Great weather...and we ate what?

View from our balcony

Wow! Fabulous weather in the south! The temps have been in the low 80's, pollen on cars, and girls are sun bathing on the beach. We have been out of town for a few days for a planning session for WAFT. We went to Jacksonville Beach and loved the sound of the ocean! I even made sure the curtains were opened so we could see the sun rise every day!

Since we didn't get home until Monday night, I didn't have time to go shopping. Juice for breakfast - no problem. But lunch?  I looked in the pantry, saw a can of pinto beans and thought "quick chili".  As usual, I wanted to try a new recipe and found this quick and easy one called The Best Vegetarian Chili EVER! Super easy and quite good.  I didn't have the exact beans called for in the recipe, so I just substituted - I know you are surprised!

Garlic, onions, bell peppers

Throw everything together

Add sour cream and cheese of desired

Seriously good!

We are finding that restaurants are expanding their menus to include more vegetarian choices. We found several that had fabulous food while we were in Jacksonville.  A favorite place of ours is the  Mellow Mushroom. We used to have one in Valdosta, but alas, they moved. We ordered  the MEGA-VEGGIE pizza: red sauce base with feta and mozzarella cheeses, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, green pepper, mushrooms, onions, black olives, Roma tomatoes, broccoli, banana peppers, artichoke hearts and tofu.  The tofu wasn't a big deal to me, eat them or leave them is my philosophy, but it is a good source of protein.

Another fun place that we ate was the Mojo Bar-B-Que. In fact, we ate there twice! The first time we ordered a vegetable plate; I got the smoked yellow corn, collards, black eyed peas, and dirty rice.  Bill had the corn too, mac/cheese, sweet potato mash and a side salad. It came with jalapeno cornbread.  As we were leaving to come back home we stopped there for lunch.  We decided to try something new - smoked chicken nachos. Yes, we had meat! Super good!

If I could get there famous sauce - I could make these!

Good food...healthy food.....if we can make it, you can too!

Craziest thing yet!

We have tried quite a few unusual recipes!  Most have been good, only one or two were "bombs"! Last night was an unexpected good one!  The kind you would probably read and avoid cooking. I figured we should bite the bullet!  Are you ready for this?  We made Vegetarian Hash!  What?! You just said, "big deal", didn't you?  Did I mention beets were in the base? with eggs on top? I have no idea how I came across this recipe.....but we would definitely make it again. I guess I would say we were somewhere between I liked it - I loved it!  HaHa!

Cook eggs to your preference.

If you need a quick, easy, HEALTHY recipe..... this vegetarian hash recipe is for you! Potatoes, beets, onions, garlic, eggs... The potatoes and beets mixed together give you a sweet/salty combo. The only thing I did differently was I used a roasting pan, because I did not have a large cast iron skillet. Also, we cut the beets/potatoes in small chunks which reduced the cooking time. "In addition to protein and fiber, this recipe will give you 13% of your daily value of iron, 54% of your daily value of vitamin C, and 18% of your daily value of vitamin A."

We do not eat a lot of beets. I'm thinking, "What do you even do with them?" We tried juicing them but didn't care for it. When I came across this recipe I thought we would give it a shot. It was a nice change and a good recipe.  Here's a good link about the benefits of beets: 7 Reasons to Love Beets.

If you are feeling adventurous and want to venture out  into the world of beets, allrecipes.com is one of my favorite go-to sites.  Check out their top rated beet recipes.

Bill is so ready to get into homesteading full time.  He looked at the vegetarian hash and said, "We can grow all this ourselves." We already have the 4 foot gardening plots, all we need are chickens!  Seriously, I wonder if we should go for it??

I love to cook!

The weather is changing, perhaps we will have a winter yet! I am convinced the worst is yet to come, probably in early February. I might even break out a jacket this year. When the air turns chilly, I start looking for more soup, stew and chili recipes.  We love them all.  I do try alternating eating "regular" food with new recipes.  The familiar is always so comforting!

