Recipe Round-Up: Vegan Bowl Attack

Vegan Bowl Attack is the first cookbook from awesome blogger Jackie Sobon (of Vegan Yack Attack). The book is divided into chapters for breakfast bowls, snack bowls, soup and salad bowls, entree bowls, dessert bowls, and some basic recipes. This is the first proper round up I've done of this book, but you can see one of the recipes I've already posted about here.

Apple Pie Smoothie Bowl: I continue to have my ongoing texture issues with apples is smoothies. No matter how powerful my blender is! I also made the rookie mistake of forgetting to chill my apples first, so it wasn't as cold as I would have liked. As well as apples, this has frozen banana and gets the colour from spinach. I made a half recipe and got one serving. The apple crumble topping, made from almonds, dates, cinnamon, and salt, was the real star of the show!
Rating: :|



Peanut Butter Pretzel Oatmeal: Peanut butter pretzels are one of life's greatest joys, but used to be very hard to find here. The only place I knew was Smith & Deli in Melbourne, so I would buy several large bags to bring back to Brisbane with me. I made a half recipe of this, which made for a small serving. Though due to being packed with peanut butter, it was quite filling. The crumbled PB Pretzels on top were a fun addition.
Rating: :)



Spicy Sesame Brussels Bites: Of course I didn't make these spicy. I made them mild. I had some cute little baby Brussels sprouts, which was enough to make a half recipe. I only needed to bake them for about 15 minutes because of their size. These are glazed in sesame oil and ginger, then tossed with a rice vinegar dressing.
Rating: :)



Sweet Potato Eggplant Curry: This is packed full of sweet potato and eggplant, as you'd expect, but also tofu, onion, and jasmine rice. The recipe calls for coconut oil, but of course I used something else. I used light coconut milk and water instead of the 400mL tin of regular coconut cream, and I decreased the curry powder and used a mild one. If doing this, I'd recommend decreasing the salt as well, as I found it a bit salty and I suspect it is because I had fiddled with the heat of it. I did end up needing to simmer this for about an extra 15 minutes as it was more soupy than curry-like in consistency, but then it thickened up beautifully. A one pot meal, though I served it over some baby spinach. Peas would also be a good addition.
Rating: :)



Cashew Crusted Tofu Stir-Fry: There are three parts to this recipe: The cashew crusted tofu, a vegetable stir-fry, and some cooked quinoa to serve it over. The vegetables include bok choy, broccoli, carrot, and sugar snap peas (I used snow peas instead), as well as capsicum (which I of course left out and added extra brocolli), in a very simply sauce. I struggled a bit to get my tofu well crusted and browned, the ground cashew and rice flour coating seemed to just want to fall off in the pan when I was frying it, but it was still nicely flavoured. I only got three serves worth of vegetables out of this, but four serves of tofu. Use the extra in sandwiches or chopped in a salad.
Rating: :)



Buffalo Chickpea Mac 'n' Cheeze: This recipe requires a bit of prep work in that you need to make the Cheezy Cheddar Sauce first. This is a cashew based sauce, and comes together very easily. It is used in a number of recipes in the book. You may also need to make the Irresistible Ranch Dressing first, though I just used some bottled Daiya ranch dressing. Buffalo is a flavour I approach with caution due to being spicy. So I made my buffalo sauce with just a teeny bit of Franks, and added in some tomato juice for the rest of the volume. It worked well. The chickpeas are coated and baked. I didn't heat the sauce first, rather waited until I added it to the cooked pasta and then heated it up so it didn't get too thick. The mac and cheese also has celery and cos added to it. My celery was off, so I ended using some quickly sauteed chopped broccoli stem. The lettuce in the hot mac and cheese was a bit odd, I'd skip that next time, but overall very tasty.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This ridiculous cutie is Olivia, a tiny foster kitten one of our nurses is raising. Some horrible person left this tiny angel in a letterbox! Can you even believe it? But she is now safe and warm and loved and fed and such a little prima donna! This photo was from two weeks ago, and is is already so much bigger!