Isa's Fake CHICKEN!!!

*Casie Here*

I made a batch of Isa's fake chicken out of her new cookbook Isa Does It. I will give you the ingredients and how you make it, but I will not give out the amounts of everything. You will have to get her book if you want the amounts! Sorry, but her book is SO worth it! I have made almost every recipe out of her book and they have all been good! 

 Pepper, Salt, Sage, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Nutritional Yeast. 

 Vegetable Broth, Pinto beans, olive oil, soy sauce or liquid aminos, and vital wheat gluten.

 This is the pot I use to steam.

 Mash up the beans completely. I think next time I will use the food processor to make sure they are ground up better. 

 I just mashed with a potato masher.

 Add all the ingredients in the order she tells you. Easy as dumping it in.

 Mix it all together with a fork.

 Portion it out and you can form it into a patty shape.

 Fold each foil packet up.

 Place in the steaming basket. 

 Let it steam for 40 minutes. DONE. 

 This tastes and smells AMAZING. Seriously, I want to eat a whole patty the second they are cool enough, but instead I refrain and just take off little pieces! It is so, so good. Mine were pretty square because I was running out of foil and had to make my pieces smaller. But really who cares what they look like. 

 I let them cool off a little and them wrap them in cling wrap and stick them in the freezer. 

 You can take out how ever many you need when you are cooking dinner. I usually only use one with a meal. I thaw, chop it up and "brown" it a little or sautee them on the stove. You really would not need to do anything except warm them up and eat. They are good any way you fix it! I will crumble one up and use as "meat" in a spaghetti noodle dish or slice in strips in a veggie, rice stir fry dish or on a sandwich with hummus spread and vegetables. I use this one interchangeably as "chicken" or "beef". It really works for either. 

This batch will last me a good couple months. So, its not a lot of work, time or money for the easy results!!! 

She has other kinds of fake meat recipes in there too. I have made the italian sausage recipe and absolutely love that one too for Italian dishes! 

Please go purchase Isa's book HERE! You will NOT regret it! I PROMISE. 

AND her restaurant Modern Love will be opening soon here in the big O!!! YAY!!! We will be first in line. I wanted it to be open by our anniversary, but I don't think it will be done. :(

Do Vegetarians Get Enough Protein?

Vegan Banana Nut & Date Muffins

*Casie Here*

I had some ripe bananas to use up, so I decided to make some banana muffins. I looked up some recipes and tweaked it to make it my own.

Here is what I did:

Chop up 10 Dates (I get ours from Costco)

 Prepare 2 chia 'eggs' (take 2 TBS. Chia Powder + 1/2 cup water ~ mix, let sit for at least 5 minutes)

We have gotten our Chia Powder Whole Foods, Trader Joes or Hy-Vee and we have also gotten it from our favorite online supplier for a lot of our food (www.vitacost.com) make sure it's the POWDER. I have use the seed before and it works fine, I just prefer the more ground up texture of the Powder.

 After a little while it gets thick and goopy like and EGG! 

 I mixed my chopped dates with the chia goop to help separate the sticky bits of dates and get them more evenly distributed (otherwise they stick together in one big clump). 

 Mash 6 Bananas

 Add 2 containers of applesauce or 1 cup total)

 Mix all the wet ingredients together.

Add 1 cup Almond Milk. This is absolutely my favorite milk EVER. There are a lot of new variations of this out there, but I love this one the most and I don't care that it has 20 more calories than the reduced sugar one.

 I didn't take any picts of the dry ingredients bowl except for when I mixed the two together. Here are the dry ingredients. Pretty standard.

2 1/2 cups whole wheat and regular organic flour mixed (use whatever flour you have on hand. I just like to buy both and mix it together)

1 1/2 cup oats (just regular Quaker Oats, not the quick cook ones) You can get a HUGE box at Costco

1/4 cup flax seed

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt (I use pink Himalian salt from Costco)

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts (also from Costco)

 The flax seed we use from Costco.

 Ready to be put in the muffin pans.

I use this scoop to get them even. I didn't fill it quite full, just 3/4 full for each muffin. This batch makes 36 muffins.

 And done.
Nice and warm!

 Honestly you can not even taste the dates in this muffin. They are mostly to make the muffin moist. I LOVE dates in all my muffins. It adds sweetness so you can cut down on the sugar  you use. Another one of my very favorite muffins are my Orange Date Muffins HERE.

 These were so, so good. My kids snatched a bunch up as soon as they were cool enough to touch.

In a bowl mix together

2 1/2 cups whole wheat and regular organic flour mixed 

1 1/2 cup oats

1/4 cup flax seed

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt (I use pink Himalian salt)

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup walnuts

In a separate bowl mix together

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 chia 'eggs' (2 TBS. Chia Powder + 1/2 cup water ~ mix, let sit)

6 ripe bananas (mashed)

2 containers Organic Applesauce (1 cup total)

3 TBS. Vegan Butter (we use Earth Balance) this could be optional

1 cup Almond Milk

Stir the two together. 

Scoop into muffin tins 

Bake 350 for 25 mins

Nutrition and Cancer - From Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Nine Servings a Day Minimum

Quinoa and Veggie Dinner

*Casie Here*

I thought I would start sharing some of my weeknight dinners with you. Tonight I wanted to use Quinoa. I looks up some recipes that used quinoa. Then I just made it my own with what I had in the house. This is what I did. *Sorry I don't have picts of each step....only the final product.

In a small sauce pan I put a tiny bit of olive oil and sautéed 1 onion and 5 cloves of garlic until translucent. *Note* You can adjust all of this depending on your likes and dislikes and what you have around the house.

Then I put in 2 cups of water and 1 cup of Inca Red Quinoa (I just bought that at Walmart) into the same pan as the onions & garlic, brought it to a boil, then reduced the heat to just a simmer and covered it with the lid.

In another big pan I sautéed pretty much every veggie we had in the house. Here is what was in mine in order that I put them into the pan to cook.

Diced Carrot (I used 1)

Diced Asparagus (about 10 spears)

Diced Red Pepper (1/4 of the pepper)

Frozen Brocoli (2 cups)

Frozen Corn (1/4 cup)

Frozen Green Beans (1 cup)

Frozen Peas (1/2 cup)

1 can of rinsed black beans

Diced Tomatoes (15 small grape tomatoes) *just throw in at the very end*

I added the juice of 1 lemon

A couple splashes of balsamic vinegar

little bit of olive oil

Some Bragg's Liquid Aminos (2 turns of the pan)

Salt & Pepper

Cumin

Mrs. Dash

Mix the Quinoa in when it is done (20 mins)

Mix all together. Enjoy!