Reuse. It comes between Reduce and Recycle.

Being vegan is about reducing unnecessary suffering. I became a vegan as a direct off shoot of my desire to produce zero waste. Food that doesn't come in packages is mostly raw and vegan, really. The no-poo, the paperless kitchen, composting, and a bunch of other stuff are all about putting out less trash.

Reusing things is important. The less we buy new, the less we throw in the landfill.

Today I made a pitcher to hold my kitchen utensils out of an old blender carafe.

I took the bottom ring off the carafe, removed the blade (important!), replaced the blade with a with a small mouth canning jar lid then screwed the ring back on.


















































Ta-Da!















Leave a comment and tell me about your fabulous DIY Recycling by Reusing projects.

Dinner last night was cabbage and carrots with steamed with cumin, polenta, spinach and a three color tomato and cuke salad. A very good dinner all around.

Vegan Dinner Last Night Roasted Eggplant over Pasta with Morel Mushroom Cream Sauce

This is what we ended up eating for dinner last night:













Roasted eggplant with morel mushroom sauce over pasta with a lovely green salad sporting fresh tomato and basil.



Here is the technical stuff if you are so inclined.


Roasted Eggplant
Preheat oven to 400F

Peel and slice an eggplant, lay the slices on a board.
Sprinkle some salt all over the top and put a towel on top of all the slices.
Put a cutting board on top and a heavy bowl full of water on top.
Let it rest for an hour or so then put sliced onion on top of the eggplant, cover with a kitchen towel, weight and let rest for 1 more hour.
This process draws some of the liquid out of the eggplant and begins the cooking process. It is optional, you can just roast fresh eggplant.

Oil a cookie sheet with olive oil and lay your eggplant and onion slices on the pan.
Spread a light layer of oil on the vegetables.
Bake in 400F oven for about 12 minutes until eggplant and onions start to get brown at the tips.
Remove from oven and turn vegetables over.
Drizzle with olive oil or add a tbs of water to the pan if you think they look a little dry.
Bake an additional 20 min or until the veges are tender.


Morel Mushroom in a Cashew Cream Sauce

1 med yellow onion chopped fine
4 cloves garlic chopped fine
1 tbs olive oil

.5 oz dried morel mushrooms soaked in 1 cup water for 20 min.
1/2 cup fresh basil
Salt to taste.

4 tbs dry cashews soaked in clear water.

Coarsely chop mushrooms and save soak water for making cashew cream :)
Saute onion and garlic in oil until they are a caramelized.
Add chopped, soaked morels and chopped basil to onions and let them cook a bit. Add a tbs of water if it seems to dry.

















Once mushrooms and basil are cooked, add cashew cream made from mushroom water and cashews in blender and blend until very smooth. The smoother, the better.
Add cashew cream to veges and stir until thickened. Add more water if you find the sauce gets too thick.

Today's Green Smoothie for late lunch

1 very ripe avocado
2 very ripe banana
1 tbs lemon juice
1 clove garlic
1 large handful of kale
2 tbs flax seeds
Fermented cashew milk. (usually i only put fruit and seeds in my smoothies but the jar was almost empty so I half filled it with water shook that up and poured it in the blender. Nothing goes to waste around here)

Sweet, creamy with a hint of garlic and a little tangy. This was surprisingly good.

I drank a green smoothie for breakfast

but I didn't take a photo.

I did get the new drive socket for the Vita-mix . I put it on (all by myself, thank you) and the machine works again, success!

Smoothie was 2 big collard leaves, 2 banana, a scoop of raw cranberry sauce (I will post that recipe later) 2 tbs flaxseed and 2 tbs Renewme! blended with water.

I split it with the man. He gets the small half :)

We got a Vita-Mix!

Here it is blending my morning smoothie.














Celery, romaine, flax seeds, garlic, Renewme and Ruth's hemp/maca/e3live.

The man bought this beautiful piece at a restaurants yard sale.














I swear, everything I own is second hand. I think I was conceived in a used car. Just kidding, mom.

This gently used commercial model with the logo of whatever they were selling on the front cost an amazingly low $50. It has a timer but it doesn't have speed control.

I think we are going to be together for a long time.
















This is the computer room. It's a mess now but it's a good size room and I think it could be fixed up nice with a little effort.

















This is the satellite dish that brings me to you and vice versa.
















And last but not least, dinner last night:














Baked hash browns, mixed cooked veges and a raw rainbow chard salad.

