Vegan Enchiladas

I know, it looks gross, but it tastes great.

Okay, this is nowhere near authentic. I tried to make authentic enchilada sauce and it was a horrific failure. So here's my version. Note, the chipotle pepper in adobo sauce is what gives this sauce the right flavour. It will be spicy. I don't know how to avoid this. If you like spicy, then add more peppers!

Ingredients

• 1 can kidney beans, drained
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• a bit of cooking oil
• 1 can whole tomatoes (diced and crushed are inferior quality. A guy who used to work in a tomato canning factory told me!)
• 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, with some sauce 
• 1/2 onion, chopped roughly
• 2 cloves garlic
• 4-6 small corn or flour tortillas
• shredded vegan cheese (I used Daiya mozzarella)

Let's do it!

Refried Beans:

1. Heat the cooking oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the kidney beans and cumin and stir to coat the beans. 
2. Mash the beans with a potato masher and add some water to make it more of a paste. I add water several times during this process as it gets absorbed by the beans. You want it to be thick, but not so thick that you can't spread it on something easily. I added more water and simmered this on low while I made the sauce.

Sauce:

1. Drain the can of whole tomatoes into a blender. 
2. Deseed the tomatoes. I do this by submerging them in a bowl of water, opening each tomato and scraping the seeds out with my fingers under the water.
3. Put the tomatoes, onion, garlic, chipotle pepper and about 2 teaspoons of the adobo sauce into the blender. 
4. Blend until it's all blended nicely together.
5. Let this mixture simmer in a small soup pot for about 30 minutes, or until you no longer taste raw onions.

Put it together!

1. Warm up the tortillas in the microwave under a damp paper towel. You want them to be pliable so they don't break when you try to roll them. Like mine did.
2. In an oven safe casserole dish, ladle a thin layer of sauce.
3. Take your tortilla, put a line of beans in the middle, then some shredded cheese. Roll it up and put it cut side down into the dish.
4. Repeat until you fill the dish.
5. Top with more cheese, then a generous helping of sauce.
6. Broil in the oven until the cheese is melted!

Lunch it up!

This lunch is a hot mess when it's cooked. It's also a meal unto itself, so I just stuck it in a lunch container and heated it up at work. Also, the husband can eat real cheese and prefers flour tortillas to corn, so I made a separate dish for him.

Stolen recipe

Okay, stolen's a strong word. But I recently tried out a great recipe that I need to share with the world.

Roasted Brussel Sprouts - Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas and Pomegranate Seeds.

This is not my recipe, which is why there's a link to it. I substituted mixed beans for chickpeas, though.

It's absolutely delicious. If you think you don't like brussel sprouts, try roasting them in the oven.

If you want a tip on how to deseed a pomegranate, use the tips in this video:

And there it is, my laziest post ever. No photo, no recipe. I realize I haven't posted anything new since July, but there are so many great recipes out there, you just can't invent something new every day.

Vegan enchilladas

Alright, the way I did this wasn't vegan, but it can easily be vegan. These are nowhere near authentic, it's just how I make them. They are stuffed with refried beans and rice, and covered with a spicy tomato sauce.

Ingredients

• 1 can black beans
• 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• Salt to taste
• Water

• 1/2 cup rice
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• Enough broth to cook the rice (sorry, I don't measure when I cook rice. I just let my Chinese ancestry guide me. Maybe there's directions in the package or something.)

• 1/2 can crushed tomatoes
• 3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced

• Flour tortillas
• Cheese (vegan or otherwise)
• Avocado

Let's do it!

1. In a small sauce pot, heat up the cooking oil (I used bacon grease, but you can use whatever you like.) Drain and rinse the black beans and add to the pot. Stir often. Mash with a potato masher. If it starts sticking to the bottom, add a bit of water. I find that I need to add water quite a bit during the process.
2. Add cumin and salt to taste. Stir until the consistency is like very creamy mashed potatoes. Refried beans: DONE
3. Rinse the rice very well in a sieve to get rid of the starch, otherwise, you won't have the nice, separated grains that I like.
4. Put the rice, broth and garlic in a rice cooker. If you don't have a rice cooker, do whatever it is you do to make rice. Honestly, I can't make rice without a rice cooker. Rice: DONE!
5. Put the crushed tomatoes in a small sauce pot with the chipotle peppers. If you don't like spice, add less peppers. Then.. give the rest of them to a friend? I don't know.
6. Simmer this while the rice is cooking. Sauce: DONE!
7. Put this all in the fridge if you're like me and prefer to assemble the next day

Lunch it up!

1. I didn't want this to be soggy, so I assembled it before work.
2. On a flour tortilla, lay down some refried beans, then rice. 
3. Roll it up and place in a microwavable lunch container, seam side down.
4. Repeat for as many as you'd like.
5. Cover with as much sauce as you'd like and sprinkle with cheese.
6. Take it to work with an avocado and try not to let either get bashed up too much.
7. At work, heat this up in a microwave until hot. Cut up the avocado and place on top (Avocados get brown really easily, which is why I prefer to take them to work whole.)
8. Enjoy!

I ended up with a lot of leftover rice and beans. This is probably good for a maybe 3 or four meals. If you're not into eating the same thing every day, you can place the beans in a freezer bag, squeeze out the air and place it in the freezer. Same thing with the sauce. I've heard that you can freeze rice, but I've never tried it. It's a pretty mild flavour, though, so you can use it as a side in another dish.

Lainey-style Gumbo

That's right, I have a pretty sweet cutting mat at work.

Full disclosure: I've never had gumbo anywhere else but my own home. For all I know, this recipe tastes NOTHING like the real deal. But it's loosely based on a gumbo recipe I found online, that also mentioned that everyone's gumbo is different, depending on the ingredients you like to use. So I'm going for it.

Call it what you like, it's definitely tasty. So here we go!

Ingredients: 

1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup oil

1 large onion, diced

5 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup veggies (I used a turnip)

3 bay leaves

1/3 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

6 sausages (I used chorizo), sliced into rounds

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed (but use whatever beans you like)

3 cups or so chicken stock

1 can/jar diced tomatoes

Let's do it!

1. Heat up a soup pot with oil until it moves around the pot really quickly if you tip it. Add flour and whisk/stir with a wooden spoon for at least 25 minutes in low heat until it gets nice and dark. This is the roux that will thicken the gumbo.
2. Add all veggies into the pot and stir until onions are translucent. 
3. Add spices.
4. Add sausage and let them cook in the bottom of the pan for a few minutes.
5. Add beans, tomatoes and enough chicken stock to cover everything. Bring to a boil and let simmer for an hour or so.
6. Serve over rice.

Makes about 6 servings.

Easy? So easy. Yummy? SO YUMMY.

Slow-cooker chili

Holy cow, I've finally done it! The worst food photo ever seen by human eyes!

Hearty, filling and warm, this is the easiest thing to make in the world. All you need is a few ingredients, a slow cooker, 15 minutes to prep the stuff and 6 hours to let it cook by itself. And you will be happy. SO HAPPY.

Ingredients
2 tbsp chili powder (make your own or buy it ready-made. I suspect the ready-made stuff is full of food colouring and stuff, though)
1 large can (about 3 cups) tomato sauce
1 bay leaf
1 can kidney beans, or whatever beans you like. Rinsed and drained
1 onion, diced
1 lb meat. I used ground pork but you can use whatever you like.
salt to taste
hot sauce/peppers
Optional: any diced up veggies.

Let's do it!
Put your slow cooker to medium and throw in the chili powder, tomato sauce, bay leaf and beans. Stir it together.

In a pan, saute the onions in a bit of oil until they're translucent. Transfer to the slow cooker.

In the same pan, brown the meat and transfer to the slow cooker (drain it out first if you don't like fat in your food.)

This is a good time to add any other veggies you want to put in there. Chili is a great way to use up leftover veggies or meat provided they don't have a ton of other spices/flavours in them.

Let it cook while you do something else for a few hours. You know, like your job.

Taste, add salt. This recipe isn't very spicy since I made it with my entire family in mind. If you like spicy, you can add some fresh chili peppers when you're putting everything in the slow cooker.

Bean Salad. WITH BARLEY!

I love barley but I never make it. Heck, unless it's in a soup, I never eat it. Today I decided to go into my first foray into making barley as a major part of a meal.

Enter: Bean and Barley Salad

This salad is crunchy, chewy (in a good way) and filling. It's also incredibly cheap. All these ingredients cost maybe $15, and you wont be using nearly all of it for this recipe. The most expensive ingredients, the vinegar and oil will last for MONTHS.

Ingredients
1 can of mixed beans
1 cup of cooked barley (cook according to the package)
1/2 cucumber diced
2 tbsp diced red onion
1 handful of chopped cilantro
big handful of grape tomatoes, cut in half
balsamic vinaigrette
lemon
salt and pepper
baby spinach
Optional: whatever other veggies you might like... hot peppers, olives, maybe a green apple?

Let's do it!
Throw the beans, barley, and veggies (except spinach) plus maybe about 2 tbsp of vinaigrette and a squeeze of lemon into a leak-proof container. Give it a taste. Season with a dash of salt, and more lemon, pepper and vinaigrette as needed. In an effort to use less salt, try adding more balsamic or lemon instead. What you're looking for is a nice, full flavour, without destroying your kidneys. Let this marinate in the fridge. Shake it up every couple of hours to really let the flavours meld. Or eat it right away, whatever.

