Category Archives: Diet Challenge

A Random Vegan/Vegetarian Products Review

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Last weekend I decided to do it…to just try to go 99% vegetarian.  Meaning there are only exceptions for holidays and maybe sushi a few times a year. While I am generally a fabulous cook and can make some darn good vegetarian unprocessed stuff myself (lentil loaf, lentil meatballs, chili from dried beans, etc.), my grad student life style means I don’t have a ton of time to prepare food from scratch all the time.

As such, I’ve been buying more vegetarian fake meat products.  In order to not eat a metric buttload of calories, I need a lot of protein.  Soy products suffice.  I’ve also been curiously trying vegan things, just for the sake of trying them, knowing that a vegan lifestyle is generally most sustainable for the environment.  Here’s a review of what I’ve tried that was memorable from the past few years up to more recently:

Frozen Meals/Quick Food:

  • Kashi frozen meals -  Mayan harvest bake, Three Cheese Penne, Spicy Black Bean Enchiladas.  The first and the last are better than the middle.  Kashi’s frozen meals retain a good texture and taste wholesome and satisfying, with complex flavors you wouldn’t usually find in frozen meals.  Only downside is that the instructions for cooking are a bit more complicated than some other frozen meals (2 to 3 step rather than 1 step).
  • Sukhi’s Naanwiches, Garden Vegetable – Very good flavor, especially with the naan.  Probably best if toaster ovened though.  Not super filling.
  • Fortune Avenue Vegetarian Potstickers – presteamed, so they’re quick to cook.  You can microwave these in a minute and a half.  These are my favorite vegetarian potstickers.  They don’t taste like meat, but they have a nice rich flavor and good texture and chewy veggies in there!
  • Amy’s Tofu Scramble Breakfast Wrap – Avoid!  How can something taste so much like cardboard through the entire bite?  Bleh.
  • Trader Joe’s Black Bean and Cheese Taquitos – These are addictive and surprisingly fairly low calorie.  They make a great snack or meal when paired with some salsa to dip them in.  A bit dry, but good flavor.
  • Trader Joe’s Paneer Tikka Masala – While this has a great flavor and good texture, it’s just not enough to keep me full.  I like the green rice with it though, and the tikka masala sauce is good.
  • Trader Joe’s Eggplant Parmesan – Good flavor, but not enough in the meal to keep me full.  And definitely not enough cheese for an eggplant Parmesan!
  • Trader Joe’s Tarte d’Champignon – A flatbread pizza type thing with cheese and mushrooms.  Amazing and rich and so good.  Bring it to a foodie potluck and people will be amazed.  Wait no, bring me one please.

Meat Substitutes:

  • Gardein Beefless Tips – The *best* beef substitute.  Hands down.  I’ve used them for many things, from stew to sliced and browned in vegetarian pho.
  • Gardein Chick’n Scallopini – a decent chicken substitute.  It has a good texture, but the flavor is a bit celery-like.  Browns nicely.
  • Trader Joe’s Soy Chorizo – uh-maaaay-zing.  Same flavor profile as the meaty version but with less fat.  Great scrambled with eggs.
  • Tofurky Peppered Deli Slices – skip these.  Go for the Hickory Smoked and add your own fresh ground pepper.
  • Tofurky Hickory Smoked Deli Slices – the best fake meat lunch meat.  It has the best texture and a rich flavor and a slight hint of smokiness. Enough protein to be satisfying.  I make my sandwiches that I eat on the train out of these!
  • Trader Joe’s Chickenless Strips – I didn’t let myself eat chicken strips before.  Now I do.  These are healthier but also tasty.  They also make great sandwiches.
  • Gardein Chipotle Lime Chick’n Fingers – yuck.  It tasted someone dipped chicken fingers in lemon cleanser.  No taste of Chipotle at all.  Gardein should retire these or reformulate them.  They have a nice texture of crust on the chick’n though.
  • Morningstar Farms Bacon Strips – eh.  They’ll work in something (like deviled eggs) if you really have a hankering for bacon, but they’re not that great by themselves.  Salty for sure.  Texture is kind of crunchy, vaguely cardboardy, but none of the chew of meat bacon.
  • Morningstar Farms Grillers Veggie Crumbles – these are fine.  Nothing to rave about really.  They add the meaty texture to whatever you’re cooking (chili, shephard’s pie, veggie sloppy joes) but wouldn’t stand by themselves as much.  You could just as soon just get TVP and do the same thing for cheaper.
  • Morningstar Farms veggie sausage products – Skip the links and go for the patties.  The links don’t have a great texture.The spicy patties are hard to find but particularly good.  Better than the fake bacon.
  • Whole Foods 365 Brand Veggie Sausage Patties – good flavor, but not low on calorie.  Nice spices and seasonings, good texture.  A little spicy but not too much for me!

