Spaghetti Casserole

Okay - so... Even though I redeemed myself Sunday night with a really good dinner, I'm feeling like I still need to make up for that really sucky dinner Friday night. :)

I didn't make dinner last night. Sweet hubby got home early because he thought he was going to have to help heathen daughter with some car repair. Turned out, the warning lights quit coming on so he didn't have to do anything and we sat in the study drinking wine and eating baked corn chips and hummus. I kept trying to go fix dinner and he kept begging for 10 more minutes. By the time heathen son got home, he just went to Chipotle to get something instead of me having to cook. It was a nice surprise, really, to have another night off. :) Not looking a gift meal in the mouth. :)

I originally thought we were going to have a couple of carnivore's over for dinner last night so I'd planned a spaghetti dinner, something that would make ALL of us happy. Since that didn't happen last night, I knew I had to make spaghetti tonight so I could use the bread before it got too stale. Rather than just making spaghetti though, I decided to turn it into a casserole.

I sauteed some onions and red bell peppers in a little water, added garlic, oregano and basil and then added some Light Life ground crumbles (TVP - textured vegetable protein). I added some zesty spice spaghetti sauce and simmered it on low while I cooked the spaghetti noodles.

Once the noodles were done, I drained them and added the sauce mixture to it and poured it into a 9x13 baking dish. I add some Daiya vegan cheese to the top (yes, it's processed and yes, it has fat but everyone needs a little splurge once in awhile, right?) and covered it with foil. I put it in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Once the timer went off, I took off the foil and topped the casserole with bread crumbs and put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes. I'd spread minced garlic on some fresh Italian bread (not whole wheat...again with the splurge!) and put it in the oven at the same time for those last 10 minutes.

When the timer went off, we had a delicious dinner. Sweet hubby and heathen son both had two BIG plates full and I enjoyed mine as well. It was about halfway through dinner I realized I hadn't taken a single picture of the process. Sigh... so I took this picture of what was left of sweet hubby's second plate. :)




I was informed by heathen son that he would be fine if I wanted to make this for his birthday dinner next week and sweet hubby said this has to be in his top two favorite meals I've cooked since we started our plant based adventure a couple of months ago. :) I like that. Guess I'd better keep this recipe plan.

- Posted by Jennifer

Location:Home, sweet home

Sunday Night Redemption!

I have been cooking almost every night for the last two months but last Thursday night, sweet hubby had a work event we needed to go to right after work so we stopped to eat at Panera Bread on our way home. They have a really delicious Mediterranean Veggie sandwich (hold the feta) that fits right into our way of eating. It was nice to have a night off from the kitchen.

So, you'd think I'd make up for it Friday night by making something really good for dinner, right? Uh, no. Apparently not. Sigh.

I got home Friday evening and realized I had some stuff in the fridge I should use up before going grocery shopping again Saturday morning. Okay... so dinner would be a bit of a hodge-podge but it should still be good, right? Uh, no. Apparently not. Sigh.

I had some okra I'd bought the weekend before at the Farmer's market. The okra still looked good so I sliced them down the center and roasted them for about 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven. So far, so good.



I also had some parsnips I'd recently purchased. Never had parsnips before but changing the way we eat has made me more open to trying new things. So I found plenty of easy recipes for roasting parsnips and, since I was already roasting the okra, easy peasy. Into the oven they went.



I still had some corn on the cob from the Farmer's Market, too. Found a great way to make corn on the cob on Pinterest not too long ago. You microwave it 4 minutes for each ear of corn - 12 minutes total for the 3 ears I was cooking. When it's done and still hot, you cut off the bottom, hold it by the top, shake the ear and the corn falls out of the shucks without any silk at all. It's impressive. Try it, if you haven't. :) So... the corn was good.

Sweet hubby loves pasta and I'd made some not-so cheese sauce (I'll post a different recipe for this at a later date - NOT the recipe I used this time since it was pretty sucky!) earlier in the week so I put some angel hair on to boil. However, I got side tracked by all the other stuff I was making and let the angel hair cook too long. It came out in a big glob. I ran cold water over it hoping that would help separate it but it didn't do much really. I stirred in the "cheese" sauce anyway, hoping it wouldn't be too bad but I was wrong.

So at dinner Friday night, we had really sucky pasta, roast okra that hubby wouldn't eat, roast parsnips that all of us decided not to eat (or ever cook again), steamed broccoli that nobody could ruin and really good corn on the cob. LOL. The corn on the cob was truly the only saving grace. Hubby was really sweet though and said "wow, it's really cool how you got the pasta to stick together... how'd you do that?" LOL. He's so funny.



Saturday evening we went to a movie so dinner was a quick avocado pasta that I did NOT overcook but it still didn't make up for the really sucky dinner Friday night.

