Vegan Lentil Soups

I made these two soups last week. Both were big hits with the girls -- and with me! Both are lentil-based soups, made in the slow cooker. Perfect for days when you need a home-cooked meal, but just don't have the time (or won't be home) to make it when you want/need to eat.

Lentil Soup with Kale Ribbons
Ingredients
olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 large yellow carrots, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 cups dried green lentils, picked over and rinsed
6 cups warm or hot water
3 low-salt vegan boullion squares
1 T Bragg's sauce
remains of a bunch of kale, stemmed

What To Do
Before going to work on Sunday afternoon, heat a saute pan over medium heat. When warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the chopped onion, celery, and carrots. Saute unil soft, adding water if needed, approximately 8-10 minutes.
Add the water and vegetable boullion to the slow cooker, mix to break up/in the boullion. Add the sauteed veggies to slow cooker. Add the lentils and Bragg's. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.
Meanwhile, roll the kale and cut thin strips. Boil a salted pot of water, add the kale when it is boiling, and cook the kale for 5-6 minutes. Drain in a colander.
Leave the kale next to the slow cooker for Dave to mix into the soup before feeding it to the girls for dinner.

This soup was a big hit with both Jacqui and Adrianna. Woo hoo! :)

Lentil and Garbanzo Soup
Ingredients
olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 yellow carrots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp groun cumin
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
1 cup dried lentils, picked over and rinsed
1/2 large can of diced tomatoes, without juice (save other half to make soup again)
1 can organic garbanzos, drained and rinsed
6 cups warm or hot water
3 low-salt vegan boullion sqaures

What To Do
When I get home late Sunday night from work, and know that I won't be getting a meal tomorrow unless I make it tonight...heat a saute pan over medium heat. When warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the chopped onion, garlic, and carrots. Cover and cook unil soft, adding water if needed. Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamon, stirring to coat the veggies. Add water if it gets too gummy.
Add the water and vegetable boullion to the slow cooker, mix to break up/in the boullion. Add the coated veggies to slow cooker. Add the lentils, garbanzos, and tomatoes. Cook on low overnight (for 6-8 hours).
Place the slow cooker to warm in the morning, spoon soup into a to-go thermos, and enjoy a piping hot container of soup at lunchtime on the go!

I meant to make couscous to serve with this soup, but didn't have the time to get it made Monday morning before I dashed out of the apartment at 7 am. So it was couscous-less the first day. It should be served with couscous or brown rice, or any other whole grain. Jacqui and Adrianna loved this soup too. Yay!

Beans and Cauliflower Stew

Two types of cauliflower, two types of beans. And a whole lot of goodness.

The seasoning is weird (although I like poultry seasoning, I don't normally cook with it, and I usually use other herbs) because the pantry here at the house we're staying at (on VACATION!!!) is heavy on the granulated garlic and baking powder and light on everything else. Including measuring spoons! But I'm on vacation and it's snowing, so trying to make the most of what I've got.

Ingredients
Romanesco cauliflower, cut into small pieces (it's neon green with spires)
Orange cauliflower, cut into small pieces
1 large sweet onion, minced
3 gloves garlic, minced
olive oil
3-4 cups cooked garbanzos (cooked with shallot and garlic), and any remaining cooking water
1 cup dried Sangre de Toro beans (Rancho Gordo - Xoxoc Project beans), cooked with garlic, with cooking water
1 potato, thinly chopped
lacinato kale
poultry seasoning
basil
salt
black pepper
2 heaping T nutritional yeast
water
1/2 cup organic rice
handful of angel hair pasta, broken into two inch pieces

