Roasted Red Pepper Pasta (vegan + gluten free options)

So, I have a tendency to see pretty fruits and veggies at the grocery store and get all excited to use them, so I buy them, and bring them home with no particular plan for them in mind. This was the case a couple weeks ago with some beautiful red peppers. Of course, they made their way into my fridge and I completely forgot that I had them and they got really soft. However, since I really hate wasting food I did not want to throw them away.
What could I possibly make with really soft red bell peppers? Pasta sauce of course! If they're going to be pureed anyway, it doesn't matter if they've lost their crunch.

As usual, I started by making a fresh batch of almond milk to use for the recipe, leaving it thicker than usual. Then, once I finished using what I needed for the pasta sauce, I added more water to the rest of the milk to make it more like I usually drink.

I also had about 8 ounces of baby portabella mushrooms in the fridge as well, so I figured they'd make a great addition to the pasta. Though, by the time I was done with it I wish I had added way more mushrooms! I made a batch of this big enough to feed both me and my boyfriend, Ryan, for the whole work week as our dinner, along with some herbed carrots and what was left over of his birthday brownies I made last Sunday. So, in the recipe I'll list the amount of mushrooms I wish I had used, rather than how much I actually used.

 It's a good idea to speed things up a bit by baking the peppers first, then letting the pasta cook while you saute the garlic and onions and let the peppers steam. This picture is of a double batch, so don't worry if yours looks like less!

Vegan Roasted Red Pepper Pasta
Makes about 14 cups. I had 2 cups per serving, Ryan had 3 cups.

12-14 oz pasta of choice, whatever the box size is (feel free to get gluten free pasta)
2 red bell pepper, whole
2-3 tbsp olive oil, or water to water saute
1/2 of a large yellow onion, roughly chopped
5 cloves garlic, whole
salt and pepper, to taste (I like a lot of salt in this one)
1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk (or other plant based milk)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tbsp cornstarch (if you are gluten intolerant, make sure it is pure, non-GMO to insure no gluten traces)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (more if you want the heat noticeable)
1/2 tsp smoked paprika

Optional:
2-3 tbsp of any of your favorite fresh herbs. I used sage, parsley, and thyme.
vegan parmesan cheese, to serve
1 lb baby portabella mushrooms, cleaned and sliced (recipe below)

1. Broil the whole peppers directly on the rack until blackened/blistered on all sides, rotating to evenly cook, about 20 minutes. They will look collapsed, and become soft. Wrap the hot peppers in tin foil, or but in a container with a lid to steam themselves (I just used a pot with a lid).

2. Start cooking the pasta.

3. Roughly chop the onion. Heat a pan and add oil if you are using it. Put the onions and garlic in and saute until golden with some brown spots. If you are water sauteing, just pour in a few tablespoons of water once in awhile when the onions start to stick, and stir to loosen from the pan. It is essentially a mini deglazing process. Remove from heat.

4. By now the pasta should be done, so drain it. Don't rinse it, and don't add oil to it, it keeps the sauce from sticking!

5. Take the peppers out of their steaming vessel and pull or cut the stem and seeds out. Peel the charred skin off. Put the prepared peppers in a blender along with the onions and garlic. Add the rest of the ingredients (except the pasta, of course!) and blend until smooth.

6. Pour sauce onto pasta and stir, add any of the optional add-ons, and enjoy!


Sauteed mushrooms
Clean and slice the baby portabella mushrooms. Heat a pan to medium high and add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Add the mushrooms, leaving space between them so they saute and don't steam themselves. Flip after a minute or two, once they have browned on the bottom side. Cook another minute and remove from pan. Add salt and pepper to taste. Use to top pasta or stir them right into it. 

Introduction and Almond milk (vegan + gluten free)

Hi! My name is Anna, and I LOVE to cook and bake! I experiment on a weekly basis and most of the time my creations turn out wonderfully! Though sometimes not so much... super salty cookies? Fail. Hey, they can't all be masterpieces.

Before I get into everything, I just want to say that you don't have to be vegan to eat my food! It is super tasty, and all my non-vegan friends love it. If you find recipes you like, great! Have a meatless, eggless and dairy free meal. Every little bit helps the animals and the environment. Hopefully you'll find enough recipes that you like to have several meatless meals a week, or even in one day! Maybe one day you'll take a step and try to be vegan for a month or longer. However, if you are someone who could "never give up steak" or "can't live without cheese," I won't make you. Just try not to eat it every single day.

Let me tell you a bit about myself, and how I came to be here today:

I became vegetarian about two years ago, and vegan around a year ago. I wanted to become vegan initially because I watched the documentary Forks Over Knives and discovered how horrible eating animal flesh and secretions is for your body. Once I switched to the vegan diet, I found it difficult at first. So, I tried to educate myself on the ethical reasons to be vegan. I figured, if I have some gruesome factory farm images in my head while I look at a burger I won't want to eat it as much and it won't be a matter of will keeping me from wolfing it down.

