Meatless Monday: Pancake Dinner

April 16, 2012 By 3 Comments

Sometimes dinner on a Meatless Monday needs to be really simple. Pancake dinner fits that bill for sure. Our kids would eat pancakes for dinner every night if we let them. They love pancakes so dinner tonight was a hit for sure!

We … haha, that is funny! Brian tends to break out the electric griddle on pancake days. Making 4-6 pancakes at once sure beats making two at a time in a skillet!

Brian’s favorite pancake recipe is Alton Brown’s instant pancake recipe. The best of the recipe is that you can make a batch (or double or triple) the mix and then just store it in the cupboard. We do this. I can even manage the mix! In the years that Brian has been making this recipe, he has cheated on all of Alton’s steps in the recipe but does make sure to let the batter “rest” just as you do with a meat!

What pancakes do you like? Do you add to the pancake batter or put toppings on there? Our kids love cinnamon sugar on the top of their pancakes.

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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Meatless Monday: Vegetarian Tapas

April 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

We are all about keeping our dinners simple, affordable, and tasty.  On the other hand, I’m still just a big kid who still likes to play with his food.  Sometimes, experimenting with new flavors or new types of food can really negate these factors (especially the tasty part).  This especially becomes a problem when, like me, you come from a household that adores meat and are now trying out meatless recipes.  These tapas are a great simple way to experiment a little, without all of the fuss.

The word tapas comes from the Spanish verb tapar, “to cover.”  The idea is that a piece of bread or meat or even a plate would be set on top of a glass of wine to keep stuff out of the wine.  These “covers” could then hold various other foods, leading to a long tradition of Spanish cuisine.  Our offerings today are quite easy and could even be accompanied by a small meat tapas for those individuals who “could never have a meal without meat.”

Below you can see, from left to right, a Spinach Artichoke Dip, Patatas Alioli (Potatoes with Garlic Mayonaisse), and Deviled Eggs.  We purchased the dip at the local big box store.  You could make your own, but this is all about being simple, right?  The Deviled Eggs…well, it’s after Easter right?  Most of us have a Deviled Egg recipe looming somewhere or can easily find one.  That will have to be another post.  The potatoes, however, were so good that I just have to include a recipe.

Patatas Alioli or Potatoes with Garlic Mayonnaise

This dish is a pretty traditional tapas and couldn’t be easier to put together.  We used fingerling potatoes, making it easy just to cut round little knobs, but you could easily cut a larger potato into long quarters and cut chunks from there.  Just use what you have.  Making the alioli can be tricky.  Whisking can make your arm tired, but get the hand blender going too fast and you’ll just have an oily mess (trust me on this one!).  If  you like more garlic, feel free to add more.

Ingredients

4-6 Cups potatoes, cut into 1/2-3/4 inch chunks
oil for frying
salt

2-3 large garlic cloves
1 tsp salt
2 egg yolks
1 Cup olive oil
1 1/2 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

Directions

Over medium-high heat, heat about an inch and a half of oil in a large skillet (make sure not to come up over half-way up the sides or you might spill over when the potatoes go in).  When the oil is hot (a potato fries immediately when inserted), add one layer of potatoes.  Fry for about 10 minutes or until the insides are fluffy when opened up.  Drain on paper towels and salt immediately after pulling them from the oil.

For the alioli, press or mash the garlic into a paste using the salt.  Add to a large bowl with egg yolks and whisk until well combined.  Slowly add the olive oil, whisking the whole time.  Add little bits at first, making sure that they are fully incorporated before adding more.  As you near the end, you can add larger quantities, but never more than 1/8 Cup at a time.

Serve the alioli on the side of the potatoes or fold the potatoes into the sauce in the traditional fashion.  Enjoy!

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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Meatless Monday: Spinach and Mushroom Quiche

March 26, 2012 By 4 Comments

Sometimes after a long day, we just need a dinner that is quick, easy, and not too heavy.  We tend to keep pie shells, eggs, mushrooms, spinach, and cheese around at all times so it’s only natural that a quiche would find it’s way into our repertoire from time to time.

Quiche is basically a pastry crust filled with with eggs and meat, veggies, cheese, or any combination of the three.  Our version leaves out the meat, but maintains the light, but fulfilling nature of any good quiche.  The buttery, flaky crust with the creamy, custardy filling and chunky bites of mushroom and spinach all topped with nutty Gruyere cheese will tickle your taste buds with every bite.  Pair it with a side salad and you have a lovely meatless meal for a warm evening or a Sunday brunch.

From a Simply Budgeted perspective, the Gruyere will be your most expensive item.  We bought ours from the big box warehouse store for about $12/pound.  The nice thing is that Gruyere has a big flavor, so a little goes a long ways.  We only used about 1/4 pound (so $3) for the whole dish.  It should also only take you about 15 minutes of active cooking time, giving you time to chill out for a bit after getting home from work while dinner cooks itself.


