Pesto Pasta

Want a super quick healthy meal? Go to pesto. You can even have it during the depths of winter. I've shared a recipe during the summer, and this is basically the same minus the fresh summer roasted vegetables. During the winter, our pesto is straight parsley.

This meal is so quick. You can pair it with a salad or just a side of toast. My kids love it, and it's very fulfilling. You can get this made in less than 20 minutes if uninterrupted (unlikely in my house). :)

Ingredients:
one pound whole wheat pasta (I prefer penne - so easy for kids to eat)
two handfuls of walnuts
three garlic cloves
one teaspoon sea salt
six twists of freshly ground pepper
3/4 bunch of flat-leaf parsley (I leave the other 1/4 of parsley for other meals during the week - through it in rice or a pasta sauce)
olive oil

Directions:
Bring large pot of water to boil. Cook pasta 8-10 minutes. Reserve 1 cup of pasta cooking water. While pasta cooks, process walnuts, garlic, salt and pepper in a food processor. Add all the parsley and continue to process. Drizzle no more than 1/4 cup of olive oil while processing parsley. Use reserved pasta cooking water to continue processing the pesto for your desired creaminess. Add pesto to cooked pasta. Add more cooking water if more creaminess is desired.

To bump up the nutritional value, add frozen peas or roasted kale.

Post Punk Cornbread

My family loves, loves, loves, loves, LOVES this cornbread! Guests really enjoy it, too. I make this at least once a week during the winters to accompany our chili. It is so hard to not eat the entire pan. It's perfectly moist and not too sweet. The authors of theppk.com (The Post Punk Kitchen) are also the authors of Veganomicon. This recipe also shows up in that fantastic cookbook, but it replaces the 2 Tablespoons of maple syrup with 1/4 cup of sugar. So choose the sweetener of your choice. And...as you can see...it is very much kid-approved!

Planning Healthy Meals and Making Them Happen

It's that time of year when our meals are the most predictable. During a Minnesota winter, someone like me who is interested in keeping our food (in order of importance) local, simple, sustainable and organic needs to get creative with dried goods and root vegetables. I often repeat the same repertoire every week in order to meet the previously mentioned pre-requisites but also to keep the family happy. My four year-old is in a phase where he can find something wrong with everything, so I find the more predictable (like most things in our life) the meal the less arguing.

Making the meal and its preparation simple is key in order for it to actually happen, since I rarely have a moment where a child of mine doesn't need my hands, words or breasts. Ha! Also, I want our food to taste like itself...I want my children to know what parsnips, rutabagas, kale, garlic, etc all taste like. I believe knowing these tastes from the moment they begin eating is what encourages them to grow into adults that will continue to choose and enjoy healthy foods.

So, here's a glimpse into how I plan our weekly meals. "Plan" being the key word. Planning is essential in getting wholesome, simple meals on your table if you plan on feeding people beyond yourself every day of the week.

I plan six dinners a week. We enjoy allowing ourselves one dinner out if we feel up for gathering the children and taking them somewhere...or we simply order pizza. Ordering pizza is a guilty pleasure of mine. Often our lunches are leftovers from the night before which helps guarantee a balanced lunch. These are the categories I use along with some of our most common winter recipes:

1. Pasta
-Cabbage Pasta

2. Chili

3. Lentils
-Lentil Bolognese
-Snobby Joes

4. Tofu

5. Soup
-Potato Leek
-White Bean and Tomato

6. Burritos
-Yes, burritos get their own category, because they are awesome.

Sometimes these categories overlap - like Lentil Bolognese. When that happens, I will then plan for two soups or two chilis that week...or a new random recipe!

I hope this inspires some to simplify and plan their family meals. I hope you have some tips for me! I plan to share some of our staple winter recipes in the coming weeks...

