Breakfast casserole recipe

We're having a para appreciation breakfast today at school, and I happen to be on the committee for this shindig. Well, as the emails started going around, listing what everyone was bringing, I began to notice a frightening amount of bread and sugar. Now, I love a good muffin or breakfast cheesecake (what - who even knew those existed??) but extra padding added to my muffin-top or a sugar-coma halfway through the morning of testing is not the best idea, IMHO. Then I saw that a few people were bringing breakfast casseroles. Yum - protein! But, also loads of meat, cheese, and eggs ... which is not exactly my cup of tea. Enter the perfect opportunity to bring a VEGAN breakfast casserole! I began scouring the internet for recipes (as I had already returned Vegan Brunch to the library...boo). There were some good ideas, but nothing that was exactly what I wanted. So, armed with a few good ideas, I came up with my own recipe! Ta-da! It smelled delicious as it cooked this morning, and I can't wait to try it! I've never brought a vegan dish to a gathering that was a big hit, so I'm not sure how this will go... if everyone loves it, great! If not, more for me!


Bethanie's Breakfast Casserole
* 1 pkg. soy sausage (I used Gimme Lean tube)
* 3 potatoes, washed
* 1 pkg. silken tofu, soft
* 1 red and 1 green bell pepper, washed and diced
* 1/2 white onion, diced (more or less to suit your taste)
* Nutritional yeast ( a few tablespoons...however much you like!)
* 1 tsp. chili powder
* 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
* 1 cube chipotle pepper seasoning (forget the brand...I'll come add it later)
* 1/4 tsp. turmeric (mainly just for color)
* 1 tsp. garlic powder
* 1 tsp. sea salt
* 1-2 TBS. ground flax meal
* 1 can diced tomatoes
* 1 c. (scant) non-dairy milk
* 1 c. Tofutti sour cream
* 1 pkg. Daiya shredded cheddar cheese (use as much as you like)


Brown the sausage in a pan. While you do this, poke the potatoes a couple times and microwave for about 5 minutes (depending on your microwave and how large the potatoes are). When the sausage is browned, remove it from the pan. Using the same pan, add a bit of olive oil and the peppers and onion (medium heat). Once those have cooked and softened a bit, add the tofu. Mix it all around with a spatula and add the spices. I added the flax meal because I was worried it wouldn't stick together enough when I baked it. Cook the tofu and veggies for about 5 min, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, remove the potatoes from the oven and chop into pieces. Spread them around the bottom of a greased 9"x13" casserole dish. Once the tofu is down, pour it into a large bowl and add the sausage, milk, sour cream, tomatoes, and cheese. Mix everything together and pour on top of the potatoes. (I refrigerated mine overnight, so I could just cook it this morning.) Bake at 375 for 35 min. Once I baked it, I also turned the oven to broil for 2-3 min to brown up the top. Enjoy!


Thoughts:
Now that I've tried it, I have some notes to make. It's a bit runny. Delicious, though! Potatoes should have been chopped smaller, so they don't have to be cut up while eating. Plenty of salt, but maybe up the other spices? Also, some of the potatoes are a bit crunchy. Nuke them longer, or bake the whole dish longer.

100-day vegan

I guess sometimes you just need a challenge to get your butt in gear. Apparently a New Year's resolution isn't enough for me to stick to being vegan. I really want to be a good vegan, it just requires re-training my brain and body to not want to eat/use animal products anymore. Habits are hard to break. Hence, a challenge - no one can back down from a good challenge, right?

100 days. No cheating by me - there are always slip-ups, I know, but for what I can control I will strive for 100%. Yay! I'll have to be creative at times, which will be fun! (Right?)

Right now there are yummy vegan lemon bars in the oven...mmmm! I LOVE lemon bars. So good! Yesterday's dinner was tomato basil cream pasta, which I got from Vegan Yum Yum (click for link to recipe). The picture I took doesn't look as good as the real thing, but it was DELISH!

