lunch

Butternut Squash Risotto with Sage and Toasted Hazelnuts

/ Kelly / 6 Comments

LVV MoFo 2014 main

We’ve all got a favorite flavor pairing. Peanut butter and chocolate. Raspberries and chocolate. Coffee and chocolate. Wait, how did chocolate make its way into all those examples?! Oops. How about mango and cardamom? Pumpkin and cinnamon? And my sleeper favorite, butternut squash and sage. There’s something transcendent about that combination, but I don’t use it often enough. Every time I do, though, I’m reminded how lovely sage is—it has such a pure, clean scent, and it complements butternut squash like a dream. I think you’ll agree when you try this dish.

Butternut Squash Risotto with Sage and Toasted Hazelnuts

Butternut Squash Risotto with Sage and Toasted Hazelnuts
Serves four

  • 1/2 small yellow onion, diced
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 1/2 cups arborio rice
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine (we keep a bottle of cheap wine in the fridge for cooking)
  • 4-6 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
  • 1 1/2 cup roasted butternut squash, mashed or pureed (you can roast a squash in advance and keep it in the fridge, then just scoop out the insides)
  • 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
  • 1 teaspoon dried sage (fresh sage would be nice too!)
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
  • 1-2 tablespoons vegan butter (optional)
  • 1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts, for topping

In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 4-6 minutes until translucent. Add the rice and stir so that the rice is coated with the oil and onion mixture. Add the wine and it let it cook for a minute or two, then add a cup of the vegetable broth. Stir frequently and add more broth as the rice soaks it up.

The entire cooking process should take between 20 and 30 minutes; you might not use all the broth and that’s okay. Taste the rice as it begins to soften to test whether it’s done. Towards the end of the cooking process, add the nutritional yeast and spices. Turn off the heat and mash in the squash. Stir in the vegan butter (if using) and add salt and pepper to taste. Top with toasted hazelnuts and serve.

Butternut Squash Risotto with Sage and Toasted Hazelnuts

This beautiful dish is just perfect for fall. Each serving offers modest amounts of protein, iron, and calcium, but this dish is just bursting with vitamin A thanks to the squash. According to the NIH, vitamin A “helps form and maintain healthy skin, teeth, skeletal and soft tissue, mucus membranes, and skin.” (1) It also helps produce pigments in the retina. Vitamin A is fairly simple to obtain in your daily diet; a serving of this risotto offers more than 100% of your daily needs. Orange and yellow fruits and veggies are high in beta carotene, which the body can convert into vitamin A. And now that it’s pumpkin season, I bet we’ll all be taking in lots of vitamin A!

What are your favorite flavor pairings?

Sources cited:

(1) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002400.htm

Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Soup

/ Kelly / 11 Comments

LVV MoFo 2014 main

11 days into Vegan MoFo and I’ve yet to feature a soup. Shocking! That oversight gets remedied today with a hearty tomato-y red lentil soup that couldn’t be easier to throw together. This ain’t your typical red lentil soup, though—the addition of quinoa not only boosts the nutritional profile, but adds a textural counterpoint to the softer lentils.

This soup is versatile, too. Yellow potatoes could easily stand in for the sweet potatoes, and diced carrots would make a fine addition. If you don’t have quinoa, I suppoooose you could leave it out. And if you prefer a creamier, richer soup, just add some full-fat coconut milk towards the end of cooking. That kiss of lemon juice added at the end is non-negotiable, though. Trust me, you’ll want to keep it.

Sweet Potato & Red Lentil Soup

Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Soup
Serves six

  • 1 T coconut oil
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 medium-sized yellow onion, diced
  • 1/2″ knob ginger, minced
  • 1-2 T your favorite curry powder
  • 1/2 tsp coriander
  • 1/4 tsp cumin
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric
  • 3 small sweet potatoes, chopped into small chunks
  • 3 C water
  • 15 oz can diced tomatoes
  • 15 oz can tomato sauce (or puree)
  • 2 C red lentils
  • 1/2 C quinoa
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Diced scallions or chopped cilantro for serving

In a large stockpot, heat the coconut oil over medium heat and sauté the garlic for 30 seconds or so. Add onion and ginger and sauté for another 5 minutes or until the onion is translucent. Add spices and sweet potatoes and stir until the sweet potatoes are well-coated. Add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, red lentils, quinoa, and two cups of the water and bring to a boil. Turn heat to low and let simmer for 25-30 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are fully cooked and the lentils are soft. Check every 10 minutes and add extra water in half cupfuls if necessary.