Our Vegan Thanksgiving

I get to make Thanksgiving dinner this year! I have had such fun mulling over the possibilities ever since our November storage box arrived last week from Driftless Organics. It was jam packed with tons of root vegetables that I plan to transform into a hearty, vegan Thanksgiving. If I were not the mother of a newborn, 2 year old and 4 year old I would probably double the dishes I plan to make. However, I will take it slow this year and imagine the possibilities for years to come. Here's the current menu I plan to make...I'll write post-Thanksgiving with the final recipes and to see how it all turned out.

Shepard's Pie
Beet Salad with Black Spanish Radish, Walnuts and Greens
Savory Dressing
Pumpkin Biscuits

These days...

These days I'm still cooking but with very little time to take pictures, etc. So, perhaps I will still share the meals we are devouring as a family; however, I think I may be writing more about my days. I find myself having conversations with myself over and over again in my head, as I am the only person over the age of four in this house of dudes for the majority of the day. This veggie mama needs an outlet.

I'm now the mama of three dear, sweet boys. Three! I still find myself in shock from time to time that I am responsible for the safety and livelihood of these guys. They are amazing. They are beautiful. They are a handful. I've never been so tired in my life. We start our day by 5:15am nearly every single day. 5:15! Daylight Savings actually has been a gift to me. I love the early sun and the early sunset. It actually grooves well with our daily rhythm. Most days I've been incredibly productive before 8am and already been spit up on or peed on a few times.

Life is blurry but life is good.

Dinner tonight: Sweet Potato Maafe

Vegan French Toast

I've never had true success with vegan french toast. Every recipe I tried I had issues keeping whatever I used as the egg replacer on the bread or cooking well enough. It just came out sloppy and wet. As I was figuring out what I wanted to do for Father's Day, I came across an Overnight Maple French Toast recipe. I had never heard of overnight french toast, and I thought this would be my perfect solution! No frying in the pan and getting annoyed that the flaxseeds won't stick or cook. I "veganized" this recipe, and it actually turned out pretty great. Even made it for extended family this weekend, and it was eaten quite quickly.

INGREDIENTS:
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1 Tablespoon Earth Balance
1 loaf of french bread, cut into 1-inch slices
3 Tablespoons of ground flaxseed
9 Tablespoons of water
1 1/2 cups plain, unsweetened soy milk
1/4 cup applesauce
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
fresh fruit, for garnish (optional)

DIRECTIONS:
-Combine brown sugar, syrup and Earth Balance into a small sauce pan. Bring to a boil for one minute. Pour into a greased (I just use more Earth Balance) 9x13 baking dish. Place bread slices into dish (I can fit most if not all).
-Combine ground flaxseeds and water and blend until thick and creamy. This can take up to one to two minutes. I use a hand blender in a plastic 16 oz cup (I got it with the blender), and it works SO much better than anything else I've tried.
-Stir the soy milk, applesauce, vanilla and salt into flaxseed mixture. Pour evenly over bread.
-Cover and refrigerate overnight.
-Preheat oven to 400 F. Bake uncovered at 400 F for thirty minutes.
-Garnish with fruit, if you wish and eat! We served with rosemary hashbrowns and Gimme Lean patties (two breakfast faves for the veggie papa).

White Bean and Tomato Soup

We've got a cool, rainy day, and it looks like the weekend will be much the same. This White Bean and Tomato Soup comes from cucina nicolina, and it has become a standard in our kitchen. It comes together incredibly fast and with so few ingredients - most you may have stashed in your cupboard right now and the rest you can grab from your garden or the farmer's market.

If I'm going to be gone during the afternoon and will not have time to make dinner, I will throw this in the crock pot right after lunch. When going this route, I use kale instead of spinach, because it sits much better in the heat. When I am whipping this together and wanting to have it on the table in thirty minutes or less, I use beautiful fresh spinach.

Make a quick loaf of beer bread or Irish soda bread, if you're in the mood to turn on the oven. This summer, you may just want to have a wonderful fresh salad on the side. Enjoy!