Category: Vegetarian/Vegan

I’m slowly transitioning into another juice cleanse. While most of my meals are juices, once daily, I’m consuming some solid food.

 

This meal was all raw; avocado, tomato, onion and a variety of freshly ground herbs and spices. Although the meal was simple, it was delicious and quite satisfying. Leftovers can be wrapped in nori sheets and consumed.

My daughter loves wrapping raw veggies in Nori so some day soon I’ll surprise her with this in her lunch. My daughter eats healthy and does that without any prodding. But, why should I be surprised? She’s been consuming fresh produce since she came into this world, initially when I was nursing her and later she was introduced to a wide range of produce prepared in a variety of ways. So she knew that produce, grains and legumes are delicious and nutritious.

Earlier this week, I made a delightful veggie dish with black beans.

I had every intention of taking photos with my Nikon D80, but that didn’t happen. You see, the camera battery was low and so by the time my camera battery  was fully charged, my daughter had consumed most of that delightful dish. Well… she did leave some crumbs. But those pitiful scraps was hardly enough to take a decent photo.  Sobs

That just gives me a reason to recreate the dish, right?

The photos shown of my most recent black bean and veggie dish is similar to what I made earlier this week, but with a few minor updates such as the addition of the cauliflower and the tomatoes. I’m proud to say that both were picked from our garden.

I’m also happy to report, that my camera battery was fully charged so I didn’t have to wait to take these photos.  My daughter eagerly helped herself to this bean dish, and told me it was incredible.

 

The black beans were prepared in my Presto 8 qt. Pressure cooker. I didn’t soak the beans in advance and they cooked in about fifteen minutes, not bad at all. These beans would typically take me over an hour to prepare on our stove.

I must say, that my pressure cooker has been a blessing. Besides making nutritious meals in shorter period of time, it also saves me money since I’m not wasting as much energy to prepare the meals.

Here’s hoping there’s enough left so I can include it into her Zojirushi bento box.

 

Those that know me, or have seen my food posts, know that I make almost all my meals. I eat mainly whole foods and rarely used processed items to add to the meals I prepare.

 

Yesterday morning, I prepared this meal.  It’s a simple sauteed dish to which I added a few herbs and spices that I’d ground in my mortar and pestle. I didn’t add too much, because I wanted the flavors of the vegetables used to shine, and they did. I sauteed the vegetables for about four minutes, which wasn’t long and left a lot of the crunch one receives from eating fresh vegetables.

All the vegetables, with the exception of the parsnips, are something we eat constantly.  Last week, I purchased parsnips at our local farm. The parsnips I recently purchased, have been mainly been using them them in my vegetable juices, but yesterday they played a starring role in this dish. I will most likely use them again this weekend, when I make a oven roasted root vegetable dish.

My daughter loves when I prepare eggrolls.

Now that I think about it, they really aren’t “eggrolls.” I make my own wrappers and don’t add eggs to them. So they’re “eggless eggrolls,” right?

Regardless, these vegan eggless eggrolls turned out really well. Let’s see cabbage was in them, carrots, sprouts, beans and some other veggies.

My daughter was extra proud because she helped fill the wrappers with a variety of vegetables and once it was time to cook them, she took over.  I normally bake our eggless eggrolls but on this day they, she pan fried them in a skillet.

After they were finished, she proudly arranged them in one of my glass pyrex storage dishes. She was a bit disappointed that some were “too brown,” but I assured her that they were fine.

I also showed her how to make a honey ginger sauce that could be used as a dipping sauce for the eggrolls. Chock full of vegetables and a few spices, these rolls are quite flavorful on their own, but she was determined to make a sauce with them.

This wasn’t a recent dish, these were made at the beginning of this month. They were made a few days after my birthday. Looking at the timestamp, on the picture, these were made on 10/5/13. I’m just getting around to posting them now. Yeah… this has been a busy month and the next few months will be even busier with everything that’s happening. However, I’m managing to find that balance.

The two chowders (potato and fish) were a big hit with my daughter and so last week I made some more.  This time, I made a corn chowder…

 

 

I pulled out my beloved mortar and pestle and ground up the herbs and a variety of spices. Once that was finished, I set the freshly ground spices into a small stainless steel bowl and ground up my garlic and ginger until it made a smooth paste. I set that aside.

 

And cut the corn off the cob. The corn was freshly picked and really sweet. This would be a mildly sweet chowder.

I still had some of the shitake mushrooms that Kenny of Veggie Gardening Tips had given to me, and so I chopped them up and added to the corn chowder. We love mushrooms…

I put everything into my pressure cooker and cooked with the lid off for about ten minutes. The corn and mushrooms were added two minutes before I turned it off.  The chowder smelled divine and filled the kitchen with its delightful aroma.

The freshness of the ingredients added extra flavor to the chowder. You won’t find that in your store bought processed chowders.  The chowder I served did not last too long, but since I’d set aside eight cups of the chowder, to put in the freezer, there was more for other days.

Chowder makes awesome comfort food. To accompany the chowder I also made potato chips. My daughter had been craving something crunchy. I normally bake my potato chips, but this time I pan fried them in a skillet.

I could have used my Mandoline slicer to neatly slice the potatoes, but I opted to chop the potatoes finely with a knife and toss them into the skillet. These potatoes came from our garden.

 

Once the chips were brown, I laid them on paper towels. I blotted off the excess oil. In the above picture, I’d made about three layers of chips. You can only see the top layer. I ground up some sea salt in my mortar and pestle and placed that in a tiny condiment bowl for my daughter. I had already made a homemade ketchup so I brought that out too.

The homemade potato chips turned out crisp, crunchy, and much better than any store bought chip I’ve had. Since I made them myself, they are much healthier and devoid of the extra junk our bodies do not need.

Cool weather and a thick and chunky chowder seem to go nicely together. Earlier this week, I made two varieties; potato and fish.

 

My granite mortar and pestle was used to grind up the spices. I love the smell that permeates the air from a good old fashioned mortar and pestle grinding.

Remembering that Kenny had given me some Shiitake mushrooms, I added that to both chowders and I must say the delicate flavoring of the mushrooms was perfect for this chowder.

 

“You added celery!” my daughter squealed before she dug in… she loves celery! Regarding the chowders, I made plenty so that we could have leftovers and although I had intentions of freezing some of the chowder, that wasn’t about to happen since my daughter and father gobbled up both varieties. I sampled the potato chowder and I must admit it was quite good. With the fish chowder, It wasn’t swimming with fish, but I added enough to the dish that you weren’t hunting around for it. My daughter and father said that was delicious.

My daughter and I took our time to eat our chowder, savoring each bite while we read books in front of the wood stove.