Sweet Potato & Quinoa Chili, Vegan and Gluten Free

Go To Recipe #2

As much as I love the summer months here in Saskatchewan, I do really love Fall. The smell of brisk cold air outside, the crunch of leaves and the comforting feeling of eating a hot meal to warm you up. For me nothing says comfort food more than chili and with today being the first snow fall of the season I thought it was time to share my awesome chili recipe. 

I am constantly bragging that my chili is the best. In fact, it is so good that my older sister who is a raw vegan ate 3 large bowls!! She picked around the beans, but absolutely devoured the rest. Good thing I wasn't looking forward to left overs... :) 

When I first started to cut out meat from my diet, hamburger was one of the first things to go, along with all poultry. So when making chili I just used beans and veggies but it just wasn't as satisfying. I missed the hearty feeling that chili had, and with just beans and veggies it felt like a thick soup. Then I discovered Quinoa and found a new main star for my chili. Quinoa gives the meaty texture, its gluten free and seeing as there is 22 grams of protein to 1 cup, this is something that will definitely fill you and your family up.

This recipe is super simple to throw together and if you don't have a couple of ingredients, substitute them out for other things you have in your fridge. The only thing I suggest you try and keep in there are the Sweet Potatoes which add a great chunky texture and of course the Quinoa.

Vegan Chili

1 tbsp of coconut oil

1 onion, diced

1 clove of garlic, minced
3 celery stalks, diced
2 medium sweet potato, diced
1 small zucchini, diced
5 large mushrooms, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 large can of black beans
1 large can of kidney beans
1 can of beans in tomato sauce
1 can of tomato paste
1 large can of diced tomatoes
2 cups of vegetable stock 
1 cup of uncooked, strained quinoa

1 tbsp of chili powder

1 tbsp of cumin

1 tbsp of coriander

Cilantro for garnish

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium low heat. Add onions, garlic, celery and sweet potatoes and sauté for about 10 minutes.  Add the tomato paste, tomatoes, chili powder, corriander and cumin and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring until spices are fully blended in. Add the mushrooms, red pepper, zucchini, beans, stock, and season with salt and pepper. Continue to cook for about 5 minutes, then add the uncooked strained quinoa. Continue cooking for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently, or until quinoa and potatoes are cooked and the chili has thickened. Top with avocado and chopped cilantro.

Thanks for reading!!

xoxo -N

Mexican Style Quinoa and Black Bean Stuffed Peppers, Gluten Free and Vegan

This month, something was brought to my attention that just made October so much cooler. October is Vegetarian Awareness Month!! For those of you who don’t know me, I love October. And when I say love, I mean LOVE LOVE LOVE. My birthday is in October, thanksgiving, my dogs birthdays and Halloween! Now this just puts the cherry right on top!
One of the main messages that Vegetarian Awareness Month is promoting is Meatless Monday’s. This is where you go all of Monday without eating any meat. I know for those of you who are meat eaters, it sounds hard, but I swear it isn’t. I even bet some of your favourite meals are vegetarian. When you actually start looking for amazing meatless meals, you will find that the options are endless.

Some simple ideas can include:

Taking your favourite Fettuccini Alfredo and instead of adding meat, add mushrooms
Vegetarian Pizza – You could do a mushroom, peppers, tomato, olives, ect. There are a lot of ingredients that go really well on a pizza. Now is the time to be creative.
Do breakfast for supper! Who doesn’t love pancakes for supper? Pair those with some scrambled eggs or omelets and you got a great meal!

Last night for supper I was in the mood for something Mexican inspired. So I checked the fridge and I was in luck, I had red and yellow peppers! And one of my favourite dishes to make is quinoa stuffed peppers. They are quite simple to make, and if you want you can do any flavour of stuffed peppers, such as Italian or Greek.

Ingredients2 yellow peppers
1 cup of cooked quinoa
1 tbsp of coconut oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 cup of zucchini, diced
1 ½ cups of mushrooms, diced
1 medium tomato, diced
1 cup of black beans

1/4 cup of Daiya Cheese
1 tsp of cumin
1 tsp of coriander
2 tsp of chili powder
1 tsp of onion salt

 

Pre heat your oven to 350 degrees and heat up oil in a medium sized frying pan on Medium/High heat. Add the onions and garlic and sauté them for 10 minutes, or until they are soft. Stir in your mushrooms, zucchini and tomatoes until evenly distributed, sauté for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and add your spices, mixing them well into the vegetables. Finally stir in the quinoa and black beans. Continue to cook on low/medium heat for another 5 minutes.

Then take the peppers and cut them in half length wise. This will make them easier to stuff, they will lay more evenly in the pan and they are easier to eat. If your peppers are odd shaped and do not stay upright in the pan, stick toothpicks in the sides of the pepper to stabilize them.

Once your vegetable mix is ready, place your peppers in a baking pan – I used an 8 inch square cake pan. Then spoon the mixture into the peppers, almost to the point of over stuffing them.

This is the point when I remembered that I had just bought a new package of Pepper Jack Daiya Cheese. I love this stuff, it melts like cheese, tastes like cheese and would be the perfect touch to my stuffed peppers.

I took about ¼ cup of the cheese and evenly distributed it on top of the peppers. This is one of the reasons why you should make sure your peppers lay flat in the pan. Because if they didn’t your stuffing and cheese would fall out.

Now they are ready to put in the oven! Now because the inside veggie mixture is already cooked, the bake time isn’t very long. We are only baking the peppers until they are soft, which takes about 15-20 minutes or until the cheese melts. This step is really up to you, the longer you have it in the oven, the softer the pepper. I like my pepper to be a little crunchy, so I only bake it for 15 minutes.

