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!!