More Easy Meal Ideas

Two comfort foods, a mighty meal.... and a partridge in a pear tree?

A perennial fave for young folk: mac n' cheese. Thing is, my daughter is dairy- and gluten-free, so this mac n' cheese is made with brown rice macaroni and Daiya cheese. It doesn't take long to cook this macaroni... no more than 8 mins, then drain and rinse well. Return to the empty pot, add Daiya cheese (I use a mixture of cheddar and mozz flavours), place pot over still warm burner and stir. Once the "cheese" is mostly melted, add a little butter. Now, this is just basically a plate of starch, so to give it some redeeming nutritional value, I saute some onion, garlic, mushrooms and whatever other veges are handy and mix them in. She doesn't seem to mind. Obviously this is a sometimes, "comfort food" meal and not for all the time. I can count on my daughter to work this off.

Stuffed potato: clean and nuke a nice large potato of choice. When it's tender and has cooled a bit, cut it in half, scoop out most of the potato and put it in a mixing bowl. You can use what you like to cream the potato. I used a little soy cream cheese (soy sour cream works too) to add some protein to it, and a little butter for yum. I also added some Daiya cheddar for flavour and some of those sauteed veges to it as well. I smooshed it all up together and packed it back into the potato skins. Put it back in the microwave and gave it a warming blast before serving.

Last, but certainly not least, the very nutritious fish dinner. Though vegetarian now, my daughter will still eat fish and eggs. These wild salmon fillets went on special at a local store and I stocked up. First I put the asparagus and mushrooms into a pan lightly coated with garlic olive oil, then, after turning them, I added the salmon fillet, sprinkled on top with tarragon and parsley, and a generous squirt of fresh lemon juice. The potato is nuked, just to complete that ol' fashioned "meat n' potato" model.

These are just some of my daughter's faves. All can be made your way or adjusted to your tastes. Bon apetite!

G-free, Vegan Shepherd's Pie

No kidding. Doesn't it look good? It really was.

Now, I'll confesss, wasn't my first try. Just to start with I needed to make my own vege broth.. there's stuff in commercial broth that my daughter can't have. So I loaded carrots, celery, onion, garlic and more into my crock pot, added water, and made broth. Thing is, I didn't have any faith in it. I mean, it didn't have bones, skin and all those animal parts that make a broth strong and rich. So I went ahead and made my first vege shepherd's pie with the broth straight up. Oooo... a little too strong. I made a date to try again.

Segue to yesterday when I rehydrated some shitake mushrooms to put into my vegan lasagna. When I was done, there sat the water I'd rehydrated them in. Oooo, I thought... can't waste that. Hmmm... time to try that shepherd's pie again? Yep.

So into the crockpot it went, along with onion, garlic, carrots, celery, some pieces of sweet potato that I've been experimenting with lately, along with some thyme, oregano and basil, and a couple pieces of asparagus and broccoli as well. This time I didn't underestimate it. When it was done and drained through a sieve, that was strong vege broth. I put some away in the freezer for another time, and treated what was left like a concentrate, adding water, salt and pepper, and using just water to dissolve the tapioca starch that would thicken my "gravy."

Now, first of course, I sauteed just a whole bunch of mushrooms. I really find these are a great replacement for meat in a vegan recipe. I also added some pieces of asparagus to the fry pan, and onion and garlic. Then I added the broth, water, salt, pepper, carrots, broccoli and zucchini. I thickened the whole thing with the tapioca starch. Meanwhile, I had made mashed potatoes, using soy cream cheese and Daiya cheese to cream them, with a little salt and pepper.

I scooped the veges and gravy into the oven-safe ceramic dishes (they have a name, but it always escapes me). Then I covered this with the mashed spuds and garnished with a bit more Daiya cheese shreds. I baked it for a bit, just to melt the "cheese" shreds a little, then turned on the broiler to brown up the top of it.

Mmmmmm.... success! It was really good.

Now, I've been experimenting, as I say, with sweet potato, and I had some already mashed in the fridge I meant to add to the potato on top of mine, to make it a little healthier. But I forgot. When I told my daughter about this she said, "only on yours?!" Hmmm... I told her I didn't think she'd like it... necessarily. But hey, she's up for the experiment too, so next time, I mix sweet potato with regular potatoes on the top of this culinary glory too see how that goes. Sounds good to me. :)