Once your peppers are cooked to your liking, take them out of the oven and let them cool for 5 minutes. Then serve!





Thanks for reading!!

xoxo -N

Quinoa Stuffing - Vegan & Gluten Free

As Thanksgiving grew closer I started to think of the things that are traditionally served at Thanksgiving supper that I would not be able to have. Last year I was only vegetarian, so it made things a little easier on me. This year however is different. So I started to think of something that could easily be converted into vegan that would still be a big hit among everyone. Then it hit me! Quinoa Stuffing! This works perfect because my sisters and dad all have celiac disease so they are unable to have gluten. So by doing quinoa stuffing I am able to make a dish me, my sisters and dad can eat. Its gluten free and if I use vegan broth then perfect, two birds one stone. 

  In the picture above there were a couple things that I forgot to add. The sage, cumin and the salt and pepper.

Ingredients

·         1 cup of quinoa
·         2 cup s of water
·         1 cup of wild rice
·         4 cups of water
·         1 white onion
·         2 medium carrots
·         3 stalks of celery
·         1 cup of diced mushrooms
·         2 tbsp of coconut oil
·         1 clove of garlic, minced
·         1 cube of vegetable broth
·         1 cup of hot water
·         3 tsp of sage
·         2 tsp of cumin
·         Salt and pepper

First you will need to clean your wild rice and quinoa. A simple way to do that is to put it in a strainer and run cold water over it.

To make the wild rice: combine rice, the 4 cups of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, cover and simmer over low heat for approximately 45 minutes, until the rice has opened and fluffed out. Strain out any excess water.

To make the quinoa combine quinoa and the 2 cups of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, cover and simmer over low heat for approximately 20 minutes, until the water has all evaporated.

Next chop up the mushrooms, carrots, onion, and celery into bite size pieces, and place the mushrooms aside for later. Heat up a medium/large sized frying pan on Medium/High heat, add your oil and sauté the onions, garlic, carrots, and celery for about 15 minutes, or until they are soft. Combine the hot water and the vegetable broth in a bowl and stir until the broth is dissolved. Add the mushrooms and broth, spices and quinoa/rice mixture to the pan,  and continue cooking for another 10 minutes. Reduce heat.

Finally in a large serving bowl and enjoy!  

Thanks for reading!!

xoxo -N

Sweet Potato Curry Soup

Brr its cold in here!!

 As the temperatures lower, and the leaves get crunchy, there is one thing I come to realize.... its now soup season! And I like to believe that I make a pretty darn good soup, not a soup whisper per say but maybe a soup fanatic. Last fall and winter I am pretty sure I made soup every week, sometimes even twice. I have made everything from an Indian inspired sweet potato/cauliflower soup, traditional harvest vegetable soup, to my all time favourite Peanut Butter Soup (more on this later). The wonder of soup is that you can pretty much put any vegetable combination into a pot, add broth and your favourite spices and VIOLA! You got Soup! So as you can tell, Soup is one of my favourite meals to make. It’s easy to prepare, easy to freeze, and really easy to eat!

Usually my process starts with me being cold and thinking ‘Man I would do anything for a bowl of soup!” So I go home and search my fridge for ingredients that work well together, grab my largest pot and start chopping! Yesterday marked day one of my soup season and boy did it turn out fricken great. As I said before, I was cold at work and thought "Mmmm soup", so I mentally thought of what I had in my fridge and sweet potatoes popped in my head. PERFECT! They are hearty, sweet, colorful, nutritious, and not as starchy as the regular potato. Then I thought, crap I don’t have celery. For me, I can’t make soup without celery. So I raced into Safeway, grabbed a bunch of organic celery and went home to start this soup.

Ingredients

• 2 medium yellow onions
• 3 mediums carrots
• 5 stalks of celery
• 2 medium sweet potatoes
• ½ head of Broccoli
• 1 tbsp of coconut oil
• 1 cube of dry vegetable broth
• 3 cups of water
• ½ cup of uncooked, strained quinoa
• 1 tsp of curry
• 1 tsp of coriander
• 1 tsp of cumin
• Fresh cilantro

  

My soup starts off like any other vegetable soup... chopped veggies! So I take out onions, carrots, celery, broccoli and the main star – Sweet Potatoes! Chop up all the vegetables into bite size pieces, and place the broccoli aside. Heat up your pot on Medium/High heat, add your oil and sauté the onions, carrots, celery and sweet potatoes for about 10 minutes. Add 2 cups of the water, and continue cooking for another 5 minutes to blend the flavours of the veggies with the water. Reduce heat.

This next step is my secret weapon... my blender!! This is something that will change your soup making days FOREVER!!!! I know it did for me. You take half of the cooked vegetables and broth, throw it in your blender and puree.  While this is blending I add my dry broth and spices to the puree while it’s going.

Next pour the pureed vegetables back into the pot and stir in until well blended. This is when you add the last cup of water, broccoli and quinoa and stir. I like my soup on the chunky side (as you can see in the picture) so I don’t add that much water, but if you like more of a watery consistency, add more water until desired thickness or thinness.  Leave on low heat for another 20 minutes or until broccoli and quinoa are fully cooked. Wait for it to cool off a bit, top with fresh cilantro and ENJOY!!

To quote my wonderful husband tonight, “Wow this is really good” followed by “You could make this every week and I would eat this!” and my favourite “I love how this soup tastes like there is cream or milk in it, but it doesn’t!”

That is the beauty of blending the cooked vegetables to add to your base of your soup. It does make your soup creamy without adding any diary to the mixture. So fewer calories, vegan friendly and less ingredients you need to have on hand. Win-win for everyone! So let me know if you try my recipe, I would love to know how you like it and if you did any other variations to it! 

xoxo -N