Vegan MoFo! Day Four: Coconut Kale Alfredo Sauce

So let's be honest here... there's nothing quite like a good helping of pasta. And as vegans, we typically get pretty lucky when it comes to pasta dishes.

When you get stuck at a non veg-friendly Italian joint with omnivorous friends or family members it's pretty much guaranteed that you are going to end up munching on bread and a bowl of pasta with some sort of red sauce and veggies. (Hopefully veggies!)

It's wonderful that most marinara sauces, whether they be jarred, restaurant, or homemade are typically vegan. But, not to knock red sauce here, it would be nice from time to time to have a little variety. Like alfredo sauce for instance.

When's the last time you had a nice creamy garlic -egg and diary free- alfredo sauce to go with that pasta from the farmer's market you like so much? We know, it had been ages for us too! So we had to do something about it!

Now, we have posted about this recipe before. It's a little creation we came up with in the early days of the Two Vegan Ladies blog and we have since perfected!  You can read the original post here but we'll admit it has a few extra steps than are necessary.

This has really become one of our most requested dishes and after making it several dozen times at various potlucks and social gatherings we have changed our method a bit. What used to take almost an hour and a half to make can now be whipped up in 20 minutes!

So let's get started on this revamped recipe- shall we?

*Note: This is A LOT of sauce. If you are making this for a small family dinner you may want to cut recipe in half.

You will need:
4 tablespoons of Earth Balance (we like soy-free)
4-6 chopped cloves of garlic or 2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 chopped shallots
1 bunch of kale
2 cups of sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil (leave some finely chopped pieces for garnish as well!)
3 cans of coconut milk
3 heaping tablespoons nutritional yeast
salt
pepper
garlic powder
1 teaspoon raw sugar
1 teaspoon dried oregano (optional)
4 tablespoons sundried tomato paste (totally optional)
4 tablespoons corn starch
and 1 mighty whisk

What to do:
First, get out a large pot. We used to make this in a sauce pan but have found it easier to mix everything together in something with higher sides.

Put on medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of Earth Balance, and in this order, add: garlic, shallots, kale, and mushrooms. Let cook, stirring well, for a few minutes.

Next shake coconut milk cans and add to pot. Stir well and add chopped basil along with 2 more tablespoons of Earth Balance. Let cook for a few minutes.

Add 3 heaping tablespoons of nutritional yeast along with a few pinches of salt, pepper, garlic powder, sugar, and oregano (if desired) and continue to cook for a few more minutes.

Now, you may have noticed the picture above has a more redish-orange tint to it than our usual off-white alfredo sauce creation. This is because we decided to go for a sun dried tomato flavor in our alfredo sauce this time around.

If you would like to alter the flavor to some sun dried tomato goodness it's easy enough. You can certainly use actual sun dried tomatoes, or go the lazy way like we did. Most grocery stores carry a sun dried tomato paste or spread like this one. Just pop open the jar and stir about 4 tablespoons of the spread into your sauce pot.

This stuff is also great on sandwiches with hummus and fresh veggies!

So now remove your sauce from the heat and get ready, because it is time for... THE MIGHTY WHISK....

Grab your corn starch and your mighty whisk of choice because we're about to turn this concoction into a thick and creamy sauce.

Add the corn starch 1 tablespoon at a time into the pot and whisk, whisk, whisk those clumps away! You may need more than 4 tablespoons, you may need less... just keep whisking till you feel like it's working.

Also, keep in mind that the sauce will thicken as it cools so take it easy there vegan tiger as you add tablespoon after tablespoon of starchiness. You don't want to end up with a solid block of alfredo sauce.

You can use this sauce as a dip with bread or, of course, put in on top of your favorite noodles. In version 1.0 of this recipe we layered the sauce with our noodles and mixed it together. This seems to be the preferred method for potluck style dining because the sauce and kale are more evenly spread amongst the noodles. 

