My friend recently moved and decided she no longer needed her waffle maker, and I was the lucky recipient! I’m a little concerned she’s going to demand it back after she sees these photos though – these waffles have such a great taste and texture you could easily serve them to anyone, dietary restrictions or not. I’ve always enjoyed waffles with a bunch of stuff piled on top, like fruit and whipped cream, but you can also get away with the standard drizzle of syrup to sweeten them up:

This recipe does call for a little bit of coconut milk, though, so I can think of no better way to use the rest of the can than by whipping it up into a delightful whipped cream topping. In fact, let’s start with that! If you keep a can of coconut milk in the fridge, the fat will solidify on top like so:

Scoop that layer off with a spoon and then pour the remaining liquid into a little bowl:

For the waffles, scoop out three tablespoons of the solid fatty part and whisk it into the liquid, then add enough soy or almond milk to equal two cups total. Set that aside. If you want to make whipped cream with the rest, then add a teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of agave nectar or maple syrup, and whisk it with a hand mixer until it fluffs up into a delectable whipped cream texture:

Naturally, you don’t have to just use this for these waffles, this stuff tastes great on lots of things! But let’s get back to those waffles. Mix together your dry ingredients (those will be a few GF flours and starches, some baking powder, and bit of salt) and then in a small bowl combine all the remaining wet ingredients and a bit of ground flaxseed. Blend it all together and you’ve got yourself some waffle batter! It’s a bit on the thin side, but it puffs up nicely once you cook it.

You’ll have to follow the instructions for your waffle iron since they are all a bit different – I found that on medium heat mine took about 5 minutes or so, but just cook them until they turn a nice crispy golden brown. Don’t be tempted to check them for at least 2-3 minutes though or they might pull apart because they aren’t cooked well enough. Not that I’m ever impatient with baked goods or check things too often.

Then just go to town with whatever you want to top them with, whipped cream, nuts, fruit, syrup – the world is your oyster. Or your vegan gluten free waffle, as the case may be.

So roasted chickpeas have been all over the internet for a while now, but I never got around to trying them myself – and now that I have, I wonder why I waited so long! They are a delightfully crunchy, flavorful snack, perfect for packing in a lunch or to take on a hike. They are also easy and versatile – just drain and rinse a can or two of chickpeas (or soak dried ones overnight), toss them with whatever flavorings you like – I used salt, garlic powder, and paprika, but you can use tons of things. Chili powder, lemon juice and dill, onion, black pepper – they go well with almost anything so it’s a lot of fun to experiment and play with various flavors. Most of the recipes I saw called for oil but I didn’t use any and it worked great – just toss slightly damp chickpeas in with your seasonings and spread them out on a cookie sheet like so:

Pop them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 45-60 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes or so (this part is important – if you don’t stir them occasionally they won’t cook evenly and you want them all to be nice and crunchy but not burnt) and you’ll end up with something like this:

Not the most gorgeous thing in the world, but once you throw them in a little bowl they look just fine – kind of like nuts, really. It’s amazing how the chickpeas go from soft to crunchy, they really have a satisfying texture!

So if you haven’t tried these yet, please don’t be like me and wait forever! If you have, do you have any favorite seasoning combinations I should try?

I buy and cook with enough produce that I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on how to store most things and how long they last (you’ve all been using my handy printable storage chart, right?) but I have to confess that lettuce and leafy greens in general were my biggest weak spot. I could not get them to last more than a few days, and I referred to my crisper drawer as “where greens go to die.” Not good.

I felt like my problem was two-fold. One, most of the stuff I’d read said to not wash or chop your greens until right before you eat them. Which made every salad seem like a little bit more of a chore than I really wanted it to be – it’s one thing to wash and chop a whole bunch of greens at once, it’s another to have to do it for each and every salad. At least if you’re as lazy as I am! The second problem was just that even unwashed greens seemed to wilt and get unappetizing remarkably quickly, or get completely forgotten in the depths of the crisper drawer.

