seasonings and flavorings

No-mato sauce 2.0: AKA Awesome Sauce (tomato-free marinara, also vegan, corn-free, soy-free)

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David calls this Awesome Sauce. Awhile back, I thought I’d come up with an ideal (for us) nomato sauce. It’s good but requires more work and ingredients than I have energy for most nights, and I don’t have the energy to put much forethought into food prep lately. Sometimes you just get into a rut. Having to be constantly vigilant about ingredients and not being able to eat out if you want a change of pace gets really tedious. So here is No-mato 2.0, AKA Awesome Sauce. This recipe requires a blender or food processor (we used our Nutri Ninja with the 16oz cup), but an immersion blender makes quick work of this too. Fair warning: this sauce is nuclear-pumpkin-safety orange. It’s delicious, but I haven’t been able to make it any redder. Since I don’t care and I think it’s delicious, I’m posting my recipe. Ingredients 1-12 ounce jar …

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Siete Foods Appreciation Post

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Note: This is not an affiliate post or a sponsored post. We just love Siete this much. It’s so hard to have food allergies and celiac disease in this world, so we love sharing our rare good food experiences. Confession: we have tacos pretty much every day for breakfast. Not breakfast tacos, but dinner tacos (vegan meat, vegan cheese, lettuce) for breakfast. It started out as a quick and easy safe filling breakfast awhile back, and it’s become the best breakfast idea ever. So we buy our Siete tortillas in bulk direct from their website, and have them shipped wherever we’re staying. We also buy their chorizo seasoning to add to Beyond Beef (vegan ground meat substitute) for taco filling. Siete does have actual taco seasoning and it’s definitely delicious but it also contains tomatoes, so we stick to the chorizo, which is tomato-free. And probably THE best pre-mixed seasoning …

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Date Caramel: gluten-free, vegan, free of allergens (unless you’re allergic to dates, of course)

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We left Arizona last month. We’d planned to stay until the end of tax season, which was extended until mid-May, but by the end of March, we had to call it: it was too hot and we needed to leave early. We’ll be working our way back up to Crescent City, California, because we loved it so much last year. But we’re going slow this time: short hops and staying a week in each place. This gives us time to rest, work, and check out the local area. We had a nice week in Indio, California! We’ve passed through here many times with and without the RV, but never stayed a week. What a treat! Did you know they farm dates here? We stopped at a local market that advertised fresh produce. It was a cramped little convenience store with a bunch of produce— including beautiful juicy-looking dates! We got …

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Chili Powder

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Pre-mixed chili powder is easy to find at just about every grocery store, but it’s also pretty easy to make yourself. Plus you can give it your own custom flare based on preferences and needs. Mine has only a mild heat and the actual proportion of cumin in each batch varies depending on my mood. This will not quite fill an empty spice jar, but can easily be halved, doubled, or tripled and stored in a mason jar. Ingredients 4 tbsp ground ancho chile 2 tbsp cumin 1 tbsp cocoa powder 2 tsp oregano 1 tsp garlic powder 1/2 tsp ground coriander Instructions Mix in a small bowl or glass, and use a small funnel to pour into an empty spice jar. Notes If you like heat, replace any amount of ancho with chipotle or other ground chile. The ancho chili tends to be a pretty mild pepper, but you …

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