Sweet Potato and Oat Pancakes!

So it has been an incredibly long time since I have been away from my beloved blog – over a year! I can’t believe how time has flown at all. But then again maybe I can, since I had a baby almost exactly one year ago and since then life has been, needless to say, a little hectic. 🙂

I am excited to be back to blogging though, and with my little guy in the picture, my desire to cook has taken on a new dimension of making him fun, healthy vegetarian breakfasts, lunches and dinners. I have been experimenting with different finger foods, soups, etc. that are packed with veggies and proteins but still flavorful enough that everyone in the family can enjoy.

My first recipe is inspired by the fact that Milan (my son), loves pancakes and I was watching an episode of the Kitchen recently where they were talking about how easy and fun it is to add oats to pretty much anything. To that end, I tried out a fairly quick and fast sweet potato pancakes recipe and much to my delight, Milan loves them! Fun fact: sweet potatoes were also his first solid food! I made a bunch of pancakes and stored them in the fridge for a quick breakfast go-to or  for him to eat as an additional snack during the day.

If you want to see a photo of my reason for the long absence, head over to the About Me page for a snap of my cutie.  I hope to be back soon with another kid and adult-approved recipe.

Apple Walnut Yogurt Muffins

Friday I was inspired by the crisp apples I had sitting on the counter and the beautiful fall weather we are having here in D.C. We have just been having day after day of picturesque sun and brisk air that warrant long walks with my dog and just staring out the window longingly when I should be working! Seriously, I love fall in D.C. so so much.

This recipe was inspired by this blog post on Chelsea’s Messy Apron but I adopted it a by adding walnuts, not using cornstarch, and using vegetable oil instead of coconut oil. Its pretty healthy as muffins go because I used whole wheat flour, greek yogurt, and brown sugar rather than less healthy substitutes. There is a teeny amount of butter in the crumble topping but otherwise there isn’t any butter in this recipe at all which I think is pretty amazing.

These have been hitting the spot for breakfast paired with a tall glass of milk. They aren’t super sweet, but I don’t need my muffin to be a dessert! (Ok most of the time I do, but I feel less bad about eating them everyday because they aren’t loaded with sugar). The oat crumble on top gives it an extra something.

A perfect fall-time muffin.

Cauliflower Fried “Rice” With Honey-Ginger Sauce

Last night we made Chinese and Thai food at home since there are no good delivery options near us. Its actually really frustrating b/c when we lived in NY there were a million amazing Thai restaurants nearby and at least a handful of decent Chinese. Ah well! I can complain about lack of amazing food options in D.C. in every post I make.

In an effort to be healthier, I used cauliflower instead of rice. How versatile is this vegetable? Its basically amazing as a pizza crust, as a substitute for rice, and as a vegan “steak” option. I am so in love. And its so easy to use (except of course the cleaning up part – the joy of having little cauliflower pieces everywhere in my kitchen is no fun).

For our lunchtime salads these days I usually make a Honey-Ginger Dressing so I modified that a bit and used it for the sauce on the rice. It was the right balance of flavors for a rice dish, I would have to say! You can chow down on this all by your lonesome but we paired the it with a Tofu and Broccoli in Peanut Sauce that I made which turned out pretty decent as well. I may post that recipe soon too.

We definitely didn’t miss the rice!

Cauliflower Crust Pizza

I have been wanting to make a pizza crust with cauliflower instead of regular pizza dough for a while but never seem to have the chance. I wasn’t sure this would be a dinner favorite at the house so I usually opt for the regular version when we do make pizza (which is fairly often). This week I decided to do a small personal pie using cauliflower crust instead of regular pizza crust for my own weekday lunch so I could experiment and see if this would work for dinner too. It definitely does NOT give you the crispy crust that traditional pizza would allow for, but it does hold together decently well and is a far healthier alternative (great for those who are gluten-free too). I totally devoured the pizza in about 5 minutes so I guess you would have to say it was a success? I would make this again for dinner I think, but need to figure out ways to make it crispier! The best part –  it only took me 45 minutes or so start to finish to put this together.

