Curried Indian Potato Stew

Zoey's dad has been busy in the kitchen lately now that Zoey and I are more focused on baby-preparing tasks. He has been checking out books at the library and searching the internet for new recipes to try. This is one of his first recipes that he found on his own and created without any help from me. He even took the picture and asked me to post it on the blog!

This recipe is from the McDougall Program website and the actual recipe can be found here. It is the first recipe in the list. We used fresh cauliflower instead of frozen and we left out the peas. Actaully I didn't even know that there were peas in the recipe until I just looked at it now. I think it would have been great with peas added, but it was great without them so you can make your own choice about that.

He used about 2 1/2 Tablesppons of curry powder spice that we got in the bulk foods section of the grocery store. He also added a little black pepper which gave it a little more zip. We served it over brown rice and hulled barley which makes everything taste even better.

Overall this dish was delicious and we ate it for leftover lunches for 2 days.

He also made the next dish down: Mexican Beans and Rice and that was really good too but we didn't take any pictures.

As for me and Zoey:

We have been busy putting together the baby's room:



Zoey tested out the changing table when I wasn't looking and she was so cute up there that I had to take her picture. It isn't the most flattering image of Zoey that I have, but it captures the moment pretty well. We are getting ready to have the baby any day now!

Taco Soup

One of our favorite go-to meals in the slow cooker is a vegan taco chili/ soup recipe that is super easy to make. We often make this when we have non-vegan friends over for dinner and it is always a success!

Taco Soup

Ingredients:

1/2 onion
1 package frozen morning star frozen "hamburger" crumbles
3 fresh bell peppers in a variety of colors
1 can kidney beans
1 can garbanzo beans
1 can black beans
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato sauce
1/2 cup frozen or canned corn
1 can black olives
1 package taco spice
cumin to taste (optional- it gives the soup a smokey flavor)


*** Note: If you prefer to soak and cook your own beans, you can add 1-2 cups of each type of cooked bean instead of the canned beans. ***

Directions:

1. Saute the onion in cooking spray or a little bit of water for about 5 minutes
2. Add the morning star crumbles and continue to saute for another 5 minutes
3. Add all ingredients to the slow cooker except the olives and mix well
4. Cook on low for 6 hours or cook on high for 3 hours
5. Slice and add the olives
6. Enjoy with baked chips (optional)

We love using the chips to scoop up bites of chili but it is just as good when the chips run out! I meant to get a picture of this in a dish with chips, but we were so excited to eat this that there was no time for final pictures! This dish is also really good the next day, so it is great for leftovers.

Boring Snoring

Well, it has been awhile since Zoey and I have posted and it is mostly because my diet has become extremely boring. I was talking to my sister on the phone the other night and she asked about my blog and when I told her what I have been eating she agreed that what I was eating really has been boring. I eat a lot of plain grains- hulled barley, bulgur, brown rice, oats, quinoa and couscous. I am soaking and eating large amounts of plain beans. And then I am having daily salads with lots of fresh fruit. It has been delicious but not much to blog about.

For some reason the past few weeks it hasn't occured to me to actually mix foods together into a "recipe". Zoey's dad has been more creative on the food front and actually checked out a cookbook all on his own this weekend and was pointing out things that he wants to make. So I am hoping to get a few more things up here on the blog before the baby arrives.

I am also in the process of collecting wholesome vegan non-refrigeratable food to take with me to the hospital when I go into labor. I met with someone at the hospital where I am having the baby and she said that they should be able to get me some wholesome vegan food while I am there but I am not going to leave much up to chance. Does anyone have any recoomendations for packaged foods that I could take with me that would be great for a 2 day hospital stay with no microwave or refrigerator? So far we have individual soymilks, canned beans, grapenuts and a few granola bars. I am at least banking on there being fresh fruit and greens/ salad bar at the hospital.

Triple Berry Pops

At some point in the past few years I signed up for the Vegetarian Times email Newsletter which gets emailed to me about once a week. I normally delete the emails because I have enough new recipes that I am trying, but something about this recipe caught my eye. I have always liked the idea of making my own popsicles and now that the weather is getting warmer, the containers are much easier to find.

The full recipe can be found here.

I bought a bag of mixed organic frozen berries and let them thaw for about 30 minutes on the counter.




I added the white grape juice (although if I make these again I will just use water because there was plenty of sweetness from the berries).


Zoey took a sniff before I blended it all together in my food processor:



Into the popsicle molds they go:



I got impatient and didn't let them chill the full amount of time before trying to break one free to test. That didn't work out very well because I pulled the stick out but could not get the good stuff to come with it. I learned my lesson though and let the other 3 freeze for 3 hours and they came out much more easily.

Now that I have the popsicle molds I am thinking that I will try other combinations!

Barley and Black Beans

One of the joys of pregnancy so far is my new found obsession with eating enough protein in a day. After awhile I realized I just couldn't eat another soy hot dog or boca burger so I decided to be a little more creative.

I discovered hulled barley at Whole Foods and I was shocked by the nutritional power this grain has. One half cup of hulled barley has 11 grams of protein, 16 grams of fiber and only 2 grams of fat. On top of that it has a full days worth of manganese and 60% of my daily dose of selenium.

So I started just eating it plain or mixing it with black beans and as the days have progressed I have gotten more creative. Now I make it like this:

1/2 cup cooked hulled barley
1/2 cup cooked black beans
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen vegetables
1-2 Tablespoons of salsa

This dish packs in 24 grams of protein and 28 grams of fiber.

Of course, barley is one of those foods that fills me up super fast, so I usually eat half of the bowl early in the day and the other half in the afternoon.

I couldn't get Zoey to actually sniff this dish but she did make an appearance on the kitchen table while I was taking pictures so that will have to do.



