Holiday Helpers! Roasted Butternut Squash with Fennel

Check out this super easy, super tasty, super seasonal side dish to add to your holiday table!

Roasted Butternut Squash with Fennel
Such a simple list of ingredients! And when you have great ingredients, it's best

Holiday Helpers! Easy Vegan Cheese Ball

This purty little gal was originally featured in The Complete Guide to Even More Vegan Food Substitutions. (Fairwinds Press, 2015) by me and Celine Steen. But I have been making a variation of this ball since way back in 2006 when we were working on 500 Vegan Recipes. What can I say? I love balls!

Smoky Pub Cheese

Smoky Pub Cheese from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman (Fairwinds Press)

Smoky Pub Cheese
Have you been craving a vegan cheese that isn't made by blending cashews (or other nuts) and then having to wait a week (or more) while it funk-tifies? Yeah, that artisan vegan cheese making is best left to the professionals if you ask me! I like my homemade vegan cheese fast and easy!  And it seriously doesn't get easier than this. If you follow the microwave instructions you could be on the couch binging season 2 of Stranger Things in two minutes!

Eating Vegan on a Budget in a Food Desert Part 2: 7-Elempanadas

"7-Elempanadas" made with only ingredients available at 7-Eleven in North Long Beach.

Welcome to North Long Beach, California.  Northtown (aka Northside, Norf Norf, or Uptown) is a community of 17 diverse and colorful neighborhoods, and filled with about 93,000 diverse and colorful residents.*

3rd Annual SoCal VegFest Cooking Demo: The Monte Cristina

The Monte Cristina from Vegans Go Nuts! by Joni Marie Newman and Celine Steen

Last weekend was the 3rd Annual SoCal VegFest held at the OC Fairgrounds. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of vegans, vegetarians, and veg-curious folks filled the humongous venue and enjoyed a weekend of learning, shopping, music, community, and of course, eating!

Eating Vegan on a Budget in a Food Desert Part 1: Roasted Potato Tacos with Radish Pico

Roasted Potato Tacos with Radish Pico

First let me explain how I ended up living in a food desert. I grew up a few miles down the road from where I am currently living in a typical suburban neighborhood. A standard three bedroom house in a post-war tract of homes built in the late '40s and early '50s. Lakewood, California. I grew up in a middle class family. My parents were divorced by the time I was four years old, and I visited my

Peanut Butter French Toast Dippers with Peanut Butter Maple Pecan Dipping Sauce

It's getting to be that time of year, even in sunny Southern California, where it's still tipping the therm at over 80 during the day. But mornings and evenings are indeed starting to get chilly, and the fall flavors of maple and pecan just feel right. This recipe originally appeared in Celine and my newest book, Vegans Go Nuts! (Now available wherever books are sold.)

Peanut Butter French Toast Dippers with Peanut Butter Maple Pecan Dipping Sauce
*Soy Free
*Quick and Easy

Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking by Celine Steen (Plus a Giveaway!)

Squash Blossom Pizza from Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking (page 63)
by Celine Steen. Photograph by: Celine Steen

I have never been so excited to do a cookbook review then I am to do this one. Celine Steen of Have Cake Will Travel fame is a long time dear friend and co-conspirator in the vegan cookbook scene. Her and I go way back to when we penned 500 Vegan Recipes together in 2008, and then went on to write several more cookbooks together. Even when we weren't partnering up to write, I still made sure to have her gorgeous food photography grace the pages of a few of my solo efforts. It's fair to say I had VERY high hopes for this tome.

Nothing could make my heart swoon more than flipping through the pages of Celine's solo debut, Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking! From the cover, to the font, to the photos, and, of course, the recipes...just everything about this cookbook makes me squee!

Make sure to read all the way to the bottom of this post to enter for a chance to win a copy of Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking for yourself!

Southern Style BBQ Pecans over Garlicky Greens and Quick and Dirty Rice

Last weekend at the first ever Plant Fest at Tanaka Farms, I got to do the thing I love doing best! Teach non-vegans how to cook vegan foods that taste great! Foods that have a familiar flavor, don't have any "weird" ingredients, made with everyday home cooking tools, with ingredients you can find at any grocery store, won't break the bank, and won't keep you in the kitchen all day.

And sometimes you just have a go-to recipe that multi-tasks. For me, it's the BBQ Pecans from the Texas Hold 'Ems recipe in Vegans Go Nuts! These sassy little nuts go so well in so many dishes, from tacos, to bowls, to sandwiches, to burritos...you get the idea. So I decided to bring these bad girls back for another run. This time with some ridiculously easy Garlicky Greens, and a Quick and Dirty Rice that is a play on the Cajun Red Beans and Rice recipe from Vegan Food Gifts.

Summer Grilling with Lightlife Smart Dogs!

It's very rare that I agree to do a sponsored post here on Just the Food. So rare, in fact, that this is the first one I have done in ten-plus years of blogging! Sure, I have received sample products and cookbooks to review over the years, but I have never done a completely sponsored post. Why? Because, for me, I have to REALLY be in love with a product for me to partner with them. When I was contacted by Lightlife Foods to participate in their summer grilling series featuring Smart Dogs, how could I say no?

I absolutely love summertime in the LBC. In sunny Southern California, and especially in Long Beach, summer means barbecue, hanging out with friends outdoors, and parties in the park. I barely cook inside, at all, from the minute the time change gives us longer days, in our house, we are all about the grill. So when Lightlife offered to send me a mini grill, tools, a cooler, condiments and enough moolah to grab all the Smart Dogs we would need to get through the entire summer...we were STOKED!