Maggie's Vegan Korean Beef/Rice Bowls

Hi friends. It's been a while. A looooooong while. The longest while between posts on my blog since I started it. So, here's the LesVegan scoop. 

1. Late last spring, our dean announced she was leaving. She and the president worked on figuring out who could take on parts of the dean role, as it would have been impossible to find a permanent person to start by July first. Two colleagues and I were asked (and agreed) to split the role. That's taken a lot of time and has been a steep learning curve. 
2. I've been, like most folks, bogged down by the emotional weight associated with swirling currents of a global pandemic, political uncertainty, and civil unrest (for good reason, when we look at continued pressure for racial justice in the US). 
3. Shana and I separated and are finalizing a divorce. The separation was sudden and the number of adjustments one makes after being with the same person for 16.5 years leads to a lot of mental and emotional work. I'm thankful to have supportive friends and family and that I'd already had a well-established relationship with a therapist. I'm well-loved and thriving. 

All of those things, plus more, led to shifts in my cooking and not enough time or energy to keep posting recipes. BUT, I think I'm back (at least sporadically), even though all of the things above are still happening. 

Thus, here's a new recipe that's easy and speedy and delicious: vegan Korean beef & rice bowls. I was inspired trying to use up food I had in my house, which included a weirdly large number of bags of Gardein Beefless Ground. I didn't want tacos or sloppy joes or chili, so I turned to the internet, found some ideas, and a delicious dinner was the happy result. I hope it's a great weeknight meal for you!

Lazy Dinner Teriyaki Tips

Can you believe I haven't posted a "Lazy Dinner" post since 2017?  With COVID shifting schedules and working from home, it's not like we haven't been eating lazy dinners... so I'm not sure why I haven't posted an new one! 

Anyway, this recipe is a a quintessential Lazy Dinner. It's really quick (relying on a faux meat product), super easy, and delicious. Plus, its versatile! If you don't want Asian flavors one evening, use the same technique but switch to different flavors. 

Maggie's All-Cuisines Salad Dressing

Well, we are mid-way through spring with hints of summer in the air. This means that it is time for our CSA again! I was *so* excited to sing our "CSA-day" song on the first week of pick-up. The joy at our CSA starting up again is also set against the backdrop of the global pandemic that rages on. Indiana has slowly begun to open up, but we're still very wary about heading to restaurants and we've only been going to the store every three weeks or so. Our weekly CSA box has dramatically expanded our access to fresh veggies, especially leafy greens! Seriously, we've gotten lettuce mix, heads of lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, arugula, braising greens, and micro-greens, plus turnips, radishes, and the first bit of asparagus; it's magical.

With so many leafy greens to eat, we've been finding new ways to eat them. Shana has been craving tikka masala with regularity, which is fine by me since it is delicious. A leafy green salad is a wonderful companion. When we first confronted the combination of tikka masala and salad, I looked at the dressings in the fridge and didn't love any of the possible taste combinations. So obviously, I made up my own! 

While originally intended as a lovely accompaniment to flavors in Middle-Eastern dishes, this salad dressing works beautifully with every flavor profile we've tried. It's a fast, easy, and tasty dressing for salads with any meal. 

Poured here on a simple salad of spinach and toasted almonds.

Crockpot Teriyaki Tofu with Veggies

It feels odd to be posting new recipe during a global pandemic. This feels especially true I last went to the grocery store over a week ago and don't plan to go again for at least another week. However, I did a good job planning when going to the store last week AND we did a good job planning dinners around how long each veggie will last. This teriyaki tofu dinner (based on a recipe from The Super Easy Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook) was just perfect, using up the last of our bell peppers and half of our kale. The rest of the kale will be used tomorrow in white bean and kale soup. Plus, I made a great teriyaki sauce from ingredients in my pantry - though feel free to buy one instead!

While I do like the flexibility of cooking at home without having to plan around classes, meetings, events, and more, I miss my students and colleagues and friends so much that this flexibility pales in comparison. sigh. At least we're eating well?

I hope you're eating well, too! If not, try this recipe?

