Vegan Archives | Tasty Oasis

Slow Cooker Caramelized Onions

March 7, 2016 By Karen

Caramelized Onions. Two beautiful words. If you combine that with Slow Cooker or Crockpot, you’ve got a phrase that’s even more brilliant: Slow Cooker Caramelized Onions. (Do you hear angels singing? You already know how I feel about the slow cooker, don’t you? Remember The Easiest Crockpot Ribs and Chipotle Barbecue Pulled Pork in the Crockpot?) Because a simple onion effortlessly gets transformed into rich and flavorful goodness that can be added to any variety of dishes. With less than ten minutes of prep work, you can get all of your onions sliced thinly, then you toss them with melted butter and olive oil. It all sits in the slow cooker on low for 10-14 hours, and it makes your home smell heavenly. It’s so easy, you’ll wonder why you’ve never done this before. Typically, caramelizing onions the traditional way requires standing at the stove for at least 45 minutes and stirring regularly, making it somewhat labor intensive. This recipe is the opposite of that. You can even set it up to cook overnight while you sleep, which all by itself is pretty cool.

It’s comfort in a pot. And there are some days more than others that we can all use comfort. I recently interpreted something about coping skills,…

Top 10 Healthy Breakfasts on Tasty Oasis

February 29, 2016 By Karen

Toasted Oatmeal with Flax and Chia Seeds

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.

― A.A. Milne

People always say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but so often it’s tempting to skip it or just grab something boring (and unhealthy) on our way out the door or as we head to work. I’m guilty of it, and almost always regret it as a wasted opportunity. You all know I am a bit obsessed with good food, so to have empty, flavorless calories as my foundation for the day is ultimately disappointing. Over time, I have learned that with a little prep work, I can be stocked with options for quick and easy breakfasts that I can feel good about eating and serving to my family. The photos and links here are my favorite Top 10 Healthy Breakfasts on Tasty Oasis. Some, like the Toasted Oatmeal with Flax and Chia Seeds, the Coconut Maple Granola, the Sesame Date Granola, the Chocolate Pumpkin Nut and Seed Butter and the Applesauce with Vanilla and Cinnamon are all things you can make ahead of time (meaning over your weekend.) The Healthy Green Smoothie with Spinach, Kale and Banana and the Healthy Homemade Chocolate Milk take well under five minutes to throw in the blender so you can drink on the run. And if you’ve got a spare 20 minutes (or less) or planning for a weekend breakfast, Martha Stewart’s Buttermilk Pancakes, Dorie Greenspan’s Maple-Cornmeal Biscuits, and Tasty Oasis’s very own Cardamom Almond Matzo Brei are all worth the extra time. Every one of these recipes is easy, and many of them are refined sugar-free, gluten-free and even vegan.

As always, I would love to hear if you’ve made any of these! Please write a comment, share with your friends on Facebook (the button is right at the top,) or pin this post or the specific recipes to come back to them later. If you hover over any image, the pin icon will appear and make it super simple for you. And if you have any favorite recipes of your own, I am always looking for suggestions. Enjoy!

Healthy Green Smoothie with Spinach, Kale and Banana

Coconut Maple Granola

This Sesame Date Granola is a healthy, hearty way to start your day. Gluten-free, refined sugar-free, and vegan, it is packed with a nutty, slightly sweet flavor that has a hint of spice from cinnamon and ginger. It's so easy to make, and is perfect to grab on the go or present for company.

Sesame Date Granola (Gluten-Free, Refined Sugar-Free, Vegan, and All Around Healthy)

Doris Greenspan's Maple-Cornmeal Drop BiscuitMaple-Cornmeal Drop Biscuits from Dorie Greenspan are quick and easy to make, and would be perfect for breakfast, afternoon tea, or in your bread basket next time you have company for dinner. | www.tastyoasis.net

Doris Greenspan’s Maple-Cornmeal Drop Biscuits

Martha Stewart’s Buttermilk Pancakes

This Cardamom Almond Matzoh Brei is an extra flavorful version of Passover french toast. In less than ten minutes you have a healthy, easy breakfast that you'll want to eat all year round.| www.tastyoasis.net

