I’ve made no secret of the fact that I adore the new vegan seafood products on the market today.  Shrimp was the very last animal meat I gave up – growing up on the Gulf Coast, I fell in love with shrimp early and it was my very favorite treat for years!  Only recently have I found a vegetarian protein to take its place, and friends, there’s just no turning back.

Tonight, I had a hankering for one of those good old Gulf Coast meals that I used to adore so much but haven’t had in more than a decade.  Shrimp and grits?  Yes, please!

I started with a cup of quick-cooking grits with a pinch of salt and set them to low heat.  (As the grits began to simmer, I baked the shrimp in the oven to get them prepared.)  Once the grits had a little bit of firmness – not a lot, they weren’t done, but just a little texture to them – I added a small can of diced green chilies to the pan and stirred well.  A couple of minutes later, I added two tablespoons of tomato sauce and stirred well again.

Now, let me tell you a little secret about how I make grits: I don’t cover them, as it says to do on the package.  Once, back in college, the lid to my saucepan was dirty and I didn’t feel like washing it, so I left it in the sink and cooked the grits “topless.”  Lo and behold, the Earth did not spin off its axis, nor did the sky fall.  Nor, even, were my grits any worse for wear!  So now I cook them topless every time.  And every time I am pleased with the results.  You just have to stir them a little more often, is all.

But back to the cooking process. 

By the time the shrimp was fully baked, the grits weren’t far behind – they’d thickened up nicely by this point and were quite nearly ready to eat.  So I proceeded with the final step of the recipe and added 1 cup of Daiya cheddar shreds to the saucepan, stirring after each half-cup until the cheese was fully melted and had blended into the rest of the dish.  Then it was time to eat!

We spooned big helpings of the grits onto our plates and topped it with a hearty dose of shrimp.  Then we dove right in and cleared our plates – and went back to the stove for seconds!  Unfortunately, there’s not a shred of shrimp and grits left in the kitchen at the moment – but fortunately, we loved every bite.  You will, too!

VEGAN SHRIMP AND GRITS

Serves 2-4

What you’ll need:

1 package vegan breaded shrimp (we used Sophie’s Kitchen)

4 cups water

1 cup quick-cooking grits

1 small can diced green chilies, drained as best you can (they’re liquidy little suckers)

2 tbsps. tomato sauce

1 cup vegan cheddar cheese (we used Daiya)

Salt, to taste

Place the shrimp into the oven to bake according to the package instructions.  (We cooked ours at 375 for 15 minutes.)

Next, prepare the grits.  Set four cups of water to boil in a medium saucepan.  Once the water is boiling nicely, add one cup of grits and salt to taste and stir well, then turn the heat down to Low.

After about 5-7 minutes, add the diced green chilies to the saucepan and stir well to combine.  A couple of minutes later, add the tomato sauce and stir well again.

Once the grits are almost to the texture and thickness you prefer, add the cheese in half-cup increments, stirring well with each addition to combine.  The cheese should blend in beautifully with your grits.

Next, when the shrimp is finished baking, pull it out of the oven and get ready to plate your dish!

Spoon a hearty helping of grits into the middle of a dinner plate, and then top the grits with however much shrimp you like.  (We tend to be heavy-handed with it, admittedly.)  Add a little extra salt if you think the grits need it, and most of all, enjoy!

:)

One of my favorite coastal meals is shrimp tacos, and since LeeLee and I have been vegetarian (almost 15 years running now), I haven’t had any proxy for them, not even once.  Tonight changed all that – and we’re hooked!

We called on good old Sophie’s Kitchen again tonight for all our vegan shrimp needs, and once again, we weren’t disappointed.  I baked a batch of “shrimp” for about 15 minutes and tucked a little foil pan of black beans into the oven too – why use a stovetop eye when the oven would do the trick all the way around?  (Near the end of the cooking process, I also tucked four flour tortillas wrapped in foil on the second oven rack to warm up.)

As everything baked, I prepared my side items!  I used shredded lettuce tonight – we normally use the leafy kind instead, but tonight I wanted a coastal, light taste, and shredded lettuce did the trick.  We also had quite a few cherry tomatoes on hand from this weekend’s veggie plate while watching the football game, and I washed a helping of those for garnish.

Finally, I prepared the avocado by slicing it into French-fry-style wedges, putting all the wedges in a bowl, and tossing them with a hearty dose of nutritional yeast and a pinch (or several) of chipotle seasoning.

Within just a few minutes, everything in the oven was ready, and we set to work assembling our tacos.  First we spooned a small serving of black beans in the middle each tortilla, then topped it with three or four (or five) pieces of shrimp.  Then we added a handful of lettuce, several tomatoes, and a generous dose of black olives, and topped everything off with some Daiya pepperjack cheese!  LeeLee added original Tabasco for some flair, while I went the more sedate chipotle Tabasco route.  Diff’rent strokes and all that.

