Vegan Home Cooking

[Holise E. Cleveland III]

Life is good! I am currently residing in the beautiful mid-west, USA and I am no longer homeless. It’s wonderful that I can now cook my own meals again. After posting a photo of my vegan dumplings my good friend, Sandy, asked me for the recipe. I get many requests for recipes, so I am starting a new section whereby I may share my culinary delights.

Please keep in mind that I am vegan for the animals first, the planet second and my health last. While my primary focus is not on nutrition, I still try to get raw vegetables into my diet. I therefore suggest that you serve the following with a salad that consists of a variety of fresh organic vegetables.

I have been cooking for many years. I rarely use recipes unless I am trying something completely new. I will attempt to start measuring as I cook so that I can share my creations more easily.

Vegan Dumplings

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup organic unbleached all-purpose flour
•  1/4 cup Earth Balance (vegan) butter
• 1 can peas
• 1 cup sliced or diced Bok Choy, celery or both (I prefer bok choy because it stays crisp.)
• 2 cups sliced or diced fresh carrots
• 1/2 cup diced red onion
• 1/4 cup sliced shallots (green onion)
• 1/2 cup bell pepper (any color)
• 1 cup diced mushrooms
• 2 cloves finely chopped fresh garlic
• 1-2 teaspoons salt (I prefer kosher salt or sea salt.)
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 cup tri-color rotini pasta
• 1 teaspoon pepper or pepper medley – white, black and red peppers along with coriander.
• 1 tablespoon oregano, basil or thyme (I prefer thyme but didn’t have any at the time.)
• Water
• Rice milk
• Biscuit mix (I used Bisquick)

I did not measure anything except for the biscuit mix, but I will attempt to give you measurements.

Roux:

Combine 1/4 cup vegan butter with 1/4 cup flour in a large (4-quart) pot or dutch oven, then fire up the heat to medium-high. Stir roux once a minute for about five minutes using a flat edged wooden spatula.

Add red onion, bell pepper and mushrooms. Stir frequently until onions are translucent.

Add soy sauce and 1/2 cup water.

Move the mixture around in the bottom of the pot slowly, allowing the liquid to be saturated by the roux of its own accord. Doing this too quickly will result in lumps.

Continue to add water in 1/4 to 1/2 cup increments until the you have the desired consistency, then add one more cup of water and bring it to a slightly churning boil.

Add thyme, salt, pepper and carrots. Cook until carrots are tender.

Meanwhile, combine your biscuit mix and rice milk in a bowl according to the package recipe.

Note: Take a look at what you now have in the pot. By adding peas, diced potatoes, cornstarch and more water, you now have the filling for a pot pie. Pretty cool, huh?

By now, your mixture may have thickened. Add more water if you so desire. You may also add some rice milk if you want a creamy texture.

Add peas and bring to a boil.

Add pasta and bring to a boil. Start your timer according to how long it will take the pasta to cook.

Dumplings:

Put some extra virgin olive oil on your hands and make balls of dough. Drop them into the pot. They will float and cover the surface creating a seal, so turn the heat down to low or medium-low.

When your timer goes off, your pasta will be done and so will the dumplings. Remove the pot from the heat and cover with a lid. Let sit for about five minutes.

Sprinkle the top with garlic and shallots.

Serve

Eat

Go back for seconds!

There are many options for this recipe. If you like broccoli, you can do what I did and put diced broccoli stalks in when you add the carrots. I saved the broccoli florets for stir fry.

If you use celery, you can add bamboo shoots or water chestnuts for texture. On the other hand, if you use the bok choy and you still want the celery flavor, just add some celery seeds.

You could also have some fun with the dumplings themselves by adding the garlic and pepper to the biscuit mix. In any case, please let me know how it turned out. Enjoy!

For more vegan and vegetarian recipes, check out my online paper The No Meat Allowed! Daily

[Holise E. Cleveland III]

Thank you all! I have been a bit busy. I appreciate the comments. Vegan hugs!

[Carolyn Bailey]

I don't expect it helps much, but there is a company which supplies palm oil free margarine in Australia. The only one, I believe: 

http://www.melrosehealth.com.au/

 

[Billy L]

Thanks for sharing Holise, it must be such a relief to have your own place again. I'll definitely try this recipe out.

It's interesting to me that you brought the palm oil subject up Roger, because I'm struggling with expressing some of the critiques of veganism that would make veganism a hard sell. If I go around and identify them as the basis of my thought on any given subject, I feel like it's too much for even many other vegans to deal with. There was a recent argument I had with Tim about supporting Peta, and it seemed like it was good enough to refute what he said, and not take it further down to the roots of my objections. But is that doing vegan ARA's or myself any intellectual good to keep things under my hat?

Man, you've been at this for many years. None of what I'm saying is likely new to you. It's difficult to imagine the vegan eggshells you must walk on in your interactions with so many of the prominent thinkers, if my assumption is correct at all.

[Billy L]

Yeah Roger thanks for the new guilt trip, ;) I thought I was getting the hang of quickly scanning ingredients, and now I notice all the palm oil and think about the indigenous humans and other displaced animals, like the savagely murdered orangutans. I guess I have to start eating things that don't come in a package as much as possible. Growing my own vegan-organic produce would be a dream come true.

There's talk of using different oils as substitutes for "butter" in the comments of this blogpost on Earth Balance. I'm barely qualified to use a microwave oven, let alone judge the validity of such claims-making (if you will). ;)

http://challengeoppression.com/2009/12/23/why-would-a-vegan-boycott...

[Billy L]

What do you think of the company line then Roger? www.earthbalancenatural.com/addressing_palm_fruit_oil.pdf

[Carolyn Bailey]

Hi Holise! :)

This looks great, thanks for sharing it here! 

I'm really pleased that life is good for you. You deserve it!