Winter One Pot Lentils & Rice + Ultimate Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook review

I am starting to  look at food in a different way now that we’re starting to feed our baby. I’ve been using my Instant Pot to cook lots of vegetables before I blitz them into purees. At first, we started with simple, single ingredients. Then we moved to combinations and eventually I started making our own meals without salt and then throwing them into the blender for a new puree. Lentils, rice and rutabaga with some spices sounds like an awesome baby puree!

Turns out he loved it! Win!

Miso Fried Rice with Baby Bok Choy and Tofu

I don’t know if other moms can relate but I am constantly running out of space on my phone and google account. I remember when I first opened my gmail account and it was meant to never run out of space. Yeah, um, not for parents.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like I am taking tons of photos of my baby. I just happen to take a quick flurry of photos at one time, because much like a cat you can’t control, I never really know what kind of expression will be captured with each photo. Come to think of it, I have plenty of photos of my baby sleeping, since I like to share them with Rob as a form of my small accomplishments for the day. Getting the baby to sleep is never an easy feat. He does not nap very well.

For a while, we had some longer sleeps at night, which I could count on one hand. Provided I get some sleep, the continual feeding every 2-3 hours doesn’t bother me as much. It just means I keep trying to get him to sleep every 2-3 hours, too.

Roasted Beet Burgers + Eat Like You Give a Damn cookbook review + GIVEAWAY

With a bold title, Eat Like You Give a Damn, it seemed fit to share this lovely cookbook around the holidays. With the American Thanksgiving/Thanksliving wrapping up and Hannukah/Christmas season quickly approaching, it should be a season for giving a damn. No?

Eat Like You Give a Damn is a vegan cookbook by Herbivore Clothing’s Michele Schwegmann and Josh Hooten and recently won Vegweb’s Favourite Cookbook of the Year.

Sweet Potato and Broccoli Bowl with a Miso-Sesame Sauce

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Even when you think everything is ready to go for the wedding, little things keep popping up. Rob needs to buy a belt; maybe I should get my nails done before we leave; we should pick some readings for the ceremony; we each need to write our vows. So while I have been silent on the blog, life has been anything but.

Rob and I want a short and sweet ceremony. We didn’t even discuss readings until I sat down to write my own vows.  I was inspired by some absolutely fabulous quotes. So much so that I wanted them a part of my ceremony. So now we have readings.

I kind of want to tell you all about our choices (I am that excited about them) but I don’t want to ruin the surprise for my guests who also read my blog. So, you will have to wait (sorry for the tease). If you want some vegan wedding porn, this one looked super cute (eco friendly on a farm!).

Otherwise, as we try to eat the remainder of our perishables before we leave, this is a perfect way to chow down. I consider these as almost non-recipes since it is basically roasted vegetables, beans, rice and a sauce. Here I returned to our staples, sweet potatoes, broccoli, chickpeas and brown rice. We love steamed broccoli but since I was roasting the sweet potatoes, in went the broccoli as well. The sauce is a lovely pantry-friendly creation (ignoring the ginger and garlic) with a heavy dose of miso and toasted sesame oil with a tahini base (although certainly not overpowering). Humble or not, this is a great meal to have on hand.

Miso and/or tahini dishes shared here previously:

Buddha Veggie Bowl with Ginger-Miso-Lime Dressing

Braised Tempeh and Green Beans in a Sesame Sauce

Macro Veggie and Tempeh Bowl with Miso Tahini Sauce

Simple Sesame-Miso Soba Noodles with Kale & Red Pepper

Wild Rice and Edamame Salad with a Lemon-Miso Dressing

Yam, Zucchini and Chickpea Salad

I am sharing this with Bookmarked Recipes.

Tofu and Kale Bowl with a Curried Peanut Sauce

You guys are too kind. Based on the responses from my last post (and my post earlier this year about non-recipes), here’s to sharing some of my simpler eats. I will have a blog sabbatical during my honeymoon and hopefully come back rejuvenated. This is actually an easy recipe to make and I could not wait to share it with you.

I have made this two weeks in a row. Its first debut was when my parents came down last weekend and I threw it together for a late Sunday meal. Everyone devoured it, returning for seconds soon after polishing off their first bowl. After one bite, my Mom declared she loved it and proclaimed I could serve it for her anytime. Big win! YEAH!

