Current Obsession: Winter Squash and Kale

Have you all been enjoying this glorious Fall weather as much as I have? I hope so! Do you know what else is glorious? Farmers market fresh kale and winter squash of course! I can't even recall how many people I have seen blog about the versatility and wholesomeness of kale. No wonder, it is quite a nutrition powerhouse packed full of fiber and vitamins A, C, and K! I picked up a huge bunch of it at the market this past weekend and immediately made a "massaged kale salad" inspired by this "Go-To Kale Salad" by Oh She Glows. It turned out really well! I "massaged" about half of the bunch of kale I bought and kept it in the fridge in my salad spinner. Whenever I wanted another salad, I just added toppings to that kale base. Yum!

Massaged Kale Salad
Ingredients:
- 1 Large bunch kale, rinsed and patted dry
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 1 apple, chopped
- 5-6 cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1/4 cucumber, chopped
- 1 oz. cheddar cheese, cubed
- 1/4 cup chopped pecans
- Pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Chop the kale and toss with olive oil and vinegar in a large bowl. Rub the oil into the leaves a bit with your hands.
2. Take out a handful of the kale and toss with the other ingredients. Serve!
3. Store the rest of the massaged kale in the fridge; lasts about 2-3 days.

Sunday, I was in the mood to finally tackle the chopping and roasting of all of the winter squash I had. Again, I was inspired by the Oh She Glows blog to try out this squash called, delicata. Apparently you can eat the skin on these ones because it softens so much when you cook them. What?! I had to try them, so I was excited to see that they had them at the farmers market on Saturday. Yipee! I'm totally going back this week to buy at least 5 more. Haha.


From front to back: Delicata squash, acorn squash, and butternut squash!

Roasted and ready to eat!!!

These roasted squash were so simple and delicious! My will-power was sure tested as I tried not to eat the entire plate at one sitting! The butternut squash isn't in this pile because I cubed it and roasted it separately to add to some lentils I made later. However, you could have used the same method to prep it as the others.

Roasted Winter Squash
Ingredients:
-1 Delicata squash, seeds removed and sliced
-1 Acorn squash, seeds removed and sliced
-1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
-1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup
-Salt to season
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Toss squash, oil and syrup in large bowl. Once sqaush covered well in olive oil, spread in single layer on baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt.
3. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until squash is soft and starting to brown around the edges. Serve warm as is or chilled and tossed onto a salad.

I've begun to really enjoy baking and prepping lots of big dishes on Sunday afternoon so I have food to easily just heat and eat or pack in my lunch the rest of the week. Now, go out and get yourself some kale and winter squash!

On Being Productive

     April showers may bring in May flowers, but Fall's chill brings in warm casseroles! At least, that is certainly what I have been craving... I was happy to have the day off yesterday since I worked last weekend. Originally, I had planned to take Friday off but had to switch. It was actually kind of fun to randomly take a day off mid-week! Instead of just lounging around like I do most weekends, I decided to try to make the most of my day and be productive. So, I did a bunch of cleaning, cooking and yoga!

Source: kaliyogi.tumblr.com via Heidi on Pinterest

    First off, can I just say, I'll never be that flexible! I went to the noon Vinyasa class at Midtown Yoga since it was a cross-training day on my marathon training plan and I never get to go to mid-day classes on a normal basis! All this marathon training has really given me some tight leg muscles. (Surprise, surprise. Ha.) This class was just what I needed to get a good stretch! There were many poses where I think the instructor could have just said, "Fold your limbs up until you resemble a pretzel and breathe". Yeah, no problem. Lol. Despite leaving the class feeling like I just had a good stretch, I am very sore today! Guess I must have worked more muscles than I realized. :-)

     That afternoon I was really craving this roasted root vegetable casserole that Charis and I used to make all the time in Cleveland. Before we experimented with that dish, I don't think I had ever cooked or eaten parsnips or rutabaga! I didn't realize how badly I was missing out. They are delish! I found a recipe similar to the one we had been using (which was on a WIC calendar - haha!). I must say, this Harvest Vegetable Bake recipe from About.com turned out just as well! I followed the original recipe pretty closely, except that I omitted the nutmeg and breadcrumbs and added some poblano pepper and sage to the cheese sauce. Yum!

Just as tasty as I remembered!

I also baked these Trail Mix Cookies! I realized I had all these bags and containers of about 1/2 cup of random nuts and dried fruits hiding out in my cabinets. So, I combined them all into a cookie! I feel like these will be a handy little snack. They are chock full of oats, craisins, currants, sesame seeds and finely shredded coconut. Pairs well with coffee or tea!

Hope you are all having a fabulous week! The weekend is almost here!!! :-)

Vegan Day 4: Tortilla-less Burrito!

