Color Me Vegan

First: A comment about Just Eating?, two suggested actions were to ask for help in the kitchen to reduce stress on the cook  and find ways to make food prep more enjoyable. I’ve dragged my netbook into the kitchen and play tunes on Pandora while cooking, and have asked that Chris handle the dishes (which he does a lot of the time anyway), and the kids are setting the table. It’s definitely made my time in the kitchen more engaging and fun.

I recently bought Color Me Vegan, it is the most gorgeous cookbook I own. So many beautiful photos! And so much great nutritional information and ideas and tips. Today I made my first recipes  from it. I used the recipes as a guide (I’m just not the best at following directions!) and this is what I came up with.

Quinoa

Start this first – 1 cup of quinoa, 1 1/4 cups of water. Bring to a boil in a small saucepan, and then turn to low and cook covered. Set the time for 15 minutes. Then take off cover, remove from heat and let sit. I used less than half this amount for the burritos but plan on using the quinoa in other things this week. Make a half batch if you don’t want leftovers.

Succotash

1 tbl. olive oil

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 bell pepper (your choice of color, I used orange for extra pop), chopped

1 can of hominy

a couple handfuls each of frozen edamame, corn, sweet peas, and cut green beans – I just did it until my pan looked full

a few shakes of nutritional yeast, to taste

1 cup of water

Vague I know. But the beauty of this is as there are hardly any seasonings -  the veggies just shine and you can make as much or as little as you want. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Once hot add the onions and saute until translucent, stirring regularly. Then add the pepper and saute for a couple of minutes. Then add the hominy, frozen veggies, water, and nutritional yeast. Continue at the medium heat until the veggies are cooked through, about 10 minutes.

Black Bean filling

1 tbl. olive oil

2 tsp minced garlic, about 2 cloves)

1 tsp minced ginger (I used bottled ginger to make things easy)

1 onion, chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 tsp curry powder

pinch of cardamon

pinch of cinnamon

1 can of black beans (about 2 cups cooked), drained and rinsed

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Once hot add onions and saute until translucent, add bell pepper, garlic, and ginger and saute until pepper is softened. Add spices and stir for about a minute. Add black beans and heat through.

Warm the tortillas of your choice, spoon the quinoa, black bean filling, some yummy salsa (there is a cool recipe for pineapple chutney they suggest for this but I was too lazy and went with bottled salsa), some lettuce and go!

This is soooooooo quick and easy. Chris was doing the dishes while I cooked and we were done at almost the same time! Bliss!

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