veganomicon | healthy laps

sloppy joes, veggie-style

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Jen

How is everyone doing today?

The week seems to be flying by so far…maybe because I am excited for the holiday weekend!

I started my morning with a juice to-go. I needed to use up some fruits and veggies from our CSA last week, so a juice was definitely in order.

Kale + extra kale ribs
2 carrots
celery
1 green apple
1/2 lemon
lime
knob of ginger

This wasn’t as sweet as I would have liked. Probably because the apple was tart, but it did the trick and energized me for the day.

I also snacked on 2 pieces of Manna Bread with peanut butter!

For lunch, I mixed up the Honey Balsamic Bean Salad from 101cookbooks (my favorite recipe website!!).

It has a hint of sweetness from the honey, but is balanced out nicely from the balsamic. I really enjoyed it and would absolutely make this again!

I ate a portion with some cherries.

And, a yogurt for a snack.

Dinner was delicious! (But, a little spicy!)

I made up some Vegetarian Sloppy Joes (Snobby Joes from Veganomicon).

I replaced the onion with turnips from our CSA and doubled the amount of tomato sauce. Other than that, I kept everything the same! I did add a little extra chile powder by mistake which made them super spicy!! But, if you got past that, they were great. 🙂

Served open faced on a whole wheat hamburger bun.

Topped with feta cheese and served with freshly picked sugar snap peas sauteed in a little butter.

They stayed crunchy and were very sweet. Delicious dinner!

Off to relax…

Filed under: Eating Laps, Recipes | Tagged: beans, dinner, juice, veganomicon, vegetables | 2 Comments »

pineapple cashew quinoa

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Jen

On my goodness – this was amazing!

I recently purchased the cookbook, Veganomicon due to all of the rave reviews it has received. I was looking for a vegan cookbook to try out some stuff, so I figured, why not?!

We had girls night tonight, so I thought it was the perfect time to make a fun springy recipe.

Enter: Pineapple-Cashew-Quinoa

You can find the recipe here!

It was sweet and spicy at the same time, and the flavors all worked really well together.

I decided to use both white and red quinoa to make it prettier. Red and white quinoa have the same health properties. The only difference is the color! Quinoa is most commonly referred to as a grain, but it is actually the seed of a leafy plant, related to spinach, beets and Swiss chard. It has a very delicate taste, and therefore, takes on the taste of the foods that you mix it with or cook it with (like pineapple juice!). It is considered a complete protein and is very rich in iron, potassium and dietary fiber. It is very easily digested!

The recipe recommends that you cook the quinoa in 1/2 water and 1/2 pineapple juice, so I did just that. I cut up a pineapple and reserved 4 cups of pineapple chunks, then juiced the rest for cooking.

While the quinoa was cooking, I got to work chopping up the remaining ingredients, including red peppers, chili peppers, scallions, basil and mint. It is important to have everything chopped up ahead of time, because once you start cooking everything gets added to the pot quite quickly.

I started by toasted the cashews over medium-low heat until toasted.

Once the cashews are toasted (it took about 7 minutes), place them in a separate bowl and turn the heat in your pan up to medium heat. Then add sesame oil, scallions and garlic and saute for about 5 minutes, until garlic sizzles.

At this point, we were chatting, so I forgot to snap photos of each step :). But, after the garlic sizzles, you add the chile peppers (above), and then the peppers, peas and quinoa. Once heated through, add the basil and mint for 2 minutes, then the pineapple and cashews.