Then I discovered The Joyful Vegan podcast with Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. Just her vocabulary and manner of speaking about animals made my whole mind rewire itself. I wasn't denying myself beef and chicken, I was saving cows and chickens from a horrible fate. If you say "I don't eat chicken" people imagine a cooked chicken breast on a plate. If you say "I don't eat chickens" they imagine a group of live chickens pecking around. It's amazing the impact words can have.

Recently, I watched the documentary Cowspiracy as well. It was also a huge eye opener that makes me want to eat animals and their secretions even less. The impact animal agriculture has on our planet is astonishing! I highly recommend this documentary. It showed me that my choice to not eat animal products is also helping to save our planet. The amount of resources (water, grain, land) used to factory farm animals is astonishing. Let me throw some stats at you:

Growing food for livestock uses 56% of the water supply in the US. 1000 gallons of water are needed to make 1 gallon of milk. 2500 gallons of water are needed to make 1 pound of beef. Animal agriculture is responsible for 91% of the Amazon rainforest distruction. 1.5 acres of land can produce 37,000 lbs of plant based food. That same amount of land can only make 375 lbs of meat. For those who think fish is the solution: scientists estimate that as many as 650,000 whales, dolphins and seals are killed each year by fishing vessels. 40-50 million sharks have been killed in fishing lines and nets. All of this info is cited, and the sources are available on cowspiracy.com/facts

Ok, spiel done. I just wanted to tell you the reasons I personally decided to live this live of compassion, and let you know where I got my information if you would like to learn more about it as well. I'll tell you, it does make it a lot easier to know all of this which makes me not want animal products, rather than just forcing myself to not eat them without any ethical reasons behind it.

Now to the fun stuff! As part of becoming vegan, I had to learn how to adjust recipes and get creative so that I could continue my passion for cooking and baking. I learned about a lot of new (well, new to me) foods and found some new favorites. Nutritional yeast anyone? Mmm. 

I bought some vegan cookbooks and followed recipes very carefully to begin with, but once I got the gist of how these new foods and products work I was able to get more creative and make my own recipes. This blog is mainly just so I can share my recipes with everyone, and prove that a vegan diet is Not Just Rabbit Food. I have shared most of these foods with my friends and family who are NOT vegan, and they all loved them and said that if they could eat like this every day they could be vegan. I promise, to everyone who says "I could never give up meat" as well as people like my sister who say "I could never give up cheese!" I will show you that it really isn't as hard as you think, and once you get into some tasty vegan goodness you'll never miss (and never want!) dairy cheese or meat again. All the animal, the environment, and your health will thank you!

Now for one of the recipes I use the most, since it is an ingredient in a lot of my other recipes:

Almond Milk

All you need for this recipe is almonds and water, a blender, a nut bag or cheese cloth, and a container to put the finished milk in.

A word on blenders: I highly recommend having a really good quality blender. It is an investment that you will thank yourself for all the time. My blendtec blender is used on a daily basis. I got mine used on ebay for a very good price (around $350 for an industrial blender from a smoothie shop that usually goes for around $1200). Vitamix is another really great brand of blender. Neither of them is the prettiest blender to have on your counter, but they're really worth the price!  

When I make nut milk, I like using a large wide mouth jar. I use the ring to hold the nut bag in place when I pour, then squeeze the milk into the jar so it can't spray around everywhere. It's also convenient to shake the jar to remix the water and almondy goodness, since it will separate a bit in the fridge.

Ok, to the recipe:

Almond Milk

Ingredients:

1 cup raw UNSALTED almonds

3 cups water, plus more to thin it to the consistency you want

Optional add ins:

2 tsp vanilla

3-4 medjool dates (grind and strain with almonds) for a caramel flavor and extra sweetness

powder or liquid stevia, to taste

cinnamon

cocoa powder 

1. If you don't have a high powered blender, soak the almonds in some water for a half hour to soften them. If you do have a high powered blender you can just toss them right in the blender with the water.

2. Blend the almonds and water. It will turn white and look rather grainy. I let mine sit for a couple minutes so the ground up almond bits can mingle with the water to make it super creamy. 

3. Pour the mixture through a nut bag or cheese cloth into a bowl or large jar. I like to use this bag and strain into a large wide mouth jar, since when you squeeze the milk through the bag it likes to spray in every direction. 

4. Thin the milk to whatever consistency you like. It will be somewhere between the consistency of cream and whole milk when you strain it, so if you prefer 2%, 1% or skim milk you can just add more water and stir it in. I like the jar method, so it is easy to just shake it in. 

5. Add any flavors you want. I usually just leave mine unsweetened and with no vanilla, since I use it for recipes that would taste odd with sweet milk (like my red pepper pasta sauce). 

Oh! Don't throw that almond meal left in the bag away! You can spread it on a cookie sheet and bake it for a couple hours at around 300 degrees and once it is dry blend it again to get almond meal to bake with. I use mine primarily for my almond croissants. What I like to do is toss that wet almond meal from the nut bag right into a plastic bag and freeze it. Then each time I make almond milk I add to the freezer bag until I have enough meal to completely cover my baking sheet. That way I don't have to bake it each time I make almond milk.

This milk will keep for around 4-5 days in the fridge. I usually end up making a bit more than a liter, but the amount you make depends on how much you thin it out. I like mine a little thicker than 2% milk.