Cheap Vegan Eats, Whole Foods and Old Cookbooks

I was leafing through cookbooks this morning and looking over some of the less expensive to make recipes that used to be staples in my kitchen back when I was cooking more (and for more than myself). Their origins vary: vegan cookbooks, whole foods cookbooks, veganized versions of recipes in non-vegan cookbooks, recipes swapped years ago in online vegetarian or vegan discussion forums, veganized versions of childhood favourites -- you name it! I've posted a few of them over the past years, either writing them out in full or sharing links to where I've since found them online: Kasha and Veggies, Lentil Burgers, Lentil Soup, Farmhouse Stew, Marinated Lentil Salad, New Farm Macaroni and "Cheese" Casserole, Melty White Cheez (and another favourite Baked Macaroni and Cheez recipe), Baked Rice and Lentils, Spicy Sweet Potato and Bean Burritos, TVP Gyros, Oven Roasted Tom Tofu, Tang Tsel and Taboulleh.

I first started learning to cook without animal products years ago using well-worn secondhand copies of non-vegan books like Jean Hewitt's The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook and Ellen Buchman Ewald's Recipes for a Small Planet. Both books taught me to cook using whole foods -- dried legumes, a wide variety of grains (whether in the form of whole or cracked berries or flour), nuts and seeds, herbs and spices and fresh produce. For a college student on a tight budget and first exploring vegetarianism at a time when the world wide web didn't exist to offer up thousands of plant-based recipes with a simple mouse-click, they were invaluable in teaching me how easy it is to steer clear of (generally more) expensive processed foods and to work with basic foods that pack more of a nutritional punch.

Unfortunately, most of these books were unapologetically non-vegan, with many of them merely omitting meat, and those omitting dairy and eggs often including honey (which was promoted quite heavily in the "natural foods movement" as an ideal alternative to refined sugar). The book pictured above (with its horribly hand-drawn cover displaying animal use) is an example of this -- a book focused on tofu, which uses dairy, eggs and honey in almost all of its recipes. These books obviously weren't so much about the ethics of animal use as they were about environmentalism and avoiding processed foods. Thankfully, we have books available today that stress vegananism and have the internet at our disposal to find vegan recipes without having to cherry-pick through the confusion of those old so-called natural foods cookbooks.

I had grown up in a home where the only varieties or rice explored had been Minute Rice or Uncle Ben's, and where the only legumes I'd ever eaten had been the split peas in my grandmother's traditional stinky and gloppy soup, or in the navy beans in the baked beans my mother picked up for our weekly Saturday dinner. I scoured the cookbook sections of the local used bookstores constantly in the city where I attended school to find a wide variety of books like the aforementioned, which enabled me to try out so many new ingredients and to get into the habit of stocking my pantry so that I always had something on hand to whip something up when rent or that extra textbook would have left me otherwise going without groceries any given week.

There are so many more recipes I've nabbed or adapted from books like those, as well as from more recent books and web postings, and I've been itching to share them for some time. I've been reluctant to do so since I'm currently without a functional digital camera and one of my own pet peeves about food posts is that I have a hard time not passing them by unless they include both the recipe and a photo. I'm going to cross my fingers that this is mostly my own quirk and that others might find the recipes useful anyway if I keep posting them here and there. Heck, if someone has a spare unused digital camera they'd like to offload and toss my way, I'd even be willing to spend an entire month posting pictures every single day of every single dish I made. ;-)

In the interim, here are a few more old favourites I've cherry-picked from various cookbooks over the years that I thought I'd share. They're both simple and inexpensive to make. The first is adapted from an old Company's Coming cookbook on "Meatless Cooking":

Tofu Sausages

What you need:

1 lb firm tofu, pressed
1-1/2 tsp cider vinegar
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp (or less) salt
1/4 tsp pepper, freshly ground
3/4 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 walnuts, ground
1/4 tsp cumin, ground
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/2 cup bulgur / cracked wheat
1 cup rolled oats (not instant)

Whatcha do:

Mash your tofu in a large bowl and add everything but the bulgur and rolled oats. Mix well. Add the bulgur and oats and mix well, again (I knead it with my hands) and let sit for around 15 minutes. Shape into small sausages or patties (use maybe 3 tsp or so).

Heat some olive oil up in a pan and brown on all sides. Makes about 20 of 'em.

