Hoot! Vegan.

How do I change my profile pic??!!!
This is me when I was very pregnant

Thought I would share how wonderful and delicous my pizzas are.  
They are also ridiculously easy to make.  You can prep and have your pizza in about thirty minutes! 

First prep your oven.  I go to 350, it makes the crust a little crispy but still pretty chewy.  If you want crisper crust, go hotter.   We are not using a homemade crust because this is an easy pizza for lazy days.  I’m sure it will be a great thing to make when I have Lilly to look after in a few months.

We will be using this premade crust:

It is vegan, its got a little sweetness to it, and you can get it from walmart for a few bucks. 

I also used a cheap pizza sauce in a jar, it was very cheap at walmart.   The only pricey ingredients will be the Daiya Vegan Cheese (it is worth the money), the fresh herbs that I used, and the marinated sun dried tomatoes.  (This jar will last you for a long time…and its the best tasting stuff ever.)


So all I did was spread the sauce over the crust (I like a lot) and dumped the cheese on there.   I have stopped here before.  The cheese is so good on its own that you don’t really need to add anything after that.
But I wanted to get a really pretty pizza so I added some of my favorite ingredients.  You may recognize them because they are the exact same ingredients used in the alfredo sauce below.

I chop up some fresh basil and parsley on one side and chop up the sun dried tomatoes on another.  The tomatoes are in a blend of oils, so they are pretty wet.  We’ll mix the wet and dry ingredients before we even put them on the pizza so everything sticks together. 

Then I take some mushrooms, pull of the stems (I don’t prefer the texture) and tear them up and drop them into mushrooms and toss it a little.  Then mix it all up into the sun dried tomatoes.  The oils in the tomatoes coat everything and the herbs stick a lot better.

Then just spread everything out on top of your cheese and stick it in the oven.

Here are my pictures… it was delicous.

Another huge craving that I have not been able to satisfy for YEARS… Nachos.
Nacho cheese in general.  We’re talking queso.

I live in a small town so I don’t have access to much… And as we speak some of the ingredients to this recipe are no longer available where I live.  They come and go. 

Oh, well  : (

Anyways, I know what you’re thinking.  Vegan nacho cheese huh?  So basically you expect me to tell you to mix up some nutritional yeast and tofu and all that nonsense to make something that “sorta” looks like cheese and tastes nothing like cheese.

For instance… my (2nd) favorite restaurant, The Spiral Diner in Ft. Worth, has recently come up with a “nacho cheese” that I was very excited about.

Sadly I was suprisingly disappointed.  I’m sure it was really healthy, but it was not cheese.  More like a sweet, yellow dip.

Where’s the creamy??!  Where’s the savor, where’s all the flavor?

You can’t fool me when it comes to cheese.

Part of the reason I went vegan in the first place was because I was overweight, and that in part had to do with my supreme all mighty love of cheese.

When I was little, and you asked me what my favorite food was, I would tell you cheese.  No joke.  You can ask my parents.   I would go into the kitchen at night and take a slice of american cheese and roll it up into a ball and take a big bite out of it.   Cheese was my thing.  

After years of loving cheese, I began to gain weight.  To put it bluntly, I hit puberty around 8 years old.  I had boobs before anyone else and I was hormonal and kind of a terror.  I attribute this to my love of cheeses and meats, and my complete lack of interest in any kind of vegetable.   Going vegan opened up so many doors for me.   I actually tried a lot of new foods that I fell head over heels for (especially indian food… : D)  I ended up eating WAY more fruits and vegetables and developing a new taste for them.  

But cheese will always be my thing, and especially now that I am pregnant.  When I have a craving, it is pretty serious.  And like most pregnant women, I crave comfort food.  The kind of food I grew up with, and enjoyed during my childhood.

So basically junk food.  And a lot of cheese. 

 When you see cheeses posted on this blog, you can guarantee that they are legit cheeses. They can be used in all sorts of cheese recipes.  I very much recommend that you take my word and try these.  I am a very picky eater and you can trust me.  

For this recipe, we will be using Vegan Gourmet Nacho Cheese.

Where I live, it is seasonal.  They brought it here around the time of the superbowl, and it was gone as quickly as it came.  Rightfully so, I suppose because its delicious.  I am hoping all the vegan and lactose-intolerant shelf-grabbers enjoyed it as much as I did and did not let it go bad in their fridges… Tsk tsk.

This cheese is probably not good cold.  I can’t say I’ve tried it.  It is about the consistancy of velveta, if not as silky, and has a similar melting point but is not going to just turn into your perfect nacho cheese without some manipulation.

