Showing posts with label Quinoa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quinoa. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2011

Liebster Award + Quinoa Basil Stir Fry (under $7)

Previous post: 4 ingredient African Stew for under $8.  I hope you all check it out and try it.



I was awarded the Liebster Blog Award by Nuestracena-Vegan Cuisine  who is just too sweet.

"Liebster" in German means 'dearest' or 'beloved'.  In this case I think it means 'favorite'.

The rules of winning this award are as follows:
1. Show your thanks to those who gave you the award by linking back to them.
2. Reveal 5 of your top picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Enjoy the love and support of some wonderful people on the www!

I get so much from all of your blogs and it's so nice to see the vegan love all around us.  Every blog is special but there are always those that stand out to each of us a bit more.  The following blogs do that for me.

happyveganface - Jessy always seems to bring a smile to my face when I read her blogs and with her comments too.  Along with her wonderful GF recipes.
VegSpinz - she always amazes me with her food art and original recipes
MELOMEALS: $3.33 A DAY - fresh, colorful, nutritious meals for under $3.33.
seitan is my motor - lots of beautiful and original baked goods

Thank you ladies!

Since my last post was a meal under $8 I thought I'd reshare the Quinoa Basil Tofu that cost's under $7 to make.  See vegan food doesn't have to cost much.
Have a great day!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Almost Rawnola and tempeh taco's

A beautiful day out today with no wind...nice! Summer is slowly creeping upon us.  The school year ends in 2 weeks for Keaton, then it's 3 months of summer vacation.  Wow time flies.

Before I move on with the food post I would like to mention a great site to look at and it's
called Forks Over Knives.  Some of you may already heard about it but for those of you who haven't or maybe are dipping into a plant based diet and and wanting to get your health back in your hands then check it out.  I truly believe food is our medicine and if you look at the many diseases out there and the people who have them you will notice the way they eat and or don't eat the proper food.  Now I know
that chemicals do play a part in some cases of disease so let's choose products for our body and home that are less harmful.  If we buy cleaner products and eat a plant based and mostly organic, unprocessed diet we can overcome many, many diseases and reverse them.  Hey it's easy to just pop a pill for high blood pressure or cholesterol or for almost anything now a days, but once people take one pill for something it then leads to more pills for other ailments.  Don't people think about what each of those pills are doing to their body?    It takes more work to change the way you eat than to pop a pill so maybe that's why they continue to do what they do.    My dad has many health issues  and yet he still eats eggs,meat and cheese and even though he takes his pills his arteries are still clogging up and his diabetes isn't going away and his kidneys are a wreck!  Not once does he think about eliminating these foods.  He called me one day to ask me if I've  heard about some oil that is supposed to clean your arteries.  He has no problems taking supplements  but he won't eliminate fiberless, saturated fat and cholesterol laden foods from his diet.  I don't want the health issues my dad has. 

What about our kids?  We do everything to protect them from bad people and teach them how to be safe but are we letting them put bad food in their bodies that can harm them?  It's our responsibility to teach them how to eat properly so they can live a healthy, long and medication free life.  Why do you think they have constant colds, could it be from the mucus forming foods from dairy and eggs?  These products are also full of saturated fat and cholesterol.  Kids arteries are starting to clog up at an early age due to the way they eat. We have control of what we give our kids to eat. let's start when they are young.  I'm so tired of hearing people talk about kid friendly foods and how kids are picky.  Who makes them picky?  The parents let them be picky.  Sure your little one might not like a food right a way but don't give up.  I always served Keaton what we ate but on a smaller scale and if he didn't eat it it the first time I didn't stop putting it on his plate.  Over time he ate it.  I want to be a part of my sons life for a long time and choosing a kinder and healthier lifestyle is the way to go, also if I didn't take care of myself that would be selfish of me.  I also want my son to be around a long time and I am trying to teach him how. I really recommend reading Disease Proof Your Kids by Joel Fuhrman with regards to kids and disease.  The human body is amazing and it can heal if we nourish it.    Give your kids the gift of a healthy and compassionate life by changing your life, with the food you eat and the way you live. 

I made this fabulous granola that's technically a rawnola recipe but I don't have a dehydrater(yet).  I found this recipe at HLife and by clicking here you can get the recipe.  I added about 1/2C. of rolled oats and 1 T. raw organic coconut oil.  I baked in the oven at about 175 with the door opened for about 5 hrs.
This rawnola(granola) makes for a great breakfast and keeps me full for hours.  Here I have the granola, bananas and rice milk.  It's nice to have this for a change instead of a smoothie every morning.  This also tastes really good with coconut yogurt...yummy!  
 Thursdays are our mexican food themed night and sometimes instead of the usual spanish or mexican rice I'll use quinoa instead.  It's so easy, you just use your favorite mexican rice recipe and change out the rice for quinoa. 
 My recipe is the following:
1C. Quinoa, rinsed
oil to saute
2 C. veggie broth or water
2 tomatoes, diced
3 spring onions
1 garlic clove, minced
spices I use are(I don't usually measure just eye it and taste it) 
 cumin, chilli powder, oregano, and salt (or seasoned salt)

Heat oil in a saute pan then add quinoa or rice and cook until brown, stirring often not to burn.  Next add the water and the rest of the ingredients.  Bring to a boil.  Once boiling cover with lid, lower heat to low and cook for about 20minutes. If using brown rice it will need to cook for 40min. 
Tempeh tacos!!!  This one goes out to Jessy at HappyVeganFace cuz I used mustard as you can see. lol!  I know you may think this is weird but growing up we used to eat them this way and I was just in the mood mustard. I did add some tomato, avocado and taco sauce  but I guess I took the pic prematurely.  The taco shells are baked, I just spray or brush oil on them and bake at 375.  For the tempeh filling I usually steam my tempeh before I use it just to get rid of some of the bitter taste.  Then in a pan with a bit of oil I brown the crumbled tempeh and add a taco seasoning or I'll add my own.  If you do purchase taco seasoning make sure you buy one without whey, I notice that most of them do contain some sort of dairy in them.  To make your own seasoning you can use, cumin, powdered garlic, chilli powder, oregano, onion powder, paprika and salt.  I will add a bit of water to the tempeh mixture in the pan just so it's not so dry and sometimes I'll even add a squirt of ketchup as well and mix well.
Enjoy!  It's Survivor night tonight!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Take a hike and Quinoa Salad

Happy Saturday morning to you.  I hope you are all having a great weekend.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow.  I'd rather it be sunny but I know the more rain we have the better it is for us out here in California.

Lots to catch up on and I have some real pretty pics to share from a hike Dave and I took a week ago.
First let me say my wrist is better, yay!

 Also my son got home safe from his 6th grade trip and he had a great time.  They went to Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria.  One of the first things he said was how good the food was and the head chef was really nice.  The chef told Keaton that he was the first vegan to cook for.  Every night when Keaton went into the kitchen to get his dinner the chef would ask Keaton questions about being vegan.  Also the last two mornings he was served pancakes and french toast( which I was told had bananas in it)so anyways, he thought that was pretty cool.  So being vegan has it's perks! hee hee. Last year in 5th grade and for summer camp he went to Rancho Allegre, which is close to us, and the "Naturalists" there are either vegetarian or vegan so Keaton would eat what they did.  So for dinner he would go to the kitchen to get his meal, which he thought was pretty cool and special.  He ate like, stuffed acorn squash and portobello mushrooms and pasta, sound like meals and a nice restaurant doesn't it?  It's so nice to know that when my kid is at camp he isn't going hungry.



So here are some pic's of the hike we took up in the Figueroa Mountains.  The cool thing about many of the areas where we hike, there are parts that are shady and those grow tons of ferns all those pretty shade plants.  This one to the right looks kind of lilypad like, it felt a bit on the rubbery side. Then when you get into the sunny parts of the hike the plants change.  There is alot of water coming down from those mountains. 
Before heading up the mountain.
This is a view from the highest point we hiked to.  We want to go to the top which is probably an hour longer to get to.
There are california poppies everywhere right now!

The beginning of a pine cone.
There were a few of these pretty blue butterflies in this certain area. 
I must finish the post with a tasty quinoa salad.  The ingredients are listed below.
In a small bowl mix together
2 C. quinoa, cooked
1 small red bell pepper, diced,
3 scallions, chopped
1/2 C. celery, diced
black olives, chopped
1/2 C. sprouted firm tofu, diced
then pour the vinegarette over and mix well
vinegarette:
extra virgin oilive oil
rice vinegar
agave
s&p
Eat at room temp or cold.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Enjoy your beets!

I just used up the last of my beets for this delicious juice. Beets, celery, apples and carrots! My son raved about this one, I think because it was pretty sweet. See it can be sweet without the sugar!


Don't throw out those beet greens, these green leafs are sweet and packed with goodness. Facts about Beet Greens: they contain large amounts of vitamins K and A, along with large amounts of anti-oxidants beta Carotene and Lutein. They are also packed with calcium. So my lunch was loaded with good stuff. Lightly sauteed beet greens, quinoa, fresh grated carrots and walnuts. Dash of salt and herbs.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Garden Loaf with Sweet Potato Salad

Garden Loaf
Sweet Potato Salad
I'm back again! It's the end of the school year and we've been busy, busy, busy!
We have a couple of favorite veggie loaves that we really like but it's always nice to try something new. As you have noticed I posted and will continue to post recipes from Karina's Kitchen and especially now that we are trying to eliminate more wheat from our diet. You can get the recipe for this very tasty Garden Loaf with Apricot Glaze at Karina's Kitchen. The only change I made was to this recipe was that I added more spinach and since it needed to stick together more, I added extra ketchup and agave. That was it! This is so delicious!!! I love the use of Quinoa and the apricot glaze is perfect on top. It's kind of sweet but the flavors are just so......lovely. It was a bit soft to plate but once it's cooler it slices really nice and it made some great sandwich's and lettuce wraps the follwing day. You really need to give this a try!
Now for the sweet potato salad... this was so good! My mother-in-law, son and I were ordering lunch at the local health food store and we saw this wonderful potato salad sitting behind the glass that the gal let us try and it ROCKED!!! We had to get some to go and I will be making this on my own because we wrote down the ingredients that were listed...hee hee. Since the salad is already sweet and the dressing has agave in it, I don't think they used very much. The dressing on here is very, very light, just enough to coat it and you can taste just a hint of dijon, but not too strong. Here are the ingredients if you would like to try this one out.
Sweet potatoes, olive oil, dijon, agave, red onions-very thinly sliced, parsley, salt to taste. I'm not sure if there was any vinegar, if so there not alot.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Quinoa, basil and tofu / ALSO DON'T FORGET THE GIVEAWAY ONE POST DOWN FROM THIS!!!

This is so easy to make. Seriously. The original recipe is on the box of a
Trader Joe's Quinoa box that I saw years ago. Here's my version.
Quinoa, basil & tofu
1 C. Quinoa , dry
2 C. vegetable broth
1 bunch of basil, chiffanade
2 bell peppers, yellow, orange, red (your choice)
2 C. yellow onion, sliced
5 cloves garlic, sliced
8 oz. extra firm tofu
1 tsp. oregano
s & p
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp garlic, minced
In a small saucepan bring 2 C. water to boil then add 1 C. Quinoa. Cover and turn down heat to low and cook for about 25 min. Once done turn off heat.
Rinse, drain and dry tofu. Dice tofu and coat with a bit of olive oil, 1 tsp minced garlic, 1/2 tsp. thyme and a bit of salt to taste. Broil on low in oven just until slightly brown. Set aside once done.
Heat up a large pan and add 1 T. olive oil. Then add the onions,bell pepper & garlic, cook until just starting to get soft. Add about 1 tsp oregano cook for another 1 minute. Next add the Quinoa, basil and tofu mix thoroughly and turn off heat. Add salt and pepper to taste. I drizzled a bit of basil olive oil on top.
Enjoy!