Kale Pesto

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Julie • 6 Comments

kale pesto

So my local Safeway sells kale one way and one way only: in a massive, Costco-sized three-pound bag. None of this namby-pamby “by the bunch” b.s. you see at Whole Foods. Nope, Safeway looks you right in the face and says “Hey man. If you want some kale, you’d better WANT SOME KALE.” Challenge accepted, Safeway.

For the record, three pounds may not sound like a lot, but when we’re talking about leafy greens…that’s a whole lot of leafy greens. I have trash bags at home that are smaller than this. It takes up a huge chunk of real estate in my fridge so I have to make a concerted effort to eat it down a little more every day until it’s time to go back to Thunderdome…uh…Safeway…and get more. Needless to say, I eat a lot of kale. Smoothies for breakfast. Ribboned and dispersed harmlessly through my lighter salad greens at lunch. Baked into crispy chips as a snack. And massaged, sautéed, braised and pureed six ways from Sunday all other times of the day, until every last bit is gone. Obviously pesto was going to happen at some point. Why not? It’s hardier than basil and doesn’t turn that awful dark color if you leave it out for a few minutes. No, simple oxygen is no match for the rugged kale leaf. It makes a beautiful bright green pesto that in turn is a fantastic spread for sandwiches or pizzas, or of course thinned out with a little water and mixed into pasta. As an added bonus, this vegan version is healthy as all get out. Nutritional yeast stands in for the parmesan cheese and cuts way down on the fat, while still lending a nutty, cheesy taste that does wonders for the flavor. This is such a good light replacement for traditional basil/parm pesto – and now that I have this in my back pocket, I can make tons of it and freeze it. Gotcha, Safeway – I’ve found your loophole. Check and mate, and on to the next three-pound bag.

Kale Pesto

Kale Pesto
5.0 from 1 reviews

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Category: Sauces, Sides
Prep time:
Total time:
Yield: About 1 cup
A healthy, vitamin-packed vegan pesto.
Ingredients
  • 4 cups chopped kale leaves
  • ½ cup raw walnuts
  • ¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes
  • 1 clove garlic
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • ⅓ cup olive oil
Instructions
  1. Combine the kale, walnuts, nutritional yeast flakes, garlic, salt, and pepper in a blender or food processor and pulse until blended. With the motor running, drizzle in olive oil until pesto is relatively smooth. Remove and store covered in refrigerator until ready to use.
  2. To use as a sandwich spread: spread thinly on bread.
  3. To use as a pizza topping: Add a bit of olive oil to the desired amount to make it a bit thinner and more spreadable. Spread evenly on crust and cover with toppings.
  4. To use with pasta: Add hot pasta water to the desired amount of pesto and stir until desired consistency (somewhat thin like a sauce). Toss into pasta.
Filed Under: Quick & Easy, Sauces & Condiments, Vegan

Date, Walnut & Gorgonzola Grilled Cheese

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Julie • 1 Comment

date, walnut & gorgonzola grilled cheese

I can’t believe it’s almost May. We’ve had an absolutely glorious spring in DC (one week of 90+ degree temps notwithstanding), and I’m super grateful for it because all too often around here we go straight from frigid winter into unbearable summer heat. Having over a month of fantastic (and seasonally appropriate!) weather has been awesome and I’ve been taking every opportunity to get outside. I spent a good amount of Saturday reading outdoors, and Sunday started VERY early with a cheerleading session for two friends running the Nike women’s half marathon downtown. I’m a very good cheerleader. I brought this sign to help rally the troops:

photo (4)

Sigh. Will I ever learn to act right? Or my age? Burning questions, people. Anyway, my friends Emily and Wendy finished their 13.1′s with aplomb and I’m very proud of them, as well as the 15,000 other people who took the leap. The run. Whatever.

After all that standing around shouting at strangers, I was obviously exhausted. You think running a half marathon is hard? Try holding a cardboard sign in the air for hours. JUST DO IT. They don’t make commercials about that, but they should. Obviously I needed to go home and carbo load immediately. I wanted something easy, filling and maybe not entirely good for me, and hey, it’s still grilled cheese month. One of my favorite salads is a combination of spinach, dates, gorgonzola and walnuts, but there was no way I was eating a salad after watching all that running and vicariously burning all those calories. So I put the salad between two big fat slices of sourdough and called it an afternoon, because it couldn’t have possibly gotten any better. The pungent gorgonzola is perfectly complemented by the soft, sweet dates, mild walnuts, and crisp onion. HIGHLY recommend if you’re a gorgonzola fan like me. Or a sandwich fan. Or if you just ran a half marathon. Or just if you’re hungry.

