Tales from a Week of Plant-Based Recipes
If you know me, you know I love trying new recipes. Hubby loves to tell stories of me debuting a dish on some very important house guests. What can I say, I love a risk now and then! So when the Kindle app told me I had access to the newest cookbook by Forks Over Knives, Flavor! I was more than a little excited. So I read through the recipes, made my list and created the week's menu.
Fall is the perfect time to up-level our eating habits and I was sure I had picked things with ingredients that most of my family would enjoy (can you ever please them all with the same meal?)
Let's start with the Beet Burgers. These babies were a labor of love. I am thinking that if I were to repeat this recipe, I would at least use the food processor to shred the beets and the carrots rather than doing the box grater that the recipe calls for. I mean, I was shredding for a while. They did come together well, but the "burgers" didn't crisp through like I would have hoped. They tasted fine, but for the amount of time and love they take to make, not worth it in my opinion. However, in defense of the recipe; it called for caraway seeds which I overlooked when doing the grocery order so I substituted cardamom but was really afraid and didn't use very much. Likely, if I had followed the recipe it would have been tastier. Also, the recipe suggests dill slaw which I definately didn't make because hubby cannot even be in the same room with dill. Three of us ate them. Hubby wouldn't even put a burger on his plate. The left overs when to my mom's house. She thoroughly enjoyed them but my mom will eat almost anything.
Oh, the Stamppot or Dutch smashed potatoes with kale were a hit. This was simple, I got to use a
steamer basket for the first time in my life, and I found a new use for kale which my Tower Garden keeps producing abundantly. I am adding the recipe to my arsenal. It's a great side for any occasion.
On to the Cauliflower Potato soup. This recipe has a spice combination that I
didn't grow up with which is super fun for me. Also, these spices (fennel, cinnamon, clove, bay leaf) read like a pharmacy, so that added to my feeling of accomplishment for the week.
This recipe made enough that I stored some in a quart mason jar and froze for a future meal, so that definately was worth my time.
Similar story with the Kale and Potato soup. The only critic from the judges (husband and teenagers) was that the kale be chopped more fine. If that's the worst they have, I consider this a win. However, keep in mind they were still reeling from beet burgers, so the bar was pretty low.
The Phenomenal Pho was the dish I was probably most excited to make and sure the whole family would love. It took me to 3 stores to find jicima and daikon and I'm still not I ended up with jicima. At the Asian food market a bin of root vegetables wasn't labeled in English so I took my chances and added it to the soup. We will never know what it actually was. I thought the dish was good. The girls ate it with no complaints. But again, I was hoping for rave reviews. For the time it took to boil my own broth, steam veggies, and boil the pho noodles, it just wasn't worth it. Lesson learned.
I'll have to get back to you on the pasta salad. I shifted it forward to this week's menu because for whatever reason, we didn't eat at home that night.
Now to the Spaetzle.
I was excited about this too. Hubby is all descended from German immigrants so I thought this would be a real treat. I spent 2 hours on my feet on Saturday while the family watched football to make this. Now, if you want to try your hand at vegan home made noodles, this is definately the recipe to start with. No tinkering with flour, oil, water to get the right consistency. Just time consuming and the flavor profile is underwhelming. Not sure what I expected. German cuisine isn't knows for it's powerful flavors. More hearty foods and sauerkraut. I'll freeze the left overs and serve it again with a protein from the grill. But this labor of love what a one and done for this mama.
So that's my summary from my week of new recipes. I feel good that we ate only plants for a week and the crew did not revolt. I also feel good that what I do: helping busy moms make healthy eating simple and fun is really needed. Most people don't have time to weed through a whole bunch of recipes to find the ones that work for their families. So I am here for you. And our community of healthy living warriors has already vetted tons of recipes that work for busy families. If you don't already have your digital copies, grab yours here:
If you want to know more about this healthy living community that took this beer pasta and step aerobics girl to one that eats kale and thinks plant based is cool, I'd love to share more of my story. Drop a comment or send me an email and we can chat.