Here it is all mixed together and ready to eat:


It's delicious!

Zoey's dad adds 1/2 a yellow zucchini and a handful of spinach to his bowl. I haven't tried that yet but he loves having it for lunch at work.

Vegan Banana Berry Muffins

As Zoey and I prepare for the arrival of our new non-feline baby this summer, we have begun a massive clean-out project. Next up on the list of things I am cleaning out? Cookbooks! I have too many cookbooks. I have some that I have never used and many that I keep around just because I tried one recipe and liked it but never got around to using it again. Check out the cookbook labels on the right side of my blog, I am mostly a walking 1 hit wonder.

So, as I go through these cookbooks now I am applying a "use it or lose it principle" which means that I am going to be cooking more from these cookbooks and making a final decision about whether each book deserves the precious real estate that it currently takes up in my kitchen.

First up on the list is the Teen Vegetarian Cookbook. I love cookbooks for kids/ teens because I like recipes that are easy to follow. If they had a healthy vegan cookbook for 5 year olds that would be about my speed. But alas, I am stuck with a book for teens and the first thing that caught my attention was muffins (imagine that).

These muffins use maple syrup and blueberries as the sweetener and I replaced the oil with applesauce.

Here it is right after adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients:



Into the oven for 20 minutes:



Out of the oven and on to the plate. This is also a picture of the cookbook that I am testing out to see if I will use it or lose it.



Overall these are probably the healthiest tasting muffins that I have made and they were pretty good.

So that is 1 point for using the Teen's Vegetarian Cookbook.

Banana Oatmeal Pancakes

It has been awhile since Zoey and I have made pancakes for breakfast so when we saw this recipe on the Meatout Mondays website, I knew that we would be giving it a try. I like oatmeal, I like bananas and I like pancakes so I was ready for success.

The first step was to soak the oats in soymilk in the refrigerator overnight. First of all, I have no idea why this step is important (but I did it because the directions told me to). Secondly, I don't know what oats they are using where they get 26 grams of protein from a cup of oats, but I should look into that. I just used standard regular Quaker oats.

So in the morning, my oat/ soymilk combination seemed pretty identical to how I had left it the night before:



Zoey kept a close eye on the prize while I added in the other ingredients:
(Notice the brown bag of pears behind her- we are still trying to ripen those pears!)


After everything was mixed together we poured some batter in the pan:


Ta da! I added some bananas on top so that my breakfast would look more like the picture (I am funny like that). Zoey's dad had these without bananas on top and they were still delicious.


Some of the other recipes on that recipe site look great so I am going to give some other things a try.

Pear Problems

This winter we have been enjoying some of the best pears here in Oregon but the past two weeks we have been unable to get our pears to ripen. We had a method that was working well, but suddenly it seems to have stopped working so I thought I would post here and see if anyone has any ideas.

We buy our pears in a big bag from Costco and pull about six out and store the rest in the fridge.



We place the 6 that we pulled out in a brown bag like this one and leave it on the table for 4-5 days. Once those pears are ripe we eat them and add the pears from the fridge to the bag to repeat the process.


All winter we have been using this method and enjoying juicy delicious pears. However, starting last week the pears just would not ripen in the bag no matter how long we left them in there. The tops would get all soft and shriveled but the pear would still be rock hard. Seriously slicing into one of these pears is like slicing into an apple (and they taste terrible like that too). We love eating pears and I am hoping that someone might have some ideas that we can try to get things rolling again. Anyone have any suggestions or a special way that you like to ripen pears?

Zucchini Banana Muffins

One of the best things about pregnancy so far is... muffins. That's right. I have been lucky to mostly escape ice cream cravings and other unhealthy foods and have instead channeled my cravings into apple juice (which I never even liked before) and muffins. Here in Zoey's Kitchen we are making muffins once or twice a week now so I am always on the lookout for something new and at least somewhat "healthy".

When I saw a recipe for Banana Zucchini Bread over at Kimmy Kokonut's blog, I knew this was a recipe that I wanted to try. Normally Zoey's dad helps with the muffin prep but I decided to surprise him with these on my own. As I was scooping the batter into the muffin pans he decalred "I don't eat vegetables in muffins!" Which was actually fine with me because I suspected that 1) he would and 2) if he didn't that was all the more for me and I could freeze them:


I decided to make muffins instead of a loaf because I am in a muffin frenzy and every baked good these days must come out as muffins. So I filled up my muffin tin (which is actually one of those sillicone muffin trays) and baked them for 30 minutes.

Here they are fresh out of the oven:



Well, turns out that Zoey's dad does eat vegetables in muffins. Not only did I not have a chance to freeze any for myself for later, they didn't even last long enough to get a good picture once they came out of the muffin pan!

These muffins were super moist and delicious. I used the oil in the recipe even though I normally would have gone with the applesauce substitution. The next time I make these I will try applesauce instead to see how that works out.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

We have had some sunny days in Oregon which is a rare winter treat. All the sun is making me more interested in sandwiches so my interest in homemade hummus has resurfaced. I found this recipe in the August 2008 issue of Oxygen Magazine. I have been trying to find a hummus that has the same taste as my favorite store-bought hummus and I thought this one might do the trick.

Ingredients:

4 oz roasted rep peppers in a jar (drained)
1 can garbanzo beans (or 1 1/2 cup garbanzo beans if you soak your own)
2 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 clove of garlic
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Add all ingredients to your food processor:



2. Blend:



3. I tried this on bread with tomatoes and in pita bread with romaine lettuce.


Review: This was okay hummus, but not as good as my store-bought variety. I am not sure how to describe this but it tasted sort of too "neon red". Perhaps I should have used less red pepper.

I am still in search of my perfect homemade hummus. Do any of you have a hummus recipe that you love?