 

While there have been glimmers of sun before and after work, I decided to continue to deliciousness into this week. It is rather a humble bowl of vegan goodness (brown rice, pan-fried tofu and kale) but the star of the bowl is the glorious peanut sauce. Sweet, spicy and saucy with a hint of curry powder. Mix it all up for a delicious meal.

Our veg staple in the fridge is broccoli and our protein of choice is chickpeas, which I contemplated for my second iteration. Worried it would be a tad repetitive (broccoli + chickpeas + peanut sauce is a common occurrence on this blog), I stuck with kale and tofu. To be honest, I don’t think I have ever made simple steamed kale and I was surprised how sweet it was. It was also ridiculously easy to make, so I definitely consider this meal a kitchen success.

What is your go-to simple meal?

Peanut sauces and dressings spotted here previously:

Broccoli and Pineapple Udon Bowl with Pineapple-Peanut Sauce

Broccoli and Spaghetti Squash Noodle Bowl with a Peanut-Miso-Sesame Sauce

Chickpea and Broccoli Quinoa Bowl with a Peanut-Miso Sauce

Mango and Snap Pea Noodle Salad with a Tangy Peanut Dressing

Noodles, Baby Bok Choy, Broccoli and Red Pepper with a Coconut-Peanut Sauce

Spicy Peanut Udon Noodles with Tofu and Broccoli

Thai Chickpea & Kale Salad Rolls with Peanut Dressing

Tess’ Ultimate Peanut Sauce

I am sharing this with My Legume Love Affair, Bookmarked Recipes and ExtraVeg.

Quick & Easy Cajun Red Beans and Rice

Sorry for a not-too-appealing photo, but trust me, this was very tasty. This was the other meal we packed for our travels.. aka, we made with the remnants in my fridge in Houston but it tasted downright delicious. Quick and easy, I used the last of the vegan chorizo, leftover rice and emptied the can of small red beans I had been saving in the cupboard. A bit of tomato paste to make it saucy and a dash of Old Bay seasoning to complement the flavours from the chorizo.

After it tasted so good, I also had to photograph it in Africa. While dreaming up a descriptive name, I realized it was uncannily similar to Cajun Rice and Beans. In my mind, I must have known the flavours were akin to my previous Southern black eyed peas with tomatoes, where I also substituted Old Bay for Cajun seasoning. Perhaps a mirepoix of celery and bell pepper (and less tomato) would make this more authentic, but for shear simplicity and flavour, this was great.

Do you prefer authentic recipes or simply delicious recipes?? 🙂

I am sharing this with Speedy Suppers.

Easy Leftover Curry Burgers (made from Pumpkin Fenugreek Curry)

The other day my Mom admitted that Rob’s opinion is biased. And she doesn’t trust it.

I like to use Rob as my barometer. How would a regular person enjoy my meal?

I think my Mom meant that Rob always likes my food, which, uh, is completely far from the truth. While Rob will eat most anything and has a very open mind (he skipped out on the rotten shark in Iceland, though), he still has his food preferences. Some meals I make are not his style, so I may not even share the meal with him. But when something tastes really good, or includes a lot of his favourite ingredients, I want to know what he thinks.

This was a curry that I tracked down fresh fenugreek. Toor dal (split pigeon peas) was simmered with pumpkin along with a multitude of spices: cilantro, mint, coriander, cardamom, paprika, ginger, garlic, chili flakes and sambhar masala. To keep it vegan, I simply omitted the chicken from the original recipe.

This was a case, though, where the curry was only ok. I thought it was ok but not great. Too many flavours became a muddled dish. Rob liked it more than me, though. He likes curry more than me, although since we weren’t completely smitten with it, we decided to try out Curry Burgers. Super simple: mix together leftover curry with leftover rice and chickpea flour. Bake. Easy, peasy. Since we usually serve our curries with rice, this was a fun way to jazz up the leftovers.

