Healthy Coffee Creamer: 1st Attempt

I've been aiming for awhile to cut sugar out of my diet when I'm not consuming it in the form of deliberate junk food such as dessert.  The primary source of unintentional sugar in my diet right now is probably the vanilla almond milk my household uses in coffee and cereal.  It has 17 grams of sugar per cup, which is kind of a lot for what it is.  I've started mixing it with unsweetened vanilla almond milk, which reduces the sugar by approximately half (Simran didn't seem to notice), and I had exclusively unsweetened almond milk in my Cheerios today and didn't much notice either.  It makes a difference in the coffee though. 

I made raw date syrup awhile back, but I didn't use it up before it went bad.  Today I'm trying something new.  I'm aiming to make coffee creamer without making a separate date syrup.  I like that this should also add a serving of fruits to my morning coffee.  I currently aim to eat at least seven servings of fruits and vegetables per day because health, and it can be difficult if I don't have at least a couple with breakfast.

My first attempt at coffee creamer is about as basic as it gets.  I put 10 pitted medjool dates in a high-speed blender with 4 cups of my store's generic unsweetened almond milk, let them soak for 10 minutes (I'm not sure 10 minutes was long enough to matter), and then blended them completely.  After I try it in my coffee tomorrow, I'll adjust sweetness level and plan for making other variations (I definitely want to make one with pumpkin puree and spices).  The consistency seems good.

[Edited 5/3/2015: It's a bit cloying.  I think I might need to use fewer dates or more almond milk.  When I finish using this batch, I'll try it with 5 cups of almond milk and keep the dates the same.]

Meal Planning

I got very lazy last week and we got takeout for dinner at least twice.  We just had leftovers another night.  So I have a lot of carry over stuff from last week that I didn't use yet.  Here is what I have:  5 avocados (they were on sale and just got ripe), 2 hearts of romaine, a whole mess of carrots, a crown of organic broccoli, and 2 tomatoes.  Here is what I'm making:

Seitan & Veggie Stir-fry and Brown Rice   

Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayo and Crudites with Homemade Ranch Dip
I made the burgers last week and put them in the freezer.  This will use up my whole wheat hamburger buns, as well as the broccoli and baby carrots and one of the avocados.

Vegetarian BLTs and Cinnamon Squash Chowder

Crispy Breaded Tofu Strips and Winter Squash Mac 'n Cheeze and Vegetable Medley
 
Veggie Pizza and Green Salad     

Nachos and Crudites with Homemade Ranch Dip
Guacamole seemed like a fun way to use up the remaining avocados.

Meal Planning

Time for weekly meal planning.  I'm trying to pare down what's currently in my overstuffed pantry.  Lots of flours and lentils and beans.  I also want to use up some of what's in my freezer.  I currently have the following that needs to be used up soon: one red bell pepper, one green bell pepper, two organic tomatoes, and the better part of a 3 lb bag of organic russet potatoes.  Here is what I'm making:

Seitan & Veggie Stir-fry and Brown Rice  
I'm back to making this pretty much weekly.  I need to make a new batch of seitan again already, so that will use up a bit more of the vital wheat gluten in my freezer and pantry.  This dish will also finally use up the last of the chopped bell pepper in my freezer.  I have some cubed tofu and baby carrots and sliced water chestnuts in there too, left over from making stir-fry last week.

Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayo and Crudites with Homemade Ranch Dip
I didn't end up making this last week, so I plan to make it tomorrow if I can find a ripe avocado.  I'm down to two final black bean burgers in my freezer, so I'm making a new batch from the brown rice leftover from this week's stir-fry, as well as some black beans from my pantry that I cooked yesterday.  It'll also use up the green bell pepper in the fridge and one of the tomatoes.  I have an entire new package of whole wheat buns to use up too.

Vegetarian Italian Sausage and Baked Potato Skins and Green Salad with Homemade Ranch Dressing
I want to try freezing the leftover sausage to see how well it freezes/thaws, since this recipe makes more than I can eat in three days.  This adds to the labor intensive meal stuff I've already got planned for this week, but hopefully it will pay off in a few easy future weeks.  The sausage will also use up some more of my dry goods from the pantry.  The potato skins will use up most of the potatoes in my pantry, as well as some of the sour cream in my fridge.