Howdy!
 Hope you are all having a wonderful Halloween week! I have been having a fun time with this vegan-venture. :-) For lunch today, I packed that walnut-tomato pasta I made the other night. It was actually 10x better as leftovers! Maybe I shouldn't have written that recipe off so quickly. Hmm. I decided to also revisit overnight oatmeal since I needed a quick breakfast again this morning. I think I prefer this made with vanilla almond milk. I loved the hint of vanilla in addition to the pb and bananas I added! Plus, I didn't have to add anything to sweeten it since the almond milk added enough sweetness by itself. Yum.

  Tonight, I was excited to try something Southwest inspired. This was another super simple dinner. I only wish I had some lettuce or tortillas to wrap it in but I forgot to pick any up at the store... and I wasn't in the mood to visit Kroger tonight. To make this dish, I just chopped up a sweet potato and cooked it on the stove-top with a little olive oil and vegetable broth. Once the sweet potato chunks had started to soften, I added the beans, seitan, taco seasoning and a bit more broth. Stir together and simmer for about 5-7 minutes. Served in a pile on my plate with some guacamole and veggie leftovers from the other night! Tasty. :-)
I am excited for Friday! This weekend is the Indie Film Festival in Memphis. I'm hoping to catch some great films!

Vegan Day 3: Keeping It Simple

Whew! I am one tired girl today! Guess I shouldn't have stayed up extra late finishing The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani. It was such a beautiful story I just couldn't put it down. I was actually in tears at one point. Trigiani guides you through the lives of Ciro and Enza as they both discover what it means to have family, love, and a home. It seemed no matter the circumstances, Ciro and Enza kept running in to one another until one day they decided to never live apart again.

Anyways, now to dinner!! I was glad that this dinner was an easy one since I was feeling so tuckered out. Ha! To throw this together, I just sprinkled the seitan with taco seasoning and heated it up on the stove-top for a few minutes. I topped my greens with the cooked seitan, guacamole, a few cherry tomatoes, and a little bit of salsa. Voila!

Vegan Day 2: Pasta Time!

My morning started off right when my friends and I saw a meteor/shooting star today before 6AM on our run!  How cool! We all assumed it was a firework until Emily came across a post by Action 5 News asking if anyone caught a pic of the meteor. :-) Since I have little time to get ready after my morning run, I packed some granola, almond milk, peanut butter, and a banana to mix together at work for breakfast. This kept me going much better than the oatmeal yesterday!
This evening, I cooked up two recipes from Oh She Glows. The first was the Roasted Fingerling Potatoes and Brussesl Sprouts with Rosemary and Garlic. I didn't really do anything different than her original recipe except use red-skin potatoes.

Ready for the oven!

Alongside the roasted sprouts and potatoes, I served the Tomato Walnut Basil Pasta. I really did want to try the nutritional yeast that she calls for in the sauce for this recipe, but it was too expensive to buy at Whole Foods just for the sake of experimenting. I didn't want to be stuck with a whole tub of it if I didn't like it! Anyways, the pasta was pretty tasty. Not sure I am a huge fan of walnuts in the sauce, but I figured I could use the protein!

Dinner is served!

I must confess, I have really been missing milk in my life. Almond milk just doesn't make my coffee as creamy as cows milk!

Vegan Day 1: Pumpkin Curry Soup

Day 1 of this vegan week! Woohoo! I started the week off with a bowl of banana, walnut, brown sugar and almond milk oatmeal. Yum. :-)

This evening, I experimented by roasting a pumpkin to use for soup rather than going with canned. It was quite a bit of work! That pumpkin was a bit tough to cut up. I tried to roast it like The Pioneer Woman did in her blog, but it took much longer in my oven and didn't soften as much as I'd hoped. So, the dish ended up being a much thicker stew-like dish rather than a creamy soup - but it wasn't bad! I think I'll need to do a little more tweaking with this one so I won't include a recipe this time around.

Mmm... pumpkin stew!

However, speaking of good vegan recipes, I made this lentil and polenta dish last week that was awesome! I found it in the local Memphis Health + Fitness magazine complements of Whole Foods Market. When I went to make this after picking up the ingredients at the store, I didn't realize that it was a slow-cooker meal! Instead, I just prepped it on the stove-top and it worked out just fine. :-) I had to cut the recipe in half... and I still had leftovers!

Slow Cooker Lentil Stew with Polenta

(By Whole Foods Market in Health + Fitness - directions edited to cook on the stove-top.)