I don’t know why but the burgers tasted better than the original curry. We ditched the standard ketchup and mustard for Indian chutneys.. with a side salad of pickled beets and spinach and just ditched the buns altogether. 🙂

Jamaican Rice and Peas (with Purple Hull Peas)

We have been all over the coconut rice lately. With mango season comes Mango Sticky Rice. Twice, so far, within the past few weeks. Rob’s latest batch was shared with a friend who proclaimed it the best ever. She had been pining over Mango Sticky Rice since her childhood and was always disappointed with resto versions. Not ours. It quenched her thirst. We split our case of mangos (20/$5!) and she subsequently made her own. Rob’s latest version substituted agave for the sugar and he used the last of our full-fat coconut milk.

While Mango Sticky Rice is good for dessert (or breakfast, in my mind), it probably would not do dinner justice. Try this coconut-infused Jamaican rice and pea dish instead.

Rice and peas is a classic side dish from Jamaica. “Peas” may be a bit misleading because it refers to a type of pigeon pea, which is similar to cowpeas that includes Southern favourites such as purple hull peas, lady cream peas, black eyed peas and crowder peas. If you are lucky enough to snag fresh peas, you will figure out that they in fact, do taste like peas. Kidney beans are often substituted in this dish, as well.

In any case, with whichever bean you choose, I do encourage you to try this dish. It is a very simple one-pot dish wherein everything cooks together and the nuances of the allspice, thyme, lime and ginger really bring out a fun flavour profile. Use full-fat coconut milk for a decadent creamy base, but the reduced fat was great too (which is what is pictured here).

Have you tried coconut rice? I am thinking that adding black beans to our Mango Sticky Rice might be a marvelous dinner, no? Who’s in to try it? 🙂

PS. I am sharing this with Let’s Cook with Pulses and Cooking with Herbs.

Chai Spiced Rice Pudding & The Blender Girl Cookbook Giveaway

Adult rice krispies and now adult rice pudding.

The difference is that I liked rice krispies as a kid but hated rice pudding. My brother loved it, but me, not so much.

However, spice it up with chai-infused flavours, sweeten it with apple, dried currants and a touch of maple syrup, bathe it in coconut milk and sprinkle it with pistachios along with leftover short-grain brown rice, and I am a happy camper.

This is no quick-fix rice pudding but it sure is delicious. My friend who tried it said it was the best rice pudding she had ever eaten.

This is my take on Tess Masters‘ version found in her gorgeous new cookbook The Blender Girl. Do not let the title mislead you too much. Yes, this is a cookbook where nearly every recipe uses a blender, but this does not mean only smoothies. The recipes are all gluten-free and vegan with only natural sweeteners. The recipes revolve around whole foods. Raw and cooked recipes are included. Tess has recipes for juices, smoothies, dips/spreads, soups, dressings, sauces and even desserts. She has entrees that use homemade sauces, including her penang curry and creamy mushroom stroganoff. Desserts include sugar-free no-pumpkin pie and chocolate-chile banana splits. Breakfast favourites including pancakes and crepes, with delicious toppings like ginger-apple-pear butter and instant raw raspberry jam. She even finds a way to use a blender for rice pudding.

She knows her stuff. It may dirty another container but I liked how a portion of the rice was pureed to thicken the rice pudding. It was rather ingenious.

She is a girl smitten by her high-speed blender. I can tell. I have one, too, and I find it hard to remember what my kitchen was like without it. Do you need an expensive high speed blender for this cookbook? Certainly not. However, you definitely need something with a blending capacity, may that be a regular blender, an immersion blender or a food processor. If you don’t have a blender, you could still gain inspiration from her creations. Your textures may be different but it would be fun to see what else you could make.

Thankfully, the publisher allowed me to share the recipe and giveaway the cookbook to a reader living in the United States. To be entered in the random draw for the cookbook, please leave a comment below telling me what you love to make with your blender (or blending instrument). The winner will be selected at random on April 20, 2014. Good luck!

Other recipes shared from The Blender Girl:

Creamy and Crunchy Spuds (with Raw Mayonnaise)
Watermelon Gazpacho is The Bomb
Fresh Spring Rolls with Orange-Almond Sauce
Creamy of Cauliflower Soup
Incredible Edible Edamame Dip
Creamy Mushroom Stroganoff
Penang Curry
Pad Thai
Anti-Oxidant Avenger
Pineapple Salsa Smoothie
Chock-Full Chocolate Surprise Smoothie
Raw Chocolate-Orange Torte

PS. This is my submission for Alphabakes and Random Recipes.

