Just Add Water Pancake Mix

8 cups flour
1.5 cups dry milk (the powdered stuff)
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons baking powder

Store in airtight container. Combine 1 cup mix with about 1/2 cup water (more or less depending on how you like your batter) and cook as normal.

CHEESECAKE!

http://bighairenvy.blogspot.com/2008/08/cheesecake-anyone.html

Must try that!

Easy Baked Ziti

Obviously this can be made with meat and sometimes I do make it with Italian Sausage. It's very easy to throw together when I don't have a lot of time and tastes great meatless.

1 package ziti
1 jar spaghetti sauce (whatever you like)
1 cup shredded mozzarella
4 or 5 slices provolone
Parmesan cheese to taste

Preheat oven to 350 or 400 (I usually make a loaf of frozen garlic bread with this and I just preheat the oven to whatever the garlic bread calls for)

Cook ziti just and drain
Pour cooked ziti back into pot and pour jar of sauce on top
Stir in mozzarella cheese while pasta is hot
Cover top with provolone

Bake in oven for 5 to 10 minutes (again, however long the garlic bread calls for)

Serve with a green salad

Rachael Ray's Pumpkin Lasagna

I was watching Rachael Ray's show today and she was making this lasagna that isn't at all meatless. Totally has sausage in it. Here's the recipe on her site but I'm going to try to make this meatless when I get a chance.

Boca has that Italian sausage I could try. Ya think?

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 1 1/2 pounds bulk sweet Italian sausage (pork, chicken or turkey, whatever you like), casings removed
• 1 large eggplant, peeled and chopped into small pieces
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, grated
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 3 cups milk (eyeball it)
• 1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
• Few dashes fresh nutmeg
• 1 box oven-ready lasagna noodles
• 1 1/4 cups grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Yields: 4-6 servings

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat with 2 tablespoons EVOO, about two turns of the pan. Add the sausage and cook until golden brown, breaking the meat up as it cooks with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Push the meat to one side of the pan and add the eggplant, onion and garlic. Cook 7-8 minutes, until tender, then season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

While the veggies are cooking, place a medium-size sauté pan over medium-high heat and melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and cook the mixture for about 1 minute. Whisk the milk into roux, breaking up any clumps. Bring the mixture to a bubble and add the pumpkin puree and nutmeg. Season the sauce with salt and freshly ground black pepper, reduce the heat and simmer the sauce for 2-3 minutes, until slightly thickened.

Spread about 1 cup of the sauce into the bottom of a 13 x 9" casserole dish. Layer three lasagna noodles over the sauce, then top them with about 1 cup of the meat mixture, a cup or so of the sauce and a palmful of cheese. Repeat these layers two times, topping the casserole with a layer of lasagna noodles. Spoon the remaining sauce over the noodles, sprinkle the remaining grated cheese over top. Cover with aluminum foil and bake the lasagna until the sauce is bubbling and pasta is baked through, about 45 minutes.

During the last ten minutes of baking, remove the aluminum foil to brown the cheese. Once out of the oven, allow the dish to rest a few minutes before serving.

Sweet and White Potato Salad with Mixed Greens

I found this today and thought it looked great to try!

Sweet and White Potato Salad with Mixed Greens
6 or more servings

1 large sweet potato
4 medium white potatoes, preferably Yukon Gold or red-skinned
1/2 cup vinaigrette (homemade or store-bought), or as needed to moisten potatoes
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
4 ounces (or as desired) mixed baby greens
1 cup (1/2 pint) cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 medium avocado, peeled and diced
Toasted pumpkin seeds for topping

Microwave the sweet potato for 3 minutes or so, just until done but still nice and firm. Then, microwave the white potatoes, starting with 5 minutes, then adding 1 minute until they, too, are done but still firm. Plunge the sweet potato and white potatoes into a bowl of cold water. If you prefer not to microwave, you can bake all the potatoes ahead of time.

When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel and cut into dice. Combine in a mixing bowl with vinaigrette; season with salt and pepper.

Line a large serving platter with the greens. Mound the potato mixture in the center.

Scatter the tomatoes and avocado around the perimeter of the salad. Top the potato mixture with a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds. Serve at once; pass around additional vinaigrette as desired.

