Vegan Stroganoff!

Well kids aside from a weekend during which I ate a cake (I made) that had butter in it, with ice cream (organic at least) and a potluck that consisted of items made with dairy that I ate to be polite (items that were tasty, but I ate them at the expense of my digestive system. Not fun!). I am loving my new In progress Vegan life and have been enjoying non-animal foods. Still eating eggs though very minimally.

It was my son's 8th birthday on Saturday (thus the cake and ice cream). Happy Birthday J-man! We celebrated at Chuck E Cheese with family and he had a wonderful time.

I have missed strogranoff and since I adore mushrooms of all varieties I decided to do a search for a vegan recipe this past weekend. I found one that sounded perfect and I tried it today. It was AMAZING! Even after having to make some tweaks to it, as I didn't have the ingredients it asked for. It seems this dish is fool-proof, and made a wonderful starting recipe. Here's the link to the original:


Seitan Portobella Stroganoff

Here's the recipe the way I made it:

3 1/2 cups seitan, sliced in thin wide strips I did not use any Seitan.

2 tablespoons +1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup shallots, medium onion thinly sliced
1 large RED onion, quartered and sliced in half moons
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups cremini 8 oz. baby bella mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 4 portobella caps, thinly sliced
1 cup burgundy cooking wine red wine vinegar
2 cups cold water
2 tablespoons arrowroot powder (corn or potato starch will work, too) I just used 2 Tbsp. of flour, but it definitely would have been better with some kind of starch, a thicker more creamy texture.
2 tablespoons fresh thyme, chopped up I used 1 tsp. of "Simply Organic" dried seasoning.
1 tablespoon hungarian paprika (I don't know what hungarian paprika is, but I just used regular).
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
2 teaspoons dijon mustard (I just used stone ground, didn't have dijon)
1/2 cup original flavored soy milk (I use Vitasoy) I used 1/2 cup of coconut milk, as you all probably know by now, I am anti-all-soy products.
1 cup peas I did not use any peas.

Directions: I used the directions as followed just substituting the ingredients listed with what I opted to use. I used whole wheat thin spaghetti, which worked fine but I think a thicker pasta would have been better.

Dissolve the arrow root in the 2 cups of water, set aside.

Heat olive oil in skillet over med-high heat. Add the shallots and onions, saute for 5 minutes. Add garlic, mushrooms and thyme. Saute for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a cast iron skillet with 1 teaspoon olive oil, just to coat it. Add the seitan and saute over medium heat about 25 minutes, until it is dark brown and crispy on the outside. If you are using store-bought seitan you need only cook it for 10 minutes.

Back to the sauce: add salt, wine and paprika. Turn heat up high to reduce the liquid, about 10 minutes.


Lower heat to med-high, add water and arrowroot, stir well and let sauce thicken, about 5 minutes. Add nutritional yeast and mix well until it is dissolved. Add soymilk and mustard and bring heat down to low, be very careful not to let it boil now because it can make the soymilk and mustard bitter. Add seitan and peas, cook for 10 more minutes.

Divide noodles into bowls and mix with the stroganoff. It is best to mix immediately so that the pasta doesn't stick. You can top it off with tofu sour cream, but I like it just the way it is.


The final product!

Thank you Post Punk Kitchen for such a great recipe!!

I have to say this was truly incredible. So very delicious even with all my crazy substitutions. This is now going to be a regular item on my menu. The flavors were better than any stroganoff I've had before made with the fatty sour cream, butter and meat. This one is healthy, and full of flavor. I loved the coconut milk, a great healthy alternative that seemed to substitute well in this recipe.

My Anti Soy Crusade & Health Kick for Life Continues

I like to call myself an "in-progress" vegan these days. I'm not big on labels or restrictions but I realize that I have decided to live a more compassionate lifestyle again and for good this time (I've been vegetarian off and on again for 15 years) that labels can assist on this path. I'm not quite vegan, but I'm getting close. In progress.

My ultimate goal is to be healthy which I find to be a very challenging endeavor in a society that is addicted to chemcially grown, overly processed, refined foods, meat, dairy and sugar. A society that blindly defends eating meat meanwhile being oblivious to what goes on behind those pleasant looking packages and tasty bites of steak. Ignorance is not bliss, and the disgusting, cruel practices of the meat industry are reaping what they sow. Three year old children are dying from eating contaminated hamburger meat (e. coli) , and don't even get me started on what these meat industries environmental impacts are (you can google it or youtube for yourself if you want to go down the rabbit hole).

I want to do my part to live a conscious, compassionate, healthy life for the sake of my own body as well as for the planet. Our home is a constant work in progress to keep it as green as possible, organic gardening, using green cleaning processes and products, recycling.

In just shy of one month's time since my last post on my "health kick for life". I have almost completely cut out cheese. I still crave it from time to time but I have found that it is suprisingly easy to cute out. It wasn't even my direct intention to cut it out, I just thought I should try cooking without and save for a pizza that I ordered and forgot to ask for it without cheese, I have not eaten any cheese, no ice cream (I have had sorbetto though which is dairy free) and very little butter. We have replaced butter with extra virgin coconut oil. It's delicious and so good for you. I still eat butter but I can see that I will be eliminating that product quickly too. We still eat eggs, but we are getting them from free range organic producer's. Eggs and butter. The last to go on our vegan process here. We didn't even start out to become vegans but here we are and I couldn't be happier about it. We have incorporate more raw foods into our diet, always trying to find/purchase organically grown, non-GMO and food that is not irradiated.

