Vegan Mac n Cheese

Hello everyone!

The finals are over, and you know what that means!!! I have time to cook!!!

I'm not vegan, and I'm not gluten free.  Also, mac n cheese is definitely not one of my favorite dish esin the world... I know.. how could I not like this All-American dish?! but anyway, I stumbled upon this recipe from Minimalist Baker, and it just seemed so interesting!  I mean, cheese sauce made of eggplant?  How cool is that? and the photos looked so good!!  So I decided to try it out  =)

Even though I grew up eating the Korean eggplant, I have yet to successfully incorporate the American kind into my cooking...  It always catches my eye though when I'm in the grocery store, and I was glad for a chance to actually go ahead and grab it and take it home this time ;)

I also grabbed some brown rice pasta because,, well, it's made of rice.  so it can't be bad, right?  haha

Oh, and I had to get nutritional yeast, and boy that was an adventure.  Who would've thought Trader Joe's would not have nutritional yeast!  I mean, that sounded like something TJ's would definitely have!  Danielle was helping me locate it, and eventually, we had to go to Whole Foods to find it, but find it we did!

The recipe is not too complicated, but it did take an hour and a half or so to make... I think it might have been because it took FOREVER to caramelize the onions, but it was totally worth it!

mmmmmmmm   so. yummy.

all I had to do for the eggplant is slice it, salt it, broil it, and peel it!  I may have eaten a few just roasted like this before I could peel  it...  and it was glorious. 

I followed the recipe pretty closely, so I won't reprint it.  just check it out here, but I did make a few changes, of course ;)

For one, I added fresh garlic (2-3 cloves) to the sauce before putting it through the blender, and I loved the taste.

and instead of leaving the pasta like this,,

I added kale and baked it for 10 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees!

The resulting dish was surprisingly good!  As a kale lover, I loved the added texture and flavor that the kale gave to the dish, and I have to say, I actually prefer this mac n cheese to the normal super cheesy ones!  =)

Hope you are having a great day, and let me know if you try this recipe out!  =)

--Janny

4 Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookie

Hello everyone!

The thing about moving out is that it takes more than 1 day to pack everything you own and move out of your house. But while you are packing stuff away, you still have to live...  so it's the art of balancing what needs to be packed away first, and what needs to be packed away last, and etc.  However, there comes a point where the interests clash, like yesterday when I wanted to bake cookies.

I don't have butter, I don't have eggs, I don't have flour (they've all been given away last week because I didn't think I would need them anymore.. I should have known better!), but I still wanted cookies.  I suppose I could have just gone to the store to buy those ingredients, but it seemed wasteful to me to go and get new boxes of all of the ingredients when I knew I would only have time to make 1 batch of cookies!  So I just had to make do with what I had (plus a new bag of chocolate chip cookies, but I know I'll go through that before I leave.  I mean, it's chocolate.  haha)

And thus, this 4 ingredient chocolate chip cookie was born.

I really wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I'm happy to say that it's actually surprisingly good! and the best part?  it's pretty darn healthy!  =)

So this is what you are going to need.

• 3 ripe bananas
• 2 cups of oats, blended in the food processor
• 1/2 cup of almond butter (could also use peanut butter)
• 1 cup of chocolate chips!

yup, that's it.  could not be simpler, right?

so let's begin by preheating the oven to 350.

then, pulse those 2 cups of oats in your food processor.  You don't have to do this step if you don't want to, but this kind of makes a substitute 'flour'.

Mash the 3 bananas with 1/2 cup nut butter of your choice, then mix in the oats.

Lastly, stir in the chocolate chips!

I must say, it looks pretty legit, doesn't it?

After that, all you have to do is shape the dough into a cookie shape.  Remember, the dough isn't going to expand or flatten out, so really make it into the final shape you want

Pop it in the oven for 12-14 minutes, and voila!

I've tried my hand at 'healthy' cookies before, but this is the best one so far!  AND I got my cookie fix without having to go buy a whole lot of ingredients before I left town  ;)

I hope you enjoy the recipe as much as we did!

Thanks for stopping by!
--Janny

Easy Curry Recipe! (can also be vegan!)

Hello everyone!

