The other day I felt a little festive and wanted to try to recreate one of my favorite dishes from R Thomas (a local organic, veggie friendly restaurant). Its a lemon pasta which is really rich and creamy.  I know, this is not healthy in the least but every once in awhile you have to let yourself indulge. R Thomas’ dish is white noodles, lemon cream sauce and a LOT of parm cheese on top.  My dish was made using 1 box of whole wheat linguine noodles, vegan cheese, vegan sour cream, vegan butter, an eggplant out of my garden, Trader Joe’s veggie Italian Sausage, sweet basil out of my garden, cremini mushrooms, Vidalia onion, lemons and garlic.

To prepare your noodles, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. You’re going to cook these noodles al dente (soft but still firm to the bite).  While your water is heating up, preheat your oven to 375 degrees and lightly spray a casserole/lasagna dish and set aside.  To get ready for the adventure ahead of you, zest 3 small lemons and juice 2 of them.  Then dice up a Japanese eggplant, mushrooms and the veggie sausage (comes in a pack of 4, I used 2).  Go ahead and put the ’sausage’, mushrooms and eggplant in a pan with some extra virgin olive oil and saute them (if you lightly salt the veggies they will cook faster…the salt will extract the water from the vegetable).  You don’t have to cook them long because you’re going to transfer all of these ingredients into the lasagna dish and bake it in the oven.

In a medium size pan, melt 4 T of vegan butter in 4 T of extra virgin olive oil on low heat.  Once the butter has melted, add 1/3 c diced onion and 3 minced garlic cloves and turn off the heat.  Add 2 t of Italian seasoning, the juice of 1 lemon and 1/3 of your lemon zest.  Now add in 2 c of vegan sour cream and the basil (I cut 6 or 7 leaves up) and mix slowly.  You can add some sea salt and vegan parm cheese if you’d like.

Once both pans and the pot of noodles have finished, start preparing your casserole. Put the noodles in the lasagna pan first, then the ’sausage’/eggplant/mushroom saute and lastly, pour the sauce right on top making sure you cover as much of the noodles as you can. Season the top of the dish with 1/2 of your leftover lemon zest, red pepper flakes and oregano.  You’re going to cover the dish with foil and bake it in the oven for 15 minutes.  Uncover it and cook for another 10.

Once the noodles were plated I topped them off with some fresh parsley from the garden, a little more lemon zest and a couple drops of leftover lemon juice.  I poured the remaining lemon juice and zest over the top of the leftovers before storing them in the fridge.  Delicious!

Potato pizza is something that I have loved since first bite. There’s a pizza place in the town where I spent my teenage years and they were kind enough to give me my first potato pizza expierience. Recently my boyfriend and I were visiting my parents and wanted to take the golf cart to lunch (long story).  Never ones to pass up a good piece of a pie, we couldn’t resist stopping in while we were in town. We ordered the potato pizza sans bacon and were saddened when it came to our table full of pig. The server explained that they can’t make it without bacon.  Why he would still ring it in and serve it to us after we said ‘no bacon’ is beyond me. It was a waste of food, energy and resources and made me sad. Right then and there I decided I would see their “could-be-vegetarian-if-they-tried, potato-pizza” and raise them a ‘vegan potato pizza’ all my own.

To make my potato pizza you will need: 5 small red potatos (cut in thin discs), 4 slices of veggie bacon, 1/4 c diced red onion, 1 jalapeno (out of my garden!), 1 can cannellini beans, extra virgin olive oil, chives, vegan cheese, cloves-o-garlic, 1 lemon, vegan whole wheat pizza crust, various spices.

The sauce on this pizza is a spicy white bean aioli.

Spicy White Bean Aioli

1 can cannellini beans (drained and rinsed), 5 (or 6 if they’re small) garlic cloves, juice of 1 lemon, dash of sea salt and pepper, 1/4 c extra virgin olive oil all in the bowl of a food processor. Hit go and let this process for awhile–that many garlic cloves is going to be spicy and you want to make sure they get diced very well in the food processor.  You may see other white bean aioli recipes that are similar but call for olive oil instead of extra virgin olive oil.  I am not a fan of using olive oil with beans to create a dip/sauce.  I have found that when I use olive oil in white bean aioli or in hummus, all I can taste is the olive oil.  When I use extra virgin olive oil, the flavors of the other ingredients is what I taste.

Back to the pie.  Whenever I use pizza crust that I have frozen, I always put a tiny little bit of olive oil on the crust and then sprinkle oregano, Italian seasoning and red pepper flakes on top. If you’re using dough or unfrozen pizza crust, you don’t need the olive oil but its always a nice addition. On top of the seasoning sprinkles comes the aioli! Spread it evenly over the crust making sure it reaches all over.

