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 You have to have pie, right?  Well here’s a great vegan Sweet Potato Pie recipe, compliments of Matt from Down to the Core Training.

You will need:

2 large sweet potatoes or yams                           1 cup almond milk      3 tbsp of flour

3/4 cup Earth Balance® Coconut Spread or vegan butter

1 cup brown sugar                              1/4 tsp Nutmeg          1  tsp vanilla flavor       2 pie crusts

(optional) 1 1/2 tsp Egg Replacer.  (Egg Replacer will make pie more firm, without you will need to let the pie cool overnight)

Preheat oven to 400°

Boil and peel  sweet potatoes.  Then mash potatoes.

In a large bowl, combine mashed sweet potatoes, almond milk, vanilla, nutmeg, sugar, flour and melted coconut spread and egg replacer.

Mix well with mixer until all lumps are smooth.  Pour mix into pie crust.

Bake for 15-20 min or until brown.

Let cool and enjoy.

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Welp, it’s that time of year again.  The holidays are upon us.  Oh how I love sinking my teeth into warm mac and cheese, and drizzling gravy over my fresh carved turk-oh wait, I’m a vegan.  Scratch that!

Since we know the holidays can be quite a challenge for us vegans, we here at calivegans got to the kitchen and got to work.  Worried about your options on Thanksgiving?  Well, worry no more.  Calivegans made some quite delicious soy free vegan versions of your Thanksgiving favorites.  Check out our recipes!

Stuffing/Dressing

1 cup corn meal                                                    2 tsp sage

3/4 cup cornbread mix                                          1 1/2 tbsp sea salt

3/4 cup wheat flour                                               black pepper

1tsp salt                                                                2 cups vegetable broth

1 2/3 cup almond milk                                            1/8 cup olive or coconut oil

2 tbsp Earth Balance® soy free spread                 2/3 cup almond milk

garlic powder                                                         1 1/2 stalks celery chopped

1 tbsp rosemary                                                     1/2 green bell pepper chopped

celery salt                                                               1/2 onion chopped

3/4 cup water

Cornbread for stuffing/dressing:

Preheat oven to 400°.  Combine cornmeal, cornbread mix, wheat flour and salt.  Melt soy free spread.  Add soy free spread and almond milk.  Mix.

Grease baking pan.  Bake for 20-25 mins.

Stuffing/Dressing:

Preheat oven to 400°.  Break up cornbread in baking pan.   Add rosemary, sage and sea salt.  Sprinkle garlic powder (sparingly), celery salt and black pepper.  Mix evenly.

Add vegetable broth, oil, almond milk, celery, bell pepper, onion and water.  Mix well.  Bake 30-40 mins.

Kale Greens

25 oz of Kale (we used 2 1/2 bags from Trader Joe’s)   2/3 cup diced onion

2 tsp salt                                                                        garlic powder

1 slice of onion                                                               everyday seasonings

1 tbsp Earth Balance spread                                          water

2 1/2 tablespoons hot sauce                                      1 tsp mesquite season

Fill 1/2 pot with water.  Add salt, slice of onion and kale.  Bring to boil.

Once kale boils down add mesquite seasoning, 1/4 cup of diced onions, Earth Balance spread.  Sprinkle garlic powder and everyday seasonings.  Let boil for 10 mins.  Add remaining diced onions.  Add more water if needed.  Simmer for 40 mins.

When kale is 8 mins from being finished add hot sauce.

Field Roast® Celebration Roast

Preheat oven to 325°.  Place in greased baking pan.  Rub with olive oil, rosemary, garlic, poultry seasonings and everyday seasonings.  Bake for 25 mins.

Vegan Mac & Cheese

3/4 box of noodles

1/3 cup almond milk

1/3 cup Earth Balance® soy free spread

1 tbsp black pepper

2, 8oz bags Daiya® Vegan Cheddar Cheese

1/4 cup vegan bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 400°.  Boil noodles.  Drain water.  Add soy free spread, almond milk, 1 1/2 bags Daiya® cheese.  Mix.  Stir in black pepper evenly.

Pour mix into baking pan.  Top with remaining cheese and bread crumbs.  Bake 15-20 mins.

Enjoy!

All recipes make approx 6 servings.

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Yogi teas are probably my favorite brand right now.  They blend different herbs together to make the perfect taste and recipes for your needs.   I always keep their Super Antioxidant Green Tea in my cupboard and I try to drink a cup almost every day.

Did you know that 3 cups of green tea a day can reduce your risk of breast cancer by 50%?   That’s huge!
I also love Yogi’s Bedtime tea.  When I was little I used to love Celestial seasoning’s Sleepy Time tea.  It is a blend of chamomile, lemon grass, and spearmint.  I used to actually beg my mom for it.  Yogi’s bedtime tea has those same ingredients plus like 9 more including cinnamon bark, licorice root and lavender flower.

I personally don’t put sweetener in my tea anyway but if you do, I would suggest you try it without first.  Yogi tea’s have such great blends of flavors,  that you don’t need to add anything.

Each tea bag has a little words of inspiration attached.  Today mine said, “Trust creates peace.”   How cute is that?  But besides being cute, they are really doing good for the reader.   I believe in the power of affirmations, so to be able to read something encouraging and positive every time you have a cup of tea, is awesome!  They also have a yoga position on every box.

Yogi teas definitely get a stamp of approval from Calivegans!  They fit right in to our holistic lifestyle.

~Lady A

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As you all know, calivegans are soy free vegans.  When we first started on this vegan journey, how we were going to get our protein was a big question for us since most vegan/vegetarian diets revolve around soy.  Name a vegan dish and you’ll usually find some kind of soy in it, whether it’s tofu or a soy based meat substitute.  So calivegans got to researching and found satan seitan!