Ingredients:

- 1 1/2 cup brown lentils

- 2 onions, sliced

- 1 large green bell pepper, diced

- 4 cloves garlic, minced

- 1 can plum tomatoes with juice

- 1 teaspoon dried oregano

- 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

- 1 1/2 cup vegetable broth

- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

- 1 cup quick-cooking polenta

Directions:

Cook lentils according to package directions using vegetable broth as the liquid. Saute onion, bell pepper, and garlic in a separate pan in a bit of olive oil until softened. Add tomatoes to the other vegetables and cook until it starts to simmer. Add cooked lentils, salt, vinegar, oregano, and red pepper to the tomato mixture. Simmer for 7-10 minutes. Serve on polenta! Yum!!

Vegan Challenge

Since it has been about 6 months, I revisited my "25 While 25 List" and realized I still have a lot of work to do! So, I committed to buckling down and trying to cross a few more things off. This week - it's #13, "Go vegan for a few days". When I told Will about my plan, he was like, "you can't just do a couple of days, you totally need to do a week!". Hmm. Well, I guess I have to now! After perusing some great vegan blogs like, Oh She Glows, The Vegan Stoner, and Peas and Thank You I think I was able to come up with a good plan. As long as I can resist the temptation of the ice cream social at work on Tuesday... I think I can make it happen! Haha.
When I think about my usual diet as a vegetarian, my meals are not too far from following vegan diet rules. If you are unfamiliar with the difference between vegetarian and vegan, here's a brief comparison:
Vegetarian: Refrains from meat such as chicken, beef, and pork. May or may not also restrict fish in their diet (I don't!). Dairy and eggs are ok.
Vegan: Eats no animal products of any kind. This means they restrict everything from steak to honey, gelatin, milk, eggs, other dairy, and in some cases beer/wine.
It's funny to see some people's reaction to when I say that I'm a vegetarian. Usually, they immediately assume I am a vegan, ie. "crazy person". Ha! As you can tell from the blogs I linked above, the vegan diet is no longer just for hippies or Hindu monks!

Shopping to prep for vegan week!

Each day, I plan to post about what I ate and any good recipes I came across. Here's my plan for dinner each day:
Monday:
Creamy Roasted Pumpkin Soup 
Tuesday: 
Tomato Walnut Basil Pasta by Oh She Glows
Wednesday: 
"Taco salad" with crumbled seitan and guacamole
Thursday:
Black bean and sweet potato tacos 
Friday:
Lentil and Squash Curry Stew by Oh She Glows
Saturday:
Dinner out - this could be a challenge!
Sunday:
Leftovers or Lentil Loaf by The Vegan Stoner

I am really excited about this experiment! It will be tough to miss out on cheese, milk, and greek yogurt for a week, but here goes! Maybe I'll love it and never want to go back...

Pumpkin Macaroni and Cheese

Mmmm...

           Last week I had the worst craving for macaroni and cheese! I had seen some great mac-n-cheese recipes around the internet. However, the one that really caught my eye had pumpkin in the cheese sauce. What, what?!? That's right. I put pumpkin in my macaroni and cheese... and I liked it! Haha. Because, let's face it, when fall comes round I get just a bit obsessed with pumpkin!
           To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised by this dish! The pumpkin was very subtle and contributed to the creaminess of the sauce. Plus with the addition of the pumpkin, you can cut back a little on the cheese - saving some calories! It also adds a bit of fiber (there are 7 grams of fiber in a cup of pumpkin!) and loads of vitamin A (763% of the daily value to be exact!).
            Now I can say that I will definitely be making this dish again in the future. One word of warning though... it makes a huge batch! I had to put several containers of it in my freezer for meals later, not that I'm complaining! I used this recipe from the blog Gimme Some Oven (click for recipe!) which I found via Pinterest and I am really glad I did! The food photography is fantastic! I start drooling just scrolling through the posts. When I prepared mine, I did the quicker option and didn't bake it with breadcrumbs - I just ate it once done cooking on the stove top (I was too hungry to wait!). I think it turned out just dandy. When I served mine up, I topped it with just a little sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Yum! Next time around I might try making it with whole wheat noodles for even more fiber!

Loving this breakfast!

           Speaking of pumpkin, I was excited to break out the pumpkin oatmeal this week! For this bowl, I threw in currants, honey, cinnamon, and chopped pecans as my mix-ins. Delish. :-) Oatmeal is seriously such a versatile food. I love it! If only I could convince more of my cardiac patients to eat it. Sigh...

Love Me Some Lentils!

To kick off fall, I was inspired to finally cook up some of the green lentils I bought ages ago living in one of my kitchen cabinets. I also had picked up a big butternut squash at Whole Foods last week, so I thought I might try to combine the two! It turned out really well - I packed it in my lunch for the rest of the week. You can serve this both warmed or cold! YUM.