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This one was adapted from another older non-vegan cookbook, Low Fat Cooking for Good Health by Gloria Rose:

Baked Zucchini, Eggplant and Tomatoes

What you need:

1 medium eggplant, thinly sliced
1 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
2 ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced (I've used 3-4 plum tomatoes before)
6 fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1/4 tsp dried thyme (feel free to experiment with different herbs for a different outcome)
1/4 cup broth (whichever flavour you prefer)
4-5 garlic cloves (or garlic to taste)
1 Tbs low-sodium soy sauce

Freshly ground pepper to taste

What you do:

Preheat the oven to 400 F / 205 C. Spray a casserole dish with vegetable / olive oil (I use olive oil in a non-aerosol pump). Spread the vegetable slices in layers, making sure that the mushrooms don't end up on top. Mix the rest of the ingredients well and drizzle over the vegetables in the casserole.

Place foil (or a cover) over the casserole and bake for a half hour.

Serve over brown rice or other absorbent grains like cracked wheat. Serves from 3-4 people.

Soup!

I've never been a food blogger and have no interest in being one for various reasons, including that others are doing a much better job at it than I ever could. I have, however, spent many (many!) years experimenting in the kitchen. Those who've been around when that experimentation spiked as a passionate indulgence rarely complained about the outcome--including my mostly omni friends. One of my biggest loves over the years has been making soup (or stews) and I have a couple of favourite recipes I'd like to share.

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First up is a variation on a green lentil soup recipe I've been making forever (and which I've posted here before). I've no idea of whether there was a specific recipe of origin for it--it's become so "off the cuff" for me. The tarragon is really a worthwhile addition!

Lentil Soup

What you need:

1-1/2 cups lentils, washed
1-1/2 quarts veggie stock or water
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbs nutritional yeast
2 stalks celery & tops, chopped
1 Tbs celery seed, ground
1 onion, diced 2 carrots, diced
1-1/2 to 2 cups tomatoes, stewed (I just use the canned and diced)
2 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 or 1 tsp fresh tarragon, shredded (optional but recommended!)

What you do:

Place lentils in pot. Add water / veggie stock, salt and yeast. Cover and simmer until almost tender. Add remainder of ingredients. Cover. Simmer until carrots are done (about 15 minutes or longer). Add the tarragon during the last 5 minutes of cooking.

This soup is great with fresh whole grain rolls smeared with vegan "cream cheese" or a bit of Earth Balance margarine sprinkled with nutritional yeast. Serves 5-6.

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Next is an adaptation of Dorothy R. Bates' "Noodle Soup", from The TVP Cookbook. This soup is a ridiculously easy to make side for a sandwich, and reminds me a lot of the canned chicken noodle soup mom would often serve up when I was a kid.

Not-Chicken Noodle Soup

What you need:

1 cup of onions, chopped
2 Tbs olive oil
6 cups of hot water
1 cup TVP granules (smallish)
2 cups noodles, broken
1 tsp (or less) salt
1 tsp dried parsley, heaping
1/3 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1 cup frozen vegetables of your choice (optional)

What you do:

Heat the oil in a large pan and sauté the onion until it's just beginning to brown. Then add the 6 cups of hot water, TVP, noodles and salt and bring to a brisk boil and simmer for around 5 minutes. Add dried parsley and frozen vegetables (if using) and simmer for another 5-10 minutes. When done, stir in nutritional yeast flakes and serve. Garnish with chopped fresh parsley. Serves 6

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Each spring, I have a moment of veritable "doh!" when I remember that I've once again forgotten to place an advance catalog order for tomatillo seed to have time to sprout them early enough to grow seedlings to transplant into my garden. You can't get fresh tomatillos here and local seed choices are (sadly) limited. If I manage to find a way to get my hands on some soon so that I can grow them, I'll surely be making the following amazing soup by late summer. It's an adaptation of a recipe that was given to me in a vegan recipes forum years ago, and I'm unsure of its origins but ended up tweaking it and making it several times the two summers I didn't forget to buy seed.

Tomatillo Soup

What you need:

2-3 Tbs olive oil
2-1/2 cups chopped onion
5 medium fresh poblano or Anaheim chili peppers (or if you need to substitute, see here)
2-3 Tbs garlic, crushed and / or minced
2 tsp salt
2 Tbs chili powder
6 cups tomatillos, husked and chopped
4 cups water
2-3 Tbs sweetener
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

What you do:

In a large pot, heat the oil and sauté the onion for 4-5 minutes. Mix the peppers, garlic, salt and chili powder into them and continue to sauté for another 5 minutes or so. Add the tomatillos and mix well, cover and continue to cook for another 8-10 minutes, allowing the tomatillos to begin to soften. Add the water and bring to a quick boil, then lower to a simmer, cover the pot and allow to cook another 10-12 minutes. Purée some or all of the soup in a blender or food processor and return to the pot to heat. Stir in the cilantro, saving some to garnish, and serve immediately. Serves 6.