“Dairy”:

  • Trader Joe’s Soy Mozzarella – Trader Joe’s does it again.  This soy cheese has a great texture and melts well, without the soy flavor of some vegan cheese substitutes.  However, it does contain casein (a milk protein) so it’s not truly vegan.  However, it didn’t bother my lactose intolerant tummy.
  • Trader Joe’s Soy Creamery Chocolate Chip and Cherry – Love Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia?  Lactose intolerant or vegan?  This is like crack.  No overwhelming soy flavor.  You will have to stop yourself from eating the whole dang tub.
  • Trader Joe’s Coconut Strawberry frozen dessert – Pretty good.  Tangy strawberry flavor, slight hint of coconut, good mouth feel and moderately rich flavor.  Different from strawberry ice cream, but in a good way.  It’d probably make some good summer cocktails if blended with rum!
  • Daiya Vegan Mozzarella/Cheddar Shreds – tastes like processed cheese product.  If you like Kraft singles, you’ll probably like this.  It melts well, but the Mozzarella and Cheddar kind of taste the same just with different colors.  However, works ironically well in scrambled eggs… (I can see some vegans face-palming right now!)
  • Pacific Organic Plain Unsweetened Almond Milk – almond milk generally works much better in coffee than soy or rice milk.  The latter curdle. Yuck!
  • Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet Cream Cheese – Bleh.  Can the Daiya people make some cream cheese substitute?  It’d definitely be better than this.  This faux cream cheese has that cardboardy overwhelming soy flavor and texture that I dislike. This will probably sit in my fridge for a long while…maybe better in desserts though.

Seasonings/other:

  • Better than Bullion Vegetarian Beef Bullion: kind of flat and honestly doesn’t taste much different than their vegetable bullion (which is still a nice bullion substitute).  Salty like a good beef bullion with a fair amount of umami, but adding it to vegetable broth and adding some mushrooms (crimini or porcini) will make the flavor better.
  • Nuoc Mam Chay/Vegetarian Fish Sauce – similar funk to fish sauce, similar saltiness, but not fish sauce.  But it will do in a pinch for Thai and Vietnamese cooking.  Find it at Vietnamese grocery stores.
  • Vegetarian Oyster Sauce – oysterless, but still great on broccoli.  Stir fry with Gardein’s Beefless Tips and some chopped broccoli and satisfy your broccoli beef craving in no time!
  • Amoy-D Curry Paste: Most Thai curry pastes are not vegetarian (most of them contain some shrimp product).  However, Amoy-D is.  It lacks a bit in the umami depth of the shrimpy curry pastes, but it works fine to make a good curry at home.
  • Hummus: Trader Joe’s is the best.  Sabra (sold at Costco and Safeway) is okay.  It’s easy to make your own though if you have a food processor or blender and some canned garbanzos.

I hope you enjoyed those reviews above and avoid the things I’ve advised you to avoid!  Unless you’re desperate, I guess.

As a side note, my mom (one of my greatest inspirations and person who I have to thank for my cooking capabilities) may be making a guest post sometime in the near future, so keep your eyes open for that!