Grab your vegan bacon and stack the pieces on top of each other. Cut the strips into small pieces–you will be sprinkling them all over the pizza. Right now, you’re going to sprinkle a few over the white bean aioli on your pie. Also sprinkle some of those diced red onions and a little ‘cheese’ is okay here too.  Now its time to layer the potatoes!

To prepare your potatoes, you’re going to boil (covered with a little slit allowing some steam to escape) the discs you cut in salted water for about….10 minutes. Keep checking them-you want to be able to stab them with a fork but not be quite able to mash them.  Taste one often–it’s really up to you to decide when your potatoes are good enough to eat!

You always want to cook potatoes all the way through.  To acheive this, make sure they’re heating up with your water.  Don’t boil the water first and then add the potatoes–it will cook the outsides too fast and not the insides.

Create your layer of potatoes on your pie.  I always spread out one layer (potato to potato) and then put smaller or half pieces on top to fill in some spaces.  Dust a few drops of aioli on top of this layer of potatoes along with some more bacon, red onion and ‘cheese’.  This is a good time to put a few jalapeno’s on your pie as well.  You’re going to repeat your potato/aioli/bacon/onion/’cheese’/jalapeno layer one more time.  You’re building a 2 layer potato pyramid!

Pop your pie in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 400 degrees (or according to your crust’s directions).  Vegan ‘cheese’ melts as good as it can-any expierienced vegan ‘cheese’ user will know what it looks like when it’s cooked.

I dusted the top of this pie off with some chives fresh out of the garden.

Friends, listen up because this is serious business.  My dear friend @Rawliving (<– Twitter name or her website can be found here) let me in on a BIG secret.  Banana ice cream made from….just bananas!!

My mother always freezes her bananas when they get really ripe because she makes banana bread out of them.  Like her, I do that but I also use my frozen bananas for smoothies. Now I can add ice cream to that list of reasons as to why there are bananas in my freezer (everyone ALWAYS asks).

In the bowl of a food processor, put 1 frozen ripe banana (per serving) and the smallest tiniest dash of vanilla extract or almond extract (I like almond extract).  Process for 4-5 minutes until the banana ice cream is completely smooth.  That’s it…that’s all you do.

All of my raw foodies can make a chocolate syrup to put on top out of agave nectar and raw cacao powder (just whip the two ingredients together).

Tomorrow is my father’s birthday and I plan on making this for him for dessert. Being a diabetic, he doesn’t eat sweets so this is the perfect ice cream dessert for him. I can’t wait for him to tell me how good it is!

In all my years of making potato salad, never did I think to use pesto.  For this particular pesto I ground up sweet basil, Italian parsley, rosemary, 1 garlic clove, the juice of 1 lemon, vegan parmesan cheese, raw walnuts, splash of sea salt, splash of freshly ground black pepper and some extra virgin olive oil.  It turned out amazing! Anyone who has eaten potatoes that came from the Rustin kitchen, know that my potatoes are cooked with rosemary. The two just go together so well! I doubled up on the rosemary with this pesto so the flavor really stood out.  I mixed the pesto with about 1 T of vegenaise and then spread it all over my (red) potatoes (skins still on, cut in chunks and boiled for 10 minutes).  I also added diced red onion and some raw sun dried tomatoes.  After it was done, I sprinkled a little more sea salt on top along with some dried basil, Italian seasoning and oregano (just a dash!).

I created this dish along with another spicy vegan potato salad to bring to a cookout at my friend’s house over the weekend.  I also brought along some raw almonds, carrots and an apple (those were for me).

Sweet potato gnocchi is such a treat for my mouth.  Growing up I avoided sweet potatoes but now I find myself trying to incorporate them into more and more dishes.  Lucky for me, my excellent farmer boyfriend has some planted in our backyard so soon I’ll get the chance to experiment much more with these delicious creatures.

Making gnocchi is easy.  All it takes to make sweet potato gnocchi is to cook your potatoes (2 large sweet potatoes) in the oven (at 350) for about 40-50 minutes (you want to make sure they cook through…poke a couple holes in them before you put them in the oven).  Let them cool until they are touchable. You want to remove the skin and mash them in a bowl with 1 garlic clove (pressed), 1/2 t of sea salt, 1/2 t ground nutmeg and 1 egg (vegan friends use Ener-G Egg Replacer).  Mix the ingredients together and then add in 2 cups of whole wheat flour (this will turn your mash into a dough.  You may need to add more or less flour–its up to you).  On a floured surface, roll the dough out into several long snakes and cut 1 inch pieces off. You want to boil these pieces in a pot of salted boiling water.  The gnocchi will float when they are done.  Make sure you drain them very well so they aren’t too soggy.  I haven’t perfected my recipe yet so feel free to play around with your spices and let me know what you use! I’ll update this post next time I make it with my changes.

