Vegan manicotti

There are lots of variations of vegan manicotti out there. This one felt like a variation on a spinach and artichoke dip.

Cook your manicotti in a large pot while you work on the spinach and artichoke part. Preheat the over to 375 as well.

Drain one can of artichoke hearts and chop them in to fine pieces. Heat some olive oil in a skillet and fry up the artichokes, 1 TBsp minced garlic, one bag thawed frozen spinach, and 1 TBsp red pepper flakes. When this is cooked transfer this to a large bowl with 1/2 bag daiya mozzarella cheese and 1/2 jar tofutti vegan ricotta.

Meanwhile in a smaller pan I fried up a little bit of diced tofurky Italian sausage.

In a large casserole I spread a layer of spaghetti sauce, then stuffed the pasta with the artichoke-spinach-vegan cheese mixture. This was layered in to the casserole, and then topped with more sauce as well as the sausage, and lastly some more daiya mozzarella.

This was baked at 375 for 25 minutes.

 

More tacos!

I never tire of tacos, and this was a super simple and tasty meal I threw together one night. Frontera has a new line of taco sauces out there, and there are a couple that happen to be vegan. I found this one at Target which happened to be vegan, and used it to cook some vegan TJs beefless strips in it:

Then I placed the cooked strips on top of arugala and put some chopped avocado and tomato chunks. Super tasty and simple. 

Like the new site? Let’s start with vegan deep dish tater tot BBQ pizza

What a mouthful, right? Welcome to the new blog folks. I have moved over here from my prior blog, at http://crunchyvegan.blogspot.com/ mainly because I am more accustomed to using wordpress thanks to the Evil Geeks.

I use my personal blog mostly for writing about my recipes (it’s my pseudo-recipe index rather than hand writing them all down somewhere). I also will write the occasional political rant or  philosophical post about running and other important hobbies in my life.

So with this ground-breaking post I am going to bring you a mouthful of a vegan recipe, both in the word department and with regards to the meal itself.

I bought my first cast-iron skillet the other week, specifically for this recipe, which is super tasty.

First I fried up a package of TJs beefless strips. Meanwhile I cooked some tater tots as per the bag’s instructions in the oven. I also rolled out some pre-made vegan pizza dough and covered the entire bottom of the greased iron skillet like a pie crust with it.

In a large bowl I mixed together 1 can rinsed diced tomatoes, 1/2 cup BBQ sauce, 1 TBsp crushed red pepper flakes, and 1/4 cup veganaise (vegan mayonaise). First I covered the bottom of the pizza dough with this sauce, then a layer of the fake meat, then the cooked tater tots, and lastly sliced vegan mozzarella “Teese”, a new brand of vegan cheese I have not tried yet. This whole thing went in the often at 425 for 20 minutes. I then squirted some more BBQ sauce on top once cooked. It was quite a delicious dish, and felt unhealthy despite being vegan.