A couple nights ago I made the best meal I've ever prepared for myself. I don't feel too arrogant saying this because my standards for home cooking are not terribly high; I generally don't like to put too much effort into making food for one, and I'm more concerned about consuming nutritious meals than gourmet ones. That said, if I can achieve low maintenance, healthy, and delicious, I'm pretty wowed. This particular meal was inspired by a black-eyed pea dip I had at Fodder & Shine  recently. I wanted to make my my own, which really is just hummus with black-eyed peas instead of garbanzo beans, but I also wanted use it in a way that felt more like a meal than a snack. I also remembered some vegan tacos I'd recently had at Bartaco , which included cauliflower and almonds in the filling. The carrots and onions just seemed like a nice complement to the roasted cauliflower. Then I needed something green, and the collards helped bring everything together (lite...

I was planning meals last week and thought the  kale and cannellini-stuffed sweet potato  meal I'd made before sounded good, but then I remembered a friend's recent Instagram post that showed a pan full of sweet potato "noodles," and I was reminded that I wanted to try that out. I'd had some  success  making "zoodles," or zucchini noodles, and I wanted to experiment more with alternative forms of pasta. So I basically decided to deconstruct the stuffed sweet potato meal and switch out kale for spinach. Ingredients 2 medium-to-large sweet potatoes 2 bags baby spinach 1 BPA-free box cannellini beans 2 cloves garlic, chopped olive oil salt, pepper, cumin, cayenne I used the same piece of equipment--a mandolin--as I used for the zoodles. I had a little more difficulty with the raw sweet potatoes, as they're much firmer than zucchini, so I had to press the potato across the blade with more force, which made me more likely to also slice a finger ...

I should note up front that I'm not  getting reimbursed or anything for this product; I just happen to love it. I first discovered Joe's Oat Patties in pre-mix form at a downtown sort of "gourmet" grocery store. It was an easy solution to dinner -- nutritious, vegan, gluten-free (some flavors are, at least), organic, and fast and easy to prepare. Oh, and delicious! But then, last weekend while at Whole Foods (which I must say is less of a nightmare to shop at because of the new grocery-shopping nightmare that is Trader Joe's ), I noticed the product in the freezer section., for even lazier people (like me) who don't want to go through the hassle of mixing a few things together in a bowl. So of course I bought them. And then on Tuesday night, after running at Four Green Fields , all I had to do was slice and season my potatoes, pop them in the oven while I steamed the green beans and put these pre-made patties on the stove for a few minutes each side, and voil...

This meal was inspired by a  Pinterest recipe  I'd pinned long ago, but I didn't feel like looking at the actual recipe; I knew basically what I needed and decided to just experiment. Plus, I used marinara from a jar, which I happened to already have at home. Ingredients: 5 small zucchinis (or 2-3 large) 2 c. cooked lentils 3/4 jar of marinara (because that's what I had) 5 crimini mushrooms,  wiped clean  and diced 2 cloves garlic 1 small shallot bulb olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, cayenne Equipment: I used a mandolin slicer with a special blade to get the zucchini in the right shape, but you can also use a  spiralizer  or a  julienne peeler .  Because I already had the lentils pre-cooked (in my handy rice cooker--who knew!), I didn't need to bother with cooking them. I just put the marinara, lentils, and mushrooms in a pot to heat up (and cook the mushrooms) and added the spices. Next, I peeled the zucchini, w...

For Christmas, I asked for and received from my older sister (thank you, Catie!) a slow cooker. Especially during marathon training, it's hard to have energy left for cooking after going from a full day of work to a run or workout that usually lasts over an hour long. So I figured this would help solve some of my problems. I pinned a bunch of gluten-free, vegan recipes from Pinterest , and this is the first one I tried. I'll admit that, while the slow-cooking part is great, about 15-20 mins prep time was still required for this particular recipe (I know, I know--that's not a very long time). I haven't quite figured out when to do the prep--night before? morning of? But how lovely it was to come home after my workout, take a quick shower, and have a warm meal just waiting for me. Granted, I have to look for the recipes that take 8-10 hours in the cooker to make this possible (on a weekday, anyway), but that doesn't seem hard to do so far. From www.thesw...

