I definitely watched this film too young in my life. My father, who does not like cartoons but likes John Travolta, rented this film not knowing much about it. Travolta had been in films we watched as a family like Grease and Saturday Night Fever so my father figured it would have the same kind of tone. My step brothers and sister all sat down to watch it one Sunday night, popcorn bowls ready, and we were all taken a little by surprise. My father eventually stopped the movie but not right away. Watching Uma Thurman snort heroine was fairly terrifying but I was spared any details about the film’s later plot line until I was older. Pulp Fiction stayed with me for a long while after that, mostly because when I told my friends I watched it, I became instantly cooler.  I was always curious about the infamous Big Kahuna burger. It looked pretty basic: thin beef patty, melted cheese, and ketchup but Samuel L Jackson seemed to really enjoy it, you know, before killing that guy who will remain nameless for the sake of spoilers. While Tarantino’s movies aren’t appropriate for 9 year old, I do appreciate the story lines as an adult.  This burger is unlike the Big Kahuna burger since it is not from a Hawaiian burger join, is vegan, and is fully loaded with veggies but you can do the Samuel L Jackson impression when you take your first bite.

Who’s a bad motherf**ker? 

Huge thanks to Laura Wright from The First Mess who allowed me to adapted her recipe, “the veggie burger of my dreams,” for this post. It is now the veggie burger of my dreams too. 

7 recipes down, 23 more to go! See you tomorrow for Day 8: Reach out! Make a new vegan friend & tell us about it. Missed Day 6? Check it out here.

Stay connected on the daily by following me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Made this recipe? I would love to see it! Use the hashtag #screcipe on your social media. 

P.S. I know this recipe is more than 12 ingredients but the ingredients are not only important for the flavour but also the structure and texture of the burger. I do not recommending skipping ingredients. 

Food Favs of Week 1 of Vegan MoFo:

Marinated Eggpland Sandwich {Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day} by Seitan is my Motor

Quick and Easy Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge by Spabettie

Salted Caramel Ginger Kombucha Floats by Ichiban Vegan

Kimchi ‘Bella Burgers’ by Plant Crush

The Big Kahuna Burger: Vegan

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

8 mins

Total time

28 mins

 

This recipe is inspired by Pulp Fiction's The Big Kahuna Burger. It is vegan, loaded with veggies, and protein-packed. Serve with your favourite burger fixings! This burger do not do well on the grill so it is best to cook them in a sauté pan. This recipe is adapted from The First Mess "veggie burger of my dreams"

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: Main

Cuisine: vegan

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked brown basmati rice
• ¼ cup raw cashews
• ¼ cup raw sunflower seeds
• ¾ cup roughly chopped red onion
• ½ cup grated sweet potato (peel first then grate)
• ¾ cup roughly chopped tempeh
• 1½ tbsp tamari soy sauce or low sodium soy sauce
• 2 tbsp GF flour blend* or all purpose flour
• 2 tsp organic arrowroot powder
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• ½ tablespoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ancho chili powder
• 1 teaspoon sumac
• ¼ - ½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1-2 tbsp water
• Pepper, to taste
• Oil, to cook
• 
  Burger Fixings:
• Lettuce
• Pea shoots
• Avocado
• Thick slices of tomato
• Thin slices of red onion
• Sriracha
• Eggless Mayo
• Spicy Burger Sauce: 1 tablespoon eggless mayo + ½ tablespoon ketchup + fat pinch of ancho chili powder, all mixed together

Instructions

1. Combine brown rice with 2½ cups of water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add a pinch of salt. Bring this mix to a boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. The rice will still be chewy. Transfer the chewy rice into a large bowl and set aside to cool.
2. In a food processor, combine the cashews, sunflower seeds, chopped onion, sweet potato, and tempeh. Pulse the mixture until it is cohesive and well combined. Transfer the tempeh/veg mixture into the large bowl with the rice.
3. Add all of the remaining ingredients to the bowl except for the water. Stir the ingredients together until thoroughly combined. The mixture should hold together when you pinch it with your fingers. If it is not binding properly, add 1-2 tablespoons of water, mix again, and pinch the mixture again.
4. Form 6 large or 8 smaller patties with your hands and place them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and set them in the fridge for one hour. If you wanted to freeze them, line them up on a baking sheet and freeze for about an hour. Wrap the frozen burgers individually and place them in a Ziploc bag for later use.
5. To Cook:
6. Heat 3 teaspoons of coconut oil over medium heat in a large sauté pan. Gently transfer 2-3 patties to the pan and cook until golden on the bottom, about 3-4 minutes. Flip the patties over and cook until golden on the other side, another 3 minutes.
7. Repeat with remaining patties, adding a little more oil with every batch.
8. Keep the cooked ones warm on a baking sheet in your oven set at 200 degrees.
9. Serve the hot veggie patties with whichever burger fixings you like. Enjoy!

