Laptop Lunches #304

Yet another attempt at veganizing my once-beloved chicken enchiladas (I am getting much closer!), some refried beans, Mexican rice (from Cook wtih Manali), and an avocado-salsa salad thing I made.

It is getting colder here--in fact, we just had a snowstorm!--so I can start in on all my oven recipes again. I have started taking a closer look at Morningstar Farms stuff because they're now labeling a lot of it as vegan, and I found their veggie pulled pork and thought it might be possible to put it into enchiladas and not be too pork-like. (I used to use shredded chicken in the enchiladas, and I haven't yet found a good substitute for shredded chicken.) It was rather pork-like--which bodes well for other recipes, if not necessarily what I was going for--but it had the right texture and I really liked the final product. It is decidedly not like what I was trying to do, but it was good.

The refried beans are Goya's Rancheros beans. I wrote to them several months ago asking if the "natural flavors" were plants or not, because they were my favorite canned refried beans, but I was wary of mystery "flavors" because I am vegan. I never got a response, but I noticed that the cans are now labeled vegan! And so are a lot of their other refried beans, incidentally. I don't know if I had anything to do with it (and wish they'd sent a coupon or something) but I'm so excited to have this as an easy option for the future.

If I'm making a Tex-Mex meal, I'm not going to do without rice, and this is a great recipe! It's really versatile. I added some green bell pepper to it when I was adding the jalapeno, and I also halved the recipe because as much as I love Tex-Mex (you're going to see a lot of it as I work my way through what I cooked), I'm not able to get through quite that much. It isn't the way I used to make it, which once upon a time involved bacon, but I'm not ready to veganize that recipe until I can get my enchiladas right. One thing at a time.

I was distraught that the bag of avocados I bought mostly had to be rejects. They would go moldy before they ever ripened, but I managed to get about half of one to cooperate.