I didn’t take a picture of this, but I had to post, because it was fantastic. Also, the girl complained a lot and tried to get me to give the extra plain rice that I made for a future meal, but when she finally tried it, she loved it!

I was looking around online, trying to find all my old blogs on my new computer, when I came across this tahini onion sauce recipe. I love tahini, and I like to use recipes that we can customize at the table without me feeling like I am making separate meals. A sauce that everyone can choose to add or not add is ideal for this. It came together quickly, too.

For the lentils and rice, I cooked up the rice, then added some pre-cooked lentils from Trader Joe’s and seasoned the dish with a small palmful of ground cumin, maybe about half as much dried oregano, and a few shakes of Mrs. Dash Original Blend. I put about half an onion, sliced thinly, in a small skillet with some Earth Balance while I cooked the rice and made the tahini sauce. Since I wanted them good and carmelized, I mostly ignored them for 10 or 15 minutes (maybe longer), just stirring occasionally to make sure it all got browned and sweet.

On the side we had green and purple beans from the garden. Well, not actually my garden, but the gardeners brought some from other gardens they do, and we will be getting the same thing from our garden soon. They told me the purple beans would turn green when steamed, so I made sure the kids looked at them before I put them in the microwave to steam. They were originally a very dark, bright purple, making for an interesting experiment. They did come out green–a little mottled, but definitely green. The kids thought that was fun.

For dessert, sliced watermelon, which is always a big hit with the children.

The girl was convinced that she would hate the lentils and rice, but she loved it. The boy loved it, too, which I new he would. But he was also adventurous and tried the sauce. He didn’t like it, but at least he tried it. I loved the sauce. I could probably carmelize an onion every day and happily eat it, but I think that might be going overboard. The people around me may not appreciate that! But at least I can enjoy some carmelized onion here, without worrying about kids complaining (or having to share!)

Man, I love this cookbook! I have had it for a while, but for some reason, I didn’t use it until recently. A couple of weeks ago I got it out and realized that I should have been using it all along, because there are a lot of awesome recipes. I made the fruit dip for a picnic at the local Shakespeare festival, but I have no picture. It was really good, though, and I loved how it was all healthy and still felt like a treat.

Last week I got a delivery from my gardeners with radishes, lettuce, spinach and fresh parsley, so I decided to find another recipe to try. I didn’t find much for the veggies, but I did find a great recipe for some fresh herbs–Peacefrog’s Artichoke Heart Pasta. I used the parsley and some basil from out in my garden. It was so delicious and easy! I did get a picture of this one:

Doesn’t that look delicious? I pretty much followed the recipe as is, although I did use a bunch of grape tomatoes instead of one large tomato, and I just used water instead of vegetable stock, but it was still great.

Tonight I got this cookbook out again, but I had to use a bit more creativity. I made Karen’s Mexican Burrito Pie, but I only had three tortillas instead of the five the recipe called for, and I was out of shredded cheese and pinto beans. I had some sliced cheese and black beans, though, so I used those instead. I think the cheese may not be entirely vegan, and I honestly prefer Tofutti, which is vegan. Next time I will get that, but this was still an awesome casserole.

I can’t seem to add another picture, so I will continue this in another post….

I read a lot of vegan blogs with fantastic gourmet recipes. I love to see people showing that great meals do not need to center around a hunk of rotting flesh, or baby animal milk. People do some truly amazing things. But in general, that is not me.

I just want to get dinner on the table most nights. I want my food to have nutrition and flavor, but I am not passionate about making it just right or gourmet, or taking a long time. There are so many things I want to do in life, and cooking is definitely one of them, but only one. I want to get good food made in the smallest amount of time that is necessary. Sometimes that is not such a small time, but some nights it has to be fast, or we can’t do it. Here are some examples of fast meals we have done lately.

