Weekly Food

It's Friday!  This iweek went by really quickly.  I'm not sure why but I'm not going to complain about that :)  I hope everyone else had a good week!  And since it's Friday, I'm joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up and share the food we ate this week.

We kept the food pretty simple this week.  We started with brunch over the weekend.  We had ordered some fresh bagels (they were so good!) so I had a breakfast sandwich on a bagel with vegan cheese and avocado. 

A friend cooked dinner for us at the beginning of the week and it was a pasta casserole with plenty of spinach.  It was delicious and we had it with salad.

Then there was fried rice with sesame roasted broccoli.  This was pretty basic and I didn't even use a recipe.  I kind of just threw things in until it tasted the way I wanted.  Thankfully that worked out really well this time and everyone was a fan :)

Our meal for the weekend is going to be cauliflower tacos, I'll report back on those next week.  We're also treating ourselves to a special take out deal.  A local catering company is doing curbside pick up for meals as a pivot since there aren't really large events going on.  We have a 3 course meal ordered tonight and it was only $22 per person.  I'm looking forward to it!

I'd love to hear about any fun meals you all have tried recently :)

 

Weekly Food

It's finally Friday!  This is another week that seemed to crawl by for some reason.  I guess part of it is because we stay in the house all the time and really don't go anywhere.  But I know that's still the right thing for us for now so we're going to keep with it.  I hope everyone else had a good week!  And since it's Friday, I'm joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up and share the food we ate this week.

 

Weekend brunch was amazing this week.  Mike made a baked french toast with whipped cream that was delicious.  We also had it with mango and strawberries on the side.

We made another vegan pasta on Wednesday.  This one had roasted veggies and a tomato sauce that was creamy with the addition of soaked and blended cashews. And we served it with salad.  Sorry for the blurry photo, I don't know how I didn't notice that when I took it.

The middle of the week was a greek salad.  It was delicious, especially the second day as the flavors had a chance to marry.  We were trying to clean out our freezer a bit so we served it with garlic bread the first day and with tater tots the second day.  Random pairings but still delicious and now there's more room in the freezer :)

I hope everyone has a good weekend in front of them!

Weekly Food

Yay, it's finally Friday!  This week went by pretty fast since it was a busy one at work.  And I'm still just working three days per week so it was tough to get it all in.  But thankfully it's the weekend now.  I hope everyone else had a good week!  And since it's Friday, I'm joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up and continue my trend of sharing the food we ate this week.

I made tofu chorizo, and it was amazing!  I am definitely doing this again.  It didn't take long at all and the spices were things I tend to have on hand anyway.  It can be kept in the freezer for a couple months, which is another advantage.  We made these sandwiches with it.  The sandwiches were good but a lot of work.  I probably won't make these sandwiches again just because of the amount of work. Sadly, it looks like I somehow forgot to take a photo.  But trust me, the tofu chorizo is going to be a hit.

We had gotten some really delicious bagels and cream cheese so we went with bagel sandwiches for our Sunday brunch.

And my birthday was this week!  So Mike made me a delicious honey yogurt cake.  It was flavored with lemon and thyme and so delicious.  It wasn't overly sweet, which is how I like my desserts.

He also made me homemade naan.  I made a chickpea curry to pair it with and it was amazing!

Tuesday was my actual birthday so we got take out tacos and margaritas.  They were the perfect way to celebrate my birthday :)  The veggie option was sweet potato and brussel sprout tacos and they were so good!

We also had burrito bowls later in the week.  We made some rice and used up the left over tofu chorizo as well as the leftover toppings from the tacos.  It all went together surprisingly well and made for another delicious dinner.

So that was our food for the week.  It turned out to be a great week full of delicious food :)

Weekly Food

I'm glad to be back to sharing blog posts this week!  And though it's felt like a long week, it's finally Friday :)  I hope everyone else had a good week!  And since it's Friday, I'm joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up and continue my trend of sharing the food we ate this week.

The weekend started out with samosa wraps.  This was a combination of a lentil spread, a filling that was a mixture of potatoes, cauliflower and peas, pickled onions and a dollop of plain yogurt.  It was so delicious!  We just served it with roasted broccoli on the side.

