Simple cabbage salad

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Go Vegan!

I used to get this salad in the kindergarten as a kid. It’s simple , yet nutritious. It’s considered that raw cabbage helps fight cancer cells, therefore you should eat it more often.

Preparation Time: 5 minutes.

Serves 2 pesprinkle the salad. ople.

White cabbage shredded- 2 cups

Carrot shredded – 1/3 cup

Onion choppped- 1/4 cup

Vinegar – 1 tablespoon

Sugar -1 teaspoon

Salt – 2 pinches

Dill – 1/4 cup

Olive il – 2 tablespoons.

Shred the cabbage and the carrot, add the chopped onion. Squeeze the cabbage well and add sugar , salt and vinegar. Chop the dill and  add it to teh salad. Sprinkle with olive oil, mix well and serve.

Tastes amazingly delicious with any dish or if you are dieting it’s a great snack.

Enjoy!

Love,

Cauliflower salad

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Fast and simple dishes

This salad is rich and creamy and very nutritional. Cauliflower is one of my favorite ingredients to work with.

It’s nutritional benefits are as follows: low in fat, low in carbs but high in dietary fiber, folate, water, and vitamin C. Almost perfect vegetable!

I love it when dieting or when fasting (which occurs more often than dieting:)

This recipe doesn’t require a lot of time, but  you have to be very careful when cutting the flowers of cauliflower, because they are very jumpy and  tend to “jump  out of your knife and onto the floor” (I am serious here:-)

I normally cut 1/4 of one average cauliflower for a salad for two, so make your calculations.

For the salad you will need:

Cauliflower – 1/4 of it

White onion – 1/2 pcs.

Tomatoes- 2 pcs.

Salt, pepper – according to your taste, I put 1/2 teaspoon of each

Mayo – 2 tbsp.

Preparation time: 10 minutes.

Serves: 2 people

Preparation:

Carefully cut the flowers of cauliflower. Chop the onion and slice the tomato. Cutting the caulflower will take most of your time. Try to cut is to medium sized chunks approx 0.5 X 0.5 in

Season you veggies, add  2 tablespoons of mayo and stir well.

Serve! Goes well with mashed potato, rice and even noodles.

 

Vegan tender asparagus in orange sauce

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Go Vegan!

Scrumptious recipe, simple as that.

Asparagus is considered to be a luxurious plant as it not harvested for at least three years after being planted. Plus asparagus needs a lot of space to grow.Main nutritional benefits of asparagus is that it has  No Fat, contains No Cholesterol and is low in Sodium, what can be better?

Asparagus has number of health benefits, such as: anti-cancer benefits, heart health and anti-inflammatory benefits etc etc.

Asparagus is easy and fast to cook, so when I came onto discounted asparagus at my produce store I was excited.

I wanted to experiment and cook it without animal-based ingredients, as I usually use butter for my orange sauce.

If you don’t know how to trim the asparagus, it’s really as simple as snap!

Please see the video tutorial here.

Ingredients:

Asparagus- 1 lb

Orange- 2 pcs

Salt- 1 tablespoon

Black pepper- 1 teaspoon

sesame seeds- 1/3 cup

Olive oil – 1/3 cup

Water- 3-4 qt.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time 5 minutes

Ready in 15 minutes

Serves: 2-3 people

Cooking Level: Easy

Preparation:

Wash and trim the asparagus as shown in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhVEBsOWJDA&feature=colike

Set a 3-4 qt. saucepan with water to boil. Put your asparagus in boiling water and set the heat on medium. Boil for 3-5 min.Add 1 tablespoon of salt just 1 minute before taking the asparagus out.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce:

Take the juice of two oranges, pour it into preheated frying pan, simmer for 2- minutes, then add olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano. Simmer for 2-3 minutes.

Put the sprouts of prepared asparagus on plate(s) and pour the sauce on it, cover with sesame seeds.Enjoy!

As you see I didn’t add no mustard and butter , which is normally added in the orange sauce. I wanted to make this recipe as light as possible. It’s good with brown rice or white rice.

The dish is light and is good for those working on their weight loss or for people with heart conditions.

Easy delicious broccoli, ready in 2 minutes.

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Fast and simple dishes

Very easy, yet delicious recipe for those who are vegetarian.( and even for those who aren’t). You will love the simplicity and mainly the deliciousness  of the dish, if you will also take into the account the useful qualities of broccoli it is picture- perfect.
This dish is also great for those who are dieting.
Preparation time: 2 min

Cooking time 2 min.

Ingredients:
1 lb broccoli
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon of oregano
8 slices of provolone cheese.
Step 1. Wash the broccoli, cut off the broccoli flowers.
Step 2. Put the broccoli on a heated frying pan. Add 1/3 cup of water. Add salt,pepper and oregano. Cover the broccoli with cheese slices evenly.
Step3″ steam for two minutes sharp.
Serve with rice or mashed potato or your potato with spring onion

 

Simple country salad

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Go Vegan!

