Ω (Omega) Muffins

This is a real quick post of a real quick muffin I just made for our trip! We are leaving early tomorrow morning, like I have to wake up sometime between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning! I would try not to even go to sleep, but I have issues sleeping, such that I can't sleep on planes..I can't sleep during the day..so I need to try to sleep tonight (this evening I guess..) But I also can't sleep when I'm nervous/excited, so I might just need one day of recovery, which is fine because it's a twelve day trip!! Okay, onto the food!


I call these ones Omega Muffins because they have three ingredients that are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids that we all need! Chia seeds, flax seed meal, and walnuts! They are basically a banana nut muffin. However, Michael's favorite things ever include coffee and chocolate, so his are kinda mocha! After making the recipe, I put half into a muffin tin, and then added instant coffee to the other half for him!


Ingredients:
1.5 cups flour (I used white whole wheat)
1/2 cup oats 
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 bananas
3/4 cup nondairy milk, divided (I used unsweetened vanilla almond)
1/4 c maple syrup
3 T flax seed meal
2 T chia seeds


Toppings/add ins (optional):
Walnuts
Chocolate chips
Instant coffee (I used vanilla)

Add all of the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix together (flour through salt; If you want the coffee flavor, add the instant coffee now, I used 2 individual serving packets for half of this recipe).

Add the flax meal to 1/4 cup of the milk and let set.

Mash the banana and mix in the remainder of the milk, maple syrup, and chia seeds.

Add the flax mixture to the wet ingredients, mix, and then add all to the dry ingredients. Mix until you have your dough and pour into greased muffins tins. Bake at 350° for 18-20 minutes.


And here they are, half topped with walnuts, and half with the coffee with some chocolate chips added to center!

These muffins really are so versatile, I just usually go off what I have on hand! You can change up the flavors however you like!

My New Life

Just found this and it's exactly how I feel! :)

Source

Tofu Sammie and Graduation!

I've been super busy lately because we are going on a TWELVE DAY VACATION!!! I am soo excited! I graduated yesterday and we are leaving this Thursday! So, there won't be any posts for awhile, but I'm going to have some amazing pictures when I get back! And I'll also do food reviews, of course :)
My parents, sister, and Michael came to the commencement. Also, I got honor cords! I had no idea I was going to get them until I signed in, so that was a good lil surprise! It was apparently supposed to tornado yesterday, but luckily the storms stopped so we could have some photo moments outside of the venue (because the place was PACKED!)
Here are some photos from last night:

The other day I made these tofu sammies! I love making baked tofu and I had some extra Daiya lying around, and that always makes everything better. The sandwich is just baked tofu that had been seasoned with garlic powder, basil, and oregeno. I also cut up tomatoes and put the tofu and tomatoes on a cookie sheet in the oven until browned. I then flipped it over and browned the other side, and this is when I added the daiya onto the tomatoes. I served this on Ezekiel bread.

Friday Favorites!

Ooohhh I just realized it's Friday, and I get to do my favorite things!! Being out of school for a week has made me completely lose track of what day it is. I went through most of yesterday thinking it was Wednesday until my mom told me otherwise..

Anyways, here are some of my favorite things lately!

This is something I saw on Oh She Glows, and I wish I would have made it the second I saw it! Basically, you take your favorite nut butter, I did peanut, and add in some non dairy milk, I did Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk (the recipe calls for a few other ingredients, but I did just the PB and almond milk). It makes it soooo smooth and creamy!! I can't believe how amazing it was!! And it basically cuts the calories in half.. which won't really matter for me because now I want to eat even more! You can add as much non dairy milk as you want to achieve whatever consistency you like. We didn't add as much as in her photo below, ours was super creamy and fluffy like frosting though!!

These broccoli burgers look so good! It has all my favorite things, broccoli, cous cous, and chickpeas!

This family photo is too cute!

I love these pear pillows! I love when things are made to look like food :)

I also started an Etsy shop! I love thrifting so much and I am currently not working so I decided to open this shop! If you're interested in any of the items (I know there's not much there right now, I just officially opened it yesterday..) you can get a 20% discount on any item by using the code "CLEMENTINES". My favorite item from the shop is this dress. It's sooo cute!!! It's going to be hard to part with some amazing items I find, but I just don't have room for them all! This shop will help me to not pass up those items and help them find a home! (Am I crazy?! haha it's like I'm talking about homeless cats or something)

PB & J Smoothie + Lil' Plants!