 Curried Butternut Squash Lentils
Ingredients:
- 1 cup lentils
- 2 cups vegetable stock
- 2 cups water
- 1/4 tbsp curry powder
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 large butternut squash
- Olive oil
Directions;
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Skin and chop butternut squash into uniform 1/2 inch pieces. Lay out cubed squash on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
2. Bake squash for 25-30 minutes or until soft with browned edges.
3. In the meantime, to cook lentils... Heat up water and stock in a saucepan on the stove. Add lentils and bring to a simmer. Sprinkle with curry and S+P. Cover and cook until the liquid has been absorbed.
4. Combine squash and lentils. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

A Different Kind of Cobbler

Howdy!!!
 It's been awhile since I've posted about any cooking ventures. Boo. So here's a remedy to that! Last week I saw Joy the Baker post this recipe --> Tomato Cobbler with Blue Cheese Biscuits. At first I thought it would probably be totally weird. A savory casserole?! What?! I was so curious though, I knew I had to try it! Plus, I had a few extra cherry tomatoes to use up anyway! (By the way, I'm a little sheepish by how amateur my pictures look in comparison to Joy's! Ha!).

Playing with biscuit dough is so much fun!

Toasty biscuits atop bubbling tomato goodness!

Dig in!

The result? Deliciousness! Of course - it's from Joy the Baker. :-) The caramelized onions and uber fresh cherry tomatoes (which can be almost like candy this time of year) made this dish rather sweet after it was baked. Yum. Plus, the blue cheese in the biscuits was hardly noticeable. I was afraid it would be a little overwhelming - but fear not! It's really very subtle. Now, get thee to a market and buy up some sunny cherry tomatoes so you can make this cobbler too!!

Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit...

I don't know what it is, but I have been on a total bean kick this week. Like, I have honestly eaten beans every night for dinner. Good thing I live by myself and can eat the same thing over and over again! One of the blogs I visit frequently had posted a recipe about some bean and corn dish so I was already craving something with this combo. I bought a few ears of corn at the market on Saturday and combined one ear with a can of black beans, a small can of roasted green pepper, a sprinkle of red pepper, and 1/4 cup of bear in a saute pan. I cooked until warm and wrapped in a tortilla with cheese, salsa, and a bit of plain yogurt. Delish! Trust me, plain yogurt is a totally legit substitute for sour cream. You can't tell the difference once added to the burrito!

Burrito + salad  = super easy and filling dinner!

When I opened my fridge tonight I noticed I had just a little bit of bean/corn mixture left. It wasn't enough to fill a tortilla but just enough to fill a green pepper! Since I had a total of 3 green peppers hiding out in my veggie drawer, I decided to make up another can of black beans and corn to fill them all! This time I just mixed the beans and 1 ear of corn with a few tablespoons of salsa, 2 cloves minced garlic and 1/2 cup shredded cheese. Just heat together until thoroughly warmed and the cheese is melted. Spoon into a green pepper whose top and seed have been removed. Top with more shredded cheese and bake @ 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes. So easy!!

The great thing about beans (besides the song!) is that they are a fantastic source of fiber and protein (for a vegetarian like me!). Here are a few bean facts...
In 1 cup of black beans there are:
    - 15 grams of fiber (almost 1/2 of the 25-38 grams of fiber recommended daily in the DRIs!)
    - 15 grams of protein
    - 227 calories
    - 20% of the DV for iron

Kale - The New Food Superhero

If you do any blog reading around the internet, I'm sure you will have run into recipes for the dark green veggie that everyone seems to be raving about - kale! After a few disappointing attempts to make kale chips, I decided to try a different approach for eating up a humongous bunch of kale greens I bought last week. One morning I decided I really needed to get started on those greens, so I threw a few leaves of kale in my smoothie for breakfast. I had seen this done before and I had some success doing it with spinach. Let's just say... a little kale goes a long way! My breakfast that morning was a bit too umm, grassy for me. With a little more tweaking, it just might work though!

From this...

to salad in a glass!

After this, I was a little nervous about trying to come up with a different recipe for the rest of my kale. So, I turned to Mark Bittman for help. I decided on his super simple sauteed kale with tomatoes and feta recipe. This one was a winner! Will was in charge of making the delicious tuna salad on top of greens to go with. :-)

For the kale, first cut the stems away from the leaves. Then, chop the stems into 1-inch long strips and saute these in oil until they begin to soften. In the meantime, cut the leaf part of the kale into strips. Toss the leaves into the pan with the stems. Cook until wilted and softened. Stir in 1-2 chopped tomatoes. Once the tomatoes have cooked a minute or two with the greens turn off the heat. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and 1/3 cup red wine vinegar. Stir. To serve, sprinkle with feta cheese - yum!
Speaking of reading blogs... I came across this one last night called http://spoonforkbacon.com/ and have been drooling over the recipes! Despite the fact that it has bacon in the blog name - ha! 
Want to know something else that I discovered the other week? This super-dark chocolate from Nashville! I keep savoring little squares of it every night for a bit of sweetness after dinner. :-)