This is just a photo post of our Christmas Eve Lasagna. Lasagna for Christmas has been something of a tradition for us, as we usually get our fill of roasted bird at Thanksgiving. I made a half-size recipe for the three of us and it was more than enough for 2 meals. You can see the recipe here. Happy Holidays!
So I have the rest of the 28 oz can of pumpkin to use up. I’m not a pumpkin pie fan, so I’m finding other, more clever uses for pumpkin puree. May I suggest Pumpkin Macaroni & Cheese? Sounds kind of crazy, but’s sooooo good!
Stovetop Macaroni with Pumpkin and Cheddar Sauce
2 cups Quinoa elbow macaroni
2 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup hot water
1 Tbsp mustard
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp salt
3 oz cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups chopped broccoli (optional)
fresh cracked pepper
Combine pasta, milk, and water (if you want to reduce the fat, you can decrease the milk by one cup and increase the water by one cup) in a sauce pan over low to med-low heat. As it comes to a simmer, add the mustard and pumpkin and stir to combine well. Stirring constantly, cook until pasta is tender. Stir in cheddar. Season with salt and pepper. I also added some leftover chopped roasted broccoli. It was amazing–even better than the regular stovetop mac and cheese that I posted a few weeks ago.
A friend gave me a giant can of pumpkin puree, so this morning I made some pumpkin muffins. Most recipes for pumpkin bread or muffins call for gobs of sugar, oil, and eggs. My friend was lamenting the insane amount of calories in the pumpkin bread she made. It occurred to me that you could probably use a standard Banana Nut Muffin recipe, and just substitute pumpkin for the bananas and add some spices. I found a recipe here that looked very similar to the Joy of Cooking Banana Nut Muffin recipe. My version is a veganized combination of the two.
Vegan Pumpkin Muffins
1 cup white wheat flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp molasses
1/4 cup canola oil
2 Tbsp flaxseed plus 6 Tbsp water (egg substitute)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup soymilk
1 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 12 cup muffin tin.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices in a medium bowl.
In a large bowl, mix together sugar, molasses, oil, vanilla, and flaxseed mixture. Combine well, then stir in pumpkin and soy milk. Stir well to combine. Add walnuts, if desired.
Then slowly add your flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture, stirring as you go, until just combined. Spoon into muffin tin and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes.
I often hear people say they don’t have the time to cook healthy food. I understand completely. When I worked full time I relied on lots of prepackaged convenience foods to get dinner on the table after a long day at work. But those foods aren’t good for you! The good news is that you can have healthy and quick weeknight dinners with only a little prior planning. These days I rarely spend more than 30 minutes preparing dinner and it’s all from natural whole foods.
Being home during the day, I can decide I want to have a bean dish that night and cook them during the day. However, if you work, you don’t have that luxury, so you have to plan ahead. If you can spare some time for bulk cooking on the weekend, you’ll have your meals prepped and ready to go for the 6 o’clock crunch.
You can prepare your time-intensive foods ahead of time and have them sorted by day in the refrigerator. If you go to the market for fresh produce on Saturday, you can spend some time washing and chopping the veggies so that they are ready to go. Same for things that have to cook awhile, like beans. Home cooked dried beans are so much better than canned! Most people don’t want to deal with them because it takes so long. And I used canned beans for somethings, too. But you can easily soak your beans overnight Saturday and then cook them for a few hours on Sunday. I’m talking about vegetarian options here, but you could easily do the same with meat, such as a pot roast, cooking it as a main meal on Sunday when you have more time and saving a third or half for use in other dishes such as stew or casseroles. Another great cook ahead item is pasta sauce, like bolognese or other meat (or “meat”) sauce. You can make a huge pot and then freeze in meal size portions. So then all you have to do move the sauce into the refrigerator the night before and then cook your pasta and a vegetable when you get home.
A sample meal plan could be as follows:
Saturday
Vegetable soup (you’re chopping up your veggies anyway, toss some in a pot and dinner is cooking!)