In cutting out all these animal derived products meat, cheese, dairy, we have not been replacing them with the convenient soy based meat replacement products. Since soy products are not healthy, and GMO soy doesn't have to be labelled GMO and is an environmental nightmare, I refuse to consume soy based products now that I know. Knowledge is power and hopefully the more people learn of the horrors of soy both on our health and environment they will stop eating soy products as well. There are some alternatives out there. Quorn is a good one, tastes like real chicken without the guilt. I believe Quorn products do use eggs though so they are not vegan. They have some really tasty non-meat balls! Gardenburger has a Vegan soy free patty that is really tasty! I like those. There are some sausages I like to get at Whole Food's that are made only of potato and apples. They are delicious and go well with breakfast foods or things like spaghetti.

I have found it is actually pretty easy to just substitute what you normally would have used meat for, with just healthy vegetables. I like to lightly saute a mixture of all the produce I can get like red, yellow and orange bell peppers, red onions, mushrooms, zuchini and yellow squash, even eggplant sometimes! I just throw it into spaghetti sauce, scrambled eggs or hashbrowns. Add some spices and it is a healthy delcious meat-free meal that is full of flavor! It makes great curry! Yummm!! We eat ours over a mixture of whole grain rice. I love the richer flavor or whole grain rice. Making homemade pizza without cheese has been a blast! I don't even notice the cheese isn't there because the sauce, whole wheat crust and all the fresh vegetables are so tasty and full of flavor.

I am starting to incorporate more raw foods and less grains into our diet as well. I am not opposed to cooking yet, as I know that even our bodies denature proteins in the digestive process, but I want to learn everything I can about how to get the most value out of the foods I eat to be happy and healthy. If you have any questions about how to do this yourself please let me know. I've found substituting ingredients into recipes to be much easier than I thought.

Health Kick for Life

Posted to fb 2/22/10.

So I am on a health kick for life. I don't smoke, I rarely if ever drink alcohol and am loving it! I don't eat junk food, nothing with MSG in it- (except on rare ocassions I do slip into temptation with Doritos Nacho Cheese flavor, damn them!), No TRANS fats, very little fried foods- almost no fast foods (Taco Time and Subway are my exceptions). I don't drink soda's of any kind, haven't for five years now. I try not to eat processed foods- and avoid white flour. I eat whole wheat grains, rice, bread, and pasta's. I try to cook from home as much as possible. I eat very little meat. Fish, some red beef (organic, free range never ground meats) and I still eat eggs, ice cream and cheese, other than that I'm practically vegan. I prefer to eat and cook mostly vegan and I love how I feel. I don't eat sugar (except in extremely small quantities)- and I avoid corn syrup like the plague. I despise artificial sweetener's and refuse to eat them unless I get tricked like tonight, its in my cold medicine and I seriously am gagging and hardly able to choke the stuff down it is so disgusting. My weakness is chocolate but I only eat dark chocolate now and I adore it. It took me a while to lose the sweet cravings, but believe me, it will happen. It has taken me almost three years to get this place where I no longer crave and can no longer tolerate sweet foods after a lifetime of over-eating sugar. It takes the brain a while to rewire from our bad habits but it can happen. Be patient! I used to only eat milk chocolate, but I have acquired the delicious slightly bitter, slightly sweet taste of dark chocolate and only eat dark chocolate! We try to eat as much raw foods as we can, but I am not against cooking. I just try to use cooking methods that keep as many of the healthy nutrients on the food as possible, light saute', slow cooker, steaming etc.

This "diet" may seem limiting, you may be thinking what does she eat? But that is just it, I am eating more delicious food than I have in my life and I'm healthier than when I was 20. I lost 25 lbs of fat, 4 clothing sizes ( a size 10 to a size 6, 4 in some jeans!), 6" off my hips- and a whole cup bra size smaller (thank god!) I weigh my pre-pregnancy weight in fat, have a perfectly healthy BMI- and am in perfect physical health (aside from this sinus infection LOL!) I'm working out (when healthy which right now unfortunately I am not) 2 times a week which come the warmer months I will increase to five or more. Love to be active in the warmer months but I really have to fight to keep it up during the winter. I've noticed though I've been healthier this winter than ever before, even with the environmental factors we've had, and emotionally I've felt much better too (I do use a Phillips Blu Go Lite on those really dark days and that helps) but nothing helps as much as exercising and eating right. It's made a tremendous difference.

I love to eat...and I love to eat Asian food, specifically Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and I love Mediteranean cooking and food as well. I enjoy Mexican and occassionaly Italian too, though that is more of an indulgence. I find ethnic foods are just so much healthier and more satisfying. I love all the wonderful flavors like curry. I am learning to cook new foods almost everyday like whole grain whole wheat breads and pizza crusts. I have made homemade vegan pad thai and recently I tried my hand at handmade whole wheat pitas and falafal. :)

I love to feel good- and the last few nights I have been having dreams in which I have the body I want and it is getting me really excited. I replaced 25 lbs of fat, with a nice lean 5 lbs of muscle and I'm working on toning up and sculpting more and more until I meet my goals.

Fitness. We all decide on what kind of lifestyle we have, why not make your decision a healthy one. Why not make fitness your life? I'm so grateful I did, and I have to say I wouldn't have been so successful if it wasn't for Hiram already being on this healthy path. With all his support, wisdom and encouragement I am getting fit for life too. We are living a healthy life together. I hope that as I pursue a career in the medical field I can learn more about fitness, and nutrition so I can help others achieve their fitness goals as well.

If I can do it, you can too, if you choose to!!