Seitan [pronounced Say-tan], also known as “wheat meat”, is a vegan meat substitute made from wheat gluten.   Seitan is a great protein source.  A 4-ounce serving has a whopping 26 grams of protein, or 48% of your recommended daily value.  Seitan is practically fat free, with only 2 grams per 4-ounce serving.  I was positive that since it is made from wheat, I was officially overdosing on carbs, but oh no.  Since the starch is washed away from the wheat flour to create gluten, a 4-ounce serving of seitan only has 10 carbs, or  3% of your recommended daily value.  So feel free to mix it with a carb guilt free.  Seitan is also a good source of iron with a 4-ounce serving containing 3.6 grams, 20% RDV.  Calories?  4-ounce serving has only160.

So calivegans did it!  We found a meat substitute that wasn’t made from soy!  We were so excited, until we read the labels of popular seitan brands in the market.  They all contained soy sauce.  This is because the traditional way of making seitan involves simmering it in a broth, of which soy sauce is an ingredient.  I can’t knock them really, we all know soy sauce makes everything taste better, but that meant calivegans were back to square one.

But there’s always a lesson to be learned in every challenge, and the lesson calivegans learned was how to make satan, sorry seitan!  It’s a super easy process which is way cheaper than purchasing ready made seitan in the store.  So even if you don’t have soy issues, as calivegans do, it’s definitely worth making yourself.

There are a million and one ways to flavor seitan.  Depending on what kind of dish you’re planning on using it in and your particular tastes, you can make all kinds of variations.  Check out calivegans recipe for basic seitan sans soy sauce.

Seitan: another beautiful reminder that being a soy free vegan ain’t so hard after all :D.

~p~

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Here’s a calivegans recipe for a quick, delicious seitan sandwich.

Here’s what you need:

bread

vegenaise

alfalfa sprouts

seitan

sun dried tomatoes

I sliced a couple of pieces of a whole wheat roll, used Follow Your Heart Soy Free Vegenaise® and soy sauce free seitan that I made a couple of days ago.

Toast your bread.  Heat up your seitan.  Slather on some vegenaise.  Alfalfa sprouts next.  Then sun dried tomatoes and top with sietan.  This sandwich is so tasty, so healthy and it’s quick!  On the go?  Grab a tortilla and make a wrap!

Bon appetit!

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Once upon a time, kind of long ago in a land about four hours away I had a sales job that I hated.  Every morning I would wake up crying to the heavens “why me”.  I would wish for a natural disaster to come but at the time I didn’t live in a place where those were common.

I would walk into the doors of what seemed to be  Satan’s warehouse  and go to my cubicle and prepare myself for 9 hours of torture.  Yup 9 hours not 8 because we got an hour for lunch and heaven forbid they didn’t get 8 hour of us selling their shady service!

I’m not bitter.  Anyway, somewhere between the brainwashing sales meetings and the cheerleader like sale chants I would find myself extremely tired.  Maybe because I was always out of my seat, pacing back and fourth with the phone to my ear so my boss would think I was really into my job.  Not!  So I was always tired but didn’t want to be on nicotine or coffee like 90% of my co-workers.  So what were my options?

Well, one day the grocery store close by was having a sale on cherries.  So I bought a pound or two.  I notice the motion of eating and spiting out the seeds seem to keep me content.  So made my calls and ate my cherries in a rhythm.  Then out of no where, I seem to be awake with energy!  Was it the cherries, I wondered. 

The next day I bought more cherries and sure enough,  It was the same thing.  I was content and had energy about 30 minutes later.  I noticed I was less stressed and concerned about the job when I had my cherries.  I was able to make call after call happily while eating cherry after cherry.

Months later, I quit that job or got fired.  But I never forgot about my cherry discovery.  So I did some research and found that cherries do give you energy.   Also cherries contain Anthocyanins which are used by the body to produce essential amino acids.  Cherries of course also gives you vitamin C.

Maybe you should give it a try.  Snack on cherries at work or when you’re on the go.  See if you feel more energized.  See if you sleep better at night.  Did I mention cherries also contain melatonin?  Melatonin helps to regulate sleep.  Yes they give you energy as well as help regulate sleep.  They’re also packed with antioxidants.  Wow!  Who knew cherries were such a great snack?

Go cherries!  Go cherries at work!  Go cherries before exercise!  Go cherries for insomniacs!

~By Lady A.

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Did you know 1/4 cup of almonds  has more protein than 1 large egg?   Really.  A regular large egg has 6 grams of protein, while 1/4 cup of almonds has 7.

A lot of people think that animal products are the only way to get protein and its just not true. If you are really interested in knowing the truth, do just a little research and you will be amazed.

My advice to vegans, vegetarians and even meat eaters is:

 Eat a variety of beans, nuts, grains and vegetables  everyday.   Its very important to think about amino acids when thinking of protein.  Amino Acids serve as the building blocks to protein.   Essential amino acids cannot be created from other compounds, so must be taken in as food.   I won’t get too specific right now but soybeans are really good when it comes to protein and amino acids.  Unfortunately I can’t eat soybeans but their is a lot of things I can add in my diet to get everything I need.

I suggest that vegans take  Spirulina or Chlorella (which has chlorophyll) or both.   They have perfect compliments of protein, carbohydrates, fats and bio-available minerals.   So with that and a variety of nuts, veggies, fruit, grains and beans.  You can have everything you need.

By adding protein powder to smoothies you can get most of your daily protein requirements.  Smoothies by themselves can give you your needed fruit servings. So why not get it all in one!  Hey, throw some vegetable juice in there too!

Who said getting all your nutrients was hard?  Liars!

So the next time someone tries to tell you that you need to eat meat to get protein, kindly direct them to our website.

~A