Vegan food posts for Starchivores who follow Dr. McDougall, Dr. Esselstyn, Rip Esselstyn, Chef AJ, and others - recipes or links to them and photos when available.
I loved Jeff Novick's Fast Food Burgers, and after I bought the DVD, made a different batch each week on Sundays for a few months. No matter how I made them, what spices I added, they still tasted like mushed up beans. Then for some reason, the half-batch I would always put away in the freezer for the future would start getting crumbly when I tried cook them up, and we stopped having them. It sort of coincided with the three of us getting the flu, too, and nobody wanted to eat a burger that had been made by either one of us sickies. We ate packaged burgers for a while because of the convenience, but once the flu left me for good (knock wood) I started cooking other foods for our Sunday dinners. On the same page as the Fast Food Shepherd's Pie that I wrote about yesterday, I found this Fast Food Loaf recipe, using Jeff's Burgers as the loaf mixture.
Fast Food Veg Loaf
We took Jeff’s recipe for burgers as our base. We doubled the recipe, added 2 more tbs of liquid and added poultry seasoning. Walla! Veg Loaf! What we did: This worked for one loaf pan or 6 large muffin molds (we used a silicone muffin tray, worked out great!) –
*This is Jeff’s recipe doubled:
Pre-heat oven to 350
Ingredients: Two Can Eden Foods Organic Kidney Beans, No Salt Added 1 Cup Cooked Brown Rice (short grain works the best) 1 Cup Regular Oats 4 TB plant-strong tomato sauce (we just used Pomi tomato puree) add 2 TB more of tomato puree (veg) Poultry seasoning spice. (we just covered the entire mixture)
Mix together and then mash with a potato masher. You could also use a large fork, or your hands will work just fine!
In a loaf pan: spread a thin layer of tomato puree, then pack in your loaf mixture. In a muffin mold: if you are using non stick or parchment paper liners, put enough veg loaf mixture to fill up each mold, pack it into each mold.
Cover the top with a thin layer of tomato puree (you can also use bbq sauce if you like).
Bake for 35-45 minutes.
My changes: Goya No-salt added instead of Eden beans Juice and small tomato bits from a can of Hunts no-salt added diced tomatoes - about 6 tablespoons to the bowl before all the dry stuff started mixing Ketchup to the bottom of the pan and top of the loaf And since I haven't had a silicone loaf pan in over 10 years, when the last one got sticky and tacky, I used a sheet of parchment paper draped over the sides and bottom of the loaf pan to not only make it non-stick but to have an easy handle to lift the loaf out of the pan after it's cooked. I then did what Jeff says to do with his burgers - I popped the filled loaf pan into the refrigerator for a bit while the oven pre-heated. I don't know if it makes a difference, but it can't hurt.
Looks pretty good so far. It's much firmer than any other loaf recipe I gathered from on-line, and no nuts like loaves from the Magic Loaf Studio. And here's the finished product, all ready to be sliced up and served with baked potatoes, veggies and cranberries in the shape of the can, as Ernest says.
It sliced up quite nicely with very little crumbling, a rarity for veg loaves. As for the taste? Well, mushed up beans. But my husband loved it and ate 4 slices - half the loaf. I ate one, and he's eating the leftovers over the weekend. He does want me to make it again, weekly if possible (Um, no), so the next time I do make it I'll be sure to add a buttload more spices. Maybe that'll help.
Are you people sick of hearing about Jeff Novick's meals yet? No? Good, because today I'm posting about his Curry Sweet Potato Burgers, one of the specialty burgers taken from his Fast Food: Volume 2: Burgers and Fries DVD. The recipe for this particular burgers in on the PDF file on the disc and is posted on this site. This is the first time I'm making this particular version of his burgers. I got the DVD when it was initially released earlier this year, but it was during the months when I was sick with the flu. Yes, months. I started the week after Christmas 2011 and was sick for 6 weeks, well for about 2 weeks then started all over again, sick another 6 weeks, better again for just a few weeks then my husband and I were both sick with it. He was so bad he had to call in sick from work for a whole week, something he's only done once before in our 35 years of marriage. Anyway, I only made Jeff's burgers about 3 times, the first with his original recipe, which is slightly different. The next 2 from his Basic Recipe from the video. Don't get me wrong - the burgers are delicious, but hand-squishing those beans when one has cervical neuritis in the neck and degenerative disc disease up and down the spine was a chore. It was so much easier - but not healthier - to just buy a package of McDougall-approved frozen burgers (and sometimes a brand that wasn't on the approved list) those rare times we had a burger dinner.
