12 vegan meals made by a complete amateur

What ho, Wee Readers! I hope you had a good Christmas. If you’ve read my last post you’ll have already guessed that mine has been a bit stressful this year. If it wasn’t the ever increasing difficulty of my course work, then its the mountain of assignments I had due – but I don’t like to complain, at least in a non comedic manner. So, I’ll move on to more entertaining challenges – namely my terrible cooking. Due to some personal matters, I’ve taken over cooking duties for my family. Mwahahahaha , now nothing can stop me from making whatever I want, except budget constraints and general lack lack of talent! *Lightening flashes ominously*…*cough* Anyway, here are the twelve vegan meals made by a complete amateur.

12. Pasta and Raw Sauce

Pasta, carrots and leftover pasta all covered with a raw sauce that would leave even the most hardened of Carnivore’s mouth watering.

Raw Suce composed of:

1 apple, chopped roughly

handful of walnuts

juice of 1 lemon

two or three celery stalks chopped – once again roughly

olive oil

Garlic

But of course you can put all sorts of veg and nuts or seeds in it. Then plop it all together in a mixer – the power of which will depend on how roughly you get to chop your veg. I have a Vitamix so I can chop things however I like – but different brands may vary.

11. Leftover Baked Sweet Potato and Pasta Salad

This is one of the easiest meals I’ve made yet – if you discount the original cooking of the sweet-potatoes. But even then all you do there is, rub olive oil on the potatoes and stick in a pre-heated oven for about an hour. Then boom, delicious, Sweet Potato goodness. They taste so good that usually there’s nothing left come the next day – but this time I got lucky. So I mixed the leftover potatoes with vegan pasta salad – available at any decent Tesco – plumb tomatoes and Quorn Ham. A substance my family refused to eat for ages, because Quorn refused to make their vegetarian range even a little vegan, and their original adds were stupid and condescending. Also they’re made from mold, genetically modified mold. Turns out I really like the taste of mold …mmm genetically modified sin against nature.

10. Roasted Courgette and Tofu with Sweet Potatoe Fries

Now this is one of my favorite dishes to make – mainly because not only is it easy, fairly cheap, almost impossible to mess up, but it’s delicious too. Take two packets of plain Tofu – I use the brand Tofuu, but it’s not a requirement – two or three courgettes, chop them all up into fairly small pieces and put them in a olive oil covered baking tray. After that the original recipe calls for a splash of soya sauce sprinkled on top, which I do recommend if you can handle the salt as it is absolutely delicious – of course not every one can, and we really have too much salt in our diets anyway. So if that’s the case for you, just use more olive oil, works the same.

Put in the oven, wait till everything goes soft and that’s that – one delicious, easy to make, vegan dish, that won’t bankrupt you.

9. Sausages and Mashed Potatoes

I don’t know why I was so nervous about making mash potatoes. They’re the easiest thing in the world to make. You don’t even have to peel them. Just cut off the bad bits, chop them into manageable sizes; boil ’em till they go soft – then add a chunk of vegan margarine and mash like you’re a crazy person. Most fun thing I’ve ever made. As you can see I’ve combined this dish with sausages – vegan of course – and a bag of frozen vegetables. Easy, done!

8. Spaghetti and Soya Balls

The best thing I ever discovered was The Seeds of Change range of sauces – just plop them in a pan, heat ’em up and wallah. This picture here is the Bolognese sauce, paired with spaghetti and soya balls – that is, meatless meatballs.

7. Pasta with Tomato and Courgette Sauce

At number seven, we have the tomato and basil ‘Seeds of Change’ sauce – combined with a chopped courgette and yellow pepper. I know I’ve already done and talked about the ‘Seeds of Change’ brand on this list but this is my favorite sauce of all time – and look! Look how well the photo turned out. I mean you can actually see the steam rising from the sauce, mmm – makes me hungry just looking at it.

6. Pineapple and Mango Smoothie

Now we come to the first of the two smoothies on this list. Just take half a bag of frozen pineapple chunks, and the same amount of frozen mango chunks, combine with three bananas, nuts ( ideally walnuts, because they’re the best, but really any will do), fresh orange juice and coconut water. Then throw it it all in a blender – again I use the Vitamix brand, but any kind of blender will do. Turn up to full blast for a few minutes, and then get ready to pour your fresh new smoothie.

