Dinner

Super Easy Lentil Sloppy Joes!

These Sloppy Joes are sweet and spicy, and dead easy to make! For everyone transitioning or still having to feed some of your meat eating family, this is a great replacement and I promise, they won’t miss the meat!

Lentil Sloppy Joes (make 4-6 servings)

- 1/4 C veggie oil
- 2 C sweet peppers, chopped
- 1 C onion, chopped
- 1 1/2 C red or green lentils
- 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1/2 C red wine
- 1/3 C red wine vinegar
- 2-3 C veggie stock
- 2 C tomato sauce
- 1 small can tomato paste
- 1 Tbsp each: paprika, cumin, dry mustard
- 1 tsp each: salt, pepper, cayenne (I added more)
- 4 Tbsp brown sugar
- Toasted buns or bread

Directions:

-Add oil to a large pot, heat to medium high and add all veggies, cook for 2 minutes.
-Add all the spices and sugar and cook for another 2 minutes
-Add all the liquids, and cover and turn to medium and cook for 60-70 minutes or until lentils are soft.
-Stir occasionally while cooking and add more stock if needed.
-Serve on whatever type of toasted bun/bread you like.

Recipe Notes:

-Add more or less cayenne to taste.
-Replace the wine with apple juice or water
-If you don’t have red wine vinegar, use Apple Cider Vinegar
-Add chopped mushrooms

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Vegan Valentine's Day Dinner for Two

A special Valentine's Day Dinner made for two.

TOMATO ONION FLAXSEED BREAD

·  5 ripe Roma tomatoes
-   1 small red onion
-  3 cloves garlic
-  
¼ cup sundried tomatoes in olive oil and Italian herbs
-  ½ cup golden flaxseed meal

-  2 tablespoons brown rice flour
-  1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
-  
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
-  1 teaspoon onion powder
-  1 teaspoon garlic powder
-  1 teaspoon dried basil
-  1 teaspoon smoked paprika
-  ½ teaspoon Himalayan/sea salt

BABY SPINACH SALAD

-  2 cups baby spinach
-  
1 tablespoon pine nuts
-  1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
-  1 tablespoon lemon juice
-  
A few sprinkles Himalayan/sea salt
-  A few sprinkles freshly ground pepper

GRILLED BREADED TOFU STEAKS

-  ½ block firm or extra firm tofu
-  1 tablespoon low sodium soy sauce
-  1 teaspoon tomato paste
-  1 teaspoon miso paste
-  1 teaspoon sesame oil/extra light olive oil

-  ½ teaspoon pure maple syrup
-  ¼ cup high quality breadcrumbs

INSTRUCTIONS

TOMATO ONION FLAXSEED BREAD

1.  Preheat oven to 320°F (160°C).

2.  Chop the Roma tomatoes, red onion and garlic in relatively small pieces. They don’t have to be tiny but it will help with the chopping process.

3.  Put all the chopped vegetables and sundried tomatoes in the blender (or food processor) and pulse it briefly to chop it up. DO NOT PUREE IT! It’s important that if you’re using something like Vitamix, you pulse it for a second quickly, then stir, and pulse until most of the stuff is chopped but not a complete mush.

4.  Pour the mixture into a fine mesh sieve and squeeze out about a cup of juice. You can keep the juice in a container to use as broth for other things! (It will be a total waste to throw it out.)

5.  Pour the chunky mashed vegetables in a large bowl and add the flaxseed meal, brown rice flour, olive oil, onion powder, garlic powder, basil, paprika and salt. Stir until everything is well mixed.

6.  Align baking parchment paper on an 9×13 inch oven tray and grease the baking paper with non-stick cooking oil.

7.  Pour the mixture on the baking tray with parchment paper underneath, and spread it out across the entire tray, so the layer is nice and thin, and even.

8.  If you want the bread to be thin and crunchy, you will need to use a larger oven tray so the layer can be thinner. It will take shorter time to bake so you MUST check every 10 minutes or so after it’s been baking for 25 minutes, because the bottom may burn easily.

9.  Bake in the oven for 50 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes (depending on the thickness). Allow it to cool before cutting it up. Be careful though, some thinner parts may burn, so every 5 minutes or so after it’s been baking for 40 minutes.

BABY SPINACH SALAD

1. Add all the ingredients in a bowl and toss and turn it around until the spinach leaves is coated by everything pretty evenly.

GRILLED BREADED TOFU STEAKS

1. Cut half of a regular block of tofu out and squeeze out as much water as you can without breaking the tofu. Once water is squeezed, use some paper towels to get more water out from all sides.

2. Carefully cut the tofu block in three layers, then slice across to make 6 small rectangles. (But you can really cut them in any sized pieces you want). You will see that more water will emerge from the middle, so once again, get more paper towels to squeeze out even more water.

3. You may even want to leave it out for a little while to dry off. The more water you squeeze out, the better the outcome.

4. In a small bowl, mix together the soy sauce, tomato paste, miso paste, sesame or olive oil and maple syrup and stir until the sauce is even.

5. In a separate shallow dish, pour the breadcrumbs on it. I used Trader Joe’s.

6. Dip the tofu steaks in the sauce, then quickly coat them with breadcrumbs. Do this to each of the tofu steaks.

7. Spray some non-stick cooking oil on a ribbed grill pan and lay the tofu steaks neatly on the pan.

8. Turn the heat on medium high (between 5-6) and cook the tofu on one side for about 10-13 minutes until you see it brown, then flip it over as carefully as you can, and cook the other side for another 6-10 minutes until the other side has browned as well.

 Recipes and photos courtesy of Vegan Lifestyle Magazine