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General Soup Tips:

If you're serving hot soup, preheat the bowls and tureens you're using to serve it. If you're serving cold soup, chill the bowls or tureens you're using to serve it. It really makes a difference!

Garnish your soup! Although soups often turn out looking quite lovely and colourful, I often add a little something to individual serving bowls. Suggestions include:

-Chopped fresh herbs (e.g. dill, parsley, cilantro, et al., depending on herbs used in soup)
-Grated citrus rind (organic is ideal)
-Croutons
-A dollop of soy yogurt topped with a thin slice of lemon or lime
-Minced scallions or chives
-A sprinkle of paprika
-Thinly sliced radish, carrot
-Chopped nuts (e.g. walnuts, pecans, peanuts)
-A spoonful of chutney
-Black olive slivers
-Toasted almond slivers

You get the point... Now go make soup!

What to Eat

Once again, hours away from lunch, I find myself glancing through the latest posts of some of my favourite concocters of tasty vegan eats. I do so bravely, clutching a section of pink grapefruit while itching for ideas of what to make for dinner this week.

I'm always on the lookout for veggie burger recipes and cookbook author Bryanna Clark Grogan offered one up on her Notes from the Vegan Feast Kitchen blog last week, just in time for Canada Day and 4th of July celebrations. Bryanna shared some suggestions for making grillable kebabs, as well as two recipes for barbecue sauce and her Mushroom-Tempeh Burgers. I'm definitely going to give the burgers a try this weekend if I can fire up my feeble little Hibachi.

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Sinead from kitchen dancing posted a recipe a few days ago that included two of my favourite foods: beets and lentils. Her recipe for Lentil and Beet Salad calls for mustard, so she threw in a recipe for a homemade whiskey mustard for it. It looks like a really simple recipe that would taste anything but simple.

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I should also note that veganf has a really neat bento blog called Disposable Ardvaarks Inc.. Along with recipe ideas, including this recent post from last week for garlic scapes (Garlic Scape Infusion, Garlic Scape and White Bean Hummus and Potato Salad with Avocado and Garlic Scapes -- does it get any better?). If the recipes won't get you, the gorgeous photos she takes of the dishes she somehow manages to find time to assemble for her vegan family of six will leave you absolutely amazed.

Vegan Recipes in the Blogosphere

I was going to post a couple of vegan recipes that have ended up on mainstream media websites this week surrounding Earth Day, but after finding a couple of scrumptious sounding ones for soup (Minestrone and African Yam and Peanut, to be precise) on the Winnipeg Free Press' site, I got sidetracked by a couple of recent posts from vegan food bloggers I follow and decided to throw out a few kudos:

Jessy over at happyveganface (a vegan food blog I adore) recently posted about Snobby Joes -- one of my favourite recipes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero's Veganomicon. I raved about them, myself, a while back, lover of lentils that I am. The original recipe can be found here on the Post Punk Kitchen website.

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Melissa at The Papaya Chronicles recently posted about the type of meal I enjoy throwing together often, myself, when I don't particularly feel like cooking but don't want to junk out. She threw an assortment of raw vegetables, seasoned and baked flour tortillas and fruit on some trays and served them up with her favourite hummus recipe (one I've since tried and loved).

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Over at Carrot and Potato Time, Anna's been writing quite a bit about her recent experiments with baking with sourdough starter. This is something I've been meaning to try out myself for quite a while with my own trusty bread machine. For those who are uninitiated, her posts will surely be more than helpful (and her photos will leave you eager to get some baking of your own done, pronto).

Roots & Lentils Casserole

I made this on Sunday. I never thought to take a photo. It was really yummy with the crushed garlic (I adore garlic, so I added lots) and extra black pepper. I had it with tossed garden salad drizzled with a zesty sundried tomato dressing.

Roots & Lentils Casserole

What you need:

One cup each of the following:

Chopped onion
Chopped celery
Diced turnip
Diced potato
Diced carrot
Diced parsnip
Dried red lentils

Also:

Two cups boiling water
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly-ground pepper (or more, to taste)
crushed garlic to taste (optional)

What you do:

Place first seven ingredients in an ungreased 3 L (or quart) casserole dish and stir them to mix well.

