It’s been a long time since I’ve made stuffed peppers.  I usually make some sort of a rice mixture to stuff them with, but decided to change it up by using some orzo pasta instead.  These turned out pretty good!

Orzo Stuffed Peppers

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1/4 cup orzo (dry)

2 large shallots, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 TB olive oil

1/4 cup roasted red peppers, chopped

1/4 cup artichoke hearts, chopped

1/4 cup olives, chopped (kalamata and green)

2 TB toasted pine nuts

1 TB basil, chopped

Juice and zest from one small lemon

2 bell peppers, any color

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Half and clean bell peppers, then place in a baking dish and bake in the oven while you prepare the stuffing.

In a small pot, cook the orzo in boiling water per package directions.  Meanwhile in a small skillet, sauté the shallot and garlic in the olive oil until softened.  Remove from heat and mix in the roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts, olives, pine nuts, basil and lemon juice and zest.  When orzo is fully cooked, mix that in as well.  Taste and season with S&P.  Stuff the mixture into the bell pepper halves, and then return them to the oven to finish cooking, about 10 minutes.

Today is World Vegan Day!  For lunch, I made my hubby and I a “date” meal that we enjoyed after Emma had gone down for her nap, Pasta with a Creamy Pumpkin Sauce.  I feel like we haven’t spent much time together since we got back from vacation and this was a nice treat.  I know it sounds kinda gross, but it was actually really, really good (and pretty rich– I would advise to serve this as a side dish, rather than a main course).

Creamy Pumpkin Pasta Sauce

1 small onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 TB olive oil

3/4 cup pumpkin puree

pinch cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly ground

1 cup veggie stock

3 TB MimicCreme (unsweetened)

S&P to taste

In a large skillet over medium heat, saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil until tender, about 7 minutes. Add the pumpkin puree, cayenne, cinnamon and veg stock.  Stir to combine and cook for another few minutes, until most of the stock has cooked off.  Turn off the heat and add the MimicCreme.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  Stir in your cooked pasta.

Sorry for the brief hiatus.  Emma and I went to Sacramento for a couple of days to visit my parents and I’ve been fighting a cold the last few days.  I’m feeling better, but with the traveling and the sickness, there hasn’t been anything exciting happening in my kitchen, aside from the ants.  Those guys just won’t quit!  A tip that my Nana told me about works better on ants than anything else I’ve tried.  It sounds crazy, but it works.  Stick a slice of cucumber in any place you see the ants coming in from.  It really does work.  I have cucumbers all along where the ants have been coming in and my kitchen is now ant-free.  I usually leave the cucumbers there until they shrivel up, just to be safe.

Anyway, for dinner last night, I managed to whip up My Favorite Pasta Dish (isn’t that name so clever?!).  It was delish, as usual.

This time, I tossed in a some toasted pine nuts, which gave it some nice crunch and nutty flavor.

Since I mentioned our trip to Sacramento, I want to give my parents (who, sadly are NOT loyal readers) kudos for eating completely vegan meals the two nights we were there.  See, guys, it won’t kill you!  In fact, they even liked both of the meals that I made for them.  My dad claims that veganism is “too extreme,” but that becoming vegetarian is something he can handle.  Well, I don’t believe for a second that he’ll even attempt going vegetarian, but I hope he’ll at least consider it.  Think about all those medications that you could avoid taking just by changing your diet…

One of our meals was this miso/udon soup.  Yep, Emma and I just can’t get enough of this stuff.  I made it exactly the same way as before, except I used red miso instead of white.  I have to say that the red has more flavor, despite being really funky looking.

A few nights ago, I made some capellini (the package was open and I wanted to use it up before opening another) with marinara and meatballs.  I often have a hard time gauging an appropriate amount of noodles to throw into a pot– they seem to grow as they cook.  I ended up cooking way more noodles than I needed for that one meal and have been eating the same thing for dinner a few nights now.