Monday night's dinner was inspired by a Pinterest recipe from Mind Body Green , called "Autumn Kale & Quinoa Salad." It looked delicious as soon as I saw it pop up in my Facebook feed, so I went to the recipe to check it out.  Photo cred: Mind Body Green I'm always looking for new and healthy meal ideas, but they also have to be pretty filling, as I'm feeding two marathon-trainers. This one actually fit the bill. It's hard to see, but the salad does have a decent amount of quinoa in it, so it's not lacking the important carbs that give us energy for training. But of course, as with any recipe I see online, I have to make my own modifications.  The first one actually came about because, in the picture above, I thought I saw (and still think I see) salmon in the salad. However, salmon is not listed in the original recipe's ingredients. But it seemed like a good addition anyway, so I added it. I also decided to add some chopped red oni...

Last week I made a meal I'd created before but never written up, so here goes. For some people, lettuce wraps are a great way to cut the carbs from their diet. But for me, because I love those healthy carbs, it's just a way to add more veggies to a meal.  Choosing the lettuce is the biggest obstacle in making lettuce wraps. You want something sturdy, but not too tough and bitter. I've used Romaine before, but it's not as flat a I'd like; it can break easily when you try to wrap it around the stuffing. The butter lettuce worked pretty well, I think. I almost went with lacinato kale, but I think it would have been to tough to digest raw. These wraps have a taco-inspired mix inside, consisting of quinoa, black beans, corn, tomatoes, green peppers, and onions. It's seasoned with chili powder, cumin, salt, and pepper. Because I almost never measure anything, I'm going to guess at the amounts that went into this meal: 2 c. cooked quinoa 1 can bl...

This is one of my favorite meals. It's easy, it's beautiful, and it's full of so-called  superfoods . The most taxing part of this meal is baking the potatoes. It seems to take at least an hour at 375 for two medium potatoes. The rest is easy:  Over medium heat, toss in olive oil, chopped garlic, spices (I like cayenne and cumin), then kale, and let the kale sort of wilt, but not for too long. I like to add in the can of beans at the last minute, as they're already cooked and only need heating. All of this takes 5-10 minutes.  Once the potatoes are full baked, cut in half and add in the kale/cannellini mixture. I have never been able to properly stuff my potatoes, mostly because they're too hot for me to slit and then squish open with my hands. An obvious solution would be to use a towel to do it, but I figure it's all going to get mixed together either way. So my picture is not as neat as it would be with a proper stuffing, but I still think it's l...

Last night, I was excited to try this new kind of "pasta" I found at Whole Foods (by the way, for a really funny retelling of a Whole Foods shopping experience, I highly encourage you to read this Huff Post blog post by Kelly MacLean ). I was looking for a more traditional-style gluten-free pasta, if that makes sense, but I happened instead upon this Explore Asian Organic Black Bean Spaghetti : It's gluten-free, loaded  with protein (25g per serving), and, I mean, it's black pasta, which I think is pretty cool. I was a little concerned about how it would cook, because other types of gluten-free pastas I've tried have tended to fall apart or stick together. But it actually cooked perfectly, and quicker than wheat or other grain pasta.  I cooked a bunch of stir fry vegetables, some of which were pre-packaged, and some of which I added in (carrots, celery, white onion), and I also added in frozen shelled edamame. I seasoned everything with olive oil, ...

Lately I've been making something new for my lunches. I'm the type of person who doesn't mind eating the same thing for lunch every day, but the previous lunch I'd been making had stretched out over many, many months, so I decided it was time for a change.  I've been spending a lot of time on Pinterest lately, browsing recipes for ideas, and while I didn't find this specific recipe there, I'm sure it was inspired by ingredients I viewed in a wide array of recipes.  I'd previously made a vegan quinoa stir fry , and I loved the roasted hemp seeds I used in that recipe--which happened to be a sample randomly picked up some time ago, so I bought a new bag at the store. I was looking for some crunch in this dish, and in addition to the hemp seeds, I added some raw celery and red and yellow bell peppers. (This week I was out of peppers but used raw carrots instead, and I think I like those even better!). The chickpeas, quinoa, and hemp seeds all hav...

