Leftovers Vegan Omelet

or 'Nomelet', as I like to call them.

In recent years I have become an oatmeal convert. Once a week I bake my steel cut oats and have eight glorious days of heat 'n eat breakfasts. I've become so enamored with the baked variety that I no longer feel the need to eat it with a heaping helping of Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter and berries. Nope, the banana custard that forms on the top is so wonderful that I enjoy my morning square of yummy as is with a side of fruit and enjoy a spoonful of nut butter later either as a mid morning snack or part of a smoothie.

But some mornings I wake up, the pull of my morning coffee and oats breakfast the only thing propelling me out of bed and to the kitchen, to find that I forgot to bake up my oats before the last batch was devoured. Like this morning. I won't lie. I had a little panic moment. I thought I could just make some steel cut oats and hover in the kitchen for 30 - 40 minutes, but no steel cut oats and only frozen bananas in the house meant I'd have to eat something else.

Over the years I've made  both VWaV's Spanish Revolutionary Omelet and Fat Free Vegan Kitchen's crustless tofu quiches so many times I could make either in my sleep. I love them both and have wowed many an omni with their deliciousness at numerous gatherings. Somewhere along the way I stopped following the recipes though and have made many a Nomelet sans recipe with leftovers from nights' dinners passed.

Remembering the Crash Hot Potatoes and Roasted Broccoli still in the 'fridge from the other night, as well as a half block of tofu still wrapped in a dish towel in there from my Buffalo Tofu post, my sleepy light bulb flickered.

I've never thought to create a recipe for what I do, I just put things in a 2 cup measuring cup and whizz away with my immersion blender. This is the Vegan Month of Food though and my untheme feels like it wants to be 'Every Post Has A Recipe' (not something I managed to do in blogging days of old), so I figured I should pay attention this morning and share with you one of my favorite ways to clean out the fridge and enjoy breakfast. While not speedy enough to recommend for daily pre-work dining, one could make the tofu mixture the night before and cook the morning of while getting ready. One could also make the day or night before and nuke. This stuff is pretty great leftover, cold or at room temperature, too.

You could use a food processor, blender, immersion blender or even just mush the tofu in your hands until it resembles ricotta then stir in your other ingredients. It is a pretty forgiving recipe, and I've never had one turn out badly. Sometimes I even have a pesto or sauce on hand to drizzle over it. Most often though I just blanket in fresh ground pepper and dig in!

Leftovers Vegan 'Nomelette'
serves 1 hungry person as a super hearty breakfast or 2-8 as a brunch side dish

6-8 oz (about half a block) xtra firm tofu, pressed*
1/4 - 1/2 c. plain non-dairy milk, I use Almond Breeze Original
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp onion powder
2-3 pinches black salt, this gives it an 'eggy' flavor but sea salt will do just fine
1 T chickpea flour
1 T nutritional yeast
1/2 T olive oil
approx. 1/2 - 3/4 c. leftover veggies, steamed, sauteed, or roasted
(today I had one small hot crashed red potato and about 1/2 c roasted garlicky broccoli)

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Lightly oil non-stick skillet. (I use my 10 in. cast iron. make sure yours has a metal handle! ;)  I've also made these in an 8x8 pyrex casserole dish successfully but they brown best in a skillet.
3. In a tallish container (like a 2 c measuring cup), add crumble tofu, 1/4 c. almond milk, and all other ingredients but the leftover veggies.
4. Use immersion blender to blend to a thick paste. Add non-dairy milk one tsp. at a time to achieve desired consistency. It really will depend on how much of the water has been pressed out of your tofu. My tofu had been wrapped in the fridge for four days so it was fairly dry. You want a thick paste that's barely wet but workable so I added almost 1/2 cup total almond milk to achieve that. It will be sticky but fairly easy to work with. Trial and error here works best as some people may want theirs firmer or less so. 
5. Stir in leftover (cold) veggies. I have done this right in the measuring cup, but today emptied it all into a bowl to show you what it looks like all mixed up.
6. Scrape tofu/veggie mixture into oiled pan and spread evenly across the pan. Yes, it will be a bit sticky. Yes, things like broccoli will make it try to pull holes in your omelette. I often just wet my hands a tiny bit and spread and pat until it's even. 
7. Lightly spray or brush top with olive oil and put into oven.
8. Check in 25 minutes. You want it to be a nice light yellow color with browned ridges. If it's not quite ready, bake for another 5 minutes. No more than that or it can dry out.
9. Carefully remove from oven (for the love of Pete, keep a mitt right where you'll see it so you don't forget and burn your entire hand badly while boxing up your home and moving. True story).
10. If your pan is truly non-stick this should slide out easily. May require a little coaxing with a spatula. don't be afraid to just flip it onto a large plate if that feels like it will help it hold together best. And again, use heat protection. You know, just in case I'm not the only one preoccupied in the kitchen. 