For social gatherings this is probably enough sauce to cover 2-3 boxes of pasta- depending on how saucy your guests like to be. ;-)

Top with freshly chopped basil and enjoy!

This has certainly become one of our signature dishes and we would love to see everyone's results and variations. If you would like, please post a picture on our facebook page here when you prepare it.

With peace, love, and compassion,

The Two Vegan Ladies

Homemade Chemical-Free (and cheap!) Laundry Detergent

We made our own laundry detergent for the first time a few weeks ago and it came out great! Our clothes are coming out super clean and we love that it's homemade (and vegan)! Not to mention that we have a ton of it and it cost us easily under $5.00!


So why make your own laundry detergent? Why spend a few hours making something you could simply go to the store and buy? Well, theres lots of reasons. 


Firstly, let's talk about chemicals.




If you take a look at a bottle of typical store-bought laundry detergent, you'll find that the ingredients are a rather vague collection of chemical substances. It may not say it on the back of the bottle, but most commercial laundry detergents, the common brands you find at grocery stores, are loaded with potentially toxic chemicals that could harm you, your family and the environment. We all want our clothes to be clean and fresh, but it seems the very detergents that we use to wash our clothes may actually be leaving them worse off than they were before we washed them. 


Additionally, residues of these chemicals are left on your clothes and possibly absorbed by your skin or evaporated into the air where they could be breathed in.

Now if that's not enough of a reason, let's talk about cost. 


The typical large bottle of detergent probably costs around $10.00. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it takes a good chunk of money for sure. Add that to how often you have to replenish the supply and you're talking at least $100 per year for most households, and that's a modest estimate for some families.


All the products we purchased for our chemical-free detergent cost under $15.00, but it only took a fraction of each ingredient to make a whole 5 gallon bucket! So in the end the first batch (a whole 5 gallons!) probably cost about $2.00 or less. And... that 5 gallon bucket is going to be diluted and put into smaller bottles- so you're actually making about 10 gallons! 


Ten gallons of laundry soap for two dollars you say? Chemical-free, vegan, better for my famalies' health, and it really works? Well let's get started! (That's what we thought!)


What you will need:

1 bar of soap (You're gonna wanna stay away from any soap which contains glycerin unless it specifically states "made from vegetable glycerin".)  And take a a look at the ingredients to make sure it isn't made from other animal fats or products. 

1 cup of washing soda.

1 cup of Borax. Now here's the scoop on borax: it's a natural and vegan product, however, the main brand available out there is called 20-Mule Team. This brand has been around for over 100 years and has never directly conducted any animal testing, but they are now owned by the Dial corporation which does test on animals. It's sort of like ordering a vegan meal from a restaurant that serves meat. It's not ideal, but it's sometimes the best we can do.

The borax information was brought to our attention recently and we are doing some further research to try to find a brand of borax or something similar to use in our next batch of  homemade detergent. We will keep you updated on our findings. 


Essential oil of your choice. Now, make sure you're using essential oil and not the kind of oil you can burn at home for frangrance. You don't want this to be perfumed, just natural. We went with a cinnamon scent and it really mixed quite nicely with our soap scents.











A five gallon bucket with a lid. You can use whatever you wish but The Two Vegan Ladies aren't going to lie, we're all about saving the moola and the environment here, so we took an empty kitty litter container and washed it out really well. It worked perfectly! Plus the plastic it took to make that bucket would have taken a century to decompose, so the more use you can get out of things like that the better!




What to do:


So first, take your soap and either grate it or chop it finely into a large pot. The smaller the pieces the more easily they will dissolve during the next step.


Once grated set on the stove and add 4 cups of water. Bring soap and water to boil while stirring to dissolve soap. 


When your soap is fully dissolved remove from heat and add 1 cup of washing soda and 1 cup of borax. Stir together.


Now, fill your five gallon bucket halfway with water and mix in the contents of the pot. Give it a good stir and let it sit for an hour.


When the hour is up fill your bucket then rest of the way with water, give it a few stirs, cover, and leave it to sit overnight. 


