Chocolate Peppermint Pie

Happy Cyber Monday! And with that, it's official... we're into the holidays, aka peppermint season! This also should be when Starbucks reveals its red cups and peppermint mochas. These days, they do it far too early, but even a few years ago, they would wait until an appropriate time to reveal these and peppermint mocha would signal the start of the holiday season, finals, and the end of the fall semester. This year, I'm a little less excited than normal for peppermint season. This is because I finally found a deep love for pumpkin. I mean, who wouldn't love a warm, cozy baked good or dinner that's based on a highly nutritious vegetable?? Also, I recently learned that 90% of the worlds canned pumpkin is made by Libby's in a plant that is only open from August to October every year. So they've already stopped producing! I need to go on a shopping spree to hoard all of the pumpkin to get me through the long winter and summer.

To usher in this season properly, I put down the pumpkin and made a chocolate peppermint pie. My taste testing committee has informed me that this is the best thing that I have ever created. Basically it's a super moist, gooey peppermint brownie contained in a chocolate crust. The crust isn't the best part though, so you can also use the silicone baking cups and cook your filling in there to make a gluten free treat. Perhaps the best part is the secret ingredient... of course, I made it with white beans! With the blood sugar stabilizing power of legumes,  this decadent treat will not surprise you with a sugar rush and subsequent crash.

Chocolate Peppermint Pie

Filling

2 3/4c white beans
1c cocoa powder
1/2c brown sugar
5T white sugar
2 candy canes, crushed to a fine powder in a coffee grinder
1T peppermint schnopps (or 1t peppermint extract)
1/4c vanilla almond or soy milk
dash cinnamon
to top: 1 candy cane,  coarsely crushed with a rolling pin

Crust (optional)

3/4c flour
1/4c brown sugar
1T brown sugar
2T vegetables oil
2t baking powder
1/3c warm water

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. To make the crust, mix the wet ingredients and then the dry. Kneed it a few times. This crust is difficult to roll, so I ended up just pushing it into the greased 8 inch pie pan. The crust isn't exceptional, so feel free to leave it out for a gluten free recipe.
3. Clean out your coffee grinder, and add 2 candy canes broken into chunks. Grind for a few seconds and you should be set! If you don't have a coffee grinder, your food processor should work as well.
4. Add all filling ingredients to the food processor (except the last candy cane). Food processes for several minutes until smooth. As usual, make sure it's smooth because bean chunks kill the chocolate vibe!
5. Pour filling into crust or into cupcake cups. Use a pinch of sugar to coat the edges of the crust. Top with the coarsely broken candy cane (it will melt, so leave chunks larger than you think you want!)
6. Bake for 50 minutes (pie) or 30- 40 minutes (gluten free cups). Serve warm and enjoy! The center will still be soft and kind of melty, but it's ok! The crust will keep it together.

You choose... make a gluten free crustless cup, or try out the crust and make a whole pie!

Cranberry Kale Salad

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I sure did! I finished the first draft of my 3rd and final proposal, so today and over the weekend, I just need to work on "TOC" style images, presentation, finding typos, and refining my brilliance. After a solid, long work day, I shared Thanksgiving dinner with my two best friends. After dinner-- the menu was shared with you this week-- we ate warm gluten free pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (they work amazingly with oat flour!), a brandy drink I developed that we entitled Pumpkin Desirrrrre, and watched Legally Blonde. What a great celebration! I really look forward to hosting Thanksgiving at my house when I own one and am "grown-up."

To close out the week, I'm sharing the recipe for our Cranberry Kale salad. Kale salads can be a bit mystifying at first, since the leaves are so hearty in comparison to other salad greens and many people have trouble digesting it when it's eaten raw. However, a raw kale salad can be quite tasty! Kale also has the benefit that it keeps with dressing on amazingly: this is a salad you can make with dressing the night before and have no worries about finding a soggy mess in your lunch box the next day. Plus, at least once a week, I tell you about the nutritional benefits of kale and cruciferous vegetables, so you already know how much of a nutritional punch this salad will deliver! Paired with sunflower seeds and olive oil for the healthy fats, this salad is a real winner, especially if you feel you still need to recover yesterday's feast.