I love pilfering in the produce section at the grocery store. Just looking at fresh veggies makes me feel healthy! Creamy white cauliflower, brilliant green broccoli, smooth red tomatoes...well, you get the picture. I really like it when the little sprayers doused the veggies...it makes them look like the dew has just fallen and they are begging to be picked! After wandering through the aisles, I decided to make a regular veggie plate.  We had fresh green beans, corn on the cob, baby carrots with a side of southern potato salad. Yum!!

Today, the wind picked up and it was just cold.  I had a bag of dried lima beans; the big ones.  Originally, I thought I would just cook the beans like normal and have a side of fried potatoes.  I was curious about other herbs or spices to add to the beans (I  didn't want to use  ham bone), and saw a lot of people made lima bean soup.  Well, that sounded good.  I scanned a few recipes and decided to make one up.  You could do the same.....I just eyeballed everything.

I cooked the dried beans the quick method.  I covered them with water, brought them to a rolling boil for about three minutes, turned the heat off and let them sit for an hour.   Meanwhile, I  grabbed my soup pot and threw in a stick of butter. I chopped up equal amounts onions, celery and a yellow bell pepper and sauteed them for a few minutes and then added some fresh garlic. The smell was wonderful!!  I drained the beans and added them to the sauteed vegetables, along with some fresh sliced carrots and covered everything in vegetable broth (you could use chicken broth).  Now, for the seasonings.....salt/pepper, smoked paprika, oregano and cumin. I cooked the soup for a couple of hours. When the beans seemed to be getting close to being done, I added a can of diced tomatoes and some cubed potatoes.....simmered till the potatoes and beans were tender (but not mushy).  It was so good! 

Crackers didn't seem like a good match so I broke down and made something that I haven't made in forever - dropped Garlic, cheese biscuits!!!!   Add a glass of sweet tea and we were in hog heaven! Ah, what shall we try next?

What's normal anyway?

Yes, we do eat normal food! Looking back over some of the recipes that we've made, you may think we only eat "strange" foods; like bean patties, polenta and walnut meatballs.  Since we have changed to a primarily vegetarian lifestyle, "normal" foods that we used to eat all the time have become a thing of the past. Now, all things are becoming new.  Our food choices and recipes are creating a new normal!

 The other day I decided to throw together a quick and easy meal - what you would call normal. I cooked up some penne pasta, made homemade spaghetti sauce, sprinkled it with cheese and baked it. We also had a scrumptious salad on the side - Blue Salad.  Take your favorite greens, add some chopped green apple, red onion, blue cheese crumbles and bagel chips.  The dressing was apple cider vinegar, oil, sugar and poppy seeds. Both are quick and easy to make!

I have to tell you about the first time we had the Blue Salad.  Our second daughter, Jennifer, had been dating Dusty Sirmans for some time.  One night he invited us over to his house for dinner.  Of course, the whole point was to tell us he wanted to marry Jennifer.  He served the Blue Salad - we fell in love with it and with Dusty.  They have been married for 3 years.

Remember the bean patties I made the other day? (They were topped with salsa) Have you ever been to Moe's or Chiptole's? They are fun restaurants where the food is in an assembly line and you can design your own tortilla. So, for lunch we had our own assembly line. We heated a tortilla shell, broke up the left over bean patties, added some yellow rice (I threw in some cilantro when cooking it) made a corn and bean salsa, added sour cream and guacamole and  voila....we had some scrumptious burritos.

More to come...happy eating!

Seriously, chocolate?!

Yes, that is a chunk of chocolate!