I served my gnocchi with a red sauce I made from sauteing broccoli, pumpkin seeds and onion in some extra virgin olive oil.  I added some tomato sauce once the veggies cooked through and let the flavors simmer together while I waited for my gnocchi to finish.  I served this pasta over a bed of spinach and finished with a couple basil leaves, vegan parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes.

Taco pizza is always a hit at the Rustin house. We hadn’t had one in awhile so I took to the Dekalb Farmer’s Market to gather up the ingredients. I bought a fresh whole wheat pizza pie crust and topped it with black beans (that I squished into a paste), spinach, jalapeno (out of the garden), red onion slices, corn, vegan cheese, chopped green n red pepper, sliced mushrooms and some cayenne pepper (from the garden).  When it was done cooking, I sprinkled some chopped olives and tomato on top.

There are so many taco pizza variations you can do.  Once I get my dehydrator I’ll post a killer raw taco pizza that will blow you away!

This was my very first attempt at making a vegan lasagna and I’m happy to report that it is the #1 best lasagna I have ever made! I made three ‘un’cheeses for this dish: a tofu ricotta, sesame seed parmesan and a soy milk mozzeralla.  Last year my fabulous boyfriend bought me “The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook” by Jo Stepaniak and those recipes were from there.  The cheeses needs to be made the evening before the lasagna because the recipes require an overnight chill in the fridge. The rest of the vegetable lasagna was my typical style: whole wheat noodles cooked just before they reach al dente in a large pot with salted water, sauted onion, green pepper, mushroom and zucchini, shredded carrot and spinach.

In a sprayed casserole dish (or lasagna pan) arrange your lasagna as follows:

• put a light layer of sauce (either homemade or store bought-amount weighing approx 2 lbs, 13 oz)
• a layer of noodles (4 across and 1 vertical to make up for the gap (you will tear about 1/4 of the length off the noodle to fit the pan))
• cover these noodles completely with sauce (not thick but make sure all of the noodles are covered)
• put a layer of tofu ricotta on top of the sauce (you’ll use 1/2 of the ricotta)
• cover cheese with a thick layer of spinach and a few droplets of sauce on top of the spinach
• put some mozzerella and parmesan cheese on top of the spinach/sauce
• another layer of noodles but this time starting them across on the side that the last row was vertical and the vertical noodle where the last ones were across (press down on the noodles so the spinach is being weighed down)
• cover noodles with sauce and the rest of the tofu ricotta on top
• put a light layer of shredded carrot and then a heavy layer of your sauteed veggies (you’re sauteing them first because your mushrooms and zucchini hold a lot of water and it will result in a watery lasagna)
• cover these veggies with chunks of mozzerlla and some parmesan cheeses
• another layer of noodles (doing the same trick as last time by switching the sides of the vertical noodle)
• cover the noodles 100% with sauce and sprinkle some red pepper flakes, oregano, parmesan cheese and some mozzerella
• cover with alumminum foil and bake in a 350 degree oven (preheated) for 40 minutes, uncover and bake for another 5 minutes

I served my lasagna over a bed of spinach and some sauted asparagas. I sauteed the asparagas in a little extra virgin oil, sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, handful of pumpkin seeds and the remaining 2 T of sauce.

Tofu Ricotta

• 1 lb firm regular tofu (drained)
• 3 T fresh lemon juice
• 2 t mild sweet syrup of your choice (I used raw agave nectar)
• 1 t dried basil
• 1/2 t sea salt
• 1/4 t garlic powder

Break the tofu into large chunks.  Put it in a medium sized skillet or sauce pan and cover with water.  Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes.  Drain well and chill uncovered in the fridge until it’s cool enough to be handled. Crumble and place in a bowl with the remaining ingredients.  Mash and blend until the mixture has reached a ricotta/cottage cheese like texture.  Cover and let sit in the fridge overnight for the flavors to combine.

Parmezano Sprinkles

• 1/2 c white sesame seeds (or blanched almonds)
• 2 T nutrional yeast flakes
• 1 to 2 t chickpea miso (I used a brown rice miso…same diff)
• heaping 1/4 t sea salt

Grind the sesame seeds into a fine powder in the bowl of a food processor.  Add remaining ingredients and pulse until combined. Store in an airtight container in the fridge remembering to shake before using.  This will keep for a month or longer if you freeze it.  I doubled this recipe and now I have plenty left over for other dishes.

