Vegan Tuesday -- Vegan Baked Beans

I've never made baked beans from scratch before, though I'm not sure why as I love them. I made a big casserole of beans and served them with veggie dogs. I thought the beans were delicious and much less cloyingly sweet than canned beans.


Baked Beans
(from allrecipes.com)
1 (16 ounce) package dry navy beans
6 cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chopped sweet onions
1 clove garlic, minced
3 (8 ounce) cans tomato sauce
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS
Soak beans overnight. Drain and rinse beans. Place beans and water in a large pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, and continue cooking 1 hour, stirring occasionally, until beans are tender. Drain, and transfer to a large casserole dish.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in the onions, and cook until tender. Mix in garlic, and cook until golden brown. Mix onions and garlic into casserole dish with the beans. Stir in the tomato sauce. Mix in brown sugar, molasses, vinegar, mustard, and pepper.
Cover and bake 3 1/2 hours in the preheated oven, stirring frequently and adding water if necessary. Remove cover, and continue baking 30 minutes.

I also made some vegan stuffed celery. I used Tofutti mock-cream cheese, lemon juice, chopped walnuts, salt, pepper, and poppy seeds. Very yummy!

Look at all these peaches!! This isn't even the whole amount from our one tree. Amazing! I saved a bunch of peaches whole, but then I also made almost a gallon of peach butter, which I'll freeze most of it and give the rest away as gifts. The peaches are incredibly delicious and juicy.

This is the basic recipe I used for the peach butter: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/289/Peach_Butter6697.shtml
I made the butter thinner and less sweet than the recipe called for as I wanted to be able to use it for things like ice cream and sauces.

I am so excited about our haul of peaches that I'm going to buy a second fruit tree tonight, and the first place I'll look is the discount grocery store where I bought the peach tree. Maybe I'll find another neglected tree to rescue!