Monday, May 07, 2012

Quick meals.

To prove that I do eat vegetables, here are two post-moving meals that we scraped together despite our diminished pantry. Both quick to prepare, with minimal hands-on cooking time. This is both a good and a bad thing - I love cooking, and love eating food that has been lovingly prepared. But, Andy and I are increasingly busy at work, and with a house and garden to spend time on as well, quick & easy meals become a necessity. That they are still healthy is the positive thing to focus on, I guess! (Incidentally, both of these meals are gluten free, and soy free.)


First, a pressure cooker risotto. This time it worked beautifully - we used a red onion, and a bit of balsamic vinegar, which gave the rice a pleasantly pink hue. The risotto also had butternut pumpkin, broccoli, and aniseed. It was very delicious.

The second meal is an improv ful salad. Ful is a dish made from fava beans, with the consistency of refried beans. When I was in Ethiopia, we ate ful for breakfast, straight up in a bowl, topped with chilli and tomato, with crusty bread. We had this from our favourite cafe, called Yeshi Buna, one of the many places in Ethiopia where they roast, grind, and brew coffee beans all in the middle of the restaurant. The smell, as you can imagine, was pretty amazing. When I returned home from Ethiopia, I posted the recipe for ful onto VegWeb. Last year, I googled the recipe and found that it had been copied, verbatim, to several places on the internet. Including my commentary about Yeshi Buna. At first I was a bit stroppy that I wasn't attributed, but now I'm a bit meh about it all - it's the internets, afterall. Anyways, we still make ful the same way, except with cooked beans instead of tinned. It's as delicious as I remember. This day, though, we didn't have any bread of any kind, so we served on lettuce, and topped with avocado & cucumber. It was still delicious.
Kitty paws not recommended as a side dish.

What are your healthy but quick go-to meals?

6 comments:

Kate said...

I'll definitely be trying the ful, it looks delicious! I've never had it before. We mostly have quick meals out of necessity too... pasta with pesto is a great quick meal along with a salad, lentil stew type things with veggies and quinoa added, tofu stir frys, and the list goes on...

Kari said...

These both look great - perfect even if you have all the time in the world, and even more so if they can be done quickly! Almost all of our dinners are done quickly, so it's kind of a necessity.

Anonymous said...

My current favorite healthy-but-quick meal is the Cheater Pad Thai from the Happy Herbivore cookbook. I load it up with broccoli and snow peas, and it's super quick to whip up!

Mel said...

The aniseed in your risotto sounds interesting and I love ful too! Stir frys seem to be the best quick meals that are also healthy. My other speedy meal that isn't quite as healthy is pasta with a smoky alfredo sauce, the sauce is made in the blender while the pasta is cooking. Too easy and delicious!

SarahByng said...

I've never thought of serving kitty paws, but i love the idea and it really brought a smile to my face and made me laugh out loud - in public! (must stop giggling) xx

Margaret said...

Love your posts!! Looks very yummy!
Thank you for your wonderful posts!
http://www.veganrawfood.net