Tag Archives: banana

Gluten Free and Vegan Elvis Panini Sandwich!

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Bread, Childhood Favorites, Comfort foods, Cooking, Dinner, Fruit, Gluten Free, Healthy, Kid Friendly, Local, Peanut Butter, Recipes, Rhode Island, Sandwiches, Vegan Bacon, Vegan Health, Vegan Junk Food and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have been trying to eat more healthfully lately. In fact, ever since I went gluten free I have found it hard to make up the ridiculously delicious recipes I was used to creating in the past. But today I dreamed up an idea for an amazing unhealthy sandwich that at first I was skeptical of being able to pull off to meet my needs. As I continued to think about it, I devised the methods that could make it healthier, and is the perfect combination of delicious, ridiculous, healthfulness, and satiety level!

This sandwich is a peanut butter and nanner sandwich, with baked vegan rice paper bacun, made with light tapioca gluten free bread, grilled in a panini maker. This definitely is not a very original idea, I’ve seen many a vegan version of this sandwich on blogs and in cookbooks, but this is my version!

It came out so well, that my panini maker has been given a new life outside of sitting in my basement!

Let me walk you through the steps, in picture form. It’s easy!

Bake the rice paper bacun. I did this recipe’s marinade, minus the ground coconut, soaked the rice paper strips in cold water, then in the marinade, and put them on a cookie sheet sprayed with coconut oil. Then I baked them in a 350 degree F oven for about 15 minutes, checking and flipping every 5 minutes (some got done sooner than others, when that happened I took the ones that were done out and put it on a plate while the rest continued to cook)IMG_9197

Set aside.

Take two pieces of Ener-g gluten free light tapioca loaf bread and spray coconut oil on one side of both slices of bread. Put the coconut oil side down on a plate.

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Take out the peanut butter. This is a locally made, all natural, salt and sugar free peanut butter. It’s so good!

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Place one tablespoon of peanut butter on each slice of bread.

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Cut half a banana into slices. Place on one slice.

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Layer the rice paper bacun you made earlier on top of the bananas. Put the peanut butter slice down on top of the bacon to make the sandwich.

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Place the sandwich into a pre-heated panini grill on medium high for about 5 minutes, more or less depending on your device (check on it).

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Ready to go!

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Enjoy!

Gluten Free Green Smoothie Waffles!

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Breakfast, Cooking, Gluten Free, Green Smoothie, Healthy, No refined sugar, Original Recipes, Recipes, Smoothies, veganism, waffles and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello, I’m sorry I’ve been fairly inactive lately. I’ve been focusing on graduate school and another blog of mine, streamoflaura.net, as well as dreaming up a concept for a youtube channel! I’ll try my best to keep you posted on all of that.

Here’s a new recipe I recently created though! There are plenty of green smoothie pancakes (although I haven’t found a good gluten free one yet), but as far as I could tell, no green waffle recipes! So, I made it!

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Ingredients:

  • 2 cups non dairy milk of choice
  • 1 banana
  • 1 serving of vegan vanilla protein powder (I used Aloha)
  • 2 cups baby spinach
  • 1/2 cup sweet white rice flour
  • 1 cup buckwheat flour
  • 1 tbsp tapioca starch
  • 1 tsp xanthan gum
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

  1. Preheat waffle iron accordingly.
  2. Place ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. You may need to scrape the sides with a rubber spatula several times to ensure everything mixes properly.
  3. Spray iron, and scoop or pour out about 1/4 of the batter. Cook in your waffle making appliance according to directions, waffle irons vary.
  4. Makes about four waffles.
  5. Serve and enjoy.

Vegan Mofo Day 4: Post #4: My blog’s 2 year anniversary is today!

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Anniversary, Childhood Favorites, Peanut Butter, Vegan MoFo 2015 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Hey y’all,

Today is my blog’s 2 year anniversary! I made a cute card for the occasion 🙂 It seems like it has been longer than two years, honestly. I’m so proud of how far I’ve come, too. And although I am currently frustrated with being gluten free AND vegan now, I have a feeling this year I will work out some of the problems I’m having with learning to bake vegan AND gluten free. I am going to try to learn through various cookbooks, which is how I learned to cook/bake in the first place. Then once I feel confident enough, hopefully I can go back to creating my own original, unique recipes. I look forward to sharing these adventures with you! This will also hopefully make my blog more accessible to more people!

This is also my second year participating in Vegan MoFo! Woohoo! I’m finding it a little more challenging than last year however, especially as I am finishing my last few bits of work for school before I have my degree!

