Vegan Family Dinner Southern Style

A few weeks ago we had Southern Style Vegan Family Dinner.  My head has been in the clouds with school and life, so I am just getting around to posting about this super fun experience.

We usually drink wine with Family Dinner, but wine didn't seem to be a good fit for a down-home Southern meal.  I decided to make Sweet Tea so that some of us could spike it with Jim Beam. 

 

Thanks to Tony spending three hours tracking down every green tomato in the city of Chicago, Leia was able to start our meal out by making Fried Green Tomatoes.  She served them with a dipping sauce that she made out of  Cholula Hot Sauce and Lemon Juice that paired fantastically with them. They were delightfully delicious!

I decided to make Southern Fried Tofu with Biscuits and Gravy.  I haven't eaten fried chicken in a VERY long time, but I think the tofu tasted a lot like it.  The biscuits were a bit thinner than I would have liked and the gravy was a tad too sweet, but over all it was pretty yummy.

 Sarah made Kale and Mustard Greens with Garlic and Onions.  I think this was my favorite part of the meal.  They were perfectly cooked and seasoned.  I could eat these all day!

Frankie and Keyanna brought a vegetable tray and fruit salad. I was happy that we had fruit for dessert, because I decided to make a new dessert recipe that I am working on and it failed miserably.  Those are the breaks when working on a new idea. 

 We had another great event full of food, drinks and laughs.  I am looking forward to our next family dinner in a couple weeks... Southwest Style.

Orange Agave Chocolate Chip Cookies

My niece, Olivia, and I have set ourselves on a journey to bake healthful cookies together a couple times a month.   Last week we made Orange Agave Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Since Liv loves baking almost as much as her Auntie Courty does, we have a blast together as we discuss and sample each ingredient before we add it to the bowl.

With just a few simple ingredients we made a delicious dough.  It had: Agave nectar, canola oil, almond milk, ground flax seeds, vanilla, orange zest, all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, baking soda, salt, and of course vegan chocolate chips!

Liv helped shape the dough into cookies with me, but spent a great deal of time eating the dough.  It's a good thing that the dough is vegan, there isn't anything in there that can make her sick.

We both thought the cookies turned out wonderfully!  When she got home later I was informed that she wanted to skip dinner and have cookies instead. 

I am so glad that I get to have cookie Baking Sundays with my favorite  3-year-old.  We have SO much fun together!

Caribbean Curried Black-Eyed Peas with Plantains and Jerk Asparagus

In another attempt at healthful and tasteful eating, last week, I made Caribbean Curried Black-Eyed Peas with Plantains and Jerk Asparagus.

I love the recipes out of this cookbook! They are quick, simple and contain few ingredients.  The curry had shallots, red bell pepper, garlic, ginger, bay leaves, star anise, curry powder, cinnamon, fresh thyme, salt, light coconut milk, water, black-eyed peas, light agave nectar, lime, and plantains.

The only ingredient I had never heard of, was the star anise.  I found some of these little guys in the bulk spice section at Whole Foods Market.  They have that wonderful black licorice scent that anise has, and are quite adorable in my opinion...

I sautéed the asparagus in my cast iron skillet with ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes, thyme, salt, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

I know I've said it before, but this was the best meal I have ever eaten! At least I felt that way once I began eating it.  The curry was perfectly seasoned and was delicious served over jasmine rice.  The sweet steamed plantains combined with the spicy curry gave it a nice balance of sweet and salty and pairing it along side of the jerk asparagus created a taste-bud explosion! It was the perfect side to have next to the curry.  I loved these dishes so much that I ate them for 4 days in a row without getting sick of them. In fact, I was actually disappointed once they were polished off.   

Personalized Pizza Party

Last Sunday was another Vegan Family Dinner.  This time the theme was, pizza.  After much thought on how to best do this, I settled on stove top personal pizzas.  

I made Pesto Sauce and Pizza Sauce for the bases and sauteed some mushrooms, caramelized a couple sweet onions, and sliced up some grape tomatoes and pitted kalamata olives to use as toppings.

For the dough, I made the easiest recipe ever!

 Pizza Dough

Makes 4 pizza rounds

What you need:

1 cup semolina flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/3 cup hot water

What you do: 

Toss all the ingredients into the food processor and run until the dough comes together and forms a ball.  Take that bad boy out of the food processor and cover tightly.  Pop it in the fridge and let sit for at least 15 minutes.

When you are ready to cook it, split the dough into 4 equal sized balls, dust with flour and roll each piece out into a VERY thin circle.  It should be "cracker" thin.

This is the way I roll dough.

Leia working it out!

Meanwhile, heat up your cast iron skillet and spray it with olive oil.  When you have one ready, throw it in the skillet and let it cook until it begins to bubble. Then flip it over and let it cook until it's lightly browned. 

After the crust is ready slap on your sauce or pesto, add your ingredients and don't forget your Daiya Mozzarella-Style Shreds.  These melt beautifully and taste delicious.

Once you've got your pie the way you like it, put it back in the cast iron skillet with the lid on, or put it in your broiler for a few minutes.

That's it!  Then you have perfect and tasty vegan pizza!

We had a blast making pizza together! 

Wine spilling catastrophe...

 Gerard was pretty silly!

He liked it!

 After dinner was over we played a game of Apples to Apples and ate Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache for dessert.  

Over all the dinner was successful, but I was wishing that we had a delicious salad to go along with the pizzas.  We will have to try this again, but next time I will be sure that there are a few additional dishes to sample. Hooray for vegan pizza night!  What a fantastic time!