Split Pea and Bulgur Stuffed Tomato

I was so excited about these beaufiul beefsteak tomatoes at a decent price at the grocery this weekend. I couldn't resist. I knew exactly what I'd do- stuff 'em!

Ingredients
1 medium/large red onion, chopped or diced
.5 cup yellow split peas
.5 cup bulgur
3 TB nutritional yeast
Salt/pepper to taste
2 beautiful beefsteak tomatoes

In a medium sauce pan, bring 2-3 cups of water to a boil and add onions and split peas. Cook for 15 minutes, then add bulgur. Cook for 15 minutes until the bulgur is done. Stir in nutritional yeast and salt/pepper.

Meanwhile, carefully massacre tomatoes by cutting off top and carefully scooping out the middle. Try not to rip the side or cut through the side or bottom. Put guts into stuffing and let it cook for a few minutes (5 to 15).

Add stuffing mixture to tomato and put in oven on 350 for 10 minutes or so. I'm only guessing because I royally messed this part up. I put them in for maybe 20 minutes while the stuffing cooked. I opened the oven and they had deflated. Good thing I have no camera to produce any evidence. I took my flattened tomato and topped it with the...former stuffing, now topping. I use these ingredients together all of the time, but this was definitely one of the tastest ways I've combined them. Probably because I usually mix the tomato in with it, but his time it was separate and I could really taste it.

It made 2 delicious servings and I can only imagine how amazing it would have been if the tomatoes and been little serving bowls. Next time, my friends...

Sweet Potato Lentil Burgers

I had an extra sweet potato, and, while I was tempted to make another pot of soup with it and some peanut butter, I opted for something new. I did some Googling and found someone else who's done some Googling and came up with something similar to what I wanted. These red bean, sweet potato, and quinoa patties seemed great, so I took a crack at it and made a few substitutions.

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa

1/2 cup uncooked lentils

1 medium (fist-sized) sweet potato

1 medium red onion

4-5 cloves garlic

6-7 baby carrots

1-2 TB chopped fresh basil

1-2 tsp dried basil

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 TB red wine vinegar

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/4 cup uncooked couscous in lieu of breadcrumbs

This used up a lot of pots, so I inititally cooked the lentils until tender but not quite mushy. Then at the same time in different pots, I:

1. Boiled the sweet potato that I'd cut into small chunks
   
2. Cooked the quinoa


3. Cooked the onion in a little olive oil until clear, then added garlic and carrots for another few minutes.

Once done, I added them all to a bowl that could have been slightly bigger, along with the basil, vinegar, salt and pepper. I smushed the sweet potatoes on the side of the bowl and mixed everything together. I added the couscous at the end and gave it a few more stirs. Then I let it sit in the fridge for a few hours until I was ready for it.

I'm not a big fan of frying, whether it's deep or pan. After shaping into patties, I sprayed some olive oil (my mom gave me a great pump thing so it sprays just a little pure oil) on both sides and put on a baking sheet at 350 for 20-30 minutes, flipping mid-way through the cooking time. I cranked it up to 400 for the last 10 or so minutes to get it crispier. It made 7 large patties, though I ate one before I cooked it. You can easily stretch it to 8, and I calculated there are about 1000 calories in the whole batch.

I didn't have any bread, and didn't want to make roti since the patties were slightly labor intensive. So I steamed a head of cauliflower and made a cheezy cauliflower sauce for the patties. I put about 1/2 cup of the cooked cauliflower in my immersion blender attachment (a blender is fine) and added some salt, pepper, fresh cilantro, soy milk, tahini, and nutritional yeast.

Roasted Potatoes and Onions with Cheeze Dipping Sauce

I bought some regular potatoes at the grocery store on a whim. Mostly because I wasn't ready for more sweet potatoes. I'd been dreaming of ways to cook them since they seem like a special treat because I consider them a forbidden food.

The first up in my potato madness is to continue with my roasting obsession. I cut up 2 medium potatoes into wedges, added .5 TB olive oil and some salt, and roasted on 375-400, turning every so often. I also roasted an onion (sliced then sprayed with cooking spray) because I can't stop thinking about them. And I also dreamt about a dipping sauce- Better than Sour Cream and nutritional yeast. It tastes like French onion dip to me. Amazing. Greatest dinner ever.