Cardamom Almond Matzo Brei

This Chocolate Pumpkin Nut Butter is a quick and healthy way to start your day. Soaking almonds and cashews overnight makes them easy to blend with your favorite seeds, coconut, cocoa and pumpkin, so you can feel good about eating this slightly sweetened boost of protein on your toast in the morning. Refined sugar-free, vegan and gluten-free, it's full of flavor and will even make a Nutella-craving kid happy. | www.tastyoasis.net

Chocolate Pumpkin Nut and Seed Butter (VEGAN, GLUTEN-FREE, REFINED SUGAR-FREE)

Cocoa Powder and Ice in the Blender for Chocolate Milk

Healthy Homemade Chocolate Milk (Refined Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free)

Homemade Applesauce with Vanilla and Cinnamon is warm and comforting, and so simple to make. | www.tastyoasis.net

Homemade Applesauce with Vanilla and Cinnamon (Refined Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free, Vegan)

Chocolate Pumpkin Nut Butter (Vegan, Gluten-Free, Refined Sugar-Free)

January 6, 2016 By Karen

Do you dream? Not big, what do I want the world to look like dreaming, but actual sleep dreaming? I do. I have technicolor vivid dreams that play out like complicated shows. They’re either long and involved and jump from scene to scene, or they’re straightforward, but in syndication, repeating themselves year after year, theme after theme. Anxiety dreams that are so cliched they’re embarrassing: I’ve missed every rehearsal, don’t know my lines, am missing my costume, and the curtain is about to go up, or I’ve missed every lecture, and now I have to take the final having never read the books. I’ve got a whole lineup that plays nightly, and I wake in the morning aware of how obvious my issues all are. Sometimes it’s revealing, other times it’s exhausting, but mostly it’s just constant. I dream almost every single night, and I tend to remember details for long stretches of time. I can still recall scenes of dreams I had when I was a kid, and the feelings attached to them. The familiarity I felt towards a celebrity after he had a part in the pictures in my sleep, the freedom of flying through the sky, with clouds all around, doing the breast stroke through the air because of course that’s the most realistic human flying move, or the stomach dropping horror of swinging and falling from the chandelier in the foyer of my childhood home. I depend on my dreams, and I appreciate them. But there are nights that I just wish I could sleep soundly and wake peacefully, rested and refreshed because my brain had simply shut down for the night.

A couple weeks ago was no different. …

Vegan Cornbread Stuffing with Chipotle, Swiss Chard and Sweet Potato

November 22, 2015 By Karen

I’ve promised several friends that I’d share this recipe in time for Thanksgiving prep, so I think I’ve made it in just under the wire! As I mentioned earlier this week in my Spiced Orange Cranberry Sauce post, stuffing is one of my favorite parts of the Thanksgiving meal. I love it so much that we always have two different kinds at our table, ensuring plenty of leftovers. While some get repeated, there are always so many recipes I want to try that I like changing it up every year. A few examples we’ve loved were sourdough stuffing with mushrooms, apples and sage, herb and bacon cornbread stuffing, and even wild rice, fruit and pecan stuffing, which was a bit of a departure for us one year. Last month, while I was searching for a dish to bring to my cooking club for our Vegan theme night, I went directly to one of my favorite food blogs, The First Mess. My friend Felice turned me onto it a year ago, and even though my diet doesn’t skew vegan generally, I want to make everything Laura writes about. The photographs are stunning, and her flavor combinations always excite me. Assigned to a starch dish that night, I new instantly that I wanted to try what she called her sweet potato, chipotle + chard cornbread stuffing. I figured I could use this as an opportunity to audition it for our Thanksgiving dinner, and I am so glad I did! I mostly followed the recipe, but made some slight adjustments in order to double it to fit a 9 x 13 baking dish. (You know me, if I’m going to spend time cooking, I’m going to make sure there’s a large yield to serve for other meals or to freeze!) I also had to find a vegan cornbread recipe to use, because my standard one uses buttermilk (and bacon fat when I’m going all in!) Food52 pulled through for me on that end, and with a few changes there too I had a winner. With this vegan cornbread stuffing you have the sweetness from both the bread and the sweet potatoes, the smoky spicy layer from the chipotles, and a savory earthiness from the leafy green swiss chard. It balances perfectly, stays moist on the inside, but gets slightly crispy on top. I made a large casserole dish to share with friends, but decided to bake two individual ramekins as well for my family to try. The good news? Because I waited for daylight to grab some of the shots, I didn’t actually let my guys eat their stuffing for 5 days after making it! And you know what? It was just as delicious!

