Salad

We had this salad with our roasted beets. This time we threw in a couple craisins and my lady had some avocado in hers, as you can see. She also made a simple dressing with oil, vinegar, garlic and salt & pepper.

Roasted Beets and Onions

I believe I got this recipe from the company where we get our produce delivered. We had gotten two bunches of baby gold beets and I was unsure as to what to do with them! The recipe was easy enough; take the beets, onions, and garlic cloves, toss them with some olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and stick in the oven. Our oven sucks; it usually runs hot so as you can see, some of the beets and onions got overcooked. And we even turned the heat down in order to try and avoid that. What we did eat was quite tasty; the beets were somewhat sweet which I wasn't expecting and the roasted garlic cloves....yummy! I am glad we tried this as neither my lady nor I had ever cooked with beets.

Salad

Another delicious dinner salad with the basic ingredients of leaf lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, sprouts, sunflower seeds, shaved parmesan and pepper. My lady captured a great pic of the salads this time.

Stir-Fried Tofu with Greens and Cashews

This dish was taken from the May 2000 issue of Vegetarian Times and had a nice taste but it came out extremely salty. I followed the directions in steaming and salting/peppering the greens in batches but I think we had less than greens than the recipe called for so the salt was just too strong. So salty in fact that we couldn't eat much of the greens, and after a moment, the tofu absorbed some of the salt when we put them together; it was a shame it turned out as such as I could tell the underlying flavor was quite nice. We used both kale and chard as the greens. I hope to try it again someday, but I will be holding back on the salt by a lot!

Omelet with Leeks and Irish Cheddar

This deliciously naughty butterific dinner omelet was based on another flat omelet I had made from Vegetarian Supers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen by Deborah Madison. I softened up some leeks and grated the cheese and mixed them all up with the eggs and cooked til the bottom was golden, slid it out, flipped it over and cooked til firm. It wasn't quite as flavorful as the previous omelet since it had basil and smoked mozzarella, but it was still decadent goodnesss....

Seitan "Chicken" and Cashews

This dish was really tasty! It was the first time I'd use seitan, let alone "chicken style". It came from The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook by Cathe Olsen and had lots of great fresh veggies in it; such as onions, bell pepper, carrots, cabbage and corn. We made the sauce with a small amount of veggie stock, soy sauce, arrowroot powder and red pepper flakes. It was quite flavorful and the texture was good. Upon opening the seitan, straining it and ripping it into bite size pieces, it felt like I was handling meat which was kind of weird, but it all worked out. I had some leftovers on some steamed rice and it was super yummy! I would definitely like to make this again and also make some more seitan based dishes.

Salad

Today we had this salad for lunch. About the same ingredients as last time we made it; mix of greens, baby spinach, sprouts, carrots, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, shaved parmesan and pepper. I'm glad we've been getting salad fixins in our deliveries and have been eating them more often.

Chard Mashed Potatoes

I guess potatoes were our theme for this week. We also received baby chard and a head of romenesco broccoli in our produce delivery so decided to make these mashed potatoes from the March 2001 issue of Vegetarian Times to utilize the chard and then just steam the broccoli. We topped the potatoes, once served, with a small amount of grated Parmesan for that little bit of extra flavor. Very tasty.

Portuguese Potato and Kale Soup

This deliciously satisfying soup came from The Big Book of Vegetarian by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. We received some baby kale, onions and carrots in our produce delivery and this soup put them to great use! We also got to use our new food processor to blend up the russet potatoes to make the soup creamier before adding back them back to the stock and throwing the red potatoes and kale in. A bit of salt & pepper, and viola, a tasty dinner!

Leek and Garlic Risotto

This dish came from Local Flavors by Deborah Madison. The actual title is Leek and Green Garlic Risotto, but when I grabbed the green garlic, it had gone soft so I just used regular garlic. We choose this recipe to use the leeks and green garlic we had delivered on Monday but it was very rich; too rich in fact. We each only ate about 1/4 of the servings. This is the second time we've made a risotto that was just too rich for us. I think this one would have been ok had we just had a small dollop as a side dish to something else rather than trying to have it as a main course. Not surprised it was so rich with cream in it. It actually turned me off on trying to make any other risotto dishes for awhile. Oh well, there are plenty of other recipes to try!