Smoothies are my favorite thing, as I said before I eat one just about every single day!
Today, for Michael and myself, I made us peanut butter and jelly smoothies!

It consisted of these ingredients:

1/2 cup Almond milk (I use unsweetened vanilla, this stuff is good)
1/2 a banana
1/2 cup quick oats
2 T PB
1 T organic strawberry preserves
1 T chia seeds

(Michael's consisted of Soy milk instead of almond and flax meal instead of chia seeds)

Before blending:

After:

These smoothies are so good, I never get sick of them! They're really thick, like (soy)milkshakes!

A few months ago (2-3??) I bought these little pots that came with soil and seedlings from Target. One is for strawberries and the other is for bell peppers. This first one sprouted about a month ago (I forgot to mark them, so I'm not sure which is which :) ).

I didn't think the other one ever would, but I didn't give up hope! I just kept watering and watering.. until...

A lil baby sprout!!!!! So excited! Especially because we have to move so I won't be getting a veggie garden this year :/
So these little Target potted plants better grow so I can have some fresh food this year!!

Product Review

We picked up this Instant Chocolate Pudding from Trader Joe's when we went a couple of months ago. Has anyone tried this stuff before?! Some of the pudding mixes you find in the regular grocery store are accidently vegan, but they don't thicken up right! They usually make more of a pudding soup than actual pudding. Well, this stuff was amazing! I'm bummed out we didn't get more of it! I had to keep Michael from eating the entire batch in one sitting, it was so good! It thickened up just like pudding is supposed to too.

All you do is mix the pudding packet with 2 cups of nondairy milk (we used a mix of soy and almond, only because after we started pouring the soy, we ran out and used almond to make up the difference). Mix it up! We used our whisk attachment for the immersion blender (favorite kitchen tool!). Then let set for 5 minutes and try to control yourself from eating it all at once!

Quick Fajitas

This is a really quick fajita recipe. You can use the flavors I did or do your own! I used seasoned tofu, in which I dry fried* it. Because my tofu had seasoning on it, I only left it on the pan until the seasoning turned blackened, so my tofu was left nice and soft. If you want, you could dry fry your tofu first and then season it later so it has more of a firm/crunchy texture. I don't have specific measurements for this recipe, but here is basically what I did:

Ingredients:
2 carrots
1/2 large onion
1/2 red bell pepper
2/3 block tofu, pressed
Cumin
Dried cilantro
garlic powder
Green Pepper Tabasco sauce
Sazon (Mexican seasoned salt)


*If you haven't dry fried before, I recommend it! Just press your tofu and slice it however you want. Then add it to a heated non stick pan without oil. Then you just let it cook until brown on both sides, it creates a really interesting texture!

First, I chopped the veggies and started cooking the carrots by adding them to the skillet with some water. Once they started to get soft, I added in the onion and red pepper. Once everything was tender, I added in all of the seasonings to taste (except for the Sazon) and the Tabasco sauce.

I prepared the tofu by coating it in the Sazon and then dry frying it until it was blackened. Then I sliced it and added it into the veggies. I served this on Ezekial Sprouted Grain Tortillas.

Bean Cakes and Thrifty finds!

Butter beans (lima beans) are my favorite type of bean, I eat them almost every day in my salads. I go through so many cans of beans, I decided to try using dried beans, which was only about $1 for the bag. I have so many beans now! I can't believe how much cheaper it is to use dried beans. However, now I have so many of the beans, I don't know what to do with them all! I'm not sure if they can be frozen or not? I have so many, it's worth trying even if they come out yucky..
Well, I decided to make Bean Cakes, and they were pretty good! The only thing is that they were kind of crumbly, they probably needed more liquid to them. I paired them with a Vegan Cocktail Sauce (not pictured). All I did for the cocktail sauce was mix Organic ketchup (I'm very picky with my ketchup, and I usually pay extra for the good stuff, it's so much better) with Horseradish Mustard. Tasted just like the cocktail sauce I remembered!

