Meatless Monday

This seems to happen about every couple of weeks.  I start to get the feeling that Jon and I have been eating nothing but meat, meat and more meat and I get the itch to dive into my vegan cookbooks and get us out of a meat-eatin rut.  Eating vegan about once or twice a week for a whole day is a goal or compromise between Jon and I and I vouch for it for a few reasons:  1. I feel that most vegan recipes get us more veggies in our meals than normally as a side dish to meat and the recipes as a whole are usually packed with lots of protein, fiber and un-refined carbohydrates.  2. vegan recipes are just interesting, unique ways to cook and eat different foods and 3. this is just the environmentally-conscious person in me, but eating meatless even one day a week can have a positive effect on our environment and lessen the enormous drain on our resources that it takes to manufacture meat production.  If you are interested here is a good article: http://www.vegansa.com/veganism-and-the-environment.php

So, for these reason this is why I'm sharing two recipes today from one of my favorite vegan cookbooks, The Vegan Table,by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.  The first is a delicious and messy version of the typical Middle Eastern shawarma or kabob.  In discussing this recipe with my other "occasional vegan" friend, Amy, we both agreed that we are loving tempeh the more we cook with it.  If you've never cooked with tempeh, then it's definitely an adventure, but worth it!  I find mine at Whole Foods and I like the flax kind.  Tempeh is basically a protein in the form of consolidated grains and soy.  It's low-fat, tons of protein and when marinaded and pan-fried, gets nice and crispy.  For the "Carmelized Tempeh Shawarmas" recipe the tempeh does a great job replacing meat and the soy sauce and maple syrup sauce give it a nice sweet and salty taste.  I ended up pan frying the tempeh with sliced onions for this recipe so that both ingredients got caramelized.  And just as a side note, I sliced my tempeh pretty thin.  The other recipe is a veggie-packed white bean dish with great flavor such as sun-dried tomato and sage.  We had this as a main course with some garlic bread and it was really filling!

http://i1263.photobucket.com/albums/ii623/hope_friedman/CarmelizedTempehShawarmas.jpg

http://i1263.photobucket.com/albums/ii623/hope_friedman/TuscanWhiteBeanswithSun-DriedTomatoes.jpg

Edible Containers

As a general rule, I usually like all food where the container is edible.  Some beloved examples of this are: soup in a bread bowl, corn dogs, brie wrapped in puff pastry, ice cream in a waffle cone...you get the point. However, it seems more often than not, edible containers tend push food into the "not so healthy" category rather then the healthy.  So when I find a recipe that is not only healthy, but also includes an edible container, I get pretty excited!  The recipe I am sharing comes from last month's issue of Clean Eating and comes from famous chef, Guy Fieri.  This is a recipe for stuffed acorn squash, which is not particularly in season this time of year, but you should be able to find it at any grocery store.  The squash is roasted with a light drizzle of olive oil and then stuffed lean, ground turkey and veggies.   Jon and I found this recipe to be very filling and so far, it's been really easy to re-heat and eat as left-overs.  It's also turned out to be very pretty looking, so I could see this being a good pot-luck dish to bring to someone's house!  Or alternatively, I think this recipe could be pre-made and frozen until thawed, heated and broiled with the ricotta.

As a note on the dairy in this recipe:  I replaced the ricotta in the recipe with a dollop of mashed potato, to cut out the dairy.  I also sautéed the veggies in olive oil rather than butter and used about 1/2 the oil the recipe suggests.  I say suggest because I've found that a lot of times when it comes to oil in recipes that call to sauté something, that this is really a taste preference and it's a good opportunity to cut down on fat if you'd like.  Now, I do caution, that this comes with trial and error.  You don't want to skimp too much, so I'd also suggest, making enough recipes to know what the difference between 4 tbsp vs. 2 tbsp of oil tastes like, for example.  Broth and water can also be good alternates added to cover the reduction in oil.

http://i1263.photobucket.com/albums/ii623/hope_friedman/StuffedAcornSquash-1.jpg