Root mashed & Vegan Gravy

This is another recipe from Kim Barnouin's cookbook. It is a healthier version of mashed potatoes featuring parsnips, turnips, and a white potato. My first problem came from trying to find turnips at the food store. To be honest, I don't even know what turnips look like. I was relying on the labels to guide me and all I could seem to find were rutabagas. Are turnips like sweet potatoes/yams? You know how sweet potatoes and yams are technically different veggies but for some reason everyone uses their names interchangeably. I figured that rutabagas and turnips are both root veggies so they would probably work the same in this recipe. Maybe?

I cut up all of my veggies and threw them in the pot of boiling water. I had too much water in the pot and when I threw the veggies in the water boiled over and put the burner out! I had to switch to another burner because my first one was saturated.
Did I mention the fact that I do not own an electric hand mixer? For some reason I do have this old fashioned human powered masher and it seemed to work just fine. The problem was that it just mashed them and didn't whip them. I don't know if it was the veggies, masher, or a combo of the two. At this point I tried the mashed veggies and all I can say is, WOW they tasted fantastic!!

Ingredients for my vegan gravy. I put stuff all over the place.

I don't know why the color looks weird in this picture but in real life the color is brown, and it looks just like real gravy. Not only does it look like real gravy, it tastes even better!

YUM! This dish was awesome! I'm so happy that I have left over mashed to eat for a few days and extra gravy in the freezer. I can't wait to have this gravy with biscuits.

*I googled turnips and rutabagas and they are definitely different vegetables but in Europe rutabagas are called yellow turnips. Luckily for this recipe it really didn't matter. I'll just keep using whatever I bought last time.

best vegan thing I have cooked - crepes!

This recipe was the reason that I bought the cookbook in the first place and it did not disappoint. I was really proud of myself because I cooked 2 things at once. I was making my weekly batch of lentils for my lentil tacos and making strawberry sauce and batter for crepes.

Lentil Tacos in the making

This was the first batch of frozen strawberries that I defrosted. Clearly I microwaved them for way too long. I guess that the "defrost" button doesn't work for frozen fruit? I decided to throw them out and start from scratch.

Strawberry sauce in the food processor! Obviously this is my new favorite appliance.

YUUUMMMYYY!! Okay, I'll admit that they do not look so great but they tasted delicious. They were so good that I just kept eating one after the other straight out of the pan. In conclusion, I will be making crepes often

My First Vegan Pizza From Scratch (not so good)

I have been falling very far behind in documenting my experiments in cooking. These are not really experiments, I am following recipes, I've just never cooked or worked with half of this stuff. I try and stay confident but I know that most of the time, the first time I am making something new, like dough, I will probably do it wrong. I prepare myself for the fact that although I may follow the directions explicitly, the end result will probably not be so great. So far, I've been able to learn from these first experiences and make it correctly the second time around. This is why I usually cook the same things all of the time.

This is the FIRST time I have ever attempted to make dough or a pizza from scratch. I got the recipe out of Kim Barnouin's Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. I know it sounds weird but doing things like making dough make me nervous. It just seems like something you learn from your grandma and if you missed that boat than you should never attempt to make dough. I bought all of my ingredients, of course confused by all of the yeasts. I bought 2 small packets of something that said it was good with all flour including whole wheat. I got all of my ingredients together and went to work.

The recipe did not say anything about testing the yeast to see if it was active but the back of the yeast packet said to do this very thing. hmmm? I guess I should test the yeast? I prepared to test the yeast and realized I had no idea how to gauge the water temperature. I know if it was slightly warmer of colder the yeast would die. This stuff seemed pretty important. I tried to guess the water temp and waited for my yeast to bubble. By looking below you can obviously see that it didn't.

On to the next! I tested the next packet and made the water a little cooler. I waited for it to bubble.... SUCCESS!

If you want to know the truth, I have no pictures of my dough because I was panicking as I was kneading it and getting it settled so it could rise in the cooled oven. I'm not kidding, panicking lol. Once the dough was in the oven, I cut and prepared my veggies. I was making a pepper and onion pie. The kitchen smelled amazing while the veggies were sauteing.

Furthermore, I don't have any pictures of my dough "rising" because it didn't really rise. It got slightly bigger but definitely did not double in size. I googled this, and read that I could still eat the dough it would just be dense.





Here is my finished pizza! I forgot to mention that I was certainly not making sauce from scratch. I used Nature's Promise organic pasta sauce (so yummy). I bought Daiya brand mozzarella style vegan cheese. It was the only one that I could find, although I didn't really look that hard. I had read some reviews about this cheese,that it tasted more like a Parmesan and to use a small amount, which I did.

The end result was just okay. My dough wasn't bad but it was pretty dense. The cheese was not bad at first and then I really hated it. I would never use this cheese again. The veggies were great so I ended up scrapping the cheese off and just eating the dough, sauce, and veggies which was great.

When I started this whole vegan thing I never thought that I would keep it up after the 21 days. I set about changing my diet solely for health purposes and once I realized how great I felt I wanted to keep going. I never intended to be at the point where I was going to eat "fake cheese". I didn't want to eat all of the same junk I was eating but in a soy alternative form. I feel like that defeats the purpose of eating this way. That being said, there is always room for treats. This is why I waited so many weeks before even attempting to have a vegan replacement for any of my old favorites. There are several other vegan cheeses that I will try. Hopefully, my next dough/pizza attempt will be better!

adventures in cooking :)

Let me tell you a secret, I don't cook. I guess that it all started with my parents. You would be hard pressed to find better people than my parents, but we ate the same few meals day in and day out, over and over. They comprised of the following: pasta, Ragu sauce, and bread, pork chops, pizza, some kind of steak, meatloaf, hamburgers, mashed potatoes, and corn. This was the majority of what I ate. In addition, I hate meat so I ended up just sitting at the table and pushing food around my plate. As a result I was never trained to cook. To date, I have learned the most from cookbooks and James. Did you know that I never even put pepper on my food until I started cooking with James? Isn't that crazy?

Therefore part of my 21 day vegan challenge was to cook out of my comfort zone. So far I have made three dishes, two of which were a great success. I even used my food processor for the first time! I literally had to dig it out of storage.

Below are pictures from making Curried Chickpea Patties. Soooo yummy!

Food processor brought up from storage
I fought my fear of using the processor, put it together, and prepared to dive into the unknown

So far so good. At least I got the ingredients in the thing.

WOAH it's blending!!

sauteing some patties

Golden brown on one side

My plating skills leave much to be desired

The recipe makes 10 patties so I will enjoy these again tonight! Success!