Ingredients:
2 cups butter beans (or your favorite bean)
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 small garlic cloves
3 T Nutritional Yeast
2 T Veganaise
2 T dried parsley
1 tsp oregeno
1/2 tsp salt

These were so simple to make! All I did was mash up the butter beans, then mix in the remaining ingredients, form into patties, and brown in a skillet with a little oil!

I also went to the thrift store yesterday with a friend and we found some amazing things! My absolute favorite things to get are items for my kitchen, and I found two!
I got these pyrex dishes!

This ice crusher! I'm not sure if it works or not, but it's soo cute!

I also got some other items including a cute stool and bookshelf!

Vegan Pozole

Being half Mexican, I grew up eating a lot of Mexican foods. One thing I always loved was Menudo, but I don't really ever remember eating Pozole. To be honest, they are pretty similar to me, I just eat them for the hominy! Pozole is made with pork and Menudo is made with beef, and my version doesn't have a meat substitute so I suppose this could technically be either soup. :)
Like I said, for me, it's all about the hominy! When eating Menudo when I was little, all I wanted was the broth and the hominy. I didn't even know what the tripe was (cow stomach) until I was older, but to me, it resembled brains. Has anyone ever had it? If you haven't, google a picture, it has the weirdest texture (warning though, it's gross looking)! From what I remember, it was gooey/jiggly and to a child, it looks like brains! My family also put pigs feet in their soups, although it was part of my culture, it disgusted me! OK, enough grossing everybody out! This is a way to enjoy the deliciousness of these soups without any of the animals!
If you've never had hominy before and you love Mexican food, I recommend it! It has so much flavor on it's own, it makes something like this really simple soup delicious.

Ingredients:
4 cups vegetable broth
2 poblano peppers
1 medium onion
4-5 garlic cloves
2 T Ancho chili powder
1 T Mexican oregano
1 (29 oz) can of hominy

Toppings:
Lime juice
Cilantro
Avocado
Crushed tortilla chips

First, you want to roast the skins of the peppers, until the skins are completely charred. While they're roasting,  dice the onion and press the garlic and saute in your soup pot with water or a little oil until tender. Once the peppers are roasted, let cool, peel the skin, de-seed, and chop.

Then, add the peppers into the pot along with the vegetable broth. Then you'll want to blend/puree the soup. You can either do this in a blender or with an immersion blender. Once pureed, add in the spices and hominy and let simmer for about 20 minutes.

Top with desired toppings. The lime and cilantro are pretty much a must. You can also serve with tacos such as corn tortillas with refried beans and avocado. You can dip the tacos into the pozole, they go great together!

Food Network Friday!

...on Saturday...
I was so excited to participate in Food Network Friday, which is done over on Vegan Appetite. I'm so happy I got to join in! This was really a fun experience. What is done is a recipe is chosen from the Food Network Website, and we veganize/take our own spin on it! This recipe was Pretzel-Fried Steak with Mango-onion Gravy by Aarti Sequeria. You can see everyone else's version here!


My version was transformed to a Sourdough pretzel baked Tofu with Sweet Potato Onion Gravy.
I chose tofu because, well, I love tofu! I looked up cube steak (I had no idea what it was) and it was just a weird, rectangular looking piece of meat. I think seitan would have been really good, but I decided to go the tofu way! Also, the gravy called for mango.. I love mango, but I'm not one to love fruit/anything really sweet in my food so I opted for sweet potatoes, which are about as much sweet as I could handle in a dish. Also, I decided to bake my version.. I don't often fry because I just don't feel it's necessary! I sometimes do want a specific dish that is fried, but I thought this would be really good baked, and it was! I also changed up some of the flavors. Other than that, I basically followed her method, here's what I did:


Ingredients:
For the "steak":
1 block tofu
1.25 cups sourdough pretzels
1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk
1 T flax meal
1/2 cup tapioca flour
2 T Nutritional yeast
1 T dried parsley
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp smoked paprika


Gravy:
1 small onion, diced
2 T seasoned flour
1.5 cups vegan chicken broth


First of all, press the tofu for as long as possible. Mine pressed for about 4 hours, I just started pressing it that morning. I sliced it into six pieces and let it press on a clean kitchen towel. You can see here how firm it got.

