What I Cooked: Pt. Eight
This week’s edition of What I Cooked is going to give you an alarming insight into how my brain functions. 600 million google tabs open always, always trying to find ‘upgrades’ to how I am doing something, and just finally saying, ahhh screw it, jump in.
So buckle up friends.
Vegetable Pot Pie
Pot pie is SUCH winter staple for every house hold. Its cozy, its comforting and hearty….like a big, warm all encompassing hug. Upgrading your typical chicken pot pie to vegetable pot pie is such an easy transition - the meal remains so hearty. This is a go to meal when I’m feeding non-plant based eaters.
I have linked above a super simple, easy basic pot pie recipe to build from. As per usual for me, this is just a starting frame for your recipe. Change and alter it to fit what you have and what suits your families tastes. To make it even easier, I like to top it with super simple, inexpensive drop biscuits. So here you go, 2 recipes for the price of one for you:
Easy Drop Biscuits
2 cups flours
1 tbsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/4 vegan butter
1 cup cup club soda
Mix it all. Drop biscuits on top of pot pie filling and bake at 400 F until biscuits are browned.
Roasted Vegetable Wraps
Such an easy, fridge clean out meal. We usually have an assortment of roasted veggies on hand in the fridge and well as other bits and bobs to add in. This week, we used sprouted whole grain wraps and spread on hummus, vegenaise and mustard. The filling consisted of left over walnut/lentil filling from last weeks tacos, roasted vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli and bell pepper) and sprinkled with shredded Daiya cheese and hemp hearts. Fold them up and give them a quite press in our panini press (don’t have a panini press? use a fry pan with a heavy dish on top for a similar effect). Serve with a side of green salad or air fried sweet potato french fries.
Apple Sauce Cauliflower Muffins
I hesitate to even link this recipe as inspiration because I went wholeheartedly rogue on this one BUT I found myself with a plethora of cauliflower and wanted to find a different way to use it. Specifically, wanted to find a way to get more cauliflower into my oldest daughter. My youngest recently announced cauliflower to be “my most favoritest vegetable ever” but my oldest believes it to be a vial weed. So enter, cauliflower in muffin form. This recipe was the beginning stages of inspiration but a) isn’t plant based and b) has SO MUCH OIL I was turned off. So I played around with it, omitted the oil completely, used about 1/4 cup of maple syrup instead of sugar, used ‘flax eggs” instead of regular eggs, used home made cinnamon apple sauce instead of apples, and ended up using some almond milk (roughly 1/4 cup) to thin out the batter slightly.
So….got all those changes??
Blueberry Donuts
DONUTS! FREAKING DONUTS!
I sent a picture of these beauties to a friend after making them and she responded with “lets be real though, are they just muffins in donut form?” and that got me thinking. Donuts basically seem to fall into 2 categories, cake-like donuts or muffin-like donuts and deep fried or baked. Spoiler alert: you will never find me deep frying anything. Ever.
So yes, these are basically muffins in donut form, but that is perfect for us! We all (kids, husband and I) looked at them and our brains screamed “DONUTS!” and we devoured them.
1 flax eggs
1 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 cup Coconut Sugar
1 1/4 cups spelt flour
2 tbsp Coconut oil
1/2 cup Almond Milk + more as needed
1/2 cup Blueberries, fresh
Pre-heat oven to 350˚ F.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Stir in flax egg, milk, and coconut oil. Gradually, stir in blueberries.
Spoon batter into a donut pan (we like silicon so you don’t need to grease it). Batter should fill donut molds to the center (but not cover it).
Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let donuts cool for about 5 minutes before removing them from the donut pan.