Well, whatever - it's not letting me upload a pic.

This morning I made "Perfect Pancakes" from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's book, Vegan Brunch. They are always really good, but I think I may have mixed them a bit too long. They weren't as fluffy as last time. Dinner tonight is veggie burgers from 1,000 Vegan Recipes (Robin Robertson) and Krispy Kale. (I'm making a chicken sandwich for Daryl.) Speaking of the hubs, who is always supportive of my food choices but wasn't extremely keen on this "100 day challenge, he offered that if I stick to this 100%, he'll take me out for steak on day 101. Ha! :) I'm not so sure about that, but maybe it will help us both have a goal to work toward!

Time to go check on the lemon bars! Happy eating!

This is why I'm vegan...

Daryl and I ate pizza tonight for dinner. I had Tofutti (non-dairy cheese), he had Tombstone (pepperoni and sausage). I'd never tried Tofutti before, but it was pretty good (not as good as homemade, but since this is the last night of vacation I was feeling lazy). Anyway, as the pizzas were baking in the oven, I looked over the nutritional information on the back of the packages. It was pretty astounding, so I thought I would list some interesting parts here. As the title states, this is (mostly) why I'm vegan: 


(Amounts listed here are for 1 serving size, comparably. That works out to about 1/3 of the Tofutti pizza, or 1/5-ish of the Tombstone pizza.)
Calories:      180 (Tofutti)        277.50 (Tombstone)
Total fat:      7 g (Tofutti)        12.75 g (Tombstone)
Sat. fat:        2 g (Tofutti)        5.25 g (Tombstone)
Cholesterol: 0 mg (Tofutti)     30 mg (Tombstone)
Sodium:       320 mg (Tofutti)  600 mg (Tombstone)
Carbs:         24 g (Tofutti)      27.75 g (Tombstone)
Sugar:          6 g (Tofutti)         3.75 g (Tombstone)
Protein:       3 g (Tofutti)        13.5 g (Tombstone)


Keep in mind these are both prepared, pre-packaged, frozen meal items. Even the vegan one isn't going to be the best thing for you (hence the high sodium... but did you see the sodium in the Tombstone???). And the Tofutti pizza has more sugar than the Tombstone does, but it's such a small amount it hardly makes a difference. I'll gladly trade a lower protein content for less fat and 0 cholesterol, too! I'm not worried about the protein - I can sauté up some kale and beans, make a quinoa or couscous salad, or dip veggies in hummus for a snack. And these numbers don't even include all the crap in the ranch dressing I used to dip my pizza in! Wow - arteries, breathe a sigh of relief!


*Note: Tofutti does make their products with hydrogenated oils, which are pretty yucky. Some of their other products also include HFCS (yikes - blech) but this pizza did not. Again, NOT a health food by any means, but pretty nice in a pinch! 

NEW BLOG - GO CHECK IT OUT!!!

I created a place to write about all of my life, not just the vegan parts. :)
http://www.cetteviequejaime.blogspot.com/ It means "this life that I love" in French. :)

Go right now and read it! And then click on "follow this blog" so it looks like I have friends. Not that I need that to feel validated. It's just nice.

Life is happening all around us

Hence the delay in posts. It has also become apparent to me that my previous blog design was very popular and everyone was copying me. So it was time for a change.


School is busier than I ever imagined. My cravings for non-vegan food have been pretty intense and I have given into temptations on many occasions. The problem with this plan is that I actually like "regular" food this time, whereas last time I didn't. It's hard to cook my husband's pizza without eating a piece of it. Or 2. Or 4. Yes, that has happened a few times. And then we ran out of the vegan version of something, so I used the regular version. That doesn't happen that often, and it's usually coffee creamer. Plus, money is always tight and vegan food substitutions are very expensive. $6 for a personal-size soy cheese, rice crust pizza? And $9 for the full-size version??? Are you kidding me?? Maybe we'll just make pizza at home from now on.... 