Chilli-Garlic Noodles 
We're expecting cold weather in the next week, and I love slightly spicy noodles in cold weather, so I'm making this.  It'll use up a package of whole wheat spaghetti noodles from the pantry.


Vegetarian BLTs and Cinnamon Squash Chowder
The sandwiches will use up some of the tempeh I got from Whole Foods last week and the final organic tomato, and the chowder will use up some more of my frozen squash -- maybe even the last of it.

Vegetable Biryani and Dal Makhani 
This is a healthy meal I like.  I make it with brown basmati rice now, and I didn't use any oil last time.  I'd use the ghee if I were making it for guests because I think there was probably a difference in taste or texture, but for a healthy weeknight meal, the no-oil version was still really good and I ate all the leftovers.  I'll have to post my amended, 100% whole grain, vegan, no-oil versions of the recipes.  This meal also requires me to buy very little since I keep most of it in the pantry.  The biryani will hopefully use up the last of the potatoes -- they don't have much time left.

Crispy Breaded Tofu Strips and Winter Squash Mac 'n Cheeze and Vegetable Medley
I'm not sure I'll end up making this, but I have all the ingredients already.  The veg medley will just be stuff to use up from the freezer, like peas and carrots and green beans and corn.  I also have at least two packages of tofu that will need to be used up in the next couple of weeks.  The mac 'n cheeze uses up some of the squash from the freezer as well as some of the quinoa macaroni from the pantry.

Meal Planning

Short week this week on account of planning on a couple nights of takeout this weekend. 

Seitan & Veggie Stir-fry and Brown Rice  

Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayo and Crudites with Homemade Ranch Dip

Seven-Layer Tortilla Pie

Veggie Pizza and Green Salad  

Pav Bhaji

 

Vegetarian Italian Sausage

I made this vegetarian Italian sausage yesterday because I had some free time and the grocery store I went to didn't have any ready made ones in stock (Tofurky makes good ones).  I used this recipe from everydaydish.tv.
   I was surprised when I tried them today in advance of using them in penne alla vodka and discovered they are the best fake meat I've ever had.  Not only is the flavor great (and not very spicy at all the way I made it), but even the texture is good.  I don't normally like to eat seitan plain, but I kept eating this stuff plain and cold.  I want to try it in a crusty hot dog bun with mustard and sauerkraut.  My recipe below will look slightly different from the original in the link because I used what I had.

Ingredients

• 2¼ cups vital wheat gluten
• ½ cup nutritional yeast flakes
• ¼ cup chickpea flour (I apparently used up the gram flour -- Indian split chickpea flour -- in my pantry, so I ended up grinding some dried chickpeas into flour in my Vitamix dry container)
• 2 tbsp vegan Chik'n flavoring
• 2 tbs onion powder
• 1 tbs fennel seed (I have whole fennel seed, so I crushed it roughly with a mortar & pestle first)
• 2 tsp coarsely ground pepper, preferably freshly ground
• 2 tsp ground paprika
• 1 tsp ground smoked paprika
• ½ tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp salt
• ⅛ tsp ground allspice
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2¼ cups cool water
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce (full sodium)

 Directions

1.  Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Whisk wet ingredients (water, oil, soy sauce) and add to dry ingredient mixture.  Incorporate everything with your hands -- I broke a rubber spatula trying to stir this stuff.  If your dough is too dry, add water in small amounts.

2.  Scoop about 1/2 cup of dough into a square of aluminum foil, roll it into a log shape, and twist it up tight like a Tootsie Roll.  Do the same with the rest of the dough (makes about 8 sausages). 

3.  If you have a steamer, bring water to a boil and put the foiled sausages in the food portion of the steamer and cook for 30 minutes.  If you are like me and don't have a steamer and your vegetable steaming basket is garbage and collapses under the weight of any food, you can do what I did.  I have a wire strainer that looks like it's made of window screen.  I put half the sausages into the strainer over a pot of boiling water and covered the pot with its own lid.  The sausages had to curve a bit, but it was fine.  Cook for 30 minutes, then do the same with the other half of the sausages (because that's how much fits in my strainer at one time).  I kept the sausages wrapped in foil and just put them in a ziploc bag in the fridge until I planned to use them.  (The strainer method is also how I steam vegetables.  I should really just throw away my vegetable steaming basket, but I keep thinking maybe I'm just somehow using it wrong because it had such good reviews on Amazon.)