5. Sausage and Potatoe Waffles

I love potato Waffles, I’d have them all day if I could – I could just throw them in the oven , heat them up and have them all day. I witter on like this because there’s not much to say about this meal. Other than the sausages – which take a grand total of maybe eight minutes frying in a frying pan – the rest are so simple and easy I could have done them in my sleep.

4. Black current Smoothie

Blackberries straight from the freezer, three bananas (again), an Avocado (no nuts this time, never put nuts and an Avocado together in a smoothie. I’m not entirely sure why, it’s just one of those cooking rules my Mum told me) lin seeds, fresh orange juice and coconut water. Blend it all up and, be careful not to spill any when you pour it. We done? Great, Next order!

3. Schnitzel, peas & carrots, and sweet potato fries

This ready made schnitzel ( I hope I’m spelling that right) takes about eight minutes to cook in olive oil, but is slightly hard to turn over half way through due to the increased side. Also the tendency of its skin to stick to the pan doesn’t help either on that front. Joining it on the plate is sweet potato fries and garden peas & baby carrots.

Sweet potato and Tomato Soup

Funny story – I burned myself making this soup, and not a small one either – my entire arm was covered with the boiling stuff. That will teach me to fill the blasted thing as much as I did. My dad did the same thing when he made this soup a week or so later, except because he didn’t fill it up so high, he only got a splash on the hand – ah well, live and learn. Scalding burns along my arms aside, this is a delicious soup made of sweat potatoes, tomato, celery, garlic and a pinch of sault. Cook up first in a pan untill all the vegetables are soft – and then throw it in a blender and hope you don’t burn yourself when you take the lid off after a througher blending.

1 Christmas!!!!!

Yes, I had originally planned to make this an entirely separate blog post by, but I’ve been very sick lately and I released I was falling behind on my planned schedule. Also, turns out when you’re cooking a meal as involved as Christmas lunch you may or may not forget to take pictures while you’re doing it. Ah well, it was a fantastic meal anyway and makes the perfect closing piece for this wee list of mine. Alright, the dishes making up these grand piece de resistance are as follows…

Roast Potatoes

Generally you would boil the potatoes first, before you roast them in olive oil – however if you chop them up very small you can skip the boiling part and cut the time of cooking down by half.

Sprouts

Funny story, I actually meant to cook chestnuts and sprouts, but it was the first time I ever cooked them and I bought the wrong sort of chestnuts – they had shells. Still the sprouts were good regardless, I don’t know why people make such a fuss about them, they were awesome.

Pigs in a blanket

Ready made.

Stuffing Balls

Ready made by Linda McCartney – check ’em out.

Roasted Carrots and Parsnips – with added Garlic segments

These are simple, just cut them into manageable slices, place ’em on an oiled baking tray; sprinkle some oil oil, add your peeled garlic segments. No need to chop those, they taste just as good when you don’t. Plop it all in the oven and wait about an hour – same as the potatoes.

Bread Sauce

This needs to be begun the day before, and cooked on Christmas day. Break up at least part of a bread-loaf, into a baking tray. My Mum can’t handle Gluten, so I made my breadcrumbs from a non-gluten loaf, but it’s not a requirement. Then cut an onion in half (after pealing first of course) and stick cloves into each side, until both rather more resemble hedgehogs than any kind of onion. From there your going to pour soya milk – or your own choice of milk alternative – over the breadcrumbs and onion halves until you get a nice gloopy mixture. You can add cinnamon stick and pepper of course – but its not vital to the dish. Then just cover the dish with foil, and stick it in the oven on Christmas day.

Turkey Roast

Ready made – ah the age of the Vegan era has truly begun. Soon were will run the world and now everyone else will have to put up with condescending articles, telling them them their diet is lacking. See how they like it! *evil laugh while lightening flashes in the background*…*cough* *cough* Sorry I blacked out for a moment, what did I just say? Oh no, she’s arisen…my inner manic Vegan!

And Cranberry Sauce

Out of a jar, I don’t see the need to make cranberry sauce from scratch.

And that’s that, all twelve of the pictures, I remembered to take, of the food I made while I was in charge of cooking. I still am of course, and I began to make far more competent looking meals than these, but then that really wouldn’t go with the theme of the post. Anyway, if this list of edible vegan goodies has left you hungry for more don’t forget to follow the wee blog if you haven’t already. Or follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and check out my Facebook, Goodreads and Tumblr pages. Until next time, my wee readers, have a bonny day.

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Side note: apology to those who were surprised when this post disappeared off the internet – my WordPress app was acting up and switched it to draft. Still it’s back up now 🙂