Anyway, I feel guilty about cheating. I don't know if it really makes a difference in my health to eat vegan all week except for 1 or 2 meals here or there. When I do eat non-vegan food it makes me feel like a faker. That is what I do care about. But, my goal in all of this was to keep it affordable, and make a change for the better in my health. 


At church yesterday (we go on Saturday nights) the pastor preached about fasting. I've fasted certain things before (a particular kind of food, facebook, soda, etc.) but never a whole meal or more. I tried, but it somehow just didn't happen. I'm not saying being vegan is equivalent to a fast, but it is an effort to control what I put into my body. I don't want to be controlled by anything, but instead serve God. Like 1 Corinthians 6:12 says (paraphrasing), "Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial". That kind of sums up my approach to veganism for me. So I'm trying to do better. And also update this blog more. 

One week down (Tofu Scramble recipe)

Well, it's been a week! It's gone pretty well, we've been eating good, and I only caved once and snuck a pepperoni off my husband's pizza. Him and his friend even went shopping for me while I was at work on Friday and got a bunch of vegan stuff I needed! There was a lady shopping in the store who helped them, who was apparently a vegan, but she had him buy pizza that wasn't vegan. (It has caseinate in it, which is derived from milk.) I ate it, though, since he thought he was getting the right thing. It was so sweet of him to go shopping for me! 


This morning I made a tofu scramble. I've seen recipes for several here and there, so I just threw some things together. The recipe is as follows:


* Extra firm tofu, diced into small pieces (how much you use depends on how hungry you are - I used about 1/3 of a block, but that was a little too much)
* 3/4 tsp. turmeric
* 1/2 tsp. garlic

* 1/2 tsp. herbs de provence

* Salt and peper to taste
* Roma tomato, diced

* 1-2 scallions, sliced
* Sprinkling of Daiya mozzarella cheese
Heat skillet with canola oil over medium or medium-high heat. (This came out a little soft this time, so in the future I think I will increase the heat at first, then turn it down.) Add tofu and scramble until it begins to cook and brown slightly. Add spices, stirring to mix, and cook a minute more. Throw in your veggies (bell peppers or mushrooms would be really great in this, too). Add cheese at the end - it doesn't take long to melt.


This was really good, the only thing I think I'd change is to increase the heat at first to see if I could cook the tofu to a little bit firmer texture. My husband even tried it and said it was good! Yay!

Last night I had a craving for brownies after seeing some non-vegan ones at church, so I made some last night. I followed this recipe, but the consistency turned out a little funny. The taste is very good, but they were really goopy when I first took them out of the oven. Now, after being in the frig all night, they're a little too chewy. I'm not sure what the problem is... I'll have to play with them a little bit more. Look for an update on those soon!

VEGAN!

Well, Monday has been here and is now gone. The transition went over fairly smoothly, and I must say I have been doing very well. The only thing I've missed so far is ice-cream (or chocolate, I'd take either one), so it looks like I'll have to try some coconut milk ice cream the next time I'm at the store. Dillons actually has a better selection of vegan ice-cream than Hy-Vee does (shocking, I know). Hy-Vee far surpasses them in all other areas of health food, however.


I've been in back-to-school meetings all week so far, and they aren't even close to be over yet. I was worried about finding foods I could eat when they provided lunches for us, so I've been packing little snack-type foods for myself. There has always been something there for me, however, so that's been nice. I actually got to talk to some teachers about being vegan yesterday. I sat down at our table with my plate of veggies, PB and crackers, and fruit leather and the first question they asked was if I was on a diet. I explained I was vegan, and they were actually really interested. One of the other guy teachers even informed me that Tony Gonzales (formerly of the KC Chiefs) is now vegan, because he thought it helped his performance! How cool is that??


Lunch time is wrapping up for me now, so I need to go prepare my mind to soak up more new information. Off I go to another meeting this afternoon! (I will put up the recipe from last night soon, until then you can access it here. Scroll down the list, it's in alphabetical order. )