What to do
I cooked the garbanzos last night with shallots and garlic, and saved the remaining (not much) cooking water for the soup today. (As I found, this house, while large, is lacking in the kitchen department -- despite the size of the kitchen. No vegetable bouillon. Not many spices at all...)
This morning, with breakfast, I hard boiled the Sangre de Toro beans with 3 cloves of minced garlic for twenty minutes, then let them sit for 1 1/2 - 2 hours before cooking them.
While the beans were cooking, I minced the garlic and onion for the soup and sauteed them in some olive oil.
I washed and cut up the two heads of cauliflower. (I didn't use all of the cauliflower in the soup though).
Last night, I had washed and chopped all the kale when I was making the Christmas Lima Lasagna, so that was ready already, but if you haven't prepared it, wash and chop the kale.
Wash, peel, and chop the potato.
Once the Sangre de Toro beans are finished cooking, add the garbanzos and cooking water, the sauteed onions and garlic, several handfuls of cauliflower, handfuls of kale, the potato, some poultry seasoning (because it's the spice here!!!), dried basil (the spice I bought yesterday for the lasagna), salt, and black pepper, and water. As much water as you need to cover everything. Also, add the rice and broken angel hair pieces. Cover the pot and let it all cook.
After 30-40 minutes, taste and check the cauliflower to see if it's finished. Add more spices.
When it tastes good and the cauliflower is finished cooking, take off the heat and add the heaping spoonfuls of nutritional yeast. Let it cool a bit, and Lunch Is Served!!!

Christmas Lima Lasagna

I've been dreaming about making this lasagna since I first spied the purple-marbled Christmas Limas on Rancho Gordo. That was several months ago, but I finally had the time to cook the beans and the lasagna today. I'm on vacation!!!!

Ingredients
9 pre-cooked lasagna noodles
2 zucchini, thinly sliced
5-6 large leaves lacinato kale
1 jar marinara sauce
3 1/2 (maybe a little more) cups cooked Christmas limas (I cooked a bag of Christmas limas with two diced garlic cloves and 1 large diced shallot)
4 T bean cooking water + 2-4 T water
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 cup Sesame Parmesan (1/2 cup sesame seeds, 3 T nutritional yeast, 1 tsp sea salt)


What to do
Preheat oven to 350 F.

Make Lima Bean Sauce: Cook the Christmas Limas. They become a beautiful purple color (Jacqui's favorite!) Then, place Christmas Limas, bean cooking water + water (as needed), sea salt, and basil in a blender and blend until smooth.

Make Sesame Parmesan: Grind ingredients together in a coffee grinder. Be careful not to overgrind (like I did!) or you'll get a bit of tahini with your sesame parm. But it all tastes good, so don't worry if it happens.

Assemble lasagna: Cover the bottom of your 9 x 13-inch pan with a thin layer of marinara sauce. Place a single layer of lasagna noodles in the bottom of the pan (I used three per layer). Leave a little space between noodles because they will expand when you bake the lasagna. Spread 1/3 of the Lima Bean Sauce over the noodles. Arrange zucchini slices evenly over sauce. Cover with 1/3 of the remaining marinara sauce. Place a layer of noodles over sauce. Cover with a layer of Lima Bean Sauce, then spread the kale in an even layer. Cover with marinara sauce. Repeat with Lima Bean Sauce, zucchini, and marinara. Press noodles down gently to make sure they are covered with liquid. Sprinkle the Sesame Parmesan evenly over the top.

Bake 50 to 55 minutes, or until noodles are tender. Let the lasagna rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing to set. Enjoy!!

Oh You Can't Elope With A Cantaloupe

Have to use these foods more...

Avocados -- love avocados...I should come up with another way of eating them regularly. Right now, they go into our smoothies, but when I'm not making smoothies, we're not eating avocados. Conventional avocados shouldn't have too much residual pesticides.

Blueberries & Blackberries -- again, I use these in our smoothies but nothing else. Blackberries should be organic because of the sheer amount of pesticides used to grow them conventionally; for some reason, less pesticides are used to grow conventional blueberries, so those are ok to buy.

Cantaloupes -- out of season right now I think. And I can never finish one before it goes bad. Something to strive towards.

Carrots & Beets -- I use lots of carrots (who doesn't?). The beets are harder...especially as your hands end up RED when you cut/cook them. I saw a recipe for chocolate beet cake today...maybe I will try that out. :) Or make up some baked beets. Beets are in season right now and available at our farmers' market.

Flax Seeds -- Two heaping tablespoons go into each smoothie and I use these in hot breakfast cereals and other recipes (replacing eggs). Apparently, the flax oil hasn't been shown to have the same benefits as the ground flax - who knew?

Green Lettuce -- I don't really eat salad. Guess I should. Hmm...

Kale -- Big check. Love kale. Love all the different types of kale. J loves kale. Even A seems to like kale. I've been dreaming about adding kale to smoothies...maybe I will try that next week. (And yes, I mean sleep dreaming. That and work have been my dreams lately. The kale is the happier dream.)

Sesame Seeds -- that quiche I made on Sunday had lots of sesame seeds. Used up all my store though, so I will have to buy more. J ate a bunch just out of the jar (when she was supposed to be adding them to the recipe or sprinkling them on top!), so she obviously loves them. And tahini is just ground sesame seeds. We use tahini all the time for sauces.

Strawberries -- out of season now. I use frozen ones in our smoothies. Strawberries are one of those foods you're supposed to buy organic, but we can't afford that right now. The frozen strawberries in BK are expensive to start with (not as bad as the frozen blackberries, raspberries, or blueberries, but still), and the organic ones are three or four times the cost! I had high hopes of picking our own strawberries this year while I was out on maternity leave, but that just did not happen. Oh well. There's always next year!

Tomatoes -- who doesn't love tomatoes? We love them, and fortunately "we" includes D. Tomatoes are probably one of his favorite foods. The farmers' market is still overflowing with tomatoes, but I can't seem to use up all the ones I buy in time (before they go bad). Fortunately, the organic canned tomatoes tend to be approximately the same price as the conventional or are regularly on sale, so I can get organic ones year-round.

Lentils Kale & Amaranth

Date: August 26, 2009 (night, made for next day's meals)

Ingredients
1 cup small black lentils (I got them in bulk from my local health foods store - I think that they might be beluga lentils, but I'm not sure)
1 red onion, chopped
1 - 1 1/2 T organic extra virgin olive oil
1 - 1 1/2 cup chopped kale (I chop it in a food processor and freeze it in batches)
Organic No-Salt Seasoning
3 cups water

1 cup amaranth grain
3 cups water

Directions

1. Heat cast iron pot. Add olive oil and heat. Add onion and saute for five minutes or until soft and yummy aroma rises up.
2. Add the lentils (picked through) and water.
3. Add as much or as little of the seasoning as you like.
4. Stir to combine spices, lentils, and onion. Bring to boil.
5. Add kale and continue to cook until lentils have absorbed all the water, approximately 40-45 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, add amaranth and water to another pot. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to simmer. Cook until all water is absorbed.
7. Serve Lentils on or next to the Amaranth.

Recipe Analysis
I estimate that this recipe will make six servings. Nutritional analysis from caloriecounter.com -- they give it an A.
Serving Size: 340 g
Calories per serving: 280, Calories from fat: 54
Details: 13.7 g protein, 44.1 g carbs (15%), 13.4 g fiber (54%), 2.0 g sugars, 24 mg sodium (1%), 0 mg cholesterol, 6.0 g total fat (9%), 1.1 g saturated fat (5%), 52% DV Vitamin A, 40% DV Vitamin C, 10% DV Calcium, 29% DV Iron.
Highlights: Low in saturated fat; No cholesterol; Very low in sodium; Low in sugar; High in dietary fiber; High in iron; High in manganese; High in magnesium; High in phosphorus; High in vitamin A; High in vitamin C.

Notes

1. Amaranth appears to be more of a breakfast cereal grain. It also spat at me and burned my hand while cooking. I think I will stick with other grains to pair with lentils next time.
2. J loves these lentils. I really need to figure out what kind they are! And buy more...I only have 1/3 cup left after making this dish last night!
3. My recipe name sounds like a law firm! :P