Sunday brunch included the usual eggs and potatoes but Mike also made vegan berry pancakes in a sheet pan and they were delicious! So much easier than flipping individual pancakes.

Our next dinner for the week was a vegan gado gado.  We used quinoa instead of rice, topped it with shredded veggies, roasted sweet potatoes and peppers, and steamed green beans.  The delicious peanut sauce is what really made this meal.  It was amazing!

And the middle of the week was pasta.  We've been getting into a bit of a pattern with pasta in the middle of the week just because it's quick and easy on a work day.  Plus, it's delicious!  We used a one pot recipe again which makes clean up quick too.  This week's recipe was a summer vegetable pasta.  But it made a ton of pasta!  It said it was 4-6 servings but we got much more than that out of it.

So that was it for the week!  The dinners all turned out delicious and we were pretty happy with them.  Hopefully that trend continues as well :)  I hope you've all been having delicious food recently too. 

Weekly Food

It's finally Friday!  This is another week that seemed to drag and just take forever.  I hope everyone else had a good week!  And since it's Friday, I'm joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up.

 

I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about our weekly food again.  Thankfully, we didn't have any food fails this week :)   We continued our weekend brunch tradition on Sunday and since we had tomatoes that needed to be used up, we made a bravas sauce to go with the potatoes.  And Mike had made little mini biscuits we had frozen so we baked some up for this meal.  It was delicious!

And since we had bravas sauce left over, we used it for our Spring Vegetable Buddha Bowl the next day.  I mostly followed the recipe but just used the bravas sauce instead of the sauce in the recipe.

We kept the middle of the week easy with a couple nights of make your own pizza and salad.  I was trying to use up some random stuff so my pizza was vegan cheese, broccoli slaw, onion, jalapenos and avocado.  Sounds really strange but it ended up being pretty tasty.

And then it ended up being really warm today.  To celebrate the Summer  feel, we scrapped our plan for peanut stew and made a vegan nicoisse salad (chickpeas instead of tuna) instead.  This was pretty easy to throw together and really good.  We skipped the beets since we didn't have any but I think we pretty much followed the recipe for everything else.  I can see us making this several times over the Summer.

So those were our meals for the week.  It was all delicious and pretty easy for the most part.  I hope you all had some great meals too!

 

Weekly food

I hope everyone had a good week!  I'm happy that it's finally Friday.  I don't know why but this week really seemed to drag for me.  And since it's Friday, I'm joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up.

 

I'm using this time to talk about food again.  Though we only had two dinners made at home this week given that we had a snafu with one of our planned meals. We had planned on eggplant parmesan at the beginning of the week but the grocery store was apparently out of eggplant.  So we didn't get any in our delivery.  Sadly, we didn't notice the eggplant was missing until right as we were about to make dinner.  So we ended up ordering from a local restaurant instead.

But the other meals we had this week were pretty delicious.  Mike grilled one day and they had steak while I had a beyond sausage.  We also grilled veggies in a foil packet and had corn with a lemon thyme butter to go along with it.  It was a delicious meal!  And I had the leftover beyond sausages for lunches throughout the week.

We also made another grain bowl.  This one was roasted sweet potatoes, chickpeas and kale with a tahini maple sauce.  I used this recipe from Mimimalist Baker as a starting point, served it over rice, and everyone seemed to love it.  This sauce is definitely a keeper.

I'm pretty happy with how food is going during the self isolation.  We've settled into a good routine of everyone on their own for breakfasts and lunches.  That generally means oatmeal and avocado toast for breakfast for me and hummus sandwiches for lunch.  And Sunday brunch of eggs and potatoes (which are an opportunity to use up any veggies that need used up), something Mike bakes, and mimosas. 

And we've still been finding interesting recipes to try out for dinners so we haven't gotten bored yet.  And given that it's been almost two months, I'm pretty happy with that!  I definitely think we're going to be able to keep up with more dinners at home even after all of this is over, which is a positive. 

I'd love to hear of any changes you've made recently that you think you'll be keeping!

Weekly Food

Forgot it was Friday again but hey, I remembered before the end of the day!  That means it's still Friday and I'm joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up.