The next day open it up and stir, stir, stir! It's going to be a little thick! Don't worry ours was super chunky too. 


Now you're ready to break it down into smaller bottles. This part is easy. Funnel laundry soap from your big bucket into a smaller bottle and fill it half way. Then add 20 or more drops of essential oil for every gallon of liquid your bottle can hold. You may want to add more or less drops. It depends on how scented you want your laundry. We did about 20 drops per gallon and the cinnamon scent is certainly there but not overpowering. It smells very fresh!


After adding your essential oil fill the bottle the rest of the way with water, tighten the lid, and shake! Now, get used to this. You're probably going to want to give your laundry soap a little shake every time you use it in case it decides to get chunky again. So far ours hasn't been too bad. Any solidified pieces that do make it into the washer work themselves through very nicely during the wash cycle. 


You're going to want to use about 1/4-1/3 of a cup of your soap for every load of wash you do- so this stuff is probably going to last a good while! You can just keep your 5 gallon bucket full of your soap until you need more to dilute and fill your smaller bottle. 




*Note, something you may notice: the detergent you have just made will not make as many bubbles as the store bought stuff when running in your washer. Don't you worry. This is just fine. The reason the store-bought detergent gets as foamy as it does is because of a chemical-based foaming agent. Your stuff is natural- and everything is still getting super clean!

This should be all you need to know to make your own homemade chemical-free laundry detergent! Please feel free to comment and ask us any questions you may have!




With peace, love, and compassion-
The Two Vegan Ladies

Mango Salsa

This past weekend was a great time for some spring cleaning. We organized a lot of things in the house and got some much needed gardening done. When we did have time to take a break from the reorganization and composting effort we went inside and made a quick and refreshing snack.

Mango salsa is so easy to make, especially when you have a food processor. Sometimes it can be difficult if you like your salsa a little on the chunky side like we do because a food processor is like a little adorable beast who's first instinct is to puree everything you feed it. Sometimes that can be nice, but if you're like us and want to keep some texture to your fruits and vegetables, but don't feel like chopping all day, then you need to take some extra steps.

You will need:

1 fresh mango

1/2 fresh plum tomato (optional)

1/2 fresh red onion

1/2 fresh red bell pepper

1/2 fresh green bell pepper

3 tbsp fresh cilantro

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp cumin

1 teaspoon lime juice

1 teaspoon lemon juice

De-seed and then chop all your fruits and veggies into large chunks.

This is the important part- if you want your salsa chunky put each item in the food processor seperately. As in, put in your mango, process to desired size, and set aside. Then do your tomato and so on. You can put them in all together but it will come out a lot thinner. 

Next, mix them all together in a large bowl and add your salt, pepper, and cumin along with your lime and lemon juice. Fresh from the fruit is best here but the pre-bottled stuff will work.

We suggest serving it with chips as a snack or as a topping with tacos or fried tofu.

 Easy and delicious! 

With peace, love, and compassion-

The Two Vegan Ladies 

Vegan Garlic Mushroom Alfredo Recipe

When we were vegetarian we often talked about going vegan. We knew it would eventually happen but we prolonged it because we didn't want to let go of certain foods. We both assumed that with committing to an entirely plant based diet came the fact that there were food items and certain meals we were committing to never eating again. What we have found however, since going vegan six months ago, is that those fluffy textures and savory flavors we thought we were going to miss out on- cheese, cream, egg- are all available to us in different non-animal derived forms. We just needed to figure out how to put them together.

Last night we had a little thrift store expedition with a few friends followed by a small dinner party. Don't get the wrong idea here. This was nothing too fancy. We didn't break out the fine dishes and dress in ball gowns. In reality, our dining room table remains covered in craft supplies, as usual, and we sat in the living room with our food watching reruns of Rupauls' Drag Race together. Yeah, we're that kind of glamorous. Looking back we probably should have worn ball gowns.


