The Very Best Gluten-free Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Guys, stop what you're doing because I made the absolute very best gluten-free vegan chocolate chip cookies in all of the world. I have very little experience with gluten-free baking and up until now I've avoided it at all costs. I had my jar of all-purpose wheat flour, so why would I go out and buy 10 different gluten-free flours to make a cookie that would more closely resemble crumbly cardboard than a cookie? Now that my cupboard is full of all sorts of flour alternatives and my husband was craving some chocolate chip cookies, I figured I'd give it a try.

I decided to start off with my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe and make substitutions rather than find an existing recipe online. Mostly since I knew I've perfected my chocolate chip cookies to exactly suit my tastes. I threw in all sorts of gluten-free flours in a somewhat educated manner and oddly enough, my concoction worked on the first try (which never happens) and the cookies turned out great.

This recipe makes super soft, non-crumbly, perfect cookies that you wouldn't even know were vegan, let alone gluten-free. They have even been likened to a "chewier Chips Ahoy" (direct quote from my husband).

Heart Windowpane Cookies - Gluten-free and Vegan

You could make a simple jam thumbprint cookie and call it day, but why would you do that when you could make painfully adorable heart windowpane cookies instead? Assuming you're not too sick of Valentine's Day mush yet, I think these cookies would make a perfect gift for anyone on any day. That is, if you don't eat them all before they make it out your door, which tends to be my problem.

More than Gluten-free Mac n Yease

When we started this elimination diet, one of the first things I thought of making was Mac n Yease. Veggie Grille and Plum Bistro here in Seattle both make a pretty delicious gluten-free Mac n Yease, so I figured making the soy-free version would be a cinch, as long as I could find some gluten-free pasta that wasn't mush. Plus it's fun to say Mac n Yeezy instead of Yease.

After a little research and some grocery aisle scouring, I found maybe my most favorite gluten-free pasta to date, Tinkayda's Brown Rice Shells. Like the package very proudly boasts, this pasta is "not mushy" has a "good texture" and cooks "al dente"! I haven't checked at Whole Foods, PCC, or some of the other health markets, but I just found it at my local Safeway and you can also definitely get it online.

As for the recipe, I adapted a copy of Plum Bistro spicy Mac n Yease recipe I found from Vegan Richa. Her recipe comes pretty close to tasting like Plum Bistro's, and it was a great starting off point for figuring out how to make a gluten and soy-free version.

Vegan Black Beans and Rice

As a vegan I get a lot of questions about my protein. How do you get protein if you don't eat meat, dairy, or eggs? The thing is though, yes, meat and eggs by themselves are complete proteins, meaning they have the nine amino acids our bodies can't produce on their own, but meat and eggs aren't the only way to get complete proteins. We don't need every essential amino acid in every bite of food. Even though beans and rice by themselves are not complete proteins, when paired together they have all the nine amino acids our bodies need. Which is great, because they make a delicious pair!

Vegan Raw Berry Pie with Almond Crust and Coconut Cashew Cream

Italian Bean Balls and Spaghetti Squash

This meal is a family favorite and probably one of the easiest so far to convert to adhere to all the rules of the elimination diet. I made the tomato sauce from scratch, as I usually do. If you're more of a canned type of person, I think there are a few brands that don't have sugar, but you're going to have to look a bit. As for the bean balls, this is one of our favorite recipes. I've made it in the past with white beans and regular oats. But since oats are banned, I used gluten-free all purpose flour instead and because I had no kidney beans or white beans, I used black beans. I haven't tested this theory yet, but I'm pretty sure you could use any type of beans or nuts that you like and they would still be amazing. I did puree the mixture a bit too much since I was being lazy and trying to make it all in one batch in the food processor, so ignore the consistency in the pictures. One of those do I as I say, not as I do sort of situations.

Vegan and Gluten Free Green Bean Casserole

Holidays are a funny thing right after you get married, suddenly you have to figure out how to combine the traditions you spent the better part of your life upholding. Fortunately for us, Thanksgiving didn't present too much of a challenge since we both had a pretty standard menu growing up. Turkey (later replaced by tofurkey for me), mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing/stuffing, and so on. But one thing I never had growing up that he did, was a green bean casserole. My dad does not believe in "ruining good vegetables" in a cream sauce, and since he did most of the cooking in my house, the creamy green beans were never offered. Luckily for my husband though, I do not have the same hang ups with ruining vegetables and was happy to incorporate his family staple into our Thanksgiving.