Black Bean Burger Experiment

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Foreword: I wouldn’t call this a success, but I wouldn’t call it a failure.  You can learn from my mistakes and probably make this one turn out awesome.  I’ve adjusted the recipe so hopefully you’ll have more success (or I will, too, next time I make them).

Black bean burgers, after much ado about everything.

After watching this TED talk about weekday vegetarianism (a great option!) , I’ve been inspired to create more vegetarian recipes.  Meat tastes great, but so do vegetables and legumes and all that jazz.  Letting the meat take the spotlight all the time is kinda unfair.  My idea was to create some black bean burgers, including some veggies and lentils furtively put in there for extra nutritional value and tastiness.

The flavor of the resulting recipe was awesome, but there were 2 problems: 1) too much liquid 2) not enough binder, resulting in the whole batch basically falling apart and me having to compact them after baking using waxed paper as shown in the unfortunate photos below.

Anyway, I’ve altered the recipe with these two things in mind so that hopefully you have a better experience than I did.  Don’t expect them to taste like beef; they’re their own thing and are not supposed to be trying to be fake meat.  There got a lot of other flavors going on (umami, earthiness, saltiness, and a light spiciness) and would also make a great burrito or taco filling.

According to caloriecount.com, they’re crazy high in all sorts of vitamins, from your mundane Vitamin A and fiber to exotic things like manganese. Doubt that makes them sexy, but they are tasty and good for you too.

Supercharged Black Bean Burgers

Makes 8 smallish patties or 4 large patties.   ~200 calories per large patty.

Ingredients

  • 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained and let dry
  • 1 cup lentils (about 1/3 of a cup dry, then rinsed, boiled for 15 mins, and let dry)
  • 1 bunch swiss chard, rinsed and chopped into largeish pieces
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 5 cloves of garlic
  • 1/4 of a large yellow onion, diced (= about 3/4 of a cup after dicing)
  • 1 tbsp cumin
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 4 dried shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and cut into smaller pieces

Make sure you have the lentils all cooked, the beans rinsed and drained, and both let set to dry for a bit.  Preheat oven to 375 F.

Boil chard in water for 10 minutes, then drain and rinse.  Press dry between some paper towels.  Set aside.

Add to food processor: eggs (sans shell, of course :P ), garlic, onion, olive oil, spices, soy sauce.  Blend until the consistency of runny oatmeal.

Add mushrooms and chard, blend a few times (pulse 2-3 times– 2 to 3 revolutions using pulse mode).

Then add the lentils, pulse once, then add black beans and pulse until the consistency of approximately meat-like-ness.

Lightly grease a baking sheet (I used vegetable spray) and form the mixture into patties.  Bake at 375 for 30-40 minutes or until browned on the outside and firmish when you poke them.

Soup-er Rainy Day

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brightening up a rainy day

It’s been raining for almost a week nonstop here in central California, and pretty cold for this area to boot (low 40s in the day, low 30s at night).  I know I’m not going to get sympathy from anyone…well, anywhere *but* California…but it’s a great excuse to make soup.

I’d been craving tom kha gai, a Thai chicken-coconut soup. (I dunno why I’ve been on this Southeast Asian food kick lately, but I’ll probably blame having just finished reading A Cook’s Tour.)  The coconut milk, though, pretty much negates the healthy soup factor, so I opted for a regular ol’ chicken vegetable soup.  The chicken adds richness, the carrots and green onions sweetness, spinach an earthiness, and the lemon, kaffir lime, and galangal a tangyness.

~300 calories for the whole pot, and chock full of tons of vitamins: vitamin A, iron, potassium, vitamin C, and fiber.  Luckily this whole diet thing makes it pretty easy to write up recipes, since I sort of measure everything anyway.

Kestrel’s Thai Chicken Soup

Makes 1 serving as a meal, 2 servings as a side or starter.

If you do your prep first, the cooking will go super fast.