Vegan Tikka Masala with Soy Curls

It's been a long time, dear readers, and I'm very sorry. In fact, this may be the longest time between posts on this blog - yikes! Life has just been busy for the two of us, which means we've been meal planning around events and/or meetings most nights. We've gotten involved with some local organizations pretty heavily, I took on a new 1/3 time role at work, last semester was rough on campus, my dad was diagnosed with and treated for cancer, and we are working to make a dream/business(?) of Shana's into a non-profit! All of this creates a hectic schedule and also means that I haven't had time to be creative.

Although I haven't been creative in the kitchen on my own, I have been tweaking and we have been eating some new foods, including this amazing vegan tikka masala sauce. I love my version of this recipe for the following reasons:
1. I can mostly throw things in the Instant Pot and end up with magic.
2. I had to purchase a new herb!
3. IT'S SO DELICIOUS!!! Seriously, it's magic.

The recipe for the sauce I've tweaked from Vegan Richa's recipe (her whole blog is SO good!), most importantly to remove the ginger since Shana is intolerant. In addition, the inclusion of soy curls makes this a hearty and satisfying main dish. While there are a number of components to make the recipe this way, I promise that your taste buds will thank you.

Maggie's Vegan Enchilasagna

The weather has finally turned into a chilly fall here in Indiana. It was a stark change, with plenty of memes going around. For me, the chilly weather means I'm excited to have the oven on and want to eat all the warm, cozy foods I can imagine.

Tonight, we had some new friends over for dinner and I made this enchilasagna recipe. One of them asked how the recipe emerged, which made me realize that dish was actually due to a series of kitchen misadventures. A while ago, I decided to bring my enchilada recipe to vegan potluck. All set to cook, I when I get home that I'm out of the rice I need for the recipe. I had other rice, but not enough time to cook it. In a pinch, I figured I would use quinoa instead, as inside the enchilada, no one would really notice. I had also planned ahead and planned to swap corn tortillas for the flour tortillas in order to make the dish gluten-free. I fill my first corn tortilla, being to wrap it up, and it breaks - it doesn't roll at all. I figure I just need to be gentle for the next one and gingerly try to roll a second corn tortilla. It broke, too. Short on time if we were going to get to dinner on time, I figured I'd just try a layered dish and call it a vegan enchilasagna. It was a hit! I'm sure it will be a hit for you and yours, too!

Yup, melting faux cheese! Plus, a bit of enchilasaga deconstruction in the back. 

Richa's Peanut Lentil Sauce

As I do periodically, a few weeks ago I went digging through old recipes I'd saved or tagged or noted in some way or another. I came across one from a blog I've been following for a while, leaned over to show it to Shana, who responded with "why aren't we eating that right now?!" I got her subtle message and we had it later that week.

While we both loved it, I realized I needed to make it again to make sure that the notes I'd jotted down about adjustments while cooking were actually correct (more than one note was a I-think-that's-what-I-remember-doing note). I'm thrilled to say it's still amazing. In the time it takes to cook rice in the instant pot and lentils on the stove (aka, less than 30 minutes), you can make a hearty, beautiful, flavorful meal that tastes like it belongs at a fancy dinner party.

NYT Chinese Sesame Cucumbers

It's been quite the whirlwind of a summer, folks. Already we're more than halfway through and I'm wishing I'd been more productive. To be fair, I've been working, but I've also been doing things for me, like reading, visiting family/friends, gardening, and cooking.

Speaking of those last two, this year I decided to grow cucumbers for the first time. Shana loves cucumbers. Our CSA was selling garden plants, so I picked one variety of cucumber to try. The variety I picked, Diva, is amazing! I don't love cucumber, but even I like these ones. I wasn't prepared to like the cucumbers, but I was even less prepared for how well they seem to be doing. I think the vines grew multiple inches per day and I'm pretty sure the cucumbers just magically appear.

Before I started growing them, we'd often receive a cucumber a week in our CSA box, which was just enough to put on a salad or Shana to eat as a snack. However, with the rate that they grow, I needed a recipe that used a lot of cucumber. Shana reminded me of one we'd had at a potluck years ago and it fit the bill perfectly.

This cool summer cucumber salad is a great side dish, snack, or appetizer that doesn't heat up the kitchen when summer temperatures soar. Plus, it's delicious and will keep you coming back for more.

That's part of my garden in the background! 

