Indian Food Fest

Red Lentil Dahl (not exactly the same recipe, but pretty close)
Crunchy spicy potatoes (so so good!)
Naan
Rice

With lunch the next day:
cucumber
orange

Orange Chi'ken lunch

Trader Joe's Orange Chi'ken
Rice
Chard
Carrot
Bell Pepper
Cucumber
Kimi
Hummus

Winter Rice Salad lunch

Ingredients
Rice
Chickpeas
Chard
Butternut squash
chipotle powder
olive oil

Tahini Sauce
2 parts tahini
2 parts soy sauce
1 part black vinegar
1 part rice vinegar
0.5 part hot sauce
1 partish water

Method
Preheat oven to 400F.

Cut butternut squash is half lengthwise. Clean out seeds and place cut side down in a baking dish with high sides. Fill the bottom of the dish with water to cover about 1/2 inch of the squash. Bake for about 30 minutes until the flesh is soft.

Drain and rinse chickpeas, saving brine for Aquafaba experiments, if desired. On a baking sheet covered in parchment paper lay out chickpeas and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and chipotle chili powder or any other spices desired. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until chickpeas are firm. They crisp up more as they cool down.

Cook rice in rice cooker. Can you cook rice any other way? I argue that there is only one way to cook rice and that is with a rice cooker.

Chop up chard into bite size pieces.

Whisk everything together for the tahini sauce adding more water if needed to get tahini to blend nicely.

In a bowl place rice, a couple of spoonfuls of butternut squash, chickpeas, chard and drizzle with sauce. Mix until blended together.

Notes
This was super tasty and a great way to use up the butternut squash that has been sitting on my counter for the past 3 months. The tahini sauce was adapted from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook.

This is what it looks like before mixing everything up. The squash sort of disappears in the dish.

The salad was served with carrots, apple, and hummus.

Veggie Noodle Lunch

Ingredients
1 zucchini
1 carrot
3 chard leaves
1 stalk celery
1/4 avocado
1-2 strips of tempeh
peanut sauce (I used Fire on the Mountain Spicy Peanut sauce)

Method
Using a spiralizer, mandolin, or serrated vegetable peeler, make noodles out of the zucchini and carrot. Place into a bowl. Chop up the chard, celery, and avocado into small chunks and add to bowl.

Cook tempeh in a cast iron skillet for about 2-3 minutes per side until browned. Chop into chunks and add to the bowl.

Drizzle everything with peanut sauce.

Add anything else that would taste good raw - bell pepper, cucumber, apple.


Notes
This was super tasty the day when it was freshly made. After the vegetables sat in the peanut sauce over night, the texture became super mushy and not as appetizing. I would eating this quickly after adding the sauce and devour entirely. It is fantastic when it is fresh! If you use pasta noodles instead of just vegetables, I bet the noodles would taste better after sitting overnight in peanut sauce. It was nice to have a dinner consisting of mostly vegetables. Winter time is coming to a close!

The small dip container holds toasted onion hummus for the carrots and celery.

Vegetable Bowl

As the day was winding down at work today, I was trying to decide what to make for dinner. We had several vegetables near the end of their lives and I knew that we had a lot of lentils and rice in the pantry. Thus the vegetable bowl with lentils and rice was born!

Serves: 2 (with about 1 cup leftover lentils, and 1 cup leftover vegetables)

Ingredients
Lentils
1/3 - 1/2 cup brown lentils
1+ cups water
cumin
chipotle powder
turmeric
smoked paprika
salt
pepper

Rice
1 "cup" rice
1.5 "cup" water
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

Vegetables
1/2 medium butternut squash
3 stalks broccoli
1/2 onion
4 stalks rainbow chard
olive oil
salt
pepper
basil
rosemary


Method
Lentils
Measure and rinse lentils. Place in a small saucepan and add water and spices. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn to a medium simmer and stir every so often to prevent sticking. Cook until the lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.

Rice
Using the "cup" measuring device from your rice cooker, measure and rinse rice. Put rice in rice cooker with the water and cumin seeds. My very simple cooker has one setting, but if you have a fancy pants cooker, you might want to set it specifically to the type of rice you are using. Cook until rice is done.

Vegetables
Preheat oven to 400F.

Peel and cut butternut squash into 2 cm pieces. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cut broccoli into 4 cm long pieces, place on prepared baking sheet. Chop the onion into large pieces and place on baking sheet. Any other "roastable" vegetable can be used here - carrots, beets, potatoes, etc. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, rosemary, and anything else you think would be tasty. Stir vegetables to coat.

Place in oven, and bake for about 25 minutes or until tender, flipping vegetables over halfway through. You can also bake the remainder of the butternut squash at this time, but if you leave it in large pieces, it will have to bake for longer.

While the vegetables are in the oven, chop chard into 2 cm pieces. Sauté in a cast iron pan with olive oil, salt, and pepper, until wilted.

Grab a bowl, put in a scoop of rice, a ladle full of lentils, half the roasted vegetables, and half the chard. Repeat with second bowl.


Notes
This was delicious. I was reminded that we need to do vegetable medley dinners more often. We get a lot of produce with our food box delivery and I hate seeing portions of it go to waste each week. My husband was a big fan of this meal.

Other ideas for combinations:
Quinoa, beets, sweet potato, spinach
Quinoa, kale, carrots, potatoes
Rice, kidney beans, onion, carrots, jalapeno, cilantro, avocado
Rice, white beans, cabbage, onion, thyme
Millet, chickpeas, carrots, chard, onion (inspired by Vegan Richa)
.
.
.
The possibilities are endless!