Cranberry Kale Salad

1 bag fresh kale
3T balsamic vinegar
3T olive oil
fresh cracked black pepper and garlic to taste
dash of fresh cracked sea salt
1/3c sunflower seeds
1/3c dried cranberries

In a large bowl, combine kale, oil, vinegar, and spices. Reach your hands in to vigorously massage the kale to help the leaves absorb the flavors. Top with cranberries and sunflower seeds. (They'll drift down anyways as your serve it, so don't mix it up or you'll get a concentration at the bottom.) Serve and enjoy!

(white bean) Pumpkin Pie

Happy Thanksgiving! For me this is an exciting Thanksgiving, my first as a full vegetarian, but also a sad one. It's my first Thanksgiving that I'm not able to spend in Pennsylvania with my family. While I will have to work through the weekend to finish an application, I am lucky that I am not spending the holiday alone... both of my roommates and my fiance are also over burdened with work and have thus been circumstantially forced to spend Thanksgiving in Cambridge. So this year, I am especially thankful for them! I hope your company is just as good this holiday!

Today I'm sharing a twist on the quintessential Thanksgiving dessert... pumpkin pie. I love the standard pumpkin pie, made with eggs, white sugar, and condensed milk, but I worry for my friends who are allergic to milk and eggs... they are missing out! For them, there are vegan versions, but most rely on tofu to get their creaminess. And for some of us, it's best to avoid soy as well. In addition to avoiding allergens, this recipe is also cost effective. My bag of white beans costs $0.99 (and I only need 1/3), which is way less than tofu, condensed milk, or eggs! While maybe it's best to stick with the original on Turkey day, this version is really great during the holiday season, when you're hankering for something sweet, but want something less decadent. The white beans stabilize your blood sugar as well as pack in some filling fiber and high quality complete protein, so this can make a great snack!

(white bean) Pumpkin Pie

Crust

1c wheat flour or Gluten Free Pantry gluten free all purpose flour
2t baking powder
1/3c warm tap water
2T vegetable oil

Combine dry ingredients, then add the wet. Mix until everything is just wet. Kneed just a few times (do not overwork), then roll out on a floured surface. Transfer to a greased 9 inch pie pan. Cut off any excess dough, leaving a generous 1 inch margin around the edge, to fold under and flute the edges. This recipe is designed for a larger pan, so that you should have plenty of extra to work with.

Note: This crust isn't my favorite, but it's pretty good and easy to roll. My family's standard is a shortening crust which is earth-shatteringly good, but I'm trying to come up with something without the weird synthetic oils.

Pumpkin Filling

1 can pumpkin puree (~1.5c)
1 3/4c white beans (or 1 can)
1/2c dark brown sugar
1/4c maple syrup
1T cornstarch
1t baking soda
2T pumpkin pie spice
1T cinnamon

Food process white beans until smooth. Add the remaining ingredients to the food processor and keep processing until you're sure all of the bean evidence is gone.

Note 2: My pumpkin pie is a bit darker than conventional because of my dark brown sugar. Use light brown or even white sugar if this offends you. Although, you would need less of the white to avoid making it too sweet!

Put it together: Preheat oven to 425F, then turn down to 350F. (If you're making everything else at 350, you can cook this at 350F too, without the 425 step. It works just as well.) Add the pumpkin filling to the pie pan, smoothing out the top. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until a fork comes out clean. If you notice the crust getting too brown, you can cover the crust edges with a "hollowed out" piece of aluminum foil to keep them from burning. Remove from oven, let cool and enjoy! You can always pair the pumpkin pie with some pumpkin sorbet like we did.

You can also make "pumpkin cups" by omitting the crust and adding the filling directly to cupcake tins (silicone like the ones I use here works best.) Bake these little guys for 30 minutes.