Free Green Juice

I love free stuff!

When I was a tot and I would say to my mom, "I'm hungry!" She would tell me to go out in the yard and graze.

There were a lot of edibles out there, berries, apples, pears, more berries, plums, and those little pea pod things we called vetch. They have purple flowers and little pods with peas or seeds in side and they are delicious. When I was about 5, I told her I was running away from home and not to worry for I could live on vetch. She told me to take all of my things because if I would need them and if I left I could never come back. We tried to get all of my toys and clothes in to a suitcase but it wouldn't close and I couldn't carry it. I decided to stay home and maybe start getting rid of some stuff...

Anyway.





This morning after the boy was put on the bus i picked some




Before










(clockwise from top)
Nettle (with gloves on, thank you)
Mint
Thistle
Dandelion
Plantain (not the banana kind, the weed kind)
Mullein








In the blender with about 20 oz water and a tbs of ginger, blend and strain. I strained it through a fine sieve, then a cloth bag.
I was going to add some lemon juice but when i tasted it and it was nice and minty. No need.

What wild edibles do you eat? Please tell me!


After

Second Breakfast: Granola with Acorn Squash Seed Milk

About 10:30 am












Oats, dates, almonds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, other seeds, nuts and stuff, I don't know. It's a mix of raw granola I made and some commercial organic stuff I bought in bulk at the store. I read the ingredients and they were all acceptable, I just don't remember what they were :)

Raw Acorn Squash Seed Milk

In blender
Raw seeds and strings of one or more acorn squash
1.5 cups water for each squash.
Blend seeds and water until it screams for mercy
Strain.
If desired, blend the pulp with one more cup of water and strain again. Compost the remaining pulp.

Chill, serve, live!

It's quite good, really. It has a slight pumpkin-y taste and would make a lovely nog if blended with banana and dates and vanilla and nutmeg. Yum.

Cantaloupe Milk Smoothie

Next time you get a cantaloupe, save the skins, seeds and strings. Keep them in an airtight container in the fridge.

The next morning make yourself this delicious Cantaloupe Milk Smoothie

Scrape the rinds to get all the meat and juice that you can. Put the seeds, strings and any cantaloupe meat you have in the blender.
Add 3 cups of water or less, do not over fill the blender.

Blend until the seeds are pulverized. There is meat inside the seeds and this is what makes this smoothie so creamy.

Pour the mixture into fine mesh strainer and press it through. Pour the thick juice into a large glass or jar and drink it up. Refrigerate leftovers and drink within three days.

NOTE: I drink this smoothie on an empty stomach and don't eat anything for 4 hours after I finish it. If I combine this with any other foods I get some harsh intestinal difficulties. You might not, I'm just saying. The rule of thumb for me with melon is "Eat it alone or leave it alone".

Home Grown Green Smoothie

The green smoothie is so good and so delicious. It's an amazing tool in anyone's quest for a highly nutritional diet.
Frozen banana, fresh mint from the yard, lettuce and chard from the small plants and some celery hearts from the store.















I chopped up all the celery and put all of every thing in the blender















Then I found some broccoli and cauliflower stems that I had been meaning to juice.
















I washed and trimmed them but...















There was just no room in the blender














So I juiced the stems in my Acme Juicerator and added the juice to my smoothie.














with some Renew Me! and some E3AFA


















And here it is in the jar there, next to the plants it came from.
















My very own, homegrown, green smoothie!

Green Mint Smoothie

Fresh, delicious and creamy. This smoothie tastes utterly decadent.

1/2 cup fresh mint
2 cups oat milk
5 pitted dates
1/4 tsp vanilla

Blend, blend, blend

Pour in your favorite smoothie glass and pamper yourself with the green goodness.

Vegan Recipe! Dairy Free Mac N Cheese! Easy Dinner

What do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire?
Frostbite! HAHAHAHAHA!

Last night's dinner was:
Vegan Mac n Cheese!














I didn't get a photo before it was cut but believe me, it was even prettier than it tasted!

Serves 4 as a main course or as a side dish for more.

Ingredients:

2 cups COOKED vegan elbow macaroni
3 cups oat cheese
2 roma tomatoes
About 1 cup chopped vegan sausage
1/4 cup bread crumbs
Lemon pepper

Instructions:

First cook about 2 cups of elbow macaroni until NOT QUITE done. That way the noodles will still have some firmness after baking in sauce for two hours or more.
Next make a batch of Oat cheese for the sauce. Follow the oat cheese recipe up to the part where you pour in a mold... but don't pour in a mold. Fear not, this will take you no more than five minutes, it's a blender recipe consisting of water, oats, nutritional yeast, sesame, lemon, onion powder and salt.

