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.

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).

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!

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.

The best part about the busted ass economy and being jobless is that I get to be super creative in the kitchen and make up new dishes that cost almost nothing.  This dish was made from some rice Loren’s mom gave us months ago (maybe even a year!), herbs from our garden, veggies from the farmers market and a green pepper I stole from my parent’s house (hehe).

The first thing I started was the rice because it takes around 30 minutes to finish.  I used a long grain brown rice that came in a box with a seasoning package.  You know the drill with box rice: empty contents of box into medium size pot with 2 cups waters, stir, bring it to a boil, cover and then simmer for 25 minutes.

When the rice had about 15 minutes left I heated a large skillet with some extra virgin olive oil (we’ll say 2 T) in on medium low heat and then added 1 garlic clove (diced finely), 2 thick rounds of white onion (chopped) and 1 jalapeno from our garden (washed, seeded and diced).  I sprinkled 2 splashes of ground coriander, a dash of sea salt and some fresh ground pepper (3 turns) on top of these guys while they cooked. After about 3 minutes, I upped the heat to just under medium and I added 2 big handfuls of spinach on top and 1/4 C raw pumpkin seeds.  You may want to add a little more oil on top of the spinach so the little guys down below don’t burn.  Keep flipping the veggies underneath with the spinach so that the heat from the veggies helps to wilt the spinach faster.  Everybody’s stove is different so use your brain and decide which heat is best for sauteing your veggies and wilting your spinach.  Once the wilt was completed, I added 2 more dashes of coriander, stirred and took these veggies off the heat.

Use the 10 minutes before you start cooking these veggies (while the rice cooks) to wash, cut and chop them. You can also prepare the pepper in this time as well or while you’re waiting for your extra virgin olive oil to heat.  To cook your green pepper, set your oven to 375 degrees and put a emptied out green pepper in on a piece of Pam sprayed foil, open top down. Make sure to poke a small hole in the bottom of the pepper (you can simply remove the bottom stem and that will be plenty of room for air to escape).  To empty out the green pepper, cut across the pepper just under the top stem and remove all the insides.  You can put the green pepper in the oven while it preheats–it’ll give it more time.  When the veggies and rice are done, your pepper will be done too.  You want it warm (hot to the touch) and a little soft but not completely soggy–it will still hold a little crunch cooking it this way.  Because there were two of us eating, I cut the one pepper in half (cutting across the pepper with a serrated knife).

When plating, I put down the wilted spinach/veggie mixture first, pepper on top and then filled the pepper with the rice.  I garnished with some chopped chives and parsley out of our garden.

My 3 Herb Pesto Lentil Salad is a really good summer salad.  The combination of the greens, lemon juice and pesto really make this salad the perfect meal after a long day at the beach or at the pool.  This salad can be made raw by sprouting your lentils but if you would rather cook them, do it to it! Unlike raw beans, lentils don’t need the pre-cooking soak so they are quick and easy to cook.

First things first! Put your lentils in a pot to boil (follow the instructions on the bag.  Be sure to rinse them off very well and inspect them).  Next get your food processor (or high speed blender) ready to make your pesto! I went out into my garden and picked some basil, Italian parsley and rosemary for my pesto.  Depending on how many you’re trying to feed, the amount varies (always use less rosemary than the other two herbs…basil and parsley are the main herbs for this pesto).  Honestly, I couldn’t tell you my exact measurements.  When it comes to pesto, it’s such a simple recipe that I just put all the ingredients into the food processor, hit go and then add more to get the amount necessary.  Remember, a little pesto goes a long way especially when you’re putting it on top of hot food (the heat helps to extend the pesto).  In the food processor I put the herbs from my garden, some raw pine nuts, some veggie parmesan cheese, a clove of garlic, juice of 1/2 a large lemon, a dash of sea salt and fresh ground pepper and hit go.  While its mixing, lightly pour some extra virgin olive oil down the food processor shaft until your mixture starts to cream. It will happen quickly so pay attention!

For the base of the salad I laid down some spinach and raw sun dried tomatoes.  Once the lentils completed cooking, I mixed them with the pesto and spooned them on top of the salad.  I finished it off with the juice from the other 1/2 of lemon and some fresh mint from my garden.

Pasta at its best! As my beach trip quickly approaches, I’ve been letting the food run out in the house and only buying things that Loren will eat while I’m away (so my house is seriously lacking in my fruits and veggies). This dinner started with some salted boiling water for the noodles and then started building itself as I ventured through my cabinets and fridge.

Bring 3 T extra virgin olive oil, minced garlic (1 large clove) and chunks of red onion (about 1 cup) to medium heat in a large skillet. Keep this moving so you don’t burn the garlic (very important in making sauce…if the oil is too hot and the garlic turns brown, you’ve burnt it).  After you’ve cooked this for about 4 minutes (you’ll smell the onions and garlic) add the broccoli (I used a bag of fresh broccoli).  Let this cook for about 5 minutes (you may need to pour some more oil on top of the broccoli so they cook down a little) but while it’s cooking,  add 2 cups of halved grape tomatoes, 1 cup of raw sun dried tomatoes (not in water or oil…just dried in the sun) and 1 cup of tomato sauce.  Once the tomatoes have heated through, they will begin popping (or breaking)….you can speed up this process by squishing them with a fork into the skillet.  I then added some Morningstar Farm veggie Italian Sausage crumbles, some fresh rosemary from my garden and turned the heat down to low and covered (stirring occasionally).  Once the veggie sausage heats through, your sauce is done.  I poured the sauce over my cooked noodles, mixed and added some freshly grated parmigiano reggiano cheese.  Once plated I topped it off with some fresh basil leaves.

This is one of my newest favorite pasta dishes! It goes very well with some Cabernet.

I’ve been meaning to try to make an avocado soup for awhile now.  Tonight was the night! It’s super easy and super delicious.

In the bowl of a high speed blender combine: 2 ripe avocados, 2 1/2 cups filtered water, 2 T organic unpasteurized brown miso, one 6 inch stem of rosemary leaves (about 1 t…its from my garden!), 2 T raw olive oil, the juice of 1 lime, 1/3 t cumin, 1/3 t cayenne pepper and 1/4 t chipotle chili seasoning.  Puree until all the ingredients are mixed and its a smooth, thick consistency.  Once plated, I topped the soup with freshly diced tomatoes and some fresh cilantro (right out of my garden!).

I served the soup along side a salad: spinach, cucs, carrot, grape tomoatoes, green pepper and red onion.