Real Hash Browns

GLUTEN FREE/VEGETARIAN/VEGAN/DAIRY FREE

Has browns are my favorite breakfast item. Whenever I have breakfast out it must be included in my dish or I’ll order it as a side. While some restaurants like to pass off chunks of fried potato as hash browns, there is nothing like grated potato hash.

Ddduk Boki

CAN BE GLUTEN FREE/CAN BE VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/PESCETARIAN

When I first started dating my husband, an American of Korean decent, I spent a lot of time researching and trying Korean recipes. My goal was to make it so he never said he’s had better,although any sane man would never say something like that to his wife any way. J

Dduk Boki is probably my most favorite of the Korean dishes, mostly for the rice cakes. As with most dishes one absolutely loves the recipes I found always seemed so complicated. Finally I just decided to cut some corners and hope for the best. The result? Corner cutting has its benefits.

Roasted Cabbage

PALEO/GLUTEN FREE/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/DAIRY FREE/COCONUT OIL

I was deferring from blogging this particular recipe since it was a huge copy from Pinterest, but figured I would any way just to show a slightly different way of doing it.

The biggest difference is in the oil. I never use cooking spray unless I’m doing a mass baking project for a fundraiser. Also I got a great tip from a PamperedChef  rep that cooking spray should never be used on Teflon products. For home cooking I only use coconut oil and occasionally olive oil if I need the oil to be liquid and am too lazy to melt the coconut oil.

Vegan Scalloped Potatoes with Mushrooms

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/ COCONUT OIL/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN

My husband loves scalloped potatoes and I haven’t made it in a while because my recipe is cheese based. For some reason I had a hankering for them yesterday and looked up some dairy free recipes. I didn’t much like my options, and remember a cauliflower ‘Alfredo’ sauce I had pinned, and decided to use it in my attempt at dairy free scalloped potatoes.

Oh, and I added sautéed mushrooms for fun. J

Vegan Chili

VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/DAIRY FREE

Switching to vegan chili wasn’t so hard. The real key is having enough chunky ingredients to make you not even notice the lack of meat. Also mushrooms…mushrooms help to add a little meaty flavor and texture. I’ve found a few different vegan chili recipes, most of which require tofu (yuck and not that good for you) so I’ve just gone with my original meat recipe took the meat out and added some more veggies in.

Chili Powder

My husband kept raving about a chili he had at work and so I had to figure out how to top that. J I tried out a few different recipes, with different combinations of seasonings and he liked them all (usually). 

Then I had a challenge, my first chili cook off. It wasn’t official or anything, just a small fundraiser. I took the competition seriously and made four small pots of chili, each with a different set of ingredients and had my husband try out each chili. He liked them all, but the one he liked the most was the combination of all four. 

Banana Oat Muffins

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/ COCONUT OIL/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/EGG FREE OR NOT

This was a scary experiment at first. I found a great recipe at a time when we didn’t eat eggs or dairy (still don’t do dairy) and tried to replace those ingredients. Instead of a cup of Greek yoghurt I used cup coconut oil and instead of eggs I used baking soda and white vinegar. I also used coconut sugar in place of regular sugar, and added almond milk to reduce the thickness of the batter after replacing the yoghurt with coconut oil. 

Banana "Ice Cream"

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/PALEO

My husband absolutely loved this! It has the same perfect texture of ice cream and is so easy to make. My favorite part…it makes use of over ripe bananas so I don’t have to throw them out.

The original recipe had one step that I changed. That was how to freeze the bananas. I usually purchase more bananas than I need for the sole purpose of making oodles of banana bread for bake sales. I break them up when get over ripe put them into Ziploc freezer bags until the next bake sale comes up. 

Pinterest Connoisseur (May 2013)

It’s always frustrating when a new recipe adventure goes awry. You’re all excited to find a recipe that meets your needs in a particular moment, and convinced that the ingredients will be so awesome when they come together and then BOOM! Turns our you were wrong, your exciting was unwarranted and you’re out a few dollars in expensive ingredients. Welcome to my world. J

Here are some recipes I found on Pinterest that were not all they were “Pinned” up to be. I didn’t hate the results, but I’ll probably never make them again.

Oh, and just so this is the most disappointing blog I put up one Pin that I really did enjoy.

Coconut “Doughnut Holes”

VEGAN/PAELO/VEGETARIAN/DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT OIL

I found the original recipe for this on Pinterest. The name for these was “coconut lemon melt-aways”, but thanks to my husband’s strange humor he convinced several of our paleo-eating friends to call them doughnut holes, because it annoyed me. Now it doesn’t annoy me and because I changed the recipe…by accident I’m ok with calling them doughnut holes now.

Normally when I “follow” a recipe I never follow it perfectly. I’ll add something extra and substitute something else. In this case I had not intentions of going off the recipe, but realized only on my third time making these I forgot a critical step. Turns out, the step wasn’t so critical because when I made them the correct way they didn’t taste as good.

