Hello there,

There are lots of new things happening in my life lately. I have lots of new ideas for this blog. I am planning on changing the content I post a bit, to be more informative about food and nutrition, post more of my recipes, and also talk about other vegan, health, and wellness related topics.

Unfortunately my last semester at my community college where I will graduate with my associate’s degree and planning for the next step of working towards my bachelor’s degree has had me quite busy lately. I hope to be able to find more time to write here though soon. By Summer there should definitely be more time.

Today I made a recipe though, and am sitting down to type it up and share it in this post.

Before I was vegan, my mom used to make Jambalaya with a seasoning mix and rice, chicken, shrimp, and sausage. I liked it even though it came from a box. I had been thinking about it lately, and how to veganize it.

I wanted to make it with quinoa because I am not the biggest fan of having rice all the time. Plus quinoa has more protein in it, which I like.

This recipe used store-bought meat substitutes for the vegan chicken and sausages, but you could find recipes to make your own if you desire. For the vegan shrimp, I had a plain batch of leftover shrimp seitan  that I froze and defrosted from when I made the vegan shrimp bao recipe. It is not gluten free because of the shrimp seitan, but there may or may not be other vegan shrimp alternatives that are gluten free that you can find in stores if that is important to you.

I do not know for sure if this is very authentic jambalaya, but since it is inspired by it, that is what I am calling it. It is really yummy though, that is for sure!

 Recipe for Vegan Quinoa Jambalaya

Makes about 10 1 cup servings

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Vegan shrimp (either store bought or made from scratch via this recipe)
• 2 Tofurky Italian Sausages, sliced into rounds
• 3 pieces Gardein Chick’n Scallopini chopped into chunks
• 3 tbsp olive oil, plus a bit more to cook the veggies
• 4 cups cooked quinoa
• 2 small-medium yellow onions, chopped
• 1/2 large green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 8 oz canned tomato sauce (I used a no-salt added brand)
• a splash to 1/4 cup of vegetable broth (I used Trader Joe’s Low Sodium broth)
• 1 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp salt (or more if you like salt)
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions:

1. Before you really start to cook, combine the spices in a bowl or little ziplock bag and set aside. Also cook the quinoa in advance, if you wish. It takes about 10-15 minutes to cook, so either way is fine.
2. Cook each vegan “meat” in a frying pan on medium heat with 1 tbsp of oil separately, one at a time, until slightly brown or golden. You can use the same pan for each of them, but I think it works best to cook one at a time, and then set it aside on a plate while you cook the next one.
3. After the “meats” are cooked, heat a little more olive oil into the pan. Add the onions and peppers, and cook until the onions are translucent.
4. Add the tomatoes and cook for a bit longer, stirring a bit.
5. Add a splash (or more) of vegetable broth, the spice mix, and tomato sauce. Make sure the spices and ingredients are thoroughly mixed.
6. Reduce the heat to low, then fold in the quinoa and the vegan shrimp, sausage, and chick’n. Stir to incorporate everything together.
7. Allow to heat thoroughly. Adjust seasonings as desired.
8. Eat! Enjoy!