Assemble in a 2 qt casserole:

Half the cooked macaroni on the bottom
Pour some of the warm cheese on top, enough to cover, about a cup.
Two roma tomatoes, cut in thick slices are the next layer
The rest of the macaroni on top of that
A bit more cheese, but not all of it, you have one more layer to go.
Chop together: one cup of vegan sausage and one roma tomato, this is your third layer. Mix them well and spread evenly over the macaroni and cheese.
Pour the rest of the sauce over that and spread it around so no sausage is showing.
about a 1/4 cup of bread crumbs. I processed two small slices of my home made bread in the blender until they were fine crumbs.
Lemon pepper all over the top.

Bake covered for at least two hours at 350F. 15 minutes before you are ready to eat, remove the lid and let it brown. Ready to serve immediately but it's even better the next day!

Juicing Without A Juicer :: Juice 101 for Beginners, It's not as hard as you may think!

It can all be so intimidating. Juicers can cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I bought a second hand juicer for $50 but it's big and a pain to clean, etc, blah, blah. It also still needs some spare parts, so for now I am juicing with my blender.*

















It's not perfect, it's not ideal, but it's a way to get juice into your body. No excuses!

Today I had celery, collard greens, and a roma tomato.
Chop all and put in blender**
















Put them in the carafe, lid on, and whirl!
















I usually let it go for about 3 minutes. The longer it blends, the smaller the pieces of veg will be and the more will fall into your juice. If the pieces are too small you will have a smoothie and not juice, which is fine if you want a smoothie but not fine if you want juice. Experiment until you get it the way you like it.

A fine colander on a bowl is what I use to strain the juice from the pulp.
















Pour it right in there and let the juice fall in the bowl. Stir the pulp to make sure you have all the juice in the bowl.
















Pour the juice in a glass and save the pulp for recipes!

















Have a RAW DAY!


















Footnotes:

*I have a second hand Hamilton Beach 14 speed blender. It's pretty powerful for a regular household blender and I keep it running from sun up until sundown sometimes, so I'm happy that I can pick them up at goodwill or on ebay for about 7 bucks each, but we can talk about my blender drama some other day! :)
** celery and collard have long fibers that can twist around your blender blade and cause the motor to burn out lickety-split! cut them into one inch pieces to avoid this situation

Vegan Benedict AND some Roundish Bread I baked this morning in my New Silicone Baking Pans

This morning for Sunday breakfast/brunch I decided to make this easy dish:
Vegan Benedict
















I got this recipe from the McDougall* quick and easy cookbook that I bought at Goodwill for $3.99. I love that store.
















I changed it slightly.














VEGAN Hollandaise Sauce

1/4 cup peanuts. The peanuts I used were soaked then dehydrated.
1 cup water
blend the peanuts and water until smooth pour into a saucepan and add
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp nutritional yeast
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tbs cornstarch mixed with 2 tbs cold water
Mix it all together with a whisk and heat slowly, stirring constantly until thickened. About 5 minutes on med heat.

The sandwiches

Toast six slices of bread
Plate the bread, two slices per plate and put a thick slice of tomato and avocado on each slice of toast.
Pour the hot hollandaise sauce on top of the sandwiches and serve immediately.















Serves three.

Fabulous Sunday brunch style breakfast. Wow. I mean, really, really good. The hollandaise was very convincing.

Those McDougalls are aces in my book. But they use honey. But I can get around that. I love cook books and this one is a real keeper. *


I baked a loaf of bread.














I made a double batch cuz I was gonna put it in two pans. But it fit in one pan. My mistake. Or not. It looks good, actually.














Next time I will split the dough and see how it works.




Footnotes:

* I guess I should link that to Amazon somehow so if you buy it through my site I will get paid but I'm not sure how. You can click through the green cloud type thing to get to Amazon and I will get paid that way. Cheers.

Raw Vegan Parmesan Recipe Raw Walnut Cheese for Sprinkling On Your Vegan Pizza

Yay, I finally made this.



















1 cup walnuts that have been soaked, rinsed and dehydrated until dry again
2/3 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp or less of salt if desired















Sprinkle on salads, soups, anything you want to add a bit of zesty flavor.

