Simple spinach omelet with fresh herbs
April 19, 2020 at 11:10 pm (B plus (3.5 stars, like a lot), breakfast, Dark leafy greens, Derek's faves, Menus, My brain, Quick weeknight recipe, Spring recipes, To test on plan)
Now that Covid has forced us to stay home for all meals, we are trying to simplify our cooking / menu planning so we don’t spend all of our day in the kitchen. We have a weekly breakfast menu, with one or two choices for each day of the week (see below). We don’t always stick to our plan, but at least it gives us some rough ideas / structure.
One of our standard Sunday brunch options is a spinach egg omelet. Normally Derek makes the omelet, but he was taking a nap so I had to improvise. Below is my own variation. Read the rest of this entry »
Instant Pot Lasagna Soup
February 17, 2019 at 11:50 pm (A (4 stars, love, favorite), Instant Pot, Italian, Menus, Monthly menu plan: dinner, One pot wonders, Pasta, Quick weeknight recipe, soup, Spring recipes, Website / blog, Winter recipes) (preschooler-approved)
I am a member of the Instant Pot Vegan Recipe group on Facebook, and almost every week someone raves about this recipe for Lasagna Soup from Vegan Richa. I like lasagna, but it always takes so long to make. A fast version in the pressure cooker? Sounds good to me!
I’ve made the recipe a couple of times now, with a few modifications (see below). The recipe is pretty fast. You basically just have to chop the onions and other veggies and measure out all the ingredients. Everyone liked it pretty well (even 4-year-old Alma who is normally very suspicious of new “mixed” dishes and Derek who typically disdains soup). It’s surprising how filling it is given that it only calls for 5 ounces of noodles for 2 to 3 servings. Normally Derek alone will eat at least 4 ounces of noodles! The first time I made it I think we even had a little bit of leftovers! I guess the lentils and veggies and broth make it filling. Read the rest of this entry »
Nutritious, delicious, practical vegetarian breakfast ideas
June 18, 2018 at 10:10 pm (breakfast, Menus, Monthly menu plan: brunch)
I know a lot of people eat the same breakfast every day. Here in Germany it’s often muesli or bread with jam or fresh spreadable cheese. But we get bored of the same thing. I like to mix it up. Here are some of our regular breakfast ideas. Some are quite fast, some are moderately time consuming, and others are either ones we make ahead of time or we reserve for the weekend.
Eat the rainbow fridge chart
July 5, 2016 at 10:44 pm (Menus, Uncategorized) (toddler-approved)
I am trying to make sure Alma’s diet includes a large variety of colorful fruits and vegetables, as well as at least one serving of nuts/seeds, whole grains, and legumes per day. It’s surprisingly hard! I thought some kind of chart might help.
There are lots of charts on the internet, but they all seemed limited in some way. So I decided to make my own “Eat the Rainbow” chart. It includes a color-coded list of foods and a weekly checklist. I use the food lists to get ideas during our weekly meal-planning session, and I use the checklist to keep track of what we’re eating during the week.
I’ve seen a lot of sources online that suggest trying to get each color in every day. That seems impossible! Right now my goal is to offer each color at least a couple times a week, and offer at least a couple different colors each day.
My list has many more rows than most “Eat the Rainbow” charts that are available on the web. First of all, in my list each color is separated into two rows, one for fruit and one for vegetables. I separated them because getting Alma to eat a variety of vegetables is much more difficult than getting her to eat fruit, which she almost universally loves. Another oddity about my list is that there are several rows for green vegetables. In my original chart the green vegetable list was way too long, so I separated out leafy greens and brassicas. I figured those nutritional powerhouses deserved their own row, especially since they get their own category on my blog! I also separated out mushrooms, since technically they’re fungi not vegetables, and because they are tasty enough to get their own category.
I thought I’d post my chart here in case anyone else finds it helpful. Feedback and/or suggestions are welcome! I tried to make it pretty comprehensive but I’m sure there are things I left out. I considered having different versions of the list for each season, but deciding what went in which list was impossible, due to regional variability and the availability of frozen foods.
You can download a pdf file of my Weekly Eat the Rainbow Chart. If you prefer to plan menus on a monthly basis, then try my Monthly Eat the Rainbow Chart.
What we’ve been eating in April, with toddler menus
May 1, 2016 at 9:22 pm (Menus)
I have had no time to blog lately, so I thought I’d do one big post about what we’ve been eating lately. Luckily Derek asked me to keep notes on our menus, as a way of making menu planning easier. It’s easier to just repeat old menus than try to figure out new menus from scratch. My notes aren’t complete though, as some days I forgot to write down what we ate.