I topped my pizza with regular tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, yellow summer squash, red onions, and tomatoes. Love this combination!. If I wasn’t being lazy, I would have sautéd the veggies a bit before putting them on the pizza, but it tasted great all the same.

Zucchini Bread

This summer has been my first foray into gardening, and I haven’t been sure that we are going to get much except some herbs. To be honest, I am not a great gardener anyways – I planted them and water the veggies, but I don’t weed enough and tend the plants (I don’t even really know what it means to tend the plants).  BUT, we have been lucky enough to get some cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and humongous zucchini! The zucchini has by far been the winner – we have gotten tons of them and I am not really sure what to do with all of it! So this week I made zucchini bread and its perfect. I added white chocolate chips to give it some extra sweetness, and I have been having it for dessert every night (which is slightly healthier than chocolate chip cookies or ice cream I usually have)!

Summertime Macaroni Salad

What’s better than a summertime grill-fest and a side of macaroni salad? In my opinion, pretty much nothing. Last night we grilled up some tofu using a barbecue marinade and I made this salad. VERY easy to put together, but it came out great so I thought it was worth posting. Our garden is finally giving us some veggies, and I got to use some of those in this recipe too.

Next time I would sub in some greek yogurt for all or some of the mayo since that would make it a whole lot healthier, but since I had never really made macaroni salad before, I kept it basic (and full of mayo). We did add some vegan sausage to amp up the flavor and I made tons extra so I can eat it for the next few days!

Samosa Wontons

I bought wonton wrappers at the grocery store for no reason at all the other day. I thought maybe I would make ravioli because I saw Giada do it on her show and it looked so easy and of course, delicious. But then, as soon as I had them at home I didn’t really want to make ravioli with them and every time I opened the fridge, they were staring at me.

**Side note: we went to Vegas over July 4th weekend and ate at Giada’s restaurant which is VERY vegetarian friendly, SUPER pricey, and just slightly better than average. I was kind of mad that the server told us that our $28 pasta bowls were not meant to be dinner portions and we should order a separate entree (WHAT?)

Anyways, back to my wontons. Yesterday I was finally struck that I can use these to make samosa’s which I love to eat but usually don’t want to go through the trouble of making the dough. So thats what I did! Pretty easy to do, tasty, and good for freezing so I can pull them out when we have people over.

Crispy Kale Chaat

If you have been to an Indian restaurant in Washington D.C., then you have seen either a “crispy spinach chaat” or “crispy kale chaat” on the menu. Its a twist on a popular Indian street food – chaat – which is basically a loose term for a collection of sweet/savory dishes that are usually found in roadside stalls in India (but is usually found in restaurants both there and here all prettied up!). I think chaat is kind of hard to explain unless you have had it, since the flavors are a real explosion of sweet/salty/tangy/crispy all in one. I love it. Chaat nights where we just eat a bunch of different types of chaat is up there with my favorite meals of all time.

I tried to recreate the crispy kale chaat I love so much at a restaurant here called Bombay Club. I am not sure its as good as the restaurant version, but it does the trick for a unique appetizer thats not very hard to put together!

Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream

Yum, home-made ice cream! I have been wanting to make this for a while, but since I don’t have an ice-cream maker at home it seemed like a more challenging task than I was up for. Luckily I got to visit my parents and brother/sister-in-law this weekend and spend some quality time with my 8-year old niece and 12-year old nephew as well as my family’s ice cream maker.

This recipe is really easy and taken straight from the ice-cream maker’s recipe book so I can’t take much credit for doing anything special. But it came out so delicious and I got to do some fun “cooking” with my adorable nephew and niece so its worth posting!

Chocolate Glazed Munchkins with Toasted Coconut Flakes

Who doesn’t love a good munchkin? I am a sucker for them every time I grab a coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts (my favorite place to get coffee – after all, I AM from New England) so I wanted to try and recreate a delicious munchkin at home. These took less than 30 minutes to make and were a perfect treat!