I’m a winner! April 16, 2012

So, the other day I entered a giveaway on Happy Herbivore and won! The prize was a copy of each of Lindsay’s books and a super cute elephant necklace. Here’s what happened to my necklace:

This little peanut stole it!

Anyway, J and I have been cooking like mad out of the cookbooks – shiny and new and all… We made this first:

It’s supposed to be a chickpea Ethiopian stew, but after we started making it we realized we had no chickpeas…so, we used navy beans and it was pretty good. We actually made this dish three times already – twice with navy beans and once with chickpeas. It’s really good, even the babies liked it – it’s supposed to be fairly spicy but we toned it down a lot.

I went and picked up some yellow split peas at my local Indian grocery last night for a different recipe I wanted to try and in typical fashion bought the wrong stuff. I’ll be posting more recipes as we cook more from these cookbooks.

Quick & Easy: mashed sweet potato & apple March 13, 2012

I bought Isa Chandra’s Appetite for Reduction book back when it came out. I’ve made a couple recipes – the babies, J and I love the mango BBQ beans recipe. I pulled it out this week when I was doing our meal plan for the week. The babies love sweet potatoes and they love apples, so I thought I’d try this recipe.

Here’s how I made it, I changed a few things from the recipe – of course.

Ingredients:
2 apples, peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes. I used the cheapest ones that my grocery store had.
2 sweet potatoes, also peeled and in 1/2″ cubes
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp salt

note: this is literally all I use in my recipe. Isa Chandra’s recipe also called for agave, ginger and cinnamon.

Directions:

While you’re cutting the sweet potatoes and apples, put a 4 quart pan on the stove to preheat in low. Right before you put in the sweet potatoes, apples, and water, spray the pan with cooking spray. Then put in the sweet potatoes, apples and water. Cover and cook for 20 minutes on low, stirring often.

After the 20 minutes, increase the heat to med-low and recover and stir often for another 20 minutes (you might also want to add more water at this point, I didn’t).

Now, check and see how the sweet potatoes are cooking. I found that they weren’t cooking enough so I turned up the heat to medium, and cooked it covered for another 20 minutes, stirring often.

After the 20 minute round on medium everything was cooked. I then used my potato masher and mashed it together. I couldn’t find the cinnamon or the ginger. I thought about adding some maple syrup, but didn’t.

The verdict:

I didn’t actually try it as I don’t like sweet potatoes (gasp! Weird, I know. While I’m admitting things, I absolutely hate tomatoes). The babies however, they would’ve eaten all of it if I hadn’t cut them off. They loved it! So, this recipe is a keeper. I’m going to have my husband taste it when he gets home tonight. I’ll update with what he thinks of it.

Butternut Squash & Chickpea soup October 26, 2011

Jen over at Vegan in the Sticks had a post about a week or so ago about a butternut squash and chickpea soup that she’d made. I thought it sounded so delicious, but as usual, completely forgot about it…

Then last Friday we took a trip to the farmer’s market. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not, but Scranton has a great farmer’s market. While we were there I noticed that the butternut squash was out and it reminded me of Jen’s soup post. So, I bought a squash and couldn’t wait to get home to try the soup.

Jen’s recipe is in her post for the soup. I followed it pretty closely, except that we were out of tomato paste. I instead put in one of those small sized cans of tomato soup. It probably made the soup a bit runnier, but it didn’t affect the taste.

J and I made it after the babies went to bed. We loved it. J, who usually hates all manner of squash said, “I could eat this every day.” I didn’t answer because I was too busy gobbling my soup up.

The next day, I thought I’d try my luck and see if the babies liked it. We reheated it in a small bowl and gave some to Lucien first. He loved it, no surprise there. We gave some to Bea, her response was a smile, a shake of her tongue and “more!” They actually ended up finishing the soup! They cried when we ran out.

J and I decided that we’ll need to make this for them a lot, since all four of us loved it, it’s totally going into rotation. I think the only thing, I might add is a bit of cauliflower or grated carrot, but only to get more veggies in it for the babies, because really this soup doesn’t need anything changed – it is amazing as is.

*since none of my pictures of the soup made it look appetizing, I thought maybe you’d like to see the two happy kids, post eating the soup. Seriously, Bea is super picky and she loved it – try it for your kid.

Product Review: Go Raw, Flax Bar October 22, 2011

I picked up this Go Raw brand flax bar at my local health food store today. I don’t know what made me pick it up, I’m not normally drawn to raw foods. Honestly, it was probably that I skipped lunch…

Anyway, included in the bar are flax seeds, apricots, dates, lime juice, and raisins – all organic.

