Tortellini&Broccoli in a Spinach Cream Sauce and Peanut-Coconut-Curry Stir-Fry

Drinking ginger tea while eating ginger chocolate chip cookies, I sense my ginger phase is coming back. Ahh, the joy of relaxing for a couple of minutes... I actually have to study like crazy (which - honestly - I am not really doing so far, being the procastination whore that I am), because my finals are coming sooner than I thought they would and time just fucking flies by way too fast!



Still had time to cook something though (it's so good to actually cook and use an oven again after living off microwaved vegetables and sandwiches for the last 6 months). I made some spelt veggie tortellini with broccoli in a sauce made of cream cheese, some leftover spinach, soy milk, vitam-r, nutritional yeast, bindobin, oregano, pepper, salt, parsley, nutmeg and some curry powder (could've needed some garlic and onions, but I didn't feel like peeling and cutting anything... lazy much?). And I bought these things, because I'm too lazy to make my own. They taste alright, but then again I'd always prefer homemade chickpea cutlets or some other patties.

And from a couple of days ago: Peanut-Coconut-Curry Stir-Fry that was absolutely fabulous! I ate it three days in a row and probably still would be feasting on it if there were more leftovers. A mix of asparagus, bell pepper, ginger, fennel, zucchini, cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, soy sprouts, brussels sprouts, snap peas and broccoli in a coconut milk/soy sauce/peanut butter mix. So so so good!



Managed the stir-fry eating with chopsticks quite well, but I always need the smurf kids fork my grandma gave me for the salad ;)

Pasta Squares with grilled Asparagus & Zucchini, Basil Mint Cucumber Yogurt Dip & Messy Equilinia with Slow Roasted Veggie

(two posts in a row from various days where I was either at work and forgot my USB-stick at home or I was at home and my internet didn't work)

I purchased these Spinach-Leek Pasta Squares last week and had two left over aswell as half a jar of pasta sauce so I used my leftover veggies and made myself a delicious dinner last night.



Although it was only two pasta squares I felt so stuffed afterwards. One would've been sufficient as they are filled with a mixture of tofu, flour & potatoes all of which fill you up quite well!

The zucchini & asparagus were grilled on my newly purchased 3-in-1 Grill, Sandwich- & Wafflemaker.
I still have a waffle maker at home, but it's my mom's... and I ruined it (whoops) aswell as a sandwich maker that my sister took to Amsterdam with her. Last time I was there I considered taking it back with me, but it didn't look very appealing (she wasn't using it anymore either). So this was a very good purchase =)
The grill works like a charm, it's so fast and easy. I just hope my boyfriend won't get the idea to buy meat and grill it on there... *waggles finger* It was hard enough for me to let him use my non-stick perfect pancake skillet for his burger patties... I always fear my pancakes might taste like meat at parts. Ha ha, das ist Paranoia, mhh hmmm mhhhh!



The Basil-Mint Cucumber Yogurt Dip was great! I think this would go great with some fresh baguette or crackers. Sadly I didn't have any.



Ingredients
1/4 cup soy yogurt
1/3 cup chopped cucumber
~ 10 mint leafs, chopped
~ 10 basil leafs, chopped
dash salt, black pepper & cayenne pepper

The slow roasted vegetables were so good I made them again this week. This time with more red onion and 2 cloves of garlic.
To go with it I made Vcon's Messy Rice (with an addition of cayenne pepper which everyone but me seems to have... now I do, too and I must say 'I liiiiiike'), but with 7 Grain-Equilina (a mixture of brown & wild rice, spelt, oats, barley, rye & wheat, used it here before) instead of white rice. Mainly because I didn't have any.



It was a nice dinner, the perfect balance of grains and vegetables with a hint of spicyness.

While the Equilinia was cooking I realized I didn't know the exact cooking time and when I took the box out of my cupboard to check the quinoa pack fell straight at me, top down and open. And it was a new full pack. Quinoa everywhere, ugh!
That left me cursing and smacking cupboard doors for a while... it was worse than when I dropped the open bag of mustard seeds because it was only a few Tbsp's (annoying nevertheless), but I assume I had about 4 cups of quinoa splattered in my kitchen.

Cookies, Snacks, Lunches, Dinner & Fruit

I've been trying more store bought cookies: the midget one is a gluten-free carob cookie and tastes, well, not very good. The Chocolate Chip ones in plastic taste awesome though!



Such milky chocolate chips and a yummy crumbly chocolate center. These are delicious!!!



Washed them down with hot & foamy cocoa latte. 2 Tbsp. cocoa powder with hot regular soy milk & 1/4 cup soy macchiato milk and foam.
♥ I love drinking cocoa through a straw!



Another lunch/snack from some day.
Seitenbacher chocolate cereals & oats with cocoa soy milk (2 Tbsp. cocoa powder plus soy milk) & strawberries.



Boy, and this was by far the best lunch I've had in a long time!



Pita pocket, grilled in a non-sticking pan with raspberry preserves, banana slices, shredded brazil nuts and pieces of 85% chocolate. With red grapes on the side, of course ;)






Probably not exactly eye candy, but look at the gooey goodness going on there (and on the plate, ha ha)!



On Saturday I finally baked something I had been wanting to make for a long time!



All seemed so well... the top was sticky, the way it's supposed to be.



And it sure did look right!



But it was way too sticky. The piece in the photo remained unfinished, it was just too heavy. Too bad though, I really craved some Ontbijtkoek!
I guess that means you can't replace molasses with the same amount of sugar beet molasses. Oh well, I'll ask my sister to bring some when she comes here.



Yesterday I made slow-roasted veggies (bell pepper, carrots, fennel, asparagus, zucchini) and with quinoa (haven't had it for quite a while) for dinner.



The veggies were sooo delicious! The red onions were caramelized... oh my, so good!



Ingredients
2 bell peppers, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 zucchini, quartered
2 carrots, quartered
1/4 of a big fennel bulb, sliced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
handful of green baby asparagus
rosemary, oregano
salt, pepper

1. preheat the oven to 320° F
2. chop all the vegetables
3. in a baking dish combine the bell peppers, carrots, fennel, onion, garlic and drizzle with olive oil, mix well & sprinkle with herbs and salt & pepper
4. after 30 minutes in the oven add the zucchini and asparagus, stir again and add some more salt & pepper (if needed)
5. another 30 minutes in the oven et voilà, dinner's ready!



"Dessert"... I've discovered red grapes as you can probably tell since they're in almost every picture in this post =p



My fantastic new Magic Bullet made a smoothie: watermelon, banana, raspberries, blueberries, nectarines (all frozen) and a splash of soy milk.



A White Bean Stew (white beans, carrots, zucchini, red & yellow bell pepper, tomato puree, onions, garlic etc.) I made last week. Topped with leftovers from my mom's bulgur salad (bulgur, tomatoes, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, tomato paste, parsley, chili etc.) which went very well together!



I'm looking forward to bake Banana Bread tonight & getting home in general. Work is so boring and I would much rather go home and keep on cleaning my apartment since I had a deep-cleaning phase yesterday... my kitchen almsot sparkles (which it usually never does... erm) and I still have some leftover energy lingering around!

Anyway, enjoy your start into the week! Hope you'll have a great day!!!

Linguine & Kamut Pasta in Avocado Cream Sauce with Asparagus & Broccoli and Grilled Veggies & Potatoes with Tomato-Onion Baked Beans

Yesterday after a long hot day outside I came back home and found a perfectly ripe avocado waiting to be used. I didn't feel like making guacamole so I mashed the avocado, mixed it with 2 Tbsp. soy creamer, a tsp. lemon juice and seasoned it with salt & pepper.



Then I cooked the rest of the Linguine and added the recently purchased kamut noodles. They taste wonderful - how I love whole wheat!
In the meantime I cooked some broccoli and asparagus, seasoned with lots of minced garlic, salt, pepper, a little oregano and a dash of nutmeg.

I tossed everything together in a bowl, added two chopped tomatoes, a few fresh basil leaves and sprinkled on some nutritional yeast and pine nuts.
I'll have the leftovers as a cold noodle salad tonight =)

A few days ago I had the following... and the beans were incredibly good! I used what was left in the jar (about 1/3 cup) and I really wished I'd have more.



Anywho, I just sauteed a medium onion in a Tbsp. water, added a clove of garlic and the baked beans, 2 Tbsp. tomato paste, salt, pepper and 2 fresh tomatoes.



And this is the first time I had a yellow zucchini. Nothing too special about it, my grocer just happened to carry them one day.

Onto the baking. I'm having PBJ sandwiches around the clock it seems and I figured I might be able to losen my cravings if I made PB cookies. I halfed the Crispy PB Cookie recipe from VwaV and got out 7 cookies. Thing is, my natural peanut butter is rather runny (although all it contains is peanuts) yet I didn't add more flour. This lead to a very crumbly cookie. Like be-careful-taking-it-off-the-rack-crumbly, as you can maybe tell from the picture.

I had it with a few Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce. And yeah, I ate the cookie with a spoon =p



Now I'll go back to work and enjoy my first watermelon this year for lunch... SO SO GOOD!!!

Quinoa Pesto-Asparagus -Tomato Salad

I've come up with this idea when my sister had a pesto noodle salad in Amsterdam. As good as my idea was I chose a rather bad day to make the salad — I had too little pine nuts, used too little garlic and the tomatoes tasted like nothing.



But I'll definitely make this again! This time with the perfect pesto and sundried tomatoes! This is exactly the flavor it was lacking.

Another quick Tortilla dinner & chinese inspired Veggie Rice Stir-Fry

More groceries! I'm really in the mood for grocery shopping at the moment it seems..

The crunchy amaranth cereal is fantastic in yogurts and the dried mango strips... well, I ate them all yesterday and felt sick because it were too many but they were seriously too good to stop =p



Also, I finally bought Hoisin sauce as you can see in the first picture! After I got back from Amsterdam I ate at this chinese place in Kreuzberg twice. They have all kinds of dishes, sushi, vegetarian dishes and even burgers that can be ordered vegan with tofu instead of fish.

I chose their veggie rice which was so good that I got the same thing twice. The sauce was delicious!! And they topped the whole thing off with pine nuts... yumm!!!

So I recreated the dish with much more veggies of course. I failed to get soy sprouts, but this was a fantastic light and very satisfying dinner nonthless.



I used a handful of baby asparagus and broccoli, 1/4 yellow and red bell pepper, 1/4 cup scallions, 1/2 carrot and pine nuts. I used to be not too fond of pine nuts and their flavor for a very long time and when I tried them this time the taste kind of reminded me of the fake ham flavor potato chips used to have... odd =p



Then on another day I had wanted to make a nice and finally more complete than usual mexican dinner à la me(meaning it's usually just inspired and I always end up making up my own variation to my liking anyway)tonight... with rice, guacamole and whatnot. But plans for tonight changed & I was left with very little time so I just cooked up a quick garlic-onion-black-and-white-bean-peperoni-tomato something and used roasted baby asparagus in it and as "the sprinkle" of my salad. Along with the new balsamico-basil dressing I bought (all the way to the left).

I used to roast it with some olive oil, but now I just wash it and put it right into the oven for about 20 minutes and it turns out perfectly.

Grilled Veggie Bagels, Sundried Tomato Zucchini Mix & Linguine with Pesto

Half the fun is getting there... even if it means you have to sit between bikes!



Amsterdam was so much fun! I went with my best friend, the one I made all the PB birthday treats for. He gets along perfectly well with my sister so we explored the city together and enjoyed lovely hours at Cafés & Bars and the Vondelpark of course, where I also spent my birthday lying in the sun!



Ha ha, loved it!



The parrots were there, too! I woke up, looked out of the window and was like "See, the parrots came to greet you!" "Huh, PARROTS???" Ha ha =p



I also experienced Queensday for the first time. Lovely, great weather, great music! Like a small Loveparade ;)



I did not eat out a lot though, because I had to watch my money. I got this Avocado & Tomato Bagel the first day we got there which was 4.40 or something and very tasty!





I spent lots of money at Albert Heijn, basically living on the typical soft toast-like bread that I spread with a tomato pasta sauce, ready-to-eat salad mixes and fresh tomatoes. Oh, and not to forget the tasty ontbijtkoek!

I was more than happy to come home and find a wrapped Veganomicon upon my birthday gifts =D
I was looking at the recipes and pictures going "Ohhh, I craved something like that all week!" at basically each and everything that contained veggies =p

So as much as I missed preparing my own meals I now miss my sister a whole lot and would happily go a week without vegetables again if it meant I could see her again.
Oh well, I'll see her in two months hopefully!



So after my craving for veggies and the rediscovered love for healthy bagels I finally used my grill pan I got at IKEA and it works so well, I can say I'm in love!

The grilled veggies: eet smakelig!!!



I marinated a sliced zucchini, asparagus, scallions, a can white beans, a jar roasted bell pepper and fresh mushrooms (for le boyfriend) in a Tbsp. olive oil, 3 or 4 cloves of minced garlic and lots of rosemary (fresh aswell as dried) and thyme.

With an everything bagel.



My whole-wheat sunflower seed bagel.





Het waar lekker!

Then I made this a few days ago. I don't know what I should call this. Stir-Fry? Side dish? Anyway, it was good ;)



Long grain white rice, wild rice and some special red rice which I can't remember the name of.
I used 1 zucchini, 1/2 cup asparagus and 1 cup sundried tomatoes cut into small pieces. I mixed the vegetables with 2 Tbsp. tomato paste and 3 heaping Tbsp. of a spicy sundried tomato-walnut paste I had bought, along with black olives marinated in garlic on top. This was pretty spicy! I liked the taste, but my stomach isn't used to even the slightest heat so I didn't feel too well after eating it. I gave the rest to my parents and they both liked it very much, it being spicy in particular! Seeing people happily eating my food and complimenting me always makes me wish I had my own vegan Café/Bistro =) Someday... he he!

After buying fresh basil again I finished off the whole plant in one sitting because I craved pesto. I bought whole wheat linguine because I was really in the mood for pasta.
As for the preparation... I had VwaV, HiaV and a vegetarian cookbook lying open looking at the recipes and in the end didn't follow one.



I used 3 1/2 cups basil, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 Tbsp. pine nuts and 3 Tbsp. grated almonds (estimated, I just tipped them into my blender from the bag) and about 1/3 cup water and a little salt.

Then I mixed under some zucchini sautéed in garlic and topped it off with fresh tomatoes!



This was exactly what I had needed! Pesto never fails to make my day when it's homemade. So much better than the jarred stuff!
The boyfriend ate it too. And you know what? He didn't say anything about the noodles. He HATES (better yet fears for a to me unknown reason) anything whole-wheat like so many people do. Just another proof that What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over. Hope the translater gave me the right saying here =p

It's good to be back! Hope everyone's doing good!

Cabbage Rolls & Sauerkraut

Mhh, this leftover stuffing did a good job serving as a filling for cabbage rolls!





I love this meal, despite of the smell that lingers in the kitchen afterwards.