A recipe! Stuffed Peppers

I know. This isn't a food blog. I like to do reviews on vegan food, on restaurants and once in a while on vegan products. I have hardly ever passed along a recipe.

Last week Mike and I weren't sure what we wanted to do for dinner. I had bought green peppers at the farmer's market and thought I would finally try to make stuffed recipes. They came out so good that I just have to share my recipe.

This takes less than 15 minutes to prepare, and then the bake time. And so easy!

This is what you need:

green peppers, cleaned out, as many as you are doing dinner for (I made three)
a little olive oil
tomato paste, one 8oz can
Beyond Meat Chicken strips, cut in pieces (I think you could use the Beyond Meat meat crumbles too)
Daiya cheese shreds, your choice of flavor
Veggies, cut and diced up. You're for the picking. I used broccoli, onions, cabbage, kale and mushrooms
black beans, one bag
quinoa (optional) I thought of this afterwards!
salt
pepper
garlic powder
cayenne pepper
.
Preheat the oven to 350.

In a saute pan or skillet, add all of the ingredients minus the green peppers.  Cook on medium heat and mix well. Add in the salt, pepper, garlic powder and cayenne powder, to taste.

Remove from heat and add the mixture to all of the green peppers. Place the stuffed green peppers in a big enough piece of aluminum foil so the pepper can be fully wrapped. I add a little water in the wrapped foil so the pepper can steam.

Bake for 30 - 40 minutes. You want them to bake enough so the green pepper can be cut with a fork when eating.

Ready to serve. I served this with an arugula salad. The stuffed peppers were delicious. Play around with the spices, and use whatever veggies you like.

You can make this a completely non-processed dish by not using the Beyond Meat and Daiya cheese.

Please let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading!

Restaurant review - Hops and Pie

Mike and I were at a fundraiser a couple of weeks ago and sat with a sweet couple who were also vegan. Our conversation turned to food (imagine that) and they started telling us about a relatively new place in town called Hops and Pie. Being that it is on the west side of town (where we live) we were excited about their excitement.

Friday night and there was a 20 minute wait. They texted us when our table was ready. The wait gave us time to walk around the Tennyson shops. The woman and server who greeted us both when we first arrived and when we returned for our table were amazingly kind and friendly, and if you have read past revues you know how important that is to us.

Beer and pizza. They have a lot of beer. I'm not a drinker and Mike doesn't drink beer, but it seemed like everyone else in the place (which was packed) was enjoying one of the beer offerings.

Our new friends had told us about the pizza. Before we could get to that we saw the vegan mac n cheese appetizer. Seriously. How could we pass that up. We didn't pass it up and as soon as it came out we devoured it. Tasty, with many flavors, including miso. It was a great way to start our experience at Hops and Pie.

There are a lot of pizza options. I meant to order a hand-tossed, wheat crust pizza but with my excitement with all of the other toppings I forgot. The toppings we ordered were smoked tofu, Sicilian seitan, mushroom, onions, whole garlic cloves with Daiya cheese.

Our pizza was delicious. We will play around with toppings next time and order the hand-tossed dough (per our new friends recommendation). It was such a great experience to enjoy great vegan pizza in a busy, bar-like atmosphere. And close to home for us.

The service side was great too. Tayler was attentive, always kept our water glasses full, was kind and checked in enough to make sure all was well.

We will definitely be back! If you like the kind of atmosphere I described, I highly recommend Hops and Pie. They are located at 3920 Tennyson Street in the Highlands part of NW Denver. For you beer lovers, Wednesday night is $2 craft can night from 5pm - close.

Thank you for reading and if you go to Hops and Pie please let us know what you think!

A new vegan world

Vegan chocolate croissants? Check.

Vegan chicken made from pea protein? Check.

More people knowing what "vegan" means? Check.

Vegan fashion shows? Check.

Last week Mike and I went to the Colorado Symphony. We took the new light rail downtown and decided to grab a bite to eat at BD's Mongolian Barbeque before the concert. We had eaten there before and knew that they had tofu and also that they totally took care of vegans. They even give the grill an extra clean if you let them know you're vegan.

What surprised us was that next to the tofu they had meats. Well, they had Gardein chicken and Gardein beef! I couldn't believe it. What a wonderful surprise, and we both really enjoyed being able to add some of both to our dinners.

The world is really changing for vegans. In my 17 years of being vegan there have been huge changes. And just in the last couple of years we have Daiya, Gardein and most recently Beyond Meat. Aside from the processed foods I would bet that the amount of people who know what kale is has grown significantly!

All of these changes make me happy. I love to eat, and new vegan eating adventures seem to be all over the place.

There are also more of us, and I'm sure that's why our selection just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I also think it's because many of us have stopped settling. We want better. Better food, better service, nicer restaurants. And when we keep asking for (and demanding for) better, sooner or later we get it.

I conclude this post with another amazing part of our vegan world: vegan ice cream. Yes, check that off too. Sweet Action in Denver. With flavors like salted butterscotch and peanut butter oreo, you definitely get the sense that we are living in a new vegan world.

Thanks for reading!