The outside of these is lightly crunchy and the inside is soft and eggy. Best part, I cleaned our refrigerator of leftovers AND got a yummy, healthy, protein-packed breakfast.

Oh, and it's kitty approved.

CJ* or Ceej loves sharing breakfasts. and lunches. and oh, you get the idea.

*That's our handsome calendar kitty, CJ. Ceej knows a good Nomelette when he swipes one. We found CJ one afternoon chasing butterflies in the parking lot of our Orlando apartment about 10-11 years ago. He was bigger than your average kitty. Not fat, just big. Gorgeous coat, beautiful eyes, and swatting to catch his fluttering play thing. Unneutered, I vowed to have him fixed if I saw him again all intact and then put him back. A couple weeks later, while a crazy electrical storm was brewing he showed up outside our apartment again. This time his coat was dirty, he was still big but dirty, and still intact. Before he really had wanted nothing to do with us, but that day he came right to us and nearly crawled in the nap of a friend who was with me (Hi Bethie! you've been his guardian angel more than once!). We took him in, got him fixed, and put up flyers to see if anyone claimed him as their own the management said they'd seen him but noticed he'd been outside more often than not lately. They figured he had been abandoned by a UCF grad or someone who'd left the complex. We knew he was the newest member of our family and wondered what his name was. After a couple of days of calling him any name we could think of we figured we had to give him a new one for him to learn. (Made me sad, surely he had a name!) The Cap'n and I were sitting outside one afternoon talking it over, wondering what would best suit this beautiful but kind of aloof new love of our lives. A Citation Jet flew overhead and I asked him what kind of plane it was (he's always schooling me, I'm always forgetting), and when he told me we just knew his name was CJ. Ceej is our calander kitty, never takes a bad picture and is so beautiful. There's plenty more to his story since his joining our crew, but I'll save that for another day. 

Vegan Parma Rosa Sauce

(and my second attempt at ferina de ceci, or chickpea flatbread, but that's another post)*

Chickpea Flatbread with Vegan Parma Rosa

Have you tried countless recipes for 'The Best EVER Vegan Mac 'n Cheese!'? Yeah, me too.  I can honestly say I've made so many different varieties, they're all pretty much a jumble of nutritional yeasty, beany, veggie, cashew-laden cream sauces in my head. I'm glad I blogged a few of them or I'd never be able to distinguish one memory from another.

I really haven't met one I didn't like.  I'm never looking for it to taste just like the mac 'n cheese of my pregan days, but I am looking for something that I could eat over and over again as the recipes usually make a ton of sauce, and I'm the only one in the house really eating it. Typically, I like eating the same thing for days as batch cooking means one day of serious kitchen time, the rest of the week just salad prep and play time with my family. Usually though, with vegan cheeze sauces, I'm meh about them come day two. Especially with the cashew based sauces. They're too sweet. Too......cashew-y. I love me some cashews, but for me, the flavor gets old. fast. 

As was the case when I tried this recipe. It was great that first night, mixed with white, red, and black quinoas, tossed with sauteed red bell pepper, carrot, and broccoli.

It was creamy, mellow, but maybe a tad too sweet. I tried to cut the sweet with a little extra lemon juice, and it was really good. But I knew I wasn't really wanting to eat it for days. 


Enter a jar of sun dried tomatoes. I always have them on hand for salads, pestos, and the occasional creole sauce. In a grand stroke of Let's See What This Does!, I took about 6 oz. of the sauce and added 2T of the tomatoes. They're packed in oil so I blotted them with paper towels first then combined them into the sauce with my immersion blender. Next, I added about a tsp each of oregano and basil. 
I tasted it. 