Well, I came home early from work (WAFT) to cook lunch. I had this hankering to try the Black Bean Cakes with Mole Salsa that I was telling you about. It's a recipe from The Taste of Home site.  If you're like me, my first question was, "What in the world is mole salsa?" The best definition I found was...are you ready for this?......."the generic named used for a number of sauces in Mexican cuisine." Well, that answered it for me, how about you?! Ha, Ha!  The black bean patties were quick, easy to make, and held their shape.  The salsa was the surprise.  At first glance it seemed to be a basic pico de gallo recipe, until you looked closer.  It has HONEY, CHOCOLATE, and chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.  Now, that was an interesting recipe to make. I had no idea what to expect.  It was good!  Remember chipotle has a smokey flavor; it wasn't real hot and spicy.

So close: parsley and cilantro

Not cilantro...

I did get a little bummed.  When I was making the salsa it called for fresh cilantro.  I was so excited that we had some still hanging on in the garden.  I ran outside and snipped some off and starting chopping it.  Something did not seem right.  I looked at it again, smelled it and realized I had parsley. Sad times.  Fortunately, I had a tube of cilantro in the frig that I keep on hand for emergencies....such as today!

I had forgotten that we had bought some fresh squash when we were at the Farmer's Market the other day. I threw those in the pan and got them to cooking right off the bat.  I do it the southern way, just olive oil, onions, squash and salt/pepper.  I also like to cook mine down. Scrumptious!

Lunch was a black bean patty, salsa, fresh squash and cornbread. And of course, sweet tea

on the side!  Now I'll be honest....I think you could use this recipe for a veggie burger.  Grab a hamburger bun, add some regular toppings and a patty.  I think the salsa would add a nice twist, perhaps even some pepper jack cheese.

Just buzzed his head!

Bill liked the salsa the best.  He thought the bean patty looked too much like a hamburger patty.  I mean, it's not like I didn't tell him.  The taste was fine, it was just in his head that he should be biting into a regular hamburger.  I enjoyed it all.

Mile High!

Pizza for supper! It could be a staple in our house! We love it. Tonight we made what I dubbed a "mile high" veggie pizza.

Here's how we layered it:
homemade pizza crust drizzled with olive oil and Italian seasonings
homemade pizza sauce
fresh basil
feta cheese
sun dried tomatoes
sauteed squash, onions, bell pepper, and garlic
kalamata olives
black olives
jalapenos
sprinkle of cheese on top
crushed red peppers
SCRUMPTIOUS!

I need some menus for this week! So I've been going through some old recipes and looking for some new ones.   Here are a couple of NEW recipes I that I plan on trying from a Taste of Home site.   One is Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers; it received a lot of good reviews. The other is Black Bean Cakes with Mole Salsa.



We'll let you know how we like them! Eat well, eat healthy!

January 2013

Happy New Year! 

Did you have greens, black eyed peas and cornbread today? Our house was filled with so many wonderful smells from the traditional New Year's Day southern foods! The only thing I was missing was some jalapeno relish that my mother-in-law makes.  I'll have to break down and make some.  It is super good, sweet and hot at the same time.  Much better than chow chow!

 
How did you do eating during the holidays? We were able to stay on our vegetarian routine with only a few exceptions.  A few times dinner was fixed for us, so we graciously ate what was prepared. Otherwise, even our kids did well with our vegetarian diet.  We did have more sweets than normal - or that we needed, but isn't that what the holidays are for? Here is a fun recipe that is super easy to make - White chocolate haystacks.  Basically, I just melted a bag of white chocolate and stirred in cashews, craisins and pretzels and dropped them in clumps.
 
You will never believe this, but we started eating oatmeal for breakfast.  I don't know if my taste buds are changing or what...because I do not like oatmeal. Maybe it's because the weather is cooler? I just don't know, but it has certainly struck a chord with me. We didn't juice very much during the holidays, so I think we will move from juicing for breakfast to using it for a snack mid morning - at least while the oatmeal craze is on.

Time to conjure up some more recipes for the weeks ahead. I have used several from The Pioneer Woman.  If we continue eating vegetarian, I'll need to boost our protein input. Otherwise, we tend to eat too many carbs.

From our home to yours......may your New Year be filled with His grace and peace!