Vegan Tomato Tortilla Soup

Before I became an ‘excarnivore’ I loved making chicken tortilla soup.  It is sad eating out because I can never order tortilla soup anymore because it is ALWAYS made with chicken and often chicken broth.  I made this recipe for the first time tonight and it was delicious.  I followed the recipe in The China Study Cookbook, but made a few modifications for my taste and preference.

Makes 4-6 servings, total prep and cook time 20-30 minutes

• 1/4 cup water
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 jalapeño, diced (seeds optional)
• 2/3 cup celery, diced
• 1 1/2 cups corn
• 1 can diced tomatoes with chilies
• 25 oz tomato sauce
• 16 oz vegetable broth
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1-2 soft tortillas sliced  (optional with coconut oil)
• 1/2 lime, juiced
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro
• 1 avocado, sliced
• salt, optional 

1. In a large soup pot, sauté onion, garlic, jalapeño, and celery in 1/4 cup of water until onions are soft.
2. Add corn, can of tomatoes with chilies, tomato sauce, and vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Two options for step 3.  If you want crispy tortilla strips fry them in a pan with coconut oil.  Tortilla strips will be a garnish. If you don’t want the oil reserve the tortillas to add in step 4.
4. Add oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, (tortillas if keeping them soft instead of fried in step 3), cilantro (reserve small amount for garnish), and lime juice.  Simmer for 2 minutes.  Optional season with salt (I didn’t add salt to mine, be sure to taste first because salt may be in your canned/bottled ingredients).
5. Serve garnished with cilantro, avocado, and tortilla strips if fried. ¡Buen Provecho!

 

Rice Cake Snacks

So I have fallen back in love with rice cakes lately.  I always enjoyed them growing up and impulsively bought some at Whole Foods recently.  The brand I bought, Lundberg, offsets 100% of the electricity used to manufacture their products with renewable energy.  How awesome is that?  I also love that their organic brown rice cakes  have only two ingredients: organic whole grain brown rice and sea salt. I also have a new obsession with coconut manna and these two pair perfectly!  Coconut manna is usually hard at room temperature so to make it spreadable I warm the jar in warm water on the stove.  Don’t bring the water to a boil though!

• One organic brown rice cake
• 2 T coconut manna
• Pinch of raw cacao nibs

• One organic brown rice cake
• 2 T coconut manna
• 4 T raw almond pulp (leftover from making homemade almond milk, alternatively chop almonds)
• (pictured with a glass of homemade vanilla almond milk topped with a pinch of coconut sugar)

• One organic brown rice cake
• 2-3 T peanut butter
• 1 T coconut manna

I hope you guys enjoy these ideas!  They make a for a healthy breakfast or post workout snack filled with protein!

“As far as eati…

“As far as eating is concerned, humans are the most stupid animals on the planet. We kill billions of wild animals to protect the animals that we eat. We are destroying our environment to feed to the animals we eat. We spend more time, money and resources fattening up the animals that we eat, than we do feeding humans who are dying of hunger. The greatest irony is that after all the expenses of raising these animals, we eat them; and they kill us slowly… And rather than recognize this madness, we torture and murder millions of animals trying to find cures to diseases caused by eating animals in the first place.” -Mike Anderson

Greek Style Eggs

“Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.” -Ingrid Newkirk

Ingredients

• 2-3 eggs
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 3 baby portobello mushrooms
• handful of spinach
• 1 tablespoon diced onions
• coconut oil
• 1/4 cup feta cheese
• optional: hot sauce

First, sauté the spinach, onions, garlic, and mushrooms in coconut oil until the spinach is wilted.  Put the cooked veggies on the plates for serving.  Then, fry the eggs to your preference.  Serve the eggs on top of the vegetables, sprinkle some feta cheese, and I top it all off with hot sauce because I cannot eat eggs without some hot sauce!

Grilled Zucchini with Goat Cheese and Balsamic Vinegar

You can prepare this on a grill or in a skillet, I’ve done it both ways.  On the grill I just put them directly on it so it would have the char marks, but you could also use skewers or cook it on foil.  This can be ate as a meal, appetizer, or side dish.  The balsamic vinegar really complements the cheese and zucchini, it all melts in your mouth.  Be careful, this dish is addicting!

Ingredients

• coconut oil
• 1-2 zucchinis (1/4 inch slices)
• 1/4-1/2 cup of goat cheese crumbles
• balsamic vinegar

1. Spread coconut oil thinly on zucchini slices.
2. Cook on grill or skillet for about 10-12 minutes, flipping once.
3. Place on plate, sprinkle with cheese, and drizzle with balsamic vinegar.

