vegan

Pan Fried Tofu with Thai Peanut Sauce

April 8, 2021 by Lindsay 2 Comments

Our 100% favorite plant-based weeknight dinner that we eat at least every other week! Perfect spicy peanut sauce (make it in advance!), crispy pan fried tofu, and slaw with whatever greens you have make for the most delicious vegan rice bowl dinner that is healthy and comforting.

I don't think I've ever said this about anything before (I probably have), but this is hands down our favorite dinner.

We have other things that we love, other things that are in regular rotation, for sure, but this is our dinner. One that we've tweaked and crafted over the years and every time we have it we kind of sink into this "it's healthy but comforting" haze of joy.

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Easy Black Beans and Rice

October 6, 2020 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

This gluten free black beans and rice recipe has just 8 ingredients and is done in about half an hour! I love rice and beans for a quick vegetarian dinner, and make these black beans in advance often for an even faster meal-prepped dinner. If you have some extra black beans, black bean salsa is great to have around for snacks!

Weeknight vegan dinner idea, here we go! Weeknight vegan/dairy free/gluten free/BUT NOT SAD dinner, to be exact.

Free of some things people avoid, not free of joy, etc.

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3-Ingredient Smashed Cucumbers

July 22, 2020 by Lindsay 1 Comment

Easy, light, and refreshing, this 3-ingredient smashed cucumbers recipe is done in just 30 minutes. The result is the most delicious, juicy cucumber bites. These are vegan, gluten free, and dairy free.

Oh heyyyyyyy not really a recipe recipe!

That's honestly all the brainpower I have in quarantine week, 8,276 you're welcome.

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Easiest No-Knead Bread In A Dutch Oven

July 1, 2020 by Lindsay 13 Comments

Mark Bittman's no-knead bread (easy dutch oven bread) is the easiest, most foolproof path to artisan-style bread at home with just 4 ingredients and a little time. No special equipment, no kneading, this is the best homemade bread ever!

Mark Bittman does it again! I have been waiting and waiting to show you this.

Much like my favorite pancakes that we make at least weekly, this homemade no-knead bread recipe was a real game-changer for me.

It of course started in quarantine, as so many carb endeavors have, but I waited a few months to write about it because I wanted to be sure it worked every.single.time.

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Easy 2-ingredient shortcut hummus

June 10, 2020 by Lindsay 3 Comments

2-Ingredient Shortcut Hummus is the easiest hummus recipe ever! Using the most delicious lemon tahini dressing as a base, just add garbanzo beans and BOOM, hummus.

Thissss is what I'm talking about.

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Summertime Green Curry {vegan}

August 1, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Today in Quick Dinners With Four-ish Ingredients:

And also What To Do With Baked Tofu!

This is a dinner that I made specifically to pair with the baked tofu from Monday, and one that we make all the time. We love Thai food, and Thai green curry is something that I order almost every time I go to a Thai restaurant.

Curry, though, can take some time to simmer and build flavors. I love doing that BUT definitely only on weekends. Weekdays aren't the time to add little pinches of this and that or be dealing with whole lemongrass and jalapenos, nope. So THIS Thai Curry is the polar opposite in terms of effort: Vegetables, coconut milk, green curry paste. Full stop, done and done.

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Easy Baked Tofu

July 29, 2019 by Lindsay 4 Comments

Hello and welcome to your Monday! I made us the easiest marinated baked tofu bites ever.

File this one in your "things to make all the time" list of fave recipes.

This, my friends, is baked tofu. We make some version of tofu two or more times per week, and even more since both kids started eating solid foods. Jay and I both eat meat, but the meat in our food system is, let's say, dicey at best. We try to buy lots of local meat, and with that comes a higher food cost. SO, we offset that by eating vegetarian several days per week, so that when we do eat meat we feel good about it while not completely going broke on fancy groceries.

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Cauliflower Adobo {vegan}

July 10, 2019 by Lindsay 5 Comments

This recipe was last updated February 2021.

Cauliflower Adobo: A perfect dinner, comin' atcha! One of our favorite vegan cauliflower recipes is here for all of our weeknight dinner needs.

