Vegan Without Cruelty [to non-vegans]

I really, really need to find another tagline.

I first encountered black bean enchiladas/burritos with the extra flavor and nutrition kick of sweet potatoes in Leanne Ely’s awesome Saving Dinner cookbook. It sounded gross to me but we had enjoyed nearly every recipe from that book so I decided to trust her and try it.

They can be enchiladas or burritos… I think I make them up as burritos, with no sauce and no baking, just cause I’m too lazy to take those later steps. Green chile and soy sour cream sauce and other additions for these that I find as I surf the internet for recipes sound appetizing… but I get so darn hungry.

My husband doesn’t like ‘em so much, but I adore them, and I adore the nutrition.

I love to serve them with a big bowl of Leanne Ely’s depression fighting, attitude adjusting, no winter weight gaining, cancer stopping veggie soup done up Mexican style. For my nonvegan friends I throw some real cheese on top of or inside the burritos/enchiladas. But they are nutritionally complete on their own.

I am a recent convert, so I am not raising my child vegan, just asking her to taste what I make and adding this or that if it will get her to try new things. Vegan is weird anyway… and then, we do eat a lot of exotic food. Middle Eastern, Indian and Mexican foods are not always that kid-friendly.

So when I am feeding kids I add even more cheese and call them ‘cheesy burritos’ or ‘cheesy enchiladas’.

You can get away with a lot, with kids, just by adding the word ‘cheesy’ to the name of the food.

And then all they see is the cheese, and they don’t really even have time to say ‘ew’. It’s just so good, by the time they take the required one bite (especially if you were smart enough to let them get good and hungry before supper) it’s too late.

They’re already hooked on something that’s also good for them.

Tonight I used this recipe from chef #788844 on Recipezaar:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Sweet-Potato-Black-Bean-Enchiladas-292128

But I did NOT use corn (that just seems like a bit too much) or green chiles (didn’t have any).

I cut up and boiled a huge sweet potato skin-on in hopes of preserving some of the nutrients lost when you peel.

I used my food processor to chop up a big onion nice and fine, not into a paste, but small. I sauteed that for a bit in olive oil, added a couple teaspoons of minced garlic, a can of black beans and the amounts of cumin chili powder and coriander called for. I let it cook for a bit just to be sure, but in the end I decided it needed more salt and chili powder. So you could add those a little at a time if you wanted, til it tasted good to you.

I used small tortillas and got about 15 or 16 little enchiladas out of them. I made a small pan with no green enchilada sauce for the little one.

I thought longingly of Karina’s recipe for homemade green chile sauce for her prizewinning enchiladas here,

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/budgetrecipechallenge/recipe2.php

but just dumped green enchilada sauce sparingly on mine so they wouldn’t be too hot.

It is not necessary to use soy analogs, as my husband calls them. A lot of people are against them for various reasons. A lot of vegan cheeses are YUCKY. But I need to buy stock in Tofutti- I love so many of their products, and I love these burritos with a smear of their guacamole-flavored Better than Sour Cream.  

Cooked sweet potatoes are an awesome food for infants/toddlers– my friend’s baby eats them like crazy and my child ate them like crazy and still does at five– just mashed with a bit of butter, or cut up into cubes.  They are very nonallergenic (sorry, not sure how to say that correctly) and they are such a wonderful whole food. 

I keep them on hand and feed them to my friend’s baby every chance I get. I use every sweet potato recipe I can find that sounds even remotely good. I veganize non vegan recipes– believe me, Kim without her sweet potato pie is not a pretty thing. And the hummingbird cake– HEAVEN! 

Sweet potatoes are supposed to be a fertility booster too– that was the original reason I started forcing myself to find every possible way to actually eat them myself, as opposed to just giving them to the little one.

But now fertility isn’t so much an issue… and I just love sweet potatoes. They are awesome in so many ways.   YUM!

So give this one a try. Hop it up any way you’d like.  If you’re put off by the sweet potato thing at first, just smother it with cheese, make up that homemade chile sauce, or use my favorite Better Than Sour Cream. Green salsa mixed with Better Than Sour Cream is darn good too.

I wish you many benefits to your health, your family’s health, your karma, and a healthier environment as we step away from factory farming for meat dairy and eggs– not only insanely cruel to animals but also making us very sick.

Enjoy! Salud! Skal!