Pat Fine's Vege-Cheese Burger Loaf

Pat Fine was a pastor's wife Sheila knew back in Monroe, Louisiana when she was a new Adventist. Pat was an incredible vegetarian cook. Sheila collected a lot of recipes from Pat and we've never tried one of them that wasn't delicious. I made this up today and it was almost entirely eaten up before I could get a picture. It's an easy recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 19 oz can of Loma Linda or Worthington Vegeburger, Redi-Burger or 1 package of Morningstar Farms Grillers Crumbles
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp sage
• 1 slice toasted bread crumbled up fine
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 onion chopped fine
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tsp butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1 tsp oregano

Direction:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl mix vegeburger or crumbles with sage, bread crumbs, garlic powder, sage, eggs, salt and 1/2 cup shredded cheese.
3. Caramelize onions by sauteeing in olive oil 
4. Add sauteed onions to vegeburger mix
5. Melt butter in 9x12 casserole dish in oven
6. Spread vegeburger mix in casserole dish and cook for 5-10 minutes
7. Mix ketchup and oregano in a small bowl
8. Take out casserole and spread ketchup/oregano mixture over the top
9. Sprinkle cheese over the top of the vegeburger loaf
10. Cook for 15 minutes or until the mixture gets firm, the cheese melted, and the edges bubble.

Serving Suggestions:

Serves 8 or 4 really hungry people. It's good with potatoes (baked or mashed), green beans or broccoli, carrots or salad or maybe Cole slaw. Some fresh hot rolls are all you need to top the meal off. Also, it can be a stand-alone potluck dish, prepared on Friday and heated up during services for a potluck lunch.  Enjoy.


Tom

Stuffed Peppers

Roasted a couple of ears of corn along with the peppers.

I was planning on doing something else this week, but on Friday I happened upon someone with a crate of very nice green Bell peppers they were giving away, so I accepted ten of them with a vague notion of chopping and freezing them or, perhaps, stuffing them. I found a plethora of recipes online, so I cobbled together my own vegetarian version and it came out rather well. It was a bit tomato-ish for Sheila, but her digestive system is a wreck, so pay no attention to her negativity.

The recipe requires the following:

Ingredients:  (Multiply as needed)

• Four (or multiples thereof) Bell Peppers (any color is okay)
• Salt (to taste - I just went with the salt I used to cook the rice)
• 5 Tbsp olive oil (it's virginity level is up to you)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 bag Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles or a can of vegeburger (LL, Worthington, etc.) 
• 1 1/2 cup of cooked rice (I made half brown/half white rice)
• 1 can chopped tomatoes, (drain liquid from the can)
• 1 tbsp oregano (chopped, powdered or dried - go lighter on the powdered)
• 1/2 cup Mozarella Cheese (optional)
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/2 tsp of Worcestershire Sauce
• Dash of Tabasco sauce (super optional)

Directions:

1. Cook the rice according to directions. Adding a dash of olive oil and red wine vinegar keeps it from being sticky. Preheat the oven to 350º.
2. Remove the tops and cut out the seedy bits of the Bell peppers. Steam them till they soften. You can put them in a steamer for 8-10 minutes or do as I did and bake them for 10 - 17 minutes to soften them.
3. Saute' the onions in a large skillet or electric skillet. Once they start to soften, add the Recipe Crumbles or vegeburger and brown lightly. 
4. Add the rice and chopped tomatoes to the mixture and stir in. Add the mozarella and let it melt into the rice/vegeburger mixture.
5. There are two ways to do the ketchup and Worcestershire Sauce. One is to mix it up in a bowl with a little bit of water (less than a quarter cup) and mix about half into the stuffing. The other is to wait and ladle it over the peppers after they are stuffed. I put half into the stuffing and saved the rest to put on top of the stuffed peppers.
6. Stuff the peppers with the vegeburger/rice mixture. Put a spoonful of the ketchup/Worcester/optional Tabasco mixture on top of the peppers. 
7. Place in casserole dish and bake 40-50 minutes till they look like the picture above.
   Serving Suggestions:
   
   Serve with another vegetable or salad and maybe some rolls. The peppers look a little wrinkly, but they taste good. You can play with the spices a little bit. Me, I'd have added a little Tabasco, but then I like the pepper flavor and a little heat with some dishes.
   
