vegetarian

Lentil Quinoa Bowl with Walnut Pesto

September 30, 2019 by Lindsay 3 Comments

Lentil Quinoa Bowl with kale walnut pesto! These are my absolute favorite ingredients for a meal prep quinoa power bowl. The ingredients can all be made in advance and the kale and walnut pesto keeps perfectly in the fridge for at least a week, and even longer in the freezer. Enjoy these fun vegetarian Buddha bowls!

I am SO, so pleased that this is going to be your dinner this week (go with it). This lentil quinoa bowl is one of the best things to come out of my kitchen in recent months (and there are....a lot of contenders), is gluten free, vegetarian, and ridiculously yummy in a way that makes you not really that concerned about the health factor.

But the health factor is THERE with these lentil quinoa bowls. We're talking quinoa, turmeric lentils, roasted sweet potatoes AND tomatoes, and walnut pesto that we've made several times this summer for these bowls, pasta, and lots of other yummy things!

(PS this is not unlike the lentil quinoa bowl from Panera!)

The walnut kale pesto is not to be skipped, is my point.

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Creamed Spinach Mac and Cheese

September 24, 2019 by Lindsay 1 Comment

this recipe is sponsored by microplane. they're offering a discount code to readers (see below!) and there will be a giveaway on Instagram later this week. be sure to follow along and enter!

Here's our new super duper easy one-pot dinner for fall!

I have been SO excited to share this with you. Creamed Spinach Mac and Cheese. It's one of those really nice unicorn dishes that everyone likes, that has veggies in it, that is comforting but not so heavy that we can't eat it on a Tuesday, checks a lot of boxes.

Let's break it down: We are boiling some noodles, and we aren't messing around with a roux/white sauce. We're stirring some dairy stuff together super quickly because we're hungry. Fresh nutmeg grated with Microplane's Spice Mill adds tons of flavor with zero effort, and garlic + handfuls of greens round the whole thing out. The resulting creamy mac is practically perfect in every way.

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Kale Pesto With Walnuts

September 12, 2019 by Lindsay 15 Comments

Yummy kale pesto without pine nuts made in my favorite food processor (the parts go in the dishwasher!) is the best meal prep ingredient ever! It doesn't require fresh herbs so can be made year-round and keep beautifully in the freezer.

Here's the thing:

How to make the best walnut kale pesto recipe from funnyloveblog.com

I don't actually hate cooking entire meals on the weeknights. I find it relaxing to put our kids to bed, chat with Jay, and make an entire meal start to finish.

Buthoweveralso, when I do that it means that we eat dinner at 9pm and then don't go to bed until 11, and that's not OK. SO, I mostly prep some things and then cook one or two items when we're ready to eat.

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Crispy Smashed Potatoes + Garlic Butter Sauce

July 23, 2019 by Lindsay 3 Comments

The most yummy crispy smashed potatoes from Bon Appetit! This is one of my favorite tiny potato recipes: tender boiled potatoes smashed and drizzled with garlic butter sauce, then baked to crispy, salty, buttery submission. Make. These. Now.

Don't leave me. It feels good. Embrace it. The garlic butter, that is.

Sheet pan of crispy smashed potatoes close up with white napkin on the edge.

Hello and welcome to your new favorite side dish! These smashed potatoes are YUMMY, a word that honestly should be used to describe as many of your foods as possible. You only live once, potatoes are a vegetable, and garlic butter is the savory icing on the potato cake that we all need to use whenever we possibly can.

These garlic butter potatoes are, frankly, the ideal potato side dish. They go perfectly with some easy stewed cabbage, add some fish and chicken and here we go, dinner is handled?

These are my version of Bon Appetit's smashed potatoes: they're simple to make in just a few steps and the end result is a fluffy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside cross between mashed potatoes and french fries that is REALLY yummy. Trust.

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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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Creamy Mushroom Parmesan Pasta

April 2, 2019 by Lindsay 3 Comments

Dinner!

Honestly can it just always be pasta? Last week Jay was out of town and I had some leftover noodles from another dinner, then I made this easy creamy mushroom pasta, AND we had some leftover pizza. So save for some wilting lettuce that I ate for the earth and this pasta, I didn't cook at all and ate carb-heavy nearly every meal. It was the best, and this week we've eaten lots of extra veggies already, so lay off me.

