Fabulous Vegan Recipes

It's great to be back!! I had to reset my password to sign on here 😂 It's been soooo long. I'm halfway through my supervision hours for my clinical social work license, I just renewed my lease and they did NOT raise my rent a crazy amount and I'm working more on my fiction novel. I'm also looking forward to summer, I love my family and friends, I love New York City, life is so good now! How are you?

This fall, I began counting my macros and focusing on increasing my protein so that I could start to really build muscle. I hadn't sat down and concentrated on planning out protein filled meals so it took some getting used to. And I also realized that if I didn't think about what I was eating, I would reach for sugary, carb heavy foods. Plant-based protein...that's what this blog post is all about. I'm going to give three meals as an example and list some of my must-have protein-filled foods.

This vegan lasagna is made with a cheesy root vegetable sauce. It is nut-free and not made with packaged vegan cheese. A meal made with whole foods, it's is delicious and nutritious.

Alfredo sauce....I used to order fettuccine alfredo at restaurants all the time before I became vegan. It's creamy and comforting and totally fattening and delish. So, I wanted to make a sauce that was just as creamy and delish but also healthy with whole ingredients. When you're buying the ingredients for this recipe, buy nutritional yeast. It's nutty and cheesy tasting and goes great in this dish. Nooch is perfect in sauces and soups and on top of popcorn tossed in coconut oil. Whoa, it's so good! At the last minute I added a carrot into this sauce so that it made the sauce more orange and added some sweetness. Turmeric, pumpkin and even a little maca powder...this sauce has everything and each ingredient has healthy, healing properties. I might make this for Christmas if I'm feeling up to it just to add a plant-based, filling dish to the table. It's fun to make Italian food for Christmas, especially when you're vegan. Everyone is carbing up on

I made this lasagna twice, once with the cashew cheese below and some packaged vegan cheese and once with this sauce and just a little packaged vegan cheese. You can make this lasagna with or without the store-bought vegan cheese....or just add a little bit of the vegan cheese to the top of the lasagna. This is a perfect family meal and one that kids will definitely love. My almost two year old niece loves pizza and pasta!

I guess I can't call everything mac and cheese even though the color of my sauce is always orange/yellow. Mac and cheese sauce is thick and creamy and more cheesier than this particular sauce but if you want to say it's a variation of mac and cheese sauce, then go for it. It definitely has a sweet pepper/lemon taste that is incredibly savory so if you wanna try something new, try this. You can super spice it up or not and the color is so vibrant that you should take a picture if you make this. Two recipes in one day....I'm on fire!

My marathon training and writing is taking up alot of my time along with trips home to visit my fam so I am just getting to this new blog post! This is a dish I made in between trips home that was quick and super delish comfort food. I love mac and cheese and since I had to use up some veggies, I threw in some spinach and toms. Mac and cheese is so cool when you make it from scratch because you can make it with veggies which is super nutritious.

Dinner was soooo good today....this recipe is amazing, low-fat, good for you, creamy and filling. Prior to this, I made mac and cheese a few different ways: with cashews, with vegan cheese and with tofu but never with cauliflower...until now. Wish I had made it sooner; with spices and herbs, it can be dressed up to be quite spicy and savory. I love how this came out and I'm loving my photos!

This recipe is EPIC because it is sinful, or what some of us might consider a sinful meal because it's creamy and fatty and full of carbs. But the best part about it is no babies were stolen from their mothers so the milk could be used for the butter and milk in this recipe. It's cruelty-free and, yep, it's high fat but the fat source is coconut and healthy oils so I didn't worry about it as I was noshing. Did I mention my cholesterol numbers are in the super healthy range ever since I went vegan?

It's amazing how similar beans are to meat, they are filling and often resemble meat when you make them into a burger or patty. Even better is that beans are way higher in fiber and way lower in cholesterol and don't contain what was once a living creature. I love how beans can fill the meat void and provide a protein filled meal. My favorite beans are chickpeas because I've done the most with them as far as making recipes but adzuki beans are becoming a favorite.

You won't believe what ingredients are in this sauce. I'm so excited it turned out so yummy; I love combining healthy fats and veggies. The trickiest part of this recipe was deciding what to use for the orange color that typical mac and cheese sauce has. With it being autumn, there are quite a few veggies that are the perfect color and that blend well with cashews and spices. It's no secret anymore, see below, that I used carrots and butternut squash. Awesome. 

For the first time since moving to NYC, I made dinner for my friends.  I went shopping at Trader Joe's, packed everything up and moved to a way bigger kitchen-my friend's in Brooklyn.  She has a Cuisinart food processor!  My dream food processor-much bigger than mine and it moved so smoothly and quietly. It was just beautiful and I wanted to take it home with me.  Making the pesto was such an easy process and I didn't have to worry about it.  My food processor is wonderful though; I've put it though the ringer (can you say sticky dates?) and it's still working well.  The grass is always greener right?  I couldn't fit the Cuisinart in my tiny kitchen anyway lol.