Baked Potatoes With Chili

I made baked potatoes with leftover chili for dinner this evening. I have also learned a quick way to make potatoes without baking them in the oven for 90 minutes. Put them into a pressure cooker for 20 minutes once the cooker has reached pressure; then put them into a 500-degree F oven for another 20 minutes. They have that fluffy texture you get when you bake them in the oven, but are much faster!

Quinoa Pot

This amazing quinoa dish was prepared by my oldest daughter for the families dinner tonight. It was wonderful! You cannot see the fresh lime juice or the cilantro, but it was amazing. Just quinoa, vegetable broth, black beans, frozen corn kernels, salt, and at the very end stir in lime juice and cilantro to taste. She added diced avocado to hers and said it was amazing!

Hash Browns

Nothing fancy here, just my lunch. I fixed hash browns, frozen from the store, with a sprinkle of ancho chili pepper and a side of salsa. Mmmm…

It was a bit annoying to have to read so many labels to find a hash brown without added oil, but I did it!

Tomato Onion Pasta

Last night I decided to remake an old family favorite as a new family favorite without any meat. This is the result: whole wheat pasta with a sauce that burst with flavor!

2 cans diced tomatoes, do not drain
1 yellow onion, diced
1 rounded teaspoon diced garlic
1 vegetable bullion cube
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon smokey paprika
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
2 large bay leaves

Heat a cast iron pan as hot as possible. Saute the onions without any liquid in the pan until you see a few black spots on the onions, then turn the heat down to medium and cook for about 3 more minutes. Transfer to a small pot and add the tomatoes and liquid from them. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir, then simmer for half an hour. Check every few minutes, give it a stir, and add small amounts of water if needed. You want to have some sauce to go with the tomatoes and onions. After 30 minutes, taste and add salt if needed. Serve over hot pasta.

My children used to love this dish because it had bacon in it. I was very pleased to hear them tell me that they could not believe there was no bacon in it and it tasted just as good! I tried fixing this without meat a couple of years ago, but did not think it was as good as the original then. I am improving in my use of spices and getting better results than I did in the past. Give this one a try, your carnivore guests should like it.

Carapulcra

I was in the mall a couple of years ago and found a Peruvian restaurant that was serving oil and meat-free carapulcra. I suspect that the meat was simply pulled out for my serving....but, I tried making it today. I am fortunate to be able to do my shopping in a fairly large city, Austin, and was able to find the ingredients at a grocery store called Fiesta. Here it is:

1 15oz package of papa seca (freeze-dried potato chunks)
5 cups vegetable broth
2 T. minced garlic
1 chopped onion
1 T. cocoa powder
1/2 t. cumin powder
2 T. Aji Panca
3 T. Aji Amarillo
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 T. fat-free peanut butter powder

I soaked the papa seca in cold water for 2 hours. Then drained the potatoes, added everything else except for the peanut butter powder. I stirred it, heated until warm and bubbly, sprinkled the peanut butter powder on, and served with a side of steamed rice. The restaurant used white rice, I used brown. Many of the recipes I found online called for 1 cup of dry white wine, I left that out and increased the broth by 1 cup. The Aji Panca is a mild but very flavorful red chili paste. The Aji Amarillo is a medium and extremely flavorful yellow chili paste. The recipes I found were saying to blend the chilies with oil to make the paste, but the paste I ended up finding at Fiesta only has the chilies in it. I was prepared to buy the chili and make the paste myself. The yellow chili has a very unique flavor and I think it would be worth finding it when you make this. I looked online and it is very easy to find it at Amazon, among other places. The original recipes called for toasted finely chopped peanuts, but I didn't want the added fat, thus the peanut butter powder.

Healthy, Inexpensive Dinner

Nothing fancy here for dinner tonight, just HUGE russet potatoes, baked, and a pan full of asparagus and Brussels sprouts.  The veggies have not been roasted yet in the picture and they looked so good when they came out that we ate everything before I remembered to grab the camera.  It was so good!  I put them into a 400-degree F oven for about 30 minutes.  The asparagus was fresh and the sprouts were frozen, but everything was ready when I took it out.

The potatoes were served with brown gravy or green chile sauce, whichever a person wanted.

Cheeze Dip

Before blending.  You can see the pepper, water with lemon juice, and cashews.

Right after I turned the blender on.

After a minute or so.

After it has been blended and poured into a red dish.

I made cheeze dip for my family a little while ago and wanted to share the recipe with you.  I made a batch this size the night before last, but by last night it was all gone.  

I make this in my Vita Mix Blender. 

1 cup raw cashews

2 cups water

juice from 1/2 lemon

1 t pink Himalayan salt

1 T prepared mustard

1 T chopped garlic

1 t onion powder

2 vegetable bouillon cubes

1/2 roasted red pepper (a little charred is even better)

1 shake cayenne pepper (maybe 1/8 t)

3 rounded T corn starch

1/4-1/3 cup nutritional yeast

Put everything into blender and turn to high.  Leave on high until it is hot and thick.  You can stop blending when it still runs and use it as a dip for veggies and baked chips, or you can let it blend until it is so thick it will not move in the blender.  That is how thick I made this batch.  Once it has cooled down, it can be spread on bread for a grilled cheeze sandwich, we like it spread thinly on pizza crust with the sauce and other toppings on top of it, or use it on baked potatoes and in macaroni.

Enjoy!