This weekend was all about keeping things light and healthy.  Lots of veggies and grains– filling things that aren’t packed with tons of calories.  Actually, we ate some form of a wrap for lunch and dinner Saturday and Sunday and I have more planned for the week. For Christmas, I was the lucky recipient of several cookbooks, one of which influenced my weekend wraps.

The first is I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude from Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco. A good friend of mine, Brianne, introduced me to this place and I love it! It’s a bit on the pricey side, but you have to remember that you’re filling up on good food and good food is often more expensive than bad (don’t expect $1 cheeseburgers here!). Anyway, I was so happy to get their book because now I can make that stuff at home.

For my first attempt at Raw food preparation (I guess you can’t really call it “cooking,” can you?!) I went for the marinated vegetable recipe because it was one that didn’t involve fancy machinery like a food dehydrator. You take a combination of vegetables– I used carrots, radishes, zucchini and grated broccoli stems– and marinate them in garlic, ginger, cilantro, and lemon juice. Amazingly enough, the recipe can be found here.  Flip through the rest of the preview, this book is great even though some of the other recipes are a bit complicated.

I opted to wrap the veggies in a romaine lettuce leaf because (1) it’s a lot easier than making their spinach tortilla recipe and (2) I had them in the fridge!  One thing that I changed to the recipe is that I used about a teaspoon of cold pressed flax oil in place of the olive oil because I didn’t want to use 2 TB as the recipe suggests and I wanted to get more Omega 3 bang for my fat and calorie buck.  These were great and I will definitely make them again.  You get great flavor from the garlic, ginger, and cilantro and very few calories.  I even made the Jalapeno Mint Chutney to go with it, but thought the wraps were better without it.

For lunch on Sunday, I made a Tofurky wrap. I’ve made these lots of times using whole wheat lavash, but thought I could save myself the 110 calories by wrapping it up in a romaine lettuce leaf. It wasn’t quite as good, but was still tasty. I could definitely get used to wrapping things up in a lettuce or cabbage leaf instead of bread. I’m sure it’s much better for my waistline too.

Not real chicken, but delicious nonetheless.  I took about 1 cup of panko breadcrumbs and mixed in about 1/3 cup of fine ground cornmeal.  To coat the chicken, dregde it in some all-purpose flour, dunk it in some non-dairy milk, then encrust it with the panko/breadcrumb mixture.  I fried mine in a very small amount of canola oil to get a nice crust, then transfered to the oven.  These were pretty addictive!  We couldn’t stop munching on them.

You’re asking yourself… did I read that right?!  Vegan quiche?  YES!  Courtesy of this blog (scroll down a bit to see the recipe).

First off, let’s talk about the crust.  I used the Flaky Crust recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking subbing whole wheat pastry for the all-purporse flour.  It turned out a little more dry than usual, but still tasted fine.  Since I don’t have a pie plate, I used a 10 inch springform pan (the only one I have left– the others fell apart and had to be retired).  I found that since the dough was on the dry side, rolling it out proved to be a little difficult.  It kept breaking, so I just resorted to pressing it into the bottom of the pan.

For the filling, all I had was super firm tofu in the vaccum sealed package (not the kind packed in water like the recipe calls for).  I also didn’t have any broccoli, so I used the rest of my frozen spinach and peas.  Neither bags had much left in them, but it turned out fine.  I also used green onions because I had some in the fridge that weren’t looking too happy.  When everything was all mixed together, it looked a little dry to me so I put in a few tablespoons of almond milk (just becuase I had some open that needed using up).

Put the filling on top of the crust and bake it!  Couldn’t be easier, really.  This reminded me very much of the hand held quiches I made a while backm during my freezer challenge.  I thought it was delicious and have been eating it every day for breakfast.  Matt throught it was “weird,” but he doesn’t even like non-vegan quiche, so I’m not sure that he’s a very good judge.  When I made the hand held quiches, I seem to remember him liking those a lot and I think I’ll try to combine the two recipes next time to see if he likes that better.

