Har-Dee Foods....

Well since winter is never leaving us here in Michigan...I've been making more har-dee (OK - hardy) foods...well most of the time.

First off though, I would like to share some great zucchini I made on the fly one night.

BBZ - Breaded Baked Zucchini

Slice Zucchini (I had 3 small ones)

2 servings of egg replacer mixed

In dry breading mixture
Bread Crumbs
Pepper
Garlic Powder
Nutritional Yeast

Coat Zucchini w/ egg replacer
put Zucchini in breading
then single layer it on a greased baking pan

To Cook- preheat oven 475 degrees.

bake for 5 mins, flip zucchini and bake for additional 5-10 mins.

Eat! The zucchini remains a little crunchy! Perfect!

I have a personal mission to use up food that is stashed in the freezer. The yellow stuff in the right corner is from my Birthday meal Goods made me in December. It is the Mac & Cheese recipe from "VEGANOMICS". Excellent recipe but it made a 9" x 13" pan for the two of us...so I did what I do best - I froze it! When I reheated this time I made another batch of the cheese sauce and poured it on it. The noodles were a little soggy but who cares when something tastes that good! The tofu is "Blacken Tofu" from "EDBV" - great too, I had the leftovers on a salad. Then just some sauteed spinach with garlic- which the leftovers from this, made it's way into another recipe below.......

the spinach made it into this- Cheesy Lasagna from "VegWeb".

This is how I'm going to make my Lasagna from no one....It was great. BUTTTTTTT, these are the changes I would make/or made this time: (plus I made 1/2 recipe)

Cheesy Lasagna Ingredients

2-3 jars of favorite spaghetti sauce (Glen Muirs-the best)
1-16 oz bag of spinach leaves (precooked spinach from above)
2-3 jars of tomato sauce (skipped)
1/2 lb. carrots (I used 1/2 c for the halved recipe)
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (used dried)
2 cloves minced garlic (used a lot more)
1/4 cup canned low-sodium veggie broth (I didn't dig this, after I heated the mixture I added ricemilk instead of the veggie broth)
1 lb. herbed tofu (regular tofu w/ 1 tsp. of Itailan seasoning- plus I crumbed more plain tofu when assembling for chucks )
8 oz. vegan cream cheese
2 Tblspns. lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
12 lasagna noodles, cooked
1/4 cup nutritional yeast, optional - (never an option, always a must)

Please see above link for the rest of the recipe instructions.

Goods and I have been craving Mexican - so the first course was "freezer bean dip". Named for where I found it, in the freezer. This is an awesome dip, I will blog the recipe some other time since it's kind of make as you go thing....

But I can tell you the gist of it, refried beans, jalapeno peppers, cream cheese and sour cream (vegan of course) and some taco mix.

Just in case you didn't know what it looked like on a chip.....

Can you tell I love jalapenos???


The main course was "Chicken Enchiladas" - a virgin attempt on my part.

The ingredients are as follows-

Sautee & Cool-
1/2 C. Chopped Green Pepper
1/2 C. Chopped Red Pepper
1/2 C. Onion
5 minced Garlic Cloves (another love of mine)
2 chopped Jalapenos

In mixing bowl:
8 oz. pkg of "Chicken Strips" (shredded/cubed/or whole, who cares)
1 shredded Carrot
1 C. Corn
1 C. cooked Black Beans
1 tsp. Cilantro
1 Tbs. dried Parsley
8 oz. Tofutti Sour Cream

Now Mix all the ingredients together .

Here is the "Chicken" I bought at our new local Trader Joes. I liked it a lot better then Morning Stars- one, the salt content seemed less, and two, it was about $2.00 less the Morning Stars!

To assemble - I used the big (around 8") tortillas and place 1/2 c. of mixture in each one.

It made a total of 8 enchiladas. I put 5 enchiladas in a 9"x13" (oiled) pan and 3 in a 8"x8" (which I was really itching to freeze but Goods talked me out of it) Then I poured canned enchilada sauce on it and baked @ 350 for about 45 mins.

And the finished product ....served with shredded lettuce and of course, jalapenos.

Goods declared it better then any Mexican we have had out! I must say it was super.

BUTTTT, because there are always buts - these are some hints and or changes I would possibly make. Hint#1- first put some enchilada sauce on the bottom of the pan because the tortillas got crispy!
Hint #2 - coat the tortillas, with enchilada sauce, in between each other, they kind of stuck together when removing them from the pan.

I don't know either, if it was totally necessary to precook the veggies- next time I don't think I will. And instead of shredded carrots I would chop them in small pieces instead. All said and down I used 2 large cans of enchilada sauces including reheating them for leftovers. Also, I think I would keep the "chicken" in their normal state.

I will be making these again and soon! I give them 6 out of 5 forks - hey it's my rating system I can do what I want.

Till next time - ADIOS!