For the third installment of my walnut love, I made vegan walnut sausage.  Following this recipe:

Vegan Walnut Sausage – www.beyonddiet.com

It came together super easy, just threw everything into the food processor! The hardest part was finding the nutritional yeast.  I found it hanging out on the spice aisle at Whole Foods.

Freshly made walnut sausage.  The crazy thing is that it actually tastes like sausage, thanks to the rosemary, thyme, fennel seeds and nutritional yeast.

I decided to incorporate this into stuffed peppers for dinner. I didn’t follow a recipe, which is shocking for me and unchartered territory, but I was feeling brave!

Walnut sausage (I doubled the recipe)

1 small onion

1 package of Quinoa/Rice by Seeds of Change

Leftover brown rice (about 1/2 cup)

2 cups tomato sauce (I didn’t have tomato sauce, so I used tomato paste and ketchup mixed with water) #cookingimprov

I mixed all of the above ingredients together, which fully stuffed 6 peppers. I put a little bit of water in the baking dish and covered it with foil.

Cooking them for 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven was just right.

I topped it off with a little sprinkling of nutritional yeast!

I was pretty pleased with how they turned out.  The only thing I would change next time is actually using  tomato sauce (and probably a little less too) because I think the ketchup made them too sweet.

I never knew walnuts could be so versatile and am loving all the fun foods I can turn them into.  It is really quite unbelievable how good this mock tuna turned out, following this recipe.

www.rickiheller.com – Mock Tuna Salad

I assembled the tuna salad on collard greens and topped it with pickles and cherry tomatoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After eating a mock tuna wrap made from walnuts that was to die for, I began searching for recipes to recreate it and stumbled across this walnut based taco meat.

Vegan Taco Meat – www.myhdiet.com

The walnut bath.

After soaking for a few hours they went into the food processor with some cumin, coriander and tamari sauce.  It really looks like taco meat!

While the toaster oven was heating up I assembled the quesadilla- I used 1/3 cup of taco meat and Daiya shredded cheese on flour tortillas sprayed with Pam, to help them crisp up.  I baked them for about 3 minutes on each side at 400 degrees.  I served it with one of my favorite salsas.

And the finished product!  I seriously couldn’t believe how good they were!  YUMM 🙂

Attending the Fun with Fermentation Clinic this past October got me all fired up to conquer the brine.

Mountain Rose Herbs Mercantile hosted a class on how to make Fire Cider.  And when they say fire, they mean fire; horseradish root and jalapeno are just two of the ingredients.  Before this, I had never heard of fire cider and I was so intrigued.  It is said to help boost natural health processes, stimulate digestion and warm you up.

My friend, Tiffany and I getting ready to take our shot of the fire cider made in class.

Just smelling it feels like it clears out all your sinuses.  The initial taste is spicy, like nothing I’ve ever had before, plus it has a really good after taste.

The following recipe is what was shared with us from Mountain Rose Herbs, with credit given to Rosemary Gladstar.

Fire Cider

1/2 cup grated ginger

1/2 cup grated horseradish root

1 medium onion (I used purple for the color contrast), chopped

10 cloves garlic, minced

2 jalapenos, minced

Zest & juice of 1 lemon

2 Tbsp dried rosemary

1 Tbsp turmeric

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 cup raw honey

Apple Cider Vinegar

Combine all the ingredients into a quart size mason jar, then pour in the apple cider vinegar to cover the food.  And now for the kicker!  You can either bury, like dig a hole in the ground and cover it with dirt, the jar for 1 month or you can just leave it on your counter for the month, giving it a little shake everyday.  I did the latter, which wasn’t nearly as exciting as burying it.  I had visions of a grand fire cider digging up party, with dancing of course. 😉

Here is the fire cider, all freshly chopped and ready to go!

One month later!

It was fun to watch the process and how it transformed over this time period.  To say I was excited for the taste testing would be an understatement.

You then need to strain it, to just get the liquid to drink.  And as an added bonus, the vegetables can be used in other recipes.

Straining the fire cider

Drinks ready to taste!

Using 1 cup of the strained grub, I incorporated them into a stir fry.  I found what leftover vegetables I had in my fridge and freezer- sugar snap peas, carrots, bell peppers, mushrooms, corn, peas and zucchini and cooked it all together in my wok.  I also added in 3 eggs, which is all I had since our chickens are not laying much right now.

It turned out amazing!  I did not have to add one spice or seasoning since it was already so flavorful from the fire cider grub.