We had this for dinner the other night– a variation of my tofu scramble, but made with some soy-rizo.  It was very, very, very good.  Even my Emma liked it!

Oh, how I love tofu ranchero!  We had these for dinner last night and they were AWESOME!  Even more awesome is the fact that Emma can’t get enough of it.  She ate two helpings of the tofu last night for dinner, some today at lunch, and some more at dinner.  She keeps asking for more.  It’s the best!

I randomly bought a tub of miso at the store the other day.  I’ve never, ever tried to make miso soup before and was totally surprised by how easy it is!  All you do is boil some water, add miso to taste and maybe a little soy sauce to give it a little zing.  That’s it!  Since I was making it as a main course for lunch, I added in some tofu, green onions, edamame and udon noodles.  Emma LOVED it.

You should see my freezer (and you will tomorrow when I take photos of it)!  It’s organized.  The door closes with no extra effort.  I don’t need to use the “safety latch” (the piece of duct tape on the side that helps hold it closed when it’s over stuffed).  It’s amazing!

After my spanokopita a few nights ago, I was left with lots and lots of leftover filling.  I don’t like leftovers– they never get eaten and I always really try to only make enough for us to eat in one meal.  Well, not ever having made that dish before, I had no way of knowing just how much filling it would make.

From the freezer: some pie dough that I made in July.  The recipe I followed made a double crust and I only needed a single, so I was left with this crust.  I almost never make pie and I guess I was just holding onto it because I didn’t want to waste it.  Anyway, so I thought that since the spanokopita filling reminded me so much of scrambled eggs, why not wrap it in pie crust and make it like a quiche?!  I mean, c’mon, what doesn’t taste good wrapped in pie crust?!

For the filling, I used what I had left from my spanokopita and added in a sauteed onion, some kale and some frozen peas.  I used up one of my partially-used bags of peas, which was a definite plus considering that I found several.  After sauteeing all that stuff together, I added about 1/2 cup of veggie stock and let it cook off.  While that was all cooking, I rolled out my pie dough.  I cut 2 big circles for mine and Matt’s and used a star cutter to cut out 2 stars for Emma (one for the top, one for the bottom).  Place some filling in the middle, fold over the circle (or press together the stars) and voila!  Just bake it until it’s golden brown.  Now I had a new problem… with all the stuff I added into my leftover filling, I still had the same amount of leftover filling.  Not to worry- for lunch today, I took what was left of my filo dough from the other night, stacked up about 3 layers, put in all the stuffing and rolled ‘em up like a burrito.  These were super tasty!

Anyway, back to dinner… IT WAS SOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD.  They really were like a hand held quiche.  Yum!

With my extra pie dough, I made these little cinnamon sugar roll-ups that my mom and I used to make with pie dough scraps when I was a kid.  So easy: roll out your pie dough, dust with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar, roll up and cut into pieces.  Bake until golden and crispy.  The best part was that I used up some cinnamon sugar that was in my pantry.  I don’t know what I made it for, but I had some sitting around in a little container.

I barely scratched the surface last night when I dug out the ingredients for dinner.  My freezer is still a mess, but at least we’re headed in the right direction.  Near the top, I found a box of half-used filo dough and I knew that I had an a$$load of spinach buried near the bottom.  I did, indeed– 2 bags of it!  This combo immediately made me think of spanokopita, which I have never even tried, let alone eaten.  It sounded good, and I had an idea that a tofu ricotta recipe that was heavy on the spinach could work as a filling.

I used the bones of this recipe as a guide, but I omitted several things because I didn’t want it to be too italian tasting.  For mine, I used one pound of tofu that I pressed for 2 hours.  Using your fingers, crumble it up into a bowl and add 1/4 cup nutiritonal yeast flakes, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp salt and 2 cups spinach (either fresh or frozen, but if using frozen, be sure to squeeze out all the excess water).  Mix it all together.