This pasta, for sure, is SO worth it. We're talking huge flavor with just a few ingredients, thickened milk or half and half instead of heavy cream, and vegetarian with a healthy hit of parmesan for flavor and protein.

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Our Favorite Kale Salad

March 21, 2019 by Lindsay 7 Comments

Happy birthday to me!

I'm 33 today. I had a lovely celebration with my family last weekend, and this week has been positively BRUTAL with sick kids and house showings and work and honestly all of our knees are really sore. That's not to say I'm not in a birthday mood, I am.

I'm just in a kale birthday mood. Don't really have time to stop and have a gazillion calories of sugar that will make me feel crappy in two hours. Need vegetables to avoid eating french fries aka my feelings at every turn. It's a very 33 birthday mood, for sure.

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Crispy Tofu Rice Bowls with Brussels Sprouts

February 25, 2019 by Lindsay 2 Comments

I have sprouts on the brain, apparently.

If you follow along on Instagram you'll know that one of my most recent posts was these Parmesan Brussels that rock my world and make for a really yummy weeknight side dish. You also might remember that last year we made Momofuku's Brussels with Fish Sauce Vinaigrette at the recommendation of my friend Emily, which was one of my favorite recipes of the entire year.

So "one of my favorite," in fact, that I decided to turn them into a full meal because the vinaigrette is just so delicious. It has a fish sauce base (I use this one because I see it everywhere but people also like the Red Boat brand), which is admittedly funky, but really delicious once the sauce comes together, and not fishy at all. The punchy tangy/sweet/umami flavor of the vinaigrette soaks into the crispy tofu and Brussels, and all is right with the world.

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Easiest Eggplant Parm

February 18, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Oh, early week dinners. They can sometimes feel sad. Maybe we're trying to do better by our bodies after a weekend, maybe we're hurried with work and activities and life, maybe we're just out of inspiration and tired.

Easiest ever eggplant parm to the rescue! Marinara + cheese is a pretty universally loved combination, and I make versions of this all the time: throw random veggies in with marinara and cheese, top with something crunchy, bake until tender, done.

This version with eggplant ends up almost creamy when the eggplant softens because we slice it with a mandoline. If you don't have one just slice the eggplant as thinly as you can - or buy a new kitchen tool, you'll use it a ton once you have one!

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Buttery Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Spinach

January 10, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

One of my favorite recipes with sweet potato gnocchi from Trader Joes (or wherever)! This super quick dinner recipe is perfect for any greens + gnocchi you have and comes together in just 20 minutes or so. Butter, sage, and garlic make a quick sauce, and dinner is on the table ready to be eaten in half an hour!

Obviously healthy enough for what we're trying to do this January.

One thing I've been trying really hard to do since having Will is find a balance between 1. complicated meals that I love to make but take forever and trash the kitchen and 2. takeout. I know that seems dumb, but I'm never the one to look for "super quick and easy weeknight meals!" I don't mind eating at 9pm, I love cooking, and it mostly works for me.

Until, of course, it doesn't. Will has been taking a longer stretch of sleep (like...two hours, don't get too excited) in the late evenings, so if we eat at nine and go to bed around 11pm I'm missing a lot of that good sleep. Then homeboy wakes up sometimes every hour at night, I'm exhausted and forgetful and irritable and honestly the fun crazy dinners are mostly not worth that.

So the quest is to find quick and easy dinners that are actually GOOD, and this is definitely that. It's sweet potato gnocchi (I love the sweet potato gnocchi from Trader Joe's!) that boils in four minutes, during which time we saute some spinach with so.much.garlic. aka my favorite way to eat spinach. Then the gnocchi gets a brown butter + sage bath because we've earned it, and dinner is ready in FIFTEEN MINUTES, tastes like something from a fancy restaurant. You need this in your life, trust me.

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Leftover Mashed Potato Cakes + Apple Syrup

November 20, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Continuing our leftover plan for the week! I feel like sometimes there are LOTS of leftovers of certain casseroles, especially heavier things. Maybe it's just our family, but if you make an 8-person casserole or side dish BUT there are 97 side dishes and people only eat a few spoonfuls of each thing....leftovers.

