Vegan Mofo Day 5! Making my own All Hail Kale Salad!

Since I love Veggie Grill so much but don't live close enough/and also can't afford to go everyday, I decided to try and make my own all hail kale salad. I found a recipe for the dressing here: http://www.estherandjacob.com/allhailkale/. I didn't have all the ingredients for the dressing but it still came out pretty close to Veggie Grill's recipe, which made me so very happy. :-) For the salad all you'll need is kale, red cabbage, carrots, walnuts, and cooked quinoa. After you get all of your salad ingredients into a bowl, pour the dressing on top, and massage the salad for about 4-5 minutes. The salad will shrink down so you will probably want to use more kale than you think. I can't wait to make this again! It's almost like having Veggie Grill at home...almost. ;-)

Chopped kale, carrots, walnuts, red cabbage, and cooked quinoa. 

After massaging the kale salad with the ginger dressing. 

Look how much is shrinks! 

Kale salad with roasted veggies. 

Taking Mom to Veggie Grill! Day 4

Veggie Grill...sigh...It's impossible not to love this place! The food is fresh and absolutely amazing. Vegans and Non-Vegans all over la la land are constantly hitting up different locations just to devour their delicious cuisine. In fact, my sister (who is not vegan) took me on my first trip to Veggie Grill and she almost eats there more than I do. So, this is definitely the place to take any of your friends. My mom doesn't live close to LA so when she visited for her birthday, I had to take her to one of my faves. I wasn't too worried about her liking the food because it's scrumptious. But, sometimes you just never know. No worries though, cuz she loved it. Woo Hoo! Check out my first post about Veggie Grill...there's a video :-) http://veganwhat-stephanie.blogspot.com/2011/10/veggie-grill.html

Mom loves it!

My mom ordered the corn chowder soup and all hail kale salad. 

My favorite! The buffalo "wings" and all hail kale salad. 

If you ever visit LA please please please stop by The Veggie Grill! You'll love it! :-)

Chickpea & Quinoa Dinner. Vegan Mofo Day 3!

Sometimes I come up with the yummiest meals when I'm hungry and I can't think of what to make. This often makes me get super creative when trying to make something fresh and new for dinner. If you check my facebook page then you know I use chickpea patties for lunch and dinner every week. It's best to make a big batch of them, because you can freeze them up and thaw when needed. I have a recipe from the Tone It Up Nutrition Plan, but there's plenty of recipes online if you're not a part of their plan. For this dinner I wanted to make something quick, because I was starving and didn't feel like waiting a long time for a hot meal, so this recipe will be nice and quick. I mashed up two chickpea patties and cooked them in a pan for a few minutes. I added some pasta sauce and stirred the mixture until the sauce done. Then I threw in some broccoli and let simmer a few minutes. I scooped up this goodness and poured it over some leftover quinoa and topped it all with parsley and nutritional yeast. This came out even better than I thought it would. Yay, score one for new recipe! :-)

Vegan Sushi at Kabuki!

Shojin is hands down my favorite vegan sushi place. If I could, I would hit them up every week...maybe even every other day. But, alas this is sadly not the case. For my sister-in-law's birthday, I unfortunately missed another Shojin opportunity when she decided to have her birthday dinner at Kabuki. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find a few vegan options. I ordered the Fresh Spring Roll which was very refreshing. I also ordered a vegetable sushi roll.

Vegan MoFo Day 1!

Woo Hoo! Day 1 of Vegan MoFo (vegan month of food) is here! I'm starting the week off with something most of us start with...Breakfast! I love all types of breakfast foods, especially pancakes...mmm pancakes. Breakfast burritos are also a favorite of mine and I love ordering them when I'm on the go or making them for a Saturday morning brunch. The breakfast burrito below was a team effort. I cooked all the goodies going inside the burrito and my hubby swooped in to wrap them up nice and tight. Okay, let's get to it! I chopped some potatoes, rubbed them with a little olive oil, seasoned them, and spread them on top of a baking sheet lined with parchment paper in a 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes. While the potatoes cooked up, I took out some tofu and veggies. After chopping the veggies and squeezing the water out of the tofu, I added the veggies to a pan and sauteed them until they got a little soft. I crumbled the tofu on top and continued mixing until the tofu was finished. Once the food was ready, my hubby warmed up some tortillas in the microwave and laid them out. He likes to use two tortillas for better wrapping but you certainly can stick with one if two is too much for you. Next, he layered the tortillas with the potatoes, tofu scramble, fresh spinach, salsa and guacamole. And lastly, he wrapped up the burritos and quickly handed me mine, after watching me salivate. Yum! It was so delicious. :-) What do you like to put in your burritos?

Tofu Scramble with green peppers, tomatoes, red onions, and portobello mushrooms. 

An almost perfect wrap. Some of the burrito insides did spill out, but it was just the condiments, so the good stuff was still inside. :-) 

Healthy Stuffed Mushrooms

What did you have for dinner last night? Well, I had some very tasty stuffed mushrooms. Earlier in the week I made another crock-pot full of Chili to last me and the hubby a few days. But, Thursday night I wanted to mix things up, so after my workout  decided to whip up some stuffed mushrooms. I had evening plans and  knew I wouldn't have time to come up with an extravagant stuffing to fill them with, so I ended up just using some leftover quinoa and frozen chickpea patties.

After thawing the chickpea patties, I chopped up some garlic, shallots, and tomatoes. I threw them into a pan and let them saute with some spinach. When the spinach was halfway done I crumbled the chickpea patties and added them in. While the stuffing was heating up I put a little water in another pan and sauteed the mushrooms for a few minutes. Once everything was ready for the oven, I put some parchment paper on a baking pan and loaded up the mushrooms with some leftover quinoa and the chickpea patty stuffing. I placed the mushrooms into a 450 degree preheated oven and let them cook for about 15-20 minutes. I paired them with some steamed broccoli. :-)

Chili Night & Happy Herbivore's Cooking Demo!

Sunday night I whipped up some delicious chili in my crock-pot. It's been a while since I've had any warm and hearty chili, so my belly gladly welcomed it with opened arms.

Check out the recipe here: http://veganwhat-stephanie.blogspot.com/2011/12/crock-pot-cooking-chili.html.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending Happy Herbivore's Live Cooking Demo at Whole Foods. I've been a fan of Lindsay's for a little while now and I love her idea of making yummy vegan food in a low-fat and healthy way. I have a couple of her books so I was very excited to eat some of the yummy recipes I've been reading about, from the author herself. Want to see what I ate??? Check out the pics and video below!

Minestrone Soup.

Healthy "Cheesy" Mac & Cheese

Quick & Easy Pad Thai

4 Ingredient No Bake Cookies

Black Bean Burgers

Me with Lindsay

I had a great time! I would have taken more pics but the crowd was so quiet in the beginning that I was embarrassed to take a picture with my loud camera.lol Next time I won't be so shy and I will definitely have a book for her to sign :-)