And it turns out it complemented the rest of our vegan cooking club meal as well. We had a fantastic lentil and nut loaf as the main course, which you shoud definitely make, …

Spiced Orange Cranberry Sauce

November 17, 2015 By Karen

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I wrote about it twice last year, when I shared the story of my dad and the pear and cranberry crisp with gingersnaps, oats and almonds, and when I wrote about feeling grateful and Dorie Greenspan’s maple-cornmeal drop biscuits. I love it for the food (obviously,) but more than that I love the traditions we’ve created around it.

We’ve hosted the meal ever since we moved into our home ten years ago. Family comes from near and far, and the best part is that for the last decade it has been low key and drama free. My parents separated when I was 14, so like many kids I had years of juggling holidays and figuring out whose house got priority which year, and there was often stress and nonsense involved. But as an adult with my own home and growing family, I chose to rewrite the terms. …

Alice Waters’ Ratatouille

November 11, 2015 By Karen

Before the warmth of summer is completely forgotten, I wanted to make sure to share this ratatouille recipe with you all. While the farm markets may be closing, I have no doubt you’ll still be able to find zucchini, eggplants, peppers and tomatoes around, because this dish uses all the best that season had to offer. In a perfect world I would have gotten this to you weeks ago, but please indulge my off-season post! Fresh and flavorful, this warm and hearty vegetable stew is comforting on its own, elegant when served as a side to Coq au Vin, and perfect as a topping to polenta or a bowl of your favorite pasta. Sweetness from the tomatoes gets balances by bright thyme and woodsy rosemary, and fresh basil completes it. It is one of those “genius recipes” that is guaranteed to work, and Alice Waters deserves all the credit for it.

I’d always wanted to make ratatouille, but never took the time to follow through on it. But when September’s cooking club theme was announced, I knew immediately what I would contribute. French night, and I was on for vegetables? Ratatouille!!! Obviously, this was the push that I needed. The first time I made this I doubled the recipe and had two pots going at once, and I am so glad that I did. The leftovers are freezer-friendly, and perfect to pull out on a fall night. It also meant I had enough extra to deliver to my friend Al, whose doorbell I rang, all frazzled, still in my apron, who let me take kitchen shears to his herb garden an hour before I had to get to my supper club when I realized that I was terribly short of basil. It was a night of fabulous food and even better company, and participating in this is always a highlight of my month. (The roasted endive and pear salad, the piped french potatoes, and the chocolate pots de creme were all hits, as was the coq au vin. Really, everything was delicious.)

The second time I felt inspired to make it though was all thanks to my neighbor Catherine. Creator of the amazing gardening and food blog The Winebox Gardener, she sent me an email asking if I would take all of her ichiban eggplant that she’d just harvested from her garden. Since she was in the middle of a kitchen remodel, and wouldn’t have a chance to cook it any time soon, she had plenty to share. Who’s going to turn down homegrown eggplant? Certainly not me! I would love to have seen what she would have done with it though, because her writing, adventures around NY and NJ, recipes and photography always inspire me. You really should go check out her blog! (Follow her on social media too, in all the usual places: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter!)

