Beet & Apple Salad With Avocado, Red Quinoa & Lentil Medley, Tofu Red & Green Pepper Stirfry

BEET & APPLE SALAD WITH AVOCADO

[Edited to correct seasonings, etc.]

This salad was the star of the meal, I think, and appropriately we almost always have our salad first these days. (Okay, we used to always follow our main course with a salad course, and that's how I still stubbornly have pictured them in this blog, but lately, well, we have switched back to the North American custom. But don't hold me to it!!!! LOL

I took the time to slice three or four small cooked beets (we were making soup with the rest) and marinate them in garlic, a mix of vinegars (I think I used rice vinegar, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, but cider vinegar might have been there instead of the red wine - I winged it!), 1 tsp or a little more of Dijon mustard, and some pepper (I generally use a mix of red, black, green which I grind fresh). Then the rest was simple, as you see. Some lovely greens on each plate, a few sliced onion shreds on top of them, and sliced red apple (sprinkled with a little lemon juice to keep them fresh looking) and then the beets arranged with avocado over it all. The marinade from the beets - a lovely thick red mixture - I spooned over the top. Simple and delicious.

RED QUINOA AND LENTIL MEDLEY

To follow, we had a 'medley' of some leftover plain cooked red quinoa (so pretty) plus some leftover lentils (previously cooked with herbs, onion, celery and carrot in the Tuscan style) and a few extra vegetables that were hanging around the crisper - celery, no doubt, onion, crushed dried chilies, etc. (I forget exactly - it was nearly a week ago). The vegetables cooked first in a little water in a skillet, the lentils and quinoa to follow with, I think, a Tbsp low sodium soysauce and/or a Tbsp Annie's Organic Vegan Worcestershire Sauce. Very pretty, very tasty - and very nutritious too I suppose ;)

And to accompany it -

TOFU AND RED & GREEN PEPPER STIRFRY



But of course we don't 'fry' but steam or water-'sautee' the vegetables. The tofu was marinated in a Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce, minced garlic, minced ginger, minced red chilies, then added to the 'stirfry' at the end, just to heat through. (Tofu doesn't need to be 'cooked'.) Celery, onion, ginger root, garlic, red and green pepper, etc., were the vegetables that day. Maybe mushrooms too - I usually do something with mushrooms whenever I find the excuse - just love them and always have a bag of them in the fridge.

Sweet Potato & Carrot Stew Pie

SWEET POTATO AND CARROT STEW 'PIE'

You may remember the Sweet Potato and Carrot Stew With Chard I posted earlier - well, it was good, but what was on that big square platter was only half the stew, although it was all of the chard that I had cooked. The leftover stew was weighing heavily on me - it improves in flavour, of course, but it lacks something in presentation and novelty. Still, 'Waste not, want not' as my long departed grannie used to say!



I had stored it in a couple of these small oval dishes. While it was in the oven reheating, I thought it looked boring so mixed a kind of 'muffin' or biscuit (in the American sense of the word) topping. I put half a cup of spelt with half a cup of barley flour, added in a pinch of salt, baking powder, paprika, oregano - whatever - mixed in a little soy milk until it looked right. When the mini-casseroles were getting pretty hot, I hauled them out and spread the topping on them and whooshed them back into the oven. Around 20 minutes or so later it was ready. The photo above shows one such dish - the other photo was blurred but, well, was the same.



The photo shows a small serving I set aside for the camera LOL It is sharing a plate with Wild Rice With Tomatoes And Chard - which I'll post next :)

Wild Rice with Tomatoes and Chard

I have actually turned over a new leaf, as it were (lettuce?), and am going to post here even if I have to be boring and show you my mistakes, my leftovers, and my days when I don't eat as well as I should. This next meal was a bit heavy in grain, but it had lots and lots of greens in it and I just adore yellow vegetables so . . . .



WILD RICE WITH TOMATOES AND CHARD

We love wild rice, and we mix it half and half with brown long-grain rice and have it with almost anything we would use rice for - not all the time, but often. A couple of days or so ago I had some leftover 'wild' rice (well, wild and brown) - plus half a bunch of chard in the crisper, half a can or plum tomatoes with juice - guess where I'm going with this!

Reminder: We cook for two. (Hence the leftovers too.)

