Happy Sunday, cuties! Are you surviving the “Artic Blast”? The weather forecast for our area was saying that there would have been a lot of snow, but in the end, we had only a sprinkle and not much else! However, it has been below zero for a few days so this called for some warm and comforting food and I was in the mood for a goulash: I still remember when my granddad was making this dish, all the care he was putting into it and how delicious and comforting it was. Obviously, it wasn’t vegan, but I was looking to recreate that feeling again and I managed to find the perfect recipe! ForkfulOfPLants’ recipe for a Vegan Goulash with Mushroom and Smoked Tofu is just what you want.
1 block smoked tofu (approx 225g) cut into 1 inch cubes
2 tbsp flour
400 g chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
500 ml vegetable stock
3 springs fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste
Method
Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the chopped onions and pepper, and sauté over a medium-low heat for 5 minutes until they start to soften.
Add the mushrooms, and cook for 5 minutes more, or until they start to release liquid. Then, add the smoked and sweet paprika, and the garlic powder.
Stir the spices through, then add the carrots, potatoes and tofu. Sprinkle over the flour, and mix well again.
Finally, add the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, vegetable stock and fresh thyme. Stir to combine, then bring the goulash to a steady simmer.
Cover and cook for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes has passed, remove the lid, stir, and allow to cook for a further 20 minutes uncovered, or until the potatoes are soft and the vegetable goulash has thickened.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Alternative
You can swap the smoked tofu for the same quantity of soy chunks – rehydrate them in warm water, drain them and add to the recipe instead of the tofu.
Hello beautiful kittens! How are you? These days everybody is talking a lot about how spring is approaching and they are all so happy, I don’t have the heart to tell them that spring doesn’t agree with me! But yeah, the past days have been decisively milder, although I wouldn’t scream “spring!” just yet as a couple of years ago we got snow in May and two years before that it was “The Beast from the East” in March.
Hello beauties! Just a very short post today. We’re having an unusual mild weather at the moment, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t make some delicious comforting food. So here’s the recipe for Flourless Chocolate Fudge Cookies by Elavegan: you won’t believe how delectable they are…and without flour!
1 1/2 tbsp ground chia seeds + 1/4 cup (60 g) water
1 scant cup (100 g) ground sunflower seeds or almond flour
3/8 cups (75 g) date sugar or organic cane sugar
5 tbsp (30 g) cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp espresso powder (optional, but recommended)
3 1/2 tbsp (50 g) nut/seed butter of choice
1 1/2 tbsp (18 g)coconut oil melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup (60 g) dairy-free chocolate chips or chocolate chunks (or both)
Instructions
1 To a small bowl add ground chia seeds (or ground flax seeds) and 1/4 cup water. Stir to combine and set aside. Also, preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
To a medium-sized bowl (or food processor) add ground sunflower seeds (or almond flour), cane sugar (or granulated sugar of choice), cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and espresso powder. Mix until there are no lumps.
Add nut/seed butter of choice, coconut oil, vanilla extract, and the chia seed mixture. Stir (or blend, if using a food processor) until combined.
Finally, add the dairy-free chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate) and mix with your hands until you have a smooth dough.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces (each weighing about 50 grams / or make 10 smaller ones) and roll each piece with your hands into a ball. You can also use an ice cream scoop.
Place the cookie dough balls on the prepared parchment paper and flatten them with your hand. Bake in the oven for 14-16 minutes. They will be still soft when you take them out but firm up once cooled. Enjoy!
You won’t regret making them and probably eating them as soon as they get out of the oven!
Hello my beautiful cats! How are you? It’s been quite a long time since the last time I wrote here! I’ve been away visiting my parents for two weeks during the Holiday season and it’s been great: I spent such a lovely time with them, we’ve been visiting some different places almost every other day, just the three of us and it’s been amazing! The downside, leaving them and when I came back home to the UK I felt I was missing them a lot – but this is not the place to talk about it and will dedicate a post about moving away from home, to another country.
Today it’s Recipe Sunday! And I wanted to share the Vegan Borscht recipe by ConnoisseurusVeg I made this week, which was exactly what I needed for a comfy night after an extremely busy day. It’s an easy recipe with a delicious result!
Vegan sour cream, yogurt, or cashew cream, for serving
Chopped fresh chives and/or parsley, for serving
Method
Coat the bottom of a large pot with olive oil and place it over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the beets, carrot and onions. Sauté until the veggies begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté another minute, until very fragrant.
Stir in the broth, tomato paste, cabbage and potato. Raise the heat and bring the liquid to a boil. Lower the heat and allow to simmer, uncovered, until the veggies are tender, 15-20 minutes. You can add more broth or water if you like.
