Skillet Cornbread

Here's a recipe that speaks to my Southern heart! Tonight I made skillet cornbread, and it was so yummy! Everyone loved it - especially smeared with the local honey we had. We had "breakfast beans" (that's a recipe I'm going to talk about another time), fried potatoes, fresh tomatoes, and skillet cornbread. I used this recipe, and I will definitely be making it again. I added a teaspoon of chipotle chile powder which gave it a small kick! I think it would be good with fresh corn kernels, sauteed jalapeno, green chiles, or even chopped chipotles. I'm sure we'll be experimenting! Jalapeno jelly would be great, too, although the honey was divine with it! This is a terrible picture, but I forgot to get a picture BEFORE we started eating! The cornbread was cooked in my cast iron skillet. Have I ever mentioned how much I love that thing? It's awesome!

Here's how I made it:
2 cups soymilk
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 3/4 cups corn flour
2 eggs
2 tbsp olive oil (plus extra for coating the pan)
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp chipotle chile powder
Preheat oven to 425, and put the cast iron skillet in there to heat up. Mix the milk and vinegar and let the milk curdle. Mix everything together. Put oil in the hot skillet, then pour in the mixture. Cook for 20 minutes (or under toothpick comes out clean and top is nicely browned).

Yummy Lentil Stew

I've had an episode of Get Fresh with Sara Snow recorded since December. She made a lentil stew on it that sounded delish. I finally made it tonight. I sounded like it would be big enough to have for dinner and throw the leftovers in the freezer for after Baby T is born. It was! Well, it might not have been if the kidlets hadn't had a friend over. They were more interested in playing than eating tonight, but that's okay. It was really yummy. It cooked so long that the lentils fell apart and made it creamy. It was an awesome comfort food that was healthy! Even dh (the self avowed soup/stew hater) said he liked it which is good because it's going to be made again! Here's how I made it.

2 C red lentils
8 C water
2 tbsp "chicken" broth powder
potatoes
celery
carrots
several kombu strips
1/2 tbsp cumin
1/2 tbsp thyme
1/2 tbsp oregano
bay leaf
zucchini
1 large can of diced tomatoes

Chop all the vegetables. Mix lentils, water, broth powder, potatoes, celery, carrots, kombu, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for 30 minutes. Add spices, zucchini, and tomatoes and simmer for another 15 minutes or until lentils have broken down and veggies are tender. Remove bay leaf and enjoy!

Green beans with tomatoes

A friend of mine who is expecting a baby the same time as me, posted a link to a recipe for tomatoes and green beans. It sounded good, and I had some fresh green beans, so I decided to make my own version of it! Here's the original version Aunt Kate's Green Beans in Tomatoes. My kids LOVED this dish and came back for seconds, so I'll definitely be making this one again! Here's my version:
Green Beans with Tomatoes
2 lbs green beans
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp minced onions
black pepper to taste
Mix the tomatoes, tomato sauce, and herbs in a large pot. Put the green beans in with the tomatoes and cook on medium high heat until the green beans are crisp tender.

I also made a version of honey baked lentils that was really great, but I need to tweak it a little. I'll post it later. I also tried a recipe for chipotle mashed sweet potatoes. Trey really liked that one, but unfortunately, no one else did, so that one got scratched!

Every St. Patrick's Day, I make Irish Bean Stew! Normally, I make a meal full of green/Irish stuff. This year, I was just too tired, but at least we had a really healthy meal! With the Stew, I steamed broccoli and cut up tomatoes and sweet peppers. With that we had carrots and made a cashew/pimiento "cheese." It was really delicious.


Last but not least - Livi's bentos for this week! She loves her bento boxes and loves taking pictures with them! This one has grapes, a boiled egg, Cajun jerky, soy cheese, snap pea crisps, gf pretzels, strawberries, and gf Pamela's cookies.

This one has gf pretzels, strawberries, grapes, a Pamela's cookie, a veggie dog, carrots, and soy cheese.

Tempeh Hot Wings

First let me say - these are absolutely, positively, freaking fantastic!!! I loved them! I will make them often! I got the original recipe off this site: Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk. I changed the recipe to make it gluten free and to my liking! :-) I bought the tempeh at the Aurora Vitamin Cottage, and unfortunately they only sold one kind of tempeh. So, they were pretty thick. Next time I'll just have to bite the bullet and drive to Whole Paycheck - uh, Foods - to get the long, thin kind. I think they'd be way better with the thinner tempeh. I didn't think about getting a picture of just the hot wings until they were almost gone, and my picture is weirdly orange. You can get the idea though. Dinner was so fabulous tonight!