Red Lentil Curry in the Instant Pot

Most home cooks I know have stacks of recipes they've been meaning to try. I have a couple of tangible stacks, but I also have a couple of virtual "stacks" - emails with links and a category of posts in my feedly account. A while ago I was perusing one of my email collections and came across a recipe that I remembered our friends Max and Sara feeding us ages ago.

In looking over the recipe, I thought that I could make it in our Instant Pot. Plus, I've been really enjoying foods with flavors from the Middle East recently and this fits in very well.

After making slight adaptations to the original recipe, I ended up with something that Shana and I both absolutely LOVE! This easy, high-protein, high-fiber, low-fat meal has been on regular rotation.

Rainbow Quinoa Salad

At the beginning of this year, a high school aged friend of ours decided to go vegan. We invited her and her mom, whom we know from an organization in town, over for vegan dinner. Her mom was very supportive of her daughter's plan to be vegan, but didn't quite know what to cook for her when she was also cooking for her 11 year old son, 4 year old daughter, herself, and her husband. We figured that we could invite them over and answer vegan food questions while also providing an example of a delicious vegan meal.

In asking what they'd like to eat, they said they were pretty open to flavors, so we chose to serve one of Shana's favorites - broccoli, tofu, and garlic sauce. They asked what to bring and we suggested "something that goes with dinner?" In other words, we were super unhelpful. However, our friends rose the challenge and brought a delicious Asian quinoa salad! Overall, dinner was a giant success. We answered all sorts of vegan-related questions, laughed a ton, and ate amazing food.

Since our dinner, we've eaten this salad a few times. I tweaked the original recipe, found at Two Peas & Their Pod, to make it more our style - doubling some veggies, removing some ingredients, and adjusting the dressing. It's SO delicious! It's also great for the unseasonably hot temps we've been experiencing - when I just don't want to eat anything. This salad has tons of protein and fiber and is a feast for your eyes as well.

Creamy Black Lentil Soup

Sometimes I go to grocery stores and buy something I've never cooked with before because it looks interesting. I did that a while ago with some black lentils. Then, of course, they sat in my pantry for a long time because I didn't have a recipe that called for them.

Finally, I decided they had existed, unused, in my pantry long enough, so I started in on some creative googling. I don't remember exactly what search term or random list I found this recipe, but I flagged it as a good option. I loved the idea of a creamy soup with the toothsome chew of lentils. I loved the idea of a subtle influence of Indian flavors. I was intrigued at the addition of tahini.

More importantly, this soup had an ingredient that would make Shana want it, too. See, this beautiful creamy soup calls for eggplant.Shana loooooves eggplant. Me? I feel strongly middling about eggplant. It's fine. I never crave it and will always pick another option over it, but I don't hate it, either. But here, in this recipe, it looked like we would both have something to love. I was right.

Maggie's Vegan Massaman Curry

I love Thai food. When Shana and I have something to celebrate, or have people in town visiting, or just a craving for an amazing dinner, we head to Thai 9 in Dayton. In the past two months, we've gone 3 times. Once when my family came to visit, once when Shana's family came to visit, and once to celebrate that I'd been awarded tenure!

While everything there is delicious (we think they must have a wall of avocados because they are always ripe), there's one dish they can't make vegan for me: massaman curry. Their recipe includes half & half and fish sauce. After feeling sad about missing out on massaman curry, I figured I would try to make my own.

In my explorations of possible recipes online, so many had ingredient lists full of things I knew I couldn't get in my town. I started feeling a bit hopeless. But then, one of the recipes I saw had an aside about a really good pre-made curry paste that was also vegan! I jumped on the chance to have massaman curry in my own kitchen and purchased two cans from Amazon. I didn't need to make this more than once; I ordered more the next day. Now I can have massaman curry whenever the mood strikes.

Vegan Teriyaki Boats

On summer nights, I can't bring myself to heat up my kitchen. But as hot days and warm nights stretch on, I also get sick of grilling dinners and Shana wouldn't be satisfied with continuous salads. This means a recipe that can satisfy the requirements of not heating the kitchen, not using the grill, and not being a salad is a huge win for our summer eating.