Notes

* I used Bob Mill's 1:1 GF Flour Blend

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The post Day 7 Vegan MoFo: The Big Kahuna Burger appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart.

If you want to receive a free copy of my eBook, subscribe on the right hand side bar or at the bottom of this post. Redefining Sprouts & Chocolate was a bit terrifying and I tried to convince myself out of it. Just 12 ingredients? For ALL future recipes? Once I started making lists of the recipes, it wasn’t as hard as I imagined. Starting is the hardest part but do whatever it takes to get your ideas in motion. You got this! Minimalist living has been on my mind for a little while but I did not know how to put it into practice for my life and not just in my recipes. As I looked around my apartment, I felt burdened by my possessions but felt like I couldn’t part with them. Mark and I live in a 600 square-foot apartment so space is tight. We felt like we were outgrowing this apartment at an alarming rate but it wasn’t the square footage that was the problem, it was the stuff. Just the stuff piled onto more stuff, littered around with more stuff. On Friday, my copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing came in the mail and during the weekend I read it cover to cover. After each chapter, I could feel my mindset shifting and it became easier to accept discarding my possessions. Mark and I turned our teeny apartment upside down, giving our cramped space some much needed breathing room. In a single afternoon, we managed to get rid of:

• 5- 45L bags of clothes to donate
• 4- 45L bags of junk and garbage
• 40 books (that one was tough)
• 38 old food magazines
• 35 VHS tapes
• 28 DVDs
• 2-68L Rubbermaid containers with duplicate or unused kitchen supplies
• 1 large unused cabinet

Every object Mark and I own now has a specific place instead of just cramming something wherever we could find room. This is just the start but like anything, simple living just takes a bit of habit reforming. Sure, I don’t live in one of those Tiny Homes and I did not want to part with all my books but it is a step toward something greater. If you are interested in minimalist living, start by looking around your home and see what it is collecting dust. Do you love it? Does it serve a purpose? Do you use it? If not, I suggest you donate if possible or discard the item. It became also thrilling to see the unneeded things leave my space and I hope you find the same joy. 

What is one thing you can do today, just today, to achieve your goal?

FYI: This post contains an Amazon Affiliate link but I really love Marie Kondo’s book! 

Stay connected on the daily by following me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Made this recipe? I would love to see it! Use the hashtag #screcipe on your social media. 

Buffalo Chickpea Caesar Salad

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

10 mins

Total time

20 mins

 

A revision on an old favourite! I wanted to recreate an older recipe of mine with new life, less ingredients, no oven, and that had a nut-free dressing. Sunflower seeds, when soaked and blended, are wonderfully creamy, light, and delicious. The extra oil in the dressing is needed since sunflower seeds are naturally lower in fat than cashews. The chickpeas crisp up well in a cast iron skillet, however if you do not own one, they will do just fine in a regular pan, it might just take an extra minute or two. This recipe is vegan, gluten free, nut free, and serves 2 generous salads or 4 light sides.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Ingredients

For the Nut Free Caesar Dressing

• ½ cup raw sunflower seeds, soaked for 2 hours
• Juice of 1 lemon, about 4 tablespoons
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• ½ tablespoon white miso
• 5 tablespoons water, or to desired consistency

For the Buffalo Chickpeas

• 2 cup cooked chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 teaspoon arrowroot powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• ¼ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• 4 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons Frank's Hot Sauce
• 2 heads of Romaine lettuce, chopped, washed and dried
• Extra lemon wedges (optional)

Instructions

For the Nut Free Caesar Dressing

1. Add all the dressing ingredient to a high power blender or food processor and blend until completely smooth. The blender is faster but the food processor will do the trick.
2. Transfer dressing to a glass jar or bottle and chill in the fridge until ready to use. You may have to add a splash of water to the dressing since it will thicken as it cools.

