Spicy Kasha-Veggie Salad

I’ve had a bag of kasha in my cupboard for quite some time now. I was never really sure what to do with it. Sure, I realize you can just cook it and serve it like rice, but I wanted to something more exciting with it. And so the bag sat there. Now faced with an international move, I was determined to finally put my kasha to good use. And so I decided to make Susan Voisin’s Spicy Kasha Vegetable Salad.

I made a few changes to Susan’s recipe. First off, I added more veggies. I believe there was radish, carrot, green onion, tomato, yellow bell pepper, and celery. Second, my grocery store was out of fresh parsley and mint, so I omitted those. Essentially my dressing was a combo of lemon juice and sriracha…yum!

au revoir!

Alright so I’m headed to Montreal tomorrow and I will be gone for a week. The main purpose of my trip is to attend a conference, but I’m staying an extra few days to do some sight seeing. Which will of course include a stop (or two) at Aux Vivres for some delicious vegan food.

In the meantime, here is a picture of some zucchini pasta I made. This isn’t raw. I used some marinara from the freezer (based on the Veganomicon recipe). For the “noodles,” I cut the zucchini into pieces resembling pasta, boiled for 1 minute, then drained. Even the bf liked it. He’s not the biggest veggie lover in the world so I was pretty surprised.

even more misc. foodstuffs

It seems as though my posts these days are always just a hodge podge of misc. foodstuffs. Well, keeping with that theme, here are some things I’ve eaten the past few days. First up, eggplant paprikash from Susan V. This was really good! Susan served her’s over pasta and next time that’s probably what I will do as well. Instead of using her sour cream recipe I used the last little bit of Tofutti Sour Supreme I had in my fridge. Even the omni bf liked this stuff. Well, as much as he ever likes a vegetable dish.

Next up, I revived the baked chimichangas. I took some refried beans, red pepper, tomato, corn, and green onion and rolled it up in a sprouted tortilla. Here it is before being rolled up:

I rolled it up, sprayed it with cooking spray, and baked it at 400 F for about 15-20 minutes. Delicious! I topped it off with some salsa and hot sauce and ate the leftover filling on the side:

I had some zucchini in my fridge that had to be used up. I remembered Susan V posting a microwave potato chip recipe and I was curious to see if it would work with zucchini. Like she says, there is a fine line between crispy and burnt. My second batch was inedible. The first batch was pretty tasty though. Not sure if I would make it again as I’m not much of a chip person, but I’m glad I gave it a try.

Lentil Enchiladas

I’ve heard nothing but good things about this recipe for lentil tacos. Finally I decided to try it for myself. However I couldn’t find baked taco shells in this city and I wasn’t really feeling the burrito vibe. Aha, why not make enchiladas?

These were super tasty and omni bf approved. And pretty cheap to make. It makes a ton of filling, but that’s delicious as leftovers.

Here is my version of the recipe, which is quite spicy and has an added chipotle so adjust to suit your tastes.

Chipotle Lentil Enchiladas:
-1 can enchilada sauce (I use store bought because it’s cheaper, but if you wish to make your own go right ahead)
-6 corn tortillas (or use a bigger casserole dish and more tortillas to use up all of the lentil filling)

Filling:
-1 c. diced white onion
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1 cup dry lentils (I used brown)
-1 tbsp. chili powder
-1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes (adjust to your own tastes)
-2 tsp. cumin
-1 tsp. oregano
-1 canned chipotle pepper minced
-2 tsp. adobo sauce (from canned chipotles)
-2 1/2 c. veggie broth
-1 c. salsa

You will also need to make your favourite nutritional yeast cheeze sauce, or use my fat free version, which is a variation of Bryanna Clark Grogan’s:
-1/4 c. nutritional yeast
-1/4 c. flour
-1 c. water
-1 tsp. salt (obviously omit this if you are avoiding salt)
-1/4 tsp. garlic powder
-1 1/2 tsp. lemon juice
-3 tsp. prepared yellow mustard

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large skillet, saute onions and garlic in a bit of water of veggie broth. Add lentils, spices, chipotle, and adobo. Stir constantly for 1 minute. Add veggie broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 30 minutes.

2. Toward the end of the 30 minutes make your cheeze sauce. Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat until it bubbles and thickens. Taste and adjust seasonings as you see fit.

3. When your lentils are cooked, pour in 1 cup salsa and half of the cheeze sauce. Stir.

4. Prepare a casserole dish. Spread some enchilada sauce on the bottom. Take a corn tortilla, spoon in filling, then roll. Make sure it sits seam down in casserole dish. Repeat with remaining tortillas.

5. Pour the rest of the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas and then top with remaining cheeze sauce. Bake 25 min.

I served mine on a bed of arugula with a salad on the side in order to get my greens in.

The Mexican food that would not end

I recently finished eating Mexican food for dinner four nights in a row (that’s more of a brag than a complaint). It all started with this recipe for spinach, black bean, and rice enchiladas. I saw that Happy Herbivore had made them and I noticed I had everything on hand to make them. I didn’t use the sauce recipe, instead I used store bought. I also didn’t follow the rice recipe, as I wanted to use up the ingredients I had at home. So basically I guess you could say I was inspired by the recipe, but didn’t really use most of it.

These turned out pretty good. Definitely healthy tasting. I’m used to heavy, “cheezy” enchiladas. I think next time I would play around with the recipe, and perhaps whip up a low fat cheeze sauce to go with them.

