Tag Archives for Recipe
Vegan Chipotle, Corn, & Black Bean Stew
If I could only have one cookbook, I would definitely choose Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (affiliate link). Every single one of her recipes that I have made has turned out wonderfully, but this stew really stands out as one of my favorite meals ever—especially when it starts to cool off outside.
You can view the recipe here and it’s also on the Amazon page along with a few other recipes from the book if you click under the image where it says “search inside this book”.
She also has a ton of recipes on her site, The Post Punk Kitchen. The ones that I have made and loved are the red lentil Thai chili, chocolate chip cookies, snobby joes, and red curry soup with rice and kale.
Do you have a favorite cookbook or recipe site? I’d love to have some new recipes to try out!
Lunch Time: Three Bean Chili
I have been making this chili recipe almost weekly because it is so quick and delicious. I omit the peppers and celery and it still turns out awesome. It makes quite a bit so it’s perfect to pack for lunch. I like mine with Greek yogurt, hot sauce, and a few handfuls of tortilla chips.
I’ve been using canned beans, but if you’re watching your sodium intake just sub it with dried. It takes a little more time but is definitely worth it if sodium is something you need to keep in check.
In baby news (since I haven’t blogged in forever), I have added a tab called “baby” at the top of the site. All baby related posts will be there and won’t show up on the main page. If you subscribe through an RSS reader then you will see the baby posts in your feed though.
Timesaver: Homemade Pizza Crust
I get a craving for pizza pretty often and it’s always at that point where I’m already hungry. It’s no fun waiting on dough to rise when you’re super hungry and don’t feel like going to the store to buy premade crust. To save a little time just choose your favorite pizza crust recipe (I’m loving this one from There She Goes—it smells incredible!), roll out some mini crusts, and then freeze. With that recipe I am able to get five rather large pieces and it works out to 267 calories each.
I just stack the crusts on top of each other with a layer or saran wrap between and then place them in the freezer. If you know you’re going to want pizza later you can grab one and put it in the fridge to thaw out so it’s ready to use whenever you’re ready. I’ve taken one straight from the freezer to the oven and it turned out fine.
When I pull it out of the fridge or freezer I let the crust bake alone on 350° for about 5-7 minutes and then add sauce and toppings. It then goes back into the oven for around 10-15 minutes.
I make a simple sauce out of tomato sauce, tomato paste, basil, salt, and oregano. Some of my favorite toppings are eggplant, asparagus, bell pepper, tomatoes, and artichokes. I also use pita bread as a crust whenever I’m in a pinch and it always turns out really well.
Pumpkin Carving & Halloween Recipes
On Friday night my sister, her boyfriend, and my nephew came over to carve pumpkins and watch movies. I wanted to make a few Halloweeny recipes and I had quite a few bookmarked. I found a couple that I wanted to try so I made a shopping list and headed to the store. I knew for sure I wanted to make this Halloween candy corn cookie bark because it just looked so cute and festive.
I had a bit of a mishap as I didn’t buy enough white chocolate squares and tried to use carob chips which you can see in the bottom right of the first photo. I put the carob chips in the microwave to melt where they caught on fire and when I pulled them out the top was hard and burnt. I just removed the burnt part but then it wouldn’t spread and instead just turned into a hard lump that tasted charred. It’s best when I don’t improvise in the kitchen because stuff like that always happens. I ended up just throwing the burnt part away and the rest was really good.
After that exciting experience I needed a lil’ something so I made this Halloween sunset cocktail from my girl Martha. I couldn’t find tangerine juice anywhere so I just used orange juice and it turned out great.
Earlier in the day I had bought Pepper a little treat as well from Natural Pet Supply. If you live in Knoxville and are looking for neat items for your pup or cat you should definitely check them out—the people that work there are so sweet.
Another Martha recipe I made was this sinister black bean guacamole. It turned out fantastic and everyone loved it. It was so easy to make and tasted incredible so definitely make this one!
Once my family arrived I put on Ghostbusters II (it’s on Hulu if you wanna watch too) and we got to carving! I originally wanted to do another Hello Kitty pumpkin but I was having a hard time getting the entire thing to fit without being too small. I did a search for “cute Halloween stencil” and found this little spider that I loved and looked easy so I did it instead.
Greg ended up doing a classic looking pumpkin. It turned out great and our pumpkins look awesome together all lit up on the porch.
On Saturday morning we travelled to Nashville for the Zombie Buffet 5k where we were chased by zombies. I will make a separate post for it since I have so many photos, but let me tell ya.. I screamed quite a few times and and have never ran that fast in my life! haha.
This morning we woke up late and I slowly made my way into the kitchen (I was hurting a bit from the 5k haha), and made Halloween pancakes. I went with my usual pancake recipe, but this time I added a bit of green food coloring to the batter. I made black cinnamon syrup to go along with them. I didn’t have black food coloring on hand so I used purple and turned out fine.
I hope you had a great weekend full of Halloween fun!
Weekend Recap
I crossed another October goal off the list by visiting a pumpkin patch over the weekend. The drive took us waaay out into the country. I’m sure I’m the only weirdo that does this, but the minute I hit those old country back roads I start sweating and looking at my fuel gauge every few minutes just to make sure it’s still good, while scenes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre play in my head. I always get worried that I will get lost, my car will break down, or I’ll run out of gas with no cell signal and there will be no one to help me besides the town creep. When I was little, my grandma owned a video store and I would constantly sneak movies from the horror section based on how scary their covers were and I think all that crazy stuff I watched has been permanently seared into my brain and made me the worrier that I am today.
Of course, none of the above happened and I was traveling with Greg, my sister, her boyfriend and my lil’ nephew so I had backup just in case. We went to this farm where you take a hayride out to this huge field full of pumpkins, spend time carefully choosing the perfect pumpkin, and then take the hayride back to the main building/barn.
First, Greg & I made sure to get our photo taken with the harvest prop.
I found the pumpkin I wanted pretty quickly. I needed a taller one since I’m doing this stencil this year. I did the Hello Kitty witch one last year and think the vampire one is way cuter so I’m excited and ready to start carvin’!
Another good thing about the weekend was that I made this Indian spiced roasted veggies over lentils recipe I’d seen last week. It sounded delicious and definitely didn’t disappoint. The vegetables tasted amazing and having them over lentils was a nice change from rice or quinoa.
I also made my own cookie dough blizzard! Although, we don’t have a Dairy Queen around here and I’ve never had a blizzard, so I call mine a blast after Sonic’s version. I used this recipe for the cookie dough bites since I didn’t have cashews on hand for the original recipe. The blast turned out really well and while it didn’t taste anything like one from Sonic, it was definitely good as its own thing and it made me feel all accomplished to make something similar that tasted so great. I’ll be making it again for sure.
I hope you all had an awesome weekend!
