recipe: roasted vegetable pot pie

I'm hosting my first Easter dinner tomorrow and I'm cooking up individual veggie pot pies for everyone! I decided to do a test-run of my recipe to make sure it would be peak delicious, and so I would have time to tweak anything that needed to be changed before I make the actual dinner tomorrow. One great thing about this recipe is that you can make the filling the day beforehand, and refrigerate it. So that will cut my actual cooking time on Easter in half! I also did my test-run with pre packaged pie crust but tomorrow I'll be using my mom's homemade crust recipe, which I'm including below.

This came out exactly how I wanted it to. The roasted vegetables make this different from a normal pot pie, but it still has the kind of classic comfort food feeling that I was going for. I think this will definitely be my go-to recipe for Easter every year now!

I wanted to make sizable individual pies, so I used these 24oz baking dishes. This recipe will make six 24oz pot pies.

Vegetables
1 bag of carrot sticks
2 large zucchini
2 pounds asparagus
2 bags of frozen green beans
2 leeks (white and light green parts only)
2 pounds of potatoes, skin on
1 pound of sweet potatoes, skin on
1 c. corn
1 head of garlic

First chop all of your fresh vegetables and garlic into small bite sized pieces. Toss them with a little olive oil and sea salt and then roast at 400' for 30 minutes. I pre-microwaved my potatoes and my frozen green beans and corn before roasting them so that they were fully cooked before going in the oven to get crispy.

Filling
3 c. vegetable broth
6 tbsp. flour (or corn starch)
1/2 tsp. tarragon
1/2 tsp. parsley
pink sea salt to taste

Whisk the ingredients for the filling on low/medium heat in a saucepan until the mixture starts to thicken. Keep stirring so that it doesn't get clumpy! When it's nice and thick, take it off the heat and mix it with all of your roasted vegetables. Then fill your baking dishes with the mixture.

Crust
1 3/4 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 c. oil
3 tbsp. water

Mix flour, salt, and oil and then add water. Combine to form your pastry dough and then roll out. I cut out my crusts by placing an empty baking dish on top of the dough and tracing around the circle with a butter knife. Then just use a fork to create ridges along the edge of the pie crust in the baking dish.

Bake for 20 minutes in a 400' oven and let cool before enjoying!



I'm also making a gluten free crust for my Grandmom, who has Celiac. This is the recipe for the pie crust that I make for her:

Gluten Free Crust
2c. gluten free flour
4 tbsp. melted coconut oil
1 egg
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 c. water

It's difficult to roll this out so I just sort of piece it together. But it tastes very close to the real thing!

recipe: my favorite snack

Earlier this year I got a free trial for one of those subscription snack boxes and I really loved it, but there was no way I could actually afford to keep getting it delivered. So I decided to come up with my own snack mix to have on hand whenever I get the munchies! Each week I just mix up a batch and store it in a tupperware container.



I don't know if this can even really be called a "recipe" since the instructions are so simple. I just take one bag of glazed walnuts (if you like the taste of plain walnuts definitely go that route since they're healthier!), one bag of dried cranberries, and one bar of dark chocolate broken up into small chunks. If you're looking for healthy dark chocolate, the higher the percentage of chocolate, the better. I got this one because it was on sale, but my favorite is the Theo 70% dark chocolate/sea salt bar.

I love this combination so much that I have to put a portion into a small bowl to snack on rather than dipping my hand into the container, or else I get "where did that whole bag of doritos go?!" syndrome. It disappears before I even realize it! It's just so good!

recipe: quick spanish rice with sun dried tomato polenta

I was in the mood for a paella-esque dish the other day but really didn't feel like taking the time to make it. My go-to recipe (from my favorite cookbook, The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen) is very time consuming and it uses arborio rice which dilly dallies and takes all day to soak up broth. I also wanted to add something with a little bit of crunch and flavor for a vegan chorizo substitute and I'm so glad I decided to try sun dried tomato polenta! All in all this dish was done in about 20 minutes but it tasted like I had spent hours slaving over a hot stove.

Ingredients for the rice:

1 bag frozen brown rice
1 c. vegetable broth
1/4 tsp. saffron threads
3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, grated
4 tsp. minced garlic
1 small yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
2 c. frozen baby lima beans
1 c. frozen green peas
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. smoked paprika
scallions
1 lemon

Start out by microwaving your frozen rice according to the directions on the bag. Meanwhile, combine the saffron and vegetable stock in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile still, heat up the olive oil in a large skillet and sauté the onion and garlic until it's making your house smell AMAZING.