Hope you're getting to enjoy some good food and spend some time with the ones you love this holiday!
And a happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate!

Homemade Green Bean Casserole

You know that delicious (somewhat unhealthy) green bean casserole that is topped with the crunchy fried onions? It's always been a Thanksgiving favorite of mine, and yup! That's what we're making today. The traditional casserole is somewhat of a bummer if you're lactose or gluten intolerant, since the cream of mushroom soup contains both milk and wheat. Well, since I wanted to share with ALL of my friends, I went ahead and made my own cream of mushroom soup, which is free of cream. Now this dish is vegan and easy to make gluten free! The one thing you still have to watch out for, is that most of the crunchy fried onions are still made with gluten. If you can't find gluten free fried onions, you can fry up your own, or use a crunchy topping of broken up tortilla chips and nutritional yeast. If you happen to find gluten free fried onions though, let me know!

Homemade Green Bean Casserole

Cream of Mushroom Soup

2 white potatoes
1 12oz package sliced baby bella mushrooms
1 leek, sliced into coins, then cut in half
1 stalk of celery, sliced
3c water
1T Vegemite or vegetable boullion
garlic & black pepper to taste

1. Peel potatoes and cut into cubes. Boil until soft.
2. Meanwhile, dice leek and celery.
3. In a large soup pot, sautee mushrooms, leeks, celery, and spices in 1/2c broth until tender.
4. Once potatoes are soft, drain and food process into a paste. Add 2c water and Vegemite or bullion and continue to process until smooth.
5. Add the potato broth directly to the pot with the mushrooms.
6. Add the remaining water and bring to a boil.

Casserole

Cream of Mushroom Soup (above)
1 package french fried onions
(OR 1 3/4c crushed tortilla chips plus 1/4c nutritional yeast for the gluten free version)
1.5lb frozen green beans

Preheat oven to 350F. Add green beans into the pot with your soup, along with 1c french fried onions. Bake for 30 minutes. Top with remaining fried onions and return to oven for an additional 5 minutes. Let cool and enjoy!

Cornbread-(Vegetarian) Sausage Stuffing

It's no secret... I love bread! Naturally, this meant that I always looked forward to the stuffing on Thanksgiving. I wasn't super enthusiastic about Stove Top stuffing, or the stuff that came out of the bird, but once per year, my Mom would use cubes of fresh Italian bread as the basis for our stuffing. Then, she'd add the magic ingredient... sausage! Then this casserole of fresh bread and sausage got baked in the oven along side the bird, for a really killer result. The taste of sausage with the baked fresh bread is really something special. Last year, I made lentil stuffing, which was good, but not quite the same. So this year, I decided to commit to it and buy a package of Trader Joe's spicy Italian vegetarian sausage. You know from my recipes that I'm not a huge fan of these processed meat substitutes, but this one exception was worth it!

Cornbread-(Vegetarian) Sausage Stuffing

Double recipe of Cornbread
1 package Trader Joe's spicy Italian sausage (or any other vegetarian sausage you like)
2 leeks, chopped into coins, then in half
2 stalks of celery, diced
1c water with 1/2T Vegemite or 1 cube bullion (double this for a more moist stuffing)
garlic, black pepper and parsley to taste (~1T each)

1. Bake cornbread. Let cool, and cut 2/3 of the loaf into 1 inch cubes. (The remaining 1/3 can be left in large cornbread sized pieces to be brought as a bonus or for your own consumption!) 
2. Preheat oven to 350F (or leave on after cornbread has cooked)
3. Slice sausage into 1cm thick discs. Brown in a skillet on the stovetop. 
4. In a large bowl, add the bread cubes, browned sausage, vegetable broth, died leeks and celery, and spices. Stir to evenly coat everything. 
5. Add to greased cassarole dish. Bake for 30 minutes at 350F covered.
Enjoy! Homemade green bean casserole is on tap for tomorrow!