For the Buffalo Chickpeas

1. Dry the drained chickpeas between two sheets of paper towels. Gently roll the beans between the paper towels until the chickpeas are fairly dry. Do not skip this step! Your chickpeas will not crisp up if they are wet.
2. Transfer the dried chickpeas to a medium bowl, add the arrowroot, paprika, salt and olive oil and gently stir to coat the beans.
3. Heat up a skillet (preferably cast-iron) over medium heat. When the skillet is hot, add the chickpeas, and cooked for 10 minutes, stirring every 2-3 minutes so they do not burn. Wipe out the medium sized bowl that you dressed the chickpeas in.
4. Try a few chickpeas before taking the pan off the heat to check if they chickpeas are to your desired crispiness. I like mine just crispy on the outside but still meaty on the inside. If you desire a very crisp chickpea, add a few minutes to the cooking time.
5. Transfer chickpeas to the clean medium sized bowl and add the buffalo sauce. Toss to coat.
6. Dress the lettuce with the Nut Free Caesar Dressing, top with Buffalo Chickpeas, and serve with additional lemon wedges. Enjoy!

3.3.3077

The post Buffalo Chickpea Caesar Salad {Nut Free} appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

Example:

Anonymous friend confession: “I thought condominiums were places adults bought to have sex in. I didn’t know that they are just apartments you owned until I was 14.” (Drunken laughter ensues!)

When it came around to me I was almost too embarrassed to confess. I had some really silly ones that I had kept to myself for years but this is the name of the game.

 “I thought the phrase was “Worth your wild!” Not “worth your while.” Someone corrected me on this earlier this year. I am 27 years old.

“Until I was 13, I thought Charles Mason was a disowned member of The Beatles since writing and going crazy after Helter Skelter.” My mother corrected me, horrified but laughing.

 “Cold-slaw” Which to me still makes sense since it is a cold salad!

 “I thought Prince ripped off the song “When Doves Cry” from the Leonardo Dicaprio/Claire Danes version of Romeo and Juliet.” That movie gave me a lot of problems about love when it came to dating as a teenager and how I desperately wanted to meet my true love through a giant glowing fish tank. 

 Now for the food confession: I don’t know what nutritional yeast is. Well I didn’t know until I wrote this post.

All I knew about it previous to this was: the first time I bought it I thought that they mislabeled fish food, upon first trying it I knew I was hooked and it is insanely good on pretty much everything from pasta, my Ultimate Vegan Nacho Cheese, soups (this one in particular) and sprinkled on roasted potatoes.

 So wtf is nutritional yeast?

“Nutritional yeast is a deactivated yeast, often a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is sold commercially as a food product,” says Wikipedia. Yeast is part of the Fungi Kingdom so no animals harmed!

Nutritional yeast is a complete protein which means it has all the essential amino acids that we humans must consume since we do not produce it ourselves. It is also sugar, gluten and dairy free. Some brands fortify nutritional yeast with B12, which is a vitamin most vegans are lacking. Read the label carefully to see if your local brand contains this vitamin (you will also notice your urine turning an insanely bright colour…too much information? Mark made the joke….”You might think ur-ine trouble….” How do I date this person?? P.S. we did not meet through a fish tank)

Thankfully going gluten free I did not have to give up one of my favourite pantry staple nor one my fav winter comfort foods: mac and cheese. Developing this recipe took some time as I posted on Instagram so long ago my first round of trials. At first I used my nacho cheese recipe minus the ancho chili and poured it onto some noodles but the sauce was way too rich plus an entire cup of cashews runs a little high with Christmas on its way. Scratch that idea.

I had heard of butternut squash mac and cheese before but squash is Mark’s least favourite vegetable and I have certainly had my fill of it already this season. Thanksgiving for us Canadian seemed so long ago. I knew I didn’t want a sweet mac and cheese like so many squash recipes are- it had to be savoury (added fresh rosemary and raw garlic) and cheesy flavoured thanks to the nutritional yeast.

Four rounds of mac and cheese later, I finally came up with this recipe. Am I sick of mac and cheese yet? Not even a little. I even had Mark’s very meat and potatoes friend test it out and he said he wouldn’t know it was squash based if I haven’t told him.

I poured it over some brown rice macaroni but it would taste good on some roasted vegetables too. Perhaps some wilted greens added to the noodle mix to make this a little more grown up and nutritionally dense.

I hope transitioning to gluten-free continues to go fairly smoothly with the exception of all the bakeries around my house smelling extra tempting. I am currently optimistic but ask me again when all the Christmas cookies start coming out…..

The post Rosemary Butternut Mac & Cheese {Vegan & Gluten Free} + WTF is Nutritional Yeast? appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.