PF Chang's Copy Cat Asparagus

My husband and I love hitting up PF Chang's for some good vegetarian/gluten free options every once in a while. Our favorite dish is the asparagus, so I had to see if I could make it on my own. i found the link below and except for switching out the oil for coconut oil and doubling the recipe everything remained the same, and turned out wonderfully.

The only problem was not having enough left overs for lunch the next day. Hee hee hee.

Original Recipe

Greek Potatoes

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/COCOUT OIL/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN

This is one of my favorite ways to make potatoes. It had been a while since I had them, and last Easter I was looking for a new way to cook potatoes to go with a lamb roast I was making. Every time I looked up the best potatoes to go with a lamb Greek kept coming up in my searches.

The only changes I made to the recipe was to replace the olive oil with coconut oil, and the first time I made it with red potatoes and kept the skins on.

Curried Fried Rice (With or Without Eggs)

This was an experiment gone awesome! I cook rice about 3-5 times a week. Usually it’s brown and usually it’s organic. For the last few months I’ve been buying an organic brand from Costco that tastes very good. Normally, we eat it plain, but every once in a while I add a little flare, with a twist of the West Indies or twist of Asia. Today, I introduce you to a common flavor of the West Indies.

For this recipe and just about any fried rice recipe I prefer to use brown rice because it doesn’t hold has much water as white rice does. This helps keep the oil popping factor down and also makes mixing easier.

Curry Powder

Not all curries are the same. Anyone who has grown up eating buss-up-shot, doubles, or friedbake knows this. Curry, like chili is not made up of one ingredient, but is a wonderful orchestra of spices.

I’ve notice that a lot of people buy curry sauce from the grocery store and use that as a base, but a trick my mom taught me needs to start with dried, ground up spices. Normally I would buy a bottle of curry powder at the grocery, but a couple of years ago I thought it would be interesting to try making my own curry powder. I still keep a grocery store bought bottle of curry powder for those times I may be out of key ingredients to make my own.

Paleo Sangria

PALEO/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT 

Sangria is one of my favorite ways to drink wine…actually it is my favorite way to drink wine, and home made is the best way to do it.

This was one of those recipes where I searched and found about a dozen variations and just decided to make one up that pulled from them all.

The reason this is a paleo recipe is because unlike most sangrias I didn’t use cane sugar. Instead I used coconut sugar. To find out more about coconut sugar check out a previous blog on my favorite kitchen things.

Mushrooms Sautéed in Red Wine & Coconut Oil

VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT OIL/PALEO/DAIRY FREE/SUGAR FREE

Mushrooms are my favorite! Well, one of many. I’m usually too lazy to do much more than simply sauté my mushrooms in coconut oil or add it to a scrambled omelet, but this recipe looked so intriguing I had to try it out.

I’ve been getting in wines of late especially since a friend of mine started her own wine tasting business. The only problem I’ve found with wine is what to do with the ones I don’t like but have already opened. Thankfully wine makes an awesome ingredient in lots of recipe.

Four Things l Figured Out When Going "Almost Vegan"

In my vegan/gluten and sugar free cooking adventures I figured out several things. The most immediate were.

1. It’s difficult to switch your diet all at once. For some it’s probably easier to change a few things at a time, rather than go all in. We had already tried out various combinations of diets and were fine with the drastic change. My only reservation was with having to get rid of all the meat in my freezer.

2. The key to making a drastic change like this work is to find easy to make recipes that you can enjoy having weekly.

3. Meat isn’t that special. Sure I like a good hamburger or steak when we’re celebrating or just feel like going ‘off the wagon’, but usually after the meal I don’t feel like I missed much.

4. People will judge you. They question where you get protein, vitamin B, etc. If you’ve done your research before making this change you will be able to properly supplement these areas of “lack”. As for a response to their judgment…my Mom always says, “Ignore the ignorant.” If you’re confident in your diet choices than what does it matter?

Veggie Shepherd’s Pie

VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/DAIRY FREE/COCONUT OIL/SUGAR FREE

Shepherd’s pie is one of those wonderful, easy meat dishes that I used to make often prior to our change in diet. I figured out a way to make a vegan version that tastes just as wonderful. You can switch out the veggies however you like, the most important part is the potato, and if you want to have that meat texture mushrooms are the answer.

“Almost Vegan”

My husband and I went “almost vegan” about a year ago. This also included excluding gluten and all sugar where possible. I say “almost vegan” because we decided to keep fish in our diet (including shell fish), and have decided in the last month to add eggs back in. On special occasions (such as birthdays, holidays, etc.) we depart from the diet entirely and indulge in meat and wheat. We’ve found some other words to describe our diet, the closest being flexitarian, but what really matters to us is that we’re eating healthy, organic (where possible), non GMO (where possible) and that we’re happy.

The last year has been quite a culinary adventure.  Since ‘converting’ I’ve been experimenting with several recipes, trying to find those favorites I could replace my favorite non-vegan dishes with. I'm happy to say that we're over the "HOW ARE WE GONNA SURVIVE WITH NO MEAT" mentality, and have developed a healthy, consistent, fulfilling diet.