Quick and Easy Vegan Tacos

When one is hungry, one tends to turn to tacos. (If one happens to be obsessed with any sort bean wrapped in any sort of tortilla, as I am.)

Unfortunately, when one is broke because one goes out for too many drinks and takes too many cab rides home after working late-night hours, one cannot afford many ingredients for beautiful complicated taco fixins.

A typical drunken awesome night in which my net taco worth is zero.

Beautiful vegan tacos with loads of complicated & amazing fixins.
I can afford this kind when I don't partake in drunken shenanigans.

When I am hungry and want a taco, I am one lucky girl when I have these ingredients on hand:

Quick and Easy Vegan Tacos

1/2 cup beans (pinto, black, or refried)

1/3 cup daiya shredded cheddar cheese

2 or 3 corn tortillas/1 or 2 flour or spelt tortillas

1/2 cup alfalfa sprouts

1 t Earth Balance, oil, or nothing

2 T Nutritional Yeast

A few squirts Secret Aardvark Hot Sauce, or hot sauce of your choice, if you like hot sauce, which you probably should

Instructions

Using either precooked home made beans or rinsed canned beans, warm in pot on stove top over medium heat. Optional: add spices while cooking (common spices to make beans even MORE delicious are cumin, garlic powder, chili powder, cayenne, and of course salt and pepper) When hot, usually 4-5 minutes, remove from heat.

Meanwhile, heat skillet to medium heat with either 1 teaspoon Earth Balance; 1 teaspoon olive oil; or if you have a fancy nonstick pan or cook without added fat, nothing. Place first tortilla in pan, sprinkling with nutritional yeast for a sort of vegan cheesey coating. Once heated on one side, flip over. Place around 1/2 the cooked beans on one side of the tortilla. Add 1/2 the daiya cheese. Fold in half. Heat for 1-2 minutes. Flip when bottom side starts to brown. Once both sides are browned and daiya is melted, remove from heat. Open, stick in some sprouts and hot sauce, close, and take a bite.

How could I resist?

Repeat with 2nd and if necessary--or extra hungry--3rd tortilla.

Secret Aardvark Hot Sauce is not needed to make a taco delicious, but is a welcome addition.

Once you have your tacos, all made and melty and waiting for you to partake in their deliciousness, do a little taco dance. Then eat. 

This is what I look like eating a taco:

Rowr.

Of course, you can add anything slightly mexican-y to your tacos--black olives, romaine lettuce, mushrooms, bell peppers, vegan taco meat.... or anything not even remotely mexican-y--hummus, bbq sauce, chickpeas.... 

The world is your (vegan) oyster--experiment and have fun! 

* If you don't want to make tacos, and you live in Portland, and it's a Wednesday night, go to the Hawthorne Hideaway. Tacos are 2 for $1 and include TVP (texturized vegetable protein), romaine, fresh tomatoes, and salsa. 

Summer Blackberry Cobbler

Last Wednesday, my lovely friend Joette and I paid a visit to Sauvie Island. (You may remember an Autumn Trip I took out there a few years ago.)

The U-Pick Berry farms were sadly done for the season, but luckily for us she has a big truck and we both had a burning desire for berries. We pulled a bit off road and found a mecca of blackberry bushes and picked til we were dusty, scratched, sunburned and happy as could be.

I knew right away I wanted to make a cobbler, but the first chance I had was today. I just made a simple recipe with ingredients I had on hand. You could definitely do the whole lemon juice in the fruit, or vanilla in the cobbler, but I was out of both. I considered for 1/2 a minute making a blackberry violet cobbler, but my brother Ahi wisely told me to keep it simple.

So here it is, my simple summer blackberry cobbler.

Summer Blackberry Cobbler

1/4 cup raw sugar

 6 cups fresh blackberries

 2 tbs cornstarch

1 1/2 cup wheat flour

 1/4 cup raw sugar

 1/3 cup almond milk 

1/3 cup melted Earth Balance

 1/4 tsp baking powder

 1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Instructions

Turn oven to 400 degrees. While it's preheating, pour blackberries, sugar and cornstarch into 9" X 9" baking pan. Mix together and place in oven.

While blackberries are warming, mix remaining ingredients into a sticky batter. Gloop big spoonfuls onto the blackberry mixture. (Gloop is totally an adjective, don't worry.)  They should almost cover the pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes at 400 degrees  until biscuit topping is done. Serve with So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream if around. If not, serve on a plate and enjoy the essential taste of summer.

Serves: 2-8 
Calories: Does it really matter?

Recipe--“Anything But the Kitchen Sink” Salad

So you know when all the food in your cabinet is vinegars, oils, uncooked beans, nuts and maybe some dried pasta or canned foods? I hope for your sake you say no.

I, however, know that kitchen despair all too well. I’m currently money-less, so can’t really go grocery shopping (One of my favorite pastimes.The tragedy!). I did give in though because I wanted to remember what a vegetable tastes like.