First, you make your three dipping bowls. 1) I ground up the pretzels in a food processor, not to powder, but small enough to be able to coat the tofu.
2) Make the seasoned flour by mixing the flour with the remaining spice ingredients. You will reserve about 3 T of this to make the gravy afterwards.
3) I made the "egg" by combining the soymilk and flax meal and letting it congeal a little.
.

Ok, so you take the tofu pieces and dip them in the flour, coating completely, then quickly dip into the flax "egg" wash, and then into the pretzel pieces. I then baked this at 350° for 15 minutes on each side.


While this was cooking, I made the gravy. I sliced one one small onion, put it in a sauce pan with some water and let it sweat until tender.  I then added in the 3 T of the reserved seasoned flour and let that toast a little and then I added in the vegan chicken broth. I used the Celifibr brand.  I then whisked the gravy until it thickened.


I served mine with some sugar snap peas.

Friday Favorites!

Blogger has been down all day and now I don't have the time to post the recipe I wanted to! I will post it either later tonight or hopefully tomorrow.

Here's somethings I love right now!

Ryan Gosling. Not only is he a super babe, but he is an amazing actor! I can't get enough of him, I've been watching all of his movies and he's amazing! (Although watching him in All Good Things was kind of (really) weird, because at one point his character is aged AND dresses like a woman..)

Source

These salted cornmeal cookies from Of Cookies & Carrots look so interesting and good to me! I want to try making them!

This cake from Fragrant Vanilla Cake. I've never had anybody make me a vegan cake..this is really all I want in life! :)

Busy Busy

I haven't had the time to post anything because this week was finals week. But, I'M DONE!!!!!! I'm sooooo excited to finally be finished! Today was my last final and I graduate on the 22nd!!
So, finals weeks always consumes my life so I haven't had any time to post any new recipes, so I should be posting regularly now that I'll have time!

Here's a peek (from my camera phone in really bad lighting..) of what I've been eating:

I've basically just been throwing anything I already have in the house together.. This above is quinoa with black beans, veggies, and soy curls! It was a good, quick meal, but I'm excited to get back to planning out what to eat and make!

Other than that, we've been making Sunshine burgers, which are good! These are one of the very few veggie burgers we will actually buy from the store!

Ok, I should be back today or tomorrow with a new recipe!

Roasted Red Pepper Mushroom Burgers

We really like burgers, so here is another type I recently made! Basically, I just make combos of whatever we have on hand, or whatever we like! Michael requested a chipotle black bean burger, so that of course turned into a different burger consisting of roasted red pepper, mushrooms, and tofu!

Ingredients:

1 red bell pepper

1/2 cup mushrooms (chopped)

1 small onion (chopped)

1/2 block tofu (pressed)

1/4 cup Nutritional Yeast

1 T dried cilantro

1 tsp ground cayenne

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1 cup breadcrumbs

Roast pepper until skin is charred. While it's roasting, sautee the chopped onion and mushrooms until tender.

Once red pepper skin is completely charred, allow to cool and then peel off skin, and chop.

Add all ingredients except breadcrumbs to food processer and process until smooth.

Put mixture into separate bowl and add in breadcrumbs.

Bake at 350° for 10 minutes on each side, or until browned.

This made six burgers and they had a nice smoky taste.  Serve with any condiments, we used ketchup and mustard and had them on rye!

Friday Favorites!

Just wanted to do another quick post today about my Friday favorites! (I might be back later today or tomorrow with some more recipes too!!)

I just caught up with Glee yesterday and I loved this performance!! Kurt is my favorite and he did amazing, and he's looking super cute too!

This post my friend Kelly sent me on how to make an ice cream cake, it looks so good, I've always wanted to make one. Plus, this post includes a baby!

This cupcake my friend Dawn made! It was a chocolate pb oreo cupcake with a pb maple frosting. Unfortunately, I didn't get to have one but look how good it looks! Also, another new favorite thing of mine is putting quinoa in salad. Dawn fed me yesterday, she made a salad and dressing recipe from Appetite for Reduction, and it was good! I saw that recipe, but for some reasons didn't think quinoa in salad would be good, I was wrong! Plus, why haven't I been making my own salad dressings...

This picture. This is a whole other story, but I used to be incredibly unhealthy and now I am completely the opposite. I am a total health nut and fully believe that your food can not only be the key to living a healthy life, but also a healthy one.

And I can't even handle how cute this cat is.