In a medium-sized bowl, stir the boiling water and peanut butter together until smooth. Stir in the salt and pepper and crushed garlic (I like to use at least 3-4 cloves). Pour over the vegetables in the casserole dish and bake in a 350F oven for around 1-1/2 hours, or until the vegetables are tender. Makes around six servings. This is great with a large tossed salad and some whole grain rolls.

Vegan recipes in the news

The Kansas City Star had a recipe for Cashew Manicotti w/ Sundried Tomatoes tucked into an Earth Day related blurb about veganism. It's from Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook.

The Canadian Press is spreading around a recipe for Tomato Curried Lentils, from Angeline Linardis' V Cuisine: The Art of New Vegan Cooking. I think that Linardis has a blog (unless the blog's name is just a coincidence), but it seems to be a 'by invitation only' sort of thing.

The Baltimore Sun has a piece today about the rising cost of food and how to eat frugally by incorporating vegetarian meals into your week. In it, the writer of the piece contributed her adaptation of a Curry of Eggplant and Peas recipe from The Vegetarian Epicure.

Vegan soup recipes in the news

The Victoria Times Colonist ran a decent article by Eric Akis the other day. It's well worth reading just for the great instructions on how to make a flavourful vegetable-based stock (and includes a recipe for one). As a bonus, he included recipes for Curried Yam Soup w/ Coconut and Lime, Classic Mushroom Soup and Lentil Soup w/ Herbe de Provence.

Recipe: Lentil Soup

This one's a variation of the ongoing basic green lentil soup recipe I've been slapping together forever. The tarragon addition started up a few years back when I first began growing it in my garden. It's optional, but is really worth it.

Lentil Soup

1-1/2 cups lentils, washed
1-1/2 quarts veggie stock or water
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbs nutritional yeast
2 stalks celery & tops, chopped
1 Tbs celery seed, ground
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1-1/2 to 2 cups tomatoes, stewed (I often just use the canned and diced)
2 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 or 1 tsp fresh tarragon, shredded (optional)

Place lentils in pot. Add water / veggie stock, salt and yeast. Cover and simmer until almost tender. Add remainder of ingredients. Cover. Simmer until carrots are done (about 15 minutes or longer). Add the tarragon during the last 5 minutes of cooking.

This soup is great with fresh whole grain rolls smeared with Tofutti "cream cheese" or a bit of Earth Balance margarine sprinkled with nutritional yeast.

Serves 5-6.

Recipe: The Most Amazing Lentil Burger Ever

The recipe is adapted from The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook by Jean Hewitt (ca. 1971). It was the first mostly-vegetarian cookbook I ever bought, back in 1990 or so when I picked it up at a used bookstore in Ottawa. I've made these for over fifteen years and they're still my favourite homemade veggie burgers.

Lentil Burgers

2 cups cooked lentils
1 cup of whole grain bread crumbs (e.g. whole wheat, spelt, etc.)
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 tsp salt (I use a little less)
1/2 Tbs celery seed
1/2 tsp pepper
1-2 tsp garlic powder (or 1-2 cloves of garlic, minced)
1/2 a large onion, grated
whole wheat flour

Mix all the ingredients but the lentils and flour. Mash the lentils only a wee bit more than lightly and mix with other ingredients. Form palm sized patties, just under an inch thick. Dredge 'em through the flour and then fry on both sides in hot olive oil until they've browned.

Serving suggestion: Melt slices of vegan mozzarella on patties and serve with tomato slices. lettuce and onion sprouts in a whole grain bread sandwich. The recipe makes around 5-6 patties.

Recipe: Baked Rice and Lentils

This is adapted from a recipe found in an old Seventh-Day Adventist recipe booklet published in Canada in 1989. It's incredibly simple and inexpensive to make and you can easily tweak the seasonings to please your own taste buds. Use it wherever you'd use something like mashed potatoes (e.g. with roasted veggies and seitan).

Baked Rice and Lentils

2 medium onions, diced
1/2 cup uncooked rice
2/3 cup uncooked green lentils
2/1-2 cups water
4 tsp or so of soya sauce

Saute the onion in oil, if you wish (I just dice it and throw it in raw with everything else).

In a small casserole dish, dump the rice, lentils, water and soya sauce and the raw / sauteed onions. Bake covered at 325 F for at least 40 minutes or until the rice is tender. Add water if necessary and add salt / pepper to taste when done if desired (I never do since the soya sauce is salty enough).

Optional: Add 1/2 cup of sauteed mushrooms or drained canned mushrooms.
Add crushed garlic to taste.