We are always on the hunt for light and/or vegetarian dinners, and this one kept popping up on my Instagram several weeks ago. I'm a huge fan of Chicken Adobo, a soy/vinegar Filipino dish. This vegetarian adobo version features cauliflower as the main ingredient and is different + much lighter.

The sauce here is suuuuuper umami and bright from the vinegar, which I love. There's some sugar here as well, and I love how pungent the sauce gets after it simmers a little bit.

The method here is so simple: sear some cauliflower for tons of flavor, then simmer it in the adobo sauce for a few minutes until it's cooked. The whole dish is done in 30 minutes, maybe less, and YES PLEASE extra sauce all over some rice you'll serve this.

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Favorite Summer Sauce: Chimichurri

May 22, 2019 by Lindsay 6 Comments

Just in time for summer! Which starts in June I know but the pools open this weekend and I'm a pool rat and pools mean summer and the pools open this weekend so this weekend is summer.

You get it.

This summer! We are going to keep cooking, but we are cooking light in two senses of the word: lighter food calorically, sure. It doesn't feel as great to inhale three plates of pasta when it's 95 degrees outside. But also, light on the actual cooking.

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No-Chop Posole Verde (and Cinco de Mayo menu!)

May 2, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

NO CHOP. This is how we dinner. No fresh, no chop, no effort, just massive flavor with pantry staples that we know and love.

Posole verde with hominy, chilies, and salsa verde. From funnyloveblog.com, how to make posole verde for cinco de mayo.

With Cinco de Mayo on a Sunday this year, I'm definitely not going to be drinking/eating tacos all day and night. I'll be doing laundry and packing lunches and I'm completely fine with that, you know? This, to me, is a perfect Sunday meal. Cozy and comforting but still light, and full of flavor.

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Spicy Peanut Chopped Salad

April 17, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

MEAL PREP THIS FOR SURE.

Spicy Peanut Sauce with red cabbage chopped salad. Perfect for meal prepping!

Alternative Title: The Time Beck Discovered Chow Mein Noodles and Now That's All She Wants To Eat.

And honestly, who can blame her? This spicy peanut chopped salad is one of my favorite things to do with the Spicy Peanut Sauce I posted on Monday. We use it in hot and cold dishes which allows it to taste super different aka behave like two sauces aka two for one aka measure twice cut once? I don't know.

I posted on Monday. We use it in hot and cold dishes which allows it to taste super different aka behave like two sauces aka two for one aka measure twice cut once? I don't know.

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Pepita Salsa

April 11, 2019 by Lindsay 1 Comment

Delicious homemade pepita salsa (salsa with pumpkin seeds) in just 5 minutes! Blend up a batch of this and serve alongside sour cream guacamole for a super yummy chips and dip spread.

It is three and a half weeks until Cinco de Mayo. And, in very inappropriate cultural appropriation, I'm super into this holiday for zero reason besides I REALLY like Mexican food. Like, top three flavor profiles for sure. Indian food ranks too.

It's also, of course (not to most people, I know), Master's week, and snacks for this weekend are an absolute must. This pepita salsa is gluten free and vegan (if you eat honey or use agave) so can appeal to a ton of people, but has huge flavor and SPICE because we use a whole jalapeno, we don't take the seeds out, and we live for it, JVN style.

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5-Minute Broiled Asparagus {vegan}

November 13, 2018 by Lindsay 3 Comments

What do you do for your Thanksgiving re: green things or health considerations?

Some people are all balance every day and some are more just casseroles is fine, thanks. We fall somewhere in the middle with a lot of "we do this every year" and me trying to shove new things into the mix. One thing that is normal for us is that my dad always does a "plain" green veg. Something free of bacon or cheese or condensed xx of yy soup, and it works so well with some of the heavier flavors we have on Thanksgiving.

This is that! A super simple, mostly pure veg. Lemon juice and olive oil and salt go so well with asparagus, and you can broil this right at the end of your meal prep right after you carve the turkey - seriously last minute stuff, even after the casseroles are reheated. The result is a charred lemon flavor that adds a ton to the asparagus without overpowering it, and the health benefits of, you know, anything green.