So the first tip is to get a salad spinner, which I used to think was a superfluous kitchen gadget but now find incredibly useful.

The secret to making it so useful is to really utilize all the functions – you can chop up a head or two of lettuce or other greens and rinse it right in the spinner’s colander, then spin it dry and just seal the lid on and keep the whole thing in the fridge. Greens stay fresh and crisp in there for up to a week! The best part is that it’s already chopped and rinsed so you can just grab a handful or two for any salads or other recipes and be good to go.

The only downside to this is that the salad spinner is a bit big so you may not have room in your fridge. But fear not, that’s where my next tip comes in! Did you know you can store leafy greens in glass jars? I saw this tip in a couple of places around the internet but for some reason was convinced that it wouldn’t work – I felt like my greens would wilt and get gross that way. But I was definitely wrong! It’s really that easy – you can chop, wash and dry most greens (I’ve done it with spinach, chard, kale, and iceberg so far) and then just shove a bunch of them into a mason jar – you can fit quite a bit into a quart sized jar, you’ll be surprised – and they honestly stay fresh and crisp for a long time. Mine look pretty much exactly the same a week after I put them in the jar!

So if you love spinach, kale, chard, and all those other fabulous leafy greens, but don’t like how quickly they wilt, try these tricks and let me know if they work for you!

I love soups, especially the kind where you can just throw a bunch of stuff in a pot and walk away, and come back to a flavorful and healthy dinner. This soup delivers admirably on that front – you just toss dried split peas, carrots, onions, celery, and maybe a potato or two into a pot:

Add some water and spices, and let the whole thing boil for about an hour or two and ta-da! You’ve got hearty and satisfying soup. If you’re feeling fancy, and want that smoky sweetness that ham adds to split pea soup (without the ham, of course), caramelizing the onions first is one way to add some of that flavor. You could also add a chipotle chili (the kind in adobo sauce) to give it a great kick and some fun depth. You’ll know it’s done once the peas have broken down and the whole thing looks like, well, split pea soup. I didn’t blend the soup or anything, it just softens and gets like that on its own with enough time.

So you’d think that egg salad, which is made with eggs and mayonnaise (which is also made with eggs) might be a little hard to make if you don’t eat, well, eggs. Turns out you’d be wrong! This was surprisingly convincing – I thought using tofu instead of eggs would require a lot more seasoning to mask the tofu taste, but once you get the mayo and mustard in there it’s pretty darn egg-salad-like. But way easier because there’s no boiling and peeling all those eggs!

You just crumble some extra firm tofu in a bowl (after giving it a good squeeze to remove some of the extra water) – don’t bother crumbling it too small, you’ll smash it up more as you add the mayo and mustard.

Then add about a half cup of vegan mayo (you can buy it or easily make your own with my recipe) and 2-4 teaspoons of mustard (to taste) and a bit of salt. The mustard will make it yellowish like egg salad, but you can also add a pinch of turmeric if you’d like it even yellower.

You could stop right there and have a very nice egg salad-y filling for sandwiches or on top of crackers, or you can add any of the things you might like in egg salad – minced cucumber, pickles or relish, paprika, garlic and onion powder, or maybe a dash of curry. One thing I saw suggested in a few places is to add black salt, which I had never tried before but am now super excited about. It adds a sort of deep sulphuric flavor that makes the salad seem a bit more “eggy” – I think it would be fantastic in lots of places, like tofu scrambles or even sprinkled on top of lettuce wraps or in soups!

For my salad I added minced celery and pickles and a bit of onion and garlic powder and it was delicious. I also went for a deviled egg approach and dolloped a bit on some gluten free crackers and sprinkled it with paprika – so good! This would be a fun Easter party appetizer for sure.

Of course it also works great on sandwiches or wraps, or even just spread on a celery stick as a quick and easy snack. It keeps in the fridge for a few days so feel free to make a big batch and have easy lunches all week!