What I really love about blogs is that every time you read a blog post, it's like you're reading a story, a slice of someone's day, or their thoughts.  It's much more comprehensive than a Twitter update or a Facebook status update, and personally, I find it to be much more engaging and waaay more interesting.  It's also a great way to keep up with what's happening in your friends' lives if they live far away, and you guys don't get to talk very often. I'm personally quite awful at keeping in touch, but through the blogsphere, I have been able to keep up with what's happening in a couple of my friends' lives, and I absolutely love being able to do so.  It would be so amazing if every single one of my friends kept blogs!  *hint hint* ;)

Anyway, a couple of days ago, one of my friends from undergrad, Kalen, posted about eating healthier/going vegetarian/pescetarian, and also talked about this documentary called "Forks over Knives".  I was intrigued, especially since I had just gotten off of my detox, and what they were advocating sounded very similar to the diet I was on during detox. So last weekend, David and I popped ourselves down with a bowl of homemade curry for dinner, and watched it.

Wow. What an interesting documentary! It's about eating a plant based diet, and how much that can change our feeling of well-being and our health for the better.  A couple of doctors used only the plant-based diet (no meat, modified sugars, or starches) to treat patients with high blood pressure, diabetes, hyper tension, and even cancer, and surprisingly, they had a lot of success in treating, and even curing, these diseases with only the change in diet (no pills, no shots,,,).  What I found to be really fascinating was that their diet was basically my detox diet, but that they do it for years and years, and they don't have the big slab of ribs to look forward to at the end of 2-3 weeks like I did...  I do feel much better when I do detox, and that's why I keep going back to it once in awhile, but I'm not sure that I can do that every day of my life, for the rest of my life...  you know?  the meat (ribs, burgers, Bulgogi, Korean bbq...yumm) it just tastes so good...!  But the documentary definitely got me thinking, and though David, my skeptical scientist, was definitely more reserved about their ideas than I was, we're are going to try to go 'mostly' vegan/vegetarian from now on.

As I was thinking about different things you could eat while you were on this plant-based (vegan) diet, I realized that what we had for dinner could very easily be turned into a vegan dish!  Just take out the shrimp, and add either more vegetables, beans, or some tofu, and there you have it!  Perfectly healthy, yummy, and so easy.  We're going to be making the vegan version soon  =)

Easy Curry Recipe!  (also vegan option)

Ingredients
2 Tbs Sesame oil
1/2 onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp curry powder
3 tsp ground cumin
1 Tbs turmeric
1 Tbs red pepper powder
1 Tbs peanut butter
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes
1 (14 oz) can coconut milk
1/2 cup cashews
1 cup frozen vegetables
1-2 stalks of green onions, chopped.
1 pound of shrimp, or chicken, or cubed tofu (and add 1 more cup of your favorite kind of beans if going vegan)

Let's begin throwing things into the skillet!

1. Heat the sesame oil in a large skillet over medium heat, then add onions and garlic to cook for a few minutes.  If you are adding raw shrimp -like I did- or cut up chicken, add them to the skillet after a couple of minutes (if going vegan and using tofu or more veggies, you can wait to add them until later).

2. While the meat and the onion/garlic mixture is cooking on low-medium heat, mix together all of the spices (salt, ground ginger, chili powder, cumin, turmeric, and red pepper powder) in a small bowl.

3. Once the meat is done, add the spices mixture and mix, mix, over low heat.

4. Add the can of diced tomatoes, the coconut milk, peanut butter, and cashews to the skillet, and simmer over low heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently.   If you like the curry a bit thicker, you can add some flour or corn starch to thicken it up a bit!

at this point we added some more red pepper powder and some more cumin because we wanted it spicier

5. After simmering it for 10-15 minutes, throw in the frozen veggies and the green onions! (oh, and if you're doing the tofu version, add that now as well.)  Simmer for a few more minutes.

6. Tada!  the finished product. So much curry--perfect for left overs.

7. Enjoy with your family or friends (or by yourself.  more for you, right?), over hot rice, while watching that documentary.  And if you made the vegan version, you can feel extra awesome while watching that movie!!  ;)

Happy eating!
--Janny



update::
I made the vegan version with extra beans and roasted veggies, and it was AMAZING!