   If you have a late summer harvest of green peppers, you can make up multiple batches of the stuffing mix, core the peppers and make as many as you'd like to. It's kind of ambitious, but it's a nice single dish for a potluck. 
   
   
   © 2017 by Tom King
   
   
   
    

Shepherd's Pie Variations

LL Taco Filling Shepherd's Pie

There are a lot of ways to do Shepherd's Pie. This is a super-easy one for a potluck. You may have to show people how to fix it on their plates, but it's really a tasty one dish meal much like that SDA staple - the haystack.

There are a variety of vege-meats that work for this dish. You can even use plain textured vegetable protein if you season it up like vegeburger.  Ultimately the barbecue sauce give it the flavor. This dish is really three in one and has always been a King family favorite. You can even fix it up for people so they don't have to assemble it. It's up to you. I like to make mine from separate bowls of potatoes, vegeburger and mixed vegetables. Here's how it works.

Ingredients for Taco Filling version (without mashed potatoes ingredients)

 
Ingredients:

• Mashed potatoes - (See "Mama's Mashed Potatoes")
• Frozen or canned mixed vegetables
• Loma Linda Taco filling, Loma Linda Beefless Chunks, Loma Linda Redi-Burger, Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles, Worthington Vege-Burger
• Bulls-Eye or KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce.
• Tomato Sauce (for the Loma Linda Taco Filling version)

Directions:

1.  Make up a big pot of Mama's Mashed Potatoes or fix some up your favorite way.
2.  Heat up a big pot of mixed vegetables or put together your favorite mixed veggies (peas, carrots, corn, green beans, Lima beans, etc.).
3.  In a large skillet pour in your vegemeat straight out of the can or bag. If you use the LL Beefless Chunks, pour off some of the gravy.  Brown the vegeburger or chunks or crumbles till it looks well cooked.  With the Taco Filling version, add a little tomato sauce to take down the Mexican spices a little bit before you add the barbecue sauce and cook it in a little bit.)
4.  Pour barbecue sauce into the vegemeat to make a kind of barbecue gravy.
5.  Set the skillet out on the counter alongside the mashed potatoes and mixed veggies in this order - potatoes, barbecue vege-meat, and mixed veggies.
6.  If you'd rather make it as a single dish, do this.  In a large casserole or two or three if you make a lot, put a bunch (that's a technical term used by famous chefs) of mashed potatoes into the casserole to make a bed for the other ingredients. Then spoon a layer of barbecued vege-meat and a layer of mixed veggies.  Cover with foil and you can reheat it in the warmers at church as a single casserole dish.

The LL Beefless Chunks version of shepherd's pie.

This is a really tasty dish and one of those King Family favorites. It's in our cookbook.  This is another one that people will scrape the dish clean. The picture to the left is made with either Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles or NEAT burger or any other brand of vegeburger. The Recipe is in my Sept. 1, 2016 blog. I have forseen it!   ;-)

© 2015 by Tom King

The South Of the Border Salad

This salad recipe is likely a variant of the venerable Adventist haystack. It was apparently invented by a restauranteur who owned a little cafe in an antique mall in downtown Cleburne, Texas, five miles from Keene, my hometown. Now Keene is an Adventist college town and notable SDA ghetto.  It is little wonder the basic haystack idea drifted into the Tex-Mex cuisine in the nearby Johnson County Seat.  They had a Pappa and Mama version, probably in deference to all the Adventist vegetarians that came into the place.  The Papa version used hamburger and was more expensive. The Mama salad used ranch-style or chili beans, but otherwise, both were basically the same

The South Of the Border Salad was advertised and listed on the menu by it's three primary initials. The South Of the Border Salad was named what it was named I figure, both for its Tex-Mex flavor and because it gave the local heathens a giggle whenever some very proper Adventist customer or little old Baptist lady, when ordering, would nervously point to the menu or describe the salad by its ingredients or call it a Mama Salad, rather than say the name listed on the menu.  It's an easy-to-make potluck dish and can be added to a haystack potluck setup by baking a bag of potatoes or two ahead of time.  It's versatile for a potluck because you just set out the ingredients and let everyone make their own version. Way better than pizza too!  This is pretty much a whole meal by itself, so while it's listed as a salad, it's a lot more than just an appetizer.