At Whole Foods, I picked up:

• 1 bunch organic spinach
• handful cremini mushrooms
• 1 head of cabbage
• 1 carton Almond Milk
• 1 package corn tortillas

It set me back like 13 bucks, which wasn’t too bad.

I came home, and threw together this messy meal:

 

“ANYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK” SALAD

• 2 cups fresh spinach, washed and shredded
• 1/2 can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 5 cremini mushrooms
• 1/4 cup salsa
• 2 corn tortillas

Heat the beans in a saucepan over low heat (heat the other 1/2 can and save for leftovers, if so desired). I didn’t add any spices, but you totally can. Chop spinach and slice mushrooms, throw onto a plate. Once beans are warm, dump on top of bed of spinach. If you have a gas flame, turn down and place tortillas directly over flame until warm. (If you don’t have a gas range, wrap in a clean dish towel and place in oven on 250 for 5 or so minutes.) Top your thrown-together hot mess with salsa. Grab a fork and enjoy! 

Poor (Wo)Man’s Pasta

 

So the other day, I was S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G and had very little food in my house to eat. Rob was hungry too, so I wanted to make something really filling.

Say hello to my little friend: Poor (Wo)Man’s Pasta!

 

I made a quick cheese sauce (Earth Balance, flour, nutritional yeast, water, mustard, miso, salt and garlic) while boiling the pasta. Once the cheese sauce thickened, I threw in some of Nate’s Meatballs (from the Grocery Outlet—one of my favorite places in the WOOORLD!) to warm up. Once the pasta was cooked, I drained it, threw in a can of black beans (protein! fiber! genius!) and some garden spinach before tossing it in with the cheese sauce.

It was incredibly filling, pretty easy, and surprisingly tasty. I would have thrown whatever I had in there, but this combination actually worked out quite well.

breakfast sausage patties

So if I haven’t mentioned it yet, I’m recipe testing for Happy Herbivore’s new cookbook.

Her recipes are all so easy and so quick. Each one utilizes ingredients that I always have at home, they’re extremely time-efficient, and they always come out great.

The kicker? Her recipes are all fat-free. Wha?! Yep, she makes the most creative and delicious fat-free and vegan dishes!

Okay, enough raving. (But I do seriously love her and what she comes up with).

I made these breakfast sausages for a breakfast discussion group I attended a few weeks ago. They were incredibly easy, prolific (yes, I’m making that word work in this case. So there.), and were, of course, fat-free.

Breakfast Sausage Patties

Her cookbook comes out next fall.

~~~

Our breakfast that day was superb. The Spicy Vegan and I made breakfast for six of us. She made roasted potatoes and a tofu scramble (AMAZING) and I made Happy Herbivore’s breakfast patties and nessie mcmuffins (My mcmuffins are the things wrapped in foil on each plate).

And yes,that is Portland’s own Secret Aardvark Sauce on the table.

Close up:

 

Housekeeping

I had a very busy weekend! Therefore, there’s no winner yet for the Missionary Chocolates. Sorry! I’ll announce the winner soon, I promise. Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet entered, it’s not too late. Thank goodness for my procrastination, huh?! :)

Also, here’s a post of my easy vegan nachos recipe. I made these for Game Night last week, and everybody seemed to like them.

Also, I went out to Out to Pasture Farm Sanctuary yesterday. If you’re a friend on Facebook, I put up some pictures. The host was gracious, the animals were adorable, and the mud was rampant. It was beautiful.

Here’s one of my favorites:

Okay, I’ll be back later today or tomorrow with the winner of the Missionary Chocolates giveaway!

What do(n't) vegans eat?

Inspired by Katy and Michelle, the organizers of Blogger Vegan 4 a Week or a Day, I’m blogging vegan today. Of course that’s not different than any other day of my life, but I thought I’d give you a glimpse into what vegans eat.
Yes, that’s right. You might even say….. It’s PHOTO ESSAY TIME! Holla! If I had planned this out for more than 2 minutes this morning, I might have cooked some really fun stuff or had something awesome to show you guys. But, I didn’t. So you’ll get a lot of basic ingredients I have around the house, and a back log of some of the food I’ve eaten this year.
These pictures include travel to Canada and Turkey, as well as eating out, drinking out (of course) and eating in.
Scroll over a picture for a description of what it is, how to use it, who made it, or where it was.

EATING AT HOME

 

    

CARB GOODNESS

 
 

FREEZER GOODNESS
 

SMOOTHIE GOODNESS
     

~~~

HOME-COOKED FOOD

 

  

EATING OUT AND TRAVELING

 

          

And finally, two extra-special yummies:
THE SPICY VEGAN’S CREATIONS

I know, right? *drool*
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Hungry yet? If you have questions or want any recipes, give me a holla. You can see that I definitely don’t lack anything in a vegan diet. In fact, I eat more of a varied, healthy, and tasty diet now than I did when I was eating dairy and cheese.