Give Them Something Better

Author: Stephanie Howard

  • Meatless Monday: Vegan Slow Cooker Bar-B-Que (Spring is Coming)

    Meatless Monday: Vegan Slow Cooker Bar-B-Que (Spring is Coming)

    BBQ chicken sandwich small crop

    It looks like the slow cooker is the new most popular kitchen gadget of the year! Every cookbook and magazine is featuring slow cooker recipes. Don’t tell them…but the slow cooker has been around for like a hundred years. Okay, maybe not that long, but for a very long time.  

    This month’s Meatless Monday Supper Club featured slow cooker recipes.  I have been playing with some of the recipes in Give Them Something Better and have learned that many of them can be converted to the slow cooker.  For example, the Mac & Cheese recipe I posted here works great in the slow cooker.  You don’t even have to pre-cook the noodles! Amazing but true.  I just blended the sauce, added the noodles, and cooked on high for 1 ½ to 2 hours on high.  Of course, the time depends on your cooker.  We also learned that it does not work with every Mac & Cheese recipe, so be careful.

    In hopes of an early spring and the warm weather I am sharing with you one of my favorite summer recipes to do in the slow cooker, Bar-B-Q Chicken Sandwich. I love these sandwiches, they make me think of summertime and hot weather, lemonade, swimming….and NO snow!

    Bar-B-Q Chicken Sandwich

    BAR-B-Q SAUCE:

    • 2/3 cup lemon juice
    • ½ cup water
    • ½ cup brown sugar
    • 1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
    • 2 tablespoons non-hydrogenated margarine
    • 2 teaspoons chili powder
    • 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
    • 1 teaspoon molasses
    • ½ teaspoon salt

    FINISH IT OFF:

    • 1 tablespoon oil
    • 3 cups prepared Soy Curls or other chicken substitute
    • ½ medium onion, sliced (optional)
    • ½ medium pepper, green or red, sliced (optional)
    • 6  whole grain buns, toasted if desired

    1. Mix Bar-B-Q Sauce ingredients together in the bottom of your slow cooker;

    2. Add onions and peppers and Soy Curls and mix well.

    3. Cover and cook on medium heat for 2-3 hours

    4. Serve on a toasted bun.

    Makes 6 servings.

    If you are in a hurry, you can use a bottled Bar-B-Q sauce. Just make sure to read your labels carefully—they are usually full of high-fructose corn syrup and other questionable ingredients.

  • Meatless Monday! To Juice or Not to Juice?

    Meatless Monday! To Juice or Not to Juice?

    SMOOTHIES_003

    I am so glad to be back with our monthly Meatless Monday Supper Club! It is always encouraging to see how many people are interested in better health—and are willing to make some big changes to make it happen!

    “To Juice or Not to Juice” was the subject at hand this month.  Our guest speaker shared some good information from a booklet by Steve Wohlburg and some insights learned from watching the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.

    We concluded that juicing is a great way to get a boost of nutrition that many of us don’t usually get because we don’t eat enough beets and greens.  Some may choose to do a short juice fast while others choose to supplement a healthy diet with a green drink or beet juice. 

    One of the best reasons to do a juice fast is to “reboot” your taste buds. Many of us have sabotaged our taste buds with fat and refined sugars. After a juice fast your taste buds have grown accustomed to not having those things and even the simplest foods are a taste explosion!

    My husband and I did a seven day fast. The first few days were very hard! The third day was THE worst, but it improved after that and we felt better. When it was all over we felt good and the food tasted GREAT.  Now we no longer fast but supplement our diet with some healthy juices. Here are some recipes for the juices we used for our juice fast.

     Beetroot Blast

    • 1 apple, cored and sliced
    • 1 lemon, peeled
    • 2 tall celery stalks
    • 1 beet, with the leaves
    • 1 handful of spinach (optional)

    Mean Green Juice

    • 6 kale leaves
    • 1 cucumber
    • 4 celery Stalks
    • 2 green apples
    • ½ lemon
    • 1 piece of ginger

    *(vary by cutting celery in half and adding spinach, chard, and cilantro)

    Delightful Green Juice

    • 2 apples
    • 1 cucumber
    • ½ green cabbage
    • handful spinach

    Beta-Carotene Bomber

    • 4 carrots
    • 2 golden beets
    • 3 oranges
    • ½ inch of ginger
  • My Trip to Scandinavia and Lasagna

    My Trip to Scandinavia and Lasagna

    Lasagna with Tofu Ricotta

    We just returned home from an amazing adventure to Sweden and Iceland.  When I first found out we were going, I was excited to learn some new recipes and try some new foods. I wanted to learn some traditional favorites. Who knows? I may want to write an international cookbook someday!

    As destiny would have it, I was able to try a few new things but ended up doing most of the cooking! The funny thing is that we were invited to three different homes in both countries and in all three homes they served us Lasagna! Another funny thing about Iceland is that their most famous and popular restaurant is a little hot dog stand. Apparently they have adopted many of our American eating habits.

    I did learn a couple of fun recipes. One is a Nutella-like date spread that is amazing and I would love to share it with you, but first I need to get permission from our host to post it here. In the mean time, here is my favorite lasagna recipe, the secret is in the sauce.