So you have an urge to make something requiring overripe bananas, like banana bread, or my german chocolate cake. But you don’t have any overripe bananas, and you don’t want to wait a few days to ripen them in a paper bag. It happens. Luckily the magic of science has provided us with a solution to take regular or even slightly underripe bananas and get them where we want them in an hour.

Simply spread your bananas (with the peels ON, please) on a cookie sheet and pop them in the oven at 300 degrees for an hour. Yeah, really, that’s all it takes. They will come out looking frighteningly black:

But don’t worry, on the inside they are nice and soft and sweet. The heat from the oven activates the sugars in the banana, simulating the ripening process. You can stick them in the fridge for a few minutes until the bananas are cool enough to handle, and then peel them open and see, not burnt at all! Just soft and ready to mash into whatever recipe you’ve got a hankering to make.

This doesn’t work with completely green bananas – they do need to be at least mostly ripe to get the desired results. But since they are usually close to ripe when you buy them, this shaves off a few days of waiting! How many of you already knew this trick? Anyone have any other simple kitchen tips that save time or effort to share? I’m always looking for new pointers!

So these are like meatballs – but made with beets! Hence, beetballs. If, when making or serving these, you feel compelled to loudly and repeatedly sing (to the tune of the old Batman theme song) “Dana Nana Nana Nana….BEETBALLS!” just know you do so with my full understanding and support. Also I’m sorry if I just put that in your head.

Oh, you mean I should actually show you what they are and how to make them? Sorry, got distracted for a second there. Aside from the fact that you have to pan fry them, these are pretty easy to throw together. Just combine some black beans, an onion, and a couple of shredded beets in a large bowl like so:

You can also throw in a handful of parsley or some spinach, it’s a great way to sneak in some greens. On a side note I wonder why it is that greens get such a bad rap? People are always talking about ways to sneak them into food, like they are so healthy but just taste awful and need to be masked. I love leafy greens! They taste great! Raw, sautéed, baked…they are so flexible and really just as tasty as any other vegetable group. So I take it back – don’t sneak any greens into these beetballs, add them proudly as another delicious ingredient that adds flavor and complexity to the dish. Okay, side note over, back to the recipe.

Blend up your beet and veggie mixture until it’s thoroughly pureed. It’ll be pretty wet, so then you can add about a cup of brown rice flour (or any other flour) until you get a sort of ground-beef texture. Or ground beet texture. Seriously, it rhymes with meat and is only one letter away from beef, the hilarious puns just write themselves. It even looks a little like ground beef, only smoother and quite a bit more fuchsia:

That’s your base – you can now shape it into balls, patties, pretty much whatever you want. Haven’t tried it as a loaf yet but I suspect that would work too. To make beetballs just roll about a tablespoon of the mixture into a ball and sauté it in a pan with some oil over medium-high heat. I have made these in a cast iron skillet and a stainless steel pan and both worked great. The outsides will darken up to a blackish/reddish color fairly quickly:

Once they are evenly heated you can serve them immediately – in spaghetti, with gravy, whatever you want to do. You can also shape them into patties and pan fry or grill, just like a burger. This recipe makes about 30-40 meatballs or 6 patties, and you can shape the raw dough and freeze it for later if that’s more than you need.

If you make burgers, they go great with my thousand island dressing or my chipotle mayo!

Dana nana nana nana….BEETBALLS!

So apparently I’m on a dressing kick lately – first my raspberry vinaigrette, then carrot ginger dressing, then mushroom gravy, and now I’ve figured out how to make thousand island dressing without any dairy so I just have to share that! I’ll try to control myself for the next week or two. Beyond that I make no promises, though.

I know I always say how easy everything is, but since the whole point of this blog is to post recipes that are so simple and quick that anyone could make them, it’s usually true. This dressing is no exception – you literally combine oil and soy milk in a food processor or blender, then add some lemon juice, vinegar, ketchup, and sweet relish, and TADA! You’ve got a very convincing rendition of thousand island dressing, ready to slather on your favorite veggie burger or salad.

