My Vegan Website

Monday, May 25, 2015

Sunday Kitchen Experiments

Over the years, I have come to realize that I feel my best when I eat a mostly plant-based diet. That doesn't mean I have gone completely vegan, but I am trying my best to cut down on the animal products.
Now, if you are going to go vegan for health reasons, it's important to remember one thing: It's all about plant-based WHOLE FOODS. I say this, because it is fully possible (and quite common, I might add) to be 100% vegan and still eat nothing but processed junk food. While you might be living a cruelty-free lifestyle (and maybe that's all you want)that way, you won't be doing anything for your own health.
Now, for a lot of people, when they think "vegan", they think "tofu". Nothing wrong with tofu, I don't mind it from time to time, but I have found that I am a bit sensitive to soy products. If I eat it too often, my boobs get really sore. True story!
Also, a lot of vegan meat substitutes are highly processed and many contain sugar, flour, and other fillers - like all processed foods - so I wanted to be able to make something that was clean!

I read about Burmese Tofu - also known as Shan Tofu or Chickpea Tofu - a while back and have been thinking of trying to make some for quite some time now. The only issue was that the recipe I found would take a long time to make, and when it comes to cooking and making things, I am all about "quick and easy"!
So of course I was excited when I found this recipe for a chickpea tofu that would only take about 25 minutes to make. I bought a bag of chickpea flour at Superstore for 7 bucks, and it's going to last me a while. The other ingredients are turmeric, salt, and water. I had all those things already.

It turned out pretty good! The consistency is a bit more jelly-like than a regular firm tofu, but it has a good neutral flavour. We barbequed for dinner and I cut strips of the tofu and marinated them in olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary - it took the flavours really well although we did not put the strips right on the barbeque but on top of some tinfoil instead. It's a little soft on it's own but I'm going to try pan frying it and baking it as well to see how it holds up. I think it would make an excellent substitute for scrambled eggs!

Next, vegan cheese (or, non-dairy cheese-like product, as my husband prefers to call it). I've been wanting to try this as well for a while, but again, it took me a while to find a recipe that seemed easy enough to master. I finally found one over at Vegan Richa - I printed the recipe last Friday but now I can no longer find it on the site! She has many recipes for vegan cheeses, this one seemed the easiest, using coconut milk and other ingredients that I mostly had at home. It turned out pretty good! A good, firm texture that was easy to slice and even melted a bit when I decided to try it out in a grilled cheese and avocado sandwich!

I forgot to bring either for my lunch today though. I'm so lame.

Maja

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Before and During

It's not a "Before and After", because I am a work in progress.
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This is mostly through PiYo - I haven't quite figured out my eating yet but it's coming along. Progress, not perfection, people!
Maja