This salad is cooked in Ukrainian country very often. It is cheap, delicious and easy to cook. Great for an everyday meal. This salad is also cooked for Christmas eve,because according to Christian orthodox tradition, the table has to consist of 12 vegetarian dishes.  This dish was one of 12 for my Christmas Eve, of course.

Yield: 4 people.

Preparation time: 15 min

Cooking time: 30 min

For the salad you will need:

3 big potatoes ( boiled and sliced);

1 small white onion ( raw, peeled and sliced);

5-6 pickled cucumbers( sliced);

1 teaspoon of salt;

1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper;

2 tablespoons of sunflower oil;

Preparation:

Boil the potatoes. You can boil them overnight then drain and cook the salad next evening.

When you boiled the potatoes drain them and let then cool down, so that you coul peel them easily.P

Peel you potatoes and the slice them as shown in the picture.

Take the dills, and slice them. ***Note from Helen *** You can take the hamburger dills , but for me they are too sour, I prefer to buy Polish dills at the local vegetable store. You can stop by at Russian store and try to find nice looking pickles there:)

Peel and slice the onions.

Mix all the ingredients season with salt and pepper and add the sunflower oil. Mix everything very well.

You can decorate the dish with parsley or lemon basil.

The salad is goohe when it’s just cooked and the next day as well.

It’s so simple yet flavorful and delicious! I just love it. Hope you will too.

 

Top 5 holiday vegan dishes. Pick yours!

This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Holidays

Christmas is when you spend a lot of time with your family, give a lot of presents and cook  a lot of food. Even if you have a vegan or vegetarian family member or friend there’s virtually million of dishes you can treat them with. I chose my 5 favorite Christmas vegan dishes for the holiday table.I y will have them on mine. If you have any other favorite dishes you want to share with me post the picture of the dish and recipe link below! Happy holidays!

Green beans with sesame seeds.

Simple, yet delicious, this dish is great for holiday table.Sesame seeds and olive oil give the dish rich taste and doesn’t matter if you are vegan or not, you will anyway enjoy it a lot!

Healthy and Easy Vegan beet salad with prunes.

Beets with prunes have sweet taste, if you add a little garlic the dish will be more  more salty and this contrast will be very appealing to your senses. In addition to this this dish possesses  many healthy benefits, so don’t leave it behind. Enjoy!

Read the recipe

 

Pickled eggplants with carrots, garlic and herbs

Goes well with mashed potatoes and with broccoli, with rice and beans. Great contrast dish, but takes time to prepare.

See the recipe

Delicious braised cabbage with raisins

Great as the main and side dish, sweet raisins and bell

pepper and salty cabbage go well together.

There won’t be too much of this dish it will vanish fast!

 

 

Read the recipe

Vegan spicy sautéed mushrooms in 10 minutes.

This is a very fast to cook dish chop mix and saute and you have a great dish in matter of minutes. It’s up to you to decide if you wanna make it spicy or not! I like it spice with saurkraut `and cranberries on the side. Read the recipe

Homemade Sauerkraut with cranberries! Easy in 1-2-3!

This entry is part 5 of 7 in the series Holidays

I bet you bought sauerkraut in the closest supermarket to make hot dogs. It is sour…mmm, very sour, with lots of liquid in a bag…generally sauerkraut sold in stores aren’t to my taste, I guess you noticed it. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with, just I love sauerkraut with cranberries and onion and sunflower/or olive oil. It’s the best winter dish for the family. It’s great for Christmas too. It is light and goes great with meats and  mashed potatoes or fish. All in all you’ll love it at first bite because this is the best one you will ever eat!

To prepare  sauerkraut  you will need:

3 lb of cabbage shredded (it is one big white cabbage, normally…)

1 cup of shredded carrots (normally it is one big carrot)

1/2 teaspoon of bay leaves grinded

10-15 black peppercorns

1 liter or 33.81 fluid ounces of water

2 tablespoons of salt

1.5 tablespoons of sugar

1 cup of cranberries

Preparation:

Now you have to understand that pickling cabbage takes time, BUT! it comes out very delicious. A family of two will eat 1.5 lbs of cabbage in 3-4 days during family dinners.

I normally cook 1.5 lbs to 10lb. depending on t

he occasion that and mood.

Pickling cabbage by this recipe takes 3-4 days. In my house it takes 3 days , in you house it may be ready sooner or slower, everything depends on the place and the temperature in your house. The cabbage has to “sit”in the dark and warm place and you have to choose a container for pickling that will keep the cabbage pressed and warm during the process of pickling.

Step 1. Shred the cabbage and the carrots. (carots should be previously peeled and washed). Squeeze and mix carrots and cabbage, Put in a pickling container.

Step 2.Prepare the pickling mixture: preheat the water, when it starts boiling add: salt, sugar and bay leaves. Wait until it will start boiling again and turn the gas off. Cool the mixture and pour it into container with cabbage.

Step 3. Take the peppercorns and put it inside the cabbage as many as you wish. Press the cabbage and  put into a dark warm place. (I put it on my fridge under a wok frying pan)

Step 4: Stir every days so that the juices would spred evenly.

Step 5. On day 3 or 4 check for readiness. The cabbage should have  slight foam on top. Not a lot.

If the cabbage is ready, take the handful of it squeeze and put in another clean container. When you put all the cabbage into a new container, put washed cranberries on top and coverwith lid.

Serving:

To serve the homemade sauerkraut just finely chop the onion, take from your container as much cabbage as you need. add salt and pepper and 1 tablespoon of olive oil and mix everything very well.

Serve with mashed potatoes and with a bird.

Enjoy!

P.S. you can cook soup or bake a pie with this sauerkraut, as well as make a lot of salads. Just let me show you in my next posts.

Healthy and Easy Vegan beet salad with prunes!

This entry is part 9 of 11 in the series Salad

Beets are like Cinderella, we think that they are not as delish as they are, we  rarely cook them and generally, we think that this it is not essential for us. But in reality, there’s much more to it than we think.

Beets provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detoxification support.In recent lab studies on human tumor cells, betanin pigments from beets have been shown to lessen tumor cell growth Beets also possess fiber-related benefit, so next time when you pass the beets in a vegetable aisle, grab couple for the salad or soup.


Cooking time: 1 h 20 min

Preparation time 15 min

Serves: 3 people

Ingredients:

2 mid sized beets

1/2 cup of pitted prunes(washed and chopped)

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 clove of garlic (optional)

1 pinch of salt

1 pinch of pepper

leaves of parsley (optional)

Preparation:

Wash and set to boil the beets. Boil the beets for an hour or for as long as it will take the to be cooked (soft inside, check with the knife)

Wash the prunes and finely chop them . If you don’t like the prunes you can use walnuts or you can use both it will be even more delicious.

Whet the beets are cooked, drain the water, let them cool down and then peel and shred the beets.

Mix the beet with prunes and add the pressed garlic (optional). Season the salad and add the olive oil. Mix everything very well.

Serve with the leaves of parsley (optional) to enhance the taste!

Enjoy!

***Tip from Helen*** If you want the salad to be more creamy and you aren’t vegan or vegetarian – then you can add some mayo instead of olive oil!

 

 

Top 3 Fall Soups

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Soups

 These three soups are the best comfort meal for the lunch in fall: it enegrizes, keeps you warm and boosts your taste buds. You can add lots of flavors to these soups by experimenting with herbs: basil, dill, parsley and others.

 

Vegetarian Pea Soup 

Vegetarian pea soup is good those days when you want a rich-creamy soup without any meat component in it. It’s a comfort food perfect right for the days when it’s chilly and drizzly outside. This recipe has simple ingredients and doesn’t require to be a skillful chef to prepare it.

All in all perfect autumn soup for the family. Read more

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pumpkin crème-soup with shrimp, cream cheese and basil.

It’s autumn and it means that it’s time for a great pumpkin soup with shrimp that I just LOVE cooking.

It doesn’t require a lot of effort but it comes out perfectly smooth, bringing in the autumn flavors and colors into your kitchen.

I tasted this soup long time ago in Europe, brought it into my kitchen and my family just loves it. Hope, you will too. Read more

 Zucchini crème-soup

This is a very simple crème soup. It takes 40 minutes to cook and your family will enjoy this meal. It’s a great summer or fall soup for your to enjoy! Simple and flavorful! It takes little effort to cook and it’s a really light  dish. It gives you energy and makes you feel good. Read more

Vegetarian Pea Soup

Vegetarian pea soup is good those days when you want a rich-creamy soup without any meat component in it. It’s a comfort food perfect right for the days when it’s chilly and drizzly outside. This recipe has simple ingredients and doesn’t require to be a skillful chef to prepare it.

All in all perfect autumn soup for the family. 

Cooking time: 1 h

Preparation time: 15 min

Inactive time: 30 min 

1 cup of peas

3-4 qt. of water

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of black fresh ground pepper

3 tablespoons of sour cream

1 tablespoon of cooking oil (vegetable better)

1 medium white onion

1 carrot

3 medium potatoes

1 red bell pepper

2 bay leaves (or 1 teaspoon of crushed bay leaves)

Pre-soak 1 cup of peas for 30 minutes. (Use hot water and twice bigger bowl, in order for you to keep the beans in the bowl not outside of it:-).

Peel and wash the veggies: onion, carrot, potatoes and pepper. Shred the carrot and finely chop the onion and pepper. Cut potato in medium sized pieces. Put the half of the chopped onion aside.

Set a 3 quart saucepan with water and add the veggies plus couple of bay leaves, add salt and black pepper.

Simmer for 10 minutes and then add the peas. Boil the soup for 30-40 minutes at the low heat.

Set a frying pan and add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil and the chopped onion. Fry on medium heat, until golden brown and then add 3 tablespoons of sour cream or cooking cream. Braise for 5 minutes and then pour the sauce into the soup and stir very well.

Simmer the soup for another 20 minutes or until the peas dissolve in the soup, truning it into the rich creme-soup.

Serve this soup warm, you may add some sour cream in each plate separately.

I fry the fine italian bread cut in medium squares with salt and pepperand add it to the soup when eating.

You can choose to do the same if you’d like.