Cornbread - There's Somethin Wrong With That

(Edit: It has been pointed out to me that the Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix contains animal products. I truly apologize for including it in the recipe. It was irresponsible of me to not read the label and just assume there would be no animal fat in corn muffin mix. I'm still learning to read EVERY label. Thanks VeggieTofu for pointing that out!)

Today is Chili & Cornbread day.

I love chili. Seriously, I could eat chili every day and be a happy camper. One of the things I miss most about eating meat is eating my mom's chili. So when deciding to give up the beef I knew I'd have to learn how to make a rump kickin vegetarian chili. I think I succeeded with this one.

Vegetarian Chili

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 to 1/2 chopped white onion
3 packets Boca Meatless Ground Burger (= 1 1/2 pounds ground beef)

(this stuff is truly wonderful... I use it in everything)
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon garlic salt
2 1/2 cups tomato sauce (or a can of Manwich)
1 8 oz jar salsa (as hot as you like)
4 or 5 tablespoons Chili seasoning
2 15 oz cans chili beans or kidney beans, rinsed & drained
1 can corn, drained (I like Del Monte's southwestern corn for this)
salt & pepper to taste
grated cheddar and sour cream to top

1. Heat oil in large pan and saute onion.
2. Add everything else and reduce heat to low for 1 hour.
3. Serve in bowl, topped with grated cheese & a dollop of sour cream.

YUM.

Everyone ate this up like it was their last meal.

As for the cornbread! I like my cornbread moist and sweet. Don't give me any of that dry stuff that sticks in your throat and crumbles off when you pick it up. I don't want to have to add a vat of butter to it to make it edible. I don't know if you've ever had Boston Market's cornbread but that stuff is just what I love. So after several attempts to make my own like theirs, I finally hit upon the right recipe. Someone had suggested this on a forum years ago and I've been making it this way ever since.



1/2 a box of yellow cake mix and one box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix some other actually vegetarian corn bread mix. Follow package directions on each box for the batter. Half the ingredients needed for the cake mix, of course, since you're only using 1/2 the box. Mix the batters together and bake according to the corn muffin mix directions. (If you can find Jiffy Yellow Cake Mix, which I can't seem to anymore, you can use a full box of that to the full box of Corn Muffin Mix... just makes things easier.... not that it could get MUCH easier. leave it on the shelf because it probably has animal fat in it, too!)



Sean calls is Corn Cake but I don't care. It's delicious and absolutely PERFECT with the chili.



Please comment if you've tried or plan to try any recipes, let me know what you changed and how it tasted! Thanks!

My new sweetener

I had a dilemma. A sugar dilemma. We all know sugar is bad. Not just for our bodies but for the fact that most of it is processed through animal bone and that makes me sort of feel icky. (I did learn, though, that Florida Crystals which is the company that provides most of the sugar in my area and I can literally drive a mile to bask in the endless fields of sugar cane they grow does not use animal bone to process their sugar. Yay for them!) So I'm trying to decrease the amount of processed sugar I take in.

Then there was Equal. Aspartame. I've heard so many evils about aspartame I could write a book. In fact, I think people have written books. Oh look, yes they have. So that was out.

Next I looked into Sweet N Low. Saccharin. Cancer causing saccharin. What a deceiving little pink packet! Who coats cancer in baby pink?

Then we have Splenda. Sucralose. My current chemical of choice. Sucralose has been found to cause a shrunken thymus gland and therefore lower immunity and also enlarges the liver. Yipee... next.

There is also Stevia which evidently isn't bad for you but I find the taste to be nose scrunching.

So yesterday while shopping I noticed this Blue Agave Sweetener located next to the honey. I figured, what the heck? It's even vegan! It does have calories but a really low glycemic index (27) so definitely not bad like sugar.

Today I sort of forgot I bought it actually. I had my first cup of coffee the way I always do. Splenda with Fat Free Creamer. Bring on the chemicals! But then I went for a second cup and as I was reaching again for the Splenda I remembered. So I grabbed the new Agave stuff.

I squirted a bit into my cup... probably about 1/2 a tablespoon so only 30 calories. I stirred, I tasted.

It is heaven. I didn't even need the creamer. The syrup took all the bitterness out of the coffee and made a nice smooth sweet beverage. Delicious. I can't wait to try it in other stuff!