Italian memories veganized

Yesterday Matteo decided to "veganize" a recipe that takes him back to childhood: cotechino servito con polenta e lenticchie (sausage served with polenta and lentils). We've bought this vegan sausage from Fry's Vegetarian a few days ago and he was excited to try it in the Italian dish (that's usually served for Christmas but he wanted to make sure it would be good first).


It's really an easy dish, fast to prepare and the result was amazing (don't let the pic fool you, it's delish!). All you need is to cook some polenta (instant polenta works fine), make your favourite lentil sauce (we used canned lentils - 2 cans would be better than one if you're cooking for two people) and cook and fry the sausage. Put all together and you're done!


I really enjoy cooking (or in this case just eating) meals that take us back home, to all these memories and reconstructing them in a vegan way is an wonderful way to keep memories alive and to build new memories, suitable to the choice we've made, the choice for life.


(Here's a picture of the original dish)

Italian vegan stuff

I already wrote here about how good is receiving packages from friends and how better is when the packages come with vegan stuff (things that you can't find in the city you live).

Since we moved we are the ones that usually send those packages. In Brazil we used to receive a lot from my mother-in-law. And two days ago we got two packages from her! There is some vegan stuff that we can find just in some places (cities or countries).

Valsoia products are some of those. It's an Italian company and they have nothing related with veganism, but they have health in their values and have soy and rice products. Even not thinking about vegan people they have a lot of options to people like us and I really like their products. I love their ice cream (you know, I'm crazy about vegan ice cream and eat it even during the winter)! I don't know if you know, but Italy is one of the countries with more vegan ice cream options and brands...

But the best product they have is the "Crema". It's a vegan version of the famous Nutella. It's just... perfect. It's almost impossible to stop eating it after you open it!

And to anybody that might think that I'm here just making free advertising for the company, I can say that the second thing that was in those packages that I love most is the "crema pasticcera". It is a kind of cream for filling cakes and it's absolutely fantastic! Last time I ate it was in Italy, at Christmas holiday and I miss it a lot. The company "Paneangeli" has most of the products to desserts and a lot of them are vegan (you just need to add soy milk instead of regular milk to make them).

So, here is my tip of today: if you go to Italy, try to find some of these products. It's worth it!

Fast and delicious III

It seems that this week is all about fast food. Today I cooked a lasagne with eggplant and it's delicious. No need to say how much I love lasagne and all the Italian food! You can use the eggplant instead of the lasagne pasta, but this time I used both and I liked it more.

So, here we go, with one more recipe:

- lasagne pasta (that one that comes ready to cook)
- 1 eggplant
- tomato sauce
- vegetable stock cube
- soya cream
- vegan cheese (I used the cheddar one)
- dairy free parmezano

This recipe takes between 5 and 10 minutes to be prepared! Cut the eggplant in small circular slices. Let it fry a little bit in the pan. Add the tomato sauce and the vegetable stock cube. Use a little bit of tomato sauce to make the first layer in a glass pan. Add the eggplant sauce. Add the lasagne pasta. Do alternate layers like that (three or four, depends of how much eggplant sauce you have).

Topping: add the last layer of eggplant sauce, than the soy cream and the vegan cheese.

Final touch: add the dairy free parmezano (you can use breadcrumbs too, it works).

Put in the oven for 30/35 minutes (180ºC). That's it!

Fast and delicious II

Some times all we want is something easy and fast to cook to eat. This is a delicious food, that seems to be something between a pizza and a bruschetta!


And all you need is:

- bread (if you have an Italian one, better!)
- spinach
- tomatoes
- garlic
- tomato sauce (optional)
- herbs
- extra virgin olive oil

Put everything over the bread (if you decide to use the tomatoe sauce, add it first with small slices of garlic). Bake it for 5 minutes and it's done ;o)

All you need

All you need to cook some awesome gnocchi at home: potatoes, white flour and salt (an Italian husband that loves to cook is a plus!). Easy to cook, delicious to eat. Perfect for an amazing Sunday. (L)

Fast and furious delicious

I love Italian food. Since... always. Even before being vegan it was one of my favourite food. And in my first years of veganism I used to eat a lot of pasta because it was easy to find without eggs and easy to cook.

Well, now I'm married with an Italian guy (and love him too!), so it's easy to figure out how much pasta we eat.


Today he went to the kitchen to prepare some fast food to us and the result was amazing: pasta with funghi and tofu. He chose the tagliatelle and while the pasta was cooking, he made the sauce: unsweetened soy cream, mushrooms and olive tofu. Put the oil in the fridge with garlic and onions chopped. Add the mushrooms, a little bit of water and some herbs (he used parsley and basil). Wait the water to boil to cook the mushrooms and keep it this way until just a few water is left. Add the vegetable stock cubes (we use it but you can use what you want to spice it up), the soy cream and the diced olive tofu. Let everything cook for 2 or 3 minutes and it's ready. Mix with the pasta and enjoy your fast and delicious meal!