowledge it, and if I don't show blogger-friendship and comment on their blogs, it's akin to being rude on my part.

Other people are still able to leave comments on my blog, unless they are experiencing the same problem I am. And, apparently, there are several bloggers who are having the same problem according to Bloggers own Known Issues site. I could still continue to post, but it would really bug me to not be able to respond. So, what I've decided to do is hold off on posting until Blogger can get this fixed. I will continue to check on their site to see if there are any updates from them. When they get this fixed, I will continue to post again. If they do not get this fixed, then I will have to look for another way to continue. I have so many more recipes to share; as a matter of fact, right now I have about a dozen recipes in the queue waiting their turn. This is very disappointing and frustrating to me because I really wanted this to be long-term, but I don't see any other way. In the meantime, I can still be reached through my email at blessedmama@pacbell.net.

I won't be able to respond to anything you say here on my blog, but I hope you all continue to flourish, enjoy good vegan food, and help save the world! I appreciate all the friendships that were starting to form, and I hope to be back posting soon.

Thank you,
BlessedMama :-)

Bean and Facon Soup

Well, wasn't that fun? Experiencing almost two weeks of not being able to access my computer was an exercise in time well-spent otherwise. Now that most of the electrical problems in our home have been fixed by my sweet G (Happy Anniversary today!), I can blog again! Aren't we all happier now?

This soup is a take on my favorite canned soup from my childhood. I've tried remaking it a few times, as I do with my most of my dishes before I post them, and I think I've come up with a recipe that is strikingly similar, except for the cruelty to animals. G grew up with a mom who worked the swing-shift and retired from said canned soup company, and he thinks this version is spot on. My children have fortunately never tasted the inhumane original and love this. I have to say, my other tries, which were too dark and heavy, take a back seat to this lighter, well-balanced tasty bowl of goodness. This is definitely going on my menu board on the inside of my cupboard.



Bean and Facon Soup

Ingredients:

1 pound bag of Great Northern Beans
Water to cover
1 - 32 oz. box of Organic Imagine No-Chicken Broth
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 pkg. of LightLife Smart Bacon, diced small

Directions:

Sort beans for grit and put in large pot with water a couple of inches over the beans. Cook on medium heat for one hour. Add broth, seasonings, and enough water to stay about an inch over the beans. Continue cooking on medium heat for another hour. When the beans are tender, add the facon, and cook for twenty minutes more. Can serve with crunchy bread and a yummy green salad. Feeds five hungry vegans.

GT Express Pizzas

So, I'm going to start out by saying that this is not an endorsement of the GT Express kitchen gadget. But, since it is a gadget that we use frequently in our home, especially the children, it seemed appropriate to post a meal using it. Just to note, we have the original, old GT Express, not the newer RediSetGo. I was going to order the new one for Mother's Day per G's prompting, but ended up dealing with a nightmare of a recording that kept insisting I needed every other product and trip and magazine available to man, which caused me to cancel my order. So, I love my old version but cannot vouch for the new one. Anyway, I love this thing (we actually have two) because the Blessings can make wraps, burritos and grilled cheese sandwiches without using the stove or oven.

We got small recipe books with our order several years ago, and I've been having fun trying to veganize them. I use that term loosely because it's not so much veganizing, as it is completely revamping a recipe. This latest one is my version of their pizzas, which turned out just great. I used my pizza dough recipe again, and with that recipe, we made sixteen mini pizzas: plenty for dinner and lunch the next day! Everyone got to have just the type of pizza they wanted. I'm not sure if there's something similar on the market, but it's a great way to make small dishes. The only drawback is with a family of five, one of us has to wait for our meal since there's only four wells (read: me). See below for a tasty recipe!

GT Express Pizza

The size of the pizza dough ball you'll need for each pizza, about a palm-full

Two pizzas in their wells (with a touch of flour on the sides)

GT Express Pizzas

Ingredients:

Pizza dough, my recipe (click on link)
Various fillings - we used:
Organic pizza sauce
Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet, cheddar cheese style, finely grated
Gimme Lean Sausage, made into little meatballs and sauteed
Black olives, sliced into thirds
Fresh pineapple, diced small
Artichoke hearts, quartered and canned in water, sliced in half lengthwise
Mushrooms, halved and sliced

Directions:

Follow the recipe on making the dough, including the resting period. Plug in the GT Expresses. Take healthy-sized handfulls of dough, filling up your palm, and on a floured surface, roll slightly out a bit larger than the size of the well. Place in heated well, and spread a small amount of sauce and toppings on each pizza. Once both wells have dough and toppings, shut the lid and time for ten minutes. Comes out perfectly. Makes approximately sixteen mini pizzas, plenty for five hungry vegans for a couple of meals.

Easy Bagel and Deli Slice Breakfast

This is such an easy breakfast that it's not really a difficult recipe but more of another breakfast idea for you. I could have baked the bagels myself, and I could have made the deli slices by hand, but c'mon, we all need a break and have shortcuts sometimes, right? So, do yourself a favor, if you have a spare ten dollars, buy the bagels and some slices, and have a quick, easy and tasty breakfast. Just a tip: use the plain or savory bagels, not the sweet ones here.




Easy Bagel and Deli Slice Breakfast

Ingredients:

Bagels - plain or savory
Vegan margarine
Vegan deli slices from Yves or Tofurky or your favorite brand

Directions:

Cut the whole bagels in half. Toast them bagels. Spread a touch of margarine on each slice. Put a few deli slices on each bagel half. So good, so simple, so filling. Feeds five hungry vegans.