When the sweet potatoes and lentils are fully cooked, turn off the heat and add salt and pepper as desired. Stir in most of the lemon juice, reserving some for serving. Ladle into soup bowls and garnish with the leftover lemon juice, freshly ground pepper, and diced scallions or chopped cilantro.

Sweet Potato & Red Lentil Soup

Red lentils boast an impressive nutritional makeup, and this soup adds a few other key ingredients to nourish you. One serving offers 24% of your daily value of iron and 17 grams of protein… but you might not want to have just one serving.

What’s your go-to soup recipe?

BBQ Baked Black-Eyed Peas

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

LVV MoFo 2014 main

Every family has staple dishes that make an appearance without fail on specific special occasions. S’s mom always makes creamy, buttery, onion-y mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without date balls from my aunt. And a backyard cookout would have seemed empty without a big pot of baked beans during the summers of my childhood.

This take on baked beans is a divergence from the recipe I grew up eating. Iron-rich black-eyed peas stand in for the more traditional legumes, and a thick barbecue sauce lends tang. I highly recommend using the tempeh bacon bits, but they’re not strictly necessary.

BBQ Baked Black-Eyed Peas

BBQ Baked Black-Eyed Peas
Serves four

For the tempeh bacon bits:

  • 1/2 package tempeh, crumbled into pieces about 1/2″ thick
  • 2 T low-sodium soy sauce, tamari, or coconut aminos
  • 1 T maple syrup
  • 1/2 tsp liquid smoke
  • 1 T canola or vegetable oil + 1/2 T maple syrup (for cooking)

Combine soy sauce, maple syrup, and liquid smoke in a container with an airtight lid. Add tempeh bits, close the container, and shake until all tempeh bits are coated in the marinade. Let sit for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. (If you’re cooking your black-eyed peas from scratch instead of using canned, let the tempeh marinate while the peas cook.)

For the baked black-eyed peas:

  • 4 cups cooked black-eyed peas (if using canned, rinse very thoroughly; if cooking from scratch, reserve the cooking liquid)
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 small yellow onion, diced
  • 6 oz. tomato paste
  • 1 1/2-2 C reserved cooking liquid or water
  • 2 T blackstrap molasses
  • 2 T maple syrup
  • 1 T prepared yellow mustard
  • 1 T vegan worcestershire sauce
  • 1 T apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tsp chili powder
  • 1/4 tsp allspice

Preheat the oven to 350˚.

In a small pan, heat the tablespoon of canola oil. Add the garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds, then add the diced onion. Sauté for another 5 minutes until the onion starts to become translucent. Add the crumbled marinated tempeh (marinade and all) to the pan. Cook for another 7-10 minutes, stirring frequently, or until the tempeh is browned and a bit caramelized. Turn off the heat and set aside.

In an 8-cup glass baking dish, whisk together the remaining ingredients (tomato paste through allspice). Add the black-eyed peas and stir into the sauce mixture, coating all the peas. If necessary, add additional cooking liquid/water to the sauce. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 40 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 15-20 minutes.

Note: If you don’t have tomato paste, you could probably substitute a 15 oz. can of plain tomato sauce and reduce the amount of cooking liquid/water you use.

BBQ Baked Black-Eyed Peas

Black-eyed peas, tomato paste, and our old friend blackstrap molasses are all chock-full of iron—each serving of this dish offers 29% of the recommended daily value. (Most ingredient lists don’t measure iron in grams, so I’ll be going by percentages from here on out.) And you’ll also get 28% of your daily value of calcium, along with 7.5 grams of protein and whole lot of potassium. Not bad for a cookout dish!

What staple dishes does your family serve? 

Lunch Box Love (+ horribly embarrassing photos)

/ Kelly / 4 Comments

In my elementary school days, I was super fly. Check out the following photo, circa 1998 or so, if you don’t believe me:

Child of the 90s fo' sho'.