First, you need to cut it up into tiny little blocks.   Kind of how you would with velveeta.  Throw it in a hot pan and let it melt a little bit.  It may take a second, but when it starts to melt you want to add some soy milk and some vegan margerine. 

Why?  Well, this cheese is a little weird.   I know, two seconds ago I said that you could trust me when it comes to cheeses, and you can.   Its just that if you want something delicious you have to work with it a little bit. 

It melts at a decent pace, but once it starts to cool it wants to congeal.   That is the only problem I have with this cheese.   Luckily for me I always eat it too quickly to really care one way or the other.

So that being said, you can guess that you want it to be pretty thin.  Thin it out a lot and get it really hot before its ready to go on your chips.

I added some rotel to it, but you don’t have to.  I have recommended this cheese because it already has an amazing flavor.  As soon as you open up the package and give it a sniff, you will recognize that trademark queso-ey smell.   Its the bomb diggity.  Of course, we had some leftover rotel from the nonvegan nachos my mom was making next to me, and I love spice, so I figured it would be a great idea.

It was  ; ) 

I don’t need to give you a recipe for this, because its nachos.  You can make nachos however you would like. 

Personally, I spread some hot bean dip over the chips first.  I threw some tomatoes on there and a TON of black olives.  I am a huge fan of black olives.  

I did this before the cheese was ready.    Like I said, you don’t want the cheese to cool off too fast.   It will congeal and its not as lovely as drippy queso.   After all real nacho cheese does not congeal in this fashion. 

I poured the entire stock of nacho cheese that I had over the plates which took up an entire dinner plate.   I am pregnant so I planned on eating the whole thing without really thinking twice about it.   And I was right about that.

I added some guac on top (May I recommend Wholly Guacamole 100 calorie packs, they are delicious and so convenient)  And a few dollops of Better Than Sour Cream by Tofutti. 

Voila! 

I cannot stress how delicious this was. 

I wanted to eat it for every single meal for the rest of my life.

Justin thought I was crazy when I woke up in the morning and was thinking nachos for breakfast.   Pregnant thing?  Maybe. 

Unfortunately I make so much of it at a time that it only made about three batches of nachos.  Sad day when I ran out.  Especially since good vegan cheese is so hard to find around here!

I have been craving this for years, especially now that I am pregnant.

If you are vegan or lactose intolerant, you have GOT to get ahold of some Daiya Vegan Cheese. It comes in both cheddar and mozzarella shreds and is literally the best non dairy cheese I have ever had in the total of the six years of my life I have been vegan.

So here’s the pics:

Now I don’t really have a recipe, per se, because I don’t measure when I cook.
Yeah yeah I know I suck.

But here’s what you need:

*Linguine, or some other kind of pasta you’d like with alfredo
*Daiya Mozzarella Style Shreds
*Some very salty water, set to boil
*Sundried tomatoes (or regular fresh/canned tomatos will do, I used marinated sundried tomatos)
*Fresh mushrooms
*Fresh basil
*Fresh parsley
*Vegan margerine
*Tofutti “Better than Sour Cream”

First heat your water to boiling, only use the minimal amount you will need to cook your pasta. It should take up about three times the space of the pasta.
Then add a ton of salt. This is your preference, if you want less salt or no salt, use it. I like my water like the ocean baby! lol.
You’re gonna cook this until it is past al dente. I like to try the noodles as they are cooking.
While you are cooking, chop up your fresh herbs and your tomatos. If you like big chunks of tomato in your sauce, keep big chunks. Keep in mind if you are using fresh tomatos that they are going to shrink a lot.
Seperate the pasta into a bowl and KEEP THE WATER. You will use it to make your sauce. The salt and the starches in the water are going to add flavor and help thicken it.
Reduce the heat on the water, add your mushrooms first. I used enough mushrooms to completely cover the bottom of the pan, because I love mushrooms and because they are going to shrink. Then dump in your herbs and tomatos. Let these cook until mushrooms have shrunk down a little bit.
Next you are going to add your cheese. I used about 1/3 of the bag, but I would probably use half of it if I’d had it. I can only recommend using Daiya because it melts the best I’ve ever seen. Add your margerine. Its going to be about two tablespoons tops. I think I used less than that.
Stir it until it is bubbling and the cheese is completely melted and the sauce begins to thicken.
The last thing you’re going to add is the Better than Sour Cream.

As soon as you add (about three dollops) you will notice that the sauce gets really pretty and thickens up a bit. Cook this until you think the sauce is thick enough. If you can’t thicken the sauce, add a little cornstarch. (I didn’t have to…but I didn’t use measurements so if you try this recipe you may end up with a thinner sauce than I did.)
Voila!
A beautiful alfredo that tastes about 100X better than it looks.
This was just a random experiment of mine, and it turned out great.