You could always add your own twist to this until it’s exactly how you like it – add some onion or garlic powder, or a dash of hot sauce, or a splash of balsamic vinegar…it’s a pretty basic recipe that can handle lots of fun tweaking. But if you’ve been missing that lovely pink dressing since you quit eating dairy, your suffering is now over!

My first attempt at making vegan gravy was, to put it nicely, gross. A weird blend of broth, spices, and nutritional yeast, it was kind of orange and runny and just generally nothing anyone would want to eat. Certainly nothing you’d want to serve to your omnivore friends unless you wanted to really convince them that vegans are crazy. This gravy, on the other hand – wow. Worlds better. I actually served it this past Thanksgiving and everyone was asking for seconds and thirds.

I usually go with a bag of frozen mixed mushrooms for this both for cost effectiveness and convenience, but I’ve made it with fresh mushrooms and they work too. Either way, you just throw ‘em in a pot with about three cups of broth and one of water (technically I’m sure you could use all broth or all water, this is just the ratio I like to use) and boil them for maybe 20-30 minutes until the mushrooms are nice and soft. You can also add some roughly chopped onion and garlic and let that simmer along with the mushrooms – you’ll be blending it later so you don’t even need to work that hard chopping them fine.

I had just added the onions when I took that photo so they are all on top – there’s actually lots of mushrooms under there too! Once everything has boiled for a bit, stir in a quarter cup of flour – I used brown rice flour, I think most flours would work – along with some salt, white pepper, and nutritional yeast (I couldn’t resist using a little…) and blend it all together with an immersion blender or by transferring it to a regular blender a little at a time. Please keep in mind that hot liquid expands when you blend it so be very careful. Either way, you’ll end up with a mixture like this:

Hey, it looks like gravy! At this point you have a couple of options – you can call it done it as it is, let it simmer longer to thicken more, or add about 3/4 cup soy milk to make it a little bit lighter and creamier. If you do this you’ll probably want to let it simmer another 10-20 minutes to thicken up a bit, or add a little more flour or cornstarch if you’re impatient.

This makes about 3 cups of gravy, depending on how long you let it boil down. It’s also really flexible – use different seasonings, different amounts, it’s not finicky. It keeps well in the fridge for at least a few days – mine has never lasted longer than that because it’s too good to resist eating!

So if you were looking at my last post and thinking “man, I wish I had a quick and delicious lettuce wrap recipe to use that with!” (You were thinking that, right? Of course you were) Today is your lucky day because I just so happen to have a quick and delicious lettuce wrap recipe to share.

This one is even made without tofu, so you can make it for your tofu-phobic friends and they won’t have to feel like they are eating weird vegan food. These are a great dinner party appetizer because you can serve the lettuce and filling separately and everyone can assemble their own wraps with as much filling as they like.

So first you’ll chop some veggies in the food processor – I used leek, carrot, parsley, mushrooms, and garlic, but you could really use a lot of different things. Onion, asparagus, bell pepper…it’s really very flexible so use what you have. Blend them up until they are chopped fine but not pureed.

Then take a medium skillet over medium heat and add your veggie mixture along with some fresh or frozen corn and heat it all up until it’s nice and warmed through. At this point you can stir in some sesame oil, rice vinegar, and if you’re in the mood for some spice a nice squirt of sriracha sauce (make sure to use vegan sriracha)

You can also throw in some chopped walnuts – I found that they added a nice crunch without being too obviously nutty. Once everything is nice and warm, transfer it to a serving bowl and serve along with a plate of romaine leaves (I like romaine but iceberg lettuce leaves could work too – anything that is firm enough to hold the filling and has a little bit of a crunch to it).

This would also make an excellent lunch option, it really only takes a few minutes to throw together but has a lot of nutrition and flavor! As I mentioned above, my carrot ginger dressing goes very well with these too.