Playing With My Food

In the midst of searching for a new apartment (from hundreds of miles away!), resume revising, and becoming a profession online application filler... I have been continuing to experiment in the kitchen. (Of course!). New recipes and my new love for the gym have been great stress-relievers in this scary, life-being-turned-upside-down time! I have also been working playing with my camera to try and improve the quality of my food pictures. Will bought me a great little light tent and spot lights for Christmas, which have made my amateur efforts at food photography so much more fun! I have a lot to research and a lot to learn... but I am finding that I enjoy it more and more! (Even if it does mean that my meals are never piping hot. Ha!) Here are a few images from the weekend - a blessedly long one thanks to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. I really needed that!

Spicy curry with seitan and mixed veggies!

Curry is such an easy and versatile dish! It makes an easy, low-carb vegetarian meal - something both Will and I can both appreciate it! I've been meaning to write an instruction post on how to make it. In this batch, we picked seitan as our vegetarian protein and added eggplant, bell pepper, and mushrooms for the veggies.

Braised monk fish with salad and roasted cauliflower. Yum!

This fish turned out great!! Monk fish is one of the more "meaty" fish like tuna and salmon, but with a bit more mild flavor. For this one, Will started by sauteing it with oil on the stove-top then adding broth and tossing it in the oven, pan and all. The broth cooks down and infuses it with delicious flavor. Yum.

Mmm... Look at those layers...

Served up with some delicata squash.

I saw this on Kath's blog and knew I had to make it immediately! It's a lasagna layered with pumpkin, kale, goat cheese, and mozzarella. Mmm... Loved it! I am so glad it made about 4 servings so I have plenty to munch on all week. :-)
Hope you are all staying warm and eating well!!!

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!!

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...