Ugly Soup

My recent lack of culinary innovation is scaring me. I guess I used it all up at Christmas.

Lately I've been a little obsessed with nutritional yeast. A "stand by" of mine is yellow split peas and barley with nutritional yeast, so I went with what I know. I jazzed it up with some red onion, plum tomatoes, and portobellas. I knew that the shrooms would make it a little gross, but it was pretty ugly. Tasted alright, though not as nutritional yeasty as I'd wanted.

"Creamed" Spinach

I had been dreaming about this dish all afternoon because I thought it was simply brilliant. Of course I would, I thought it up.

I steamed a head of cauliflower (left over from last week and about to be unusable), then used my badass immersion blender to cream it along with a touch of unsweetened soy milk, 2 cloves of raw garlic, salt, pepper, mustard, and nutritional yeast. I also added some water to make it soupier. Then I added an entire bag of fresh spinach (that I'd torn) and cooked until the spinach was wilted.

While brilliant in my head and no too untasty, it wasn't what I hoped because the cauliflower was so thick- the idea was that the cauliflower would be a "cream" sauce. I like creaming cauliflower, though. Well, I just like cauliflower. I'd like to make it again with some onions and mushrooms. And maybe some Better Than Cream Cheese. But still good.

I'm repurposing it tomorrow- on top a bed of yummy quinoa.

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.

Cauliflower Faux Gratin

The problem is that it's Super Bowl Sunday, which means two things. First, I'm going to eat like crap today. Second, all of my dishes are dirty because I spent the morning cooking (more on this in another post). So I decided to make some sort of vegetable based dish to make sure I have something good in me (though both the things I'm bringing are healthy, duh).

I looked around my fridge and had an old head of cauliflower, some spinach that desperately needed to be eaten, and some left over green onions from something I made this morning. Done.

I put the spinach in a dish and nuked it for 2.5 minutes until it wilted. Then I put 2 cups of soymilk in the the microwave (which I HATE using, but I had to because all of my pots and pans were in the dishwasher) and nuked it for about 3 minutes until it got pretty hot and barely started to boil. I took a small container of cold water (a couple of tablespoons?) and mixed in roughly a tablespoon of cornstarch. I didn't measure because my measuring spoons were all dirty and because I like to live dangerously. I added the milk to the spinach with some salt and pepper, a large squirt of mustard, two tablespoonsish of nutritional yeast, and the cornstarch mixture. I put it in the microwave for 3:33 (too lazy to push any other buttons, seriously) and stirred it every minute.

Meanwhile, I dismantled the cauliflower and put it in a large rectangular Pyrex baking dish and sprinkled the green onions on top. I then started to pick them out thinking that I'd put them on at the end instead. But that lasted about 2 seconds when I realized it wasn't worth the effort. So I poured the nuked cheesish mixture over the cauliflower/green onions. It wasn't liquidy enough so I just added a cup of soymilk and didn't even bother mixing it together. Popped it all in a 400 degree oven and waited patiently.

I guess it cooked for about 20 minutes and I took it out of the oven to stir it. I suggest using two oven mitts- don't try to be a badass and take it out with one hand. I came pretty close to dropping it. Because I didn't stir it initially, some of the cauliflower looked a little dry and unhappy. Next time I'll definitely stir it before putting it in the oven.

After another 20ish minutes I took it out to stir it again. The cauliflower started to get mushy but still needed more time. It was still soupier than I wanted and I debated adding some flour to thicken it up...guess I didn't need that extra cup of soymilk afterall. I put it back in the oven for another 20 minutes or so until the sauce thickened up.

And the end result? Not too bad! It clearly wasn't smothered in cheddar cheese, but the taste was far from unpleasant. Would I make it again? Yeah! Would I let someone else try it? I think I might. Jennilicious would definitely eat it, but then again we both pretty much eat anything. Next time I'd like to add some very finely chopped onion and garlic and some more spinach, but otherwise it seems like a go. It might be nice with some homemade bread crumbs or whole wheat couscous on top, too.