I wasn't really sure how to go about making this recipe without the cream of mushroom soup since my cream sauces are mostly soy milk based and I didn't want to have that flavor profile in the casserole. But after a little Googling, I found a recipe that I thought might do the trick. I altered it slightly by reducing the vegan sour cream and mayonnaise since I personally found it to be a bit too runny and a little too rich for my taste, but other than that I kept true to Beth's original recipe (thanks Beth!...also check out her site, Delectably Free, she offers a lot of vegan, gluten-free, and sugar-free recipes!). 

If you are looking for the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and canned green beans taste, look elsewhere. But as my husband said, this version is better and tastes more fresh. I'll take that as a success.

Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

(P.S., I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that those leaves, those were cut by hand, with a butter knife. Watch out Martha Stewart.) 

Guest Post: Vegan Seitan Barbecue Ribs

In just about a week my single days will be over and I will be marrying my best friend (insert awwws here). It's shaping up to have the makings of a really wonderful day of family, celebrating, and of course, food. Food can be a touchy subject, especially when you're talking vegan food. But since my husband-to-be is mostly vegan and I'm all vegan, we decided it really only made sense to go the vegan route and serve a mixture of faux meat proteins and vegetables that would hopefully make everybody happy.

To have a vegan wedding can be easy if you plan on paying for a vegan caterer; however, after talking to a few, it became pretty clear that my family could do it cheaper and better. So my parents strapped on their catering caps, developed a menu based on my husband-to-be and my favorite foods, and set out a schedule to get everything made by the big day. I must say I'm quite impressed with what they've come up with and the work they've put in so far. My parents are great cooks and they're no novices when it comes to cooking for a crowd, but I was a bit skeptical about their ability to put together a meal 100% from scratch for 100+ people. But as we're just a few days away, I believe they're going to not only pull it off, but pull it off with flying colors.

In order to get so much food together with just the two of them, they've been pre-making, freezing, and canning a lot of the dishes and side dishes all summer. And all throughout the food-making process they have been emailing me and keeping me up to date with the status. Usually it's just a "we canned chili today," or "perfected the gluten free chocolate chip cookies." But when this very detailed description with associated photos came into my inbox, I knew it had to be shared, even if it puts my regular blog posts to shame with its descriptiveness.

So without further ado, my father's guest post, or as he called it "a photo experience" on making vegan barbecue ribs:

Start with an empty counter:

Add all the dry ingredients: gluten, paprika, onion powder, nutritional yeast:

Mix them together:

Combine all the wet ones: water, liquid smoke, soy sauce:

Add to the dry and mix them together:

Take them out of the bowl and you have big lumps of mixture:

Pull them apart into tiny 1 x 2 inch pieces:

In the meanwhile, put 2 gallons of water, 1/3 cup hot sauce and 2 tbsp salt in pot to boil:

After the ribs soak up the water they look like this:

They cook for 30 minutes and then you strain them. This is 1/3 of the ribs. Notice how much bigger they are:

Then you put them on drying racks to dry. There will be 4 trays like this:

Here they are waiting to be desiccated:

4 hours later they are much smaller than when they went in. They're slightly crunchy on the outside:

Put them in a big bowl and a whole bunch of bbq sauce and let them sit there, swimming in yummy sauce for an hour or so:

Then put them in two pans (this in one of them) and put them in the oven for 30 minutes:

There you have it. 7 hours of time and about 120 (depending on how many you sample along the way ribs.

Vegan Potato Salad

Summer may officially be over, but a good potato salad is always in season.

Vegan Grilled Cheese with Caramelized Apples

Why I never made this before, is beyond me.

I would imagine everyone at some point has made a grilled cheese sandwich, but have you tried adding caramelized apples? You probably should.

Avocado Summer Roll

These are one of my new favorite snacks/appetizers. They are light, healthy, and crazy delicious. There are lots of variations you can make to the recipe below. You could include cabbage, jicama, baked tofu, bean sprouts etc. One thing I always tend to include though is fresh basil. Mixed with the light rice paper and crunchy vegetables, the flavors combine for a perfect and refreshing summer snack.

