We’ve been sticking with the Asian inspired foods this week. We went out for Thai on Monday, had tofu sandwiches with ginger peanut sauce and soup Tuesday, and now this tasty red curry quinoa. This definitely doesn’t replace your more traditional Thai vegetable red curry dish with rice dish, but it’s a great way to eat quinoa. I’m learning quinoa is very versatile. This recipe serves two to three and I think that’s spot on. We devoured this and Aya had to stop herself so she could have leftovers for lunch.
Super easy and super fast, both a plus today.
The soup was leftover from the other day and complimented this really well.
Rounding out the theme for this weeks meals, I found a nice Japanese recipe for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to that one.
I was a little iffy on these sandwiches. I like tofu, but I don’t love it. Luckily, everything worked really well together and I actually loved this sandwich. The peanut sauce was great, and the crunch of the peppers and carrots balanced the tofu. Ellie loves tofu and gobbled it up. “Daddy made this!? Oh my goodness!”
This soup complimented the sandwich really well. I made a double batch because I plan on using the soup again tomorrow. I used 3 lbs of carrots. That was a lot of peeling and chopping, but it was totally worth it! Ellie loved this too!
You gotta love mushrooms to like this one. And luckily we all do over here. Especially Ellie!
I left out the shitake mushrooms only because I forgot to buy them from the grocery store. I also didn’t have lemon pepper so I used 1 tsp pepper and 1 tsp lemon juice. According to the directions, this is all about simmering, no boiling. I flirted with that line a few times, but I think I succeeded.
I’m more used to a creamy type mushrooms soup, so I really liked how this was flavored differently than what I’m used to. Ellie devoured it, and Aya loved it as well. I served it with a salad and open-faced spinach and caramelized onion sandwiches. We just ate them all before I could take photos. This was a great filling dinner.
This was really simple to throw together and very tasty. This was a nice take on pizza. You could probably use different vegetables and throw on some chicken if you want.
I used a pre-baked crust and a jar of tikka masala for the sauce. I have enough ingredients to make this again next week, and I’ll do that for sure!
I’m not a huge fan of lentil soup, but after using lentils earlier in the week I figured I could give it a try again. I found this recipe from Alton Brown that seemed easy enough. And to my surprise, I really liked this. It was very filling and had great flavor.
I used vegetable broth and left out the “grains of paradise, ” because I didn’t have any and I’ve never heard of them. This recipe also makes a huge batch, so if you’re not wanting a ton, maybe halve the recipe. I was hoping for leftovers to carry us through the weekend though.
This is our first dinner for vegan week. We don’t plan on turning vegan, we just wanted to try some new recipes. So why go vegan though? Well, one reason is we decided we wanted to reduce the amount of meat and dairy we consume. We’ve heard a lot about the benefits of a wholefoods plant based diet and wanted to see how we could incorporate more of that into our current eating habits.
Also, when I think about vegan food, I think about tempeh burgers, bean burgers, mushroom burgers, and soy hot dogs. I like vegetarian meals, but going vegan seems so much more restricting. I know my perception of a vegan diet is a little flawed. There is so much more to this cooking I don’t know about and I really wanted to explore and educate myself.
I have also been bored, unmotivated and uninspired in the kitchen lately. I wanted to try something new to reignite my efforts in the kitchen.
I know eating vegan doesn’t necessarily mean healthy. I could eat french fries all day and be vegan, but that wouldn’t be very healthy. So I wanted to avoid the soy cheeses, soy hot dogs and a lot of those types of processed imitation products. I wanted to focus on fresh natural ingredients as much as possible. I tried to select a diverse menu from simple typical dishes, to some of the more complicated unique (in my eyes) recipes. I also didn’t want to break the bank either. I had in my head that eating vegan would be expensive. But I came in under budget for this week’s grocery shopping even after I had to by some specialty products I don’t have in stock.
So hopefully after a week we’ll get a good idea of what we like, don’t like, and what we think is practical for us to incorporate into our regular habits. And hopefully learn a thing or two in the process.
First up for dinner was potato broccoli soup, portobello mushroom paninis and a salad. Day one went really well! Everything had a ton of flavor and was very filling. The soup was great, but definitely better as a side. I couldn’t eat the soup and a main dish just because it had such a strong flavor. I know Ellie loves mushrooms so I thought starting with the mushroom sandwiches was the way to go. She ate her whole mushroom and most of the bread. She said she liked the soup but only ate a few bites. The artichoke tapenade for the sandwich was great. Extremely flavorful. Prepping and preparing these meals were very simple and not super time consuming either. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.
We’ve been sticking with the Asian inspired foods this week. We went out for Thai on Monday, had tofu sandwiches with ginger peanut sauce and soup Tuesday, and now this tasty red curry quinoa. This definitely doesn’t replace your more traditional Thai vegetable red curry dish with rice dish, but it’s a great way to eat quinoa. I’m learning quinoa is very versatile. This recipe serves two to three and I think that’s spot on. We devoured this and Aya had to stop herself so she could have leftovers for lunch.
