This dish is a favourite in our house. I first made it when I was pregnant, when I was craving all things cheezy and carby, and it was so good we continue to make it routinely.
I have only taken photographs once, and it was when I mistakenly added twice the amount of noodles, so it wasn’t as saucy. I recommend the full amount of sauce though. This is a saucy dish and the sauce is LOVELY. Creamy, yet not heavy. Read the rest of this entry »
Tofu scrambles. We’ve made them plenty of times – dillicious, chili masala, curried dill, tahini chickpea, and mighty migas. And then there was the Revolutionary Savoury Egg Mix just waiting for a tofu scramble. They are all good but we make dillicious the most often, since we love it so. However, I have to tell you. We’ve found the chickpea scramble that rules them all. The BEST tofu scramble is right here. And it is deliciously doused in nutritional yeast and also sneaks in chickpeas.
Read the rest of this entry »
I always loved eating peanut butter, but I ate even more of it while pregnant. Breastfeeding brought a whole new level of hunger as I build a new human and possibly even higher levels of consumption. It is usually limited to breakfasts and desserts, and even though I had stirred it into stews before (hello, African Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew), this version is easily made in a slow cooker, simplifies the spices with curry powder, swaps chickpeas for kidney beans and I love how effortless the frozen spinach brings another layer of goodness. The coconut milk and peanut butter make for a creamy base that is deliciously paired with the sweet potatoes and carrots. I added some peanuts for garnish, but the crunch was a fun treat when they were immersed in the stew, too. Read the rest of this entry »
It is local corn season!
This baby business has had me cooped up most of the spring and summer and it is nice to finally feel like the early hazy days have lifted somewhat. It only took 9 weeks. One problem with having a preemie is that his newborn period runs longer. We have to wait for his corrected age for him to develop his milestones. So no, he isn’t sleeping through the night just yet. Not even close.
But, it was nice to wake up while corn season is in full force. Rob can grill the corn pretty quickly and if you have any leftover, or can spare a handful of cobs, this is a fantastic soup. Read the rest of this entry »
This summer we’ve been eating a lot of soups and stews. It could have been that we were immune to the hot weather, as we spent the majority of it in an air conditioned NICU. Or, more likely, that we’ve been making up for lost time and stocking our freezer with extra food. We have fully adopted making a second batch of a recipe and freezing half. Soups and stews are great for that. Read the rest of this entry »
Wow, it is incredible what a bit of sleep can do for you.
The good news is that Baby P is now home from the NICU but he has grown up enough such that his previous 3 hour around the clock feeding schedule didn’t come home with him. It was closer to every 2 hours when we were discharged home and let me tell you, when feeding can take 30-45 minutes and followed by a 20 minute pumping session, this doesn’t leave a lot of time before the cycle resumes once again. Read the rest of this entry »
Want to know what I would consider a lot of spinach? 2 pounds.
It can take me a week to finish a clamshell of baby spinach but I I figured 2 bunches of regular spinach would be 2 lbs. After prepping and removing the stems from both bunches, I barely had a pound of spinach.
Still eager to make this dish, I added our emergency package of frozen spinach (the convenience of it being de-stemmed was not lost on me) and while I still didn’t have enough spinach for the recipe, it was certainly plenty of spinach! Read the rest of this entry »
Rob and I went to New York City (and Brooklyn) last week. When we left Toronto, it was snowing and cold (definitely felt like winter). We were happy to drive a bit further south for even a minor relief. After a week of walking all over Manhattan, we returned to even warmer temperatures in Toronto! Our friend’s toddler was playing in a kiddie pool, it was that warm and summer-like. Read the rest of this entry »
What can I say, but I have been gravitating to homely, comforting dishes over the past few weeks. Casseroles have been coming out of my oven like no tomorrow and this has been one of my favourites. Not only because it tastes great (not sure why, but the tofu-hummus-cauliflower concoction tastes like ricotta cheese) but also because it is fairly easy. Of course, oven-ready noodles and store-bought hummus and marinara sauce make this nearly a dump and cook, fool-proof recipe. Read the rest of this entry »
It took me three years but I finally bought millet again.
While I have shared a few recipes with it, I loved it most of all popped and found in granola. This time, I was intrigued by Meghan Telpner’s millet crust. Soak and cook millet, then press it into a pie plate. And voila, instant gluten-free, whole food, texture-a-plenty pie crust. Read the rest of this entry »
While I have never eaten a white chili, this definitely reminded me of my time in Houston.
This chili has no red in sight. No tomatoes. No red chiles. No red kidney beans.