Simran's 3rd Birthday

Simran's 3rd birthday is coming up, and when I asked her what she wanted, she said ice cream cake, so we're having ice cream cake.  Because ice cream cake without the chocolate crunchies OR with actual frozen cake instead is absolutely terrible, we're going the Carvel route.  Did you know Carvel is mostly an East Coast phenomenon?  I didn't.  I considered making the cake myself, but that's a lot of work, and I'm rather looking forward to not baking a cake and trying to clean the kitchen up again right before having house guests.  They sell plain Carvel cakes at the local grocery store, and since the closest Carvel store an hour away doesn't carry cakes, I'm going to buy one from the grocery store and just decorate it myself.  I'm going to do it just a couple hours before her party since I doubt it will fit in my freezer.

Sim also said she wants a Thomas & Friends themed birthday party, so we've got lots of blue and red stuff.  I'm terrible at cake decorating, but I found a little Thomas cake kit on Amazon, and I'll do the writing with a tube of sparkly red gel frosting I have leftover from Sameer's last birthday.  I also bought some green sprayable (?!) airbrush-looking frosting from the grocery store to make grass.  I think I'll get blue for sky too if the green appears to work.  I have a random snack pack of pretzel sticks in the pantry, so I'm going to coat them in chocolate and lay them down as train tracks across the cake.  As long as I don't have to draw anything, it should look okay.  I bought blue and red rock candy at Party City simply because it was there and I think rock candy is beautiful.  It was probably a bad financial decision.  I think the only time I ever ate some I was ten, and I can't imagine people will eat it.  I saw a table centerpiece on Pinterest that consisted of a Thomas toy, followed by freight cars made from loaf pans with Oreo wheels (and marshmallow axles), so I'm making that to hold some of the other food stuffs liked cookies and crackers and cubed cheese.  Essentially it looks like Thomas is hauling the party food onto the table.  I found brown paper loaf pans on Amazon that should work well as freight cars.  I bought the large ones since the others wouldn't hold much.

Since one of our regular birthday party guests is allergic to eggs and another eats a gluten-free diet -- and Carvel ice cream cake contains both eggs and gluten -- I'm making Rice Krispie Treats too.  I'm going to cut them into smallish cubes and put them on skewers like lollipops (Amazon sells 6" bamboo skewers for wicked cheap, and I already have some from making vegetable kabobs) and  drizzle them with blue- and red-dyed white chocolate just for looks.  I'm going to aim to use up some of the other stuff I buy, like the Oreos, by dipping and drizzling them in chocolate too.  And maybe do the same with leftover marshmallows, half dipped in chocolate and then sprinkled with blue sugar or drizzled with the colored white chocolate, served on skewers (the people on Pinterest do this sort of thing a lot apparently).  These are things that will be exceedingly simple and yet look pretty, which is what I'm going for here.  The best chocolate chips I've found are the Trader Joe's brand, both in semi-sweet and white chocolate.  Nestle isn't bad, but the Meijer store brand ones are practically inedible.  You can also make dipping chocolate from a chopped up chocolate bar, or from mixing multiple varieties of chocolate -- the most important thing is that it be good quality, not vomitous garbage like Hershey's makes.  The product that markets itself as melting chocolate and dipping chocolate is just chocolate discs of questionable quality with the vegetable shortening already worked in or coating it, so don't waste your money on that.

Here is the menu for Simran's party:

Broccoli Florets, Baby Carrots, Grape Tomatoes & Homemade Ranch Dressing

Sliced Fruit, Berries, and Fruit Dip (I'm using the amendments in the "most helpful" review)

Various Crackers & Cubed Cheeses

Rice Krispie Treats (I need to double the recipe to make them thick enough in my baking dish of choice)

Dipping/Drizzling Chocolate (1 tsp vegetable shortening per 1 cup chocolate chips, heated and stirred until melted; I'm going to use a tiny amount of food coloring in the white chocolate to make blue and red drizzling chocolate)

Ice Cream Cake (store bought)

Organic Mango Lemonade (sold ready made at Trader Joe's), water, sodas

Meal Planning

I have some carry over meals that didn't end up happening last week.  Here is what I currently need to use up:  four hearts of romaine, one crown of organic broccoli, about a quarter of a red onion, and a couple organic russet potatoes.  Here is what I'm making:

Spinach Lasagna  and Peas & Carrots
I'm making this tonight.  I might make green salad rather than the peas & carrots -- I haven't decided yet, but I do plan to make some fresh ranch dressing today that I need to use up within the next week because that's when the yogurt I'm using expires.