I shared the bar with my son, Lucien. He’s two and a half and will literally eat anything (as I’ve mentioned before). I thought I’d test him and see if he liked this.

You can see in the second picture, above, that at first he wasn’t sure if he should eat the piece I gave him. After taking his first bite, he smiled and said “more.” I guess he liked it…I liked it too. It was chewy like a fruit roll up, but slightly thicker than a fruit roll up. I liked the crunchiness that came from the flax seeds. I mostly liked that the bar wasn’t super sweet. It was sweet enough for Lucien, but not sweet enough for me.

I picked this up on sale, I think it was $1.99. I’d buy it again at the sale price, but probably not for the regular price, which was I think, $3.79.

Quick and Easy: part two, electric bugaloo October 17, 2011

My mom has been visiting for the last couple of days, so that’s why I haven’t been able to post – well, that and a cold hit every member of my family.

Anyway, my mom brought with her some homemade pasta sauce. What could be quicker and easier than something that someone else made?

She didn’t give me a recipe for her sauce, most likely because there isn’t one. She’s the kind of cook who just throws things together without ever measuring. But, since her sauce was actually pretty good (after I added some wine and more spices), I thought I’d share the recipe.

Here’s how she did it:

She said she took a couple of jars of plain Ragu. She added to that chopped belled pepper, onions, finely diced carrots, a can of chickpeas (after she ran the chickpeas through the food processer), and diced mushrooms. She put all this in a big pot and cooked it until the veggies were soft. She added 3 garlic cloves and a small amount of salt and pepper.

Now, it was kind of bland, but that’s because she was making it for the babies and not for me. But when I reheated some for my dinner, I added a splash (or three) or wine, a lot more garlic, a lot of black pepper, and a bit of parsley. It was really good.

I’m not normally a fan of anything tomato, I think tomatoes are gross, but this sauce had so much other veggie flavors (and wine) that it was super good. I didn’t think of this at the time, but I think it would be pretty good with some vegan meatballs added.

How do you like to make your tomato sauce?

Quick and Easy October 10, 2011

I think I mentioned a few posts back that I have toddlers. They’re two and a half. My son will literally eat anything, my daughter is much pickier. Sometimes she’ll eat something and love it, then when we give it to her again she wants nothing to do with it. Add in that my husband and I are raising our children as vegetarians and it sometimes makes meal times more challenging. We have found, however, that a couple things will always be winners.

I try not to rely on convenience foods for them. I hit up my (amazing) local farmer’s market 2-3 times a week for fresh fruits and veggies. We’ve found out that the babies love broccoli and cauliflower…my husband thinks it’s weird, but I remember loving broccoli when I was a kid.

One of our go-to meals is to steam broccoli and/or cauliflower, and add it to pasta or rice – sometimes with other veggies like shredded carrots, bell pepper, or onions. When we add it to pasta, we then mix in tomato sauce and nutritional yeast. Of late, we’ve been using the Ragu brand basil flavor and they go nuts for it (I don’t normally buy that kind but I had a coupon…). When we add the steamed broccoli or cauliflower to rice, we also add some sort of sauce. My husband usually does the standard tomato sauce and nutritional yeast. I like to mix things up and will do a peanut sauce, mild korma curry sauce, or sometimes just a made up nutrional yeast sauce.

My husband and I are thankful that even our pickiest eater loves the taste of nutritional yeast since they eat it all the time. We’re also happy she and her brother love peanut butter, and that they don’t have a nut allergy. That’s our other winner of a meal, peanut butter sandwiches…but isn’t that practically everyone’s easy default meal?

Smoothie Surprise September 19, 2011

I mentioned in my last post that I had two children. They’re both two, and my husband and I are raising them vegetarian. Both of my children have completely different eating habits.

Our daughter, B, is a very picky eater. She loves peanut butter, tomato sauce & nutritional yeast, caramel rice cakes, and popscicles. She does not like to try new foods and really, sometimes acts like she doesn’t like a lot of foods she’d had before – when in the past it was something she’d gobble up.

Our son, L, is the complete opposite. He will eat anything and everything. I’ve often said that if he doesn’t like something we give it, there’s something wrong with it. He loves his veggies, peanut butter, and well, everything. He is really good about trying new foods.

Anyway, I’m always trying to figure out new ways to sneak them more veggies. A good way, I’ve found is via a smoothie – even B can’t argue with a sweet smoothie.

Tonight we made one with a papaya, two oranges, a handful of spinach, and a tiny bit of soy milk. Let me just say that when B tasted it, her eyes lit up and she put her glass down and literally danced around the kitchen. I’m guessing this means there are more smoothies in her and L’s futures.