Friday, October 10, 2014

Les Bouchées Quotidiennes

It's finally Fall break! Woo-hoo! I also realized that I haven't done a meal post in over a month, so that was my first order of business for Fall break! A month or so ago, I won a copy of Salad Samurai, which I had been looking forward to reading ever since I heard about it. I will definitely do a full review of it once classes are over, but for now, these are the first recipes I've made from it. I made my own salad with the That 70s Tofu recipe (roasted in tamari, apple cider vinegar, etc.) and the Upstate dressing. The Upstate dressing is supposed to be a healthier and gluten-free version of Annie's Woodstock dressing, which I loved when I was younger. Both recipes were incredibly flavorful and easy to make! I also love that she splits up the recipes by season...but I will save the rest of my lovey-dovey feelings for Salad Samurai when I do a full review! 

Typically when we think of "sweet and sour" we think of a stir-fried dish, or even sauce that comes with spring rolls. This sweet and sour brown rice salad from Isa Does It is possibly my new favorite sweet and sour recipe! I did make a couple of changes: I used steamed edamame instead of azuki beans and I used sprouted green peas instead of mung beans. I think next time I will probably leave the sprouts out, because I've come to realize that I am not a huge fans of sprouted beans. Besides that, this salad is tangy, zesty, crunchy, and super flavorful! Don't skip the fresh mint or cilantro! This would be a great lunch to pack for any day of the week as well.

Near the end of summer, I was walking through the grocery store, and I realized that I almost forgot to make minestrone this summer. I quickly looked up the ingredients to my favorite recipe from Shutterbean, and cooked up a huge pot of it that very night. I have tried many different variations on minestrone, but I always come back to this one. I am convinced that the combination of curry powder and red wine vinegar is what makes this particular minestrone incredible and habit-forming. Summer produce is still lingering at markets, however, so make this minestrone before it's too late!

Here's an easy dinner that I pulled together with out a recipe. Warmed GF tortillas (I use Trader Joe's) spread with vegan refried beans, some Mexican spiced tofu scramble that I made, plus fresh tomatoes, avocado, and chipotle lime hot sauce. It doesn't get much better than this! 

The mini slow-cooker is a great appliance. It allows you to cook food while you're gone, but it doesn't give you a ton of leftovers that would take weeks to eat. What pairs best with a mini slow-cooker? A book from one of my favorite vegan (and local!) authors which is Vegan slow-cooking for just 1 or 2. This recipe is sloppy black-eyed peas, which also has millet and spinach in it, which I put on toast with hot sauce. I also made some balsamic roasted green beans to eat on the side. Both recipes were great, and the sloppy black-eyed peas were also great over potatoes! I would definitely like to use my mini slow-cooker more this winter.

I love lentil soup, and I am always looking for new variations! This is a lentil soup with cumin and coriander, which you can easily adjust to whatever you have in your fridge. For example, I used yellow squash, only one or two small potatoes, and frozen spinach. This is technically a pressure cooker recipe, but to make it on the stove I just brought everything minus the spinach and lemon to boil, and simmered for an hour or so. After that, I added the lemon, spinach, and more spices. This makes a TON of soup, but I'm sure you could freeze some for the coming colder months! I did love how easy this soup was to make and that it required no oil! 

This is definitely one of my new favorite versatile recipes: tomato rice from Food52, which I veganized and made with short-grain brown rice. It was easy to put together, super flavorful, and you could eat it in so many different ways! The first night I had it, I pan-seared some carrots and broccoli in a nutritional yeast sauce to go with it. The following day, I ate it with some soft-boiled eggs and nutritional yeast. If you're vegan, this would be lovely with some pan-seared chickpeas and greens! I would also like to see how this rice holds up in a burrito with black beans and greens. The possibilities are endless! 

Procrastibaking (noun) - When you have so much work that you don't want to do, so you bake something instead. I am occasionally guilty of procrastibaking, and this was one of those occasions. I blame the fact that there was leftover pumpkin puree in my fridge, just begging to be turned into muffins every time I looked at it. This is my standby recipe for gluten and dairy-free pumpkin chocolate chip muffins; and yes, I always make them with chocolate chips! There's a local bakery near me that makes the BEST, gigantic, fluffy pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, but they are full of things that I cannot eat. BUT, these are seriously amazing and you will not want to share them. Hooray for fall baking (and for procrastibaking too)!

Breakfast from this week: almond butter toast and a vegan vanilla chai smoothie. So good!

Did you know that GF orzo exists? That's right, and it's incredibly delicious! I discovered that I had some in my pantry from a random Walmart trip (which rarely happens) and I decided to use it for tempeh orzilla, originally from Isa Does It. I don't even know where to start with this recipe because it's so good and has a lot of flavor going on. The tempeh sausage crumbles taste almost identical to regular Italian sausage because of the fennel seed and coriander (which is a great thing). After the orzo is done cooking, it's mixed with a nutritional yeast, white wine and rosemary sauce, along with sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, and sauteed thinly sliced red onions. Are you drooling yet? This might be one of my new favorite pasta dishes ever, and it was so easy to make! Isa might want to consider re-naming her book Isa always Does it because her recipes are the bomb!

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