Remove the pot from heat and stir in the lemon juice and dill. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve the soup into bowls and top with vegan sour cream, yogurt, or cashew cream, and a sprinkling of fresh dill, parsley and/or chives.
Hi kittens! How are you? It’s been a very cold week: snow and ice have covered where I live and I was really a Winter Wonderland! Just perfect for the pre-Christmas period. And it’s a great time to have some comfort food like this Vegan Vegetable Wellington by ConnoseurusVeg.
Place the rice, broth, thyme, sage and rosemary into a small saucepan and set it over high heat.
Bring the liquid to a boil, lower the heat and cover. Allow the rice to simmer for about 40 minutes, until the liquid is fully absorbed.
Remove the pot from heat and allow it to sit with the lid on for at least 5 minutes before uncovering.
While the rice cooks, preheat the oven to 400°.
Toss the squash with 1 teaspoon of olive oil and and toss the mushrooms with 2 teaspoons of oil. Arrange them separately on the baking sheets.
Place the baking sheets into the oven and bake until the squash and mushrooms are tender, about 20 minutes.
Remove the baking sheets from the oven but leave the oven on.
Coat the bottom of a large skillet with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and place it over medium heat.
When the oil is hot, add the onion. Sweat the onion until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and sauté another minute, until very fragrant.
Lower the heat and carefully add the whiskey (Note 4). Raise the heat back to medium, bring the whiskey to a simmer it simmer for about 2 minutes, until most of the liquid has cooked off.
Add 1 cup of the cooked rice (Note 5), squash, mushrooms and pecans to the skillet. Stir a few times to mix everything up.
Taste-test the mixture at this point (careful, as it will be hot) and season it with salt and pepper to taste.
Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir to incorporate. Remove the skillet from the heat.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Place the puff pastry on a lightly floured surface and roll it to about a 12-inch square. Transfer it to the baking sheet.
Pile the filling on the puff pastry, forming a long rectangle extending down the center of the puff pastry sheet. Shape the filling with your hands and pack it in. It should seem like a lot, but you can remove some if it’s way too much.
Option 1: Braid the dough. Use a knife to cut approximately 1-inch strips down either side of the rectangle, stopping about a half in from the strip of filling. Starting at the bottom, fold the strips inward at a slight diagonal, over the filling, pinching opposite strips together.
Option 2: Simply fold the top and bottom ends of the puff pastry over the filling, then wrap the sides overtop to form a log shape, pinching tightly at the seams to form a seal. Poke a few holes in the dough to allow steam to escape.
Brush the pastry with the melted butter.
Bake the log until golden and puffy, 30-35 minutes.
Allow the vegetable Wellington to cool just for a couple minutes, then slice and serve.
We’re so close to Christmas! Do you have everything ready for this holiday? If yes, I’m absolutely happy for you and kudos for your organisational skills. Here, we’re not 100% ready but. I know what I would like for my Christmas dinner! So, I’m sharing with you the recipes
To me, lasagna is THE Christmas main course par excellence: there is just something about the whole mix of ingredients in the lasagna that screams “festivities”. And just to give a twist to the traditional recipe, the Vegan Lasagna Rolls with Tofu Ricotta by Shane&Simple is the perfect main course recipe for your Christmas dinner. Another delicious recipe for the occasion is the Wild Garlic and Asparagus Risotto by LovelyJubley.
I hope you’ll have a great time during these holidays and you’ll manage to also get some rest. And I hope you’ll enjoy some of these delicious dishes! If you make any of these, let me know what you think 🙂
Hello beauties! Is everything okay with you? Here it has snowed and it is really Winter Wonderland! So beautiful. This morning I felt like pancakes and followed a recipe by the VietVegan that I shared last year for Pancake Day: it’s my favourite recipe for pancakes, so easy to make and has a delicious result! For dinner, I wanted something versatile to use for tomorrow’s lunch and this Air Fryer Tofu by LovingItVegan was exactly what I needed.
Press the tofu for 30 minutes. It’s ideal if you use a tofu press. If you don’t have a tofu press you can place your tofu on a plate, with another plate on top and then stack something heavy on top of that, like a heavy pot.
When the tofu is pressed cut it into cubes.
Add sesame oil, soy sauce and maple syrup to a measuring jug and whisk together into a sauce.
Place the tofu cubes into a container with a tight sealing lid.
Pour the sesame oil, soy sauce, maple syrup mix over the top of the tofu.
Place the lid onto the container and rotate it a few times, gently tossing the tofu with the sauce.
Add cornstarch, nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and ground black pepper to a small bowl and mix together.
Sprinkle half the spice mix over the tofu. Put the lid on the container and rotate it a few times to gently toss the tofu in the spices.