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Quick + Easy Focaccia

October 18, 2018 by Lindsay 8 Comments

I couldn't wait. As promised, after we watched the first episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat (why are the episodes not in the order of the words in the title?), all I could think about was making focaccia. Ok maybe more all I could think about was eating focaccia, because the filming of the episode was so lovely and the language used with the imagery was just so compelling, I NEEDED to experience salty, oily-in-a-good-way bread ASAP.

The obvious hiccup being that I 1. don't bake and 2. have literally never made anything with yeast. Ever. And if we're being honest, 37 weeks pregnant with a messy house and full-time toddler and part-time job is really not the time to get all LET'S TRY NEW THINGS. Having a second child is new enough. Eating bread was the goal. Luckily, I had a package of pizza dough in the fridge that had all but tripled in size in the few days it had been in my fridge. Tripled! I bought it on a whim thinking that I'd make pizza for Beck as a treat, but I hadn't done so yet or told her about it, so I took to the interwebs to see if other people make focaccia with pizza dough.

THEY DO.

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Fresh Tomato Butter Sauce + Spaghetti Squash

June 5, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Raise your hand if you recently had surgery and ate all of the things while not moving for nearly a month!!!

Jay is raising his hand right now. We've had the weirdest few months - we were all three sick in increments so basically someone in the house was sick for over a month, then Jay traveled for work, then had surgery, and in that time frame we decided that CARBS AND DAIRY GOOD and KALE BAD. Which honestly emotionally was exactly what we needed, but still. Can't do that forever, sad aging bodies don't work well that way. Now, let me be super clear that I think Jay looks no different and he's maintained a super duper great outlook on health and food in 2018 so far, BUT, I definitely get that sometimes after a slump it feels great to eat especially lighter or healthier meals. For us, that means less/no red meat, fewer carbs, and smaller portions. We aren't cutting out anything exactly, but more fish + veggies + vegetarian options feels great to us right now. With cheese on top.

So to continue our Whole30-is-over-but-white-carbs-aren't-great way of eating, spaghetti squash is back in the house with a fun vengeance, because we both love it. The idea for this fresh sauce came from Pinch of Yum, which I read all the time and adore, and serving it over spaghetti squash seemed like a no-brainer. The way to make this delicious is a teeny bit of butter in the sauce, parm on top, and LIBERAL use of salt and pepper. Unsalted anything isn't great, but an unsalted healthy-on-purpose meal is just the most sad. Salt for president!

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Spring Veggie and Farro Soup

May 23, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

One of our favorite easy vegetarian soup recipes, spring veggies with farro! This recipe is easily made vegan AND gluten free, and the herby, lemony broth is absolutely delicious. I love this as part of a weekly meal prep session; it keeps really well in the fridge for lunches.

Because apparently we are a sick house and I only want to eat broth-based things ever.

Our week of healing is going well, thanks to incredible amounts of support from our friends and family and narcotics for Jay. I, on the other hand, have gotten some kind of cold-on-top-of-a-cold and can't stop craving salty brothy things to make my throat feel better and my nose unclog slightly.

Doing a surgery recovery with a toddler while sick and doing regular work has been a struggle; we feel like we.just.can't.quite. catch up on sleep and housework, but we're getting there, one day at a time.

The good news is that the Porta Potty was picked up from our FRONT YARD where it has been for nearly 6 months, so small victories, you know?

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Ramen Noodle Salad {vegan}

April 5, 2018 by Lindsay 1 Comment

I know it's supposed to rain and snow this weekend but it's practically Mid-April so we're just going with it, ok? It's time for springy food, cooler food, lighter food.

This is that! Also featuring noodles. I wanted to make a lunch-type salad with a super savory soy-based dressing, tons of crunchy veggies, and noodles, full stop. I went vegetarian on this version but you could definitely add some leftover cooked chicken, and the veggies you use can be mixed up every time you make this based on what you have in the fridge and based on what your preferences are.

I MAINLY wanted to make this because I ordered a whole heap of these ramen noodles on Amazon that came highly recommended AND THEY WERE SO GOOD with exactly one exception: they do not store well at all with no exception. I made this mid-day and it was so good, the noodles were the perfect texture, and by evening when we had this for dinner they were mushy and kind of dissolved in our mouths as we ate, not cute at all. So, while I DO recommend these noodles because that's just how certain noodles behave and the flavor was excellent, I'd say to make this right when you'd like to serve or use a noodle like spaghetti as a substitute which would be equally delicious.