I've been wanting to make this recipe I saw on Pinterest for a while now. Since I'm making actual meals for two now, I'm finally getting around to trying out the hundreds of recipes I've pinned to my Recipes pin board. This one was appealing to me because it looked very hearty and easy. And because it has so many vegetables in it, the dish seemed almost more like a casserole to me than a loaf.  This is literally the whole recipe: theveganstoner.blogspot.com But here, of course, are my substitutions: I used corn flakes instead of crackers for a gluten-free loaf (I also could have used gluten-free crackers, but I thought the corn flakes would be simpler); I skipped the walnuts, because I'm allergic to them, and so I added a bit more corn flakes to make up for the consistency; I don't care too much for ketchup, but I do like barbecue sauce, so I made a half-ketchup/half-bbq sauce mixture instead of using straight ketchup. The most time...

It's a mouthful to say, but I can't think of a better name, and anyway, it's not my recipe. The author of the recipe simply calls them "Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies," but I feel that's misleading. I found this recipe on Pinterest  and decided to make it last week for a former coworker's last day in the office. One of the reasons I chose this particular recipe among all of the varieties of "healthy" peanut butter oatmeal cookies was because it required two ripe bananas, and I happened to have two bananas that were almost too ripe to eat as they were. Plus, it's a really easy recipe, and it uses no oil or flour. These can easily be gluten-free and vegan; I did not buy certified gluten-free oats, because they're pricey, but regular oats are still largely gluten-free. And the chocolate chips I bought are not completely vegan, but again, they're close. Sunspire does carry a wide variety of "chocolate" chips, some of which are...

My new dinner creation this week was a bit of an experiment. I'd been craving a Salad Nicoise (pronounced "nee-'shwa" in butchered-French English) recently and decided to make my own. But I'd also been craving sweet potato fries, so I swapped out the white potatoes in a traditional Salad Nicoise and made baked sweet potato fries on the side. I didn't include tomatoes, because Tim doesn't care for raw tomatoes, so I added carrots instead (why carrots? I don't know). I also didn't add the hard-boiled egg, mostly because I forgot. But I did retain the lettuce, tuna, green beans, olives, and vinaigrette.  For the sweet potato fries, I peeled two medium-sized sweet potatoes and cut them into wedges or cubical lengths (I'm at a loss for words), but this was more difficult than I anticipated, due to the cylindrical shape of the sweet potato. My skills got better toward the end, though. I added olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, and turmer...

Last night I made one of my best meals to date (this was conferred by the boyfriend). It was also one of the simplest. Here's what went in: Gluten-free penne pasta (I like this one  by DeBoles) 1 can cannellini beans (sometimes called white kidney beans) 1 head fresh spinach 1 bag sundried tomatoes, julienned  olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic I first boiled the pasta, which is a little more tricky with gluten-free pasta. As you can see in the picture, it tends not to hold its shape as well as traditional semolina/wheat pasta. I might have let it boil a minute too long.  Next, I heated a frying pan and poured in some olive oil, probably a couple table spoons, then a spoonful of minced garlic, then added the other spices to my liking.  I added into the pan the rinsed and torn spinach (if the leaves are large), beans, and sundried tomatoes, all over medium heat. I let it cook until all the spinach leaves were slightly wilted--probably 6 or 7 min...

Tonight I made an altered version of a quinoa stir fry that I've made before. I realized after grocery shopping that I'd forgotten to get a protein for the stir fry, but then I remembered I had chickpeas at home. I wasn't entirely sure they would work, but they ended up being a delicious addition! I also found this sample packet of roasted hemp seeds that I'd picked up at a natural food store a while back: More protein, and added crunch! I tossed the whole packet in to a large frying pan, which also contained the following: A little less than 1 lb. pre-chopped, mixed stir-fry vegetables from Whole Foods (I cheated, and I'm glad) 1/2 white onion, chopped 1 large carrot, sliced into rounds 1 can cooked chickpeas 1 c. frozen organic peas 2 c. cooked, whole grain quinoa About 4 strands (whatever you call them) of scallion, chopped Organic sesame seed oil, 2-3 tbsp. Braggs Liquid Aminos, about 1 tbsp. Few shakes each cumin, paprika, turmeric, Mr. ...