These taters are so loaded, you’ll have to keep them locked away from the kids. Safety first!

This recipe serves two, but you can easily halve the ingredients to make a single serving.

Baked Potatoes, Canadian Pizza Styley

Ingredients

2 medium-to-large white baking potatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 cups diced tomatoes, canned or fresh
2 cups mushrooms, canned or fresh
1/2 cup black olives
8 slices of Lightlife Smart Bacon (or the “mock meat” of your choice)
1/2 cup vegan cheese (any brand or flavor will do), shredded
basil to taste
garlic powder to taste
salt to taste
pepper to taste
margarine to taste

Directions

1. Scrub down your potatoes, washing all the dirt and grime off the skins. In an oven (preferably a toaster oven), bake them at (approximately) 425 degrees for 60 minutes.

2. Wait 30-40 minutes before preparing the topping.

3. In a large frying pan or skillet, heat the olive oil on high. Reduce the heat to medium, adding the minced garlic, diced tomatoes, sliced mushrooms, black olives and Smart Bacon. Add the spices – basil, garlic powder, salt and pepper – to taste. Saute, covered on medium-low, until the veggies and bacon are cooked to your liking. Be sure to stir the goods every few minutes.

Note: If you like your veggies well-done, you may want to wait 10 minutes or so before adding the Smart Bacon, as it crisps faster than the tomatoes, mushrooms and olives tenderize.

4. Optional: Reduce the heat to low and sprinkle a little vegan cheese on top of the veggies. Cover and let cook until the cheese is melted.

5. Remove the potatoes from the oven, slicing each in half and emptying its contents onto a plate. If desired, add margarine to garnish.

6. Remove the veggie/bacon mix from the stove and combine it with the potato “meat.” Stuff the potato skins with some of this mix and/or enjoy it as-is.

7. Slip into a carb coma. Awake in time for the next meal. Rinse, repeat.

FWIW, methinks this mock meat/veggie topping would also taste delish atop a plate of pasta. Next time, perhaps?

Updated to add: Oh, snap! Done and doner!

What we have here is basically the same fried veggie concoction as above (doubled), but mixed with a pound and a half (dry weight) of garden rotini and a 26 ounce can of pasta sauce (or half what I’d normally use, so as not to overwhelm the oily goodness of the veggies).

Both dishes are super-yummy, but if I had to choose one…well, I don’t. So there.

Share and Enjoy

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 11:15 am and is filed under Carnivals, Food & Recipes, Human, VeganMoFo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.