Aww yeahhh. Purple velour shirt? Check. Bell-bottom overalls with sweet flocked designs? Check. Awesome giant denim pouch key chain that probably held a Tomagotchi or a Giga Pet? Total check. The 90s were an era of classic, timeless styles, and I totally rocked them, as you can see. What you can’t see, however, is my lunch box. Lunch boxes were a key element of my grade school experience; I loved choosing a new one every year. I remember a pale green one I particularly liked; it might’ve featured the Little Mermaid or maybe the Lion King. Either way, it was awesome, in all its rigid, plastic, boxy glory.

In high school, I became too cool for childish lunch boxes. Instead, I re-used paper bags or brought one of those boring adult-like lunch bags. If you don’t believe how cool I was, check out this photo:

Geekery.

Oh yes. My high school days pretty much centered around Lord of the Rings – reading the books, watching the movies, going to midnight shows, obsessing over various cast members, hosting Academy Award parties, sewing costumes… those were the days. Believe me, if I’d found a LotR lunch box, resplendent with an image of Aragorn or Legolas, I would’ve cast aside my lunch box snubbing in a hot minute. But I didn’t, and instead I used boring, plain-colored lunch totes. Snore.

Now I’m all grown up and working at a big-girl job, and I usually bring my own lunch to work. For many months, I’ve been putting my food into a small tote bag or cramming it into a purse, all the while complaining that I needed a lunch box and risking horrible purse-spillage disasters.

Apparently complaining pays off, because my dear boyfriend found the most adorable lunch box for me recently. With it, I have come full circle and returned (or, perhaps, regressed) to my childhood love of lunch boxes. Check it out:

Love!

Isn’t it just precious?! Luc is so cute! Those stripes are so whimsical! And it almost always fits all the food I want to bring to work! On this particular day, I brought an Eggless Salad sandwich, cherries, and watermelon. Nom nom summer fruit!

Do you pack a lunch? What’s your strategy for lunch-making? I’m a big fan of planned leftovers, whether they’re the kind I eat the next day or the kind I freeze and eat a month later. It’s economical and healthy, not to mention environmentally friendly when I pack it my sweet new lunch box – no brown paper bags for me!

Raw Wednesday

/ Kelly / 2 Comments

I suppose it’s not technically Wednesday anymore, but better late than never, right? I meant to post earlier, but I got tied up with family and friend type activities and you know how it goes. Anyway, I’ve got a doozy of a post planned for tomorrow, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet. And that’s fitting, really, because my eats today were simple and unassuming yet undeniably satisfying.

In the spirit of Raw Wednesday, I put together a magnificent raw lunch that filled my tummy and made me smile thanks to its colorful appearance. Check it out:

Raw delight.

Lovely, no? My lunch was comprised of two dishes. First, I decided to try a recipe from Choosing Raw that I’ve had my eye on for a while now. Although I’ve never been a huge tomato soup fan, Gena’s chilled Basic Tomato Soup looked like the perfect way to use some delicious tomatoes from my dad’s garden. And it performed that function perfectly.

Avocado and tomato goodness.

Although it ended up being a little avocado heavy (and thus turned a borderline unappetizing green-brown color), the tomatoes fought back and let their garden fresh flavor shine through. The result was a delightful mix of creamy avocado and sweet tomato goodness. My only problem with the soup was the slight tangy balsamic vinegar aftertaste I noticed with each spoonful, but that’s just because I seriously dislike being able to taste or smell any type of vinegar in my food. Even though I did cut down on the amount called for in the recipe and added the smallest of splashes, I should have left it out entirely to tailor the soup to my personal tastes. Other than that, however, it was a perfect summer soup, and it paired so well with the more substantial part of my lunch.

Lovely lettuce wraps.

These lettuce wraps were filled with matchstick zucchini slices and generous scoops of the Sunflower Pate I made a few days ago, and they were fantastic! Although Romaine lettuce may not be optimal for wrapping, it was the only type we had in the house and worked fairly well. I had another helping of pate on the side with more zucchini for dipping, and I also enjoyed three delicious heirloom Chocolate Cherry Tomatoes. I love these little guys; they’re so amazingly sweet and smooth and rich. They’re truly a treasure and I love popping them in my mouth right off the vine. They complemented the meal perfectly, and I washed everything down with some Santa Cruz Mango Lemonade. It was a wonderfully refreshing lunch on a hot summer day.

Although I planned on enjoying a big ol’ massaged kale salad for dinner, my wonderful father ended up making a potato-leek-mushroom hash and I just can’t resist his cooking. There’s always tomorrow, right?
:)