Date, Walnut & Gorgonzola Grilled Cheese
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Category: Lunch
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Yield: 1
Ingredients
  • 2 slices sourdough bread
  • 1 Tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 tsp balsamic vinegar
  • A few thin slices of red onion
  • 1 handful baby spinach leaves, chopped
  • ⅓ cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese
  • 4 dates, pitted and chopped
  • ¼ cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
  1. Butter one side of each slice of bread and place buttered side down on a plate.
  2. Begin heating a grill pan or skillet over medium heat.
  3. Brush each slice of bread with balsamic vinegar. Layer onion, spinach leaves, gorgonzola, dates, and walnuts on one slice of bread and place the other slice atop it, balsamic side in, buttered side up. Place in heated skillet and cook, using a spatula to press down on the top slice, until the bottom slice is browned and cheese is melting, 3-4 minutes. Flip and cook another two minutes, until browned and hot. Serve immediately.
Filed Under: Lunch, Main Dish, Quick & Easy, Sandwiches, Uncategorized

Baked Avocado Egg Rolls

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Julie • 8 Comments

Baked Avocado Egg Rolls

I guess my theme this week is food inspired by stuff I used to eat at work. I used to travel quite a bit for a former client – it was a hectic way to live but a lot of fun. Work travel is a great way to see little bits of cities you might never have had a chance to spend time in – usually there isn’t much time to do touristy stuff, but if you can fit in one or two little things or try a good restaurant, it’s more than you’d get to do staying at home.

Of course, between the good local restaurants you get to try are the ones you have to go to just to make sure you eat. Those are the ones that were always a bit of an adventure for me as a plant-eater trying to stay healthy on the road. I can’t count the number of iceberg salads and pastas with red sauce I’ve eaten in various cities across the country because that was what was available. And sometimes if something looked really good, I’d just give in to the deep fryer and go to town.

These egg rolls were one of those special cases. I’m mildly obsessed with avocado – if I could pick one food that had to be in everything I ate for the rest of my life, that would be it. I found avocado egg rolls on the menu at BJ’s Brewhouse, a restaurant where my coworkers and I always ended up killing time before redeye flights home from Seattle, and I loved them so much that I ordered them every time I was there. Healthy? Nope. Delicious? Yep.

I work on a different project now, and my Seattle days are over. But I still REALLY like those egg rolls, so I started looking for a way to recreate them and maybe healthify them a bit in the process. I had immediate success with this one, and I wasn’t surprised – how could they go wrong?  If you don’t care about the extra oil, you can certainly deep fry these, but I don’t think they suffer for being baked. I for one am certainly enjoying being able to eat these without traveling across the entire country. Serve these with any dipping sauce you like – ranch, soy-ginger, or sweet chili.

Baked Avocado Egg Rolls

Baked Avocado Egg Rolls
4.5 from 2 reviews

Print
Category: Appetizer
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Yield: 9 servings
Ingredients
  • 2 large, ripe avocados, diced
  • Juice of one lime
  • 4 oz (1/2 package) fat-free cream cheese, softened
  • 2 Tbsp sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and chopped roughly
  • ¼ cup red onion, minced
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 Tbsp pine nuts, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp cilantro, chopped
  • Pinch of red pepper flakes
  • Salt & pepper to taste
  • 9 egg roll wrappers
  • Cooking spray
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 400 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
  2. Place diced avocados in a medium bowl. Gently stir in lime juice.
  3. Stir in cream cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, onion, garlic, pine nuts, cilantro, red pepper, and salt and pepper until thoroughly combined.
  4. Lay an egg roll wrapper on a work surface. Place 2-3 tablespoons of the avocado mixture down the middle of the wrapper. Fold one point of the wrapper over the mixture and roll once. Fold in the two sides and roll the egg roll shut. Use a bit of water to fold in and seal the remaining tip. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining wrappers and filling.
  5. Spray tops of the egg rolls lightly with cooking spray. Bake for 10 minutes. Turn each egg roll and spray the other sides lightly with cooking spray. Return to oven and bake for another 10 minutes, until browned and hot.
  6. Serve with dipping sauce of choice.

Source: Inspired by BJ’s Brewhouse
Filed Under: Appetizers

Cauliflower Fried “Rice”

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Julie • 5 Comments

Cauliflower Fried Rice

The last office building I worked in before we moved further out into the wilds of suburban DC had a lot of fun stuff in it. It had a nice gym, a fancy bar with amazing happy hour specials, and a decent cafe for lunch.

I did not list those three things in order of importance, by the way – although a decent lunch place is important, being within walking distance of a good happy hour is paramount. But that’s not the point right now. The point is that this cafe had a lot of good things going for it – an adequate sandwich selection, a salad bar, and a small hot bar. The hot bar was pretty limited, but always included a gigantic buffet warmer of fried rice. Which I could not keep my hands off of. At least four days a week I’d go down intending to get a salad, instead ending up with what my friend Emily and I lovingly termed a “rice vat.”

Incidentally, the rice vat is the most likely origin of the 25 pounds I had to lose last year, even though we moved offices five years ago.

… [click for recipe and more]
Filed Under: Main Dish

Scrambled Egg Stuffed Portabellos

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Julie • 0 Comments

scrambled egg stuffed mushrooms

Last Monday I posted about how much Mondays suck, about having a case of them, whining about the weekend ending. I can safely say that over the last seven days, starting a few hours after I put up that post, I’ve learned a little bit about how bad a Monday can really be. I can safely say that from now on, any day that ends in “y” will not be inherently assigned a suck factor just for existing.

… [click for recipe and more]

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Filed Under: Breakfast