Cheddar garlic biscuits
Sunday
Freshly cooked pinto beans
Cornbread
Sauteed squash
Slow-simmered green beans
Monday
Quick Vegetable Curry
Basmati rice
Tuesday
Mexican pizza (with pinto beans and veggies)
Wednesday
Spaghetti with “meat” sauce (sauce from freezer)
Steamed or roasted green beans
Thursday
Bean Burritos
Mixed roasted vegetables (i.e. squash, peppers, green beans, potatoes)
Friday
Vegetable Risotto (with leftover roasted veggies)
So, the basic plan here is to use the weekend to prepare for the weekly meals. You shop Saturday morning. This example assumes a summer season, so you are buying squash, green beans, peppers, and potatoes (as well as onions and garlic). You then wash and chop your veggies. Then you sort them out by meal. So, a bunch go into the pot for Saturday evening’s soup. Then bag squash and green beans separately for Sunday, a large mixed bag for Monday, a small mixed bag for Tuesday, a bag of green beans for Wednesday, a large bag of (the rest of) the mixed veggies to cook Thursday (for both Thursday and Friday’s dinners). You’ve cooked your beans Sunday and get to use those in two additional meals that week, without feeling like you are eating the same thing. For the Mexican pizza, you can make a quick thin crust out of just whole wheat flour, butter, and milk–requires little kneading and no rising, so you just basically stir it up and roll it out. With the advance preparations, all of the weeknight meals can be made in about 30 minutes.
This is the creamiest and EASIEST macaroni and cheese ever! I used quinoa pasta but you could just as well use regular or whole wheat pasta. It makes a nice quick lunch for one!
Super Creamy Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese
Serves 1 (double or triple as desired!)
3/4 cup quinoa elbow noodles
1 cup milk
1 tsp mustard
1/2 cup shredded cheddar
salt to taste
In a small sauce pan, combine milk and pasta. Bring up to a simmer and cook, stirring frequently, until pasta is al dente and milk begins to thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in a tablespoon of extra milk if it looks too thick. Add mustard and salt, and stir well to combine. Then, add cheese and stir until melted.
Quinoa pasta cooks really fast, so this whole process takes maybe 10 minutes! You can plan for about 20 minutes with whole wheat pasta, but still, a good quick lunch!
It’s day 8! We made it a week, with only a couple “cheats.” My first thought upon waking was, “a cappuccino would be nice. Maybe this can just be a one week cleanse. Or maybe I can keep doing the other things, but add in the cappuccino.” Uh-huh. Nice try. I got up and got on the scale. 5 pounds lost this week! Oh, okay, so maybe I don’t want that cappuccino after all! 
In the book
Coconut Curry Soup
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp curry powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
1 or 2 cups vegetable broth
1/2 zucchini, very finely chopped
1 carrot, very finely chopped
1/4 bell pepper, very finely chopped
1/4 cup tomato puree
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1-15 oz can coconut milk
1/3 pkg rice sticks (check the asian section of the supermarket for these)
Saute your onion in olive oil until tender and translucent. Add garlic and saute until it is aromatic. Then throw in the spice mixture and stir well, letting the spices cook a bit. Toss in the veggies and mix with the spices. Then pour in enough vegetable broth to cover the veggies, scraping up all the spices that are stuck to the pan. Allow to simmer until veggies are tender. This won’t take long since we’ve cut them so finely. Add in the tomato puree, salt, and coconut milk. Bring back to a strong simmer. Meanwhile prepare your rice sticks according to the package directions. Mine said to soak in hot water for 10 minutes, then chop. I soaked them until they looked nice and flexible, then chopped them into about 1″ pieces. Add the chopped rice noodles to the soup and allow the whole mixture to simmer for another 5 or 10 minutes. Serve hot and enjoy!
Spaghetti Bolognese is the champion of fatty, meaty, animal based pasta sauces. So it was probably crazy to attempt a vegan version. But lo, behold, the most amazing sauce ever. It is DELICIOUS! Serve over whole grain spaghetti, cooked al dente.
