This is a great hearty lunch or a salad to go alongside fish or beans for dinner. This is as healthy of a salad as it gets so eat up and make extras for the next day! Also great to bring to a party. Watch out for turning your cutting board and fingers a nice pretty ruby color!
Beet and Kale Salad
Salad:
Dressing:
Directions:
Wash beets and bring to a boil in a large pot. After boiling bring to a simmer, continue to simmer for one hour, until tender. Let cool, then peel beets and cut into 3/4 inch pieces.
In the meantime, lightly toast the pumpkin seeds by placing them in a dry skillet and cooking voer medium heat. Constantly stir the seeds to ensure even cooking (or buy toasted sunflower seeds). When they begin to pop and give off a nutty aroma, they are ready. Set aside to cool.
Wash kale and place in a large pot of boiling water for 30 seconds. Place in strainer and cool with cold water, cut into bite size pieces. Finely dice the greens onions and peel the carrot. Slice into 1/8-inch rounds.
Place all dressing ingredients in a bowl and mix well with a wire whisk. In a separate bowl place chopped beets, chopped kale, dice green onions, sliced carrots and pumpkin seeds. Add dressing and toss gently. Serve chilled. Make six servings!
From Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair
This is a great side salad to burgers (vegan/gluten-free) or anything else that is a bit more hearty. Fish would be a great option as well. This would also be a great gluten-free/vegan option to bring to a party so that you have an option of something interesting to eat that everyone else will love too!
Lemon and Garlic Quinoa Salad
Salad:
Dressing:
Directions:
Cook Quinoa. Prepare dressing in large bowl, add carrots, seeds and parsley. Add cooked quinoa and toss well. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Adapted from Feeding The Whole Family by Cynthia Lair
One of the best restaurants on the West Coast, Canlis a place for special memories to be made. Caleb and I went there the first time for my birthday after our daughter was born. She was only 6 weeks old and I tearfully left her for 2 hours with a good friend. The evening was amazing and I adored every minute of it. It didn’t work out to go again this year for my birthday but my hubby had been trying to find a special time to just go for drinks and light food and sit in the bar. Last Saturday night was the perfect night, we attended a wedding (re-commitment ceremony where I couldn’t eat anything) so then we decided to go out for food afterward. Caleb had the special surprise in mind as we were already all decked out in our fancy clothes. It is amazing, very expensive and totally worth it once a year if you are a food lover!
I had their lemon drop martini (amazing), prawns, and arugula salad (that comes with gilled melon!). I let them know I was gluten-free and vegan (minus seafood) and they just substituted where needed. If you do go for a romantic night out and need a gluten-free/vegan full meal just call ahead and they can specially design you a meal that will work for you! Happy Eating!
Oh – their bar is absolutely amazing! Order anything/everything and enjoy their color changing drink and super fun drink list. Let the bar tender know you are gluten-free!
For breakfast today we made Gluten Free and Vegan Pancakes! I have tried mixes before and have never enjoyed the product but this one is actually very tasty. Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Pancake and Waffle Mix with Egg Replacer or try using applesauce. IF you are eating eggs then using eggs will make your pancakes more light and fluffy. I served the pancakes with hot maple syrup and a bowl of applesauce and everyone liked it a lot. Quote from my husband “These pancakes are better than the gluten filled kind!” He is normally quite difficult to please!
Also – I haven’t tried making it yet but there is a coffee cake recipe on the side of the pancake mix and it looks scrumptious – so we’ll be trying that soon!
I made this for an easy and quick Sunday night dinner. We were all feeling tired and worn out so I needed a recipe that wasn’t going to take a lot of chopping power or concentration. Emmy (my 15 month old) really liked having the beans and rice separate on her plate. This is also another very inexpensive meal that can feed lots of people! Yea for feeding 4 people for less than 4 dollars! Gluten-free and Vegan is a great way to save some hard earned cash.
Dinner 9/27/2009:
Mexican Brown Rice with Pinto Beans
Ingredients:
Directions:
Heat oil in a 2-quart pot. Add cumin and chili powder and saute for a few seconds. Add onion and salt and continue cooking until onion is soft. Add rice and stir well to coat. Now add water and tomato paste and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, covered, until all the water is absorbed (about 4 minutes). Serve next to hot pinto beans.
From Cynthia Lair’s Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking with Whole Foods (Best cookbook I have ever had!)
Alternative if you already have rice cooked: Add cooked rice without any water but an extra tablespoon of tomato paste. Also – if you like onions (we love them) add an extra sauted onion to the pinto beans, less finely chopped for more flavor. This is a very mild meal which is great for kiddos but can sometime need an extra boost at the table. I also served this alongside a dry green lettuce salad (you can pile the rice and beans on top for dressing or make lettuce wraps at the table) and hard corn tortilla’s so that rice and beans taco’s could be made. Yum!
Last Tuesday I decided that I was tired of gluten-free rolled oats and needed a change of pace. So I decided that we needed to try something new. Corn Grits? It doesn’t sound great but they are very delicious. You can serve them with fresh raw honey(or Agave Juice) and rice milk or soy milk for extra tastyness. You could add regular milk if you are not vegan.
I recommend Bob’s Red Mill Corn Grits which can also be used to make polenta (I haven’t tried it yet but it’s on my list!). I served a half of Banana in each bowl to add a serving of fruit in the morning. Nuts could also be a good option but I’m not a huge fan of nuts in the early morning. I should say, to be fair, that my husband does not care for this meal. He grew up eating corn grits and now won’t eat them anymore. He doesn’t have to eat gluten-free so he had Cheerios instead.
Tonight I made one of our new favorites! We looked at the total cost of the meal and it is about $6.50 to feed 4 people! I hope you enjoy it – gluten-free and vegan and yummy. My daughter LOVES this meal and literally was squealing while eating it – talk about kid-friendly. Everything is gluten-free and vegan and could easily be make as a ‘camp’ meal without much fuss or even clean up.
Dinner 9/24/2009:
Black Bean Tacos with Green Salad
For 4 People:
Directions:
Saute chopped onion until soft, add black beans to heat. Chop tomatoes and set aside. Cut avocados into long strips. Rinse and rip lettuce. Heat hard corn taco shells in oven (350 degrees for a few minutes). Put lettuce on plates with basil leaves on top. Make tacos using lettuce, basal, black beans mixed with onions, tomatoes, avocados. Once everyone has a ‘hard taco’ with fixings encourage people to make taco salads with remaining ingredients – no dressing necessary!
I just picked up the book Feeding the Whole Family. I have been getting recipe’s from the book off the internet but I figured I should probably own the cookbook if I liked it so much. supposedly it i has great kid-friendly recipe’s and can be gluten-free and vegan or easily modified. I guess we will have to see – I haven’t even gotten to open it yet! I don’t normally buy cookbooks and if I do I buy Gluten-Free emphasis cookbooks so this is a whole new adventure for me. I am really excited to start reading it this next week. Bastyr’s Website pulls a lot of recipe’s from her book and I have liked everyone that I have tried thus far. More reviews to come of future delicious meals!
Another Gluten-Free, Vegan, Kid-Friendly meal that will fill your families tummy and save you lots at the grocery store! Yea for bargain meals!
I made this recipe last Sunday night for my family and it was surprisingly good! My husband was super skeptical coming to the table and wasn’t sure about the ‘combination’ of ingredients but they all went very well together. The best part is that this is a super fast and easy recipe that can be a good last minute dinner if you have run out of time. The brown rice can be made far in advance and everything else just takes a few minutes. I also made a Green Bean and Sesame Salad recipe to go with the meal (gotta get your vegetables in) but it was terrible, so I won’t share that really bad recipe. To the credit of the recipe it called for rice miso which I wasn’t able to add because it is not gluten-free (or I couldn’t find a gluten-free version) so I had to try to substitute and I think it went badly. Steamed Green beans next to the Brown Rice and Kidney Beans would be delicious and will fix the need for a green something at the table.
Last night, Wednesday night, I served this as left overs but added an extra can of black beans so that it was very heavy on the beans. I really like it when there are more beans rather than less so that is another option. The black beans with the kidney beans also looks really good together. We ate a green salad next to it last night to get in the veggies.
Dinner 9/20/2009:
Dilled Kidney Beans and Brown Rice
Salad:
Dressing:
Directions:
1.) Mix oil, vinegar and dill with whisk or shake in small jar
2.) Pour dressing over rice, beans and onion, toss gently.
If possible, let sit an hour or tow as flavors mellows with time.
From Feeding the Whole Family, by Cynthia Lair. Moon Smile Press, Seattle, WA.
Today I felt like I needed to cut costs even more and so I have decided to make my Hummus instead of buying it at Costco! It is actually one of the easiest and most delicious little dishes I have ever made. Who knew Hummus had just a few ingredients? I would warn you that this makes A LOT of Hummus. I like to leave out Hummus as an O’rderve with Rice Chips or Carrots and Celery or as an afternoon snack or lunch treat. Enjoy!
This Middle Eastern dip is traditionally made with chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, and olive oil. Prepare and refrigerate it a day ahead; let it stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before serving. Garnish with a lemon wedge and fresh parsley sprig, and serve with Rice Chips or Vegetables.
White Bean and Roasted Garlic Hummus
Ingrediants:
preparation:
Remove white papery skin from 2 whole garlic heads (do not peel or separate the cloves). Wrap each head separately in foil. Bake at 350° for 1 hour; cool 10 minutes. Separate cloves; squeeze to extract garlic pulp. Discard skins.
Place garlic pulp, Traditional Hummus, and 1 (15-ounce) can rinsed and drained cannellini beans (or other white beans) in a food processor; pulse 5 times or until chopped (I used my blender). Add all other ingredients; process until smooth, scraping down sides as needed. Stir in chopped fresh rosemary.
CALORIES 45 (40% from fat); FAT 2g (sat 0.3g, mono 1g, poly 0.6g); PROTEIN 1.8g; CARB 5.3g; FIBER 1.2g; CHOL 0mg; IRON 0.4mg; SODIUM 81mg; CALC 16mg.
Laura Zapalowski, Cooking Light, NOVEMBER 2008
