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Lasagna with an eastern twist (and a lot of hidden vegetables)
Can you even imagine being tired of classic lasagna? It’s pretty hard for me, but maybe some of you want something different. Or you like Middle Eastern flavours like cumin, cinnamon, tahini and mint, but you don’t feel like cooking an entirely new dish. Maybe your family is picky and they will only eat food that is at least similar in form to something well known. Who am I kidding, the recipe is just perfect for everybody. A nice, rich filling with strong taste from all the spices, creamy yoghurt tahini sauce and fresh mint on top. And the best thing about it? Over 300g of vegetables per portion. If…
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Quick vegan chocolate milk (aka the magic of transforming sweet potato into a drink)
Any fans of chocolate milk here? I’m surely addicted to it – especially the Oatly one! Despite its deliciousness, store-bought chocolate milk is not even remotely healthy enough to make drinking it a sustainable habit. And there is also the issue of packaging: to my knowledge, all chocolate milk brands sell their products in tetra paks, which are hard to recycle. So here I present you a relatively guilt-free and easy way of making your own chocolate milk: creamy, sweet (but low in sugar) and containing fiber. You may be sceptical about the sweet potatoes, but trust me: you will forget they are there. For me, this particular vegetable is…
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Basic vegan cookie dough and ice cream sandwiches (gf option, safe-to-eat-raw option)
I’m addicted to Ben&Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream and their cookie dough ice cream sandwiches. The availability of those products in the Netherlands was seriously one of the points I considered a pro when I decided to move here. But the fact that they are milk-based was really something that bothered me a lot as I started to move in more plant-based direction with my diet, and well, their ingredients list is not very appealing in general. This frustration made me test over and over cookie dough recipes that could serve as a basis for vegan alternative. I wanted to make this recipe as versatile as possible. First, it can…
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Sweet/sour/spicy tofu in pineapple-sriracha sauce
Asian cuisine is one of my favourites to massacre in the kitchen (with Italian being the close second). Probably there is no single dish that I can make properly, yet I really enjoy cooking in this improvised, Europe-ised and chaotic way. I also have never been to Asia, so my whole idea about the food from this part of the world is based on restaurants located in Europe, which presents a variation far, far from the original. A staple in those places – the sweet and sour chicken – is something that has made it to the collective memory of everybody who ever stepped into one of those pseudo-Asian bars:…
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Carbonara ersatz for lactose haters
Pasta carbonara is one of those Italian classics that are notoriously being prepared wrong. The list of sins is long: adding cream, using bacon and not guanciale, skipping the eggs in the sauce, I have even seen people who put vegetables in the dish. And here comes another one of this abominations to Italian cuisine. In my defence, this time twisting of the recipe has a good reason: the version I present you here provides a carbonara substitute to those who cannot digest lactose or prefer not to eat diary. It would be more honest probably to call it “creamy pasta with bacon and pepper”, but using the term carbonara…
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Vegan boeuf bourguignon (practically indistinguishable from meat version)
I know that the statement in title of this post may seem too optimistic at best. However, this is true: this dish will fool majority of meat-eaters, even if they ate the original boeuf bourguignon, a French beef stew with red wine. The remarkable similarity to meat was noticed both by my boyfriend and my coworkers at a Christmas party. I decided to put the recipe here before Christmas, in case you want to troll your family or show them a nice, festive vegan dish perfect for people who miss conservative food and don’t crave falafel and hummus everyday. The recipe is really easy and involves maybe 10 minutes of…
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Almond & walnut granola (zillion percent less sugar than in store bought one, yet still tasty)
My boyfriend is a big fan of all dry things made from grains: dry oats, dry pasta, beschuitjes or sucharki, dry cereal. And of course, granola. I’m rarely afraid of sugar (you should see me casually eating a whole chocolate in the afternoon), but actually the amount of sugar in store-bought granola is crazy. Our favourite (Jumbo own brand nut crunchy muesli) is 10% sugar. The “Eat natural” (sic!) one – 12%. I just cannot justify eating this for breakfast (would make a nice dessert though). So I made my own version – does 4.4% sugar sound better? Don’t know why, but I always thought making granola is a big…
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Baked kidney beans salad (an answer to “where do you get your protein” questions)
I bet you know the feeling when somebody sees you eating a non-meaty dish and start with the topic of protein and long satiety, which of course are impossible to get from plant-based meal. Well, beans are your answer. This salad is crazy filing, especially if you add a hummus-based sauce to it (I just mix hummus with warm water to get a more liquid consistency). Warm up a pita bread and you won’t be hungry till the end of the day. I don’t like eating it for lunch, because then my appetite for dinner is completely gone. Should have eaten smaller portions. Oh well. The beans itself are delicious…
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Apple cinnamon banana bread (that is good enough for guilt free breakfast)
Disclaimer: this is not a fluffy type of banana bread. The consistency is more of a dense brownie than anything else. I think even that the name “banana bread” here is a bit deceiving, as usually the banana breads I’ve seen on the internet are basically regular cakes with a bit of banana in the mix. Anyway, it looks not so great inside but it’s still delicious. This recipe is so simple, that I don’t even know what to write about it. Mash bananas, dump the rest of the ingredients into the same bowl and this is all the effort needed – it can take maybe 10 minutes, including cleaning any spilt oil or…
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Chili sin carne (that will make you stop missing the “con”)
I’ve tried many vegan chili recipes and all of them lacked something. Sometimes it was the right mix of spices, sometimes the consistency was off, sometimes I just thought that the meatless version cannot be compared to the original. So I made my own, and the chances you are never going to cook another one are pretty high. The key to success lies in replacing ground meat with green lentils (and that works even for lentil haters). This chili is filling, easy, freezes well and the total cost of eight portions comes to about 5 euro. A nice added bonus: at the end, you will only have one pot, wooden spoon,…