Vegan Spaghetti Bolognese
olive oil
1 onion, minced
1 small bunch baby celery, leaves included, chopped
1 large carrot, diced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/8 cup soy sauce
2 cups cooked small lentils
2 cans chopped tomatoes
2 tsp salt
8 sundried tomato halves, finely chopped
1 cup coconut milk*
water
Add enough oil to a large sauce pan or stockpot to cover the bottom. Heat over low, then add onions, celery, and carrot, cooking until onions are translucent. Turn up the heat to medium or medium high and saute until the vegetables start to brown. When they are starting to brown, deglaze with red wine vinegar and soy sauce mixture, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add lentils and stir well to combine. Then add all the tomatoes and salt, stirring to combine. If needed, add a bit of water so that it looks a little soupy. It should not look thick at this stage. I added about a 1/2 cup to a cup of water. Bring to a simmer and then stir in coconut milk. Allow to simmer for an hour or two, stirring occasionally. Then transfer about 1/4 of the sauce to a blender and blend until smooth. (Alternatively, you could use an immersion blender.) Return the blended portion to the pot and stir well. You should now have a thick sumptuous sauce!
*The coconut-y taste of the coconut milk cooks off leaving you with a creamy decadent sauce that’s vegan! Hooray!
I’ve upped the ante. My morning smoothie now looks like this:
I never thought I would EVER be able to bring myself to drink anything that looked like that. But it was yummy! And now I’m addicted.
After reading Crazy Sexy Diet
So I talked to a friend of mine about adding some greens and she suggested some painless ways to get started–just a little green stuff to start with and work your way up from there. The first day, I started with my normal banana, orange, strawberry, and threw in about a third of a cucumber. It was okay. Drinkable with a straw anyway. But you see, I really, really HATE cucumber. So, although that may be one of the least offensive vegetable add-ins for most people, it was probably the worst for me. The next day, I added a little bit of the cucumber again (since I had it), plus some broccoli stems, a broccoli leaf, and a few leaves of parsley, oh, and a green apple instead of the strawberries. And we have a winner! The green apple flavor dominates, so none of the other green stuff is recognizable to my taste buds. Perfect. I still have a little bit of cucumber left, but after I use that up, I am thinking about switching it out for zucchini. I’ll gradually work my way up to 50/50 fruit/veggies. A lot of raw foodies suggest mostly veggies, but fruit is good for you too! And I’m not one to just sit and chow on fruit, so for me a smoothie is the best way to get my daily dose.
Interested in trying a Green Smoothie? Here is a mix to get you started:
1 banana
1 blood orange
1 green apple
1 broccoli stem (~2″ long)
broccoli leaves (or if your broccoli doesn’t have leaves, you can add other greens–spinach, carrot greens, etc.)
few parsley leaves (easy on the parsley, it has a strong flavor)
1/3-1/2 cucumber (or more if you actually like cucumbers!)
1 romaine lettuce leaf
Combine in blender and blend until all is smooth. My blender is not one of those fancy expensive things that many of the raw food sites recommend, but it still manages to do the job. I let it run for awhile until everything looks really smooth. You may want to cut the larger vegetables into little pieces to help everything blend up faster.
Serve and enjoy! But be warned: they are addictive! My energy levels skyrocketed with the addition of all these yummy enzymes! One morning I skipped it and had coffee and a whole grain muffin and felt horrible by noon. You can judge the benefits of food choices by how they make you feel. When I eat heavy food, I feel heavy and sluggish. When I have a super-smoothie, I feel light and energetic! That’s proof enough for me!
P.S. My 3 year old loves them, too!
All gone!
a.k.a Crack.
Really, they are THAT good. Well, I don’t know how good crack is, actually. But these cookies are certainly habit forming. The first batch went so fast I didn’t even have a chance to take a photo. So, we had to make more. Damn.