This is the basic recipe. You could make it hotter, or add dehydrated lemon or any other spices you may like.

Oat Milk : Dairy Alternative : Vegan: Soy Free : Cruelty Free Beverage

Today I made Oat Milk. It's a very cheap, very simple, nutritious alternative to cow's milk, soy, rice, almond or other nut or seed milk. With oats at $1.99lb and almonds at $8.99lb, it's less expensive that's for sure!


















4 Cups water
2 Cups rolled oats
1 Tbs flaxseed oil


Blend on high speed for 4-5 minutes. Strain and store in the refrigerator up to about 7 days. I like to use this in tea, blend creamy vegan smoothies, bake with it, put it ice cold on hot cereal or drink it by the glass with yummy vegan treats.

If this is too thick for you, add a bit more water. You might want to sweeten it or add a drop of vanilla.

It will separate if you let it set. Just shake it before using, it's fine.

If you forget about it in the fridge and it gets a little sour don't throw it out. Use it to make muffins or pancakes or other baked goods, that's what I do. Use your judgment. There is a little sour and then there is bad. Toss it if it's moldy, smells foul or turns funny colors.

I think i might try making some ice cream with it today! I'll let you know if it it works.

Raw Fermented Tomato Ketchup :OR: Catsup Recipe/Experiment :: Fermented Condiment Chronicles

Ketchup or Catsup? I don't care. The giant white cat doesn't care, either. But he does eat chickpeas!

hehe.
:)

I have been wanting to make more prepared condiments. I don't like commercially prepared ones, they are all full of chemicals and HCFS, are cooked to death, etc. I just like having them and I enjoy making things. Especially fermented things.

They are delicious and there is always that chance that they could go bad and give me botulism.*

Live on the edge, that's my motto!

As you know, I make my own sauerkraut. I love that stuff. So easy, so delicious, so nutritious, crunchy and tangy. mm mm. I put it on everything, soup, salad, sandwich, wraps, a fork...

I go through approximately two jars a week which translates into about a medium sized head of cabbage and a tbs of salt. With cabbage at 49c/lb, it's pretty darned economical, too.

I have been looking for a ketchup recipe. There are lots of raw ones. Basically, tomatoes , sweetener of some kind, salt, vinegar. Boo. I want to ferment my own with no sugar. There are plenty of fermented recipes, too. They all call for canned or cooked tomatoes. Boo x 2.

Today I was searching again for a recipe and all of a sudden it dawned on me. Why not take a couple of roma tomatoes and some salt and put it in a jar and wait a couple of days and see what I get? Why not?
I didn't take photos of the making process.

I did get a photo of my measuring spoons.
















Recipe:

2 roma tomatoes
2 tsp sea salt
half clove of garlic
put them in the blender and liquefy.
Put in a CLEAN glass jar with the lid on loose. Leave at least an inch at the top so there is room for it to... well, to swell.














That is where I am now. I will wait three days and then check it to see if it made ketchup (or catsup, I don't care).

I will let you know!

Footnotes:
* actually, the acidity of fermented foods keeps bad bacteria from growing. If a you are trying to ferment food and it goes bad, you will KNOW it. It looks funny, smells funny, has a funny texture. Toss it out if it looks even slightly off, it's not worth it.
Do some research, I am not responsible if you poison yourself. Cheers!

COOKED VEGAN Quick lunch! Thai Food! :OR: What to do with the left over spaghetti and peanut butter

Spring is coming...















The lawn furniture tells me so.



Ingredients RULE!~!!















Pour
















Mix















Bake


I made bread again today.












I juiced all morning. Using my blender. My "new" juicer came today but the condition was not as represented and it was packed so horribly that there was a crack in the... oh, nevermind. I might blog about it later. I just feel like tearing my hair out. Good news is, It Was Cheep. It's not like I'm out 500 bucks. Dammit.














Speaking of hair, this is a RARE shot of me with my hair down. I weighed 156 this morning. That's 61 lbs so far.


Then for lunch I made a lime peanut sauce and poured it over cold noodles.
Lime juice














Peanut butter














Ginger
















Oregano















You can tell it's oregano because of the clear label I made. Yup. There will be no confusing this one with the one like it that has basil in it. Nope.


Whizzzzz!!!














No, I haven't been drinking. That shot glass was for measuring vinegar. I SWEAR!!!

Pour sauce over cold noodles and pretend you are in a fancy Thai restaurant. mmmmmm.

The Money Shot