Then sprinkle the rest of the spice mix over the tofu, seal the container again and rotate it a few times again to toss the tofu in the spices.
Place the blocks of tofu into the air fryer in a single layer with space between each block. Make sure they don’t touch.
Depending on the size of your air fryer you may be able to do it in one batch.
Cook at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes until golden and crispy.
Happy Sunday my beauties! Is everything okay with you? This weekend has been so lovely, I have enjoyed a couple of nice autumn walks and also a trip to a local Christmas Market and coming back from these walks I was craving some comfort food. This Creamy Potato Leek Soup by SimpleVeganista was definitely the answer to these cravings!
1 tablespoon olive oil or 1/4 cup water (for water saute)
3 medium leeks(use white and light green parts only)
2 1/2 lbs. potatoes, cubed 1/2 inch (peeled or with skin on)
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme or Herbes de provence
1 bay leaf
4 cups water or low-sodium vegetable broth
mineral salt, to taste
1/4 cup chopped parsley, to garnish
Method
Start by removing and discarding the root ends of the leeks and thick dark green parts.
Cut the leeks in half lengthwise and rinse each half under cold water, pulling apart the layers to remove any sand or debris nestled inside, slice the leeks crosswise. Alternatively, slice the leeks, then put in a colander and wash well under running water. Should yield 4 – 5 cups.
Cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes. Feel free to peel the potatoes or leave the skin on (I left the skin on).
In a large dutch oven or pot, heat the oil/water over medium heat. Add the leeks and cook, stirring frequently, until soft and wilted, about 10 minutes. Adjust the heat as necessary so as not to brown the leeks.
Add the potatoes, broth, bay leaves, herbs, salt to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer on low for 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are fork-tender.
Remove the bay leaves, and puree the soup using a hand-held immersion blender until smooth (or leave a little chunky). Alternatively, use a regular blender to puree the soup in batches. Taste for seasoning.
Alternatively
If you don’t want to use potatoes, you can use 3 carrots instead of the potatoes. I’ve tried also adding half a broccoli and it’s DE-LI-CIOUS!
I hope you’ll try both ways and let me know what you think.
Hey there! How is it in your neck of the woods? Here all good, just avoiding burnout by taking it a bit easier at work and meditating more.
You might have noticed in the past months a petition started by Cruelty-Free International asking for the closure of Vivotecnia, “an independent European toxicology contract research organisation based in Madrid, Spain. Since 2000, it has offered services to support pharmaceutical and biotech, cosmetic, chemical and agrochemical industries. Its customers include companies from Spain, Europe (including the UK), Central America, Japan, Korea and the USA.”
These are just two of the petitions asking for governments to ban vivisection (especially for beauty products). It would appear that more and more people realise that experimenting on live animals is just barbaric, considering that there is so much research confirming the uselessness of these practices.
To be honest, I have only a little bit of hope that these petitions will be successful because the experiments are usually required by the main pharmaceutical and beauty multinationals. And this brings me to the Huntingdon issue in the UK.
Huntingdon and MBR Acres Ltd.
Maybe you have heard or maybe not, that during the years people have been protesting what is happening at the MBR Acres Ltd facilities in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England (just to give you an idea, one of the latest protests was this May). But if you don’t have a clear idea of what I am talking about, here are some facts about Huntingdon (Huntingdon Life Sciences Group plc.):
it’s a contract research organisation, privately owned
founded in 1951
had an initial focus on focused on nutrition, veterinary, and biochemical research
their research uses animals, both wildlife imported from other countries and “local”
it went on researching pharmaceuticals, food additives, industrial and consumer chemicals
in 1996, a member of PETA went undercover as an employee of the organisation and recorded the treatment of the animals in Huntingdon’s facilities
the tape sparked rage amongst animal rights activists and PETA was sued by HLS. HLS managed to win.
the buildings in Huntingdon have been the subject of numerous protests by animal activists.
I shouldn’t be stating the obvious, but any form of experimentation on animals is just wrong. It wouldn’t be justifiable even if what they are testing was the cure for cancer. And they are not experimenting on that. In the 2000s they stated that they were very close to a breakthrough in xenotransplants, organ transplants from animal to human. Pigs and primates were the main subjects of these experiments: the non-human animals were grown to then harvest their organs and then put them in humans. The longest a human has survived after such a transplant is three months. THREE MONTHS.
The suffering that this practice brings is twofold: it causes much pain to the animals that are grown for the sole purpose of taking their organs and the people into which these organs are implanted.
