Month: January 2017

White Beans and Tuscan Kale

I love to spend a few hours cooking on Sunday in order to set myself up with healthy, satisfying meals for the week. One dish that I often cook on Sundays is a large pot of beans. Canned beans are convenient but there is something special about cooking dried beans which you can infuse with your favorite flavors. Plus, cooking them at home also allows you to control the amount of sodium that you put into the beans.

Heirloom Beans

Recently, I have become obsessed with heirloom beans. Luckily,there are few companies that are preserving the incredible diversity of beans beyond what you will find canned in the grocery store. There are two companies whose gorgeous beans I haven’t been able to resist in the past. With names like Tongues of Fire, Orca, and Rattlesnake, these heirloom beans are really beautiful, like little works of art. They make me want to buy all the clear glass containers to store them in my pantry. #pantrygoals

Rancho Gordo is a California-based company that specializes in dried heirloom beans. The other is Zursun Heirloom Beans, an Idaho-based company that also sells an amazing collection of dried beans, many of which, you may not have ever seen before. I know I haven’t seen them available anywhere in regular grocery stores. I encourage you to check out the selection of beautiful beans that both companies sell.

About This Recipe

In this recipe, I used Zursun’s Flageolet beans which are a favorite of the French for their cassoulet. These white beans are prized for their delicate flavor and pretty pale green color. You could use any dried white beans and they would be perfectly fine.

While the beans cook, they soak up the favors of the sage, garlic, and Parmesan cheese. The beans cook until they are creamy consistency. You add the kale, spicy red pepper flakes, and more cheese right at the end and cook until the kale wilts.

You end up with a stew-like consistency. You can ladle it into a bowl or spoon it on top of slices of toasted crusty bread. This meal is so hearty and satisfying; I guarantee that you will love how it warms you up from inside on cold winter days. If you have any leftover they will taste even better the next day in your brown bag lunch. I promise!

Roasted Carrot Hummus

I saw Giada De Laurentiis make this recipe for Roasted Carrot Hummus recently on her Food Network television show Giada Entertains. I grabbed my computer during the episode and searched for the recipe on the Food Network website.

I was able to locate the recipe for Roasted Carrot Hummus but the photograph of the food on the website seemed a disservice to the appetizer that Giada demonstrated on her show. Isn’t the photo above of the Roasted Carrot Hummus much more appealing than the one posted below from the Food Network website?

The photo of Roasted Carrot Hummus from the Food Network website

The experience that I had watching Giada’s show and many other similar experiences on the Food Network website inspired the new series that I am starting today. The focus of this series is take awesome recipes from the Food Network and to cook them at home. Then, the important part, we are going to take good photos of the recipes. The Food Network’s website has consistently terrible photos of their recipes. Did I mention that?

I often feel frustrated when I want to pin a recipe from Food Network to my Pinterest account. The photographs of the food that come up are rather uninspired. I work hard to curate Pinterest boards that are full of tantalizing recipes and sometimes I won’t pin a recipe despite how good it sounds because the photo is bad.

So, I am taking on the challenge of a photography project to create beautiful photos of recipes that I see on the Food Network. This way I can pin the recipe and hopefully give the recipe the Pinterest love that it deserves.

Next up in this photography challenge

Here are few examples of delicious-sounding recipes that are paired with sad photos on the Food Network website. I plan to make and photograph these over the next few months.

Original photo from Food Network website

Parmesan Pomodoro

Original photo from Food Network website

Rigatoni with Greens

Original photo from Food Network website

Southwestern Potato Salad

See what I mean? Life is too short to post recipes with mediocre pictures.

Don’t you think the pin below would get a lot more repins on Pinterest than the one next to it? This is important if you are an avid Pinterest user.

If you come across a poorly photographed recipe on the Food Network, shoot me an email with a link to the recipe and I will add it to the list of recipes that need to be photographed again. Also, I need a good hashtag for this project. If you can think of something clever, leave me a comment below.

Onto to the recipe, I made a few adjustments to the original recipe. I added tahini, cumin, and reduced the amount of oil.

Tator Tot Poutine

It’s time for some real talk. You guys know that I typically focus on whole food, plant-based recipes here on Hello Fun Seekers. But sometimes you need something else. Call it comfort food or Super Bowl food, or whatever you need to justify this delicious but in no-way-healthy dish.

I want to share with you guys a dirty little secret of mine. I love tator tots, despite the fact that they represent everything that I hate in food. Frankenfood. This is what I like to call processed food made in a factory that bears little resemblance to the natural food from whence it came. What the hell are those ingredients?

That being said, I love tator tots. I can’t help myself. But, I do try to limit my tator tot fix to the occasional treat. This recipe is nod to our neighbors to the North. Canadians have an unparalleled level of expertise on hockey, beer, and poutine. For the uninitiated, poutine is traditionally a snack of French fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy.

In general, I am not a fan of fried foods and never fry food in my kitchen. The mess! The smell! No thank you. But, I can get 100% behind baking a tray of tots. See the note in the recipe for tips on crisping up baked tots.

The key to this Tator Tot Poutine is timing. You want all the components to come together at the same time. Layering the hot Tater Tots, room temperature cheese curds, and bubbling gravy all come together is the key to successful poutine. So, be sure to have all your ingredients prepped and think through the timing of this dish so it will be perfect.

If you are looking for other comfort food or Super Bowl recipes, may I recommend?