I made the same thing last night, but added some kalamata and green olives and fresh basil.  It definitely perked the dish up a bit and reminded me of my favorite pasta dish, which I haven’t made since April according to my blog.  Yikes!  We are definitely due to have that one night soon.

The good news is that I have eaten all the noodles and can move on to something new for dinner tonight.

I don’t know why I’m bothering to blog about this, since I didn’t make any of it.  I cooked it and assembled it, but that’s as far as my efforts went.  It was hot, I didn’t feel like cooking, but we had to eat.  This was the best I could do and, yes, it’s another horrible photo.

The meatballs are the Whole Foods brand of vegan meatballs.  The sauce Whole Foods organic marinara from the jar.  The noodles are multigrain with flax seed.  Nothing exciting, really.  Emma sure liked it though!

I guess it’s about time to write about some food.

When I made zucchini pie the other day, I had a bunch of leftover filling. Inspired by this blog (my new fav), I thought it would be a great idea to use it up by stuffing some peppers. I used the same filling from the zucchini pie, except that I added in about 1/2 cup of frozen peas and 1/4 cup of grated carrot. The result was great. It was tasty and used up some food before it was destined for the trash.

To go with our peppers, we had some penne topped with basil cashew cheese. I used the same recipe that I’ve always used, but I threw in a big handful of basil too. It was very, very tasty. Emma was not into this meal at all. She ate plain pasta and some peas. After dinner was over, she came back and finished off her applesauce. That girl can be so picky!

I was going for more of a Greek style with this pasta salad.  My original idea was to use tofu as a substitute for feta cheese, but it didn’t turn out the way I had wanted it to.  I’ll have to fiddle with that some more.  On it’s own, though, this pasta salad was really good and perfect for a hot day when you don’t want to cook.  The best part is that I made it without any oil so, aside from the olives, this is pretty figure friendly.

Greek Style Pasta Salad

1 cup orzo, dry

1/2 cup chopped cucumber

1/2 cup roasted red peppers, chopped

1/2 to 3/4 cup kalamata olives, halved

1/2 cup artichoke hearts, quartered

1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes, chopped

3 TB chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

Dressing

Zest and juice from 1 large lemon

1 TB red wine vinegar

2 TB agave syrup

1/2 tsp dried oregano

S&P

Boil orzo per package directions.  Meanwhile, combine all of the other salad ingredients in a large boil.  In a separate bowl, prepare the dressing.  When the orzo is cooked, strain it and run it under cold water for a few minutes to cool it off.  Add to the salad bowl.  Pour dressing over the salad and toss.  Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

A glass of wine would have turned this into a very romantic meal. It’s also a little more romantic when it’s an evening without the child, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

The inspiration for this meal started with the Sweet Strawberry-Balsamic Asparagus Salad that I came across on Yeah… the other day. It looked and sounded so good that I had to give it a go. It’s constructed of lightly blanched asparagus spears, topped with sliced strawberries. I drizzled some of my pre-made balsamic dijon vinaigrette over the top and it was delish!

To go with our salad, I whipped up a pasta dish on the fly. I threw in whatever veggies we had in the fridge (zucchini, kale, basil), poured a little veg stock over it and let it reduce, tossed with with pasta and called it a day. The sauce was good, but the texture of the noodles was a little gummy. I used a sprouted wheat noodle and I guess that what I get for trying to be healthier in my noodle choices. 

I would make this again, but I would probably stick to a white noodle. For a little crunch, I garnished with some toasted pine nuts. Yum!

Most of the meals this week have been a bunch of repeats, so I won’t bore you with them. This meal, however, was a total highlight for me because I have had this idea for a while and I am always happy when an idea pans out exactly as I envision it.