Here's the recipe for the tempeh hot wings:
2 pkgs of tempeh
1/2 C amaranth flour
1 tsp salt
4 tsp thyme
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1/3 C soymilk
8 tbsp margarine
4 tbsp hot sauce (I used Tapatio)
8 tbsp ketchup
3 tbsp agave nectar

Cut the tempeh into fairly small triangles. Boil water. When the water is boiling, put the tempeh in and let it boil for 15 minutes. Drain and cool enough to handle. Mix amaranth flour, salt, thyme, paprika, pepper, and garlic powder. Have a bowl with the soymilk and a bowl with the flour mixture ready. Dip each tempeh piece in the milk and then coat with the flour mixture. Put them on a greased baking sheet and spray the top with olive oil spray. Cook in a 400 oven for ten minutes - flip and then cook for ten minutes more. While the tempeh is cooking, prepare the sauce. Melt the margarine in a saucepan and then add the hot sauce, ketchup and agave. Keep the sauce hot. When the wings finish cooking, put in a bowl and coat well with the sauce.

I would have liked to have had the wings a little hotter, but Trey and Beth thought they were just fine! Next time I'm going to have to make two batches - one a little less spicy for Ray. He liked them, but the poor kid went through about 8 glasses of water! :-) The rest of dinner consisted of basmati rice with sumac, roasted asparagus with lemon, roasted potatoes with lemon/garlic seasoning and chile powder, sauteed mushrooms and sweet peppers, and a green salad. Aaahhh - it was yummy!

Cashew Fruit Dip

I made the cashew fruit dip again. I really like it. It's not overly sweet. It does taste better if you make it ahead of time and then let it chill. This recipe makes a pretty good amount, so if you're feeding a smaller family, you might want to cut it in half.

1 C raw cashews
12 oz. Vanilla Whole Soy yogurt
1 tbsp agave nectar
1 tsp cinnamon
Blend really well, chill and serve!

Vegiac

I have to say that being a gluten-free vegetarian seems to set one apart! A lot of the mainstream books that focus on being gluten-free, also focus a lot on meat eating. The first book about celiac and gluten sensitivity that I read was insane about it. I swear, this woman thought our ancestors ate a diet that consisted of about 75% meat! You'd think we were more like lions and tigers than apes biologically. Oh well. Thanks to Vegetarian Times, I found a website community dedicated to gluten free vegetarians! Woo hoo. Vegetarian Times is a great magazine, and over the past couple of years, they seem to have gotten pretty in tune to the growing gluten-free vegetarian community as well. Many of their recipes are naturally gluten-free. Unfortunately, the first article and recipes that I saw dedicated to gluten-free were pretty nasty. I think they tried a little too hard, but it was a step! I think they even mark their recipes gluten-free now. Although, I usually don't pay much attention to the gf markings on recipes. There is still too much confusion that they are often wrong. I just read for myself. Anyway, it was nice to find a gf vegetarian community. There are several different message boards. They're a bit quiet, but I'm sure as more and more people find out about it, it will become much busier. Check them out: Vegiac.


I tried a new recipe (sort of) that I found in VegNews. It was for a creamy cashew dip. It was so yummy! I changed it a bit, but because I only had so much of certain ingredients, I didn't measure anything - I just threw them in! I am going to make it again, measure the ingredients, and then post a recipe. It was so fabulous. The kids loved it, and so did I! I also made quick tacos. I used a soyrizo that is gf and super yummy. We were in a hurry, so this was just a quick meal to throw together. The kids ate every bit of it though. I think the older kids had 5-6 tacos a piece. You'd think they were filling up a hollow leg. LOL.

March Madness Bentos

My daughter's school intramural basketball tournament starts tomorrow. So, in honor of that, I made her a special bento for lunch tomorrow. The "basketball" is half an orange that I drew on (Yes, I know - my artistic skills are lacking! LOL.) Also in the top tier is a peanut butter "sandwich" on a gf graham cracker with words in chocolate sauce, just raspberries, and gf pretzels. The bottom tier has peanut rice noodles with carrots and broccoli.

For dinner tonight, I made orange-chile broccoli stir fry with rice, and a salad with a peanut sauce. The sauce was adapted from a recipe in an Asian cookbook my darling husband got me for Christmas. It was okay, but it was very vinegary. It definitely needs work. The salad was romaine, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and tofu.