Sweet Potato & Balsamic Black Beans

If you've never made beans from scratch...the time has come. Beans are about the cheapest thing around and a superb powerhouse of nutrition and protein all in one. Eating a healthy, plant-based vegan diet can be quite frugal, contrary to popular belief. Just think of all the pennies you'll save from swapping beans for the carcasses of terrified, brutally confined animals! It's a win-win, don't you think? Oh, the more you know...and feel...and engage. Today I'm starting a new little bit called, If I Were President. See what I would do at the bottom of the post. 

“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.”

— Helen Keller

Keller's words have never been more appropriate than now. While science helps force mother cows to produce more milk, factory farmed pigs to not get deadly sick even though they wade through their own filth, and chickens to grow so unnaturally large that they can't walk...we aren't addressing the real problem. The complete and profound lack of caring for these fellow creatures. And our mind-bogglingly gluttonous greed. 

I tried to make this side dish look as appealing as possible, but...you know...beans. They're not exactly the cover models in the world that is food photography. So, sorry for that. 

Sweet Potato & Balsamic Black Beans

Tender black beans combine with chunks of sweet potatoes and bathe in a spiced balsamic sauce for a healthy and delicious side. I’ve included instructions for using a pressure cooker or a soup pot. Adapted from JL Fields book, Vegan Pressure Cooking.

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

• 2 cups black beans, soaked overnight or 8 hours
• ½ tbsp olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp table salt
• 2 large sweet potatoes, diced
• 2 cups water
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• ¼ cup + 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Cooking Directions

1. In a pressure cooker, heat the olive oil over medium-low. Add the garlic and sauté a few minutes, until fragrant. Stir in the spices and salt.
2. Drain and rinse the beans. Add them to the pot along with the remaining ingredients, excluding the vinegar. Cover, turn heat to high, and bring to high pressure. Keep at high pressure for 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and allow a natural release.
3. Once the pressure is released, uncover and stir in the vinegar. Over medium heat cook for about 10 minutes, uncovered, until most of the water has evaporated. Stir occasionally to keep the beans from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
4. Alternatively, you can use a Dutch oven or heavy bottomed soup pot with a lid and follow mostly the same instructions. However, cook the beans covered for about 1 hour at a simmer, then uncover and follow the same instructions. Check the beans for tenderness, they can vary widely in their cooking time and how long they were soaked for. Add the salt along with the vinegar if using this method.

If I Were President

I'd require every citizen to visit a factory farm and slaughterhouse. If they were still okay with the horrors, then they would be allowed to eat animals. No, just kidding. They'd have to live a day in the life of a mother cow who has had her calf stolen from her. Or be pumped full of growth hormones, or have his/her beak (nose) clipped off. Just the standard stuff. I don't think it's too extreme seeing as it happens to millions upon millions of living, sentient beings everyday.

Dutch Word of The Day

Apathy -->  onverschilligheid (onver-schil-ehide)

Good Deed of The Day

If you're still consuming animals, ditch that habit for one week. It's just one week. I think you can do it. 

Vegan Pressure Cooking by JL Fields - A Review & Giveaway

I have a new favorite cookbook and it's all about the almighty pressure cooker.

It's a cherished thing of mine, to look at cookbooks...but I rarely make anything out of them. There's a variety of reasons for this. For one thing, it's my absolute biggest pet peeve when authors have a recipe within a recipe. You know how it goes. Here's a recipe for pancakes, but first you have to make this vegan egg creme and for that please turn to page 35. Oh, you wanted frosting with this cupcake recipe? That's on page 98. It just really irks me. Why can't everything be included on one page? It's a silly thing, but as soon as I see this Russian doll nonsense...recipe dismissed. Second, I use what I have on hand and use recipes as a loose outline mosty. This is a large departure from my teenage days of cooking where I always followed the recipe exactly as stated. It wasn't that I didn't have a lot of experience cooking, I just didn't have a lot of kitchen confidence. 