Ingredients:

• Baked Potato, Large

  

  Start off your South Of the Border Salad with a baked potato.

• Butter/margarine
• Salt
• Chopped lettuce
• Diced tomatoes
• Chopped salad veggies like peppers, onions, cucumber carrots or whatever you've got.
• 1/2 cup Avocado or make up a big bowl of guacamole
• Jar or two of Picante Sauce
• Shredded cheddar cheese (for potlucks just buy a big bag of it already shredded)
• Bit carton of sour cream
• Bottles of Ranch and Catalina Salad Dressing
• Black olives
• Pot of Ranch Style Beans or you can use Loma Linda Five-Bean Chili, Chili Man or barbecue beans of some kind.
• Loma Linda Vegeburger, Worthington Vegeburger or Morningstar Farms Grillers Recipe Crumbles (you can even brown up some Loma Linda Taco Filling)
• Tortilla chips and Fritos
• Chopped Jalepenos
• Monster jar of Picante' Sauce (Pace or San Antonio Riverwalk is great)

Directions:

Add tortilla chips and beans or chili

1. Bake up a bag of potatoes in the skins before the event. You can take them already baked and heat them up in the church's warming ovens.  Most Adventist churches have these. By the time potluck is on, they should be nice and fluffy inside. 
2. Cook up a big pot of Ranch-Style beans or Vege-chile.  
3. Chop up your veggies, grate your cheese and set out the sour cream, tortilla chips and what not all out in a row in order of how you build your South Of the Border Salad.

Constructing the South Of the Border Salad: 

Next add all the salad stuff and voila!  You're done.

1. Break open the potato and spread it out over the bottom of the plate. You can leave the skin on or peel it off.  It's up to you, but I like all the vitamins to come with my potato.
2. Butter and salt is optional.
3. Add a layer of tortilla chips
4. Spoon on a layer of chili, barbecue or Ranch Style Beans
5. Make a a bed of lettuce and start adding all your chopped veggies. Get what you want. Make it with onions or without. There are no rules. 
6. Sprinkle a bunch of shredded Cheddar over the top.
7. Decorate the whole beautiful pile of stuff with dollops of avocado or guacamole, salad dressing, Picante sauce, olives, crouton, vege-bacon bits (TVP) and chives or whatever else you like.  Add a little peak of sour cream and you have created a magnificent meal - run for the table

This salad is best consumed quickly which is never a problem for me. That way, the salad stays cool and crisp while the potato and chili give you a nice warm base. It's great!  I've seen teenage boys consume two or three of these in a row. Sadly, this feat of gastronomy is no longer permitted me by either my physician or (more importantly), by my Sweet Baboo who does not wish me to explode and die.

Bon' appetite!*

(c) 2015 by Tom King

*And, yes I spelled it "appetite" on purpose - the American way not "appetit" like the French. This is, after all, an American Tex-Mex dish and we don't pronounce words all French and sissified.  Just sayin'.

Hobo Dinners

My wife thinks my putting ketchup on this stuff is
a desecration. She may be right.

Hi, folks. I'm back. I've been off the grid for a bit. Sorry about that. But in the meantime we've cooked up some really good meals and taken pictures. This time I'd already put ketchup on mine and Sheila had hers half eaten before I remembered to take a picture of it.

