BROWN RICE w/apples, celery, tofu and cranberries

So, summer is coming upon us soon and we’d like to drop a few LB’s so Mike can fit into his yellow polka dot bikini ;) We have been eating a lot of brown rice lately, which honestly, I could probably eat every day!  Brown rice can get a little boring if you don’t spruce it up.  We have been eating our brown rice with vegetables, but decided to go for a sweet brown rice dish a few nights ago.  It was delicious! I love the crunchiness of the celery and the sweetness from the apples and dried cranberries.  I think the sunflower seeds give this dish a nuttiness tying it all together.   

Brown rice is really easy to make.  You basically boil 2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice, add a little vegan butter, and sometimes I’ll even throw in a vegetable bouillon cube.  Bring it all to a boil, and turn down to simmer for about 25 minutes.  After most of the water has evaporated, take off heat, let it sit for a minute and fluff with a fork.  You can basically add anything to brown rice.  It’s good plain too and most of all, it’s good for you!

Happy cooking!

Karie and Mike (a couple vegans)

VEGAN MINI PRETZELS

I’ve had a hankering for pretzels lately.  (Probably caught wind of pretzels at the mall or something). Anyhow, I thought I’d give it a shot.  I looked up a few recipes online and they were basically the same.  The one I thought sounded the most promising and had some good reviews was from supervegan.com.  I have to say, they turned out freakin’ great! Totally curbed my pretzel craving.  Mike came home and ate 3.  We had them with yellow mustard, nothing fancy.   We found a vegan queso at Akin’s a few weeks ago that would be amazing with it, (next time).  Well, hope you try this recipe .  It’s ok if your pretzels aren’t perfect.  I tried, but I think with more practice they might come out looking a little better. 

Till next time!

Karie

DINNER CHEESECAKE

I made a vegan cheesecake for Mike on valentines and it turned out fantastic (recipe to come soon). We talked about making a dinner version with mushrooms, artichokes and sundried tomatoes.  So, I experimented, and low and behold, our dinner cheesecake version.  It works best if you have a small cake spring pan so the cheesecake can hold its shape. (I found a pack of 3 at Target for $10 ).  You want to make sure you let the cheesecake cool on a cooling rack for at least an hour so it can hold its shape.  You could even serve this chilled if you’d like but I think the warm gravy and a chilled dinner cheesecake didn’t really sound too good… but it’s up to you how you want to serve.  The tofuttie cream cheese and tofu, blend so nicely together in the food processor, and makes for a nice creamy texture.  Would make for a great dip for veggies, crackers or pitas too!

Happy cooking!

Karie & Mike

MINI DONUTS

These vegan donuts are soooo good! I found a few recipes online and tweaked some of ingredients.  I’ve tried 2 different kinds of flour.  The first one was whole wheat flour, which I really liked because the batter was thick, and the mini’s came out like thick little mini donut cakes. The other flour I used was a gluten free flour, just to try.  The batter came out a little runnier, and took about 6.5 minutes to bake, but still came out pretty good.  I definitely prefer the whole wheat all-purpose flour for this recipe.  


I also used a mini donut maker by babycakes that I found at Kohl's (with a 30% off coupon). The donut maker is super easy to use and makes the cutest little donuts that come out very nice and neat. Easy clean up too, it's non stick.  If you don't have a mini donut maker, you can shape your donut dough in a donut shape if your batter is thick enough or also use a mini donut pan.  I initially went out to look for a donut pan but found out that the pans were almost the same price as the mini donut maker.  

Our first blog

Hello!

Welcome to COUPLE VEGANS blog.  A little about us....Karie and Mike.  We are a couple and a couple of vegans (hence the name COUPLE VEGANS, ha!).  We are originally from San Diego and recently moved to Tulsa, OK.  Can you say culture shock? I, Karie have been vegetarian for 14 years and decided to become vegan the past 4 months.  Mike has been semi vegetarian for the past 1.5 years and recently decided to become vegan.  We both really love animals.  Deciding to become vegan is not only a healthy option, but a moral option for us as well.  We wanted to start a blog about our vegan cooking and baking recipes since we love food, love to cook and bake.  So, here we are...our first vegan food blog! 

We are planning to update this blog once a week and hope that you stop by our page and see what's cooking.  Maybe this will inspire you to try out a recipe or get creative and try one of your own. Not all recipes on this blog will be our own.  We also try out many recipes from cookbooks and blogs.  We will be sure to mention where we find these at, and also give our opinion of what we thought about the recipe.  We are also hoping that non vegans will try out something new and see that vegan meals can be yummy too!   Also, if you have any suggestions please contact us and let us know! We'd love to hear from you! 

Stay tuned! 

Karie and Mike...a couple vegans :)