This particular recipe was in a special recipe collection called "Best Vegan Recipes" published by Vegetarian Times magazine (which now exists in an altered state under the title Vegetarian Today; I no longer subscribe). Shana and I had been standing in line at a grocery store and saw this special collection. While waiting to check out, I perused it and found so many recipes I wanted to make that we ended up purchasing it.

These teriyaki boats are ridiculously fast and easy - so much so that Shana has made them - and they are delicious and healthy. Everyone we've served them to has enjoyed them and I can see them being quite flexible, if you wanted to add/remove ingredients.  Serve them as a lunch, a light dinner, or even as an appetizer (see Helpful Hints).

KMW's Vegan Honduran Black Bean Soup

It was this time two years ago that we were moving into our new house. We are so happy here and a lot of that has to with our neighbors. We have AWESOME neighbors.

One set of our across the street neighbors, Katie and Marc, work at one of the other colleges in town. Both of them are biological anthropologists. They do field work where they dig for bones or artifacts in carefully arranged grids. (And habits die hard; you should have seen them digging a very precise 3'x3' hole for a new tree they planted!) Although they do field work in a variety of places, one of their primary locations is Honduras.

A while back, they invited us over for dinner. They were a little worried about what vegan thing to cook, but then realized that a traditional meal they ate while doing field work in Honduras could easily be made vegan. Katie Neighbor* told me that two women, Rosa Hernandez and Elvia Martinez, in Copan, Honduras taught her the recipe. I'll never meet these women, but I am SO glad they shared with her. This black bean soup was so. freaking. good. Seriously good. The underlying flavor is layered and complex and round. Plus, each of us gets to personalize our own bowl with the via all sorts of add-ins. Finally, while I hate to tell anyone how to eat, whichever add-ins you choose, you simply must add the radishes! Yes, radishes.

Vegan Peruvian Lomo Saltado

More than three years ago, I mentioned that there were some Peruvian recipes in Bryanna Clark Grogan's World Vegan Feast that I wanted to try. Let's just say that life got a little bit hectic between then and now.

In any event, we have some Peruvian friends who work with me at Earlham and we have a night of dinner and games with them. Last month, I told them that I wanted to try cooking a vegan version of a popular dish in Peru called lomo saltado. According to Robertson, this dish is an example of a fusion between Chinese and Peruvian cuisine and has become an incredibly popular dish all over the country. Our friends agreed.

When we first decided to make lomo saltado, I was a bit perplexed by the variety of flavors that I saw in the dish. Traditional to Peruvian cuisine, potatoes play a role, as does steak (for which strips of seitan substitute wonderfully), vinegar, lime juice, oregano, and cumin. Traditional to Chinese cuisine, we have the stir-fry technique, along with soy sauce and rice. I was skeptical until I took my first bite, wherein I discovered what a wonderful and flavorful fusion these two traditions created! Our Peruvian friends thought it was delicious, too! Shana and I decided to have it again this week, which is why I'm sharing it with you.

Maggie's Stir Fry Sauce

The first day of fall has come and gone, but it sure doesn't feel like it's fall in Indiana. We've had temperatures in the mid to upper 80s all this past week. So while I've been staring longingly at all of the soups and stews I cook in the fall, it's just not happening for a while. Instead, we have been cooking like it's summer, using all sorts of fresh veggies and flavors.

Since I've been so ready for fall, I couldn't keep making the same summer dishes. Instead, building on Shana's love of Asian flavors, we had an excellent stir fry tonight! With a ton of veggies and light and flavorful sauce, we enjoyed it immensely tonight. This is something we'll be sure to eat again, plus the recipe is a great base for all sorts of experimentation.

Eggplant Asian Stir Fry

School has been out for both of us for a few weeks. Most people assume that for teachers like us, summer time means days filled with lounging around and cocktails. That's hardly the case. Shana's picked up two summer-only part time jobs, I've been doing committee work and catching up, and we've both been busy with projects at our house. For example, I've been gardening, Shana's been clearing our old patio, and we've been discussing which projects come next. Shana's also been coaching a 3rd & 4th grade softball team, which has meant about 3 evening games per week.

All this activity has meant that we haven't actually seen each other as much as we would like. To remedy that, we decided to have a date day in Indianapolis. We had a great time! We met a friend for drinks, had a great dinner, and went to a game. We also did errands. I know what you're thinking: "Errands?! On a date??!!" Yes. Errands. But the errands totally worked out in Shana's favor, as I purchased an awesome magazine full of recipes. We've tried two recipes to great success already.

