Category Archives: Side Dishes

Roasted Cabbage

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Julie • 3 Comments

roasted cabbage | baked in

I know what you’re thinking. “Really, Julie? You’re posting all weekend on the facebook about making cupcakes and now you’re giving me cabbage? And on a Monday, like Mondays need to suck more?” I know. I know. I’m not even going to try to make cabbage exciting. But hear me out. I have not one, not two, but THREE cupcake recipes coming at you over the next two weeks. And they’re good ones. If you’re not following my ridiculous train of thought, what I’m basically saying is I just gave myself license to give you one super unexciting thing for every three awesome ones.

I’m being pretty unfair to the cabbage here. Especially since I’ve basically made it my life’s work* to free its little cousin the Brussels sprout from its unfairly negative reputation. I actually really like cabbage, and like most of the cruciferous vegetables, it’s especially good roasted. It caramelizes a little and it completely changes the texture, with a pleasing crunch and a little brightness from freshly squeezed lemon juice.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Quick & Easy, Side Dishes, Vegan

New York Salt Potatoes

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Julie • 9 Comments

New York Salt Potatoes

Yesterday I had one of those days. You know those days. Nothing outright horrible happens, but these little piddling annoyances (doctor’s appointments, work stuff, blah blah blah) pile up throughout the day, and you’re gritting your teeth harder and harder and just when you think you can put today in the rearview, you’re driving home and your car overheats. At that moment you’re so Charlie Brown that you just can’t even with anything else.

GOOD. GRIEF.

So yeah, I closed out Hump Day a little salty. Okay, maybe a lot salty. Case in point: my neighborhood hosts a LOT of ghost tours. More than once a week I come home to a throng of people sitting on my front steps, enthralled with some tall tale about my haunted house being woven by a colonial-attired tour guide holding a lantern and standing directly in front of my door . Normally, I politely wait until the story is over and the group starts to move – after all, they shelled out like eleven bucks to be scared out of their wits. Far be it from me to interrupt, let alone reveal that my “haunted house” was actually built in the early 1900s, not the 18th century. Last night, I parked, took a big whiff of my burning engine, and then stomped through the crowd gathered on my stoop with barely an “excuse me,” nearly kicking over the lantern in my rude haste. See? SALTY.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Quick & Easy, Side Dishes

Vegan Duchess Potatoes

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Julie • 2 Comments

Mashed potatoes are one of the absolute best parts of Thanksgiving. And of life. Seriously, what’s better than a gigantic plate of creamy mashed potatoes?

I’ll tell you what’s better. Creamy mashed potatoes piped into a swirl and baked to browned, crispy perfection. These are just mashed potatoes taken one step further. I’ve always loved twice-baked potatoes, and these are everything great about those, without having to worry about keeping the skins intact to restuff. These are so easy, and they make for an incredibly impressive presentation. The return on investment is high here, people. You don’t even really need to pipe them – you can just as easily spread them into a casserole dish and bake them. The peaks will brown just as beautifully and no one will know that you took a shortcut, because their mouths will be full of delicious potatoes.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Holiday, Side Dishes, Vegan

Healthy Green Bean Casserole

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Julie • 2 Comments

Thanksgiving is a fun holiday for vegetarians, huh?

That sounded sarcastic. But it really is fun! I get a lot of jokes about what I’m eating during the holidays, and questions about what we do when we sit down at a dinner table with a gigantic turkey carcass plopped in the middle. What do we do? We handle it. For me, there are few things more fun than a challenge – and vegging up a holiday meal that can wow even the most devout turkey fanatic is most definitely a challenge.

The ubiquitous green bean casserole was not something that ever showed up on our Thanksgiving table. I’m not sure why – we did the canned cranberry sauce with the can’s date imprinted in the bottom, the mashed potatoes and gravy, and pretty much every other staple. But I had never even heard of this until five or six years ago, and the person who described it to me didn’t do a great job of selling it – I’m paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines of, “You take a bunch of cans of condensed crap and dump it into a dish, and then you mix in mushy cafeteria green beans and try to cover it with enough fried onions to make it palatable. Then you weep in memory of actual food.”

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Holiday, Side Dishes, Vegan

Loaded Thai Sweet Potatoes

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Julie • 8 Comments

It’s been an incredibly busy – but great – couple of weeks. Work has been insane (this is normal) and I have finally made room in my routine to incorporate almost daily workouts (this is not normal). Since my bike accident back in May, I’ve spiraled a bit. The torn ligaments in my back just nagged and nagged, often leaving me nearly in tears by the middle of a workday and with absolutely no energy to even go out for a walk by the end of it. On top of the injury, I’m allergic to all anti-inflammatory painkillers (Advil, etc.), so all the doctors could really tell me to do was ice it a lot and try to find time to lie around doing nothing until it felt better (have we met? My name is Julie and I am pathologically unable to lie around doing nothing).

I will regretfully admit to feeling a little bit sorry for myself, even while trying not to lose sight of the fact that it could have been a hundred times worse. I didn’t break anything, my head was blessedly undamaged (thanks, helmet!), and I am fortunate to have good health insurance through work that kept this from becoming a financial nightmare. But even cooking became a chore for those couple of months, as prolonged standing and twisting around in the kitchen would end up quite literally bringing me to my knees. I worked hard to keep my routine normal, to keep updating the blog, to tell people I was feeling 100% when I was nowhere close, but it took a toll.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Main Dish, Side Dishes, Vegan