This is one of our very favorite recipes and it's probably the easiest one of the bunch.  Sheila calls this a "hobo" dinner because theoretically you could make this with a campfire and a big piece of foil and a few odd root vegetables.  Here's how it works:


Ingredients:

1. Potatoes, peeled and quartered
2. Onions, peeled and quartered
3. Carrots, peeled and cut in chunks (peeled baby carrots are perfect)
4. Can of Loma Linda Swiss Stakes or Worthington Vegetable Steaks or Loma Linda Redi-Burger
5. Salt & your favorite seasoning  (Make one for everyone and a really big one for yourself)
6. Foil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375° 
2. Spread out large sheet of foil - 12x12 inches will do it.
3. On foil place carrots, onions, potatoes and half pieces of vege-meat
4. Salt and season. For added flavor you can sprinkle a little olive oil over all
5. Wrap ingredients with foil to make a little bundle.
6. Place foil wrapped veggies and vege-steaks in oven and bake till fork passes through potatoes easily.
7. Gently open foil wrapping and place hobo dinner on plate
8. The taste is incredible. The flavors blend so beautifully you don't need anything else except a tall cold glass of iced sweet tea (caffeine free of course).

This is a great recipe for a youth campout and really healthy to boot. Bring a sack of potatos, a sack of onions and a sack of carrots and cans of Vege-steaks. Have the kids peel their own veggies. Several rolls of foil and you're in business. These will cook in the coals of your campfire and come out amazingly tasty.

You can even do this with Redi-Burger since it can be taken out of the can in chunks and cooked that way and it will hold together. The original recipe uses balls of hamburger.  It's good stuff. If you wait around, you'll be sorry you did.

© 5/23/2015 by Tom King 

Potluck Pizza Party

 

We used to have these church get-togethers at our house where we made homemade pizzas. Friends would gather in teams around a dough ball, smash it flat, roll it out and then decorate it with sauces, cheeses and veggies. This was an SDA group, so the cuisine du jour was lacto-ovo vegetarian. Everybody brought their favorite topping ingredients and cheeses. We the hosts provided the pizza dough (see the recipe below).  It takes just a few minutes to make up a pizza ball. Start an hour or so before the event and you can make up plenty.  

Have any of your guests who have a pizza stone or pizza pan to bring them along. And you'll need a sturdy pizza cutter and a stack of paper plates.  I usually find a volunteer to make a gigantic bowl of salad and have people bring their favorite salad dressings to show off. The handy thing is that a lot of the leftover pizza toppings can be tossed into the salad.

Homemade pizzas are also a great place to test vegetarian meat substitutes. For instance if you want to make a vegetarian sausage pizza, you can use Loma Linda's Little Links or Worthington Saucettes or crumble up some Morningstar Farms Sausage Patties. You may want to brown them in a skillet before putting them on the pizza. Just slice the links into little round disks, fry lightly and scatter them over the pizza. I also like to brown some Loma Linda Redi-Burger or Worthington Vegeburger or Morningstar Farms Grillers Recipe Crumbles and then scatter them over the pizza. Just put a lot of loose cooked vegeburger in a bowl and let pizza makers add as much as they'd like. If you like chicken, Worthington Fri-Chik or Worthington Low Fat Fri-Chik diced up and browned makes a nice topping as well.

The crust is the secret to the whole thing. This never-miss medium to thin pizza crust recipe came from a bread machine recipe book where it was called "New York Style" pizza. I toss in a little whole wheat flour and sprinkle the bottom with corn meal to give it a little Texas touch.

Start with a dough ball.

By making it a potluck homemade pizza party, you not only get healthier pizza, but you also have a fun activity for everybody to do at the party. Lots of friendly conversation, sharing of pizza "secrets" and sharing of ingredients and experimentation. I like to put out a little fresh spinach. Someone inevitably groans until someone adds it to the pizza and tastes it. It's quite good. Everyone will bring all kinds fo stuff from traditional olives, mushrooms, onions and peppers to more creative veggies like artichokes and chives. Some pineapple will inevitably show up and if you're in Texas, watch out for some clown to spike a pizza or two with jalapenos or habanero peppers and cover it with cheddar to hide the trap. Goat cheese is also acceptable as are other unusual cheeses. In Texas somebody inevitably brings a big block of Mexican Cheese, which is an acquired taste.Your pizza is only limited by your imagination.

