Eating In: Kale “Nacho” Bowl

As you know, there’s nothing I love more than a good bowl for dinner. So, when I spotted Minimalist Baker’s Vegan Kale Chip Nachos, I was intrigued – and promptly bowl-ified it.

My favorite thing about bowls is that they’re infinitely customizable – making them (1) very easy to make fit your own preferences and (2) very easy to adapt to what’s already in your fridge (or lacking from it). This bowl takes a particularly healthy turn with a base of crispy kale “chips,” dusted with spices and nutritional yeast.

(Almost) No Recipe Required: Cilantro Lime Burrito Bowls

You know when you know something is gonna be good? Like, tasty? Like, you’re excited to eat it before you’ve even started cooking it? That’s how I felt about these burrito bowls, courtesy of Fork Knife Swoon. I knew they were going to be hearty and savory and something I wanted to take big fat bites of. (Also, I love lime. And carbs. So, easy sell?)

Plus, look at all that GREEN. They look so healthy! But enough mooning over them – here’s the basic situation.

Eating In: Turkey-Veggie Meatloaf

And NOW to those healthy recipes I’ve been promising! The Boy saw something about Whole 30, decided that was healthy (no argument there), and put us on it until he realized we couldn’t have any dairy and hence couldn’t have our usual glasses of milk to drink…so a modified Whole-30-ish healthy route was laid out instead. We were delighted to discover a meal plan on The Nourishing Home, and selected a few recipes to kick off the New Year right.

First up – this turkey-veggie meatloaf. I haven’t made meatloaf in a long time, if ever, and of course it does have a bit of a…reputation. Still, the recipe was pretty straightforward, and we were trying to be healthy, so…

Eating In: Portobello Steaks with Avocado Chimichurri

Well, you can definitely tell we’ve hit the holiday season by how sporadic these blog posts are getting…I’m doing my best! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving (hope you did too) and I’ll be back with some holiday desserts soon. In the meantime, here’s another healthy, veggie-centric meal to help balance out all those holiday treats.

All credit goes to Dana Shultz of Minimalist Baker for the recipe (my second one in a row – apparently you’d all better stop reading this blog and go read that one) – Portobello Steaks with Avocado Chimichurri.

Eating In: Roasted Broccoli, Sweet Potato, & Chickpea Salad

And suddenly we’re in November, and the madness of the holidays  is upon us! There are already far too many events and parties piling up on the calendar, not to mention the sweets and drinks and all kinds of delicious temptations that go along with them. As a result, we’re trying to really stay on the quick-and-healthy track when we cook at home (easier said than done).

Which brings me to this “salad” from Minimalist Baker – warm, simple, healthy, and delicious. Oh, and quick. Weeknights, it’s gotta be quick.

The main players are broccoli, sweet potato, and chickpeas. Red peppers were optional in Dana’s recipe, but the Boy is not a fan so I subbed in some shiitake mushrooms we happened to have on hand. The veggies get chopped and the chickpeas get tossed in oil and a myriad of spices.

The veggies go into the oven to roast, and meanwhile you whip up an easy and very yummy sauce that involves garlic, dill, and hummus.

The veggies come out toasty and golden, and get piled artistically (or not, whatever, you’re just gonna eat it) on a plate and drizzled with dressing. Salad? Sure-ish. It’s a mess of vegetables, but it’s warm and hearty and roasty, not like a lot of salads I’ve known. And I have to say, I like it all the better for it.

Roasted Broccoli, Sweet Potato, & Chickpea Salad
Adapted slightly from Dana Schultz of Minimalist Baker

I imagine this is another adaptable recipe, since it’s essentially just a bunch of roasted veggies with an addicting creamy-yet-still-healthy sauce. After all, I did the easy peppers-to-mushrooms swap from the original, and I’d bet depending on the season you could get quite creative. Still, the chickpeas and the sweet potatoes lend a nice meatiness, so I’d try this version first.

Yield: 2 Servings
Cook Time: 30-45 minutes

Ingredients
Vegetables
1 large or two small sweet potatoes
1 head broccoli, torn, chopped into bite size pieces
1 cup mushrooms, chopped into bite size pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
Healthy pinch each salt and black pepper

Chickpeas
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained, rinsed, dried
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon tandoori masala spice
1 teaspoon sugar
Healthy pinch sea salt
Pinch red pepper flakes

Garlic Dill Sauce
1/3 cup hummus
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried dill
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Water to thin

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Add rinsed dried chickpeas to a mixing bowl and season with oil, tandoori spice, sugar and salt. Toss to combine.

Add sweet potatoes and chickpeas to one sheet, and the broccoli to another. Drizzle the vegetables with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper – toss to combine. Arrange in a single layer.

Bake both for a total of 20-25 minutes, rotating the pans once near the halfway point. You can flip the sweet potatoes over to encourage even baking, but it’s not necessary. You’ll know the broccoli is done when it’s golden brown, the sweet potatoes will be tender, and the chickpeas will begin firming up and taking on a slight crunch. Set aside.

While vegetables and chickpeas are baking, prepare dressing by adding hummus, garlic, dill and lemon juice to a small mixing bowl and whisking to combine. Then add only enough water to thin until pourable. Set aside.

To serve, divide vegetables and chickpeas between two serving plates and drizzle with dressing.

Eating In: Lettuce Wraps with Almond-Basil Chicken

We don’t eat a lot of meat when we cook – really just because it’s cheaper to cook vegetarian and it’s still delicious, but the environmental reasons are a definite plus. As a result, my most used cookbooks are those heavy on the vegetables (you’ll notice how often I use Erin Gleeson’s The Forest Feast – my Mom just got her new party book and I’m very jealous). One such (gorgeous) cookbook is Bountiful by Todd Porter and Diane Cu, which isn’t vegetarian but draws the main recipe inspiration from fruits and vegetables, then adds in meat where it makes sense. We spent a week cooking out of it with great success (go buy it and make the Basil Pesto Farro Salad immediately), including making these Lettuce Wraps with Almond-Basil Chicken one weeknight as a quick, healthy meal.

Eating In: Carrot-Leek Soup with Quinoa

Sometimes I have a bit of an app problem. Yes, iPhone apps. Not as bad as some people, certainly, but I’m always reading about all these cool apps and then downloading them and then forgetting I have them and letting them just hang about cluttering up my phone. Some of them are even quite good! For instance, KptnCook (don’t ask me what the name means) offers up three recipes a day, generally of the healthy, under-30-minute variety. Of course, I miss a lot of the recipes due to the aforementioned forgetting about the app, but when I DO remember to use it, the recipes generally turn out rather well. Which brings me to this recipe, which is heavily based on one from KptnCook – carrot-leek soup with quinoa (and other things too!).

Eating In: Beet Poke Bowls

My love of bowls in general, and bowls involving avocado in particular, has been well documented. I am certainly not the only one to be “into” bowls, however – it seems of late all of Los Angeles has taken a seat on the metaphorical bowl train. One of the particularly hot bowl-trends (wow, I’ve never written the word “bowl” so much) is poke, a sort of Hawaiian sushi-bowl situation that is customizable and extremely yummy.

While I love poke, it’s not something I have really tried to make at home, since sushi-grade fish is expensive and, frankly, a bit intimidating. So when I saw this beet-based twist on Shutterbean, I was immediately intrigued and roped in the Boy to make it happen.

The bowl is really quite simple, though it involves a bit of prep work (cooking your beets, chopping your various components, letting them marinate in your sauce), so plan accordingly. (And admire the Boy’s precision avocado cutting after the jump – man, he’s good.)

No Recipe Required: Yogurt Bowl with Broiled Citrus

So, apparently I enjoy broiling citrus. It makes whatever you’re ending up with seem fancy, especially if you call it bruleéd, plus I like cooked sugar (so sue me). Also, in the winter, there’s not a lot of fruit around besides citrus for a lot of people, so this is a way to fancy it up a little (ok, admittedly not for me in Los Angeles…).

This particular rendition of broiled citrus, which fancies up a yogurt bowl, was inspired by the infinitely brilliant Deb of Smitten Kitchen. Of course, her citrus is all fancy and lovely and multicolored, which mine is straight minneolas from my latest CSA box, but the general broiled citrus + yogurt idea still stands.

Eating In: Sqirl Rice Bowl

It was some time ago that the Boy and I visited Sqirl, a hipster-trendy breakfast spot in the  Silver Lake area of Los Angeles. I harbor deep, fond memories of my luscious toast and the Boy’s tangy sorrel rice bowl, so when I came across the recipe for the latter on Tasting Table, it was immediately bookmarked.

Of course, it took me a long time to actually make the bowl, because it seemed like it had a lot of components and the ingredient list had things on it that I was pretty sure went beyond the offerings of my neighborhood grocery store. And I was right about that last part. However, despite that, it turned out that with a few substitutions this wasn’t actually a difficult meal to pull together on a weeknight – and I’m apparently on a bowl kick, so who am I to fight it?