Saturday, January 31, 2009

Today's Lunch: Vegetarian Style

We've been giving a good effort towards improving our eating habits around here.  In the past, we'd make grand plans to eat better!  More vegetables!  Less sugar!  HEALTHY, HEALTHY, HEALTHY!

But after the first two days of steamed brocccoli and bland chicken, we'd invariably give up and go back to our old ways.

And really, our old way sure tasted delcious, so who could blame us?

But with me being pregnant and Shaun wanting to improve his own health, we decided to it another roll.

This time, we're focusing on great recipes that highlight our favorite vegetables and using proteins (for both of us), and grains (for me) as supplements to the base dish.

I subscribe to Vegetarian Times magazine, which I LOVE, though a lot of the recipes tend to be a bit time consuming or require too many obscure ingredients.

But we got adventurous.  And today?  Today we tried Sesame Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Broccoli.


It was absolutely delicious.  The combination of the lightly browned and roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli and the tangy mixture of sauce was awesome.


The verdict?  A complete hit with everyone, including Bean.  C?   C didn't get to try it this time... She ate this instead:


Not exactly as delectable as our lunch was, but her turn will come.

The recipe itself is in under the link.  (Let me know if you have trouble seeing it).  I adjusted a bit by serving the roasted veggies over a spring mix of lettuce instead of baby spinach (we were out).  I'm not a particularly big fan of ginger, so I left that out as well.  (I also didn't have any).  In the future, we'll also add more broccoli. 

Everyone except for Shaun had a side of quinoa.  I made the quinoa in the rice cooker with three quarters orange juice and one quarter water, which highlighted the flavors in the original recipe.  Other than that?  Wouldn't change a thing.

One thing we noted is that if you don't have some of those ingredients on hand, the initial making of the recipe can be pricey.  But if you consider the possibility of making more dishes that are similar or possibly repeating this recipe, the successive makings are considerably less expensive.

The prep work was minimal and the most time consuming part of the recipe was waiting for the vegetables to roast.  

Anyway, definitely let me know if you give it a go!  I recommend this more highly than the Mac and Cheese from last time.  (So does everyone else).

Who knew healthy could taste so dang good?

5 comments:

  1. Hey didnt know if you saw or not but i tagged you in my blog!

    That looks really yummy!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. you should be a food photographer! Jan

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have a cookbook called More-With-Less: Suggestions by Mennonite on how to eat better and consume less of the world's resources" that is AWESOME for healthy, globally-friendly, inexpensive and easy meals (http://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Cookbook-World-Community/dp/083619263X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233535366&sr=8-1).

    One of my professors and his wife (who are Mennonite) have as many students as want to come over for dinner every week and feed us delicious, super healthy meals that are mostly from this cookbook. It's inexpensive and easy enough that I've been able to make meals from here (favorites so far have been cream of tomato soup and homemade french bread) in my tiny college kitchen for bunches of friends. Definitely check it out!

    ReplyDelete
  4. oops, the link didn't copy... http://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Cookbook-World-
    Community/dp/083619263X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8
    &s=books&qid=1233535366&sr=8-1

    ReplyDelete
  5. I own that book (that Emily mentioned), if you want to borrow it.

    We don't use it much... although I look through it from time to time and think, "I should make something from this."
    It has a LOT of recipes.

    ReplyDelete

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