Guacamole with Clementines

Clementines, Mandarins, Cuties, Halos, whatever you call these delicious little gems, they are easily found at grocery stores this time of year. I nearly always have a bag of them in my fridge during the winter months. They travel well, are super sweet, and let’s face it; seasonal fresh fruit is scarce this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. But, this small citrus fruit shines when it is cold outside.

So, why not add a little oomph to your guacamole with chopped up segments of clementines? That is exactly what I did here. I took a handful of those easy to peel clementines and cut each segment into thirds. I wanted the pieces to be substantial enough that you get a burst of sweetness in a bite but not so big that you would have worry about keeping it balanced on a chip.

Everyone loves guacamole. I mean, if you don’t love guacamole then you confuse me. We can still be friends and everything, but I don’t understand how anyone can resist dipping a chip into a bowl of fresh creamy guacamole. Actually, if you don’t like guacamole, let me know, I will invite you over to my place. More guacamole for me!

A local restaurant here in Salt Lake City called Taqueria 27 offers a ‘guacamole of the day’ (G.O.D.). They offer up some wild combinations.

Recent G.O.Ds include:

red apple, Anaheim pepper, and pickled red onion
grilled onions and jalapenos, lime and queso fresco
blueberry, gorgonzola, habanero, and balsamic

I don’t love all of them but I do appreciate the chef’s commitment to using interesting ingredients.

That is what inspired me to add clementines to a batch of guacamole last weekend to snack on while the NFL playoffs were on. Plus, the Superbowl is coming up in a few weeks which always feature the best game-snacking opportunities of the year. I believe I once heard that the statistic that more avocados are sold Superbowl weekend than any other time of the year.

This recipe doesn’t stray too far from a traditional guacamole recipe other than I bumped up the heat a little to complement the sweet from the clementines. I love the sweet and spicy combination with the traditional creaminess of the avocados and acidity of the lime. Recommended!

Do you have a favorite non-traditional ingredient that you like to add to your guacamole? If so, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

A few other ideas for your Superbowl party:

Greek Pizza with Spicy Yogurt Sauce

Do you have a few dinner recipes in your arsenal that you go to when you need a quick, healthy dinner? Veggie burgers, bean and cheese burritos, and popcorn are mine. I know popcorn isn’t technically dinner but on occasion, paired with a glass of wine, it is the best I can do.

It can be easy to outsource dinner to take-out or delivery but its January and we are committed to sticking with our healthy eating goals, right? Right! So, let’s skip take-out and add some new quick and healthy recipes to our collection.

What I love about this recipe is not only quick and healthy but the Greek flavor profile is delicious too. The only cooking involved is chopping the veggies and roasting them in the oven. Everything else is just an assembly job. The pizzas can be totally customized to suit your taste and the tastes of your families. Hate olives? Skip them. Love artichoke hearts? Add them.

Use a whole wheat pita as a base. You can use regular white pita too, of course, but using whole wheat bumps up the nutrition. Hummus is the sauce. You can use prepared hummus or homemade. I love making hummus at home but there are so many delicious commercially prepared tubs of hummus out there that I almost always pick up a few containers to keep in the fridge when I grocery shop.

The only step in this recipe that can be considered cooking is this one. You will chop up vegetables into uniform pieces to encourage them to roast together in harmony. If some of the veggie pieces are huge and others small, the small pieces may burn before the large ones cook through. So, uniformly chop your veggies and drain then rinse a can of garbanzo beans. The roasted beans add a little crunch to the pizza.

Warm the pitas in the oven while the veggies roast and all you have left to do is assemble pizzas and pat yourself on the back for sticking to your resolutions.

Fiesta Buddha Bowl

I live on Buddha bowls. I cook the components for Buddha bowls as part of batch cooking for the week. When I first started making them I didn’t know that they were called Buddha bowls. I just called them bowls. But, I love the name Buddha bowls now, so that is how I always refer to them. For the uninitiated, a Buddha bowl is simply a meal that consists of a grain, a green, and a bean.

The grain can be rice (brown, white, red, black, or wild), quinoa, wheat berries, or any other grain that you fancy. Be adventurous and try some new grains. Peruse the bulk bins at your grocery store and find a new grain to try. You can buy a small amount of a few different types and see which ones you like. You can google how to cook any grains for instructions on how to prepare them.

For greens, I like to use raw greens which are hearty like chopped Romaine or kale. Or, sometimes I will use sauteed greens like Swiss chard or spinach. But, I often substitute other veggies in my bowls like roasted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, or cauliflower. This isn’t science, just use what you like!

I always have cans of beans in my pantry. I couldn’t pick a favorite. I love them all. They each offer unique character to a dish. On any given day, you can find garbanzos, black beans, white beans, kidney beans, and pinto beans in my pantry. I also keep a stash of dried beans handy. They are so cheap, easy to cook, and a great source of fiber and protein.

As you can see, Buddha bowls are perfect for make-ahead meals. Cook a big batch of your grains over the weekend, open a can of beans, and then decide what vegetables you want to include. Then, you will have a quick easy dinner and left overs for lunch.

I often will see an ingredient at the store that will inspire my Buddha bowl for the week. This week I found avocados on sale at my local market. Instantly, I know that a Fiesta Buddha Bowl was going to happen this week. Over the weekend, I made a batch of brown rice. I had black beans, Romaine lettuce, salsa, corn, onions, salsa and pepitas in my pantry. Along with the avocados, I was set!

I will be featuring ideas different Buddha bowls in the coming months. But, there are seriously so easy that I encourage you to come up with some combinations of your own featuring ingredients that you love. I would love to know if you have any favorite bowl combinations. Feel free to leave me some ideas in the comments below.