Parma Rosa, plated. I really need to stop watching Top Chef) with roasted broccoli and Crash Hot Potato.

Suddenly I was transported to my earliest twenty-something days when the Cap'n and I worked at a pizza joint all night and slept most of the day away. We lived on ramen, canned things, and the ever popular $1 a packet Knorr Parma Rosa Sauce (I'm a horrible Italian, what can I say?). That sauce transformed pasta into restaurant-style dinners. Adding a green vegetable made us feel like we were living it up. I once even tried to mimic a favorite beach side eatery's house pasta dish by adding artichoke hearts, black olives, mushrooms, and feta and totally thought I was getting my gourmet on.

Knorr's little packet of delicious always tasted great to me. This? SO much better. Even the Cap'n raved. I don't have a picture, but it was amazing on pasta. It was even better on chickpea flatbread and pure hors d'vours heaven with herbed broccoli and cauliflower I threw together before friends came over. I think we have a winner. 

Vegan Parma Rosa
3-4 pasta servings
6-8 side dish servings

3/4 c. raw cashews
(soaked overnight & drained if you don't have a high speed blender and want it super smooth)
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano or majoram
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 3/4 cup almond milk, unsweetened
1 1/2 T arrowroot
2 T olive oil (I use a very mild variety, not EVOO)
2 T light miso
2 T lemon juice
3/4 - 1 cup sun dried tomatoes**

1. Finely ground cashews in food processor.
2. Add nutritional yeast, onion powder, garlic powder, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, and pulse to combine.
3. Mix almond milk, oil, and arrowroot, and bring to simmer on high heat. Decrease heat to med lo and cover, stirring occasionally, until cornstarch is dissolved (about 7 minutes).
4. Running food processor, add heated mix to contents and blend.  Add miso, lemon juice, and tomatoes. Blend for 2 minutes or until sauce has reached desired consistency. Should be on the thicker side but still run off a spoon just fine. 
5. Use as sauce for pasta or for drizzling over veggies or for topping pizzas or flatbreads.

*A big fan of Socca (I'll have a post about my favorite use for that, too!), I have had fun tinkering with chickpea flatbread. When I make it next I'll be sure to post about my flatbread journey. Not all recipes have worked in my favor.  :)

**I always have the oil-packed variety on hand and blot well with paper towel, but placing the dry dried version in hot water until they plump up, draining, then using will work just as well. Adjust oil in recipe to get desired consistency. 

Vegan Hot Dogs (with recipe!)

Vegan Hot Dog. My inner five year old is ecstatic!

Labor Day at our casa started out pretty sweet. A sunny day with just enough breeze to make one happy to be outdoors on a typically sweltering South Florida holiday.  Me, T and the Cap'n spent time outside cleaning out and detailing my car, even breaking out the carpet cleaner to finally get those grease stains off the front seat from that time I brought some marinating tofu to a family gathering, and it leaked. Everywhere. 

We had plans to spend the day together in the pool after all our hard work was done, but as is typical of the Sunshine State in September, crazy thunderstorms came rolling in and all activities were moved inside. 

Nothing that a delicious but simple Labor Day dinner couldn't fix! The Cap'n fired up his grill for things that only omni's eat, and I steamed hot dogs, something I'd always wanted to try. T shucked the corn while I cut up what turned out to be this summer's finest watermelon.

Mmmm, mustard. Some sweet onions made them perfect.

I've made plenty of vegan fauxsages in the past but hot dogs never really occurred to me.As a kid I loved hot dogs with lots of mustard. Remembering that I'd seen them on the PPK forums, and digging up this recipe, I tinkered a bit and really enjoyed the way they turned out. The texture was spot on. Spot. On. Not mushy like store bought veg brands. The flavor didn't scream 'hot dog', but I haven't had a hot dog since the mid '90's. I think as far as mouth feel and overall flavor once bunned and dressed was really great. It wasn't 'gluteny' which I worried about without the sausage flavoring that usually carries fauxsages.  I got a nice 'skin' on mine by lightly sauteing them in a tiny bit of coconut oil after they'd cooled a bit from the steaming.  I plan to freeze some of the leftovers and look forward to boiling them to thaw and then throwing them on my grill. Everything good tastes even better with char lines, no? 