I had quite a few of these leftover, so I ended up eating leftover enchiladas the next day. On day #3 I still had quite a bit of Mexican rice leftover so I made an enchilada casserole with refried beans, some of the rice, and a cheezy sauce.

On Day #4 I still had some leftover rice, but now I also had leftover cheezy sauce and refried beans. This called for a tostada. I piled the toppings on way too high, but oh well, I had to use them up.

Fat Tuesday Eats

Since yesterday was Fat Tuesday, I decided to try my hand at some Cajun cooking. Living way up here in Canada, Cajun food isn’t something I’m very experienced with. First up is Happy Herbivore’s Cajun Chickpea Cakes. These babies are delicious! The mixture was pretty dry and crumbly and wouldn’t stick together, so I added some additional tamari as well as some water, worked like a charm. I simply adored the spice combo in these cakes. Since they are fat free they are a bit dry, like she says, so I suggest dipping them in something.

We also had Susan Voisin’s Eggplant Creole. This was good, but I feel like it’s missing a flavour. However, I have no idea what that flavour is since I know nothing of Louisiana cooking. Maybe my ratio of tomato to eggplant was off? Mine certainly turned out a lot saucier than her’s looks in the picture. Not sure. The heat was there, but it lacked a certain “zip.” That being said, it was still quite good and we enjoyed the nice fresh veggies. I served this over quinoa instead of rice.

Nacho….Squash??

So the secret is pretty much out that I adore nacho toppings on anything and everything. Put some beans and salsa and cheez sauce on it and I’ll eat it. I really really wanted something Mexican but I also had a spaghetti squash to use up. That’s when I remembered Happy Herbivore’s fiesta spaghetti squash.

I didn’t follow her recipe (or any recipe) but the idea is the same. I roasted the squash in the oven. I then topped it with some black beans, bell pepper, and corn. I dumped a bunch of salsa on top of that and finished it off with a fat free cheez sauce…sooo delicious. The only down side was that it was new salsa I wasn’t used to, and while I normally enjoy Hot salsa, when this one says ‘hot’ it means hot. I was sweating profusely and the bf was worried about me so he brought me lots of soymilk.

Nacho Spaghetti Squash

• 1 spaghetti squash, roasted (or cooked in microwave)
• 1 1/2 c. black beans
• 1/2 red bell pepper, diced
• 3/4 c. frozen corn kernels
• a batch of your favourite nutritional yeast cheezy sauce
• salsa

1. Lightly saute bell peppers until tender. Add in beans and corn kernels until heated through.

2. Make your cheezy sauce.

2. Spread spaghetti squash out on plate. Top with bean/pepper mixture. Top with cheezy sauce and salsa.

delicious east indian…

My apologies. The following food is not very photogenic. Usually I wouldn’t post these. But I already feel guilty enough about my infrequent updates so I decided to go ahead and share these for one very good reason: the food was delicious.

First up, spinach chickpea curry from Vegan with a Vengeance. I used frozen spinach for this dish, as that was what I had on hand. The spice combo was a bit bland for my tastes, so I jazzed it up by adding a pinch of this and a dash of that until it seemed right. Yum. I was eating this for 3 days afterward, but no complaints here.

To go with this delicious curry I made bharta from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. This was pretty good, although labour-intensive. I’m not sure if I would make it again for that reason. I had this served warm, but Madhur Jaffrey says you can eat it room temperature or chilled. I think it would be great as a chilled spread in a pita or something like that.

I didn’t serve these with rice. I just ate them “as is.” So there you have it, an Indian feast that’s Eat to Live compatible.

Nachos…Healthy Version

On Saturday the bf and I were grocery shopping and I stopped in the ethnic aisle to pick up some salsa. He looked at me and asked if we could have Mexican food for dinner the next night. Specifically, nachos. When I first met him, he was convinced he hated Mexican cuisine. So how could I say no? Frantically I tried to think of how to make my nachos Eat to Live friendly (he likes his loaded with cheese and sour cream, but whatever). I frantically searched for baked tortilla chips and luckily found some blue corn ones that were baked instead of fried. Now I know these aren’t allowed on the six week strict plan, but I hadn’t had my grain that day and I made sure I only had one serving of the chips (counted them out and everything!). So I feel pretty good about my choice.

For toppings I had some pinto beans, onion, tomato, lots of salsa and hot sauce and a fat free cheeze sauce. Mmmm…who knew that healthy nachos could be so delicious??

What do you do with leftover beans? You put them on top of a plate of lettuce and top with salsa for the world’s fastest (and laziest) taco salad on a night when you are too busy to cook:

Mushroom Stroganoff…kind of

Tonight for dinner I had quite a few mushrooms to use up when I remembered that Happy Herbivore had a recipe for mushroom stroganoff in her e-cookbook, Pudge-Free Holidays. Perfect. Except I already had my allotted 1 c. of grain for lunch. Boo. Enter the fabulous chickpea.

I made a few changes to the recipe to get rid of some veggies that needed to be used. Instead of an onion, I used a lonely leek that was on its way out. I omitted the carrot (counts as a starch on Eat to Live) and added a wee bit of red pepper and green onion. I put this over chickpeas and voila, a very comforting meal that was prepared lickity split. After all of those changes is it still considered stroganoff? I have no idea, but it was delicious all the same.

As a side note, lately I am obsessed with these mini mandarin oranges. They are on sale super cheap as the holiday season is over and they need to get rid of them. You do not want to know how many I have eaten in the past two days. Well, even if you did want to know, I’ve lost count. Here is one next to a quarter, just so you can see how tiny (and cute!) it is: