I'm not quite sure when avocados are in season, since they really don't grow in Ohio, but they must be in season now because they are on sale everywhere! And they are one of the so called 'super foods' because of their potassium and omega 3 fatty acids. Sounds like a good excuse to stock up and make some guac!
Really you can use avocados to replace a lot of creamy sauces, like in chicken or tuna salad. I also love avocados on sandwiches and burgers because I don't like condiments. I have seen them used in smoothies, but I'm not sure I'm ready to try that yet. What I am ready to try is making an avocado sauce that replaces alfredo! And if you make your own alfredo sauce, this is sooo much easier!
Sauce
1 avocado
.25 cup creme fraiche (or sour cream)
1 tsp lemon juice
2 tbsp parm, shredded
1 tbsp basil, chopped
1 garlic clove
salt and pepper
2 cups cooked spaghetti
1.5 cups steamed broccoli
1. Boil spaghetti noodles according to package. Steam broccoli for 5 minutes. Saute garlic in olive oil.
2. Cut open avocado and scoop out into small mixing bowl. Add lemon juice, chopped basil, shredded parm, sauteed garlic, creme fraiche, salt and pepper. Smash ingredients together with a fork.
3. Combine noodles, broccoli, and sauce together and serve! (see, so easy!)
Oops, getting this weeks menu off to a late start. It's been one of those weeks where it feels like the only thing we do is work, cook, eat, and sleep. My husband has been in NYC and back working a crazy amount of hour. Meanwhile I am at work too and it is so quite you could hear a pin drop on the other floor of the building.
On the bright side, Spring is almost here! Daylight savings time is this weekend. It will be nice to have that extra hour of sunlight in the evening. It boosts your mood and makes you want to get outside! I seriously cannot wait for summer... the thought of summer literally put a smile on my face just now.
Any way, on to this week's menu...
asparagus ricotta tart
squash croquettes with salad
homemade mac & cheese (i hope it works out this time)
baked ziti (because I foresee a couple late nights at work still)
veggie jambalaya
stuffed onions
and then out one night for my husband's birthday!
So this is cheating a little on the 40 day challenge because I already made baked raviolis a few weeks ago. But these are different because I am actually making the raviolis! So this recipe is kind of the spinach and artichoke lasagna recipe wrapped up in wontons. These make a great meal covered in tomato sauce, but also make a great appetizer because they can be finger food too!
Oh... and just so you don't make the same mistake I did... artichoke petals and stems are not friendly with garbage disposals. Toss them in the compost or garbage... not the sink!
1 cup ricotta
40 wonton wrappers
1 egg
1.5 cups spinach
1 artichoke, steamed
shredded parm
salt and pepper
.25 cup tomato sauce
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Steam artichoke for 10 minutes and wilt spinach in pan. Remove artichoke petals, stem, and choke and chop the artichoke heart.
2. Add ricotta, egg, chopped artichoke, spinach, some parm, and tomato sauce in a small mixing bowl.
3. Lay out wonton wrappers on a parchment lined baking sheet. Add about one tablespoon of filling mixture on each wonton. Wet edges of wonton wrapper with water (brush on with finger) and carefully lay another wonton wrapper on top. Press edges to seal.
4. Bake for 12 minutes or until edges start to brown and get crispy. Serve with tomato sauce.
When I think of peanut butter, I think of desserts and sandwiches... never for dinner! I was first introduced to a dinner entree two years ago at Northstar Cafe where they have a Thai dish with rice, peanut sauce, and vegetables. I'll try pretty much anything once, I do love peanut butter, and discovered I loved it! I tried my hand at recreating it at home later that week and it turned out pretty good. But since then, I kind of forgot about it until I started researching different vegetarian recipes (you know, more than just the normal go-to meals with this whole 40 day challenge). A lot of Thai food kept popping up in my searches and in the cookbooks I was looking through.
So enter this soup... Even though I knew I had enjoyed previous dinners using peanut butter, I was nervous all over again. Turns out, there was nothing to be nervous about! The soup is rich and creamy. The peanut butter is really the star ingredient with only hints of the tomato juice and vegetable broth. The rice and garbanzo beans give the soup some texture and the spices really compliment the sweet peanut butter with a slight kick. Definitely a recipe worth trying, even if you are as nervous as I was!
1 15oz. can of garbanzo beans, rinsed and peeled
2 cups vegetable broth
2 cups tomato juice
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup brown rice
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cinnamon
salt and pepper
1. Saute onions and garlic in a little olive oil. Add broth, juice, and spices, bring to a boil and lower to a simmer for 15 minutes.
2. While simmering, rinse and peel the garbanzo beans. Add rice, beans, and peanut butter into the broth and simmer for another 10 minutes or until the rice is cooked.
A stir fry is a great way to get a lot of veggies (and a lot of variety) into one meal really quick. And you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand really. I always have garlic and onions in my pantry (well, sitting in a basket on my counter) and always have a bag of carrots for snacking, juicing, and cooking (I love carrots! Eating a lot of them will give you skin a healthy glow and keep your eyes in tip top shape.). I noticed at the grocery store that snow peas were starting to come in season, which always makes me think of stir frying. So I gathered up my veggies, heated up my wok, and started chopping.
2 tbsp sesame oil, divided
3 tbsp soy sauce, divided
1 cup soba noodles or brown rice
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 onion
variety of chopped veggies
1. Cook soba noodles or rice according to package instructions. While your grain is cooking, heat up 1 tbsp of sesame oil in wok or large pan. Saute garlic for 1 minute. Add vegetables and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and cook any where from five to 15 minutes until desired tenderness (I cooked for 12 minutes).
2. Add remaining soy sauce and sesame oil to noodles/rice to flavor. You can either serve your veggies on top of a bed of noodles/rice or add the grains to the wok to get everything combined.
So every year for Christmas I make buckeye candy, among other treats and cookies of course. Buckeyes are pretty labor intensive for something you don't have to bake or cook. Rolling the balls, refrigerating making sure the 'eye' is just right, not having too much chocolate that it pools while cooling... it's enough to make you give up before starting! And then... I saw this idea on Pinterest! So I took my buckeye recipe and made it into bark... easy, poppable, and just as delicious!
2 cups dark chocolate, melted
1 cup peanut butter
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar
1. Melt chocolate in double boiler or microwave. Spread thin layer of chocolate on parchment paper and put in freezer for 3 minutes to set chocolate.
2. While the chocolate is in the freezer, combine the peanut butter, melted butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar to make the peanut butter 'dough'. Spread peanut butter over the frozen chocolate and place back in freezer for 2 minutes.
3. Pour remaining chocolate over top of the peanut butter and spread evenly. Place tray back in freezer for 20 minutes.
4. Cut bark into one to two inch chunks. Bark is best kept cold to prevent the peanut butter from oozing out of the chocolate.. but peanut butter and chocolate is good no matter the temperature.
One of the things about limiting how much processed foods you buy is that it goes bad quickly. It really makes you think about all the chemicals and preservatives that are in our 'normal' food. How can something stay in our pantries for a year and still be safe to eat? Eating unprocessed foods only increases the importance of menu planning because you can't just buy ingredients you might use since it won't last long. Sometimes I forget how quickly fresh food can go bad... I bought some freshly baked french bread for grilled cheese sandwiches and the bread was stale and moldy within a few days. You could probably have a loaf of Wonder bread sitting on your counter for weeks. Any way, I had to swap out the grilled cheese sandwiches for cheesy avocado toasts from last week's menu...
Here is this week's menu...
Spinach Enchiladas
lasagna bites with salad
taco pie with spanish quinoa
asparagus soup with poached egg
peanut chickpea soup
grilled cheese and tomato parm soup (since I didn't get to it last week)
What is better than a stack of pancakes on Saturday morning? A stack of pancakes with sweet blackberries and melty Nutella, that's what! Last spring we got so many blackberries from our CSA share that I had to freeze some. I kind of forgot that they were in the freezer (they were under a pile of frozen peaches, also from our CSA). Memories of late spring came flooding back as I scarffed the stack down while looking out at our snow covered back yard. Our spring flowers are starting to pop up, so it can't be too much longer...
BTW, I love this pancake mix! It is called Kodiak Cakes and I found it at Target of all places. I love Target's grocery section... it is so small you would think it was only convenience foods that you could get at any normal grocery, but they really do have a variety of stuff I have never seen before. Like individual packs of tomato sauce and peanut butter (great for hiking!), freeze dried fruits of all kind (I might make my own cereal mix), and these Kodiak Cake pancake mixes. The pancakes are whole grain (but don't taste like it) and all you need to do is add water. Of course you can get fancy and add things like blackberries and lemon juice, but all you really need is water!
1.5 cups Kodiak Cake pancake mix
.5 cup water
.75 cup blackberries, halved
1 tsp lemon juice
2 tbsp Nutella
1 tbsp butter
1. Combine pancake mix and water. Add blackberries and lemon juice. Cook pancake batter in butter over medium heat. Flip after about 3 minutes or until golden.
2, Spread a half tablespoon of Nutella on top of each warm pancake and stack.
I don't know what rock I have been living under for so long... but I had never heard of churros until last year. I love cinnamon sugar, how could I have never heard of these delicious treats?! And there is a super easy way to make them, well, something very similar. Add some cheesecake filling and you're in heaven.
1 cup cream cheese
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 pkg puff pastry
.5 cup sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp butter, melted
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine cream cheese, egg, and vanilla and beat together. Roll out pastry dough and cut each sheet into 6 sections.
2. Scoop a little over a tablespoon of cheesecake mixture on top of the pastry. Fold pastry and press closed with a fork. Bake for 10 minutes. While baking, combine sugar and cinnamon.
3. Brush pastry with melted butter and coat with cinnamon sugar mixture.
Eggs are not just for breakfast and baking. They are a great source of protein in a vegetarian diet. Quiches, souffles, stratas, frittatas, or poached on a sandwich or in soup are all great ways to incorporate eggs into meals after noon. Some day I want to have a few chickens and we could have eggs every day...
Any way, this recipe is kind of like a Hot Pocket... well, only in that it is hot and a pocket of food. Quality and taste are way better than any Hot Pocket. But you get the point. The puff pastry is buttery, flaky, and tender. The filling tastes fresh and a little spicy. Really you could put pretty much anything inside these pockets, like ham and cheese or broccoli and cheese or something else and cheese (guess I really want a cheesy pocket). As long as it is fresh ingredients, it will be good!
1 pkg puff pastry, thawed
5 eggs, divided
4 oz. cheese
1 avocado
.5 cup salsa
chives
salt and pepper
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Scramble four eggs with salt and pepper. Roll out puff pastry and cut into six sections. Lay puff pastry on parchment paper lined baking sheet.
2. Layer eggs, cheese, smashed avocado, salsa, and chives on half of the dough. Fold dough over top of the filling. Press edge close with fork.
3. With remaining egg, brush a thin layer of egg over each dough pocket. Bake for 18 minutes or until crust turns golden and flaky.