A bit of Lime Cilantro Coconut Butter on my corn on the cob and I'm convinced I'll never be enjoying this summer crop with vegan margarine ever again!

Vegan Hot Dogs

 Makes 8 Dogs

5T almond meal

9 oz xtra firm tofu

2T shoyu

3T canola oil

1.5 tsp sugar

1 tsp arrowroot

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp Hungarian paprika

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp mustard powder

3/4 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp cardamom

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cumin

1/4 c. water (+ 1-2 T if needed)

1 c. + 1 T vital wheat gluten

1. Add all ingredients but gluten to food processor.

2. Blend, scraping down sides as needed, until it becomes a smooth mixture.

3. Scrape contents of processor into large bowl.

4. Add gluten and mix to combine well. You should have a very soft dough. If needed, add water one tablespoon at a time to achieve desired texture.

5. Knead softly only until all gluten is absorbed

6. Divide dough into 8 equal portions.

7. Roll each portion into a log, careful not to make longer than steamer basket.

8. Wrap logs tightly in cheesecloth and secure or parchment then aluminum foil, twisting the ends to secure.

9. Place seam side down in steamer basket. (I laid mine four across and four on top of them at a 90 degree angle.

10. Steam, covered for 45 minutes. Allow to cool and eat as is or reheat in boiling water or on grill for 5 minutes.

I've never met a batch of seitan that didn't freeze just fine, so I froze some of mine with the intention of thawing in the future and reheating as directed above, 

Buffalo Tofu w/ Simple Vegan Blue Cheese

Dry Fried Buffalo Tofu with Simple Vegan Blue Cheese

I've always been a fan of buffalo wing sauce and blue cheese. As a vegetarian I could coat any manner of faux chik'n with wing sauce and top it with blue cheese, craving satisfied. As a vegan I craved it so much that I even created this crazy good, not even close to healthy vegan version of the real thing.  I have had more Buffalo Soy Curl Sammies than I really want to admit to you right now.

Lately, I have been learning to enjoy comfort food but by approaching it from a healthier angle. Inspired by one of my favorite chef's blog post, 15 Minute Crispy Low Fat Buffalo Tofu; no pressing required over @ Melomeals.

I'd already been dry frying tofu for a while. I remember stumbling across a YouTube video years ago that turned me on to the healthiest, simplest way to give to that restaurant quality 'skin' in no time at all. If  you own a good non-stick pan, you can do it. You just put your pan on med-hi heat and place tofu in pan (I wrap mine, after cutting, in paper towels to get some of the water out as my nonstick cast iron skillet is only barely seasoned and it's more 'non stick' when the tofu is drier), turning occasionally to evenly brown all sides. Done. Seriously, it's that simple. No more tofu soaking up needless oil rather than being coated with amazing flavor of your favorite sauce.

The sauce I used, also inspired by Melody, is simply some Frank's Buffalo Hot Sauce heated in a small pan with a teaspoon of my quick version of her Chipotle Lime-Infused Coconut Butter (and to think, I would have just thrown some Organic Earth Balance in there!). My quick version is pretty much her recipe, but I didn't have the chipotle peppers and had to make up for it by throwing in a pinch or two of powdered chipotle. Surely not the same depth of flavor, so I added a touch more lime and cilantro to mine to make up for that. 

When people think Buffalo Sauce and Blue Cheese they often think of.......celery! I hate celery. OK, that's not true. I LOVE cooked celery in soups and stews, and I really enjoy the flavor of celery. It's just the stringy texture that messes up that crisp celery thang it's otherwise got goin on. So, I improvised. A lover of fresh green cabbage, I cut some of that super thin and plated it. Then I tossed that with a couple pinches of celery seed on the plate. Light, fresh, crunchy, with a bit of celery flavor but none of that stringy, all-up-in-your-teeth texture. See? You hang out around enough great cooks' blogs and that genius just rubs right off! 

