How do you know when someone is vegetarian or vegan?? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you! This is so true. I feel the need to share it with everyone. I feel incredibly proud and thankful to be able to have this lifestyle with relative ease. I met a friend of a friend the other night and I’m excited to learn from her.
Tonight, I made a few awesome recipes.
First was a black bean burger. I’ll put in parenthesis the changes I made.
http://www.dailygarnish.com/2010/05/vegan-bean-burger-recipe.html
- 2 cans black beans (rinsed and drained) (I USED BLACK BEANS WITH JALAPENOS!)
- 2 carrots, grated (LEFT THESE OUT I DISLIKE CARROTS)
- 1/2 cup dry rolled oats
- 1/4 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp coriander (USED CURRY POWDER INSTEAD)
- 1/2 tsp chili powder
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
To Prepare: Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Next, add the oats and pepitas to your food processor and grind until coarsely chopped (they will still be a little chunky). Let it run for roughly 10 seconds. Grate the carrots, and then add to your mixture in the food processor. Add 3/4 of the beans, all spices, and the olive oil. Once all of this is in the food processor, give it a whir and mix it all together.
Spoon mixture into a mixing bowl and then fold in the rest of the whole, reserved beans. Wet your hands and then form into 6 medium sized patties. Place patties on a non-stick baking sheet or into a baking pan, and bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes, turning once in the middle.
All in all this recipe was pretty amazing. I did have one minor fluke. I forgot to shell the pumpkin seeds. My burgers have a bit of an extra crunch, haha.
I also made a great salad dressing.
http://www.forkandbeans.com/2013/07/17/cilantro-lime-salad-dressing/
Coats 2 salads (or 1, depending on how greedy you are with your dressing)
INGREDIENTS:
- 1/2 c. cashews
- juice of 1 lime
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- 4 Tb water
- 2 medium handfuls of cilantro
- 1 garlic clove
- 1-2 tsp jalapeno (1/4 of a whole jalapeno)
- In a high-speed blender, place the cashews, lime/lemon juice, and water inside and blend. Depending on what type of consistency you want in a dressing, add (or not) more water by the tablespoon.
- Throw in the rest of the ingredients into the blender until combined but not necessarily completely smooth. You want those small chunks in that dressing–it’s the best part!
This also turned out amazingly! I added extra cilantro and jalapeno for deeper flavor!
What I love about where I am at in my journey is that I am no longer obsessed with the numbers. The numbers on the scale, the numbers on the food label ie calories, carbohydrates, serving size, etc. the number of oz’s of this or cups of that. I literally just make 1 plateful of whatever it is that I’m eating and don’t go back for seconds. That is all, no obsession, no starvation, no binging, no purging, just eating plant based foods and doing the next right thing. The relief from food obsession is beyond anything I could have thought possible. Because I am new to vegan-ism and so excited to learn new recipes and ways to prepare things, I probably do think about food more than a person without a special eating plan or a big interest in cooking. However, when I’m thinking about food now it’s about what new things can I put together that would taste great when before it would be “how many of those can I stuff down my throat before I’ll have to throw up?” Thank you, Universe for allowing me to have this victory today!
That Spiritual Vegan 