Ingredients for One Crust:

Cover a 16" pizza stone for a thin crust.

• 2/3 cup warm water – 110° to 115°
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2¼ cups all-purpose or bread flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon cornmeal (optional)
• Whole wheat flour (substitute measure for measure for white flour if you want to fiber up your crust a little)

Directions for making crust:

1. Dump the dry ingredients (not the yeast or cornmeal) into a mixing bowl
2. Put the yeast into the warm water and whisk to blend.  Allow it to sit for maybe 10 minutes till it starts to bubble at the edges.
3. Add all the liquid ingredients and any sediment in the yeast water cup to the mixing bowl and mix it all up with the dough hook.  You can knead it by hand, but I highly recommend you give the barely formed dough ball to the guys in each group and give them the job of kneading the ball for ten minutes (or till they start to whine and then you can probably let them stop, although the crust won't be as crisp and may crumble. You want a very smooth dough ball when you are done kneading. If the dough is too sticky, add a little flour till dough is just barely dampish on the outside, but not sticky to touch.
4. Lightly oil the pizza baking sheet or pizza stone. I like olive oil, but any vegetable oil will work. Sprinkle a little corn meal over the surface of the stone.
5. I'm not too proud to use a rolling pin to flatten out the pizza dough, but some clown in the group will inevitably try to twirl it in the air like you see on TV.  Make sure your kitchen floor is very clean so you can just brush off the dough and go ahead and use it.  Lay the dough over the pizza stone and spread it to the thickness you want. I like a flat thin crust pizza and this recipe is perfect for a thin crust on a 16 inch pizza stone. I like to raise the edges so they keep the sauce and melting cheese from running over the side and mucking up the oven.
6. Preheat oven to 450° to 500°.  The higher temp is better with thin crusts. Go lower if you're doing a thick crust. 
7. Each group then gathers around its pizza crust and decorates it with pizza sauce, cheeses and toppings. Depending on the size of your oven, you can only do a couple at a time, but they only take 8 to 20 minutes depending on the thickness of crust and ingredients. Let the edges darken and the cheese melt till it bubbles a little or the crust won't cook through. See the picture for an idea of how it ought to look. Use the middle rack as much as possible. If doing two at a time put the top and bottom racks as close to the middle as you can get them. Fortunately pizza isn't very thick, so the racks can be close together.

Makes enough crust for one 12-16 inch pizza

Conclusion:

As the pizzas come out, everybody will want to sample each other's handywork. Cut the pizzas in 8 to 16 pieces at first. As the later pizzas come out, you'll be able to cut larger pieces. Push the salad or people will forget it's there.

Sneaky Trick:

You can do this in a big hurry if you just go out and buy a bunch of ready-made pizza crusts - enough for everyone to have a whole pizza; they tend to me a small to medium pizza size.  Then you just deal out the pizza crusts and turn the young-un's loose.  Takes about 10 minutes each to cook from a ready-made crust. 

This make-it-yourself pizza party is a lot of fun for all ages and a particularly good way to generate good fellowship, stimulate conversation and help forge new relationships among people who may not know each other well.  Kids get a kick out of it too, you just have to make sure they wash their hands first.

Tom King © 2013

Haystacks

Photo borrowed from "It's Gotta be Gluten Free" website

First off, we’re not talking about cattle feed here, though if you’ve got a whole lotta people corralled, this traditional Adventist potluck favorite is one of the best ways to feed them all, fill them up and send them on their way in no time.  It’s suitable for feeding visiting choirs, Pathfinder clubs, youth groups of all sizes and any group that shows up needing to be fed on short notice. 

Every city, state, country and continent has its own version of the venerable haystack.  In Hawaii, they put pineapple and macadamia nuts and stuff in it.  Up north I saw a version made with baked beans.  I’m going to describe the way it’s done in parts of Texas.  If you have a local version, you are welcome to post it here for all of us to share.  A Seventh-day Adventist named Ella May Hartlein is sometimes credited with coming up with the recipe in the early 1950s, when she and her family craved tostadas and could not find a Mexican restaurant close to their home according to Wikipedia.  References to similar versions of the now signature SDA dish can be found prior to the appearance and spread of Mrs Hartlein's creation. Apparently the Amish and Mennonites even have their own versions of the haystack as well.  Here's the version I grew up with in the 60s.