Double Chocolate Cookies
(a modification of my Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp molasses
1/3 cup oil
1 tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 tbsp water (egg replacer)
3 tbsp soymilk
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cup quick oats (see? they’re healthy! flaxseed AND oats!)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
In a large bowl, mix sugar and molasses until well blended. Add oil, soymilk and flaxseed mixture, stirring well. In a medium bowl combine, flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet, combining well. Stir in chocolate chips and oatmeal. Spoon onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees until set (about 10 minutes). They should still look puffy, not flat!
Goodmorning! It’s a beautiful day in Italy!
Today is day 11 of our 21-day Vegan Indulgence. We are over half way through and no cheating! Hurray!
It has been surprisingly easy. I am much more prepared this year than I was last year. I have good vegan substitutes for eggs and milk, plus the key ingredient–a proper mindset. It is a wonderful opportunity to see how my body feels dairy-free. The only thing that has been hard is not having my morning cappuccino with delicious organic Italian whole milk. I’m actually having dreams of cappuccini at night! Soy milk just doesn’t compare. So, clearly that is something that will return to my daily routine at the end of this 21-days.
But cheese? Haven’t missed it. At all. We even bought some Amy’s frozen dairy free mac-n-cheeze dinners, in case of a dairy craving emergency, but we haven’t needed them yet. Last night we ordered pizza–marinara with eggplant and peppers for me and Brian and margarita (cheese) for Alex. I can’t speak for Brian, but I don’t miss the cheese pizza. The crust and fresh tomato sauce and roasted vegetables are all so good! Of course, I’ve been eating the marinara for a few months now when we order pizza, so this wasn’t a new thing for me.
The one thing I was not prepared for was not being able to eat our soy meat-replacement products. I kind of have a love/hate thing going with all of that anyway. I love how easy it is to simply replace meat in chili, spaghetti sauce, tacos, etc, with soy crumbles. I hate that it’s a heavily processed food. Other than the soy products, we don’t eat processed food. So, in the back of my mind I have been wanting to cut back on those anyway. Well, surprise, surprise, I read the labels and all the Morningstar products that we buy have milk and egg products in them. So, that eliminated a few of the meals I’d planned for the 3 weeks. I’m going to try spaghetti with just lentils tonight. I’ve made it before, but it wasn’t exactly right, so I’m hoping to improve my recipe to a more convincing meat-replacement sauce.
I love the book, Skinny Bitch, but I was disappointed with the Skinny Bitch in the Kitch cookbook because it relies so heavily on processed meat and dairy replacements. I like to consume as much natural food as possible. I’ve often pondered whether it isn’t better to just eat meat than some complicated, processed meat replacement food. This, of course, would only be acceptable if you could guarantee the quality of the meat–free range, organic, and local. Conventional meat is just too risky.
One thing I do like about the Skinny Bitch approach to healthy eating is the morning routine. They suggest that when you wake up you only have water, or perhaps decaf green tea if you need a hot drink right away. Give your body a chance to wake up. Let your digestive system get going. Then, when you actually FEEL hungry, have fruit.
I’m not actually a big fan of fruit, outside of berries, but it is undeniably good for you, so my version of this is to make a big-ass smoothie (see photo above). I was doing this regularly during the summer, but then it got cold and I got back in the habit of wanting warm food in the morning. But I have to say, I felt really, really good when I was starting the day with fruit. It reset my appetite for the whole day. I didn’t snack as much, instead listening for my body to tell me when it was actually hungry, so I ate healthier.
With not loving these soy-cappuccini so much, I figure I should go back to the smoothie breakfast again. The bag of blood oranges my Italian neighbor brought over helped convince me that this was a good idea!
Wake-Up Call Smoothie
1 banana
2 small oranges
5-6 frozen strawberries
1 cup water
1 tsp honey
Combine all ingredients in your blender and blend until smooth. Pour into a big crystal goblet and feel special as you treat your body to a healthy and delicious breakfast!
