Dominican Breakfast

This is a good breakfast option for anyone that might be tired of the standard varieties. Being half Dominican I have been eating this for years, it's called Mangu. It is a breakfast staple among Dominicans and consists of eggs, Dominican salami, Dominican white cheese and mashed plantains. I actually love eating this but since giving up animal products have had to alter some of it.

Here is what you'll need: Green plantains(1-2 is fine for a single serving), olive oil, water, lemon, onions, Adobo, tofu (firm or extra firm), turmeric, pepper, paprika, vegan sausage (I just used pepperoni slices because it was at hand)

1. Cut off the ends of the plantains and take off the skin. If you don't know how to take the skin off take your knife and cut a line down one side then go in and peel it. 


2. Next cut up the plantains into like two or three pieces just to make it cook faster. Place the pieces into a pot of water and bring it to a boil. To determine if the plantains are cooked a knife inserted into them should be easy to do. You don't have to worry about overcooking them since we are going to be mashing them up.

3. After the plantains are done mash them up as you would with potatoes. Add in generous amounts of olive oil while mixing so make it softer and not quite creamy but almost. You can add in your seasonings also so some Adobo (to taste) and a bit of lemon juice (to taste). If it is still a bit dry add a bit of water from the batch that it was boiled in.

4. If you want to add onions to your Mangu then fry them in a pan and add them to the plantains that you mashed and seasoned.

5. Taking your vegan sausage cook it as you would normally, I would use a pan and with a bit of oil make it a bit crunchy. Which happens to be what I did to my pepperoni slices.

6. If you buy blocks of vegan cheese then you can easily cut a slice and heat it up then plate it. I didn't use cheese this time, but if I did I would just melt some shredded mozzarella on top because that's what I normally have on hand.

7. Cook your eggs as you normally would season them and plate them with the rest of the food. I like seasoning mine with some salt, pepper, paprika and turmeric.

So this is a hearty breakfast and an alternative to eating bread or sweets for breakfast. It is fairly simple to make and tastes delicious.

This is a picture of how someone would make Mangu with real cheese,eggs and salami 

Give it a try and enjoy!

Egg and Cheese Sandwich

So I have been craving an egg and cheese sandwich for like a week or so and finally this morning decided to give it a try. Occasionally I will make scrambled tofu but generally my breakfast consists of just toast with butter and some nutritional yeast. I woke up to find my mother cooking scrambled eggs and omeletes and felt inspired to make my own version.

Taking a pain I put a small amount of oil and threw in some sliced onions. Letting it cook for like a minute I then threw in some paprika, tumeric, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Normally to season my "eggs" I don't add poultry seasoning but I actually quite like the taste it gives it.

Crumble in the tofu and stir all the ingredients together so that it is well seasoned. Then in the meantime I just popped my bread into the toaster, lightly buttering one side.

Depending on whether you are going to use any mock meat you can start cooking it now also. I decided to use some pepperoni slices which I threw into the pan with the eggs to cook.

Once you see that the tofu is cooked (it doesn't take long) then you can add in your cheese, I used mozzarella. I just let it melt and then took my bread out of the toaster and placed it inside of it. Once my pepperoni's were as crunchy as I wanted them I added them on top of the egg and cheese. Also while the bread is still hot from the oven I sprinkled some nutritional yeast onto the side that was buttered.

*Since tofu can get cold really quick you want to space everything out so that it will still be warm by the time you plate it and go to eat it.

I had my sandwich with some water and an orange. The sandwich is filling and tasty, I might even go so far to say that it tastes better than a real egg and cheese sandwich. 

Smoothies

I have been trying to get more fruits into my diet because I hardly eat them, so I have been making them into smoothies. I try to get my 5 a day but if not at least 3 is better than nothing. I've made two different kind of smoothies the last couple of days and besides that I have also been eating an insane amount of clementines. 

The first smoothie I made (which I like to make for the color honestly) is what I call my pink smoothie. It has strawberries, banana, pineapple, soy milk/yogurt and oats. I love oatmeal and since being vegan I have only made it once successfully so whenever I can put oats into a recipe I do. I did figure out the trick to get my oatmeal the consistency I want it to be, just like it was when I used regular cows milk but I'll do a post on that another time. 

Okay so the second smoothie that I've made contains blueberries, apple, banana, oats, soy milk/yogurt and some superfood. I bought an individual packet of a green superfood at wholefoods just to give it a try and see if I liked it. I blended everything together then at the very end I added only like 1 tbsp of the superfood (I was only making 1 serving of my smoothie). It didn't alter the color in anyway but there was a slight taste of the superfood that peeked through, not immensely but noticeable. The smoothie was actually quite sweet with all the fruits so it masked the taste of the superfood pretty well I think.

I quite enjoy having my smoothies early morning as like a starter to my breakfast that way I get my servings of fruit out of the way and don't have to worry about getting them. I'm going to try and do a smoothie a day that way I get into the habit of it. Its really easy and quick to make, the only thing that I hate doing is cleaning the blender afterwards.

UPDATE

So I haven't posted any new food posts this year, mainly because I've been in a cooking slump. I haven't been in the mood to cook and really I haven't had much of an appetite. Most of my meals have been fairly simple or ones I have already done so they haven't been blog worthy. I'm going to get back into the swing of things and cook new things. I have been thinking of maybe getting a really good vegan cookbook and challenging myself to cook from it for like a month or so. I could stand to learn more recipes and it's a way to get me out of my comfort zone and be more creative with cooking. I already have a couple of cookbooks but none of them are vegan which is why I'm thinking of buying one. Or I could make it a bit more interesting and challenge myself further to adapt the recipes in the cookbook into vegan alternatives.
Nonetheless I will be posting new recipes by the end of this week or by Monday the latest, so look out for those.