This particular recipe has Shana's name written all over it. It's full of Asian flavors and contains eggplant. Shana loves eggplant. I'm only...meh... about eggplant. Luckily, this recipe also includes green beans, which are my absolute favorite vegetable. Because both Shana and I were predisposed to like this recipe, I'm happy to say that we also had friends over who enjoyed it. This is a winner of a recipe all around!

Veganomicon's Chickpeas Romesco

Every so often I just get sick of everything we eat. It usually happens once or twice a year, such that when Shana and I plan our meals absolutely nothing sounds delicious. It was in a bout of hating everything that I turned to my cookbooks to find inspiration. Upon paging through my trusty copy of Veganomicon, I came across something that tickled my taste buds, simply upon reading the recipe. The recipe in question was one for Chickpeas Romesco.

Romesco sauce is of Spanish origin (northeastern Spain, arguably Tarragona according to this NYTimes article), although similar types of sauces exist in other places. Generally, romesco is a pepper, tomato, and nut-based mixture, ranging from thin-ish to spreadably thick. This recipe takes a bit of prep-work, only because you need to toast almonds and roast peppers before you can actually make the sauce. But! The extra steps of preparation really ARE worth it, as they add such wonderful depth to the flavor. If that still seems out of reach for you, many grocery stores carry toasted almonds and roasted red peppers, but make sure they are not packed in brine.*

This dish is worthy of your next dinner party, especially if you serve it over saffron-garlic rice! We brought it to our monthly vegan potluck in February and it got rave reviews. We always share recipes, but forgot after February's dinner. This month, people pointedly asked for this recipe, which I'll take as a good sign that it was well-received.

You can see the chickpeas romesco over the saffron-garlic rice we like,
as well as another dish from February's vegan potluck. 

J & L's West African Peanut Stew

There is a big vegan event occurring in our small mid-western town: I've started a monthly vegan potluck! September was our first and was a great success. Although I knew many of the people who came the first night, there were still some folks new to me, and many of the people who came didn't really know each other. Regardless, we all laughed, shared feelings about how amazing it was to be able to eat everything on the table, and joked that it was nice to be in a place where we didn't have to explain our food choices or be "jokingly" offered a bit of someone's steak/burger/bacon. Our second potluck went as well as the first and November's gathering is just around the corner! We're building a little community of vegans, which is just so awesome.

For me, one of the most fun parts of these monthly gatherings (aside from feeling less isolated) is the ability to try and share new recipes with other vegans. After every potluck, we've compiled our recipes and shared them with the others on the email list. I've eaten some amazing new things and even my food neophobic wife has tried (and enjoyed) everything. The recipe below arrived at our first vegan potluck from our new vegan friends J & L (I'm not sure if they would want me to post their names, so I'm refraining). This dish was SO good that Shana and I have made it twice since our first potluck, which is more than we've made anything - aside from soup, because soup - since then. This really is a winner of a dish - delicious, easy, and inexpensive! You may even have all of the ingredients in your pantry already, so what are you waiting for?!

Vegan Coq au Vin

This semester I hope to cook a ton of new recipes. I'm pretty sure I say that every semester, but I am on a "pre-tenure leave" this semester, which means that I'm not teaching anything! Instead, my time will be spent working on writing up all the research I've been doing over the past years. I've got big goals (four manuscripts of the six I have waiting, plus seriously revising a class I will be teaching in the fall), but I have been told that I am also to take time to relax and rejuvenate. For me, that means cooking, singing, and reading books for fun. All of that sounds amazing.

To start off the semester of fun new foods, I decided to pick a recipe from an awesome cookbook that I've barely used: World Vegan Feast. Bryanna Clark Grogan is amazing. She has a number of awesome vegan cookbooks and an extensive vegan recipe blog. She also has an interesting background with family members from various parts of the world. Aside from her amazingness (not a word) as a cook, I also wanted this cookbook as a way to stretch my taste buds and culinary repertoire. This "coq" au vin does just that. The flavors are traditionally French for a taste of international cuisine when you don't have the money and time to actually go there!