If you've never made balsamic vinaigrette before, it's very simple. 1:1 ratio of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Put in a jar and shake. Because my coworkers don't steal food, I have a bottle of both balsamic and olive oil in the cupboard. I put them in a jar and shake before pouring over my salads. Yes, you're also supposed to add some mustard, chopped garlic and salt, but I don't always do it and it ends up just fine. I tend to put a little more balsamic than olive oil, but only because I love sour flavours.

Lunch it up!
If you're going to eat your lunch within maybe 4 hours, you can throw your spinach in a container, then top with the bean salad and some more dressing. The dressing will season the spinach without making it too soggy. If you love your spinach crunchy, package it in a separate container. If you can, bring some vinaigrette in a jar so you can season it to taste when you get to work. I tend to drench my salads in dressing, particularly balsamic vinaigrette, thus my salad-dressing supplies at work.

There you have it, a healthy lunch that combines whole grains, protein, dark greens and vitamin C! This recipe will yield about 4 servings, which makes it a great thing to make on a Sunday night and eat throughout the week.

Salami and Bean salad

Last week I almost exclusively ate salami sandwiches for lunch. It was a mix of laziness and a weird craving I was having. I still had a little left over, and wanted to make something somewhat healthy and easy so here it is: Salami and Bean Salad.

Ingredients
1 can mixed beans, drained and rinsed well
5 slices of salami, chopped
some olives
a handful of mint leaves, chopped

Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tbsp finely minced onion
1/4 tsp dried oregano
salt


Let's do it!
First make the dressing. Combine all the ingredients into an airtight container and shake shake shake!

Then mix the salad ingredients. To chop the mint leaves, place them all on top of one another, roll lengthwise and chop into little slices. You can also add ingredients like red onions, tomatoes, edamame, spinach, whatever.


Lunch it up!
I kept the salad and dressing separate, since I didn't use all the dressing for the salad. I like to make extra and just have it in the fridge at work.

The salad was actually quite good, the mint was a nice touch, as was the spicy/salty salami. It's still probably not the healthiest thing I could have eaten, but the leftovers had to go.

Chicken and bean tacos/rice

No exaggeration, I got a phone call from my coworker, demanding that I tell her what I was having for lunch, since it smelled so delicious. Let me tell you, it tastes as good as it smells.

Ingredients
1 chicken leg (or big chicken breast, whatever), skin separated and reserved, meat diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1/2 green pepper, diced
1/2 jalapeno pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves chopped
1/2 cup pinto beans
2 tbsp chili powder
3 tbsp chopped cilantro
1 tbsp oil
1/4 cup tomato sauce

cooked rice and/or tortillas

Let's do it!
Mix the meat, chili powder, cilantro, oil and a bit of salt in a bowl and set aside to marinate (in the fridge, preferably)

Heat a pan on medium and put the chicken skin in it. Cook until the fat renders out and you have some oil for frying everything else. (If you're thinking "ew", perhaps you should know that the key to making things delicious is salt and fat. Because you're getting some fat in you, your body will probably register as fuller earlier and for longer.) Throw in the onion, green pepper and jalapeno. Stir fry until soft. At this point, you can take the skin out and toss it. Unless you're a disgusting person like me, in which case you will keep it in to keep the fatty goodness in the meal.

Add the garlic and beans and saute for another few minutes, until the garlic takes on a goldish hue. Apparently cooking the beans longer takes the gassiness out of them. I don't know if this is true, but beans don't seem to result in hilarious gas with me as they seem to do in popular culture.

Add tomato sauce and chicken mixture and saute until the chicken is cooked.

Lunch it up!
If you're me, then you will pour this mixture over some cooked wild and brown rice. If you're my husband, you will wrap it up in a flour tortilla (mixed with rice, maybe? For fibre? Who am I kidding? It's probably going to be processed cheese slices.). Either way, this is a great way to get a ton of veggies in you with the delicious savouriness of meat, without going meat crazy. I had mine with some field greens in balsamic vinegar and oil, just to get the dark leafy green content in.

Quinoa and Other Stuff Salad

Otherwise known as the "Quinoa and whatever else I have laying around" salad.

Quinoa is supposed to be super good for you, so I try to make it as often as I can.

Ingredients
1/2 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed well
3/4 cup water
Any veggies, beans, etc. you have laying around
1 lemon or some kind of vinegar
Same amount of some kind of oil
salt

Let's do it!
Throw the quinoa and water in a rice cooker and turn it on. If you don't have a rice cooker, boil the water, throw in the quinoa, simmer and cover. Drain if necessary.

Rinse/chop any veggies you have laying around. I had frozen edamame, chickpeas and tomatoes.

Measure up 1:1 lemon or vinegar and oil in a glass jar. Put in some salt. I also tossed in a bit of dried basil. You can use fresh basil or whatever light herb you like. Shake shake shake!

Mix everything up in a container with a lid.

Enjoy!