The dressing is the real star here, use any noodle you want, seriously.

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Marinated Grilled Artichokes {vegan}

March 29, 2018 by Lindsay 1 Comment

I mean, could there be a more appropriate springy recipe? I'm thinking no, but this one isn't trying too hard with excessive amounts of green stuff. Or any green stuff, really. It is, however, a super simple snack/appetizer/side dish that happens to be VEGAN and takes all of 20 minutes to make.

It is also full of flavor and texture and just feels like warm-weather with the help of an indoor grill because our grill is under the house out of the way of the never-ending construction.

I love marinated artichokes straight out of a jar, especially on cheese plates or as a snack before dinner with nuts/wine, etc. We recently went to a new Italian restaurant in town and their antipasto platter had something similar to these: artichokes that tasted tangy and marinated and familiar but that were charred on the outside and served warm. I loved them (and ate them all, Jay can go either way on artichokes); the contrast of the tangy marinade and charred grilled bits was so good. HOWEVER, when I decided to make them there was no way in hell I was going to mess with a gazillion fresh artichokes even though they are in season. Trimming and choking fresh artichokes takes forever and I always find myself injured. Plus, Trader Joe's has frozen artichokes, so the texture is a little more firm than a jarred version and they hold up really well on the grill.

So! We make a super quick marinade. You can do this the day before or right before grilling, the flavor is great no matter what. A few minutes on the grill just for some blackening, and then we serve hot, warm, room temperature, or cold after a day or two in the fridge. There is no wrong way to serve these, and I'd suggest making a massive batch because extra things to go with wine and cheese is not a bad thing ever. See also: Easter brunch/lunch.

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Coconut Vanilla Chia Pudding (vegan, dairy free, sugar free)

January 25, 2018 by Lindsay 3 Comments

I mean, come on. All of the free things, which means that pudding for breakfast is totally acceptable whether you're on a diet or not.

When I was reading about Whole30 and the philosophy (a ton that I disagree with), there is a note that it isn't recommended to eat chia pudding because it can make you think of real pudding and THAT IS SO BAD and on and on. So I presented this to Jay, who'd been asking for chia pudding, and he rolled his eyes and we made chia pudding.

Great story, right? So, while this isn't on the hoity-toity list of recommended Whole30 foods, it is totally compliant with all of the actual rules and delicious to boot. You can also make this with sweetened versions of any of the ingredients, which...wouldn't be gross, hence why some people feel the need to detox from sugar. Because it's good. We enjoyed this without added sugar, though, thanks to some fresh fruit and raisins which add sweetness without sugar to the final dish.

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Chipotle Sweet Potato Chili with Walnuts {vegan}

January 8, 2018 by Lindsay 2 Comments

It's our first Whole30 recipe!

Jay is a little more than a week into this endeavor, and is powering through like a champ because "it's a work competition, don't you ever just like to challenge yourself?" Not at avoiding dairy and carbs, no I don't. But! Jay's doing it, so I've made our meals that we eat together as Whole30-friendly as possible, and he in turn isn't huffy when I have a cup of pasta on the side of my protein and roasted veggies. Because balance.

This chili, though, needs zero help or additions; it is PERFECT just as it is. I made it this weekend for Jay's mom and grandmother, and was fully expecting them to politely eat the weird chili and move on with their day. But no. They raved. Had seconds (these are teeny women we're talking about). Went on and on about the flavor, and trust me, I was with them all the way. Truthfully, I created this chili for Jay and expected to eat it once, but I loved it way more than I expected to and am already planning to make it again for another gathering.

Sweet potatoes show up in tons of Whole30 recipes, and I wanted to offset the sweetness with chipotle to keep the dish super savory. I've seen people use walnuts in place of taco meat, and while I haven't tried that, the thought of softened walnut pieces in a super savory broth with soft sweet potato chunks just seemed to work in my mind, and work it did. The walnuts seem weird but they aren't at all; they soften just a bit but still keep a bite after they simmer for a long time, and they add a great nutty flavor to the chili that alllllmost mimics meat. You can use any kind of stock you like for this, but to keep the dish vegan grab a box of vegetable stock and get to it.

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