Here’s what you need for Texas-Style Haystacks:     

1. Lots of lettuce (chopped or shredded)
2. Bags of Tortilla Chips (or Fritos Corn Chips)
3. Tomatoes - diced
4. Onions
5. Mounds of Grated Cheddar Cheese
6. Sour Cream
7. Black Olives
8. Jalepenos
9. Ranch Dressing
10. Avocados or Guacamole
11. Pace™ Picante Sauce (accept no substitutes)
12. Ranch Style Beans
13. Loma Linda Redi-Burger, Loma Linda Vege-Burger, Worthington Vege-Burger or Morningstar Farms Grillers Recipe Crumbles

Here’s How to Set the Serving Line:

1. Place two long folding tables end to end
2. Chop up the vegetables, put everything in bowls with the proper sized spoons.  The only thing that needs to be heated is the beans and fry the vegeburger.
3.  Set out the serving bowls in this order on the table.

a.      First stack the paper plates at the start of the serving line.  Use the heavy Chinette ones because a haystack can get pretty heavy.

b.      Second place a huge bowl of chips right after the plates.  Tortilla chips are traditional in Texas, but I’ve seen it done (more expensively) with Fritos Corn Chips – regular sized.

c.      Third, heat up a huge pot of Ranch Style™ Beans with a couple of big soup ladles in them.
d.   Fourth, put a small amount of oil in a skillet and brown the vege-burger. You can make haystacks without the burger, but it makes a nice addition to traditional haystacks.

d.      Fifth, chop up a big bowl of diced tomatoes, and a big bowl of chopped lettuce

f.       Sixth, cut up smaller bowls of chopped onions, sliced black olives and sliced jalapenos

g.      Seventh, grate up a big bowl of grated cheddar cheese. I like the sharp kind myself.

h.      Eighth, prepare a big bowl of guacamole or chopped avocados

i.       Ninth, dish up bowls of sour cream and picante sauces and set out bottles of Ranch Dressing, and Catalina French Dressing for visiting Yankees and Californians.

j.       Flatware, napkins, drinks

Construction Techniques:

You build your haystack according to your own tastes, but for newbies, here’s the basic order of battle.  You can pretty much follow the order of setup, but everyone has their preferences.  Here are the directions for constructing the basic haystack:

1. Lay down a bed of chips covering the bottom of your plate. Everything else is built on top of the chips.
2. Scoop hot beans and/or vege-burger on top of the chips
3. Lay down a bed of lettuce on top of the beans
4. Spoon tomatoes generously over the lettuce
5. Sprinkle onions, olives and/or jalapenos to taste over the salad ingredients
6. Cover with grated cheese.
7.  Add picante sauce to taste
8. Decorate with spoonfuls of avocado/guacamole, and ranch dressing (or Catalina French if you must). 
9. Top with a spoonful of sour cream.  Always save one olive to put on top of your little snowcap of sour cream to complete your mountain of deliciousness.

 Warning:

A haystack is not a “Taco Salad”.  It is a breach of etiquette to call it that or to put the chips on top of the beans.  Everything else can be laid down according to your own personal preference.  Take it easy on the jalapenos if you’re not used to them. 

Haystacks are pretty cheap to make and very filling.  Young people love them and because you make them yourself, little kids can even make their own versions which leave out anything “yucky”.  Haystacks are perfect if you need to feed a lot of people fast and you can leave extra unopened bags of chips and beans in the kitchen and add more to the feast if things start running low.  We always keep extra unopened jars of Pace, blocks of cheese, bottles of salad dressing, lettuce and tomatoes to chop up.  If you don’t need them, you can take them home or store the unopened jars for the next time you need to serve this imminently useful dish for your church potluck.

© 2013 By Tom King