We've made this meal before for just ourselves and made a lighter version with slightly different ingredients, but tonight since we were making it for 5 people we changed it up a bit and made a full flavor version. Let me tell you we got some great reviews! This is the sort of meal you serve your non-veg friends so you can see their carnivorous eyes light up and watch them speak the words "THIS is VEGAN?"

 So without further ado we present to you another original recipe.

 The Two Vegan Ladies:

Vegan Garlic Mushroom Alfredo

Time to cook: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate (it only looks hard, we promise)

Calories Per Serving: About 200 (excluding noodles) less than 100 if you're doing the lite version

Serves: 6-8

You will need:

4 tablespoons Earth Balace (we use soy-free, it seems to have the most natural "butteryish" flavor)

6 cloves of fresh garlic

3/4 cup of fresh basil

2 shallots

1 large package of white or baby bella mushrooms
1 cup fresh kale (optional)

2 cans of coconut milk (lite coconut milk if you're going for the lite version of this recipe- you may want to up your corn starch and nutritional yeast if you are using the lite coconut milk or else your sauce will come out on the thin side. *Note: If you sampled this dish at the potluck we made the full-flavor version with the regular coconut milk.)

1/2 cup nutritional yeast 

2 tablespoons corn starch

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 1/2 packages of noodles (we went with Barilla Penne noodles for this meal)

The way to make this sauce come out thick and smooth is to add everything together slowly and give the flavors time to meld. It will be a process but it will be worth it!

1. Heat a large sauce pan/skillet to medium heat. 

2. Add 2 tablespoons of Earth Balance to pan.

3. Chop all your garlic and shallots then add to pan. 

4. Chop half of your basil into medium pieces and add to pan.

5. Stir everything and let simmer for 2 minutes.

6. Then chop all mushrooms and add to pan.

7. If you are adding in kale (not shown in pictures but highly suggested for flavor!) chop and add in now. You want them to be bite sized when they cook.

8. When the mushrooms and kale are coated in the Earth Balance, shake the coconut milk cans. Especially on the full flavor coconut milk it can get very thick and chunky. It may even need to be stirred once opened. Add both cans into the pan. This is going to seem very runny. Let it simmer for a few minutes.

9. Now add the another 1/4 of chopped basil along with your nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and garlic powder. You can go a little liberal with the spices here. I like mine a little more peppery so I probably end up adding a lot more. Just do it to you personal taste.

10. Add the remainder of your Earth Balance and let melt in while stirring. 

11. Time to start thickening your sauce! Grab a whisk and add in the corn starch. (Add more if you're using the lite coconut milk and you feel like it needs to be thicker.) With this ingredient you really need to make sure to mix it well or you could end up with little chunks of raw corn starch in the final product... and no one wants that.

12. You should have half of your basil left now. Add 1/4 of it in and leave the rest chopped to the side.

*Super secret ingredient tip: taste your sauce. If at this point you feel that the mix needs a little something to even out the zip of the garlic add a pinch or two of raw cane sugar. That will do it!

At this point your alfredo sauce should look something like this:

Yeah, it's sort of a gray. Don't worry that's natural coloring from the mushrooms. (Note: If you added in the kale it will a lot more green and leafy!)

13. Turn heat down to low and let simmer while you boil the water for your noodles. Keep stirring the sauce every so often for a few minutes then remove from heat. It's ready to use!

14. Once cooked, drain your noodles then set to the side. 

15. In a large bowl layer your sauce and noodles so that every bit is well coated. 

16. Mix pasta and sauce well then garnish with your remaining fresh chopped basil.

As Rupaul would say:


"It's an eleganza extravaganza!"


But really it's more of a basil alfredo garlic and mushroom (and kale!) extravaganza.






Serve with a big scoopy spoon or tongs and don't be surprised when your friends go for seconds.

With love, peace, and compassion-

The Two Vegan Ladies

Vegan Crabby Cakes Recipe

Vegan Crabby Cakes

So let's get this started right with a little recipe we created the other day. We were both raised in a fishing community in southern Florida and we grew up eating a lot of seafood. When we stopped eating fish and shellfish a few years back it was quite a transition to find something to curb that craving. Especially when it came to crab cakes. 