Vegetable Biryani and Dal Makhani 
I still haven't made this in awhile, despite planning for it for the last two weeks.  I get very lazy when it comes time to prep the slow cooker before bed.

Veggie Pizza and Green Salad 

Penne alla Vodka 
This meal is so quick and easy, and it's full of vegetables and will use up some of the penne and the jar of vodka sauce in my pantry.  I might make the Italian sausage, but I'll probably end up buying it ready made out of laziness.

BBQ Seitan Ribs and Dill New Potato Salad and Crudites with Homemade Ranch Dressing

Tofu Banh Mi and Baked Zucchini Fries

Saag Tofu and Brown Basmati Rice

Best Seitan

I have been making my own homemade seitan for years, but I found a significantly better recipe than the one I posted previously.  It's the base for HellYeahItsVegan's fried chicken, which is how I first encountered it, but I also use it sliced up in stir-fry, ground up and stirred into marinara for spaghetti or lasagna, and pretty much any time I would use seitan.  The spicing is amazing.

Ingredients

• 1½ c vital wheat gluten
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1½ tsp cumin
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp pepper
• ½ tsp chili powder
• 1 c cold water
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp vegan Worcestershire sauce (Annie's brand makes a good one, and Whole Foods tends to carry at least a couple brands)

Broth:

• 5 c water
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp vegan Worcestershire sauce

Directions:

1.  Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl.

2.  Mix together wet ingredients in a measuring cup and add to dry ingredients.

3. Knead and mold dough into a ball.

4.  Divide dough into at least 6 pieces, pull and shape them into thin patties (as thin as you can -- they thicken substantially during cooking).  The more you knead the dough, the better the texture since this is gluten.  Don't be too gentle.

5.   Mix together broth ingredients.  Add patties to the broth, bring to a boil, boil for ten minutes, then cover and simmer for one hour, flipping them halfway through.

Drain the finished product.  You can dredge them in flour and fry them, bake them, slice and stir-fry them, or grind them up and use like you would ground beef.  They also freeze well.

Meal Planning

Time for weekly meal planning.  I need to make a new batch of seitans because I ran out a couple weeks ago, and we usually eat them at least once a week in something (planning to have them in both spinach lasagna and veggie stir-fry this week).  I also need to make a new batch of pizza dough.  The recipe I use makes enough for three pizzas.  Here is what I have to use up this week:  one ripe avocado, half a green cabbage shredded, a couple crowns of organic broccoli, the better part of a 3-lb bag of organic russet potatoes, and about three shredded carrots.  Here is what I'm making:

Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayo and Crudites with Homemade Ranch Dip
My meals are getting redundant, but I don't see the problem in making what I like, as long as it's relatively healthy and no one in the house seems to mind.  We still have burgers in the freezer and leftover chipotle mayo in the fridge from last week.  I already have the broccoli and the yogurt for the ranch dip too, so this will use up a lot of things, including the avocado.  I just need to buy whole wheat hamburger buns, red onion, lettuce, and tomato.  I've been using up a lot of red onion, lettuce, and tomato lately making green salads as sides.

Vegetable Biryani and Dal Makhani
I didn't get around to making this last week, so I'm making it tomorrow.

Veggie Pizza and Green Salad

Chilli-Garlic Noodles  
I usually make this two weeks in a row on account of needing to use up the leftover half cabbage quickly.  I also have the carrots already shredded and the milder chile-garlic paste already in the fridge, leftover from last week.  I think I just need some chopped green onions to make this dish.

Pav Bhaji
This will use up the hamburger buns I need to buy for the black bean burgers.  It will also use up a couple of the potatoes in the pantry.  I only used half a tablespoon or so of pav bhaji masala last time and it was still spicier than anticipated -- a good amount of spice for me, but too much for Simran.  I think I'll try it with just a teaspoon of pav bhaji masala this time. 

Spinach Lasagna  and Peas & Carrots

Seitan & Veggie Stir-fry and Brown Rice