Sunday night family dinner

It’s impossible for me to forget about our weekly cooking dates because Kyle entered them in our joint google calendar.  So I get reminders emailed and texted to me when it’s time.  He’s almost as type A as I am…

[Fact: I’m only pretending I don’t find it attractive.  In reality, I love his nerdy traits more than anything – I just don’t want it to go to his head.]

So anyway…Kyle’s parents came to visit and I cooked them dinner. 

 

Happy Birthday Kevin!

The (vegan, gluten free) menu:

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Creamed Corn

Tomato & Avocado salad

Chocolate Coconut Macaroons

And wine (of course).

Ready for some recipes?

Disclaimer: I didn’t measure anything because I wasn’t planning on posting the meal…but then it got such rave reviews…and I did take photos…

So I’ll guestimate the amounts of things, starting with the star of the night.

 

Vegan Creamed Corn

[vegan, gluten free, soy free]

Ingredients:

• 1 (16 oz.) bag frozen corn
• 1/4 cup raw cashews
• 2 tbsp roasted sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup plain almond milk
• 1/2 cup water
• salt (to taste)

 

Directions:

Let frozen corn thaw to room temp (or just rinse with warm water and drain).

In food processor (or bullet or whatever), pulse cashews and sunflower seeds with almond milk until they are smooth and creamy. 

Add to glassware.

Then pulse half the corn (8 oz.) with the water until it’s mostly pureed.  Don’t stress over the consistency, just get it to a slightly lumpy but mostly mashed state.

Then add it to the nut/seed/milk blend.

 

Mix them together.

Then add the rest of the whole corn kernels to the mix. 

 

Feel free to adjust the amount of liquid (with more/less almond milk) as you want, there’s really no wrong consistency.  Add salt if you want.

Bake on 350 for 35 minutes.

When you take it out of the oven it will be HOT.  Really hot. 

Basically you don’t have to worry about serving this right away.  You also don’t have to worry about there being leftovers.  Kyle licked the serving spoon clean after the rest of the dish was gone, if that gives you any idea of how much he liked it.

 

It was my favorite too.  So in addition to becoming a hippie household regular, it has also been deemed a new Thanksgiving necessity.  I’m pretty proud of it. 🙂

 

Next up, the main course.

Stuffed Bell Peppers

[vegan, gluten free]

• 3 bell peppers

Bean & Grain Stuffing:

 

• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1/2 cup (dried) black beans
• 1/2 tomato
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp lime juice
• 1 tsp salt

Tofu Ricotta:

• 1 package extra firm tofu
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt

Directions:

Cook brown rice, quinoa, and black beans.  I used dried beans, so I had to cook them, but you could easily use canned beans and add them to the grains after they’ve cooked.  Whether or not you cook the ingredients separately or together is up to you.

 

I used my rice cooker and added everything in the morning, pushed go and forgot about them.  Later on I had a big pot of cooked beans and grains. 

 

Combine rice, quinoa, and beans with chopped tomato and spices.  If you want a shortcut, just add salsa in place of tomato and spices.

 

Store in fridge until ready to stuff peppers.

For the tofu cheese, just mash the tofu with a fork and blend in nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and salt.

Once it has a ricotta-like texture it’s good to go. 

With the amounts above you will have extras of both the cheese and stuffing so feel free to either (a) stuff more bell peppers than I did or (b) save the leftovers for other meals. 

Note that making less of the mixture is not an option. 

Why pass up leftovers?  It makes meals for the rest of the week even easier.  The tofu cheese goes well in and on everything (especially these) and the bean/grain mix is a perfectly good meal on it’s own. 

Back to the meal at hand.

Split the peppers and remove the stems, seeds and white pith. 

Place in sprayed pan and stuff.

 

I alternated stuffing the grain and bean mix and the tofu mix but you could just combine the two prior to stuffing.  Your call.

 

Bake for 40 minutes on 350.

The tops get nice and toasty while the bell peppers get all warm and soft.  It’s just a neat little package. 

 

The crispy grains with the soft “cheesy” ‘fu…yeah, it’s good stuff.  Actually, mixing the creamed corn in with it would probably rock too.  Hell, I’d pour that creamed corn on my shoe and still lick it clean. 

The last component to the meal was the tomato and avocado salad, which really doesn’t require a recipe at all.

Avocado and Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 avocados
• 4 tomatoes
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tsp salt

I think lime juice and avocados are a match made in heaven and since the meal was already Mexi-themed, this just added an extra boost to the rest of the flavors.

Happy weekend!