1 onion, chopped
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced
Half a large can of Italian plum tomatoes (around 12 or 14 ounces), roughly chopped
1 tsp oregano
good pinch of crushed dried chilies
1 Tbsp low-sodium soy
half a bunch of chard, chopped (stems thinly sliced)
1-1/2 cups or so (I didn't really measure it) of pre-cooked rice - half wild rice and half brown long-grain rice

Soften the onion and garlic in a little water or stock in a large skillet or with the sliced chard stems. Add the tomatoes, oregano and chilies and simmer for a little while until it all starts to look a little less than raw. Add the rice and keep stirring until all is coated in the mixture. Add the chard leaves and keep turning them to wilt them. Make sure the rice is hot and that the chard is dispersed throughout the rice and tomato mix. Taste for seasoning and serve.

We hadn't finished the menu yet, however - we had some with the Sweet Potato and Carrot Stew 'Pie' of my last post (Blogger is giving me a problem today, as you might have realized, hence separate posts). And of course we preceded with a salad -



Gotta show you our salads - no matter how mundane - because it helps me to be pleased that I'm eating my raw greens (I used to hate salads!).

And oh yes, we finished up with some fresh fruit as usual. Who'd want to eat pastries when there's fresh fruit in the house!!!

See ya later!

Mostly Leftovers plus Salad with a Sherried Vinaigrette

Yesterday we ate mostly leftovers - so many recipes make enough for four or six and sometimes we make the whole thing to save ourselves time. So yesterday we had the more of my version of the lovely millet dish that has been bandied around the net for some years now (with great gratitude to the ladies who provided the original version!). I had simply taken what remained in the slowcooker and pressed it into small baking dishes, as you see, and then, when I wanted it again, popped it into the oven to reheat while I put away my other groceries and made the salad. It was if anything even nicer for having sat for a couple of days. (It freezes pretty well too, although rarely lasts long enough for that, since it makes a great quick meal, even breakfast.)

To go with that we had some Italian-style brown lentils (well, they're french lentils, those tiny ones, but the recipe is Italian.), a recipe which my husband has adapted from one in Vegan Italiano by Donna Klein.



He had made these lentils some time ago and frozen half of them, so you see they're pretty good for a lazy meal too! Again, in an ovenproof dish they could be defrosted overnight and then popped in the oven along with the millet dish. I must hassle him for the exact recipe soon so that you can have it here!



I steamed a little broccoli with that - lovely, just fresh from the farmers' market that morning. And while we were waiting for the broccoli to steam and the other dishes to re-heat, we enjoyed a quick salad, made of the rest of a bag of arugula, some beansprouts I'd bought for something else, some snowpeas (we love them raw - so crisp!), the rest of the yellow cherry tomatoes (not many left as I thought, but a few to add 'colour') and a few slivers of onion.



SHERRIED VINAIGRETTE FOR TWO (FAT-FREE)

This was a combination of a couple from other people's cookbooks plus an idea of my own :) bearing in mind what was in the salad.

1 Tbsp seasoned rice vinegar, 1 Tbsp balsamic, 1 Tbsp sherry (I had some Amontillado in the sideboard, so that added a nice not-too-dry but not-too-sweet touch, finely minced garlic and ginger (I dunno - a little scoop of each, maybe a little less than a tsp of each - I tasted as I went), a tsp of smooth-style Dijon mustard (which is all I keep in) and that was probably it - all whisked together quickly.

Okay, not much of a recipe I know, but you can't say this entry was devoid of ideas after that ;)

For dessert? Honeydew melon - no photo, sorry!

Crockpot Ratatouille, Chickpea Patties With Sauce

I'm a little behind with a couple of items for this blog, so some of these entries today will be a bit, er, disordered. But here goes! My husband and I decided to make Ratatoille again the other day (Thursday? Yes, it was.) - it's such a useful way of eating all one's favourite veggies at once and having wonderful leftovers to use for something else. It works fine chilled or at room temp too, if it lasts that long :)

Anyway, this time I made a double amount and added some lovely basil to the mix. I was going to be busy so popped it into my slow cooker for around three hours on high. It quite filled up my cooker, but by the time the veggies were tender, it had shrunk down nicely, as you see here.

The addition I made was a small can of tomato paste (mine says 5.5 ounces) which I stired in at that point. It looked great and smelled even better.