The final product was so incredibly tasty.  We loved the blend of flavors, from the smoky black beans to the crispy shrimp, from the crunch of the lettuce to the juicy cherry tomatoes.  The olives added a salty kick, and the pepperjack gave the dish some spice (to say nothing of the Tabasco!).  And the avocado fries!  They were just great – the creamy avocado really soaked up the nutritional yeast and chipotle powder.

I can already tell you that this recipe will soon be a mainstay at our place!

VEGAN “SHRIMP” TACOS

Serves 2-4

What you’ll need:

1 package vegan shrimp (we used Sophie’s Kitchen)

1 can black beans

1 package taco-sized flour tortillas

1 bag shredded lettuce

1 container cherry tomatoes

1 can sliced black olives

1 package vegan cheese (we used Daiya pepperjack shreds)

Hot sauce, to taste

Cook the shrimp according to the package directions.  Heat up the black beans however you see fit (on the stovetop, in the microwave, or in the oven in a foil pan).  Several minutes prior to the end of the cooking time, wrap the flour tortillas in foil and add them to the oven with the shrimp – just two to three minutes will heat them through.

Just like that, it’s time to put everything together!  Once the shrimp and black beans are hot and fully cooked, spoon the beans onto a tortilla, then add three to four pieces of shrimp.  Next add the lettuce, tomatoes, olives, cheese, and hot sauce, as well as any other side items you like (sour cream and avocado are other favorites of ours). 

Dig in – you’re ready to eat!

:)

Now THIS is a recipe I haven’t had in a long, long time – not for at least 14 years, or since LeeLee and I became vegetarian!

I’ve been noodling – no pun intended (well, maybe a little bit intended ;)) – on how to concoct a vegan version of tuna noodle casserole for a few months now, and tonight I decided to give it a go.  It’s so much easier now that we can enjoy vegan Toona via Sophie’s Kitchen!  And after I concocted a satisfying vegan cream sauce recently, pairing it with my creamed “tuna” over English muffins, I knew this casserole would be doable indeed.

With that in mind, I got cooking!  I put the pasta water on to boil and started in on the cream sauce (details below).  Once the water was boiling, I added a package of eggless ribbon noodles and half a bag of green peas, and after the sauce thickened there on the other burner, I added a jar of sliced mushrooms and a jar of pimientos (like a good Southerner, I keep them on hand at all times!). After the cream sauce was nicely thickened, I added two cans of Toona, stirring well to combine, and then drained the pasta.  After that, it was simply a matter of mixing everything together in my bright yellow casserole dish, topping the meal off with some bread crumbs, and baking it for 20 minutes!

Let me tell you, friends – this toona noodle casserole was SO good.  It tasted just like the seafood version I remember from all those years ago!  The cream sauce was smooth and satisfying; the pimientos and peas played nicely amidst the noodles; and the Toona itself was wonderfully flavorful, with a mix of salt and pepper hanging out within the flakes.  I confess I enjoyed two helpings, and we’ve got plenty more for lunches for the week!  I can already tell you that it’ll be a fight between family members to get the lion’s share for each day’s noontime meal.

OK, enough intro – let’s get on with the recipe!

VEGAN “TUNA” NOODLE CASSEROLE

Serves 4-6

What you’ll need:

1 bag ribbon noodles (think egg noodles, but vegan)

½ bag frozen green peas

¼ cup bread crumbs

First, set the pasta water on to boil and prepare the noodles according to the package instructions.  Add the frozen peas to the pasta pot as well; they’ll all heat up nicely together!

As the noodles cook, prepare the cream sauce.  First, make a roux by melting the butter in a saucepan and then whisking the flour in to make a paste.  Once those two ingredients are combined, add the milk and whisk continuously until the mixture becomes a cream sauce (this always takes me 5-7 minutes).  Once the sauce has thickened to a creamy consistency, add the mushrooms, pimientos, vegan tuna, salt, and pepper, and stir well to combine.

Drain the pasta and peas and then put them into a casserole dish.  (The casserole dish I used tonight managed to fit almost all of the cooked pasta; your mileage may vary!)  Next, pour the sauce on top a few dollops at a time, stirring to combine as you go.  Keep adding sauce until the sauce is all gone (or until there’s simply no more room left in the casserole dish!).  If you have sauce left over, you probably have pasta left over, too, so just combine the two and you’ll have an auxiliary tuna noodle casserole for later.

Sprinkle the bread crumbs atop the casserole and put the dish in the oven at 375 for 20 minutes.  Once the crumbs have browned and the top noodles are a little crispy, you’re ready to eat!