To assemble the dish, I greased up a loaf pan with some olive oil.  Take one sheet of filo, brush lightly with olive oil andn top with a second sheet of filo.  Repeat this process until you have at least 4 layers.  Press into the bottom of the pan.  Add in the filling (I had a bunch left over, you won’t need it all) and top with more layered filo.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown.  Remove from pan and cut into chunks.

This turned out awesome.  Matt and I both had seconds and Emma even ate all of hers (after picking out the spinach of course).  The tofu had the texture of scrambled eggs, but didn’t have an overwhelming tofu (or nutritional yeast) taste.  In fact, I think I will make my tofu scrambles like this from now on by first pressing the tofu and adding in some nutritional yeast.  See, even if you don’t like something, keep trying it because it may grow on you with time.

Since my aim lately has been kid-friendly, easily-freezable stuff, I made two Vegan Lunch Box recipes tonight. First for dinner, we had Pups in a Blanket, which was a biscuit crust wrapped around a faux hot dog. I thought these were awesome, but (no surprise) Emma was not really into them. After picking off the crust after saying her hot dog was “dirty,” she ate a few bites of the dog. Since I had a few dogs left without a blanket, I stuck those in the freezer for later.

I also made some Banana Oatmeal Cookies after reading about them on Jennifer’s blog. The recipe sounded super duper (no oil, no sugar, no salt) and like something Emma might actually eat. To top it off, I had 2 overripe bananas on the counter and about ten thousand in my freezer, so I really think it was in the stars for me to make these today. This recipe is probably great as is, but I made a few changes, of course:

1. Instead of sunflower seeds, I used 1/3 cup of toasted pumpkin seeds.
2. In addition to the cinnamon, I added 1/4 tsp of allspice (I love allspice in banana bread and thought it would be good here too).
3. After mixing in the dates (which I probably used about 1/2 cup of) and seeds, I didn’t think it looked like there was enough “stuff” in the batter, so I added in about 1/2 cup of raisins.

These are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good and the best part was that Emma ate one entire cookie. That, in itself, is a miracle. She is the type of kid who can eat a dessert in the middle of dinner and still finish dinner, so I gave it to her as part of her dinner. I don’t like to use treats as rewards for things– treats are treats. We have them occasionally and she doesn’t have to lick her plate clean to get one. I froze the rest for her to take to Mimi and Papa’s when Matt and I go on our vacation.

So for not being into the pups, she liked the cookies and still managed to eat the rest of her dinner. It was a good night.

I was totally uninspired tonight. Matt took Emma to the park to play some soccer, which gave me the opportunity to throw something together. For some reason, breakfast seemed much easier to cook than dinner did (why? it’s the same amount of work), so that’s what we had!

Low Fat Blueberry Banana Muffins

(veganized from this recipe)

1 cup all purpose flour

1 TB baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/8 – 1/4 tsp allspice

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 1/4 cups mashed ripe bananas

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup Tofutti BTSC

1 1/2 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer (whisked with 2 TB warm water)

2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients and add to dry. Stir until just combined. Pour into greased or papered muffin tins. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

These were SOOOOOOO good. In place of the sour cream, you could probably use a soy yogurt. And in place of the egg replacer, you could probably use a few TB of applesauce or some ground flax seed.

With our muffins, we had a tofu scramble. I threw in whatever we had lurking around the kitchen, which turned out to be some kale (yes, I’m on a kale kick right now), a potato, a green pepper, and some onion. If you make yours with a potato or the kale, remember that they need a head start, meaning that they go in the skillet about 10 minutes before any of the other veggies (unless you are adding other veggies that need extra cooking time too). When the potatoes are cooked through, add in the peppers and onions and cooked until they are tender. Crumble in the tofu and let it brown a bit on all sides. When the tofu is browned up, add some salsa (the amount you add is up to you) and some S&P. I think it’s important to let it brown up because it won’t get mushy when you add the salsa, just FYI.