I had to redeem myself and Sunday seemed like the perfect night for redemption. I think I actually managed to do it. :)

I started with my new favorite potato and green bean salad. I just microwave a bunch of small potatoes and some fresh green beans. Put a couple of cooked potatoes in the Vitamix, along with 1/4 cup of fresh basil leaves, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of water. Blend until smooth. Stir together with the potatoes and green beans and refrigerate for an hour or two to let flavors blend. It is amazing!




Then I roasted some of the best looking Brussels sprouts I've ever seen. 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. The individual leaves get really brown and crispy and they're like eating candy. If sweet hubby and heathen son are around when they come out of the oven, they fight over them. Today, they were all mine. :)



I decided we needed some sort of casserole for a main dish. I seem to fall back on stuff I know is good together and we all like but since I'd never made anything quite like this one before, I wasn't completely sure how it would turn out but it was really good. I guess I'd have to call it an enchilada casserole since I used enchilada sauce.

I put some red onion and red bell pepper (I had them both all chopped up from earlier in the day) in the pan to saute. Then I added some garlic, about half a can of enchilada sauce and some rehydrated TVP (textured vegetable protein -- makes your sauce thick and "meaty"), along with about 1/2 a package of taco seasoning and a good dash of sriracha sauce. Then I added a can of drained and rinsed black beans. In hindsight I realized I could have added a can of corn, too, but I didn't think of it tonight.



While all of that was cooking up, I cooked about 8 oz. of whole wheat penne pasta. Once the pasta was done and drained, I returned it to the pot and mixed the enchilada sauce mixture in really well and stirred in about 1/4 cup of chopped fresh cilantro. I poured all this into a 9x13 inch glass baking dish, topped it with a little nutritional yeast and popped it into the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes.


Sweet hubby and heathen son both agreed that I did, in fact, redeem myself.



Now to figure out what to make for dinner tomorrow.... hmmm. :)

- Posted by Jennifer

Location:Home, sweet home

PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA

Pizza has always been a favorite at our house but it hasn't always been the healthiest thing we liked to eat. Hard to believe you can have a completely satisfying pizza without meat or CHEESE but it's so true! We don't even miss the cheese.

We've been ordering pizzas from Domino's -- thin crust veggie pizza with no cheese (you have to be sure to tell them no feta either because apparently they don't know that's cheese - sigh) but wow, it's expensive. You can get two large pizzas with meat and cheese for $7.95 each but if you get veggies with no cheese, they're suddenly $14 each instead. We decided NOT to do that anymore.

I found some great whole wheat pizza crusts at Whole Foods recently but hadn't gotten around to making homemade pizza just yet. I looked around on the Internet for recipes but nothing really appealed to me so I decided to just wing it.

Tonight we ordered a thin crust veggie pizza from Pizza Hut (only $10 instead of $14) and I made a homemade one, too, so we could compare them side by side.

My pizza was a bit different. I made it with red, green and yellow bell peppers as well as fresh basil snipped from Kay's front yard and green olives (I didn't have any black). Heathen son and I piled on the tomatoes, red onions and mushrooms on our side, too, but sweet hubby doesn't like those ingredients so we left them off his side.

Sweet hubby said he liked mine just as well as the Pizza Hut pizza but he'd like me to jazz up the sauce somehow and make it a little spicier. I suggested red pepper flakes (which heathen son always puts on his pizza) but told him I'd see what I could do to spice up the sauce next time.

Yep, no more restaurant bought pizza for us. Good thing it only takes about 5 minutes to put together (I have a fridge full of cut up veggies all the time so all I had to do was sprinkle them on!) and about 10 minutes in the oven. Oh, and I got to use my Pampered Chef pizza stone that I bought about, oh, I don't know.... 6 years ago maybe.... for the very first time. :)

Isn't it pretty? :)



- Posted by Jennifer

Location:Home, sweet home

Thanksgiving meal planned!

Since starting on our plant-based diet adventure a couple of months ago (2 months ago today, to be exact!), I've wondered a couple of times what we'll have for Thanksgiving dinner. Unless we visit some of my family, we have a very low-key Thanksgiving. In fact, the past couple of years, sweet hubby and I have managed to sneak off to the beach for a quite holiday to ourselves while the heathen son goes hunting with his uncle and heathen daughter makes her appearances wherever she happens to be at that moment. We know heathen son will be with us this year because he's decided he just can't hunt if he's not going to eat the meat. He played around with the idea of donating any meat he'd have or just leaving it with his aunt's family who lives nearby but for the expense he said he'd just as soon not hunt. He'll find other ways to spend time with his beloved uncle and he'll spend Thanksgiving with us instead (which is fine by me!).