Salad

Tonight we just threw together a nice big salad with a lot of the items we received in our produce delivery on Monday: a salad mix of greens, baby spinach, radishes & carrots. We also threw some items in we had on hand: cherry tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, sunflower seeds, freshly ground pepper, and then I shaved some parmesan cheese on top. It was a very satisfying salad.

Chard and Rice Casserole

This tasty casserole was taken from The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook by Cathe Olson. The actual title was Kale and Rice Casserole, but we used chard instead since that was one of the items in our weekly produce delivery. It was really yummy. We had just gotten a food processor so I was able to mince the chard quite easily. The only thing was that it turned the brown rice pink when I first mixed it in. That went away upon baking it though. The egg topping consisted of eggs, nutritional yeast flakes, nutmeg, salt, pepper and a small amount of cheese, which was optional. I really liked the way the egg browned during the baking. It was quite tasty and the leftovers kept well and I had them twice during the work week. I think we'll be making this again.

Corn and Cashew Nut Curry

This yummy curry came from The Wok Bible by Sunil Vijayakar, Becky Johnson and Jenni Fleetwood. It consisted of shallots, cashews, red curry paste, potatoes, lemon grass, tomatoes, corn, celery, ketchup, soy sauce, brown sugar with fresh basil on top. The recipe also called for kefir lime leaves which we couldn't find and scallions which went bad before we made this. It was quite flavorful and the leftovers were good the next day. It was a bit wetter than I expected, but the taste was nice and it firmed up when stored for leftovers.

Slow Spanish Rice and Beans

An easy Sunday favorite from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. Read more about this delicious stand-by here or here from the past when we've made it.

French Onion Soup

This soup was fantasic! I have always loved French Onion Soup and I've been on the lookout for a vegetarian version. My lady found the recipe in The Big Book of Vegetarian by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. It was so filling and rich; especially compared to the lighter dishes we've been focusing on. We used Gruyere cheese and it was delicious on top of the French bread. My only gripe would be that I didn't carmelize the onions enough so they weren't quite as soft and sweet as I would have liked. Something to work for next time we make it though! We heated up the leftovers for another dinner, threw it in the broiler after adding the bread and cheese and it was just as good as the night we made it. Yum!

Spicy Black Bean Chili

This yummy chili came from the book, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. It had a really nice flavor and not too spicy for my lady to enjoy. We had it with some Jasmine Rice; very satisfying. It had minimal ingredients: onion, bell pepper, garlic, chili powder, tomatoes, black beans, green chiles and salt & pepper but packed a flavorful punch. Will probably make it again.

Sesame-Crunch Tofu

Another recipe featuring Jasmine Rice from Entertaining for a Veggie Planet by Did Emmons. The tofu was very tasty. We marinated it for a few hours; the book suggests anywhere from 1-24 hours to marinate. It says to drain the tofu keeping the marinade for a drizzle. There was no marinade left! I put together a little mixture of soy sauce & sesame seed oil as a drizzle since the marinate consisted of that plus fresh ginger and garlic. The tofu was rolled in a flour and toasted sesame seed mixture then fried and turned out nice and crunchy. It was pretty flavorful although I don't think my body liked the flour too much. A nice filling dinner.

Tofu, Broccoli, and Tomatoes with Curried Peanut Sauce

Not the most original name, but a unique tasting dish from a cookbook we recently received from a good friend; Entertaining for a Veggie Planet by Didi Emmons. The dish had quite a different flavor to it than we've been having. The Curried Peanut Sauce had a very strong flavor. A small amount drizzled on top was just enough; more than that would have been overpowering. Another different thing was cooking the tomatoes; not used to eating warm cherry tomatoes. A very odd sensation for us. We put the mixture on some Jasmine Rice as suggested in the book. A good meal; will we make it again? I'd say probably not. The best thing I liked about it was the broccoli, it's been a long time since I'd had any and boy was it yummy!

Sweet Glazed Tofu Cutlets

I've been wanting to make this again for some time and finally got around to it. We both really liked it last time we made it and it was as flavorful as I remembered. I could have cooked the tofu just a bit longer but it still came out ok. It was a bit more chewy last time and I think the tofu we used this time was fresher so there were a few reasons the texture was different probably.

More recipes coming soon

Luinda has been on vacation and then sick so we haven't done a lot of home cooking these last couple of weeks. That will change this week so stay tuned! Happy New Year!