Food for Thought

If you were alone on a deserted island with a pig, would you eat the pig or starve to death?

Hmm. If you were not alone, living on a planet with 7 billion people, had access to unlimited fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and other healthy foods and know animals suffer and die horrible deaths so you could eat them when you don’t need to eat them to survive, would you continue to eat them? The difference between our questions is that your scenario will never happen and mine is the choice you face right now. Which do you believe is worth answering? -Andrew Kirschner

Cucumber Salad

Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.

Ingredients

• 1 cup sour cream
• 1-2 cucumbers, thinly sliced
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1/2 pack of fresh dill (roughly 4+ tablespoons)
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• dash of fresh cracked pepper
• pinch of sea salt
• pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

1. Combine the herbs, sour cream, lemon juice, vinegar, and salt and pepper. Adjust to taste.
2. Stir in cucumbers, ready to serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to eat.

I made this with 1 1/2 cucumbers and still had some dip remaining that I ate with carrots.  So this recipe is definitely liberal enough to add some additional vegetables or more cucumbers. You could also just serve the sour cream with the herbs as a vegetable dip on a veggie tray.  A vegan blogger that I follow made a vegan variation of this recipe with radishes in it too.

I also found some fun facts about cucumbers I recommend you check out!  They can eliminate bad breath, be used to erase pen and crayon marks, and even prevent a hangover!

Raw Lemonade

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. -Leonardo Da Vinci

I hope you all are having a fun Memorial Day Weekend.  We didn’t really do anything special this weekend since I am busy studying for the CPA exam, and my boyfriend worked on Saturday.  Today I made lemonade for the first time after some inspiration from a vegan gal I follow on Instagram.  This is the classic summer drink, and I made it with raw agave nectar instead of the usual processed, refined sugar.  Raw agave nectar is an all-natural sugar replacement made from the juice of the weber blue agave plant.  You can use agave nectar as a sugar replacement in all recipes.  My bottle suggests you use 1/2 to 2/3 cups of agave nectar per 1 cup sugar in recipes.  Raw agave should be selected over pasteurized agave so that the enzymes aren’t killed and will aid in digestion.  Other benefits of agave nectar are that it has a low glycemic index, and it even helps with calcium absorption.

Ingredients

• 3-4 lemons
• 4 tablespoons raw agave nectar
• 4 cups water
• ice
• optional, several fresh mint leaves

1. Juice/squeeze 3 1/2 lemons.  Pour the lemon juice in a pitcher.
2. Add the water and raw agave nectar to the pitcher.  Whisk the ingredients to blend.
3. If it is to your taste preference add ice to fill up the pitcher.  Also add the slices from the remaining 1/2 lemon to the pitcher.
4. Optional, add fresh mint leaves for a nice twist!

Loaded Salad

“It is increasingly obvious that environmentally sustainable solutions to world hunger can only emerge as people eat more plant foods and fewer animal products. To me it is deeply moving that the same food choices that give us the best chance to eliminate world hunger are also those that take the least toll on the environment, contribute the most to our long-term health, are the safest, and are also, far and away, the most compassionate towards our fellow creatures.” -John Robbins (Author of Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution)

This salad & salad dressing are scrumdiddilyumptious!!

Salad

• 2 cup red romaine
• 2 cup green leaf lettuce
• 1/2 avocado
• 1/4 carrot, shaved
• 1/4 cucumber, sliced
• 3-4 pieces of marinated artichoke hearts
• 1 T chia seeds
• 1 T hemp seeds
• 1/4 cup feta (exclude for vegan)
• 1 hard boiled egg (exclude for vegan)

Toss the ingredients together.

Salad Dressing

• 3 parts EVOO
• 2 parts red wine vinegar
• dried basil, sprinkle in generously
• dried rosemary, sprinkle in generously
• salt & pepper to taste

Whisk ingredients together.  It is a good practice to make your own salad dressings whenever possible because you don’t need to consume preservatives, additives, and ‘natural flavors’ that are terrible for your health!  It blows my mind that salad dressings often have in excess of 10-15 ingredients when you can make your own for a fraction of that.

Farm to Fridge

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.  We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals” -Immanuel Kant (philosopher)

Look at the unnecessary cruelty that humans cause on this Earth by eating these animals/animal products. 😦