Hawaiian-Style Sweet-and-Sour Roasted Pineapple, Brown Rice, and Baby Bok Choy

This pineapple recipe is from the May/June issue of Vegetarian Times. It looked fantastic and it didn't disappoint. My boyfriend, who doesn't even like pineapple, loved it as well. The roasting caramelized the fruit and it brought out the flavor and provided some crispy bits. Also within were red bell peppers and red onions, all the flavors went together wonderfully. It was great over rice, but it wasn't necessary. The only negative to this dish, like most roasted dishes is that it gets cold so fast. On the side was ume vinegar sprinkled baby bok choy. Yummy.

Here's another pre-roasting beauty shot:

Bow Ties with Broccoli Pesto

This lovely green concoction came from last month's Vegetarian Times. Cooked broccoli is used as the base in lieu of fresh basil. Mint, parsley (I subbed cilantro), and hazelnuts also make an appearance in this perfect-for-spring dish. I thought that this was super good, but a tad garlicky for my taste, which hardly ever happens as I love garlic. I'd suggest using less if you're not a huge fan. If I were to make this again I 'd add some chopped red bell pepper and maybe some zucchini or tomato, because bite after bite it got a bit boring with no other flavors or textures going on here. The addition of extra veggies would definitely spruce this up!

Also, I had a little trouble finding hazelnuts at the store. I finally asked an employee and he was able to track some down for me, but they were called filberts. Tricky...

Smothered Seitan Medallions in Mixed Mushroom Gravy, Mashed Potatoes and Bok Choy

This seitan recipe is from Vegan Soul Kitchen; it was also featured in Vegetarian Times. I made a few changes. First we halved the recipe, we also cut our seitan into strips and dredged them in flour mixed with a little garlic powder and pepper versus arrowroot powder. I also cooked them in my cast-iron so that I could use much less oil (his recipe calls for over a cup of oil!). I didn't have time to make a mushroom stock and none of the ones at the store were vegan, so I subbed vegetable stock and used only cremini mushrooms because buttons were unavailable; I doubled the amount of mushrooms in the gravy to make up for the lack of mushroom stock. I also left out the cabbage, scallions, and parsley at the last part of the recipe (using only the jalapeno). Ok, I think that's it, I followed the rest of the recipe! For the potatoes we used golden Yukon and mashed them with a little bit of Earth Balance and soy milk and for the bok choy I just sauteed it in a bit of soy sauce and mirin. This was one tasty meal! Nothing from Bryant Terry has disappointed (except for the oil factor, but that's usually easily rectified) and this was another one to add to that list. The fried seitan simmers in the gravy and stock for 30 minutes giving it a great flavor and texture. The mushrooms were awesome, the sauce was awesome, it was just great.

Garlic and Kale Soup

Mmm...this one was a winner. Also from this month's Vegetarian Times (it's easy to tell what I was reading before going to the grocery store), this was a yummy soup with kale, shiitake mushrooms, wheat berries, and lots of garlic. This requires some planning ahead to let the wheat berries soak, but otherwise comes together pretty quickly. I served it while the kale was still a bit crunchy because that's how I like it (my boyfriend said he would have preferred it softer). The kale does get softer as it sits, so for leftovers it will be soft; the soup does reheat nicely.

Vegetables Korma and Sauteed Spinach

This Vegetables Korma recipe is also from this month's Vegetarian Times. It was mediocre. I had already been running around to several stores (the drill having to go to multiple groceries to find everything needed for the week) and was tired of looking for the perfect pack of frozen vegetables for this, so I went with a bag from Trader Joe's that included corn, red peppers, and edamame. Admittedly, not the best vegetables for an Indian inspired dish. I will take some of the blame for this failing, but the sauce which I didn't tweak wasn't all that great either. It was made from tomatoes, ginger, and onions. It tasted mostly like onion and just didn't go down well. The other items included, besides spices, were chickpeas and almonds. I served this over brown rice.

The spinach was the saving grace of this dish. I just cooked it up in a drop of oil with soy sauce and mirin. As long as there was enough spinach in each bite it tasted alright. Anyway, as you can guess I don't recommend this recipe, not even to try and make it better.

Red Pepper-Carrot Soup

After roasting the red bell peppers for this soup from this month's Vegetarian Times the rest comes together pretty quickly. It is nicely spiced and beautifully colored. I served this up with some toast with a roasted garlic butter spread (mash roasted garlic add melted Earth Balance, stir, then place in fridge and allow to harden). Perfect warming soup for this time of the year!

Tofu Bento Bowl

This recipe was in my most current Vegetarian Times as a reader favorite (click for recipe). The only non-vegan ingredient was yogurt, so I just subbed plain soy yogurt and it worked great. Other than cooking the brown rice everything was quick. There's plenty of sauce/dressing from both the tofu and lettuce mixture to make everything moist and super-delicious. I also liked that there were so many different food textures here with the crunchy cucumber and carrot contrasted with the soft avocado and tofu. Nice weeknight healthy option, we'll definitely make this again.


The leftovers also saved very well and I was able to have them for lunch the next day!