Oh, right! The Blue Cheese! This is where I'm going to ask you to just trust me. No, really. I have spent weeks staring at the recipes strewn across the internet, shaking my head thinking, "No. No way. Just....no. There is no way that's worth trying". Remembering how UNhealthy my original vegan blue cheese stand-in was, I decided to try it. If it failed, I'd have lost very little in the way of ingredients, so why not? The recipes go something like this: Place a bit of your favorite vegan mayo in a bowl, add a tiny bit of tahini, a few shakes of garlic powder, and a couple splashes of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar. So that's what I did. If I had to create a recipe, though I didn't measure with anything but my eyeballs, it would look like this.

Why Not? Vegan Blue Cheese

1/4 c. Original Vegenaise (or, about all that was left in my now watery Vegenaise jar)

1/4 - 1/2 tsp. garlic powder (or, shake, shake....shake, shake......shake, shake)

1 tsp. of tahini

1 tsp. of lemon juice

1 tsp. of apple cider vinegar

pinch of sugar (I always use Florida Crystals)

whisk well, taste and adjust.

I tasted it. Shut up. It didn't taste like the rich, thick, chunky blue cheese of old that my original concoction had managed, but damn it if it didn't totally work! Maybe I've been eating vegan food for too long. I took it to the Cap'n, my resident omnivore (and awesome husband who happily tries everything I make and always gives me his absolute honest opinion). I walked up to him, tiny spoonful of this vegan could-it-be blue cheese?,  and offered him the disclaimer, "OK, so it's in NO way, blue cheese, but tell me this. Doesn't it taste all.....blue cheesy?!". He tasted it. "You're right. Totally tastes all blue cheesy. Nice!". Didn't need much of the stuff, just enough to balance the heat and tang of the hot sauce with a little creamy goodness. 

And so my dinner was complete, and even better than what I was craving.

Welcome (Back?)!

Oats, in all forms and cold-brewed coffee are always on the breakfast menu.

Welcome, fellow MoFo'ers (and any poor soul that still stops by now and again to see if I have posted anything new. I'm lookin' at my sister. Hi Seesa!)! I wouldn't be me if I didn't wait until the very last minute to prepare for something I'm super excited about. And if preparing means lying awake at night dreaming up recipes and posts but failing to write anything down before sleep hits me like a cheap shot, then I am so damn ready.

Don't Get Mad, Get Vegan! Then & now.

I started this little blog back in 2006 as a way to catalogue and share my journey into veganism after being a vegetarian for nearly a decade. I posted frequently and often long-windedly, and really loved sharing in the amazing recipes and techniques, handy kitchen tools and new ideas that fellow vegans and I were dreaming up.

My baby T is five! We're all getting a LOT more sleep.

 In 2008 I had my daughter and shifted from full-time blogger to sleep-deprived mama just trying to get from one day to the next with everybody (that's me, T, the Cap'n, five felines, one goofy yellow lab, and for a few years there a couple of the most adorable nephews on Earth who I got to watch during the week) fed. Posting became infrequent, lurking even less frequent, but I have always had the kitchen be my Zen and vegan food be my mantra.  

Whole foods, comfort foods, failed experiments, and delicious successes have all been churned out of my tiny little Florida kitchen, if not always chronicled. I'm hoping to change that this month and post often.  I can't really promise a theme, but I can promise new ideas, revamped old ones, the dusting off of old cookbooks to discover new recipes, the cracking open of new cookbooks to embark on creating new staples (say it with me, Artisan Vegan Cheeeeeeese!), a focus on healthier meals, occasional diversions into things that satisfy my oh-so-sweet tooth, highlighted favorite kitchen tools, DIY beauty and household products and their reviews and any other thing a self-respecting, curious vegan might be interested in checking out (I hope!).

Oh, and kitty pics.  You can always count on me for kitty pics. 

Nope, you're mistaken. BanAnna in that middle pic is totally our sixth kitty.

 For today, while I organize my thoughts, dig through my woefully unorganized picture and recipe folders, and settle into this beloved place I've called my blog for so long, I welcome you to my kitchen, the place where the music is blasted, the food is healthy, delicious, and always made with love, the cat hair is the not-so-secret ingredient, and the space is limited. 

My tiny, sunshiney happy place.