What is vivisection
Depending on the dictionary one uses, one will get a slightly different definition of what this practice is. From Merriam-Webster, vivisection is
: the cutting of or operation on a living animal usually for physiological or pathological investigation broadly: animal experimentation especially if considered to cause distress to the subjectMerriam-Webster Dictionary
While Cambridge Dictionary offers that vivisection is
the use of living animals in tests that are intended to increase human knowledge of human diseases and the effects of using particular drugs.Cambridge Dictionary
Contradictions of vivisection
The main contradiction is that the promoters of such practice will say that they use such and such animal species because they will get similar reactions as if it were human, but when they’ll be asked if they’re concerned about the feelings and emotions and pain that these species will have to endure, the vivisectors will say that although similar in bodies to humans, they really don’t feel the same as them.
Without even going into the philosophical aspects of the ethics behind this practice, the mind is part of the body: pain receptors ARE pain receptors, which means that they are telling the brain that that thing is painful and the non-human or human animal is feeling pain.
All animals, humans and non-humans, when they are enclosed in small spaces, hearing screams or seeing their fellows being taken away and then taken back wounded and hurt, are going to feel fear, being afraid.
So, if someone is telling you that live non-human animals are good for testing because of their similarities with humans, but not to worry because they don’t feel the same as humans do, call BS on them.
The Alternatives
There are alternatives to animal testing. It’s 2022, we went to the moon and around space. We keep finding ever smaller particles. We do have ways to avoid the use of animals in research: from cell culture to computer simulation, there really are viable alternatives. Companies who don’t use non-human animals in their testing are known as cruelty-free.
If you want to read a bit more about the alternatives to animal testing, you can find some more here and here (2 Wikipedia pages, to get you started).
Conclusion
Huntingdon Life Sciences and MBR Acres are just two of the many organisations around the world that are using live animals to test on. If you think that animal testing is wrong, there are quite a lot of websites that are providing you with lists of brands that conduct this kind of testing, as well as those that are in the process of becoming cruelty-free. Keeping on testing on animals, with money spent on this instead of investing in alternatives just extends the suffering of both human and nonhuman animals.
Beautiful kittens! How is life treating you these days? It’s nearly Halloween, can you believe it?! I just thought of sharing this recipe very quickly with you, because I feel we need a lot of comfort with all that is happening around the world. And what best comfort food if not PASTA?! And there is the recipe for a vegan ricotta within the main recipe! What’s not to like? So, without further ado, here are the Vegan Stuffed Shells Florentine by ConnoisseurusVeg.
6 ounces dried jumbo pasta shells (about 20 shells)
For the Quick Tomato Sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ large onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 (28 ounce or 794 gram) can crushed tomatoes
½ tablespoon organic granulated sugar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
¼ teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
½ cup fresh basil leaves, torn and lightly packed
For the Vegan Ricotta Florentine
½ cup roughly chopped onion (about ½ of a medium onion)
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup raw cashews soaked in water 4-8 hours, rinsed and drained
½ cup unflavored and unsweetened soy or almond milk
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 (14 ounce or 400 gram) package extra firm tofu, drained and broken into 5-6 large chunks
½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
¼ teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
2 cups fresh spinach leaves, coarsely chopped and lightly packed
Method
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta shells and cook them according to the package directions.
Drain the pasta into a colander, then return it to the pot and toss it with a few dashes of olive oil. Set aside.
Make the Quick Tomato Sauce
Coat the bottom of a medium saucepan with oil and place it over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, add the onion. Sweat the onion until softened, about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and sauté it with the onion 1 minute more, until very fragrant.
Stir in the crushed tomatoes, sugar, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a simmer and lower the heat.
Allow the sauce to simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Stir in the basil and remove the sauce from the heat. Taste test and season with additional salt and pepper if desired.
Make the Vegan Ricotta Florentine
Place the onion, garlic, cashews, milk and lemon juice into bowl of food processor. Blend until smooth, stopping to scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
Add the tofu, salt and pepper. Pulse the machine until a thick and slightly chunky, ricotta-like texture is achieved, again, stopping to scrape down the sides of bowl as needed.
If some space remains in food processor bowl, add the spinach and pulse until finely chopped and well blended. Otherwise, transfer mixture to a bowl and stir the spinach in by hand.
Taste-test and season the mixture with additional salt and pepper to taste.
Make the Stuffed Shells Florentine
Preheat the oven to 400º. Coat the bottom of a 9 inch by 9 inch baking dish or 10 inch round oven-safe skillet with about half of sauce.
Stuff the shells with the ricotta mixture and arrange them in a single layer in the baking dish or skillet. Top with the remaining sauce.
Cover and bake the shells for 20-25 minutes, until the sauce is bubbly.
Remove the shells from the oven and allow them to sit for 5 minutes before serving.
The Vegan Cat Librarian 