We will probably still go down to the beach for the holiday but we won't be going to our favorite restaurant where we've had their wonderful (but very traditional) Thanksgiving meal the last couple of years because that just doesn't fit the plan any longer. However, I think I discovered a wonderful meal last night that will be perfect for Thanksgiving - veggie pot pie! It was yummy! I'm picturing veggie pot pie, a really good salad and a baked sweet potato, of course. Ta-da! Holiday mystery solved. :)

I actually made two pot pies last night and will give you the recipes for both of them in a bit. I found these really good pre-made whole wheat pie crusts and that really helped. Wholly Wholesome. How can you not love a name like that? :)




Chicken pot pie has always been a favorite around our house. I'd even made it as our Christmas dinner on more than one occasion so it makes sense that I'd have it associated with the holidays. I thought I could probably adapt the recipe I've used for 20+ years easily enough and found out that I was right! Here it is, ready to go into the oven. The only thing I did differently was to not put a top crust on it - because I needed the second crust for the veggie pot pie!




Here's my chickenless pot pie recipe:

1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 3/4 cup no-chicken broth
1/2 cup almond milk
4 red potatoes, cooked - 2 diced, 2 roughly mashed
1 package LightLife "chicken" veggies strips
1 package frozen peas & carrots
1 teaspoon tarragon

Heat oven to 350 degrees and let pie shells thaw about 15 minutes.

onion, garlic and celery in a little broth until onions are translucent and celery is soft. Mix in flour and stir until well-coated. Add broth and milk at the same time and stir until sauce thickens. Add veggies strips and peas & carrots, stirring well. Add both diced and mashed potatoes, stirring well. Stir in tarragon.

Pour mixture into pie shell and bake for 45 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Out of the oven it looks like this:




Your house will smell so good!

I also thought I'd see if a pot pie using different veggies would be as good and I'm happy to report that yes, it definitely was! I really think you could use most any veggie combination you'll like - I just happened to have some fresh green beans, broccoli, mushrooms and potatoes so that's what we went with here.

I started with the same basics as the chickenless pot pie with onions and garlic but I didn't add celery. I used just 3 tablespoons of whole wheat flour and no milk - just broth. Then I added the veggies and spices, sprinkled some bread crumbs on op, baked the same amount of time and voila - delish!




They were both so good and really tasted different from one another, too.




Veggie Pot Pie

1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons whole wheat flour
1 3/4 cup veggie broth
3 cups assorted veggies (I used broccoli, green beans and mushrooms)
4 red potatoes, cooked - 2 diced, 2 roughly mashed
1 teaspoon Spike seasoning (or any seasoning you like)
1 teaspoon tarragon (I just love tarragon in pot pies)

I'm happy to have Thanksgiving figured out already!


- Posted by Jennifer

Location:Home, sweet home

Mexi-bean Polenta Surprise

Okay -- occasionally I'll just throw something together and hope it works - and sometimes it actually does! That's what happened a couple of weeks ago when I threw this recipe together and sweet hubby declared it to be a keeper. :) I called it "surprise" because I was kind of surprised it was as good as it was. LOL.

Since it only takes a few minutes to start and just a little more time to heat up, it's a super fast dinner and was perfect for a night when I didn't really want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. (Hooray for my little Vidalia Chop Wizard that makes it so easy to dice up onions and bell peppers and then have them on hand, ready to go!) Had to chop up an onion tonight - look how awesome that is:



I just love that thing. :)

Here's the recipe - I doubt I'll make it exactly the same way twice but this is what I did the first time:

Mexi-Bean Polenta Surprise

1 can Rotel tomatoes
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed
1 can corn drained
½ package polenta, sliced and cubed
½ medium red onion, diced
1 medium red bell pepper, diced
¼ cup fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 ½ teaspoons cumin
2 cloves garlic, minced

Cook onions, bell peppers and garlic with Rotel tomatoes in large pot until soft – about 2-3 minutes. Add black beans, chick peas and corn, stirring well. Once thoroughly heated, add polenta cubes and continue to heat. As polenta warms up it will thicken the sauce. You may want to add ¼ cup or so of vegetable broth to keep beans moist. Once heated well, add cilantro and stir together. Serve over brown rice with avocado slices on top.

This is when I first put the polenta in. Once it heats up, the polenta softens and dissolves a bit into the juices and thickens it up.



Then it looks more like this:



And then, when you serve it with the avocado (and I usually sprinkle a little more cilantro on, too - it looks like this. :)




You can't see the brown rice underneath but it's there! Yummo! Add a little srircha hot sauce to spice it up and it's de-lish! :) Plus, you can easily wrap this in a whole wheat tortilla to make a really awesome burrito. That's what I like to do with any leftovers. Enjoy!