Enjoy!

:)

Since it was my birthday, I decided to tackle a few of my favorite foods, beginning with a vegetarian version of the shrimp sandwich I used to love at this restaurant named Harry’s, down on the Gulf Coast in a little town called Carrabelle.  I used the breaded vegan shrimp from Sophie’s Kitchen, and it turned out just beautifully!  I was going to get fancy and mix up an Old Bay Aioli, but I neglected to remember that I had no Old Bay in the house.  (I hope this memory lapse isn’t a sign of old age!)  So once the shrimp was baked and the buns were toasted, we simply topped our sandwiches with some Vegenaise and lettuce and called it a day.  The end result was just like I remembered from Harry’s!  We piled our sandwiches high with shrimp, so there was protein in every bite, and the lettuce gave us a little crunch.  (And I’ll try the Old Bay aioli another time.)

Alongside the sandwiches, I whipped up a big batch of kousherie, with a few modifications from the recipe I’ve just linked to — we used macaroni instead of spaghetti, for instance, and I boiled the lentils along with the pasta.  Also, instead of making a big pot of rice, I simply warmed up two packets of Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice and added them to the mixture before serving!

The peas were a wonderful addition to our plates; English peas are some of my very favorite veggies, and we mowed down the whole pot.  Plus, they added some much-needed greenery to our surf-and-carb meal!

We paired our dinner with a bottle of Flying Dog Dead Rise, a beer brewed with — what else? — Old Bay.  Don’t recoil in horror; it’s actually a very subtle seasoning in this brew, and we love the end result.  It was a fitting way to toast a wonderful day!

:)

That’s right, friends – tonight we served up Old Faithfulwith a new twist!  Several, actually, if you count the Chesapeake Salsa we served alongside (which was spiced with Old Bay seasoning).

I’ve been dying to try the Sophie’s Kitchen vegan scallops, and tonight seemed like as good a time as any to infuse our dinner table with a Gulf Coast feel.  I prepared the rice and black beans as usual – with a Goya seasoning packet for the rice and a hearty helping of adobo seasoning in the beans – and then got to work on the scallops, which I’d neglected to thaw prior to baking and as a result had to partially thaw during the cooking process, at which time I pried them all apart and finished the cook time properly.

As usual, tonight’s Old Faithful came together in no time at all – about half an hour end-to-end.  But how would we like the vegan scallops?  Would they remind us of the Gulf Coast delicacies of yesteryear?

Well, I’ve got to be honest here about two things in particular.  First, I don’t really recall what scallops tasted like.  Like tofu – stick with me here! – scallops always tended to take on the flavor of whatever we cooked them with, so it’s really the texture that I remember.  Sophie’s Kitchen’s version did just fine on that score, though – here’s my second bit of honesty – LeeLee and I both felt like it would have been a more successful finished product had we seasoned them with something prior to serving.  Perhaps a garlic butter, or perhaps some Cajun spice or blackening rub.  Something of that nature.  But they were still very good as-is, and there wasn’t one scallop left when it came time to do the dishes, so there’s your proof.

The black beans and rice were, of course, as good as ever, and they mingled beautifully with the scallops, the Chesapeake salsa, the vegan sour cream, and, for me, the nutritional yeast (one of these days I’ll have to do a post to fully dedicate my love to nutritional yeast!).  Like the scallops, there wasn’t a single bean or grain of rice left in the pots when dinner was over – a sign of success, for sure!

:)

Creamed tuna is a longtime family favorite – my mother used to make it as a go-to dish, particularly in the summertime or when we were camping.  Since we’ve been vegetarian (for the last 15 years or so), I’ve missed it tremendously!  We haven’t had many occasions to have a creamed tuna substitute in the last decade or so – not since Tuno went off the market, anyway, which has been at least 10 years now.  So after several successful outings with Sophie’s Kitchen’s Vegan Toona, I knew it was time to give it the test of a lifetime.  How would it hold in creamed “tuna”?

The full recipe is below, but the shortened version is: I prepared a basic flour-and-almond-milk cream sauce, then added the toona to the pot – we used the Black-Pepper Toona tonight – and stirred everything around to mix it thoroughly.  I spooned the creamed tuna over English muffins, served some steamed mixed vegetables alongside, and dinner was ready!  From end to end, it took about 15 minutes of preparation time; not too shabby for a night when we were short on time and energy.  (Tonight was a shelter night for me, and LeeLee had to bring some work home to finish up.)

The finished product reminded me so much of my mother’s creamed tuna, it was amazing.  Instantly, I was transported back to my family’s dinner table (the actual table is now at our home!), where I ate serving after serving, unable to get enough.  That was the case tonight, as well; we cleaned the saucepan out!  We’re not proud.  Just hungry after a long day of work.