After the onion and garlic have softened, add the peppers (I specify a yellow pepper and a red pepper just for the sake of making the dish pretty - if you can only get one color it'll still taste the same!) and sauté until they're soft. Then add the cooked rice, the soy sauce, the paprika, and a little salt and pepper. Stir it all together to combine and then add the frozen lima beans and the saffron-infused broth. Let everything cook, stirring occasionally, until the broth is all gone. While it's cooking, you can whip up your sun dried tomato polenta:



Ingredients for the polenta:

1 package of sun dried tomato polenta
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp. smoked paprika

In a small bowl, combine extra virgin olive oil with smoked paprika. Cut the polenta into round slices, as thin as you can get them, and then brush each side with the paprika olive oil marinade. Heat in a skillet over medium heat until they start to get crispy. Make sure to flip them over and cook both sides!

When everything is done, just squeeze a bit of lemon juice on top of the rice, top with polenta and some chopped up scallions, and enjoy! I love that this was still super flavorful and packed with so many good veggies, too! It's one of those meals where it feels like you're being indulgent but it's actually incredibly healthy :)

recipe: strawberry coconut ginger smoothie

I decided to start my mornings with a smoothie this year (mostly because I have a large probiotic to take each morning that I can only swallow with something as thick as a smoothie, lol!) and this concoction is SO delicious! Plus it's dairy free, and the ginger adds an anti-inflammatory benefit, too!

1 cup frozen strawberries
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 tsp. grated (or powdered) ginger
1 tsp. raw honey
2 ice cubes

Just blend it all together in your blender, and then enjoy! This makes a pretty sizable smoothie which is perfect for a "meal in a cup" situation but if you just want something refreshing to drink, you might want to halve the recipe.

Recipe: Three healthy Thanksgiving recipes

Happy Thanksgiving! Today I'm sticking with my anti-inflammatory diet (what fun would a holiday be if I spent all night with an upset stomach?) and I thought I'd share the recipes I used for three of my healthy courses. I'm also making mashed roasted cauliflower (just steam-in-the-bag roasted cauliflower mashed with vegetable broth and roasted garlic) and seared salmon for my main course.

Keep reading for recipes for Pumpkin Custard (dairy-free, gluten-free, and nut-free!), Hazelnut Wild Rice Salad, and Cranberry Apple Relish (recipe courtesy of my mom!)



Cranberry Apple Relish
My mom has been making this for years and recently switched up the recipe to make it fit my anti-inflammatory diet, which was so sweet of her! My family eats pretty healthy for the most part, so it's pretty simple to make mostly-healthy recipes (fruit and sugar) into much-healthier recipes (fruit and maple syrup.)

You'll need:

1 orange
1 medium apple (my mom suggests gala or fuji)
3 c. fresh cranberries
3/4 c. maple syrup
1 Tbsp water

Grate zest from whole orange. Cut off any remaining pith from orange. Cut orange into chunks. Peel, core, and cut apple into large pieces. Combine everything in a food processor until finely chopped - but not mushy. Stir in maple syrup and water. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight.



Pumpkin Custard
This is just like eating pumpkin pie without the crust! My Grandmom has Celiac so custard has been a Thanksgiving staple ever since she was diagnosed about 20 years ago. This year I adapted this recipe I found online so that it's not only gluten free but anti-inflammatory as well. And I made sure to use coconut milk (a lot of dairy-free recipes call for almond milk) since my brother is allergic to nuts.

You'll need:

1 1/3 c. light coconut milk
1 c. pumpkin puree
3/4 c. maple syrup
3 eggs
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. pink Himalayan sea salt

Preheat the oven to 325'. On the stove heat the coconut milk over low heat until small bubbles form along the edges. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and maple syrup. Then once the milk is heated, whisk it into the egg/syrup mixture one tablespoon at a time.

In a separate bowl, whisk the pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and salt. Then whisk that mixture into the egg/syrup/milk mixture. Pour into a glass baking dish, and then put that dish into a slightly larger baking dish. Fill the outer dish with hot water until it goes halfway up the edge of the inner baking dish. Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes, or until the top is mostly set. At the 1 hour mark I started checking on mine every 10 minutes just to make sure it was setting properly.

Remove the inner baking dish from the outer baking dish and cool on a wire rack until the pan is room temperature. Then refrigerate until ready to serve!



Hazelnut Wild Rice Salad
Several years ago my family had a similar salad from the prepared foods section at Whole Foods and we fell head over heels with it! Of course that meant that every time we went back afterwards they never seemed to have it again. Luckily I kept the ingredients list from our first order and recreated it at home! The vinaigrette was adapted from this recipe. This makes a pretty hefty batch of rice so you might want to halve it if you're not feeding a lot of people.

For the rice you'll need:

18 oz. Lundberg Farms Whole Grain & Wild Blend Brown Rice
(other wild rice will do, but this is my absolute favorite!)
1 1/2 c. dried cranberries
1 1/2 c. diced red peppers
1 1/2 c. chopped hazelnuts
1 1/2 c. chopped spinach
1 1/2 c. sugar free dried pineapple, diced

For the vinaigrette you'll need:

1/3 c. chopped hazelnuts
1 shallot (finely chopped)
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
a pinch of allspice
3/4 tsp. pink Himalayan sea salt
2 tsp. maple syrup
2 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 c. walnut oil

Cook your rice, and then combine all of the rice ingredients listed. For the vinaigrette, sauté the chopped hazelnuts, shallot, and extra virgin olive oil. Then whisk with the remaining ingredients. Toss with the rice and refrigerate for at least one hour before serving.



I hope everyone has a wonderful and healthy Thanksgiving today! 💞

recipe: three variations of vegan pesto!

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I've been trying to eat a healthier diet the last several weeks and one thing that has been making all those healthy meals taste amazing is homemade vegan pesto. I've been trying a bunch of different varieties, with different nuts, seeds, and greens. It's so fun to play around with this recipe!

I use this pesto in so many different ways -- on wraps or sandwiches as a spread, diluted with a little extra virgin olive oil as a salad dressing, or (my favorite!) with zucchini noodles and roasted vegetables for dinner. Yum!! I usually use about 1-2 tablespoons at a time. It's packed with flavor and you really don't need all that much to make a difference.

Each batch that I make comes from the following recipe --



In a blender combine:

1/2 cup nuts or seeds
1/2 cup vegetable broth (add more if it's too thick)
a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
6 cloves of garlic
a pinch of sea salt
1 cup of greens (herbs or vegetables)

My favorite combinations are:

Sunflower seed - Parsley pesto (perfect if you have nut allergies!)
Basil - Walnut pesto (my favorite!)
Roasted asparagus - Cashew pesto

For the roasted asparagus pesto, just cook asparagus tips on 400' for 20 minutes and then wait until it's cooled to room temperature before adding it to your blender.

And that's it! It's SO easy to make this, and it's so healthy! (And so yummy!!)

recipe: eggs verde

Whenever I go to Hollywood, there is one thing that I look forward to the most. It's not the Hollywood sign, the movies, the chance celebrity sighting, the proximity to Disneyland, no. It's the Eggs Verde that I get at Mel's Drive In. I was going out there for the TCM Film Festival every spring, but since I'm not planning on returning I figured I better try to make my own version of this dish at home. It's either that or pay for a plane ticket to LA *just* for this restaurant (which I would 100% do if I could afford it, lol!!) or cook at home.

And this was so simple to whip up! I just fried a couple of eggs and put them on a bed of kale, then topped it with chopped tomatoes, corn, and fresh parsley. Add some roasted asparagus (400' for 20 minutes) and voila! This tasted so fresh and healthy and it's so filling. At Mel's they poach the eggs, use arugula instead of kale, and the corn mixture is more like salsa than just fresh vegetables. But this was so easy to whip up, and I made so much corn and asparagus that I had enough for leftovers the next day. I just had to make the eggs, and chop up some tomatoes!



This is sort of unrelated, but I was meeting with a career counselor this summer and for this one exercise she showed me a couple of recipes and asked me to choose the one that stood out to me. They were all for the same dish, but one was spelled out with very precise instructions in a numbered list, one was more casual but it still included specific measurements and times, and the last one (the one that I went for) was more like a conversation about a recipe. It reminded me of the recipes I grew up with, the kind that my mom and grandmom have written down. Stuff like "combine salt, flour, water. Bake." lol! Recipes that require eyeballing it, and just trusting your own instincts. Obviously those recipes don't really work for more science-y foods like cookies or cakes, but when you're throwing together an egg dish or biscuits or pasta sauce it can be fun to wing it!

Anyway, my whole point is that after I got home and was looking over the paperwork she gave me, I realized that the recipe reminded me a lot of the ones I've written here. I don't know if I've ever actually typed out a numbered list of steps. It's usually casual and leaves room for tweaking. Sometimes I still get messages from people telling me that they have tried my chickpea and tomato dish (still one of my favorites!) or my cranberry walnut pasta and it makes me so happy! Not just that I've helped you find a meal that you like, but because it meant my instructions were somewhat follow-able! ha!