I only have two dinners to share this week.  I haven't made the third meal yet so I'll share that in next week's food post.  But the good news is that the two meals we made were super delicious!  Breakfasts have been oatmeal or avocado toast for me.  And lunch has been hummus sandwiches or sandwiches with chao vegan cheese.  This is my first time I'm trying chao and I'm amazed and how much they taste like cheese.

Our first dinner for the week was bbq tofu bowls.  This was sooo good!  We used this recipe from Pinch of Yum as the starting point.  And we used the honey mustard sauce they recommended.  The flavors all worked so well together!  We had rice, bbq tofu, roasted sweet potatoes, slaw, cucumbers, radishes and the honey mustard sauce.

The second meal of the week was somehow even more delicious!  It was polenta slices topped with spring vegetables.  I didn't really have a recipe for this, I just kind of made it up as I went along.  And I kind of regret that because I didn't write anything down and that means I probably won't be able to recreate it.  It was basically onions, peppers, radishes, green beans and mushrooms cooked in white wine and then I added the left over honey mustard sauce.  I added some fresh thyme at the end.  It's so simple but everyone ended up loving it.  We served it with a salad on the side.

So that was it for the week!  I hope you all had a week full of delicious meals too!

Weekly Food

It's Friday!  And that means time to share what we ate this week.  I hope everyone had a good week.  This week went pretty slow for me for some reason.  I'm not sure why but the days seemed to crawl by.  And this is the end of 5 weeks of social isolation for us so that may be part of the reason time seemed so slow.  But thankfully it's finally Friday so I'm also joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up.

Meals turned out pretty well this week and thankfully there were no mess ups or duds.  There were a couple things we had to improvise on but it all turned out ok.

The week started out with burrito bowls.  The base was rice and black beans cooked with onions, peppers and corn.  Everyone had the toppings of their choice.  There was no recipe for this one, we just winged it.

We had initially planned on more barbecue tofu during the middle of the week.  But we weren't able to get tofu.  And for some reason, we got twice the number of eggs we were expecting.  And we still had pitas that needed to be used up.  So we went with a weird mash up of a banh mi style egg pita sandwich.  And we served it with some frozen onion rings that we found deep in the freezer.

And the last meal for the week was a vegan mac and cheese.  Originally we had planned to include broccoli in the dish but the broccoli had gone bad :(  Oh well, it was a dinner without veggies but it was also really delicious.  This is the first time I tried to make a vegan mac and cheese and I was surprised how easy it was and how delicious it was.  Both Mike and Joy felt like it tasted like the real thing.  The sauce was a little gritty so I think the only change I would make next time is adding some non-dairy milk when blending the sauce to smooth it out more.  But this is definitely a keeper and I'll be making it again.   Hopefully with the broccoli next time.

So those were our dinners for the week!  And they all made enough to have leftovers for dinner the next day.  I appreciate not having to cook dinner every day.  How were everyone else's dinners this week?
 

Weekly Food

I hope you are all doing well!  We continue to stay at home for the most part and it's hard to keep track of the days.  But I just realized that it's Friday!  I'm keeping with my recent weeks and sharing what we've been eating this week.  I'm also joining up with Fairytales and Fitness for their Friday link up.

We've gotten into a tradition of making brunch for Sundays at home.  This week was vegan pancakes, scrambled eggs and roasted potatoes.  We were out of sparkling wine so we went with screwdrivers instead of mimosas. We also had some pizza delivered form a local pizzeria on the weekend.

We started out the weekdays with Barbecue Tofu pita pockets.  These were delicious, and pretty easy to make.  Get a good barbecue sauce because that the main flavoring. We had them with tater tots because tots are always a good addition.  We've been making everything with enough for two meals so we cook every other day and have leftovers on the non-cooking days.

Then we had pasta with mushrooms and kale in pesto, served with a salad.  This was delicious and there's no recipe.  Just saute the veggies, cook the pasta, and combine it all with some store bought pesto that we already had.  Added benefit, it was about to pass it's use by date next month so we used it just in time :)

The plan for the weekend is a cauliflower curry, no photos to share of that one yet but I'll share it on next week's post :)

So that's my week in food!  I hope your week was delicious too.