Of course, that left me with a slight problem of what to put with it - so I raided the refrigerator and found some cooked chickpeas left over from a batch of hummous. Hmmmmm. chickpeas with - what? I mashed the chickpeas with a potato masher (just over a cup of the little honeys), zapped some wholewheat bread in the mini-processor to produce around 3 Tbsp crumbs, ditto a chunk of zucchini to produce ca. 3 Tbsp grated zucchini. I added two finely chopped green onions, a dash of hot sauce, a spritz of Braggs, a sprinkle of sage, a grind of black pepper and bound it all together with a flax 'egg'. I think that was it. [EDIT: I forgot to say I added a sprinkle of raisins! Sorry.]

Formed into patties they browned in my cast-iron pan (with just a quick spray of cooking oil/Pam). I thought they looked a little naked, so I heated up a few tablespoons of the last of my Roasted Red Pepper Pasta Sauce from Wednesday.

By the time the flavour of the tomato paste had melded nicely with the ratatouille, thickening it nicely, the go-withs were ready. A quick green salad quickly thrown together, and we were ready to eat. Somehow, however, the plates didn't get a chance to get photographed!

My husband didn't think the sauce on the patties was needed, though, and I agree. Overkill.

Leftover Leftovers!

This ever happen to you? Two days ago I made some leftover ratatouille into a polenta pie, and of course now I have leftover Polenta-Ratatouille Pie!



Fortunately, we also had made excess Tuscan-Style Beans With Tomatoes and popped them into the freezer. We decided to make our lunch with those two dishes and a salad (ok, so we take our main meal at lunchtime).

The pie re-heated beatifully in the oven (we had a little pasta sauce left from the other day too, to go on top), and the beans were just as we remembered them being - perhaps even a bit better for having the flavours nicely blended.



I then made a mix of salad veggies - red bell pepper, onion, celery, cucumber and apple on a bed of romaine - and dressed it in a mix seasoned rice vinegar and balsamic vinegar. It was just right!

POLENTA-RATATOUILLE PIE

This recipe is a variation on the Polenta Pie With Spinach I posted here 22 February - posted again for your entertainment and convenience. I had left-over ratatouille from a couple of days ago and thought what to do with it. Because I like things spicy most of the time and also because it would make it different from what we’d recently eaten, I jazzed it up a bit.

POLENTA-RATATOUILLE PIE
(Using Left-Overs)

The filling (I had that - the left-over ratatouille - maybe a couple of cups, give or take - I didn't measure) with extra zing of
Crushed chiles (about a tsp)
1 cup polenta/medium corn meal
3 cups water - or vegetable stock if you prefer
1tsp dried parsley
1 tsp crushed/pulverized garlic
1 - 2 cups Pasta sauce (I had some home made, but you could use your favourite)
A little (just light sprinkles) Vegan parmezan cheez (I used homemade version) - optional

Add the crushed chiles to the left-over ratatouille and keep it warm in a pan while you make the polenta, which is only slightly changed from the previous recipe. The major difference was in halving the recipe since I thought I’d made it a bit heavy the first time.

Bring 3 cups of water (you could use veggie stock and skip the salt) and a pinch of salt to a boil over high heat in a LARGE pot. Slowly add the 1 cup of cornmeal, whisking it in so that it doesn’t go into lumps - or use a wooden spoon, stirring all the while. Add a tsp of dried parsley flakes and a tsp of pulverized garlic and stir well.

Reduce heat to a bare simmer. Cover the pan and cook, stirring now and then, around 15 minutes or until the polenta is cooked.

Remove from the heat but leave it covered for about 5 minutes, during which time preheat your oven to 375 F.

TO ASSEMBLE:
Immediately spoon half of the polenta into a lightly oiled/sprayed pie plate. You will need to use the back of a large spoon to press it down and smooth it out nicely. Spoon the warmed ratatouille filling over the polenta base - to within 1/2 inch of the outside rim of the polenta.

Put the remaining polenta on top, carefully spreading it (I used a knife dipped in cold water again and again) and smooth the surface with the back of your big spoon.

Sprinkle the top with a little vegan parmezan cheeze (or your homemade faux cheez substitute), but this is optional.

Cover with foil and bake 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 15 mins or until the top begins to brown a little. Remove from oven and let it settle for another 15 minutes.

Cut into wedges, garnish and accompany with pasta sauce if you are using it.

This was too good to call leftovers! Yummmm!!!! (As you can see, we managed, between us, to make great inroads into it.) Serve with a nice salad of your choice.

I was more pleased with this than with the Polenta Pie With Spinach because it wasn't so heavy on the polenta and also because I just love doing something useful with leftovers :) It WAS hard to photograph, though!