In short, this meal was a definitive success.  We’ll certainly make it again and again!

VEGAN CREAMED TUNA OVER ENGLISH MUFFINS

Serves two-four

What you’ll need:

4 English muffins

¼ cup vegan butter

¼ cup flour

2 cups almond milk

1 can vegan tuna

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

First, toast your English muffins.  I like to handle all four at once by opening them up and putting them on a baking sheet, baking them at about 400 degrees for 10 minutes.  Once they’re in the oven, it’s time to make the creamed tuna!

Next, make a roux by melting the butter in a saucepan and then whisking the flour in to make a paste.  Once those two ingredients are combined, add the milk and whisk continuously until the mixture becomes a cream sauce (this always takes me 5-7 minutes). 

After you’ve got your sauce in order, it’s time to add the tuna!  So spoon in your vegan “tuna” and be sure it separates nicely, rather than forming big clumps within the cream sauce.  Next, add salt and pepper, stir to combine, heat everything through, and let stand until the muffins are toasted.

To serve, simply place two muffins on a plate and spoon a heaping helping of creamed “tuna” atop each open-face slice.  Serve alongside a vegetable or salad to round out the meal, and enjoy!

:)

This dinner was a meal of two firsts and an old faithful (though not that Old Faithful!).  We’ve been on a bit of a veggie-seafood kick lately, having recently discovered the bounty of Sophie’s Kitchen (no kickbacks, I swear – I’m just enamored of the products!), and now that the CSA has kicked back up again in earnest, I’m getting a wonderful array of vegetables to use each week alongside.

First up tonight was the mashed potatoes and broccoli.  I found this recipe over at Real Simple, and tonight was its maiden voyage.  First, I chopped two large heads of CSA broccoli in the food processor, then added it to a steamer basket along with a bag of small potatoes, which I halved to speed up their steaming process.  Then it was just a matter of steaming them (I found that the cooking time took about 20 minutes – longer than the 10-12 Real Simple called for), and them mashing everything together with the potato masher, adding the mix-ins as I went.  Next time I might even add some veggie bacon for taste!

As the broccoli and potatoes steamed, I baked four vegan crab cakes in the oven at 375 for about 15 minutes, flipping them over halfway through.  When I had about five minutes left of cooking time, I heated up a bag of frozen mixed vegetables – they go with any meal!  I placed them in a serving bowl and garnished them with a little chipotle powder, my new go-to seasoning. 

Once everything was cooked fully, it was time for serving – and taste-testing!  We were eager to give all of our new recipes a try, and thankfully we weren’t disappointed!  The crab cakes were sufficiently “fishy” without being fishy, and they went great with my little fake-cocktail-sauce of mayo and spicy ketchup.  The mashed potatoes and broccoli were fantastic – I mashed everything roughly, leaving some chunks of vegetables here and there, and we both loved the texture and the flavor, which was creamy even though we didn’t use any milk.  And of course the mixed vegetables filled out the plate (and our stomachs) beautifully.

We’ll definitely give this meal – both in whole and in part – another try!  It’s a keeper, for sure.

:)

Up until recently, it’s been awhile since we’ve tried any fish or “fish” – we’ve been vegetarian for the better part of 15 years, and over the last decade or so have found most vegetarian fish products largely unsatisfying.  In recent months, however, our taste buds have been piqued by some new products on the market, and we’ve welcomed them with open arms!  For this Gulf Coast girl, enjoying something “fishy” once in awhile is a taste of home.

So tonight we popped open a package of Sophie’s Kitchen vegan fish fillets, put them in the oven, and baked them right up.  Alongside the fish we served a package of steamed mixed vegetables and a saucepan of couscous (which was another menu item largely absent from our lives and our pantry until recently – it’s really making a comeback now, though!). 

We’ve really enjoyed Sophie’s Kitchen’s products over these past few months (and, just to be clear, I have no relationship with Sophie’s Kitchen; I’m just speaking my mind :)), but I confess I was a bit nervous about what tonight’s “fish” fillets were going to taste like.  Over the years, we haven’t had great experiences with many “seafood” products (other than the occasional veggie shrimp), and most fillets I’ve tried from time to time simply haven’t been up to par – or, in some cases, have been inedible.  But I should have known that Sophie would do right by me!  The fillets were great!  The breading crisped up nicely in the oven, the protein had a good mouth feel, and the flavors were seafoody enough to evoke memories of what used to be, but not soseafoody that they were off-putting.  A win-win!

The mixed vegetables and couscous were a hit as well – we don’t have a single bite of either side item left.  But we DO have two fillets for lunch tomorrow – I’m looking forward to mine already!

:)