Tofu Florentine (broiled marinated tofu over garlicky chard and roasted root vegetables, topped with Cheezy sauce) from last week (on menu from 2 weeks ago)
Last week was a good week. I ate really well. There’s something so lovely and self-caring about making gorgeous food full of fresh colorful veggies. Planning seems to be working out for me, and as an added bonus as I page through cookbooks and click through internet and blog recipes I’ve started compiling a mental (and actual) file of recipes I want to make. This means that when I’m at the farmer’s market, and there are beets everywhere, and not an eggplant or a zucchini in sight, I remember I’ve been wanting to make beet curry and can easily ditch the eggplant stew and rework things on the fly.
Sweet potato and black bean enchiladas with adobo sauce from last week
I tried a bunch of brand-new recipes last week and loved every single one of them. They also made fantastic leftovers – I had a sweet potato and black bean enchilada for breakfast for four days running! This time I have more new recipes and a few familiar ones. I feel like this plan is actually way overambitious, especially as things will be getting quite busy in the middle of the week, but I’ll just have to do the best I can.
“Mish-mash bowl” with quinoa, fleur de sel, flax oil, and nori, topped with sweet potatoes, broccoli, broiled tofu, avocado, grated carrot, radishes, pumpkin seeds, cashews, sunflower seeds, parsley, mint, and green onion, with tahini sauce (picture taken before the tahini sauce, 'cause it's prettier!)
This week Cheryl of Gluten Free Goodness hosts the Gluten-Free Menu Swap with the theme of Quinoa. I love quinoa and eat tons of it! I’m not doing anything particularly creative with it this week, like baking with it or turning it into breakfast cereal, but it will accompany my curry and form the base of the delicious mish-mash bowl I’ve fallen in love with. Mish-mash bowl makes a terrific leftover and a great lunch to pack for an on-the-go day. The trick I discovered last week is to toss the quinoa with a little salad dressing (I had some left over from my romaine and herb salad) before packing it into my lunch container. This keeps it from getting dry and unappealing. My favorite way to eat hot quinoa is to just toss it with a pinch of fleur de sel. The big flakey grains of salt don’t dissolve all the way, and their salty crunchy texture is a great complement to the little pearls of quinoa.
As always you’ll find tons of menu plans at the grand round-up over at OrgJunkie!
Monday
Beets, beet greens, cabbage, and chickpea curry
Quinoa
Romaine salad with carrots, green onions, celery, with Spa Vinaigrette with fresh dill
Tuesday
Rice bowl with dandelion greens and avocado
Steamed artichokes
Wednesday
Leftovers
Gai lan with garlic and soy sauce
Thursday
Moroccan veggie tagine with zucchini, potato, cabbage, celery, cauliflower, eggplant with harissa (*defrost 2 C. stock)
Lundberg GF brown rice couscous
Friday
“Mish-mash bowl” with quinoa, fleur de sel, and nori, topped with baby broccoli, avocado, grated carrot, radishes, pumpkin seeds, cashews, sunflower seeds, parsley, mint, and green onion, with tahini sauce (steam veggies and make tahini sauce ahead)
Saturday
Leftovers
Sunday
Chili-glazed tofu
Stir-fried iceberg lettuce
Coconut rice
In My Box 
your photos are so pretty and colourful
That tofu florentine looks fantastic–now I’m craving some broiled tofu (and of course that sauce!). Love the colors of the mish mash bowl, too. 🙂
The whole recipe is tweaked from Veganomicon. Can you eat nutritional yeast? That is basis of that yummy sauce. I am completely in love with my mish-mash bowls now, and it’s all thanks to you!
what gorgeous photos! looks like a fun week
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It sounds like a yummy week for you, too!
I have agree with the other folks here. You take incredible food pictures! I could almost taste the sweet potato and black bean enchiladas!
Thanks so much, Sandra. I have a pretty bad camera so I’m always embarrassed by the yellow cast in all my pics, but when I can take them in natural light they come out a little bit better and then I can stand to post them. 🙂
Well, I guess I’m last in line here to say your photos are awesome. Both the tofu florentine and the mish-mash bowels look excellent. I will have to investigate the mish-mash bowl actually. And Veganomicon is going on my list for sure. Your menu for the week looks really, really good. I’m pretty amazed that you can do all the chopping for so many meals (because I am kind of a wimp and that’s the part of the recipe that usually gets to me). Do you ever pre-prep that part of the recipe?
Sometimes I do pre-prep, like I steamed the sweet potatoes in advance for the enchiladas when I made them for the mish-mash bowl (or bowel?). But I kind of have two modes right now. In Mode One I move into the kitchen for an entire evening and night, listening to food podcasts and chopping, cooking, cleaning, making sauces and dressings and all kinds of stuff. That’s all I do for the whole evening. In Mode Two I don’t cook at all, either because I have plans from say, 6-9 or 7-10, or because I’m so tired I can’t even drag myself into the kitchen. On those nights I eat leftovers or nothing.
I need to find a balance between the two for sure, some way to make meals that doesn’t involve that being my sole activity for the night. But one thing that it has shown me is that once I “get into the flow” the chopping is not that big of a deal. I, too, used to be intimidated by veggie-heavy meals because of how much prep they were going to take. Now I just get into a rhythm with it, washing, peeling, chopping, throwing the scraps in a bag for scrap stock, etc. I’m always surprised at how little time it actually takes when I get down to it. It takes less time to wash, peel, and chop a sweet potato for steaming than it does to make a dressing or sauce, what with pulling the ingredients out from fridge and cupboard, finding the different sizes of measuring spoons, getting the spices out of the spice drawer, etc. I even have RSI in my wrists and I find it’s not as bad as I think it’s going to be. (Of course there was a time when I couldn’t even lift a knife, so things have really improved in that department.) Is it pain that makes you want to avoid the chopping? Or just that sense of overwhlem – I totally used to have that myself. I always wanted to eat things like spinach rather than kale, stuff you didn’t have to chop before cooking. Come join me and embrace the chopping! It’s easier than it seems!
Ha ha. Mish-mash BOWLS! Not bowels–major whoops! 🙂
Wow, what yummy food pictures! You have a delicious-looking week ahead of you too.
Uhmmm… that tofu florentine looks kind of amazing. And by “kind of” I mean “really.” The two pictures are recipes from Veganomicon, right?
ANYWAY.
No worries about the nudge; I really appreciated it! I was worried that I’d lose readers as I contemplated my next move, so it was good to be reminded folks are still thinking of me. It seemed only fair I return them with some content to think about, even if it’s a review of a restaurant 99% of readers will never go to. Ha.
Keep up the great meals! I’m jealous of your farmers’ market.
The tofu florentine is from V’com, but modified (roasted root veggies instead of home fries, chard instead of spinach). The sweet potato enchiladas are from the blog GF Goddess, and the link to the recipe is in the previous week’s menu plan. They are truly incredible, especially with a little stripe of soy cream cheese in each enchilada. The mish-mash bowl comes from the blog Diet, Desert, and Dogs, though I use a different tahini sauce, and those are both linked to in this post.
Can’t wait to read what you write next!
I love your recipes, I will be checking here often!
Yum. Everythng looks heavenly. I am making a fritata for dinner using veggies from our csa and garden.
Just looking at your last-week’s menu – your menus & meals are so elaborate! My goodness, I really should try to carve out the time to make something as beautiful more often!
That mish-mash bowl looks INSANELY yummy. I am having a sort of mental food strike lately, I should browse back through your posts and see if something strikes my fancy.