Mango Chana Masala

It is the most wonderful time of the year….

Not because the spring weather in Houston is positively happiness (it is!) or it is the beginning of a cycling season (it is!)…. but it is the beginning of mango season and now we live closer to the mangoes!

Nearly every year, Rob will hunt down Alphonso mangoes. The fancy mangoes flown in from India. I am not sure whether they will be coming to Houston, but it does not matter. There are cheap and plentiful Mexican Ataulfos to be found. Last week, we picked up a whole case for $5. (We split it with a friend to keep our eating crop fresh. I know we’ll be replenishing a few times, no worries)

We tend to keep the mangoes plain and unadorned (at least I do, Rob adds it to his breakfast granola) but used some frozen mangoes for this fun twist on chana masala. It kind of a combination of my Mango BBQ Beans combined with Indian flavours. While I have used amchoor powder (raw mango powder) to make a nice chana masala, this was a fun twist since it was hot and sweet, too. The heat came from our newest infatuation: roasted hatch chiles. The flavours complemented each other nicely, especially with the tang from the tomatoes and the earthy tones from the cumin, mustard seeds and garam masala, too. Not too overly spiced.

Rob actually made a double batch of this and we shared it with friends. We told them to give an honest opinion of the dish. It was the first time we tried it, so we could handle their feedback. Like us, they loved it! And I hope you do, too.

Here’s to a prosperous mango season!

This is my submission to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes and this week’s Souper Sundays.

Tomato Red Lentil Soup with Dill

I love it when Houston behaves itself.

Rob and I had another Canadian visitor recently. In between Polar Vortex 1 and Polar Vortex 2, Houstonians enjoyed balmy (normal) summery weather at its finest. You know, summer how it is meant to be: around 25ºC. None of that feels like 38ºC with 90% humidity forecast. None of that below freezing business (that’s tonight, by the way).

Together, we did more touristy things than we had ever done before: hiking next to alligators, admiring the Museum of Fine Art’s impressive gold collection, watching Americana in our backyard via the Martin Luther King Jr Parade. However, I still skipped out on the stereotypical NASA Space Center visit. We still shared our favourite haunts but explored new restaurants as well. Nearly every meal was pre-planned. My friend had so many restaurants she wanted to try!

After the whirlwind of a visit (if you knew my friend, you would know this is no overstatement), both Rob and my friend parted for Canada. One to Toronto and the other to Winnipeg. Both returned to temperatures around -20ºC (-4F). Yesterday, my friend in Winnipeg told me it was -40ºC with the windshield. For those that need a conversion to Fahrenheit, at -40, both Celsius and Fahrenheit scales collide. Collide and freeze. They are the same. Both, really, really cold.

With the imminent cold weather, I am sharing another warming soup. Red lentils are a perfect blank canvas for a hearty meal. Pureed tomatoes and red lentils are combined with cauliflower and brown rice in a broth spiced with cumin, mustard and dill. I never would have thought to combine those flavours together but the dill really brightened the dish. This is an excellent soup!

How have you been keeping warm lately?

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes.

PS. The winner of Balanced Raw is Marquis. Congratulations!

Holy Moley Veggie and Rice Soup

I am no stranger to mole, but our recent trip to Mexico City, gave me an appreciation for Mexican food like no other. Fresh, soft and supple corn tortillas that blew my mind. An assortment of flavourful vegetables. Spicy salsa on the side, to add as much or as little heat as I could tolerate. Vegan eats were a bit hard to find, but after scoping out the right restaurants, we had unearthed some gems. My two favourite restaurants served an abundance of tacos. One of them served a delicious chocolate-infused mole sauce. Rob did a double-take after I ordered another taco and did not share. I had to savour another one!

Chocolate in savoury meals can be a bit tricky. A bit heavy handed, and it can sink in your tummy. A good balance of sweet, spicy and salty are necessary to balance the flavours well. This is an unusual spin on mole, in soup form, bulked up with vegetables and brown rice. The tomato-chocolate backdrop was a delicious spin without being heavy (and the initial puree prior to adding the stock would be a delicious sauce on its own). While this wasn’t in a taco, we served this with tortillas on the side.