We’ve been making lots of old standbys, but have tried a few new recipes. I’m posting our menus below, with some brief notes on the new recipes. I’m also including a separate entry for what Alma ate for dinner, since my German friends with toddlers often ask me what we feed her. They just can’t imagine what she eats. A vegetarian toddler who rarely gets bread or pasta (and who doesn’t like potatoes, at least when I cook them)? What in the world does she eat every day? Hopefully this post will answer that question! Read the rest of this entry »
What we’ve been cooking this week
May 17, 2015 at 8:01 pm (Beans, Cruciferous rich, Dark leafy greens, East and SE Asia, Georgeanne Brennan, Indian, Isa C. Moskowitz, Menus, Middle East / N. Africa, Nancie McDermott, Peter Berley, Root vegetables, Tofu, Vegetable dishes)
I say what we’ve been cooking instead of what I’ve been cooking, because with the new baby, Derek has been doing about as much cooking as I have, if not more. In the first few months he was mostly just making old standbys, but in the last week or two we’ve finally started to branch out and try some new recipes. I don’t have time to write full blog posts about each one, so I’ll write a short blurb here for each. Read the rest of this entry »
What I’ve been cooking: Spring 2013
May 12, 2013 at 2:17 pm (Alice Medrich, Beans, Cruciferous rich, Dark leafy greens, Indian, Italian, Menus, Quick weeknight recipe, soup, Website / blog)
I can’t believe it, but I haven’t posted a proper recipe to this blog since Spring 2013. At this point my list of recipes to blog about has grown so long that I have despaired of ever posting them all. So instead I decided to just do one quick smorgasbord post. Read the rest of this entry »
Vegetarian Passover Menu for 2013
April 6, 2013 at 8:10 pm (Menus)
We hosted our third Passover seder this year in Saarbruecken. Including ourselves and Derek’s parents, we had a total of 13 people at our seder, which was a nice number (and also the maximum that we could fit at our tables). Amazingly we had enough dishes and silverware and even wine glasses, but what we didn’t have enough of was chairs. Three unlucky guests ended up sitting in some pretty uncomfortable folding chairs for many, many hours. Hopefully the food made up for some of the discomfort! Our menu was pretty similar to the menu from our 2011 seder, except we swapped the honey cake for some simpler almond-lemon cookies, and we dropped the salad entirely.
Read the rest of this entry »
What I’ve been eating lately
September 17, 2012 at 8:51 am (Menus, Uncategorized)
I’ve gotten two requests recently to update my blog and let my reader’s know what I’ve been making these past few months. I know I haven’t posted much lately. But don’t worry, I have been eating lots. Here’s the answer to your question about what I’ve been making/eating. Read the rest of this entry »
Vegetarian Passover 2011
April 25, 2011 at 10:35 am (Jewish, Menus, Spring recipes, unrated)
Derek and I hosted our second ever Saarbruecken seder this year. Including ourselves and Derek’s parents, we had a total of 12 people at our seder. Derek’s father planned the seder itself, Derek was responsible for all the singing, and I was in charge of the food. I tried a number of different recipes in the weeks leading up to Passover and debated a lot with Derek. In the end I decided on this menu:
- Appetizers (before the start of the seder): kalamata olives, hummus, and crudite
- Appetizers (during the seder): Hillel sandwiches with 2 kinds of harosetz and beet horseradish
- Soup: matzoh ball soup in vegetable broth, with diced carrots, diced parsnips, peas, and parsley and chives to garnish
- Main course: spinach matzoh pie and a layered potato and chard terrine
- Side dish: beets, fennel, celery, and apples in a mustard vinaigrette
- Dessert: orange, nut, honey cake; lemon bars with a matzoh-nut crust; toffikomen
Mexican Brunch
March 14, 2010 at 10:17 pm (Menus, Mexican & S. American, unrated)
Inspired by the delicious corn tortillas from Austin, I decided to host a tex-mex brunch. I wasn’t sure how many people to invite, but we ended up with 9 people (including Derek and me), which was a reasonable number. This was the menu:
- corn and white flour tortillas, and corn chips
- scrambled eggs, at the bottom of this recipe
- scrambled tofu with green peppers
- refried beans
- pico de gallo
- Frontera Grill salad made from 1 pineapple, 1 English cucumber, and most of a daikon radish, plus lime juice, salt, and chile powder
- guacamole
- grated cheese (only a few ounces were eaten)
- Frontera Grill margaritas (courtesy of Derek)
Back to normal life
February 3, 2010 at 2:43 pm (Menus)
After returning from Madrid, Derek and I have been struggling to return to “normal” life and deal with all the backlash that comes from being gone for one (or more) weeks. Consequently, my cooking has hewed very closely to the tried, true, and quick. What we’ve been eating this week:
- Sesame noodles with broccoli, tofu, and raw veggies.
- Cauliflower curry with potatoes, peas, and tomatoes. Mom’s or Madhur Jaffrey’s.
- Bowls of soupy pinto/kidney beans, topped with salsa, raw veggies, and avocado or feta.
- Chilaquiles with tofu and corn chips
- Baked tempeh, apple-mustard or barbecued
- Smoothies with frozen strawberries, bananas, and hemp powder
Vegetarian Passover 2009
April 12, 2009 at 10:43 am (Jewish, Menus, Spring recipes)
I hosted my first seder this year. We had planned for 15 people total, but in the end one guest was sick so we had only(!) 14 people to feed. I played around with a number of different recipes in the weeks leading up to the seder, but finally settled on this menu:
- Appetizers (before the start of the seder): matzoh, a cheese plate, and green bean pate
- Appetizers (during the seder): Hillel sandwiches with harosetz and beet horseradish
- Soup: matzoh ball soup in vegetable broth, with diced carrots, diced parsnips, and peas
- Main course: spinach matzoh pie
- Side dishes: beets in a sesame orange dressing and three-seed quinoa salad
- Dessert: apple rhubarb crisp
- Mignardise: toffikomen
I made the toffikomen a few nights before, and just let it sit out on the counter, covered by a bowl. The quinoa salad and green bean pate I made the day before, along with the matzoh ball batter and the spinach matzoh pie filling. The day of the seder, I made the haroset, the vegetable broth, the beets, and the crisp. I also pre-baked the spanokopita and fruit crisps, and boiled the matzoh balls and soup vegetables.
All the food turned out well, but we significantly overestimated how much food we needed. We bought 4 large chunks of different cheeses, which was about right. However, I made 2 recipes of green bean pate, which made about 8 cups, but we only ate about half that. I made 2 matzoh ball soup recipes, which was supposed to make 32 matzoh balls, but they came out small and so I wished I had made a few more. If they had been bigger it would have been about right. I made 3 recipes of the spinach matzoh pie (24 servings), and probably 2 would have been enough. We made about 16 beets, but they were barely touched. I wouldn’t make the beets again, for Passover or otherwise. The sesame orange dressing simply didn’t complement the beets that well. We made three quinoa salad recipes (supposedly 12-16 servings), which made about 6 quarts! of salad, and again we barely made a dent. Probably one recipe would have been fine. I made 3 crisp recipes (18 servings), and 2 would have been enough. We made 2 toffikomen recipes, and 1 would have been sufficient. For next year, I’ve learned my lesson. Given all the courses, I think next year I will make 1.25 servings per person. Some people will have seconds, but that is counteracted by the guests that only take half a serving. Probably 1 serving per person is sufficient, but having some leftovers is nice.
To reduce the amount of cooking, I could have cut all the amounts, not made the harosetz or the green bean pate, and only made one dessert. I think that everyone was pretty stuffed by the time the toffikomen came around.
One week of menus: January
January 12, 2008 at 1:15 am (Menus)
Derek was here last week and we did a lot of cooking, made lots of different dishes, and yet we still ended up eating lots of leftovers. Ours wasn’t necessarily the healthiest menu ever, but we had a lot of fun, and made lots of tasty recipes (as well as some disasters). Here’s what we ate for our meals over the week, to the best of my memory:
Saturday lunch: leftover spinach and mushroom lasagna
Saturday dinner
- spanish potato omelet with roasted red pepper sauce
- pan-roasted brussels sprouts w/ yellow pepper sauce
- fennel, orange, and mint salad
Sunday brunch: sandwiches with seitan o’greatness and italian baked tofu (separately, not together), avocado, mustard, julienned carrots, and spicy yellow pepper sauce
Sunday dinner: roast vegetables (squash, parsnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, …) with thai green curry paste
Monday brunch: apricot millet breakfast cake with warm milk
Monday dinner
- broiled raclette served with sliced apples and farm bread
- roast veggies w/curry paste (leftovers)
- dessert: ice cream with almond hazelnut butter
Tuesday brunch: leek and mushroom spring rolls with fresh mint and thai basil
Tuesday dinner: seitan mushroom stroganoff over pasta
Wednesday lunch: leftover spanish omelet with pepper sauce
Wednesday dinner: dinner at Laloux
Thursday breakfast: more tofu and seitan sandwiches
Thursday lunch: chickpea salad and broccoli cauliflower salad (from the work cafeteria), and clementines
Thursday dinner: leftover stroganoff, sauteed asian greens, and mashed rutabaga
Friday breakfast: millet raspberry almond cake
Friday lunch: shmorgasborg of leftovers
Friday dinner: dinner at Madre
Saturday brunch: more italian tofu / seitan o’greatness sandwiches and celery root salad
Saturday dinner: pizza out
Sunday brunch: grapefruit, tempeh bacon, and leftover celery root salad
Sunday Indian extravaganza:
- gujarati sweet and sour kidney beans
- mushroom and spinach saag
- banana raita
- basmati rice with black cumin and mung beans
- whole wheat naan (store bought)
- carrot halvah
My Menus
August 14, 2007 at 8:19 am (Menus)
We had company last week and Derek loved the dinner so much he asked me to document the menu, so we don’t forget it. So I started this thread to record menus that work well. I’m going to keep them seasonal/local, or at the very least write comments about what isn’t seasonal/local.
Summer American/Mexican 1
- watermelon and watercress salad (when is watercress’s season?)
- tomatillo hominy soup
- black bean and zucchini quesadillas
- lemon bars (lemons imported)
Summer American/Mexican 2
- cold avocado and corn soup (avacados imported)
- sweet potato and black bean burritos with chipotle soy mayo and frontera grill salsa (the sweet potatoes were from last fall, so not quite seasonal)
- Derek’s S.O.B. sundae with beets
The captious vegetarian 