Spinach and Mushroom Quiche

Ingredients

1 9 ” pie shell
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups sliced mushrooms
salt and pepper
2 cups baby spinach
1 garlic clove, minced
3 eggs
1 cup half and half
1 cup Gruyere cheese, shredded

Directions

Preheat oven to 375.  Prepare pie shell in 9″ deep dish pie plate.  Set aside.

In a large pan over medium-high heat, add olive oil, mushrooms, and salt and pepper to taste.  Cook mushrooms until lightly browned, 5-6 minutes, and add spinach and garlic.  Cook until spinach is wilted and most of the liquid has evaporated, another 4-5 minutes.  Drain off the excess liquid and set vegetables aside for a few minutes to cool.

Whisk together eggs, half and half, and salt and pepper to taste.

Place vegetables into bottom of pie shell.  Pour egg mixture over the vegetables and top with Gruyere.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes or until quiche is puffy and golden brown.  Serve warm or at room temperature.  It makes about 6-8 servings.  Enjoy!

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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Meatless Monday: Mushroom Risotto

March 19, 2012 By 4 Comments

Risotto is one of those yummy, comforting dishes that seems so fancy that you have to go to a nice Italian restaurant to get it.  Just like so many comfort foods, however, risotto started out in the homes of Italian grandmothers.  Basically, it consists of oil, rice, broth, and cheese.  Everything else is just extra flavor.  The dish is yummy, very cheap, and something that kids can easily relate to.  It takes a little time and know-how, but the basics of this dish are super simple and this whole dish can be finished in under thirty minutes.

We get a fair number of comments from people about how they love our meatless recipes, but that they or their significant others would never, ever, ever, ever be able to have a meal without meat.  As we started considering this, we realized that many of our meatless recipes could really serve a dual purpose.  Today’s recipe is one of those.  This could easily be served as a main dish or topped with a little chicken to add that meat element.  We love to roast some chicken breasts on the weekend to use in salads or for quick dishes throughout the week.  Just take a little of that, warmed up in a pan and layer it over this yummy risotto.

 

Mushroom Risotto

Arborio rice can be found in the rice aisle in smaller packages.  For the broth, I wound up using half veggie broth and half mushroom broth to up that mushroom flavor a little.  Can’t find mushroom broth?  Just toss some dried mushrooms into the veggie broth!

Ingredients

8 cups vegetable broth

3 Tbsp olive oil, divided
2 Tbsp butter
1 pound mushrooms
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
salt and pepper

1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano

Directions

Heat broth and keep warm over low heat.

Heat one Tbsp of oil over medium heat.  Add butter, mushrooms, Italian seasoning, and salt and pepper to taste.  Cook 5-6 minutes until lightly browned.  Set aside.

Heat remaining two Tbsp of oil over medium heat.  Add onion and garlic and saute 2-3 minutes.  Add rice and cook about one minute, stirring continuously.  Add wine and cook until most of the wine is evaporated.  Ladle warm broth into the rice one cup at a time, stirring frequently and allowing each addition to absorb fully into the rice before adding more.  When all of the broth has been absorbed, stir in 3/4 of the mushrooms and the cheese until the cheese is fully melted.  Serve on a large plate and top with the reserved mushrooms and more cheese.

Enjoy!

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

 

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Meatless Monday: Macaroni and Cheese

March 12, 2012 By 4 Comments

Having a meatless meal does not mean sacrificing comfort.  Macaroni and Cheese is one of those meals that takes just about everyone back to some point in their childhood.  Unfortunately, as a nation, we have taken to using those electric orange yellow powder packages of cheese dust in lieu of taking a little bit of time to make it from scratch.  Whether as a main meal or as a side dish, “real” mac and cheese is actually very easy to make, takes just about as much active cooking time, and is so much tastier than that boxed stuff.  On top of that, it can be a great foil for introducing veggies that may not be as popular on their own (can anyone say “broccoli mac and cheese”?).

Here is the four-step process to making great Macaroni and Cheese:

1.  Cook the noodles.
2.  Mix in cheese sauce and veggies (if using).
3.  Top with bread crumb mix.
4.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Simple, right?  Use whatever noodles you want.  We used a mix of shapes because we had them and they looked fun.  For the cheese sauce, just use the one we introduced last week in our Meatless Monday:  Baked Potatoes post (I thin it out with just a little extra milk because that’s how I like it).  If you are using veggies, I would saute them first and then add them in.  For veggies like broccoli, just add them to the water when you boil the pasta.  Veggie options might include peppers, mushrooms, even spinach.  Use your imagination or just clean out your fridge!  Mix everything together and pour into an appropriately sized baking dish.  For the topping, mix 3 tablespoons of melted butter with 1 cup of breadcrumbs and sprinkle over the dish.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes and you are all set!