While looking for another of Jeff's videos the other day I rediscovered the Burgers and Fries one and realized I never saw it with a clear head, so popped it into the machine. Of course looking at those gorgeous burgers made me yearn for one again, so I decided to pop an Aleve and make up a batch of the Curry Sweet Potato ones. I already had some leftover mashed sweet potatoes in the freezer in those tiny 1-cup storage containers, so took one out to defrost. I have a supply of curry powder I got from Penzey Spices already on hand, and always have a load of canned beans in the pantry in my Cansolidator.
The finished product. Well, shaped but uncooked. They'll stay in the refrigerator for a while, then get popped on the Calaphon non-stick griddle for a few minutes, then flipped. I have lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and whole wheat Kaiser rolls for hubby, Ezekiel English muffins for me. I was going to get whole wheat pita or naan bread but the store had neither when I went, only white flour versions.
I also made up some spiced up steak fries from the DVD, too. I know the photo isn't that great but I had to be quick as my husband was already grabbing some out of the bowl. On the russets I used garlic powder on half of them, curry powder on the other, and for the sweet potatoes, half had curry powder, half had pumpkin pie spice. These were as big a hit as the burgers! The only problem we had was that the burgers were SO filling! Next time I'll plan on just one burger each, and hubby already requested we use these burgers without rolls just served on a plate with the fries and some veggies. He likes Jeff's SNAP curry recipes and says this is a pleasant change of pace.
Next week, maybe the Southwest version. I already got some hints on what to serve them on in this thread on the McDougall forums. I already have the spice, a nice Southwest mix from Penzey's.
Casserole weather is here! When the leaves start turning it's time to relight the oven in the un-air-conditioned kitchen, and the second most-requested casserole to toss in that hot oven is Jan Tz's classic Minnesota Hot Dish. The most requested is Isa's Chickpea Broccoli Casserole, McDougallized, of course, by omitting the oil and breadcrumbs and dumping the other ingredients together with a bag of hash browns, like this recipe. Jan first posted this recipe way back in October 2003 in the original McDougall forums at VegSource.That particular forum was replaced by the Fat Free forum for a while and eventually disappeared completely from any menu, but the old messages are still there in hiding, just like those of the McDougall forum. You can find a lot of Jan's original recipes over there - she only reposted a handful to the "new" (6 years old) official McDougall forums.
Subject: Recipe: Minnesota Hot Dish Date: October 21, 2003 at 4:36 pm PST From the Land of 10,000 Lakes (and 100,000 swamps), where the mosquito vies with the loon for State Bird, I bring you... Minnesota Hot Dish, that staple of church socials and funerals everywhere: 2 Boca Burgers, original vegan 2 good-sized potatoes, peeled and sliced handful of chopped onion 1 can (about 1.5 cups) condensed vegetable soup (I used Vegetarian Vegetable) or any vegetable soup/broth Preheat oven to 375 F. Lightly grease or spray a small casserole dish. Nuke the Bocas with the onion for a couple of minutes, until they are mostly cooked. Put the potato slices in the bottom of your casserole. Put the burger/onions on top. Then pour the soup over all. This is not a particularly "liquid-y" dish. Cover and bake for 45 min. Uncover and bake another 15 minutes. This dish is really really filling and meaty. Very much comfort food for me in East Central MN. * ~ * ~ * ~ *
This recipe was written back when Dr. McDougall still allowed things like Boca Burgers and Gimmelean meat substitutes. Many of us old-timers had packages of burgers and chubs of both "beef" and "sausage" Gimmelean in our freezers and used them in a few different meals each week. I still keep some Gimmelean and Lightlife Smart Ground in the freezer and when I see they've been in there for around 6 months, defrost a pack and use it in one of the old tried-and-true recipes. I was never a fan of Boca Burgers, especially when they stay in the freezers of our local grocery stores so long they're freezer-burnt before I even purchase them. Instead of a few whole potatoes I used a bag of frozen Southern-style (diced) hash brown potatoes. Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup is the soup of choice for this recipe, and just last week I grabbed some at Walmart at the price of 3/$1. I used 2 cans and swished about half a can back and forth between them to rinse out all the little bits of soup, alphabet pasta and veggies that stayed behind when I poured the soup out. They're a bit higher in sodium than Jeff Novick allows, but there's such a small amount in each serving, I can live with it and just drink extra water the next day.
A few shakes of Frontier brand dried onion pieces finished off the ingredients. I always buy these in bulk bags from the company so they're always on hand, even when my newly bought fresh onions magically turned moldy on the trip home from the grocery store. I use my largest Pyrex mixing/casserole bowl, stir everything up until it's well mixed, then cover with parchment then foil and pop it all into the oven. Jan says her isn't a particularly "liquid-y" dish, but with the bit of added water and the good mixing, all the stuff gets nicely distributed and nothing is dry. There's just no watery sauce or gravy so no need for bread for sopping any excess up. Because of the soup and the crumbles, this isn't a meal I make on a steady basis any more. In fact, this one is the first I'm making in over a year. It's a surprise for my husband, who had complained about all the very veggie meals I'd been making lately. Because this is the mid-point in VeganMoFo with a lot more very veggie SNAP meals to come, I figured he needed a good dose of starchiness and salt, real comfort food, for me to get back in his good graces.
I forget when or even why we started to name our closets - I guess I read it in a children's book somewhere and someone else was naming their closets to distinguish one from another and we started doing it in this family back when our son was young (He's now almost 30 so you see we've been weird a long, long time.)
This closet is located in the "third bedroom," as it was described by the owner, when in actuality you can't even fit a twin sized bed in it. An army cot, maybe, but that's it. So it became my craft/sewing storage and computer room, and the closet became our food pantry, because we have so few cabinets in the kitchen. We can fit our dishes and storage containers and that's about it. Our pots and some things like the casserole dishes and ovenware are stored in the not-connected dishwasher. The previous owners disconnected it from the water supply about 20 years ago when they discovered the drainage in this apartment sucked and every time the dishwasher was used it flooded the kitchen. Instead of taking it out and putting another cabinet in there he left it so when the house was sold to the current owner he could say the apartments had dishwashers. The same deceit occurred when it came to "heat included" with the rent - this tiny room isn't connected to the radiator system but has an electric baseboard radiator installed that is on OUR electric account, not the one for the house in general that the owner pays for. We had it on the first month we moved in and our bill was over $300 for a balmy April. Our bill dropped almost $200 the next month when the heater was turned off completely and it's been off since. I'll wear a sweatshirt when it gets cold out here!
Back to the pantry closet.
In the photo you get the full frontal view, so to speak. The closet extends another foot or so in each direction, too, making it hard to get things in and out of those spaces, so I keep rarely replenished things there, like extra storage containers, plastic shoeboxes of supplies, like tape and tiny notebooks and greeting cards.
But the main areas - ugh!
One thing we McDougallers have plenty of are canned goods. We use lots of beans, and most of us seem to prefer the easy way out and use canned. We use lots of tomato products, again usually canned, although since Jeff's Fast Food video I've been using a lot of boxed Pomi tomatoes. I keep canned fruit on hand because fresh produce around here is lousy and it's easy enough to find water-packed fruit in cans and no-sugar added applesauce. Other things in my pantry include bottles sauces and dressings, boxes of non-dairy milk, containers of old-fashioned oatmeal (Plus the boxes of instant that my husband prefers). And I have to share this closet with some boxes of craft supplies, too.
It's a pain, trying to make sure the new stuff goes to the back, older stuff used first. It takes a long time to put groceries away each week because I have to unload a pile of cans to put the new things on the bottom and rotate the stock.
I've had enough!
I'm now researching those rotating can systems that I've read about in articles by survivalists and Latter Day Saints groups. I envy people who have systems like this:
or this:
or even this:
But I think the best thing I can do right now is just get some can rotation systems. THIS SITE has a whole blog about it as well as a PDF file of plansyou can use to make your own out of cardboard. Here it is in action:
This guy makes one using his own pattern, one that doesn't require glue and duct tape:
But I'm lazy, and not very adept with an Exacto blade and have the scars to prove it, so I'll probably wind up with a store-bought system. I like these, by CanOrganizer. But it's a one-size-fits-all kind of thing when it comes to the size of cans. Here's a guy with a whole closet-full of them:
It looks nicer than before, but I noticed some of the organizers on the lower shelf there were popping open on top.
I would love to have one of THESE but don't have the money or room for even the smaller ones.
What I will probably wind up with are a few of these Cansolidators. 2 of the Pantry Plus size will fit on that top shelf
and one of the regular Pantry size on the middle shelf, putting the larger and non-canned items around it. This guy shows how they're put together and how much food one of the small 40-can units holds:
The price of these units will be worth it if it straightens up that mess. It might even save me money, as I won't be finding 5 (or more!) years outdated cans hiding in the corners any more. When I did some rearranging this past summer I found cans in there I moved with me when we moved into this place. I know that because they were dated 1999 and from the grocery store we used to go to when we lived in Florida! We've been back in Jersey since April 2000!
I have my husband convinced we need to do SOMETHING with poor old Irving. He does like the look of the Cansolidators but isn't too keen on the money. Maybe I'll have my son make up one of those customized cardboard ones to show him how it'll look. As I unpack all the aunt's stuff we moved over to this house we'll have plenty of empty cardboard boxes with no further purpose in their lives.