So if you’re looking for something that’s healthy, freezer-friendly, vegan, gluten-free, and all those good things, pick up some vegetables and herbs the next time you’re at the store and try Alice Water’s Ratatouille. It’s worth the effort. It’s satisfying and cozy all at the same time. And if you’re like me, and you find yourself falling into the pumpkin trap that surrounds us these days, there’s no reason you can’t throw some butternut squash or pumpkin into the mix, and with a little added sage, it will embody fall for you too. See, there, everybody wins. Now it’s seasonal! And please, let me know what you think in the comments, because I would love to hear if you make this or any other recipe on Tasty Oasis. All of your experiences and feedback helps me, and other readers, so please keep me posted!…

Sesame Date Granola (gluten-free, refined sugar-free, vegan, and all around healthy)

September 28, 2015 By Karen

A few years ago, my husband decided to cut refined sugar out of his diet. And I’ve got to be honest with you, when he did it, I was mad. And I don’t mean just a little bit annoyed. I mean MAD. Big, angry, cranky, wanted to kick and scream, MAD. Now, I realize that an appropriate response would have been to be impressed, supportive, proud or inspired, but I felt none of those things. It’s not like he was even trying to pressure me into joining him, he just quietly started reading labels and stopped eating any of the desserts I baked and didn’t order treats when we were out. It was all very reasonable, but it didn’t feel that way to me. It took a few months for me to understand my own reactions, but it came down to a feeling of jealousy. He has discipline and will power that I never believed I could possess. Because I doubted my own ability for restraint, I resented that it came so easily to him.

And come on, have you seen this blog? Do you know me at all? Then you probably get how important sweets are in my life, and how a good cookie or cake brings me sheer happiness, and a chewy brownie brings me comfort when all else fails. So the idea of giving that up scared the daylights out of me. Scared maybe isn’t the word…..I was worried that I would feel deprived, and that isn’t something I was willing to entertain. But truth be told, his sugar-free period lasted around 6 months, and he then went back to his normal ways.

But jump ahead to this past spring, and the sugar-free plan resurfaced. But this time, I was finally open to thinking about it. What changed? Me. I changed….

Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sour and Hot Mushroom Tofu Soup

May 19, 2015 By Karen

It’s been a while since I updated you on the cooking club I participate in. I wrote a general “how-to” guide for cooking clubs, I told you about our inaugural Israeli night, I shared the Apple Cider Rum Punch from the Caribbean dinner, and I filled you in on Indonesia by way of an Avocado Shake with Kahlua and Godiva Liqueur. But there have been three others that I’ve kept you waiting on! While Mexico and Greece are on standby, I’d like to catch you up on our incredible Chinese meal and let you know about one of my new favorite cookbooks.

In order to expand my options in the kitchen lately, I keep ordering new cookbooks at the library and actually (shockingly!) cook out of them. But after years of collecting cookbooks for the sake of collecting, I have become much more selective. If I find one I really like, that I am willing to make a permanent space for on my bookshelf, I go ahead and buy it. This is one of those books. Fuchsia Dunlop was the first Westerner to study at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in central China, and while not a native Chinese cook, she has become a prominent cookbook author. Her latest book, Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking is easy to follow, filled with healthy recipes and beautiful photographs that show food you’ll want to cook on a regular weeknight basis. Experimenting with Chinese cooking was on my to-do list, but this book pushed me to finally do it. It’s a perfect introductory book, and I can’t recommend it enough. (Full disclosure, the link is an affiliate link. It doesn’t mean you’ll be charged any extra, it’s just that I’ll get a few pennies to buy an extra mushroom or two if you purchase anything after clicking through.)

The one thing to know is that you will need to pick up a few specialty ingredients for your pantry, but once you have them you’ll be prepared to throw together quick and easy meals that will beat Chinese take-out ten times over. It will be healthier, more flavorful, cheaper, and can be made in less time than it takes to place an order and get it. That’s definitely true of her Spicy Buckwheat Noodles, her Sweet and Spicy Cold Noodles (which I’ve already made at least half a dozen times!,) and her Spicy Sesame Noodles, which all can be made in the same amount of time it takes to make boxed mac and cheese. Seriously. They’re incredible. But admittedly, for a girl who’s definition of soy sauce was the low sodium bottle from Trader Joe’s, I had some shopping to do to stock my pantry. I was lucky though to have a Taiwanese friend take me on a tour of our local new Asian grocery store, and after 90 minutes of wandering the aisles, I was ready to go. If you don’t have the same resources near you, remember you can always find ingredients online. Don’t let your location stop you!