Instead, we use all the white and green counterparts: green Anaheim peppers. White kidney beans and even some chickpeas. Spinach adds another punch of green. And corn, technically yellow, is almost white. The original recipe called for hominy, which is actually white, so I was the one deviating from the white/green template.
Even though we have had the BBQ on in full force since it arrived, it is (mostly) limited to the weekends. However, I love bulk cooking on the weekends, so we’re trying to keep things simple mid-week.
Here I multipurposed leftover portobello carpaccio (just as good with a longer marinade) into a glorious summer salad with strawberries, fresh (not grilled) tofu, all over a bed of baby spinach, doused with a balsamic dressing.
Jessica asked about mosto cotto in my previous posts. It is a sweet balsamic reduction and a simple 1-ingredient dressing. A balsamic vinaigrette could easily be substituted, so I decided to make my own and use it all week. I made a glorious full cup to share with Rob.
Except the world was against me, and I tipped 75% of my dressing. Onto my shorts, onto my slippers and behind my stove. I am not sure if bird poop or balsamic vinegar makes a worse stain, but I quickly disrobed and cleaned my shorts and next my slippers. My black shorts fared better than my slippers which may now look a bit more brown than white. Oops….
Anyways, the salad was fabulous. I hadn’t planned to share it but the mushrooms added a wonderful earthy contrast next to the sweet strawberries and savoury balsamic vinaigrette. Delicious. Enjoy!
I am sharing this with Meat Free Mondays.
This is totally the Vegan Green Power Bowl. Let us count the green ingredients: spinach, cucumber, asparagus and avocado. Balsamic baked tofu and cooked quinoa round this out as a hearty salad. I drizzled some mosto cotto overtop as a quasi-dressing. With its sweetness, it balanced the rest of the bowl perfectly.
Posts will be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks. Rob and I are moving across town and work has been keeping me hopping, so I have barely had enough time to squeeze in cooking, let alone blogging.
While I realize it is likely too late to grow anything at our new place (heck, we don’t even have a garden dug out yet), I am still dreaming of what to plant. I am going to try to my hardest to get an asparagus plant going. They are perennials and can live for over 50 years. It takes a few years until they are productive, so we will be patient. We plan to settle for down for many years. For the last five years, Rob and I have moved every.single.year. It will be nice to unpack our boxes for the last time.
Which vegetable do you like the most in your garden? Do you have any asparagus?
I am sharing this with Meat Free Mondays. Read the rest of this entry »
I must admit that I was drawn to making this because it had the word “summer” in its title. With frozen corn, canned tomatoes and fresh produce available even now (zucchini, spinach, red bell peppers and cilantro), you could almost imagine was made in the summer. This is probably one of most colourful curries, due in part, to all the rainbow of colours from the vegetables.
Rob and I (very briefly) considered taking our bikes out this weekend (we skipped right over snowshoeing) but while the temperatures are nice, the roads are littered with salt, sand and even some small snowbanks.
I am kind of hoping that once we return from our trip, spring will be here for real. Especially since I am already planning/imaging what I want to plant in my garden pots for the summer. I have missed my forest of fresh herbs.
I am sharing this with Vegetable Palette, Cooking with Herbs, and In My Veg Box (zucchini).
(Continuing with making a curry each week, although not necessarily blogging about them each week, ha!)
If you are looking for recipes with a pressure cooker, other than JL’s new book, I recommend checking out Indian cookbooks. Or more specifically, I knew there were plenty of bean-centric pressure cooker recipes in one of my Indian cookbooks, 1000 Indian Recipes. I ventured forth with a dish that required no pre-soaking and cooked reasonably fast.
Thank you, chana dal, which are split black chickpeas. They are more crunchy than most beans I cook although that may because I didn’t cook them with too much water (2:1 water to bean ratio, weird). This dish could also be made without a pressure cooker, it would just take longer and I would add the greens later.
While dill might seem like an unusual ingredient for curry, I know it works really well (see this fabulous chickpea dill curry). The tomato is familiar to both Indian and European foods although this is purely Indian with the ginger, cumin, garlic and cilantro. The spinach almost melted by the weight of the pressure cooker, so I may try something different next time (like using baby spinach added at the end) or use a heartier green like kale.
Rob gave me a high five for finishing up the last of our chana dal. I say high five for the chana dal for still being awesome after all these years on my bean shelf!! Yeah! 🙂
I am sharing this with Credit Crunch Munch, Cooking with Herbs and Eat Your Greens.
the taste space 