Enter the pressure cooker. I got my fancy pants one, many years ago (at least eight now) from a dear aunt. I confess it sat, unused, for a great while. Nowadays, I'd venture to say it's one of my most used kitchen pots. I use it for my Friday Soup, and to cook things up in a snap. It's used at least two to three times per week! Applesauce, lentils, quinoa, assorted vegetables, you name it. So, you can imagine my excitement when I found out about a vegan pressure cooking cookbook!! This was a cookbook I must have! 

I feel very fortunate to have been gifted this book to review. Usually, when I first receive a cookbook, I go through and tab all the recipes that I want to make in the future. There's usually about five I'm interested in. No joke. I find many to be too complicated, too simple, and/or not healthy enough. Oftentimes, Alaska just doesn't lend itself to exotic ingredients. Tamarind paste? Been searching for the stuff for months! This cookbook though? I couldn't stop tabbing everything! 

I've made JL's pressure cooked tofu scramble five times now! I used to make my tofu scramble in a frying pan. It was kind of crispy and left a giant mess to clean up afterward. It was good, but not exceptionally eggy. This scramble though is light and fluffy and wet, just like I remember my scrambled eggs. I'm already planning on making some of her soups. And I even made seitan! OMG, you guys! Homemade seitan is a new staple.

Okay, I need to have a heart to heart with my vegan and veg friends here. If you don't have a pressure cooker, you might be feeling a little sad right now. Understand that I am somewhat minimalist and working towards becoming even more so (get rid of all the stuffs!!!) However, I am telling you that  you might really want to consider getting a pressure cooker. These bad boys are absolutely the most handy if you consume a lot of soups, grains, beans, and or vegetables - like a health vegan should! It's a really fast, nutritious, and flavorful way to prepare foods in a short amount of time.  Pressure cookers can cut cooking times by 70%! So you can prepare your favorite foods in 1/3 the time they would normally take!

I really like that JL Field's first chapter in her book is Pressure Cooking 101. It explains a lot of the misconceptions regarding pressure cooking and addresses old fears of using such a contraption. She informs you how a pressure cooker actually cook things so fast and some things to watch out for, as well as what cooks well in the cooker and what does not. She also goes over the different types of pressure cookers. This is really handy if you're planning on buying one, or have one but it's just been collecting dust because you don't really know how to use the thing. The chapters are divided into categories like beans, soups, sides, sauces, one-pot meals, and she even has a dessert chapter! Oh my.

Today, I am very excited to have been granted permission to share her seitan recipe with you. If you've never made your own, holy smokes, is it good. The stuff is quite expensive to buy in the store and you'd never guess how easy it is to make at home. Not to mention fast with the help of a pressure cooker! I'm already planning on make more tonight! 

Seitan actually starts out as...dough! Who knew?

It's not going to win a beauty pageant or anything but...it's damn delicious!

There were a few changes I made when making my seitan. First, I didn't have blackstrap molasses (and I had run out of regular molasses as well), so I used agave nectar. I actually did have avocado oil, but I don't see why olive oil wouldn't be okay to use. I found the dough to be a bit wet after looking online at some other seitan making videos (yep, I'm that person), so next time I might add a little less broth to the dry ingredients. I found the dough hook on my electric stand mixer to be of no help, so I just kneaded the dough in the bowl. Save the cooking broth for use next time you  make seitan (or use it in a soup), so as not to waste it. Stay tuned very soon for a stuffed seitan recipe. 

A note on the vital wheat gluten and chickpea flour. For the gluten, I had to buy it on Amazon.com because my local stores here in Alaska either didn't have it or were out. As for the chickpea flour, I've seen other seiten recipes that call for the same amount of a different flour or it's just omitted altogether, using extra gluten. The chickpea flour is used to make a lighter and fluffier seitan. However, it's not "vital"...get it? Hehe.

I don't think I'll ever buy seitan from the store again. It's just too easy to make myself and I love that I can customize it. I've read it freezes well too, so don't worry about making huge batches of the stuff!

Have I convinced you to buy a pressure cooker? Or if you already have one, this exceptional cookbook? Just click on the right to purchase your own copy from Amazon for $17.35. 

You can also enter below to win a copy! Hurray! And in case you weren't aware, I'm doing another giveaway here. Don't miss out!

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