 

Vegan Buffalo Cauliflower Casserole

I've been a vegetarian my whole life, so never really tasted buffalo sauce until recently.  Buffalo cauliflower became a popular option in the past several years and I have to admit, I love it!  I can't believe I've been missing out on this flavor.  But of course, buffalo cauliflower doesn't really seem like a meal.  I've had it as tacos before to make it more meal-like.  And now, I've found a new way to round this out into a meal... buffalo cauliflower casserole!

You all, this was so delicious!  It's vegan, gluten free, and pretty healthy.  It's also easy.  It does take some time in the over but most of the time is inactive so you can do other things while the casserole is cooking.  I started with the recipe I found on From My Bowl.  I only made some small adjustments.

Ingredients
 

• 2 cups low-sodium vegetable broth 
• 1/2 cup buffalo sauce (read the ingredients to check it's dairy free) 
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon onion powder 
• 1/2 a medium onion, finely chopped (the original recipe used celery but I hate celery)
• 1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed (the original recipe uses 2 cups of cooked chickpeas)
• 1/2 medium head of cauliflower, chopped into bite-sized florets
• 1 cup uncooked brown rice 
• Vegan ranch dressing and chopped green onions, for garnish (Optional) 

 

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Heat the broth, hot sauce, nutritional yeast, and onion powder in a medium pot over high heat until it comes to a boil. 
2. Pour the chickpeas in a 9×13″ casserole dish. Next layer the cauliflower and onion on top. Last, add the uncooked brown rice.
3. Remove the vegetable broth from the heat once it comes to a boil and pour the liquid evenly over the casserole dish. Cover the casserole with aluminum foil and bake in the middle rack of the oven for 75 minutes. The original recipe said 60 minutes but the rice in ours was definitely not done at the 60 minute mark.
4. Remove from the oven and top with green onions and/or vegan ranch. 

And that's it!  If I made this again, I would probably add some green veggies (finely chopped broccoli or kale) to the casserole as well.  Serve it with a salad and it makes for a great meal.

Anyone else have a love of buffalo sauce that they try to indulge in creative ways?  I'd love to hear about it :)

Chickpea Flour Omelet

This week has been speeding by!  I'm sure that's because Monday was a holiday so it's only 4 days of work this week.  I did get back to meal planning this week too so I have breakfasts and lunch taken care of to bring to work.  One of the things I've discovered that I enjoy when I'm in a mood for savory breakfasts is a Chickpea Flour Omelet.  It's one of the things my mom used to make for me a lot when I was a kid too so it definitely has some nostalgia to it.  And in addition to being vegan, it's also gluten free!

I started with this recipe from Vegan Richa. I also asked my mom for her recipe but she never actually measures ingredients and instead cooks by feel, so the recipe I ended up with is a combination of the two.

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients
2/3 cup chickpea flour
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon coriander powder
Red chili flakes to taste
1 teaspoon oil
2/3 cup water
Vegetables to taste - I added chopped onion, green pepper, tomatoes and peas as well as grated ginger.

 

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl.  Add the spices and the water, whisk until there are no lumps in the batter.  Let it sit for at least an hour.

Add vegetables to the batter and mix.

Heat a non-stick pan on medium high with a teaspoon of oil.  Spread a ladle of the batter and cook for 5 minutes.  Flip and cook for another few minutes until golden brown.  Complete with the rest of the batter.

And that's it!  I like to eat mine like a sandwich, by putting one of the omelets in between two pieces of toast with some ketchup.  But they're definitely delicious on their own too!  And it's a healthy, savory start to the morning.  It definitely kept me full until lunch time.

This was my first attempt at making them.  You can experiment until it gets to the texture and taste that suits you.  I decided that I like them a little thinner than the above and cooked a little longer.

Any other options for savory breakfasts that you've been into lately?

Plant based eating

As I've mentioned on the blog before, I've been trying to go more plant based for a couple months now.  I've been vegetarian my whole life but want to transition to being vegan, mostly for health reasons.  My cholesterol has always been really high (good cholesterol is super high too) but it does better when I don't eat dairy. 

I've been doing ok but transitioning seems to be kind of an easy slide into eating dairy again and once a week turns into twice a week, etc.  So starting May 1st, I've decided to just flip the switch and eat completely vegan.  And because Mike is awesome, he's joining me in making May vegan month for him as well. 