It all started last night when I whipped up a small batch of cashew cheese to make calzones. I only made about 1 1/2 cups of cashew cheese, but I blended in about 1 cup of fresh basil leaves. It made great calzones, but I thought it would make killer ravioli. The few times that I have attempted fresh pasta have not been a success, so I was hesitant to try it out again. I pulled out my trusty sidekick How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, which, as luck would have it, had a super simple vegan fresh pasta recipe in it.  It’s all made in the food processor and consists of just 3 ingredients- totally foolproof.  Once my pasta dough was done, I divided it into quarters and rolled each one out by hand with my rolling pin.  I suppose it’s worth mentioning that you should not even attempt this recipe if you don’t have one of the following: a rolling pin, or a pasta machine.

Anyway, I rolled out all four of my quarters super duper thin.  On two of them, I placed 1 teaspoon of filling in various locations around the dough using my cutter as a guide.  Brush the dough with a mixture of 1 tsp cornstarch and 1/4 cup water (to seal the two pieces of dough together) and top each with the second sheets of dough.  Press out any air bubbles and make sure that the edges are sealed firmly.  Cut out around the filling using a cutter (I used a circle cookie cutter) and check again that the edges are firmly sealed.  Boil in salted water for about two minutes, or until they float to the top.  Remove, then add to the skillet that you use to make your sauce:

Creamy Spinach and Basil Broth

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

pinch of red pepper flakes

2 cups veggie stock

1 cup cream substitute (I used MimicCreme)

1 cup fresh spinach, roughly chopped

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (optional)

In a large skillet with high sides, saute the onion, garlic, and red pepper flakes in about 2 TB of olive oil for about 5 minutes.  Add the stock and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, reduce the heat back to medium and add the spinach.  When the spinach has wilted, add the cream, basil and S&P.  Continue to cook for about 2 minutes.  Add in the cooked ravioli and simmer for about 1 minute.  Garnish with the pine nuts and some more fresh basil and serve.

With the scraps of my ravioli dough, I cut out little fishies for Emma that I served with a jarred marinara sauce.  She seemed pretty happy with them, but not as happy as me with my first successful homemade pasta venture.  These were so incredibly delicious!  If you have the time, please give this recipe a try.

I was digging something out of the freezer the other day when a frozen container of cashew cheese jumped out and fell to the floor. Part of the container shattered and my only option was to defrost it to transfer to another container. I decided that I’d leave it out and use it up in a lasagna, which has been an idea floating around my head for a while now.

It turned out really, really good. It was definitely a much lighter version of a typical lasagna and the only part that I sort of missed was the crispy cheesy top of a traditional lasagna.  Other than that, we really enjoyed it, but I would still only call this recipe a near success.  To me, a fully successful recipe is one that all three of us will eat and enjoy. I think there was too much going on and Emma just wouldn’t even try this. She did eat some of the leftover noodle scraps topped with marinara sauce and seemed to enjoy that quite a bit. I suppose she enjoys more simple foods.

Vegan Lasagna

*I made a small dish of it so that we wouldn’t be eating it for days and days. You may need to adjust the measurements according to how big you are making yours.

9 sheets lasagna noodles, cooked per package directions

2 cups cashew cheese

2 zucchini, roughly chopped

1 carrot, diced

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup kalamata olives, halved

1/2 cup green olives, quartered

2, cups marinara sauce

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped

In a medium sauce pan, heat about 1 TB olive oil over medium low heat. Add the onions, garlic and carrots and cook for several minutes until the veggies are tender. Add the zucchini, 1 1/2 cups of the marinara sauce, olives and basil and remove from heat. Taste and season for S&P if necessary.

Spray the baking dish with cooking spray. In the bottom of the dish, spread a small amount of the extra marinara sauce and put down your first layer of noodles. It should fit 3 across. On top of the noodles, spread about half of the cashew cheese and top the cheese with half of the marinara/veggie mixture. Put down another set of noodles. Spread those noodles with most of the remaining cashew cheese, but save enough to spread the top layer of noodles with a small amount. Top with the remaining marinara/veggie mixture. Put down the rest of the noodles, top with cashew cheese and the rest of the extra marinara sauce. Baked uncovered at 425 degrees for about 30 minutes until the top and sides are bubbly.