When I mentioned in the last post that our kitchen is so tiny, we would just keep getting take out until we renovated it, I was only halfway kidding. Both JT and I work four (more than) ten-hour days and healthy, from-scratch cooking at the end of those days (in a tiny kitchen) just wasn’t always happening. Add on top of that my study schedule for the NCIDQ (still no results yet — arrggh!) and I was happy that we found someone to cook for us. That’s right folks, we have a personal chef…. sort of. I convinced JT to accompany me to the 4th Annual Vegetarian Festival a while back in Scottsdale and learned of a local company called “The Vegan Taste”
Every other Monday a cooler arrives at our front door with fully cooked all-vegan meals in individual portions. I just stick the menu on the fridge and pick out a labeled Tupperware to reheat for my dinner. JT does the same and we can even have different things for dinner on the same night (gasp!). It’s been great.
On the non-delivery weeks we cook. I try to do a lot of the prep work on the weekends to make it easier on the weeknights. Here’s a few of our favorite tried and true recipes we love:
Eggplant Meatballs (with pasta and a spicy red sauce) from SkinnyTaste
Creamy Coconut Garlic Mushrooms (also could be with pasta or spiralized squash … yep, we’ve been spiralizing and it’s great!) from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken
Chipotle Mac and Cheese (I guess we have a pasta theme going on … I swear we eat more than just pasta!) from the Post Punk Kitchen
Deconstructed Falafel Bowl from Vegan Yack Attack
Thai Peanut Sauce Spaghetti Squash from Leelalicious
Pesto Tortilla Round-Ups from Vegan in the Freezer (great for lunches)
For more ideas and to see what we’ve tried out, check out my Pinterest board here.
In other vegan news, eggs!
I tend to steer clear of the meat and cheese replacers – the fake products are often very processed and I don’t really like the taste of meat anyway so I’m not too interested in a fake meat. However I saw a vegan egg product at our local Sprouts store that I thought I might try …
It came in a cute little 4 pack egg cardboard carton but what was actually in the carton was the bag of powder … When mixed with cold water as directed, it did actually have that sulfurous smell of eggs but more the consistency of a cornbread batter. I mixed it up into a kind of huevos rancheros breakfast burritos but at the end of the day I think my opinion of replacement products holds up. This is not something you could probably ever convince a non-vegan to eat and there are so many yummy other ingredients you could mix in with the beans (rice, avocado, roasted corn, chipotle salsa …) that I don’t think the fake eggs make the cut. I did however use them as an egg substitute in a cookie that I made for work (Gooey butter cookies also with vegan cream cheese and pea protein margarine) and they were a hit – no one realized they were secretly vegan. Probably because they were covered in sugar.
So that’ s what’s going on in our tiny kitchen. Any other must try vegan recipes I need to know about? Cheers – CT
Living Analog 