Today’s theme was to tell everyone about a weird food combination I love. Well, I don’t really have a really weird one, but some people may find this weird: sometimes I get cravings for a peanut butter and potato chip sandwich. I didn’t make one today, because I’m trying to eat a little bit more healthy than usual, and I don’t have that particular craving/am not in that kind of mood…but an especially crispy potato chip (I like Utz’s chips that have ridges in them best for this) can trigger this desire. I like it best with white bread and smooth peanut butter. I think this comes from eating chips with my sandwiches as a kid (I was rarely even allowed to eat chips!) and making sure each bite of my sandwich included a chip at the same time. Eventually, as I became more autonomous in making my own choices about food, I just put the chips directly into the sandwich.

It’s childlike, weird little things like this that can make me happy.

Oh, and here is a picture of some raw brownie cupcakes I made today that I’ll pretend were in celebration for today.

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Happy Birthday to me! Banana costumes and a birthday-worthy waffle recipe!

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Birthday, Breakfast, Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen, happy herbivore, Happy Herbivore Light and Lean, lindsay s. nixon, mayim bialik, mayim's vegan table, Other Vegan Food Blogs, Recipes, Sunday Brunch, Vegan cookbooks, Vegan Health, veganism, waffles and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For my 30th birthday, which happens to be today, I had a bunch of fun stuff planned. The biggest thing was my run last weekend, in which I lived up to my blog’s name, and ran in a banana suit in the Providence (RI) Monster Dash 5k. I made a PR by about 2 minutes and it was soooo fun running in this costume:

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10435985_10100231982422689_6184586216801925680_nIt was a big hit with kids, especially. When I ran through the large crowd of people cheering us on, so many kids along the way would exclaim “there goes the banana!” And many of them put their little hands out to catch a high five from me as I ran past them…it was so cute. I waved to several of them, and even had a trifecta of 3 little kids put their hands out all at once that made me feel like I was a celebrity working the crowd. Haha. So that was cool, and I also plan to use this banana suit for more things for this blog, to make it funnier. You’ll see what is in store for it soon!

This morning, I made birthday cake waffles. I had some left over chocolate sauce from my candy apples and some strawberry syrup left from the strawberry frosted donut recipe that I put on top. Yum.

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BIRTHDAY Cake Vegan Waffles

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup Immaculate yellow cake mix (found in my local Target in the baking section)
  • 1 cup vegan bisquick mix (read labels)
  • 1-2 scoops vanilla vegan protein powder (optional)
  • 2 tbsp melted Earth Balance
  • 1 tbsp applesauce
  • 1 ½ cup vanilla almond milk
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • ¼ tsp almond extract
  • ¼ cup vegan non-pareille sprinkles (read label, I was able to find one without the confectioner’s glaze that’s in most sprinkles at my regular local grocery store, and instead has carnauba wax.

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together and follow waffle iron’s directions to cook them. Makes about 5 waffles depending on your maker.

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The batter

Tonight my family is making me a vegan vanilla cake, with raspberry filling and chocolate buttercream. I am making vegan crockpot buffalo ranch lasagna from this recipe for my dinner. I will share pictures later in a new post, maybe.

Also, I got three new cookbooks for my birthday present:

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So far I have looked in Chloe’s book the most, and I was seriously drooling after that. I will be cooking out of these for awhile in the next few weeks I think, so get ready for me sharing some reviews and pictures! 🙂

Vegan MoFo Day 25: Easy Green Tea Smoothie and Latte Recipes for a Busy Day

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Drinks, Green Smoothie, Recipes, Smoothies, Vegan Mofo 2014 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today I’m headed into Boston for a research study. I woke up earlier than I’d like to admit, fit in a run that ended up being pretty crappy, and now I’m trying to rush to get other stuff done before I have to leave for the train. However, I get to also go to Veggie Galaxy with a friend tonight!

Back in my pre-vegan days, there was this Asian Market I loved exploring when I lived in Boston. I once bought a huge green tea latte milk tea mix that tasted slightly like melon, it was amazing.

To try and recreate that taste, I have made this green tea smoothie (I wish it looked more green!).

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It’s pretty simple actually.

1 1/2 cups almond coconut milk

1 cup watermelon (I froze a bunch of it in cup-sized portions this Summer to use later in the year)

1 banana

Vanilla Protein Powder

1 tbsp green tea powder (matcha)

You just blend these ingredients together to make the smoothie.

I also have really been enjoying an even simpler recipe for a hot green tea latte.

You simmer 1 cup almond coconut milk and 1 tbsp green tea (matcha powder) until boiling, and then I like to add some liquid stevia extract in to that. Mmm. And great because I refuse to drink coffee but haven’t given up caffeine entirely.

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Vegan MoFo day 4! Thirsty Thursdays–Cranberry Orange Dream Smoothie

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Comfort foods, Food for Fall, Green Smoothie, Original Recipes, Recipes, Smoothies, Vegan Mofo 2014 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY (or thereabouts!) to my BLOG!