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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Meatless Monday: Baked Potatoes

March 5, 2012 By 4 Comments

Ok, so I know that we did Twice Baked Potatoes last week, but potatoes are a great multipurpose staple, and, if you shop on a budget like us, you are likely to buy them in 5-10 pound bags.  Potatoes keep for a while, but not indefinitely, so it’s smart to plan a few meals around them.  This week we made up a batch of baked potatoes.  Need a quick recipe?  Here goes:

1. Wash them
2. Oil them (rub them in some olive oil)
3. Poke them (3 or 4 time with a fork)
4. Salt them
5. Bake them (350 right on the rack for 1 1/2 hours or until they squeeze easily)

Easy, right?  Once they are baked, the sky’s the limit as far as toppings go.  If you want a side or a light meal, simple butter and sour cream can be nice.  If you are looking to make it a full, hearty meal, you can use the basic potato as a vehicle for some of your leftovers.  Here we have a potato with broccoli and cheese sauce (recipe follows) and another with some leftover Chili Soup, the same cheese sauce, and sour cream.  One of the great things about this is that, since we had the oven on anyway, we just baked up about 10 potatoes.  We had whatever we were having for dinner, leaving plenty of easy to microwave potatoes for quick lunches later in the week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheese Sauce

This sauce starts with a bechamel (one of the French “mother sauces” that so many other sauces are based off of).  Learning to make this sauce gives you some basic techniques that you can use for future dishes.  This is the same cheese sauce you would use for Mac & Cheese!  If you find it to be a little thick, add more milk.  Not cheesy enough…well, you know what to do!

Ingredients

2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Directions

Melt butter over medium-high heat.  Add flour stirring continuously for 2-3 minutes or until paste cooks a bit, but is not browning (this part is making a roux and takes some practice to get just right!).

Add milk, stirring constantly and bringing it to a boil.  Lower heat, add salt and pepper, and let cook for 2-3 more minutes.  (Stop here for a bechamel, continue for cheese sauce)

Add cheese and melt thoroughly.  Adjust seasoning and remove from heat.

We hope that you enjoy!  Let us know how it turns out!

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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Meatless Monday: Twice Baked Potatoes

February 27, 2012 By 2 Comments

Sometimes going meatless doesn’t mean doing anything particularly fancy or outside of the box.  It can mean taking a basic, well-loved recipe and simply removing a small part of it.  This is what we did this week with twice-baked potatoes.  Usually, when we make these, we include cooked bacon when we mix it all together, but leaving it out does not really affect the final product too much.

These tasty dinners are terribly simple to put together.  Basically, you bake a couple of potatoes at 350 for an hour or so until you can squeeze them and they give a little.  You cut them in half, scoop out most of the insides, and make mashed potatoes with whatever fillings you want (milk, sour cream, butter, cheese, chives, green onions, etc are the basics, but you could experiment with whatever).  You fill up the shell, toss them back into the oven and bake for another 20 minutes or so.  Let them cool a bit, serve with a side salad, and voila, dinner is served.

 

There are literally hundreds of recipes out there.  This one from Betty Crocker is a classic and a great vegetarian option.  For our vegan readers, try this version from The Veggie Gal.  This was the one that we tried out (without the vegan bacon bits).  The whole family enjoyed.

We hope that you try this out and enjoy it too!

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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Meatless Monday: Vegetable Minestrone

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Some days you just know that Monday night is going to be a little rough.  That’s when the good old slow cooker is worth its weight in gold!  So this Monday, we’ve pulled out our trusty copy of Fix-It and Forget-It Lightly and have made a Vegetable Minestrone.  The thing that annoys me about so many slow cooker recipes is all of the cooking that they sometimes require before tossing it in.  Let’s be honest, if I had time to cook, I wouldn’t be using my slow cooker.  This recipe has you just toss everything, except for the pasta, right in and turn it on.  After you add in the pasta and let it finish, you just ladle it into a bowl and eat.  How hard is that?

Vegetable Minestrone

In order to make this recipe vegan, we used a low-sodium vegetable broth, but because we needed to keep our protein levels up on a vegan diet, we added one can of drained white beans.  I also don’t keep dried basil on hand, but I do have Italian seasoning, so I subbed that for the basil and oregano.  On top of that, we didn’t have rotini, but we thought that the kids would like the bag of wacky shapes pasta that we had.  It was fun to watch them searching for the shells and wheels as they gobbled up this yummy soup.

Ingredients

4 C low-fat, low-sodium chicken broth
4 C low-sodium tomato juice
1 Tbsp. dried basil
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. black pepper
2 medium-sized carrots, sliced
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 C fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
28-oz can low-sodium diced tomatoes
1 1/2 C uncooked rotini pasta

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients except pasta in slow cooker.

