mixed veggie casserole

About a month ago I posted my recipe for Green Bean Casserole, which is one of my favorite vegetarian holiday foods. When I served it to The Boyfriend, he ate it but I also noticed he was picking out all of the green beans. Turns out he likes green beans about as much as he likes mushrooms, which is not at all. Oh well that's what dating is for, to learn what other people like and don't like.

Being as I love this dish and I also love casserole in general because it's sometimes two meals at once, I decided to give it another shot. Last night I cooked up what can only be described as mixed veggie casserole.

What You Need:

1-Can of potato soup. I used a roasted garlic potato soup.
1-Can of mixed veggies
1-Can of cream of mushroom soup
1-Can of French's Famous Fried Onions.
crutons

What You Do:

Pop open the potato soup and add to a pyrex dish.

Mix in the can of mixed veggies

Open up the mushroom soup. If you got condensed soup DO NOT ADD THE MILK, the mixture will get too mushy and you'll get more of a soupy texture and less casserole action. Add mushroom soup.

add either crushed croutons, precrushed breadcrumbs, or if you're feeling crunchy do whole croutons. Stir mixture around.

add about two handfuls of the dried onions. stir in.

Heat oven to about 350 degrees and bake for about 20 minutes.

Pull dish out after 20 minutes, stir in some pepper and seasonings of your choice. Coat the top of the dish with dried onions, these will become your crust as you bake the dish further.

put back in the oven for another 10-20 minutes or until hot and crisp on top.

let stand for about 5 minutes before serving.

A word of caution: this is a really filling and delicious dish. It's also not very pretty. But it worked, I got my casserole deliciousness on and The Boyfriend didn't pick out any of the ingredients this time around. Score.

bento! (or holiday gift ideas for your veg friends)

So recently I've become kind of obsessed with the concept of Bento Boxes. I have a lot of time on my hands and like to cook. And I love anything cute. I joined a community for Bento and I realized a lot of people who are into Bento are also vegetarians. The community on LJ has all the entries tagged so you can click straight through to veg or vegan boxes and there are some really creative ideas in there for packing a more appealing lunch.

With the holidays coming up I thought I would start a series on gift ideas for you to ask for or to give your vegetairan friends! So today's idea is all about the bento.

Some examples of the boxes:



This is a pretty traditional Japanese Bento.
It comes with:
*2 tier lunch box
*Lunch box bag
*Chopsticks
*Erastic belt

Or if you want to go a little more cutesy, there is this Black Sheep box.

And as far as I'm concerned you can't talk bento without bringing Miss Hello Kitty into the mix.

There are alot of extras you can also throw in when introducing someone to the art of bento. Like rice molds, so that they can create rice balls or even use them to make sushi. Some people like egg molds for hard boiled eggs and another almost essential product is a sauce container.

The best part about the bento is its resuable and you save some plastic waste, especially if you make sure to get the sauce/condiment container.

There are also loads of cook books on how to make bento boxes that would make a handy companion for a first time bento maker. The Manga Cookbook comes with a bento box already while Vegan Lunch Box takes a more American and totally vegan take on making and packing lunch.

I'll leave you with some photos of delicious looking veggie bentos. Come back soon for more gift ideas....

A couple of lunches prepared by jokergirl

contents:
Vegan Korean stew, -with sihmeji and enoki mushrooms. Then there's tomatoes, carrots, a dumpling and a mini muffin, and rice in the top layer.

Big box (top): Millet and chili sin carne decorated with parsley. Millet is actually rather tasty, but not very different from couscous texture and flavour-wise. Mmm.
Small box (bottom): Tiny croquettes on picks decorated with oregano; mini chocolate chip muffin (made in a condiment cup with a tiny amount of muffin dough), star-shaped carrots and a cup of tsatsiki.