Savory oatmeal with tofu and mushrooms

So far so good.  It's only been a week but I haven't had any slips.  Breakfast and lunch have been easy.  Breakfast has been oatmeal (I've been making a big batch of steel cut oats on the weekend to eat throughout the week, I have savory and sweet options). 

Chickpea salad sandwich

Lunch has been either tofu banh-mi style sandwiches or chick pea salad sandwiches.  I supplement that with fruit and raw veggies with guacamole.

Vegan lasagna soup

And I'm working on simple, quick weekday dinners that can be plant based.  We've done a simple pasta with roasted veggies and tomato sauce, and we have an easy chickpea stew that I can do.  We also do a veggie banh mi that just needed us to switch from mayo to veganaise to be vegan.  I also have a lot of vegan soup recipes but I'm not sure we'll want soup in the Summer.  I'll see what else I come up with.  And of course, I'm happy to take help from vegan prepared foods from the grocery store as needed.

 

I love the vegan options at Trader Joe's, like this cauliflower gnocchi

But eating out is really where I had been falling off the wagon  before.  What I've found in this past week is that it just takes a little more planning and research.  Thankfully we have a couple places near us where it's easy to get plant based meals if we need a quick meal.  There's Chipotle for Mexican, Honeygrow for stir-fry/noodles, Cava for mediterranean, and Mod pizza as well as &Pizza have vegan cheese.  So we're definitely lucky that way.  When we went to Baltimore this weekend, I was able to find a place that had vegan options in their menu such as the impossible burger and a vegan BLT.  We just had to research in advance and drive a tiny bit further but it was worth it.

This week is going to be a bit tough since I'm traveling for a conference.  I've already done a little research and found places near the hotel that have vegan options.  But it's mostly the conference provided meals that I'm a little worried about.  We'll see how it goes!

Vegan Lasagna Soup

I can feel the change in the air and Spring should hopefully be right around the corner.  But it seems like we're still got a bit of cold weather left to get through.  The high temperatures for this weekend are in the 40s.  So that counts as still soup weather to me!

I wanted to share this lasagna soup we made for the first time this Winter.  It's hearty, healthy, vegan, and easy!  I've learned that weekday meals have to be quick and easy for us to realistically make them after a full day at work.  This recipe checked off all the boxes and was delicious as well.  I started out with this recipe.  This blog has become one of my go to sites when I'm looking for vegan recipes.

The original recipe makes 3 servings, we just added some garlic bread to stretch it out to 4 servings so we would have leftovers.

Ingredients

• 1 tsp oil
• 1/2 onion chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic chopped
• 1 cup veggies - combination of peppers , carrots, zucchini
• 1/4 cup red lentils
• 1 cup tomato puree
• 1 diced tomato
• 2 tsp italian seasoning 
• 1/4 tsp each of onion powder and garlic powder
• salt to taste
• 2 cups veggie broth (2.5 to 3 cups if using whole grain noodles or with more veggies)
• 5 oz lasagna sheets , broken into small pieces
• red pepper flakes to taste
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 cup packed spinach
• vegan pesto, vegan cheese, or garlic bread as optional accompaniments

1. Heat oil in the Instant Pot on saute mode. Add onion, garlic and a pinch of salt. Cook for 2 mins, stirring occasionally.
2. Add veggies, lentils, tomato, salt, seasoning, onion powder, garlic powder and mix in. Then add pasta and broth. Make sure to use small pieces and mix them in well so they don't stick.
3. Close the lid and cook on manual high pressure for 3 mins. Let the pressure release for 10 minutes, then manually release.
4. Mix in the black pepper, pepper flakes and nutritional yeast.
5. Fold in the spinach and let the spinach wilt, about a minute. Then serve with any toppings you want, such as pesto or cheese.
    
   This was so delicious!  Mike added cheese to his soup and said it definitely gave it more of that lasagna feel.  I stuck with pesto and nutritional yeast on mine and it was really good.  I didn't really miss the cheese but if you want it to feel more like lasagna, definitely add it :)
   
   Also, I'm linking up with Deborah and the Meatless Monday Link up.