I am so excited to be participating in Vegan MoFo 2014 as a celebration. I have come along way since starting this blog. From being so afraid to make up my own recipes (literally shaking while my first real recipe was in the oven!) My recipes at first did not usually come out all that impressively. But now I’m excited to be having some really delicious things happen, and recipes becoming the biggest focus of my blog. Since I’ve tested a lot of the recipes I created for Vegan MoFo already, I know you are all in for a big treat!! I can’t wait to see what this next year of blogging brings!

Cranberry Orange Dream Smoothie

So Fall is just around the corner and I wanted to make a new smoothie that features a famous Fall ingredient aside from pumpkin—cranberry sauce! The cranberries do not overpower this smoothie and are not the most prominent flavor. Overall though, they make the smoothie sweeter and give a unique, comforting taste. The flax gives it some Omega 3 vitamins, something I’ve been trying to incorporate into my cooking more but haven’t been able to find many ways yet besides smoothies.

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Ingredients:

  • 1 banana
  • 1/2 cup plain flavored almond milk or water
  • 1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
  • 1 cup baby spinach or other greens
  • 1/4 cup whole berry cranberry sauce
  • 1/2 tbsp flax meal
  • 1 scoop plain or vanilla protein powder
  • 1 tbsp agave or liquid stevia to taste

Directions:

Blend and drink.

photo 2 (4)

 

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VeganMoFo.com

Peppermint Patty Green Smoothie!

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Green Smoothie, Holiday Food and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

ImageI’m pretty sure this is not too unique of a recipe or idea. But I made it myself and it was so good (and simple!) that I wanted to share it here (though I already shared it on the Banana Curl, Vegan Girl Facebook page).

Recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup vanilla almond milk
  • 1 whole banana (broken up into smaller chunks)
  • 3 mint leaves
  • 1 cup spinach
  • 1 tbsp raw cacao powder
  • 1 tbsp vegan unflavored protein powder
  • Liquid stevia to taste
  • Peppermint extract (just a tiny amount, probably less than 1/8 tsp)
  • Ice (2 handfuls but use whatever amount you want)

Directions:

Blend all ingredients in a full size blender. Depending on your blender’s strength and other factors, you may need to scrape down the sides halfway through blending. 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

Foodie (Photo) Friday! Aloha salad, holiday pie, green smoothies, galore!

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Food for Fall, Foodie Friday, Getting Healthy, Green Smoothie, Holiday Food, Other Vegan Food Blogs, Seasonal Fall Foods, The Vegan Stoner Cookbook, Tofu and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello!

I was sick this week with a pretty exhausting cold. I’m feeling much better now, though. Since my exhaustion and my lung congestion made it difficult for me to work out, I decided I was going to try and eat much better than usual and eat more fruits and veggies than normally (even though on average I get at least 10 servings a day or so) and so I finally gave in and tried some green smoothies. I think I’m going to be better about eating more fruits and veggies (Including green smoothies) from now on even though I’m not sick, because… duh. I also ate a lot of Amy’s No Chicken Noodle soup, which was awesome.

The first one was a banana-less kale based “Green monster” one here

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I had to add a lot of extra water because it came out way too thick. Also, I gagged several times still, and it sort of tasted like a salad dressing or something to me, oops. But I thought it was decent at first, since I had never had one before, that is, until I tried the Caramel Apple Green Smoothie from the recipes here. That one is by far much tastier. I used almond butter instead of sunbutter though. I don’t have a picture of that one, though.

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Next was the Holiday Pie from The Vegan Stoner Cookbook. It’s basically tofu and non dairy milk blended together, mushrooms and garlic cooked in soy sauce, prepared stuffing, and I decided to use the optional tofu hot dogs on top. I also dipped it in cranberry sauce. It was quite delicious.

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I rate this recipe 4 good bananas, one bad! (It just didn’t have the total wow! factor of 5 good ones, but I like it)

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Then there is this salad I made tonight!

Aloha Salad with Tiki Tempeh.

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So good, and made me think of fond memories from the Summer. I didn’t think bananas would be so tasty and add such a great texture contrast to this but it was definitely the best part for sure! Everything tastes so good, though! I also majorly splurged on a small amount of macadamia nuts which are so yummy, and added reduced fat dried coconut. The dressing is creamy and super tasty, the tempeh has great flavor, and all the fruits along with the spinach and cole slaw mix are wonderful together.

This has to be rated 5 good bananas!Image

I’m hoping this upcoming week I’ll have time to write some more fun entries besides just on Friday, but we’ll see what my life has in store from me. Until then take care and eat yummy foods!