Lazy Lemon Spinach Pasta: One Pot Pasta

I like to think of this as perhaps the adult version of buttered noodles? It came about after watching a movie and getting home late, with bare cupboards and hungry bellies. Now normal TVP sauce pasta isn't exactly a kitchen marathon but I wanted something faster and with even less clean up.

Which is how the following recipe was born!

Optional Try hard: Save your lemon slices for the food porn ;)

Lazy Lemon One Pot Pasta

• 2 Handfuls of spaghetti (I used the veggie blend pasta for added nutrients but any whole grain would work, or white)
• 3 cups veggie broth (or bullion powder)
• 1/2 small lemon slices
• 1/2 T mince garlic (from a jar for added laziness)
• 3 T Earth balance/vegan butter
• 1 bunch spinach loosely chopped (any other light green would work)
• 2 T dried oregano (fresh would be better but my plant died :( )
• Splash soy milk
• Salt/Pepper/Nooch to taste

Combine everything in a large pot on medium heat. Cook with cover on until noodles fall into the liquid, stir occasionally for ~10 mins or until your pasta is done. I cooked it for about 4 extra mins with the cover off for the liquid to reduce, basically you want the soy milk/vegan butter to help thicken the mixture and you can pull out your lemon slices as the flesh dissolves.

boiling it should look like this and smell like heaven

Adding nooch helps to thicken it a bit and give it a flavour boost. I tossed my finished product with some toasted sesame seeds/hemp hearts but a vegan parm or nut parm would be nice too.

As the pasta cooks you can see the liquid thicken and envelop the noodles

Voila a bare bones pantry pasta with minimal clean up, one pot, no strainer and great leftovers. If you don't have fresh lemon you could easily give a few tbs or lemon juice from a jar and it would be just as good. I am so pleased with how well this turned out and it's likely something I will always have the required goods for.

Fork Ready!!

Hope this helps someone else who is hungry and lazy out there! <3 br="">

March Cookbook Challenge!

From the lovely minds of the PPK, I've signed back up for a cookbook challenge to cook at least a few things from an honest to goodness book.

I also signed up for a cookbook swap with the Halifax Veg*n FB group, and got two cookbooks from another HRM Vegan. So this Month I am cooking from those.

So Far~!
Challenge : Cook from the book
Book : Martha Stewart's Meatless
Impressions: lots of easy/basic intro to making vegetables taste good, reliance on fresh ingredients and simply showcasing basic cooking techniques.

This is likely a book I really enjoyed flipping through and have bookmarked about a million things to make, but for the most part I will likely use this book for inspiration or a basic direction rather than a true every day go to book. Like a lot of non VEGAN specific authors/books, it does some pretty tasty vegan dishes and sides but mostly its a lot of making vegetables not taste bad and nothing that is super mind blowing (but maybe PPKers/authors like Isa, Terry, Joanna, Kelly, Katie, Kittee, Julie, Joni etc have ruined me for other authors)

Now the good stuff, photos and recipes tried!

Roasted ChickPea/Eggplant Stew
This was super easy and one of those dishes I could see myself turning to when there is wayward eggplant in the fridge on a busy week night. Eggplant aside, I always have the rest of the ingredients if I sub dried herbs for fresh (because im not a millionaire).

I love that the recipe has everything roasting on one pan all at once to make it an easy throw together, the stew was very thick and tasty the next day with Vegan Naan for lunch. It was pretty earthy and salty, and definitely good but not something I would go out of my way to make

Roasted Chickpea/Eggplant Stew PG136-137

Italian Baked Eggplant with Seitan

This was another recipe that was pretty easy to make because I had a huge batch of julie (everydaydish.tv) famous seitan sausages I needed to use up. The recipe looks way fancier in the picture, but I left my roommate jae in to prep and he said he found it a little cumbersome/involved for a week night meal. The end result was good, but someone not quite what I envisioned. I might try this one again with a more hands on approach, overall it was a decent filling one dish meal but the steps of breading the eggplant wasn't as low key/tasty as I had hoped. Still good and gave us lots of leftovers and didn't feel like we were missing anything by eating this by itself (since it has eggplant, tomato, spinach and seitan)

PP. 168-168

It also photographs much better.

There is another eggplant dish, I am regretting not trying for a simple dip. I have a feeling the simpler recipes are where this book will really shine showcasing vibrant fresh produce and ingredients w

I think in the future, I would try breading all the eggplant, it seems like this dish aims for a more casserole like dish and our presentation might be to blame for it's middle ground achievement.

I still really love reading through this book and have a weak spot for Martha, so while I wouldn't pay full price for this book and feel it's target is better suited for non-veg*n looking to learn how to eat more vegetables or even learn how to cook some veg*n food. I will probably buy this guy used or on sale, because I am a sucker for well edited books with lots of photos

VwaV stuffed peppers on a work night

Work today until 7pm, hit the store for student Tuesdays!

More exciting score was 2$ strawberries and coconuts are 1.99$!

Flour was on sale so I grabbed some as I have like 2 cups left and Almond Joy 2/5$

Shopping aside after being sick for a while I figured some simple home veggies were in order and mom had bought me two peppers! (Score!)

I halved the recipe and had everything on hand thanks to the pepper donation.
They were tasty as usual, VwaV keeps bringing me back.

I think YRR and VwaV are the two books I use most, followed by AFR.

Veganmofo: Squash Ribz time!

 

 Sorry about the delay in posts midterms and life has been kicking my butt. I have been eating and photographing though, so expect some food porn to appear eventually.

But enough about excuses, today is about ribz! My awesome Vegan Pal Blake was down for a week and made plans to make his famous ribz, unfortunately we got side tract with other adventures and never got around to it. This is one of those recipes someone talks about, but they don't really have a recipe for it. Here are his instructions to me and I'll give you some precise details about what I did and how.


Blake's explination: no recipe. I wish make BBQ sauce while I cook thin strips of squash to get them all crispy (coconut oil/butter works best), cover in sauce then cook some more.

So with his words of wisdom in mind I set off to slice my squash

Blake's Acorn Squash Ribz

• 1 Acorn Squash

• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil (I don't have coconut butter sadly)
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/3-1/2 BBQ Sauce (I got lazy and used some old stuff, I imagine Tequila Cherry from this post would work great though!)

• 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice ribs along indents in squash, space across your baking sheet, use a basting brust to coat the squash in oil on all sides. Bake for 30 minutes, turn over and bake another 30 minutes until crispy.

While the squash bakes, sort through the guts to remove the seeds. I'd recommend popping them into a dry or lightly oiled skillet with some coarse salt and chili powder to snack on because these ribz are gonna take a while. If you don't have BBQ sauce laying around, you could also prep that and sides while the ribz cook.

This one was baked directly on the rack

Once the squash is crispy and cooked through, bast with BBQ sauce (liberally!) on both sides and bake at 450-500 for another 10 minutes, flip and re-baste and bake again until the sauce is caramelized. I feel as though continuing this process earlier on with numerous flips/bastes would produce even better results, but these came out great. Extra points for a broiler finish.

Serve with your choice of sides, I did mashed potatoes and steamed veggies!