Urban Blackberry Jam

I am currently loving two things:

1) It is blackberry season in Seattle and they are everywhere

2) The color of my freshly canned blackberry jam (seriously in love, as evidenced by the quantity of pictures I've included in this post)

It all started when my mom was here visiting. While we were out exploring she pointed out all the many, many blackberry plants growing in various spots around the city and suggested I make jam. My mom is a genius sometimes.

After she left, I ventured out for a little urban berry picking. I chose a nice shady spot alongside a busy road in Seattle at rush hour. Needless to say I got my fair share of gawks, but I was determined to make this jam. So I got over my stage fright and began clambering all through the thorny bushes. Once finished, I marched my way proudly, albeit a bit roughed up, through my neighborhood with a bowl full of blackberries destined to be my first batch of jam.

I have been an assistant jam maker for most of my life, which primarily entails stirring and cleaning, but never the head jammer. While the job responsibilities of an assistant weren't exactly the best preparation for breaking off on my own, being in the kitchen as the whole process went down apparently gave me a pretty good gist of the procedure because I am now officially marking my first jam attempt as a success. All the jars made that lovely "pop" sound indicating they sealed properly, they have a beautiful deep purple color, as I may have mentioned previously, and considering I ate probably an entire jar of jam before it actually made it to the jar, I can confidently say it is going to make one mean PB+J.

While I'd like to say it was all fun and easy and I took to jam making as if I was Mr. Smucker himself, I do admit there were a few frantic calls home to my parents. Which is probably for the better because now you can learn from my nearly disastrous mistakes!

Vegan Spinach & Artichoke Dip

Vegan Buttermilk Raspberry Scones

I still have two more stops on the New York City food tour to write about, but I thought I'd take a break today to share with you this recipe for Vegan Buttermilk Raspberry Scones.

I have a confession about these scones, but before I tell you, I want you to know they are delicious and I am not dead. With that said, my confession is I used expired hemp milk. Here's how that happened:

I really wanted to make scones, but we didn't have any soy milk. As I searched the kitchen high and low in my pajamas for any hiding soy milk, I started weighing my options of either giving up on the scones idea or getting dressed to go to the grocery store. It was then I saw the carton of hemp milk that had been given to me and my fiancé a long time ago. Sure enough, it had been expired for about a year, but it didn't smell bad, it didn't taste bad, and it still looked like a non-dairy milk. So since I was just making these for myself and using expired hemp milk was far more appealing than getting dressed, I decided to use it and if the scones ended up worse because of the decision, my dogs would just get a special treat.

Well, you already know the end of this story and as for now no one has food poisoning. My general rule of thumb of if it smells okay and it tastes edible, then it's fine came through once again. It may get me in trouble one day, but so far it hasn't failed me yet.

I can't be the only one who takes expiration dates as more of a suggestion than the rule, right?

Vegan Sushi

Vegan sushi is one of the easiest things to make, as long as you have a little patience. The most difficult part of the process is slicing each of the ingredients into long, thin pieces, and then methodically spooning the rice on the nori (seaweed paper), and rolling each roll.

I'm giving you the recipe I use for the sushi rice. Other than that, I'll leave it up to you to decide what to use as the filling. The rolls pictured are a combination of salted and baked tofu, carrots, avocado, and cucumber. 

Kale Chips

I am quite envious of my mom's garden. She has all sorts of herbs, vegetables, fruits, berries, and pretty much anything else a garden would grow. Every day seems to bring a new harvest. Today that harvest was kale. Lots and lots of kale. With the abundance of the vegetable, and knowing there are only so many kale salads one can eat, she gave me several bushels. Naturally, I made kale chips. 

For those of you curious about this healthy snack, it's very easy to make, quite high in nutrition, and depending on the amount of oil you use, relatively low in fat and calories. And for the flavor, it's really quite satisfying. My only qualm is that the texture reminds me of a crispier nori, the seaweed wrapper used for sushi. If there was some way to make these even the least bit thicker, they would be perfect. But even despite their paper thinness, I would still recommend them to anyone looking for a healthy in between meals snack.

Alternative use: Crumbled kale chips make a great seasoning for anything from popcorn to french fries.