Sweet Potato and Seitan Chorizo Enchiladas

This has become one of my favorite things to eat. Simply roast sweet potatoes with sweet corn and onions, mash and add seitan chorizo and you have the perfect filling for Vegan enchiladas. In fact, I am making these bad boys tonight for my friend's birthday potluck. I hope she loves them!



I found some "accidentally" Vegan enchilada sauce at Sunflower Markets which made making these a whole heck of a lot simpler. The seitan chorizo recipe I got from 500 Vegan Recipes. They were very tasty but, for me, the texture was a little less than desirable. I think next time I will make the chorizo out of tofu or TVP.



Top with a sprinkle of Daiya cheddar and pair with homemade re-fried beans and Spanish rice. Yum!



(Sorry the photos are poor quality the light in our kitchen is ancient and started to burn out, but we fixed that so hopefully no more crappy images)

Quinoa And Sweet Potato Pancakes

Brinner is one of my most favorite meals (breakfast for dinner) it is quick tasty and it is the only time I can really eat waffles, pancakes, faux sausages and hashbrowns. Most big breakfasts are way too big for me, eating that amount of food and carbs first thing in the morning can spell out disaster. A pancake for breakfast usually means I will be returning to bed and wearing my pajamas for the remainder of the day. A normal breakfast for me consists of a banana and a larabar and then a four mile walk. So now you know why I go gaga for brinner. Tim and I had originally planned on having pancakes and a tasty tofu scramble but then we both agreed pancakes were enough.

I wanted to make sweet potato pancakes and was inspired by the Thrive diet book by Brendan Brazier to add quinoa to my pancakes. I cooked up both red quinoa and regular quinoa and added 1/2 cup to my pancake batter, but I think next time I will add more as when I was eating it I kept thinking I wish there was more quinoa in here. I also diced up a handful of medjool dates and tossed those in and once cooked they added a gooey sweetness to the pancakes. I was really bad and just eyeballed the measurements, because there is still need for some improvement but this is what I did and I thought they were fabulous.



1 cup flour
1/4 cup ground flax meal
2 tsp. baking powder
dash salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
2 cooked medium sized sweet potatoes
1/2 cup cooked quinoa
1 1/2 cups soy milk
2 tablespoons canola oil
4-5 dices medjool dates
1 tablespoon agave nectar


First cook peel and cut your sweet potatoes into cubes then cook. I boiled mine but as an afterthought I wish I had roasted them with some Earth Balance and a bit of brown sugar and maybe some raisins. OOOOOOOHHHHH that sounds good, huh? While those are boiling/roasting cook your quinoa, once cooked set aside to cool. Mix all of your dry ingredients together and set aside. When the sweet potatoes are cooked put into a mixing bowl with agave and mash. Add the oil and soy milk to the sweet potatoes and mix. Once mixed add your dry ingredients and mix until incorporated, do not over mix or you will end up with rubbery IHOP pancakes. Then fold in your quinoa and diced dates.




Heat up your griddle and go pancake crazy!I hope you like these, I know Timmy did he ate six or seven of these bad boys, which is really only two restaurant sized pancakes.

Taking On The V-Con Pt. 6

Keeping with my non-lazy theme this will be post number three for the day. I took a bit of a hiatus to help my dear friend Jefe hand his art in a local gallery. Jeff is a super talented guy and thanks to me (insert pat on the back) he is having his very first art show. His artist's reception isn't until October because it is way too hot to draw a decent crowd, but his art will be up until then...bonus! Here is a peak at his work.






pretty good, huh?

After that Timmy and I went to the fancy Whole Foods in Chandler and got some Gardein tacos and supplies for my upcoming baking adventure. Now my tummy is full and I can focus once again. Drum roll please...

This weeks V-Con challenge makes me think of a cooler Autumnal day, in other words perfect biking weather. The sweet potato and pear tzimmies would be a treat after a long day spent on the green belt cycling around watching the Frisbee golfers, the beautiful cranes flying over the many parks on the belt and all of the happy cyclists rolling up an over the many hills that make up the belt. I imagine I would come home, a bit tired but happy and would put together this wonderful side dish in order to heat up my house and appease my senses. The smell of the tzimmies in the oven is divine, an olfactory orgy. The vitamin packed sweet potatoes, the energy giving properties of the pecans, the subtle sweetness of the agave, all would be a welcoming dish for all of my senses to enjoy. I am painting this picture because although I really liked this dish the preparation and even the eating of it was not as joyous as I would have preferred. I had been painting my kitchen and making a cake as stated in an earlier post, went out with a friend and had a friend over for a visit so everything was a bit rushed and made with zero energy, I followed the recipe exactly and I wish I would have made a few slight changes. Next time Rikki, in Fall you will make this recipe and you will be delighted.

Sweet Potato and Pear Tzimmies with Pecans and Raisins
ingredients:
2 lbs Sweet Potato (I used three sweet potatoes and who knows how much they weighed?)
3 pears (I used two)
1 T. veggie oil
2 T. Mirin / Sweet cooking Wine (I used Sangiovese)
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
1 T. Maple Syrup (I used agave)
3/4 cup Pecan halves
3/4 cup raisins



Put all ingredients sans raisins in a pan and cover and bake at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour. Remove from oven, uncover, add raisins and bake an additional 1/2 hour. Eat!

Roasted Sweet and Red Potatoes

Sometimes while at work I will walk the aisles of my fine grocery store and make lists. Lists of things to purchase that week, lists of new cupcake flavors, lists of my favorite mythological creatures and often lists of foods I do not eat enough of or at all. Just this last Sunday I eyed some fantastic organic sweet potatoes and tried to remember all of the things I have made with sweet potatoes and I came up with one dish, sweet potato pie. Now, this is my favorite pie in all of the land so I was not completely disappointed with my lack of s.p. culinary prowess. I was, however, upset that since I do love this root vegetable with an intense fiery passion that I do not eat it more often and more as an entree instead of dessert.

The sweet little potatoes are packed with beta carotene, vitamin A, fiber, B6, vitamin C, are beneficial for those with diabetes and are raved about by one of my fave Vegan chefs Bryant Terry (Vegan Soul Kitchen); that it really boggles my teeny brain as to why I have not been eating these by the bucketful.

I decided on roasting these babies with red potatoes because I really did not know what else to do with them, next week I am thinking pizza with them. As for Monday, they were a side dish to Bryant Terry's delicious black-eyed pea fritters and an arugula and spinach salad with oranges and blackberries. Sounds yummy, huh? Everything was so tasty I ate it twice (saved some for lunch the next day)! I make my co-workers jealous with my leftovers. :)

Roasted Sweet and Red Potatoes

3 red potatoes
5 medium sweet potatoes
1 red onion
5 cloves garlic
2 T. olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

Peal and cube sweet potatoes, cube red potatoes leaving skins on (that is where the fiber is!) chop onion and mince garlic. Combine all in pan and coat with olive oil and sprinkle on sea salt and pepper. Bake for 35-45 minutes.


Ready for oven!

Black-eyed Pea Fritters

Arugula and Spinach salad with Blackberries and Oranges

All together now...