Like mashed potatoes! That we are going to fry into patties and top with stewed apples, latke-style. If these are inauthentic enough, feel free to re-purpose the idea for Hanukkah. Here's the recipe that I used for this batch of potato cakes.

Since Beck has gotten big enough to care we usually do a breakfast all together one or two days per week - usually on weekends when Jay is with us, but also sometimes Mondays call for pancakes made with all white flour and extra butter, and I'm not above that at all. I'm REALLY hoping to score some leftover mashed potatoes this week to make these on Saturday. They're super easy to make and you could definitely form them the night before and fry them right before breakfast, maybe throw some bacon in a skillet just for good measure.

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5-Ingredient Baked Smashed Potatoes

November 12, 2018 by Lindsay 3 Comments

Ok so we agree that the weather firmly dictates what we desire to eat, right?

Because today it is pouring rain and freezing and dark AND it's my first day alone with both kids, and is it too early to plan on making myself mashed potatoes for lunch? Or ordering a burger that costs $5 to be delivered for a 50% upcharge?

I'm not above it, is my point. Send funny memes.

Onward, though, in our Thanksgiving planning! We have about ten days to go, and these potatoes should a thousand percent be on your menu. They have very few ingredients and are ridiculously delicious thanks to a few tricks. The first trick is to boil the potatoes whole. This takes a bit (ok, a lot) longer, but the flavor of the potatoes stays IN them instead of floating out into the water, and the resulting texture is closer to a smashed baked potato, which I adore. The second "trick" is...a lot of butter and salt. I don't know a different way to say that, but butter and salt make potatoes taste amazing, so we use a lot of it here.

For make-ahead purposes, these could be made easily on Monday or Tuesday of next week, and then baked right before you eat on Thursday. Starchy sides hold up so well in the fridge, and I love them for that reason - anything I can make in its entirety before the day of the big meal is a huge win. ...

Bruleed and Curried Carrots

November 7, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Continuing our Thanksgiving prep! Enter...a newish way to eat veggies with lots of butter in them. I like carrots in almost all forms, but they can definitely feel like an afterthought or boring vegetable. We roast them at home a ton with olive oil, salt, and dried dill - that's probably my favorite way to eat them.

My family never did carrots at holidays, but I think the boiled-in-sugar version is common, or at least was in the 80's, in many families. I think carrots (I always picture them at cafeterias like this) boiled in butter and sugar are delicious, and that was kind of the impetus for this recipe. We boil the carrots in stock, butter, and spices, then broil them with some coarse sugar for a fake brulee effect. The end result is tender, flavorful, and so warming from the spices.

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Blueberry Breakfast Cookies

October 23, 2018 by Lindsay 2 Comments

This is of many things currently in my freezer that I'm trying SUPER hard to not eat until after the baby is born, easier said than done. I've been trying to make a thing or two each week to put in the freezer before the baby is born. Mostly I've done sauces to use in quick meals, I froze a bit of slow cooker pork for tacos, and some oatmeal-heavy breakfast-meets-dessert stuff is high on the list for the sake of not just eating a half loaf of bread each morning AND because oatmeal is supposed to be great for lactation but I don't usually run for bowls of straight oatmeal so. Cookies instead!

This particular inspiration came from the fact that I had some frozen blueberries leftover from my sister's inlaw's yard this summer (riddle me that). Part of all this freezer cooking is that we are using up stuff that was already languishing, so I used something from the freezer to make something for the freezer, which is pretty much like saving for retirement, right? Tres meta.

This recipe came straight from Sally's Baking Addiction, and I doubled it and added chocolate chips because chocolate is probably definitely important for lactation.

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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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Whole Roasted Cauliflower in Butter

October 15, 2018 by Lindsay 1 Comment

I've started joking with my family when they're like mmmm love those potatoes, and I'm all, you mean the butter with a little potato? Yeah, it's local.

I use local butter and buy it in two pound logs and that makes it healthy, and environmentally friendly, and community-conscious, and an all-around good choice. Showing you this recipe is doubly relevant today because we watched the "Fat" episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat last night and HOLY COW HOW INSPIRING. The show itself is phenom, the setting is gorgeous, we learned a ton (I think I safely speak for Jay when I say that we, as a couple, like learning about food in all the ways all the time), and I came away with about ten new ideas for holiday cooking specifically. Highly recommend you watch it this week all the way through so we can discuss.