Homestyle Lentil Loaf

When I was growing up, my mom's meatloaf was my favorite. I could never understand why on TV they would portray meatloaf as this gross thing that should be dreaded for dinner. This was so much my favorite meal, that it became the standard for my Mom to make for me when I came home from college. After weeks away at CMU, home of some of the worst college dining in the country, I would come home to a warm plate of meatloaf, green beans, and boiled potatoes. Heaven!

This will be my first Thanksgiving fully vegetarian, so I have been searching for something that I could make and bring with me as the main course. You know, so that my Mom wouldn't get stressed about the lack of turkey on my plate. I came across this recipe for lentil loaf on Oh She Glows, but decided that, despite the lovely fall flavors, it wasn't quite what I was looking for. After a bit more thought, I decided that it would be great to vegetarianize my Mom's meatloaf, using the exact same recipe and spices, just substituting lentils for ground beef. Lentils are my favorite legume, so I had high hopes for this substitution. While I wasn't quite sure how many lentils would be equivalent to "1.5lb ground beef" I played a bit and here's what I got. The flavor and texture is very similar to my old favorite. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Homestyle Lentil Loaf

3 1/2c cooked green lentils
1 + 1/2T Vegemite (or 2 cubes vegetable bullion, if you don't happen to have it)
2 leeks, chopped
2 stalks of celery chopped
1/2c finely ground oat flour
1c quick cook rolled oats
1T cornstarch
1/2t baking soda
1/3c BBQ sauce or ketchup
1T Worcester or soy sauce
1T spicy mustard
2 cloves or 1T powdered garlic
1/2T ground black pepper

1. Starting from dry lentils, cook a 1lb package of lentils in a broth made up of 1T Vegemite (or bullion) in a large pot of water. This can be omitted, but it'll infuse your lentils with more "meaty" flavor.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Food process 1/2c rolled oats to make your oat flour. Add to a large mixing bowl with the cornstarch and baking soda. Mix.
4. Coarsely food process 3c lentils with the leeks, celery, garlic, black pepper, and remaining 1/2T Vegemite (or 1 cube bullion)
5. Add to mixing bowl with processed oats.
6. Add remaining 1/2c lentils, and 1c oats to mixing bowl, followed by remaining ingredients. I usually use my hands to mix this like working clay, as it is quite thick.

7. Press mixture into a greased loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour at 350F.

8. Top with an extra squiggle of BBQ sauce or ketchup and bake for an additional 5 minutes.

9. Let cool, slice, and enjoy!

Moving around the plate to cornbread stuffing with (vegetarian) sausage tomorrow!

Thanksgiving Week Teaser

Hello! It's been a pretty eventful weekend, with one of my dearest girlfriends visiting, as well as my fiance, and now my parents are on the way. I also did a cross race today, but it can be summed up by saying that it felt like I was trying to race a track bike over an obstacle course on an ice rink. With temperatures well below 20F with 40mph gusting winds. I spent more time on the ground than on my bike. Needless to say, I am planning to forget that that ever happened.

Anyways, since Thanksgiving is usually a time when concerned relatives worry about your vegetarian habit, I decided that I'd devote the blog this week to bringing you a week's worth of delicious completely plant based Thanksgiving recipes! Here's what's on tap...

 

I've updated to link to all the recipes! From front & center, clockwise: Homestyle lentil loaf, cornbread (vegetarian) sausage stuffing, homemade green bean casserole, kale and cranberry salad, cornbread, and (white bean) pumpkin pie!

Are you excited? I know you are! Feel free to bring any of these with you where ever you're going, they're sure to please! One tip I've heard for a vegetarian Thanksgiving is to plan to bring your main dish, since you'll be able to have many the sides and that way you'll get a filling protein kick. So we'll start with the homestyle lentil loaf tomorrow. See you then!

A lovely surprise from my fiance!

As a side note, I plan to post one recipe per day, so if you think you want one of these to take with you on Thursday & you haven't seen it by Wednesday, just message me and I'll send the recipe your way! Total prep time for all of these dishes combined was about 2 hours, so this is an easy-peasy Thanksgiving spread.