Eggplant Green Bean Pasta with Tomato Lentil Sauce

It's the end of my food week so I clearly needed to get rid of some veggies. This is a meal that dirtied a ton of dishes and was not really quick. But it was fun and delicious.

Eggplant Green Bean Pasta with Tomato Lentil Sauce

• .25c lentils
• 2 plum tomatoes, chopped
• 1/2 large red onion, chopped/diced

• 1-2TB olive oil
• 1 eggplant, cubed
• 3-5c green beans, trimmed and cut into bite sized pieces

• 3/4c dry rye pasta, cooked

Combine the first 3 ingredients in a pot, cover with water, and boil until lentils become very tender, adding water as necessary. Add salt and pepper to taste. Blend 1/2 of it together.

Heat oil in skillet or pot. Add eggplant and cook 5-10 minutes until starts to become tender. Add green beans and cook to desired consistency. Add salt to taste.

Mix pasta and eggplant/green beans together. Top with sauce. Sooooo good.

Deconstructed Green Bean Casserole

I blame Top Chef for me using words like "deconstructed." I don't know if what I did fits, but I'm going to pretend like it does and that I'm an amazing chef.

I thought of this recipe yesterday while making my "cream" of mushroom soup and almost couldn't wait a whole day to make it. It was pretty simple and contained 3 things:

1. Green beans- about 3 cups trimmed on both ends and steamed.


2. 2 cups of "cream" of mushroom soup, which was about half the recipe (though I added a little pepper)


3. 1 large red onion, cut in half and sliced in half rings, tossed with some olive oil and roasted on 375 for 20 minutes, stirring every 5.

I put the green beans on the plate, topped with he soup, and topped with the onions. Voila!

Just what I expected- and better than the original. "Fried onions" in a can scare me and roasted onions are definitely healthier and tastier. Next time I'd add a little salt on top of the green beans and maybe cut them into smaller pieces so they fit on my spoon. Or I could use a fork...

Red Beans and Bulgur with a Side of Roasted Green Beans

Culinary mental block is no joking matter. Especially when you rely on yourself to prepare all of your meals.

I thought long and hard all day about what to make for dinner to no avail by the time I got home. A quick trip to the corner grocery netted peanut butter and oatmeal- no good for dinner. Somehow, luckily, while I was walking the dog in the bitter cold I thought of red beans and rice, probably because I associate chili with the cold weather. I have something against rice, even brown rice, though. So I went with bulgur, the grain love of my life (as are barley and quinoa).

It was pretty simple- I sauteed some red onion until translucent, added 3TB tomato paste, .5c bulgur, and 1 can dark red kidney beans. Seasoned with Tony Sacheries and voila, dinner.

I also made one of my favorite things of all time: roasted green beans. Really, you can pretty much roast any vegetable and it will be my favorite. I just rinsed from fresh green beans, snipped off the ends, and tossed lightly with some olive oil and salt. I roasted them on 400ish for 20ish minutes, stirring every so often. These barely made it to the table before I devoured them.

Easy Meals for the Lazy Chef

Coming back from a long Thanksgiving and then preparing for another one-night stand with a celebrity in LA (relax, it's just an overnight dash from the East coast over to the West coast to play with someone famous), I hoped to minimize my time in the kitchen. So lunch the next 2 days is a strange concoction that somehow tastes fabulous:



Creamy Tomato Green Bean Soup

Boil .5 cup brown rice in 1 can veggie broth for about 10 or 15 minutes. Add 3 cups fresh green beans (and more water/broth if necessary) and cook until green beans are done. Meanwhile, using your handy dandy immersion blender attachment (or a blender), blend .5 block of silken tofu (firm), 2 TB tomato paste, and some canned chipotle in adobo sauce. When the green beans are done or almost done, add the creamy mixture to the pot and add salt to season. Stir until thoroughly mixed. Enjoy the strangest but most delightful concotion you've had in awhile.



Chipotle Polenta with Lime Infused Spinach/Artichoke/Roasted Garlic

I'm fairly certain you can guess from the title what's in it. I boiled some polenta, salt, and chipotle powder (which I will use for chipotle brownies soon!) until creamy. At the same time I boiled one package of frozen spinach and one package of frozen artichokes, which I didn't know existed. I added some salt and roasted garlic and cooked until piping hot. I added the lime juice, stirred, then piled atop the chipotle polenta and added jennilicious' favorite plant- cilantro. Some of the bites were amazing...and some were just ok. I'm not sure how that can happen. Yes, that's my unsweetened homemade cranberry ginger ale.

The Blog is Back!

The past 3 months have been insane with travel taking up nearly 50% of my time. So now I've decided to go back to food blogging- but really only because I've been eating some good things and can't remember them. So, no, it's not about the 10 of you who actually read this. It's about my failing memory....



One of my greatest creations that saved me on 2 separate trips in November was lentils, green beans, and whole wheat pasta with some salt and garlic olive oil. I simply made it the night before (well, the 2nd time I made it the morning I left), let it sit and marinate, then enjoyed on the plane as everyone else was eating the crappy plane food. I even got desperate the second time and grabbed some canned green beans and it was still delicious.



This week I also experimented with stuffed acron squash and lentil loaf. Yes, I said lentil loaf. I followed this reciple for the squash, but made it my own so that it ended up being:



2 gigantic acorn squash

.75 cup wild rice, .25 cup brown rice

2 veggie bouillon cubes 2 cans veggie broth

2 tablespoons olive oil

a large yellow onion

2-3 stalks of celery

1/4 cup (or so) chopped walnuts

2TB each fresh tarragon and sage

3 cloves garlic

1/3 cup fresh cranberries

salt

ground black pepper to taste



Then I followed the general cooking instructions, adding the cranberries at the same time as the walnuts and the herbs as close to the end as possible. I either undercooked the rice inititally or overcooked it when reheating in the oven because it was pretty crunchy, which was a little less than ideal. But it was still very tasty.