Buffalo Mostarella

• 2 c plain soymilk
• 1/2 c nutrional yeast flakes
• 1/3 c quick cooking rolled oats (oatmeal)
• 1/4 c tahini
• 1/4 c arrowroot
• 3 – 4 T fresh lemon juice
• 1 T onion powder
• 1 t sea salt

Lightly oil a container that holds at least 3 cups of substance. Combine all ingredients into a blender or food processor and process several minutes until completely smooth. Pour this mixture into a saucepan or large skillet and cook and stir over medium heat unilt very thick and smooth. Pack into the prepared container and cool uncovered in the fridge.  When your cheese is completely cool, cover and chill overnight.  When you’re ready to use it the next day, turn over the container (cut along the edges of it first) and the mixture will come out.  It will be soft and sticky to cut using an oiled or water moistened knife. The leftovers will last between 5-7 days in the fridge.

Green smoothies are the perfect way to start your day.  Not only are they super energizing but they are filling and very good for you too.

In your blender (per smoothie) put: 1 banana, handful of blueberries, 2 cups spinach, ice cubes, 1/2 T coconut oil (optional). Hit go on the blender and let run until everything is ground up and mixed together.  You can also add peach or frozen berries if you’d like. The spinach taste comes through but isn’t too powerful; the sweetness of the fruits help to balance out the taste.  The result is a super delicious, healthy and slight earthy tasting treat!

Nachos are always on my mind….I’m serious. They’re definitely my “food of the moment”.  I could eat nachos every day of the freaking week and never be sick of them. Well…maybe after a week of them I’d finally be sick of them. The best thing about nachos is that you can use every single chip in the bag–even the bottom crumbs; that is exactly what I did for these nachos.  We had three partial bags of chips that had been sitting on top of the fridge for a hot minute and I was sick of looking at them so I spread them out on top of some aluminum foil on top of a cookie sheet.

Well, let’s not let me get ahead of myself.  Before I started any of this I submerged a bag-o-brown rice in some water on the stove top.  Instant rice is super quick–its amazing (10 mins tops).  I added some cumin and cayenne to the water while the rice was cooking in hopes that it would soak up some of those flavors. When the rice is almost done, preheat your oven to 350 degrees (you want it hot enough to melt your vegan cheese).  In a small skillet I put some extra virgin olive oil spray and about 2 T of soy sauce and heated to medium heat.  To it I added 1/2 a block of tempeh cut into cubes. You want to cook the tempeh until its colored throughout (from the soy sauce).  It’s going to get some more heat added to it once you put the nachos in the oven.

On top of the chips I put some black beans (opened the can, drained and rinsed them), diced jalapeno (fresh out of the garden!), the brown rice and the tempeh.  Then I sprinkled some vegan cheese (pepperjack and mozzerella).  After the last sprinkle of cheese, I added a light dose of cumin and cayenne pepper and put the nachos into the oven, keeping my eye on them…you just want the cheese to melt slightly.  Vegan cheese has a tendency to get really rubbery if cooked for too long.  It will string if you catch it at just the right temperature.  While the nachos were heating, I diced up some red onion, banana peppers, tomato (out of the garden!) and kalamata olives to put on top once they came out of the oven.

You can make a good set of nachos in my vegan kitchen–all of the above ingredients are staples.  When I go grocery shopping I’m simply replacing the staples.  In the near future I’m going to post “Vegan Kitchen Staples” as well as a “Raw Kitchen Staples” and “Vegetarian Kitchen Staples”. Should be helpful for those of you who are trying to eat healthier and stay away from the fatty convenience foods.  Don’t get me wrong, there are a TON of fatty vegetarian and vegan foods too; the trick is to know what you’re looking for and what you’re NOT looking for.  Like I said before, reading ingredients is a very important part of buying and eating food.

Eating veggies out of our garden is our favorite thing in the world! Our eggplants didn’t stand a chance; we ate 3 in about a week. Now we’re waiting for our plants to slllooowwwlly fruit more. It’s painful…it really is!

Before you saute anything to make the sauce, you need to get to choppin your veggies. I cut up one Japanese eggplant into thin discs, 1 jalapeno pepper into small pieces, quartered a handful of baby portabella mushrooms (washed) and then sliced two thick rings off a yellow onion and chopped them into medium size pieces.

In a medium sized skillet, saute the eggplant, jalapeno and onions on medium low heat in some extra virgin olive oil. I seasoned these veggies with some sea salt, fresh ground pepper and oregano. Once they cooked for about 4-5 minutes, I added the mushrooms, MorningstarFarms ground “beef” crumbles and a can of organic diced tomatoes. I turned the heat up slightly to medium, added some Italian seasoning and some red pepper flakes.  Watch this sauce, stirring occasionally so nothing burns at the bottom.  Once its cooked for about 5 minutes, turn the heat back down to medium low and cover.  You can let this cook like this until your noodles are done.

Once plated I topped with some fresh basil leaves from the garden as well as some broccoli that I ran through the food processor and some vegan parmesan cheese.