Ingredients

  • 1 skinless boneless chicken thigh (I prefer the thighs because they have more flavor & are cheaper), chopped into bite-sized pieces
  • Sea salt & freshly ground pepper
  • 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
  • 1 can chicken broth (Swanson 100% natural is what I used)
  • 1 tbsp fish sauce (nước mắm)
  • a few kaffir lime leaves (anywhere between 1-3 is fine)
  • a few coins of galangal (I find it’s a bit sweeter and fruitier than ginger)
  • 1 sliced ring of lemon
  • 2 small carrots, sliced into coins
  • 1 1/2 cups fresh spinach, chopped roughly
  • 1/4 cup shelled soy beans/edamame (I bought preshelled frozen ones)
  • 2 green onions, sliced
  • 1/2 to 1 cup of chopped fresh cilantro/coriander leaves

Add the oil to the bottom of the pot and heat up.  Add chicken, salt, pepper.  Keep stirring until chicken is a little bit browned.

soup base

Add chicken stock, galangal, fish sauce, lime leaves, lemon ring.  Bring to a boil.

adding veggies

Turn down to a simmer.  Add carrots, then bring to a simmer again and add spinach, soybeans.  Bring to a boil.

simmer!

green onions & cilantro


Throw in green onions, cilantro, and turn off immediately so the cilantro and green onions don’t overcook and lose their brightness.  Stir, let cool for a minute, then enjoy.  Garnish bowl with a few sesame seeds if you want.

all done!

Pro tip: don’t try to eat the lemon ring, galangal, or kaffir lime leaves.  They’re all pretty tough and pungent.  You could probably take them out before serving if you wanted, or just eat around them like I do.

Vegan for a Day

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Lately, I’ve found myself eating a lot of saturated fats and cholesterol in the form of cheese, meat, butter, etc.  My body doesn’t seem too happy about it, and I’m a little paranoid of an expanding waistline. Today my plan was originally to eat only fresh fruits and vegetables, to help give me some fiber and vitamins I’ve probably been missing out on.  I realized, though, that my taste buds wouldn’t forgive me for that, so I included some nuts and carbs.

Breakfast: banana, fruit and almonds from farmer’s market

Lunch: vegetable (green been, green onion, turnip, and cilantro) fried rice and miso soup with spinach, edamame, and corn

Snack: sourdough toast (with olive oil, salt, and paprika), a grapefruit, and some black tea

Dinner: portobello mushroom tacos (recipe below)

Portobello Mushroom Tacos

(Serves 1– 2 tacos)

The trick here to keep the mushrooms from getting too soggy is to roast them at 375 F for a while, drain off the water, then broil them for a few minutes.  This will make your tacos neater to eat and let the mushrooms have a good chewy texture.  If I were going to do this again, I may actually mash the avocado and spread it on the tortilla before adding the mushrooms and everything on top of that, to make it a bit more like cheese.  Overall, it came out quite good and refreshing, even if it was vegan.

Ingredients

  • 1 portobello mushroom with a firm cap, sliced into 1/2″ thick strips
  • vegetable oil spray
  • 1/2 pasilla pepper, sliced into 1/4″ rings
  • 4 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
  • pinch salt
  • a couple of pinches of cumin
  • 2 corn tortillas
  • vegetable oil
  • 1/4 of an avocado, sliced into 4 strips
  • veggie toppings recommended: cilantro (lightly chopped), finely diced onion, diced tomato, lime (to squeeze on top)
  • hot sauce

Preheat oven to 375.  Spray a loaf pan lightly with vegetable oil spray.  Lay mushrooms, peppers, and garlic in the pan.  Let roast for about 20 minutes, then drain the water off.  Sprinkle with salt, cumin (and perhaps a little black pepper or cayenne pepper if you want).  Set oven to broil, return mushroom mixture to the oven and let broil for 5-10 minutes, until garlic cloves are well roasted.  Remove from oven and let cool while preparing tortillas.

Fry the tortillas on each side in a little vegetable oil, until golden brown.  Place on a plate, top with mushroom mixture.  Top this with avocado, cilantro, onion, tomato.  Add hot sauce as desired, and squeeze lime juice on top.

Would I do this whole-day-vegan thing again?  Not unless necessary for my health, I think. The tacos were pretty good, though.