    Lasagna

    • 6 cups Tomato Sauce (recipe below)
    • 12 lasagna noodles, cooked
    • 1 recipe Tofu Ricotta
    • ¼ cup nondairy Parmesan cheese (optional)
    1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly coat a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.
    2. Ladle 1 1/2 cups Tomato Sauce in the bottom of the prepared dish. Arrange 4 noodles over the sauce. Spread 1/2 of the Tofu Ricotta over the noodles. Repeat layers once.
    3. Top with remaining 4 noodles and cover with remaining sauce. Sprinkle with Parmesan, if using.
    4. Cover with aluminum foil and bake 1 hour.

    Tomato Sauce

    • 2 tablespoons oil
    • 1 large onion, chopped
    • 1 cup green bell pepper, chopped (optional)
    • 8 cloves garlic, minced
    • 2 tablespoons dried basil
    • 1 tablespoon dried oregano
    • 1 tablespoon salt
    • 5 cans (28 ounces) tomatoes (crushed, diced, pureed, or sauce)
    • 2 tablespoons maple syrup or other sweetener
    1. Heat oil in a large stock pot over medium. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic; cook until onions are translucent, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes.
    2. Add basil, oregano, and salt to stock pot; cook 2 minutes, stirring occasionally.
    3. Add tomatoes and maple syrup to stock pot; stir well. Add water if needed.
    4. Bring to a boil over high heat; lower to a simmer and cook 1 hour.

    Makes 12 cups.

  • Meatless Monday! Better than Mac & Cheese

    Meatless Monday! Better than Mac & Cheese

    Vegan Macaroni and Cheese

    I did a cooking school in Iceland just a few weeks ago and was shocked to learn that 99% of the people in my class had never had macaroni and cheese! It’s very strange but true. I am happy to tell you that I was able to remedy the problem. They have all tried it now and loved it! The good news is that they didn’t try the typical high-fat-and-cholesterol bomb that we normally serve here in America. I gave them the healthy variety with whole grain pasta and cashew cheese.  I was also able to serve it at a youth camp meeting and they cleaned it out – they absolutely loved the stuff! So if you are looking for a healthier alternative to the easiest Meatless Monday dish ever here is my recipe for Mac & Cheese.

    Mac & Cheese

    • 1 box (14 ounces) whole grain macaroni noodles, cooked
    • 4 cups water, divided
    • 1 cup raw cashews
    • ½ cup oil
    • ½ cup pimento peppers or bottled roasted red peppers
    • ¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes
    • 3 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
    • ½ tablespoon salt
    • 2 teaspoons onion powder
    • ½ teaspoon garlic powder
    1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly coat a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.
    2. Blend 2 cups water and nuts in a blender until very smooth and creamy. This can take several minutes, depending on your blender.
    3. Add remaining ingredients, except pasta, to blender; blend until smooth and creamy.
    4. Combine blended mixture and pasta in prepared baking dish; stir well to mix.
    5. Bake 45 minutes.

     

  • Pinspiration! Vegan 37 Calorie Brownie Experiment

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    Valentine’s Day is throwing a wrench into my New Year’s resolutions.  Here at our house we decided to start up an exercise routine, avoid junk food and get back into shape. Now Valentine’s Day rolls around and everyone thinks I have to eat lots of candy and desserts!  It wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day without chocolate, right?!  I had decided not to give in to the pressure to make some ooey gooey chocolaty dessert for my Ridzoman, but Pinterest did me in again!

    There it was staring me in the face – a beautiful-looking 37-calorie brownie. I absolutely had to try it. It would be the perfect valentine for those of us trying to get back into shape.  Unfortunately my Pinspiration was quickly turned into Pinsapointment.  Edible, yes… great brownies, no.  In fairness to the original recipe I did make a few changes replacing the Greek yogurt and the egg with my usual substitutions to make it vegan, so it is possible that it could have been better the way it is written here.  Let me know if you have tried it. Did it turn out for you?

     

  • Meatless Monday: Navy Bean Soup

    Navy Bean Soup

    About 18 years ago I decided to cut all dairy products from my diet. At that time, I had no idea that there was even a word for that kind of diet…vegan,  let alone, other people and cookbooks that were vegan.  The first few months were very hard.  I found a cookbook, which shall remain nameless, that I tried to use but the recipes tasted horrible. And then by divine providence I came across the Country Life Cookbook. It was amazing—the food was not only edible it was really good!

    But somehow in the flood of cookbooks and blogs and recipes that is now available, I had forgotten about my first favorite cookbook. So last week I was in search of a new soup recipe and I remembered the Navy Bean Soup from the Country Life Cookbook.  It is so good, why had I stopped making it? And for an added bonus, it even has greens in it! It’s a great way to eat my greens, because I usually don’t like them.

    Navy Bean Soup

    • 2 tablespoons olive oil
    • 1 cup onions, chopped
    • 2 cloves garlic, minced
    • 5 cups water
    • 2 cups potatoes, diced
    • 2 cups kale or collared greens
    • 1 ¾ teaspoons salt
    • ¼ teaspoon cumin
    • 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
    • 3 cups cooked navy beans or 2 cans

    1.     Sauté onions and garlic in a medium sized soup pan.

    2.     Add the remaining ingredients and cook for 20-30 minutes until potatoes are tender.

    I hope you enjoy the soup! The chips on the side in the picture are a new version of the Chili Cheese Frito recipe I posted last week. This time I used Mrs. Dash’s Fiesta Lime seasoning with some salt and yeast flakes.  Very yummy.