Like mole, tamales are also a Mexican comfort food. Our next Mexican culinary adventures will be tamales. We were planning to have a tamalada (a tamale-making party) prior to Christmas, as tamales are usually eaten around holidays, such as Christmas and New Year’s. However, it is harder to schedule a large gathering of fellows than you might think. It means the tamalada will happen in the new year. With my recent chocolate themed eats, I will likely be proposing chocolate tamales for dessert.

What is your favourite Mexican comfort food?

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this week’s Weekend Wellness, to this month’s We Should Cocoa, to this month’s No Croutons Required and to this month’s My Legume Love Affair.

Raw Parsnip Sushi Rolls, Two Ways

You saw the writing on the wall. With my love of wraps, it was only a matter of time before I made sushi rolls.

It took me a few tries, but I finally found not one, but two recipes that I really like.

Am I the only one who scopes out a bunch of recipes for a particular dish and then can’t decide what to make? Should I go with option A or option B? Sometimes, I decide to hedge my bets and make multiple options. That’s how I ended up with 2 versions of my chocolate black bean cookies and oodles of combinations for my savoury flax-hemp crackers. Half a recipe for you and half a recipe for you… which means the bonus of 2 recipes for me!

This explains why my recipe says it serves 1. I boiled down each sushi roll to fit one parsnip with its seasonings.  The fillings could easily be doubled, tripled or quadrupled, but please, please, please don’t assemble these babies too far in advance. The nori sheet will become limp and soggy…and no fun.

To be fair, my first venture at a nori wrap was from Color Me Vegan with an orange-cashew cream sauce. I have become spoiled because that cashew sauce was nothing compared to my previous Zesty Cashew Orange Spread. The rolls seemed a tad lacking, especially since there wasn’t anything that reminded me of a standard sushi roll.

Having really enjoyed the parsnip in Raw Thai Pineapple Parsnip Rice, I knew that this was the way to approach raw sushi. Then I had to decide- nut butter-version from Gena or miso-version from Lauren? I have had some really heavy sushi rolls at raw restos because they make the rice from nuts, so I was excited to try the lighter miso version. I was torn, though, because I was still drawn to Gena’s recipe since the butter seemed to accentuate the parsnip rice. So, I made both and glad I did because they were both different yet equally delightful.

The miso version was light and flavorful and worked well with the multitude of veggies. It reminded me of my citrus-spiked sushi rice bowl with the miso twist. I am not sure the oil was completely necessary so I may remove it next time. The tahini version was heavier but incredibly flavourful from the tahini and the touch of toasted sesame oil. They were both filling as a light lunch.

If you haven’t yet made raw sushi, don’t be shy. You certainly don’t need a special sushi rolling mat. Just a great filling. It is what is inside that counts, and I’ve got you covered. Twice. Two hugs, as Rob would put it.

This is my submission to this month’s Pantry Party for quick foods.

Moosewood’s Caribbean Stew (& Cookbook Giveaway!)

You may not have noticed, but I snuck away last week. An absolutely epic road trip, starting at Portland, the vegan mecca, meandering through lakes and mountains, including Crater Lake, reaching our ultimate destination: Burning Man. I hope to summarize our adventures and if I don’t I’ll be sure to share if Rob posts anything on his website. He is much better at looking through photos afterwards. I have a hard enough time keeping track of my food photos. 😉

Before we left, I tried to cook through our pile of produce. Serendipitously, I had everything for this delicious Caribbean Stew. It is from Moosewood’s latest cookbook: Moosewood Restaurant Favorites. Through their collective, they run a restaurant in Ithica, New York, and have written many cookbooks over the past few decades. Most of my Moosewood cookbooks were bought/discovered at used book sales, although they are still keeping up with the times. Their latest cookbook, while not entirely vegan (they still use cheese, although less than before) and not even vegetarian (they have recipes for fish), includes updates from their restaurant favourites. Between their section dedicated to Soups (Thai Butternut Squash Soup, Texas Barbecue Bean Soup, Red Lentil Soup), to Main Dish Salads (Peruvian Quinoa and Vegetable Salad), to Curries and Stews (Lentil-Vegetable Sambar, Navajo Stew), a section dedicated to Beans (Basque Beans, Caribbean Red Beans, Creole Red Beans), and sides (Lentil Dhal), I was very pleased with their vegan recipes.