The lentil loaf was lentil, yes, but not loaf. I think some of my issues were that I didn't know if 2 cups of lentils meant 2 cups dry, cooked, or 2 cups of cooked lentils. Then I didn't have breadcrumbs so I substituted 2 pieces of stale bread. And I had no marinara sauce, so I added some tomato paste and chili powder. Looking back, I should have added more tomatoes and spices and let it sit in the loaf pan to cool. Instead, I wasted no time in turning it out onto a plate where it quickly became lentil mush. But I didn't touch it, mostly because my dinner guest had to postpone until the next night. So the next night I got it back in the loaf pan to heat it up (I'm scared of the microwave) and it was more loaflike, but less flavorfull than I hoped. I made a sauce for the top that consisted of 3 roma tomatoes, cilantro, chili powder, and 2 tb tomato paste blended together. It was alright the first night but inedible the second night. You know I still ate it though.

Tofu, I'm Not Scared of You!

My camera has no batteries because it evidently takes a LOT of power to take 30 pictures.

Since I'm going to the beach this weekend and Iowa for the Livestrong Presidential Cancer Forum, I wanted to use up my produce. I purchased some portabellas on a whim this week, and I had some green beans. I needed some protein, though, so I decided to throw in some tofu, too.

I pan-fried the firm tofu I'd cubed in a light layer of olive oil spray. I actually didn't touch it, so it got nice and brown. But I didn't feel like browning all four sides so I browned 2 sides and threw in the green beans with some red wine vinegar. When those were almost done, I added strips of the shroom. Meanwhile, I cooked some couscous and topped it with the veggies. A pretty easy and tasty dish. I had no onions so next time I'll make it like I usually do my caramalizing some onions first. Yum.

Save the Vegetables! Soup

Evidently I overpurchased on veggies last week, which means that I didn't need to buy much this week, but I had to come up with a way to use them up because the thought of throwing out food makes me want to cry. So I did what I love to do- threw it all in a pot to make a soup.



On hand:

1 medium onion

6 cloves garlic (I had to buy a giant pack of garlic becuase I needed it one day and the only nearby place tht had it sold it in 6 bulb packages)

3 large yellow squashes

4 plum tomatoes

4 cups of green beans

1 medium head of cauliflower

1 cup frozen corn



1 can light kidney beans



.5 cup barley (my favorite grain)

.25 cup each quinoa and bulgur



Simply seasoned with seasalt and pepper. If it was topped with avocado, it would contain all essential food groups! It's a nice summery soup and should feed me the rest of the week- it made 5 gigantic servings.

Bean Pile

I used to make something similar to this dish fairly often a few years ago. I rediscovered it tonight and am glad I did. A coworker named the dish way back then.

I got .75c whole wheat spiral pasta going in one pot and heated up 1TB sesame oil in my frying pan. I sauteed a medium onion in the oil and added some green beans (4cups?) when the onions were transparent. I seasoned with some sea salt and red pepper flakes.

I eat green beans every week and it seems like they are the same every single time. So the sesame oil was a nice departure from the norm. Overall, the only thing I'd do differently is cut the green beans into smaller pieces so I can shove them in my mouth faster.

Green Bean Pocket

I made this last week but haven't had time to post anything since I ramped up my exercise routine. Maybe I'll post about that later...

I randomly had some whole wheat pita bread and, surprise, surprise, wanted to use it up. So I cooked some green beans in red wine vinegar, my favorite. I then added some soy milk, mustard, and nutritional yeast to make a "cheese" sauce. I let it simmer until the green beans were done and then scooped them into the pita. I put it in the oven for a little bit to get a tad crunchy. It was pretty good, fast, and easy. Should I randomly have pita again, I'll probably to something very similar.

My Favorite Meal

I recently came up with a recipe that is my absolute favorite thing ever. Chop up a large onion and sautee it in olive oil until the onion gets very clear and looks like you are about to burn it. Add some chopped garlic and brussels sprouts (greatest veggie ever) or green beans. When green beans are almost done, deglaze the pan with some red wine vinegar. Why did I have red wine vinegar? A friend willed it to me when she moved. I'd never used it before the first time I made this, and it was also my first time to deglaze a pan.

I made it last week and took it to work for lunch where no less than 3 people asked me what I'd made that smelled so good. My response, "Brussels sprouts!" Then I got a few weird looks. Just because your parents overcooked gross frozen sprouts so they tasted like crap doesn't mean they aren't absolutely delicious. You can roast them with olive oil, steam them and mash them with a little vegan butter, pan fry with onions/garlic, shred them, blend them into a soup...oh my god I have to stop.

Lately I've been trying to mix food groups instead of eating, oh, a giant plate of roasted brussels sprouts. So I made some whole wheat couscous that I had planned to add to the pan, but it was too full so I just threw it on the plate with the veggies on top. And ever since lunch a few weeks ago at Java Green, I've been obsessed with tempeh. I bought some awhile ago but let it sit in my fridge as I debated how to use it. Cubed it and tossed that right in a few minutes before the green beans.

It makes about 4 good-sized servings that are less than 400 calories a piece. (2 large onions, 9 cloves garlic, 1TB olive oil, 4 cups green beans, 8oz tempeh, 1 cup couscous)