Tag: vegetarian meals (Page 3 of 4)

Mushroom-Sage Flatbread Pizza

May 13, 2016 / Jenny / 22 Comments

Enjoy the rich, savory taste of sautéed mushrooms baked with fresh sage, cheese, olive oil and garlic, all on top of naan flatbread. This mushroom-sage flatbread pizza is so quick and easy to throw together, yet so very flavorful.

The health benefits of mushrooms are great. If you don’t eat meat, are trying to eat less meat, or just want a break from meat, mushrooms are a good way to give your body some of the same nutrients that meat gives it, plus some other vitamins and minerals. Mushrooms are high in selenium, vitamin D, potassium, iron, and calcium, in addition to containing antioxidants.

With my daughter being a vegetarian (actually, she eats fish, so I guess that is a pescetarian…), we eat a fair amount of portabella mushroom burgers. For a change, I have been buying mixed mushrooms and making these flatbread pizzas for her. They are so good! We love the sage and mushroom combination, and sage has its own health benefits and healing properties. It is known as the herb that imparts longevity and wisdom, and in the days when the use of herbs was more prominent, sage was used to soothe coughs and colds, ease night sweats, purify the spirit, and ward off evil. I’m not sure if baking some fresh sage leaves in this pizza can accomplish all those things, but it can’t hurt, and it tastes so savory and earthy, so delicious with the mushrooms and cheese! In addition, sage is really easy to grow, and it comes back year after year. We have had some in our garden for years, and I love to go out and pick the leaves as I am making dinner.

With many of our afternoons and evenings being filled with sporting events, meetings, concerts, and now yard and garden work this spring, I have been looking for quick and easy dinners. This recipe fits the bill of being quick and delicious at the same time. It works great served with a salad or a bowl of soup, or just on its own for a light dinner or tasty lunch.

For Mother’s Day, I walked in the woods with my mother, husband, and kids, and with it being mushroom season, I got to thinking about how I would like to learn more about foraging for mushrooms. I know that morel mushrooms grow in my area, and I think it would be a worthwhile hobby to cultivate, and a great excuse to get out into the woods more! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and enjoy spring! Although it’s supposed to get cold again this weekend, so many trees are flowering here, and our lilacs are in full bloom. I believe that is my favorite scented flower, so I am savoring every minute of the lilac season. Fiesta Friday is co-hosted this week by Ahila @ A Taste of Sri Lankan Cuisine and Diann @ Of Goats and Greens. I look forward to checking out their posts!

Mushroom-Sage Flatbread Pizza

Servings: 2-4, or 2 flatbread pizzas
Time: 20 minutes
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Ingredients:

2 cups of mushrooms, your choice (I often use a mixture of shitake, oyster, and mini bella mushrooms), washed, patted dry, and thinly sliced
a handful or two of fresh sage leaves, washed and patted dry
2 cloves of garlic, minced
extra-virgin olive oil
2 naan flatbreads
about 2 cups of shredded mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, or shredded cheese of your choice
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Wash the mushrooms, pat them dry, and thinly slice them. In a small skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Place the mushrooms in the skillet and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Sautee the mushrooms for about five minutes, or until they are tender. Pour about 1/4 cup of olive oil into a shallow bowl and mix the minced garlic into the olive oil. With a pastry brush, brush the garlicky olive oil evenly across the pieces of naan flatbread. Spread the mushrooms over the flatbread. Then arrange the sage leaves on the flatbread, the amount according to your taste. Sprinkle the shredded on top of the mushrooms and sage.

Place the pizzas on the baking sheet, and bake in your 400-degree oven for about 10-15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the bread is golden. Let the pizzas cool for a couple minutes, and then slice into pieces. Enjoy!

Tempeh, Vegetables and Noodles

January 15, 2016 / Jenny / 8 Comments

Tempeh is marinated and baked in a tangy sauce made of soy sauce, honey, garlic, and ginger, then combined with stir-fried vegetables and noodles. This makes a delicious, comforting, and healthy meal.

In keeping with my desire to eat nutritious meals as part of the New Year and a fresh start, I am sharing a recipe for a delicious vegetarian meal using tempeh. Until recently, I have struggled with using tempeh, because without the right flavorings, it can taste really bland to me. Yet I know it is such a good source of protein, and from a great source–soy. Tempeh is made from fermented soybeans, and the whole beans are retained and softened during the fermenting process, making tempeh easier for us to digest than other forms of soybeans.

Therefore, I was SO happy when I found this delicious marinade, which I adapted from one I found on allrecipes.com. I changed some things, like using honey instead of maple syrup, powdered ginger instead of fresh, and I used less tempeh but kept the same amount of sauce, because I wanted to be able to drizzle the sauce over the whole dish, making it warm and comforting with every bite. This sauce is so good, I will use it with other meals as well!

The past week, we got some snow. The birds at our birdfeeder have been eating their seed like crazy, leaving their tiny footprints all over the yard and front porch steps. In winter, when the outdoor landscape is bleak, certain things stand out to us more, like little birds or little bird footprints. The comfort of a warm bowl of tempeh, vegetables, and noodles in a tangy sauce tastes that much more comforting on a cold winter day. The contrasts are starker and more noticeable in winter, and we experience things more strongly. It makes me think of a quote by one of my favorite writers, Virginia Woolf: “Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter’s evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day.” That reminds me to turn off the lights and eat by candlelight tonight. I hope you all have a great weekend, and stay warm! I am going to make it to Fiesta Friday today, co-hosted this week by the wonderful Julie @ Hostess at Heart and Elaine @ Foodbod.

Tempeh with Vegetables and Noodles

Servings: 2-4
Time: 2 hours to marinade, and about 30 minutes to bake and prepare
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Ingredients:

For the marinade:

1/4 cup of soy sauce (I use reduced-sodium)
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup of honey
1/2 teaspoon of dried, ground ginger
1/4 cup of water

For the rest of the meal:

8 ounces of tempeh, sliced into thin slabs
2 tablespoons of olive oil, plus another 2 tablespoons for the vegetables
12 ounces of your choice of noodles
2 large carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 bell pepper, thinly sliced
2 cups of broccoli flowerets, chopped

Directions:

In a medium bowl, combine the ingredients for the marinade sauce and stir vigorously until all combined. In a 9 inch by 9 inch baking dish (or something similar), pour 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Place the slices of tempeh on top of the oil in the baking dish, then pour the marinade over the tempeh. Cover with foil, refrigerate, and marinate for about 2 hours.

When the tempeh is done marinating, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake the tempeh, covered with foil, in your oven for 20-30 minutes. Then raise the temperature to 375 degrees. Take the foil off of the tempeh and let it bake for another 10-15 minutes, till it becomes golden brown.

When you take the foil off of the tempeh, bring a large pot of water to boil, and cook your noodles according to package directions. Drain the noodles. While the tempeh is finishing baking and the noodles are cooking, heat a wok or skillet over medium-high heat. Pour in two tablespoons of olive oil, and stir-fry the vegetables until just tender, about 5-10 minutes. Pull the tempeh out of the oven. Arrange the noodles and vegetables in bowls. Top with pieces of tempeh, and spoon the desired amount of sauce from the tempeh baking dish over the meal. Enjoy!

Sunshine Flatbread Pizzas

September 25, 2015 / Jenny / 13 Comments

Is there anything easier and more versatile than flatbread pizzas? Well, there probably is, but I’m not sure what that would be. Anyway, these flatbread pizzas are so easy, they are hardly a recipe–just a nudge in a certain direction if you are unsure about what to make for a quick dinner, or an idea if you are searching for ways to use your summer squash and zucchini. And they taste really, really good too. I make these when we need a quick dinner before going back out the door to our various evening activities. They are healthy and quite light, so if you are headed out to exercise after dinner, this meal won’t weigh you down too much.

I call them sunshine flatbread pizzas because I typically make them in September and early October, when we have summer squash and zucchini in abundance, and the sun is warm and golden. Serve them with a salad or a bowl of soup if you like. It only takes a few minutes to prepare and bake them, and when they’re done, you have something warm and tasty, full of seasonal vegetables.

It is now officially autumn, and the following quote by writer Gladys Taber reflects how I feel about this gorgeous time of year. “We are in for a spell of perfect weather now, every day luminous, every night brimmed with stars. Picnics at noon, supper by the applewood fire at night, a walk in the cool moonlight before bed.” I hope to make the time to savor early autumn in the spirit of this quote, and I hope you all have a beautiful weekend! I’ll also be taking a plate of these over to Angie’s Fiesta Friday to share with the lovely bloggers there.

Sunshine Flatbread Pizzas

Servings: 2-4
Time: 20 minutes
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Ingredients:

1 small zucchini, thinly sliced
1 small summer squash, thinly sliced
1/2 cup red onion, thinly sliced
2 flatbreads (I like to use naan)
extra-virgin olive oil
1 large clove of garlic, minced
shredded mozzarella cheese
shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Wash and slice the zucchini, summer squash, and onion into thin pieces. In a large skillet, heat one to two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Sautee the sliced vegetables until tender, about 5-8 minutes. Set aside.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour some olive oil into a shallow bowl. Mince the garlic and add it to the bowl with the olive oil. Lay your flatbreads out on a cutting board or the counter. With a basting brush or pastry brush, spread a layer of olive oil/garlic mixture over the top of the flatbreads. Then arrange the sautéed vegetables evenly over the flatbreads. Sprinkle with a good amount of mozzarella and Parmesan cheese (to your personal tastes). Place the flatbreads on a baking sheet.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes, or until heated through and the cheese is melted. Remove, let cool a couple of minutes, and slice into pieces. Enjoy!