First, I described my recipe for fast vegan fried rice awhile back, but here is a picture:

Doesn’t that look healthy and delicious? The kids even like it. The boy had seconds and the girl ate hers without too much convincing (although she did try to convince me that she wasn’t that hungry, a holdover from a virus she had the week before–she didn’t complain about the taste, though). Every time I make rice these days, I make some extra so that we can have this later in the week. It is super fast, nutritious and we all like it.

Here is an even faster way to use up leftover rice:

For this one, I used fried tofu I got from the international foods market, along with a canned Thai soup and frozen green beans. I had to add some sriracha hot sauce to mine, but my friend said it was very good.

So, there you have it: some fast to the table, but still flavorful vegan meals. I hope this gives someone some good ideas for quick family meals that don’t sacrifice flavor or your food convictions.

I feel kind of yucky today. I have had a cough for a couple of weeks now, and I could tell that I was fighting off a worse illness. For the most part, though, I felt successful. I made sure to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. I kept working out. I tried to get enough sleep, successfully most nights. I thought I was winning the fight.

When I woke up feeling kind of sore and achy all over today, I put it down to the hard workout I did last night. Unfortunately, I am now thinking it is more than that. I am really, really tired, and not in a “I’ve done a lot today” way. I am still pretty achy, and even though I did work out hard last night, I usually don’t stay this sore all day from a workout. I feel really warm, too, although that may be a consequence of living on the top floor of a building with the forced air, radiator heat, with the thermometer on the first floor.

Despite all this, I did not want to abandon my plan to finally cook dinner tonight. My kitchen has been a mess lately, due to a combination of being legitimately busy, and just not feeling like cleaning it. I have eaten at home some, but just sandwiches and fruit, or microwaving frozen food. Tonight we didn’t have anywhere to go after work and school, so I resolved to clean my kitchen up and cook dinner. But I didn’t feel like cooking at all.

Road’s End Organics came to my rescue. Their Shells and Chreese was perfect for just this situation. It was easy to make from the box and completely dairy-free. I added peas to it and felt like it was semi-nutritious. And mac and cheese is such great comfort food. Not being able to eat macaroni and cheese is one of the big drawbacks of being vegan, I thought. But, now I can! And the kids love it, too, which is a double bonus.

We didn’t sit around the table, but at least we all ate food I cooked at home, and it was at least semi-nutritious.

I don’t have a dishwasher. Like most people, I hate washing dishes. I have been cooking a lot more lately. All of these things came together tonight into a huge pile of dishes and no desire to cook a whole meal.

I had Curried Noodles with Veggies on the menu tonight, but I also had a lot of leftover Curried Fruited Couscous from my vegetarian potluck at work today. I mean, a LOT of leftover couscous. We have not had a huge group lately, so I made a bunch so that we would be sure to have plenty of food for those of us who did come. We did have a relatively big group of people show up today, though–a total of 9 people, and everyone brought a lot of good food. I didn’t think another curried pasta dish would be a good thing to make, even though they are pretty different recipes. They are too close for a lot of leftovers at once.

So, when we got home, I asked the kids what they wanted for dinner. Predictably, they both said pizza. This sounded like a good plan to me, since it didn’t involve the stove top, which was disturbingly full of dirty dishes (I am short on counter space in my kitchen, so the stove top does double duty). Even better, the girl volunteered the information that she could make the pizza herself. I started on the mound of dishes, and she got to work. Our shredded soy cheese was no good, but I had slices of Tofutti cheese in mozzarella and American flavors, and she was thrilled to be given a knife to cut the cheese to scatter on the pizza. The boy snacked on golden raisins, and both kids had extra slices of cheese during the prep time. After the pizza went in the oven, I had an appetizer of the couscous. I watched over the baking while working on the dish mountain as the girl impressed her brother with her Spiderman video game playing skills.

The pizza turned out really yummy. We all really enjoyed it, and I think we could have made a significant dent in a second one if it had been available. It was really nice to have my daughter make the dinner tonight, mostly. I need to go tell her how much I appreciate it before she goes to sleep.