Easy Breezy Beautiful Covergirl Shepherds Pie

I'm Irish and lord knows many traditional Irish recipes call for two things: booze and meat. So last St Patricks Day, I was newly veg, and planning a party. I had no idea what to make until I came across a recipe for Shepherd's Pie. Now I'd had the meat version before at a pub in Santa Monica and thought it was pretty delicious and filling and would make a nice dish for the party. However all of the recipes I found were really time consuming and too much work to feed to a house full of drunks who were probably just going to complain about the lack of meat. So I went on a mission to make it just a little easier...

What you'll need:

For the topping:

Mashed Potatoes. Yes you could totally go boxed on these, but gross. I made my own and I'm a lazy bitch, so let's assume you're going to need real ones. To make mashed potatoes you need:

1 1/2 lbs potatoes, peeled and quartered length-wise
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 Tbsp heavy cream (or milk substitute)
2 Tbsp butter (or vegan butter substitute)
1 Tbsp milk
Salt and Pepper
1 teaspoon of minced garlic

1 Put potatoes into a pot. Add salt. Add water until potatoes are covered. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, 15-20 minutes, or until squishy and mashable

2 Warm cream and melt butter, together, either in microwave or in a pan on the stove. Drain water from potatoes. Put hot potatoes into a bowl. Add cream and melted butter. Use potato masher to mash potatoes until well mashed. Use a strong spoon to beat further, adding milk to achieve the consistency you desire. (Do not over-beat or your potatoes will get gluey.) Salt and pepper and garlic to taste.

Okay now set that aside, you'll need it in a little while.

Most Shepherds Pie recipes require you to make the filling yourself. But when I'd like to be drinking Guinness with my friends, I'd rather not be constructing what amounts to a vegetable soup all flippin day. So I called on Amy... Amy's Kitchen that is.

You'll need about two cans of Amy's Organic Soup. I used chunky vegetable (pictured below) but she's got a few interesting veggie combos brewing in her kitchen, if you know what I mean. I chose this brand because they have an easy to read "key" on their products that tells you if it's veggie or not. If you're new to the vegetarian game as I was last year, you might not know a lot of the "vegetable" soups that are on the shelves still have meat products in them. So be careful if you're using another brand.

Anyway take the two cans of Amy's Soup and combine them in a large pot. Add one pint of Guinness Beer and cover to simmer. I threw in some more garlic and pepper just make sure there was a kick to it.

Traditional Shephard's Pie does have meat in it and some people use artificial crumbles or whatever to replicate that texture and flavor, but I'm not really a faux meat crumbles girl, so I skipped it.

After heating the soup up and waiting for the Guiness to cook off, pour the soup into a pyrex dish. Wait a second for it to cool, because it will give the soup some "tackiness" which you will need.

Take the mashed potatoes you made earlier and spread them across the top of the soup, like a frosting or pie crust. You can also add some cheese or vegan cheese sprinkles over the top of the potatoes once you get them sprinkled in.

Put in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes. If the potatoes are browning and the "cheese" is melting, your dish is done.

This recipe made about a large pryex casorol dish and a half for us and served about 11 people. This could also be an excellent edition to your Thanksgiving table.

ThanksflippingGiving

This is going to be my first year as a Pescetarian at Thanksgiving. Now if I were hosting the dinners as Pescetarian we'd just have salmon or mussels or something but I am not and every where I am going to eat is tradition central. I came across an article at www.delish.com that has some veggie recipes so I thought I'd share that first.

http://www.delish.com/entertaining-ideas/holidays/thanksgiving/vegetarian-thanksgiving-recipes?GT1=47003

But also I wanted to share my easy as a box of cornbread dressing I mixed up the other day.

Ingrediants:

1-box Stove Top Cornbread Stuffing

1- can Swanson Vegetarian Vegetable broth <-- btw the only broth I found at my local grocery that is 100% vegetairan.

1/2 green granny smith apple

1 green onion

How to do it:

Dice up the onion and green apple before putting the stuffing on.

Prepare the stuffing just like the box says except instead of water, use the can of vegetable broth. Add the apple and onion when you add the stuffing mix. Five minutes later you have delicious.

Other suggestions to add would be: dried cranberries, carrots, garlic, etc.

Later I promise to share my easy breezy beautiful covergirl recipe for Sheppard's Pie!