So, given the fat theme, it makes perfect sense that we roast our cauliflower in butter. Good butter, enough butter so that you know it's there, butter butter butter. The concept here is super easy: some raw ingredients (literally salt, fat, acid) in and on a whole cauliflower, some liquid and cherry tomatoes to bring everything together, roasty toasty, and fresh herbs to finish. We served this a few weeks ago with some chicken and veggies, but honestly I could eat half of this cauliflower with a hunk of bread and call it dinner. I use chicken stock here because we aren't vegetarian, but veggie stock would be wonderful for a truly vegetarian option.

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Oven Roasted Home Fries

September 12, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

WELP, no one knows a dang thing about where Hurricane Florence will go, but nowwwww they're saying the storm might end up over us at some point. This means...well, who knows. We're pretty far inland, so even major storms coming our way have a good amount of time to slow down once they hit the coast. We get some wind and lots of rain and the occasional short-lived power outage, but overall nothing catastrophic in several years from a hurricane.

BUT STILL. We absolutely should reward our bravery for making it through this storm with fried potatoes to go with our fried chicken, right? Because hunkering down means nothing if it isn't calorie laden, especially if you're pregnant and mostly sober. Give me my calories in other ways. For the baby!

Even if you don't use carbs as rewards for getting through tough events, you could just...make these because they are delicious. The method was inspired by Molly Yeh's new Food Network show (which I love! have watched every episode! can't wait for more!), and is nice and simple for a weeknight dinner or breakfast/brunch situation, which we definitely need more of as the days get slightly cooler. The potatoes are boiled and then roasted with tons of spices, and the boiling can definitely be done in advance. Then, before eating, roast the potatoes and done! Crispy, buttery potatoes with tons of flavor that go well with just about anything.

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Super Quick Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Energy Bites

July 30, 2018 by Lindsay 4 Comments

They're balls, but it felt tacky to use that in the title because of all of the jokes I'd invariably make.

But! For your Monday! Here's our treat-because-its-Monday meets healthy-because-weekend-recovery. It's perfect for any way you're feeling. Our weekend was fiiiine food-wise save for some extra bites of Beck's pizza and overindulgence of the booze on the part of the non-pregos. We went on a quick long weekend vacation with my family and it was great to get away, do very little, and let Beck have some time with her aunts.

Today we're back at it, working and unpacking and cleaning (omg the dogs alone in the house all weekend so much hair), and these little bites of happiness are calling my name. I took the recipe directly from Pinch of Yum, one of my (and everyone else's) favorite food blogs. The recipe takes five minutes, is no-bake, is customizeable, and works every single time, all criteria I have for recipes because obviously. The ingredients combine to taste somewhat like cookie dough, and and the base of oatmeal + peanut butter + coconut is hearty without being super heavy like a cookie made with butter and oil. They're also gluten free and dairy free but don't scream I'M A HEALTH FOOD, which I love.

Make these today and have them for the entire week, is pretty much all you need to know.

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Pimento Cheese Squash Casserole

July 9, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Oh hell yes.

Hi! How was your weekend? We had a great one, including being at home with Beck all day Saturday and not leaving the house. We did yard work, hung some remnants back on the walls from the construction on our house, watched TWO movies, and cooked a boat-load, which was fun but also a benefit to eating out on the weekends means the kitchen isn't so ridiculously dirty all of the time. Cue me spending Monday undoing our all-at-home weekend.

So this casserole. This time of year we seem to find ourselves with tons of squash and zucchini, all of the time. My grandparents grow it, it is super cheap at the farmer's market, cooks quickly, lasts for awhile in the fridge, reason after reason to keep it around at all times. Mostly we saute it with onions and salt and pepper for a quick dinner veg, but sometimes, especially when we have a ton of it, we need to go old-school and decadent, you know? This is that. It's definitely a vegetable and definitely vegetarian, but other than that I'm not going to scream at you about health benefits.

This casserole is made on the stovetop and includes almost all of the seasonings from my favorite pimento cheese and traditional squash casserole. Ritz crackers are a must for topping, and you can bake the casserole for a few minutes and eat it immediately or keep it in the fridge for a few days and heat it up for dinner one night this week. Make-ahead friendly!

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