2. Cover. Cook on low 7-8 hours.

3. Add pasta.

4. Cover. Cook on high 15-20 minutes.

That’s it!  An easy vegan dinner customized for our needs and what we have available on hand.  I’m pretty sure that no one will miss the meat in this delicious, comforting soup.

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

 

If you are interested in owning a copy of Fix-It and Forget-It Lightly of your own, Amazon has great prices.  Check them out here:

 

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Meatless Monday: Stuffed Peppers

February 13, 2012 By 1 Comment

Finally, the hardest part of our journey comes to an end.  Our six-week vegan diet period is over, but we still have another six weeks of vegetarian fare ahead of us.  When we say vegetarian, we are including honey and dairy products (including eggs) in our diet, but all flesh are out.  No fish, beef, pork, or poultry for a while yet.  So far, I am down 24 pounds from the start of the year and Beth is down 14.  Those are good numbers for six weeks worth of dietary changes.  We are very happy to be able to include cheese back into our diets now.  Still, just because we can eat cheese, doesn’t mean that we should!

For this week’s Meatless Monday, we decided to base our recipe on the Zucchini Boats recipe from MeatlessMonday.com.  We actually tried the Zucchini Boats without the cheese a week earlier, but found that the zucchini was a little bland for us and didn’t cook through all the way, leaving it squeaky (that might be one of the worst descriptors for food).  The only change we made to the recipe was using a brown rice blend instead of just brown rice.  We loved the rice mixture and thought that it would be great in a stuffed pepper.

Since we had made too much of the rice mixture, we just used it the next week to fill some peppers.  All you have to do is slice the tops off of the peppers and pull out the seeds and white stuff inside.  Fill them up with the rice, but don’t pack it down.

I discovered too late that I did not have any pasta sauce anywhere in the house, so I found a can of diced, fire-roasted tomatoes, drizzled some of the juice over the rice (so it could seep down into the rice), and topped with a couple of spoonfuls of the tomatoes.

Pop them into a deep-sided pan or casserole dish, pour in about 1/4 inch of water, cover with foil, and place into a pre-heated oven set to 350.  Cook 30-45 minutes or until a sharp knife easily pierces the pepper.

Serve it with some bread if you like, or with cheese, or not.  At that point, it’s all up to you.

That’s it!  See how easy and tasty meatless can be?  Can’t stand the thought of going meatless?  Use this as a side or toss some ground beef in the mixture.  Either way, this is going to be a healthy, tasty dish that everyone is your family will enjoy!

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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Meatless Monday: Black Bean and Rice Burritos

January 30, 2012 By 4 Comments

So we are officially into Week 5 of our New Year’s diet plan.  That means that we are still on a vegan diet, but we can eat bread and actually feel full from time to time.  That’s kind of a nice feeling.  The problem is that we are both quickly getting a bit bored and the comfort foods that we both love, (i.e. pizza, hot dogs, mac & cheese) are all off limits.  It can be a little frustrating to be craving chips and cheese dip and just know that you cannot have it.  More than once, we have considered giving up the whole thing.  Thankfully cooler heads have prevailed and we are still on track for meeting our goals.  The real trick right now is to put together foods that are comforting, remaking them so that they are a bit healthier.

This week, we decided to make some burritos.  For me, burritos are that slightly sinful food that I often feel bad about eating even while I am scarfing it down.  Cheese, meat, sour cream, and who knows what else crammed into a tortilla and wrapped up for easy carrying and consumption.  We just took that happy idea and fit it into our diet plan.  The great thing about this was that it was so easy.

First, we cooked the black beans in the slow cooker using Betty Crocker’s Slow Cooker Cuban Black Beans and Rice recipe.  These beans and very tasty and definitely worth a look.

Next, we sliced up some onions and peppers (green bells and red, orange, and yellow sweet peppers) and sauteed them with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little cumin.

Then, we cooked up a little rice in the standard method.  We took 1 cup of white rice, 2 cups of water, and a dash of salt, brought it all to a boil, lowered the heat to medium-low, covered it, and waited 20 minutes.  We then mixed in a little lime zest just for some extra flavor.

To put it all together, we laid down a large tortilla, spread out some vegan sour cream (in the produce section of our mega mart), and added some rice, beans, and peppers and onions.  Then, we topped the whole thing off with some chopped cilantro, diced red onion, and a little squirt of lime juice.  Fold the ends, roll it up, and enjoy!  Delicious!

Not counting the beans, the whole thing took less than 30 minutes from the time I started chopping to the time I started eating.  The kids loved it and there were plenty of leftovers (this is even better the next day).  All in all, it was a great little pick-me-up from our diet doldrums.  We hope that you give this a shot and let us know how it turns out.

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

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