Recipe Thief

Good morning, Sunshines! Happy FRIDAY. Happy WEEKEND. What will you do? I have a long run and some cleaning planned, but nothing fun...

During this past week, I've been able to try some new (to me) recipes, and while I usually try to be original with my recipe content, I got a lot of mileage from a couple other people's recipes this week. These recipes were so good that...

1) One is vegan. And the fiance has requested it repeated it not once, not twice, but THREE times. So good.

2) The other is a vegetarian casserole-type dish and it was almost gone in 24 hours. We ate it for dinner, lunch, snacks...basically everything except breakfast (because breakfast was covered by #1).

Ok, so this is what happened. I've been eyeing Angela's Vegan Oat Parfaits for a long time...but it's really warm weather food, and it was too cold in Iowa. Then last week Lauren reminded me that it was a recipe worth trying. And she is similarily addicted now.

 This is a perfect, filling, protein heavy breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack food. It takes a little prep, but it is fully customizable.

Angela's recipe is perfect, so I just used her basic recipe, and then I started playing with the flavors. She has tried every variety imagineable, so I'm really excited to play with the flavors as well. 

The three we tried were:

Original layered with raspberry puree, sliced strawberries, and kashi go-lean crunch

Cardamom-almond layered with blueberries and strawberries

Chocolate layered with raspberry puree and almond butter sauce

So amazing. I am also inspired by Gina's Meyer Lemon Lavendar Macaroons...maybe we'll have some coconut, lemon zest, lavendar oat parfaits in the future? Yummmmmm.

Recipe #2?

Black Eyed Peas and Cornmeal Biscuits from Meghann at Meals and Miles.

I was doubtful. The fiance was sure he wasn't going to like it. But from this really simple, easily customizable recipe rose a meal so delicious that we abandoned snacks in favor of eating more of this delicious, nutritious stew.

This one we didn't completely follow Meghann's recipe, so I'll tell you what I did. But I should emphasize that this is so perfectly customizable, you could probably use any bean, any veg, and any herbs. It's really just a concept piece.

1/2 yellow onion

2 small carrots

1 celery stalk

1/2 butternut squash

1/2 c frozen peas

1 tbsp garlic

1 tbsp savory (it's an herb - use whatever you like)

1.5 c frozen or canned black eyed peas

2 c chicken stock

1 tbsp flour

Biscuit mix

1.5 c WW flour

1/2 c cornmeal

1 tbsp baking soda

1.5 c milk

Chop veggies small for quick cooking. Saute onion, carrot, celery, and squash. When onion is translucent, add garlic, herbs, and a hefty pinch of salt and pepper. Stir in peas and beans. Transfer to greased oven-proof dish. In a bowl or cup, whisk flour into cold chicken stock and add to veg mixture (prevents clumping). 

Seperately, mix together biscuit components. Very gently, roll out to 1 in thick and cut out rounds. Top stew mixture with rounds. I had extra and cooked the remaining biscuits for 15 minutes on a cookie sheet while the stew was cooking. 

Stew cooks with biscuit topping for 45 min at 350. 

Biscuits are also good with some smart balance and jam, and because they are whole grain, they fit perfectly into my detox! 

Speaking of detox, I'll do an update this weekend on how it's going. I'm almost to day 10 of 14...and I can already tell my healthy eating is coming back. More on that later!