There's a lot of imitation meat out there. Hell, you can really get a fake version of just about anything if you look hard enough online. There's a website that makes a one pound hunk of textured vegetable protein molded into the shape of a lobster and dyed shades of red and white.


Not that we don't appreciate the effort the vegan community is making, but the idea of it actually being molded with legs and claws sort of creeps us out a bit.

Anyway, were trying to keep it a little more natural here. We like to take natural things and flavor them to taste like other things. You can do anything with just the right ingredients and spices. 

So with that introduction we give you one of our newest creations.

Name: Vegan Crabby Cakes
Difficulty: Moderate
Servings: 6-8
Calories (Per Serving): 150

You will need:
1 large sweet potato
1 cup bread crumbs (homemade or canned)
4 cloves of garlic
1 small red bell pepper
1 small green bell pepper
1 small red onion
2 ribs of celery
2 pinches fresh rosemary
2 pinches dill (fresh or dried)
2 TBSP soy sauce
tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric (optional)
tsp salt
tsp pepper
tsp garlic powder
2 TBSP olive oil

First: Take that sweet potato and stick it in the oven if you have a year or so to bake it. If you don't have a year then stick it in the microwave. Either way you want it to get very soft. The idea is that once cooked you'll be able to pull all the insides away from the skin without much problem. Once throughly cooked, set aside to cool for a minute while you chop your veggies.

Next: Chop your garlic, peppers, onion, and celery. You may also need to give your rosemary and dill (if fresh) a little chop depending on how large you want your pieces. Everything should be small enough to fit nicely into the patty without sticking out.

Now: Cut your semi-cooled sweet potato in half and scoop the contents of into a large mixing bowl. Add your vegetables and fresh spices. Mix well.

Then: Add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce along with the remainder of your spices and continue to mix. The mixture will be semi-thick. By the way, the turmeric is optional because it really just adds a yellow tint to the mix. It is not necessary for the flavor. So if you want your patties orange then you're good to go. If you want them to be golden yellow then throw some turmeric in that bowl.

Next: Add your cup of bread crumbs and continue to mix throughly. The mix should be thick enough to easily form patties with. If not- add more bread crumbs. Make sure your bread crumbs are saturated in the mix or else one of you diners may get a nice bite of dry bread crumbs, and no one wants that.

Now: Heat a large skillet with olive oil on medium heat. Form your patties to the desired size (we like mini but if your going for crab cake sandwiches make them the size of your buns) and throw them on the pan. Cook each side until golden brown. You should probably let each side sit for 5 minutes or more and cover with a lid for a bit- you want that raw garlic to cook through.

Finally: Once cooked set patties on plate lined with paper towels to drain extra oil. Serve with vegan tarter sauce.

Oh no! Vegan tarter sauce- what's that? Well don't you worry this is a super easy recipe and we're gonna throw it at you right now.

You will need:
3 TBSP Veganaise (you can get this just about anywhere now. We have it at our local Publix near the eggs. Why near the eggs you ask? Because where else would vegans look for fake mayonnaise that contains no egg or dairy products? Of course! Right next to the eggs! Bad placement on the part of Publix. We're working on that one with them right now. If you have a Whole Foods or a local store that specializes in vegan products they should carry it as well. (Always shop local when possible!)

You will also need:
3 TBSP Sweet relish
1 TBSP Deli Mustard (or spicy brown mustard)

Mix those ingredients together in a small bowl and you'll have yourself some delicious vegan tarter sauce! For us a seafood-esk meal is never complete without some tarter sauce goodness. The calories run a little high on this scrumptious sauce though so use it sparingly (if possible).

A little wedge of lemon is also a nice edition to serve with your crabby cakes. Enjoy!

With love, peace, and compassion-

The Two Vegan Ladies