- Posted by Jennifer

Location:Home, sweet home

Dinner Guests

Because they had traveled recently to Arizona, we hadn't been able to spend much time with our wonderful next door neighbors lately. So it gave us the perfect excuse to invite them over for dinner this weekend when, due to Hurricane Isaac, our plans of going to the beach changed and we were going to be home on this long, holiday weekend.

Because of my recent recipes posts (sans photos), I've been thinking about those great casseroles - and, since Kay likes spicy foods but her sweetie, Bill, doesn't, making both of them would work great. Plus, to add to the fun of cooking for someone else, Kay is allergic to gluten -- something I don't normally pay any attention to at all!

I normally only use whole wheat pastas when I cook but that was out of the question this time. Kay had warned me that both quinoa and rice pastas weren't the best but I found some corn pasta and it was terrific! Good to know. I also found that you can substitute corn starch in any recipe that uses flour as a thickener. If you do that, be sure to use half the amount the recipe calls for - 2 tablespoons of flour = 1 tablespoon of corn starch.

In addition to the two casseroles, I also made a kale/avocado salad (dinosaur kale, avocado and lemon juice -- it's to die for!) - and a special treat for desserts (really for the guys as Kay and I sat this one out) - a fat-free vegan spice cake with vanilla glaze frosting.

Here are some of the pics of the cooking process and the final results. :) Go back to previous posts for the recipes if you'd like -- they're both easy to make and taste wonderful!

Here's the curried chickpea mixture before going into the baking dish -


Here it is fresh out of the oven with the sweet potato tater tots topping it off -



Here's the "chicken" spinach pasta mixture ready for the pasta to be mixed in before going into the baking dish -



And here it is, topped with nutritional yeast and fresh out of the oven - gosh it's so good.




Side by side (with the cake in the background), we were ready for a great dinner - topped only by the terrific company. :)





- Posted by Jennifer

Location:Home, sweet home

Asparagus & Chickpea Casserole

We had a get together last night with a group of our friends but they were getting together at a local restaurant that doesn't have a single meat/dairy free item on the menu - even the salads have meat and/or cheese! So we chose to meet up with them after dinner and have dinner at home. We've found a few restaurants here in Oklahoma that work okay for us but not that many. I'm thinking if someone would open a vegetarian/vegan restaurant, (yes, I know about Matthew Kenney but raw vegan doesn't appeal to me) they could make a fortune just for having no competition. :) Wish I had leanings toward going into the restaurant business but I just don't. :)
Being a Saturday night, I didn't want to spend too much time cooking - although I'd spent quite a bit of time earlier in the day gathering food stuffs -- first at the Farmer's Market, then at one of our local grocers, then Sprouts Farmers Market and then Whole Foods! I just can't seem to get everything I need at one place. The good thing about going to Whole Foods is that I can plug the electric car in while I'm there and it always gets attention. (I just love spreading the word on how great it is -- note: see comments in first post about spreading the word on things I'm passionate about!)




Since I had some lovely asparagus and areally good recipe for making a casserole with it, dinner was a no-brainer.
Asparagus & Chickpea Casserole
1 medium onion, diced
1 rib celery, diced
8 ounces sliced mushrooms
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons vegetable broth
2 tablespoons flour (or 1 tablespoon of cornstarch to make it gluten free!)
1 cup vegetable broth
3/4 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk (I use almond milk)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 1/2 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 package frozen hash brown potatoes
Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly spray a 9x13 glass baking dish with non-stick spray. Heat a non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Add the two tablespoons of broth and the onions. Cook until onions soften, 2-3 minutes. Add the celery, mushrooms, and garlic and cook for 2-3 more minutes, until mushrooms soften. Add the asparagus and a little more vegetable broth if needed, cover pan, and cook for another 2-3 minutes, until asparagus is bright green and beginning to become tender.
Whisk the flour (or cornstarch) into the cup of vegetable broth. Add it, the milk, nutritional yeast, thyme, and basil and heat until bubbly. It will thicken as it cooks. Add the chickpeas and salt and pepper to taste. Turn heat to low, and simmer for 5 minutes. Pour into prepared casserole dish and top with an even layer of potatoes. Sprinkle potatoes with salt, if desired.
Bake until casserole is bubbly and top is lightly browned, 45 minutes. If top does not completely brown, place it under the broiler for a few seconds.
Here's what it looks like after adding the liquids:




Here is it before going into the oven:




And here is it on the plate accompanied by corn salad and some yummy lentils:




Luckily there were a few leftovers - it's almost lunch time! :)
- Posted by Jennifer

Location:Home, sweet home