And this Caribbean Stew? It did not disappoint. A delicious medley of sweet potato, red bell pepper, tomato, cabbage and kale in a flavourful (not too) spicy broth made with ginger and green chiles. The dash of nutmeg and lime finish kept this special. As part of their growing process, Moosewood recommends more fresh herbs than before (I learned that lesson, too!) and this included fresh ginger, thyme and cilantro. They also recommended freshly grated nutmeg which is definitely more potent than pre-bought powdered. I modified the original recipe slightly, noted below. I decreased the ginger, although I probably didn’t need to be scared of the bit of heat it would impart. I also found the directions to cook everything on low to be too slow, so I increased my heat to medium-low and eventually medium. In the end, though, it was a fabulous soup. Tons of veggies with a delicious broth. A bit lacking in the protein department, I served it with the suggested brown rice. I bet you could easily sneak in some beans or tofu in there, too.

I really want to share this cookbook with you. Thankfully the publisher is letting me give away a cookbook to one reader living in the US or Canada. To be entered, please leave a comment here, telling me about your favourite Moosewood dish. If you haven’t made anything by Moosewood yet, have a look through the table of contents of Moosewood Restaurant Favorites on amazon (or my list below) and tell me what you want to cook the most. I will randomly select a winner on September 15, 2013. Good luck!

Other Moosewood recipes I have shared:

French Barley Salad
Bulgur Chili
Chinese Cabbage and Fermented Black Beans
Spanish Green Bean and Lime Bean Stew
Japanese Winter Stew
African Pineapple Kale Peanut Stew
Italian Stew with Winter Squash and Chickpeas
Thyme-Spiced Toasted Pumpkin Seeds and Cranberries.

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to this month’s Flavours of Caribbean.

Enoki, Broccoli & Kimchi Tofu Rice Bowl (Vegan Bibimbap)

In addition to cycling through Houston, Rob and I are also discovering Houston, one grocer at a time. After chowing through our organic produce, we started exploring my hitlist of ethnic grocers, one weekend at a time.

First of all, though, our Rawfully Organic broccoli lasted 3 weeks. WOAH! Gotta love that!

Second, because I love Asian produce, the first ethnic grocer we picked was H-Mart, a Korean market. It is a chain that has branches as far as California and New York, so you may be familiar with it. It reminded a lot of T&T, actually. A large, clean store with fresh produce, mostly Asian with a heavy Korean slant, with reasonable prices. They had a whole giant section just for kimchi. Rob picked out a house-made vegan kimchi for us to try. Turns out it wasn’t as blow-off-your-face hot as kimchi can be… score for me!

We also picked up a few different bags of brown rice. I am very particular about my brown rice and we both absolutely loved these finds. While both are short grain brown rice, the Sukoyaka Genmai Brown Rice produces the most fluffy and sticky rice (that doesn’t even taste like brown rice, imho). I can’t seem to find the other one online (it is made by Organic Farm and is a 50/50 blend of organic short grain brown rice and brown sweet rice). It requires a 2 hour soak, but it is very nice as well. Not sticky in the slightest, and less aromatic, but good rice. I was quite impressed by their wide selection of brown rice at H-Mart, which is usually hard to find. Now the dilemma will be whether to gamble and try a new brand or stick with these two we like a lot.

Lest you think we have gone all raw here, have no fear. A perfect rice bowl, akin to Korean bibimbap, complete with fresh rice waiting for me when I come home from work (thank you, Rob). A quick stir fry with tofu, broccoli and enoki mushrooms in a sweet maple infused sauce that is matched well with a side of not-so-fiery kimchi. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but we’ve made the quickie kimchi from Vegan Eats World, although it is really spicy if you use the full amount of Korean chili flakes. I am quite partial to the ginger-only version, actually.

So, have you ever been smitten by brown rice? What is your favourite brand?

This is my submission to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes.