A Vegetarian Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was our first Denver Thanksgiving. B and I wanted to try new vegetarian dishes.

Our menu:
Spinach Salad
Quinoa Squash Casserole
Baked Sweet Potatoes

1. Spinach Salad with lemon/oil dressing, tomatoes on mine and craisins on B's

2. Quinoa Squash Casserole

It turned out SO tasty. I will definitely make this again. It was filling without being heavy.

Here is where I found the recipe: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/quinoa_squash_casserole.html

The recipe called for a lot of spices so I was unsure how it would turn out, but I can see why the spices are necessary to counteract the bland quinoa. We also had to puree a fresh butternut squash because Safeway did not have frozen. I will definitely be doing that more often. All it took was cutting it in half, baking it with a little baby bit of water for a while, then spooining out into the blender.

3. Sweet Potatoes

These almost acted as a dessert because we baked them with a sweet candy topping. It was a mixture of melted butter, vanilla, and brown sugar. Then on top of that I had crumbled pecans. These were super easy to make but took a while in the oven.

Here is the messy counter with a few of the ingredients used.

 

More veggie meals, a concert, and new shoes.

This week we made veggie nachos!

Multigrain chips with flax seeds, Smart Ground with taco seasoning, colby jack cheese, 

sliced avocado, and salsa.  

The sliced avocado was the best part, it balanced the spicyness. 

We made these as our football game day snack, 

so they are not the healthiest, but healthy-ish for being junk food. 

Apologies.. these pics are terrible, I took them on my cell phone and they do not do the nachos justice. 

Also this week, we finally got a plant for the apt! 

Sidenote: I love adding fresh lemon juice to popcorn.

My recent favorite late night snack: frozen yogurt with bananas and sprinkles.

This night I added hot fudge made from sugar free Nesquik plus a bit of hot water.

  The concert! We walked to the venue (The Summit) 

in downtown Denver.  

Larry and his Flask played first. First for us. (We actually missed the very first band.) 

The lights weirded us out.
Plus it was 10pm on a weeknight and apparently we are adult/responsible now and get tired by 9. 

Frank Turner! The tickets were one of B's birthday presents. He <3's Frank Turner. 

hey Frank Turner 

He really did have a good time, even though it doesn't look like it in this picture. 

After the concert: walking home through downtown Denver.

New Shoes (thanks B) 

I know they look like men's shoes, but they are not, and I love them. 

So happy! 

We decided to go and a date so I could wear the new shoes out. We went to Jonesy's.  

The end! 

Vegetable Quinoa Smash

Tonight was crazy experimental dinner night. The result = Vegetable Quinoa Smash. 

Looks tasty right! It came together as a result of not having many groceries and wanting to try something new. 

Its basically quinoa, spices, tomato sauce, and vegetable broth. 

Here are the ingredients. 

It was a random mixture of 2 recipes I saw online about 5 minutes before we started cooking. I literally Googled quinoa + tomato sauce and a surprising amount of recipes came up. Here are the two recipes I saw:
http://chinasplate.blogspot.com/2012/03/vegetable-quinoa-with-tomato-sauce.html
and
http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetarian-recipes/spanish-quinoa.php

To start: I boiled some quinoa in water while I schemed what to mix with it. So water boiling in pot 1 while we evaluated what was in the pantry.  

The quinoa is just in Ikea tupperware because we buy a lot of the Whole Foods bulk items then store it at home.

While that was boiling in pot 1 (I only let it boil for a few minutes then simmer for about 12 minutes) we began mixing the rest. 

In a different pot, BSod started with the spices/herbs. He took a little extra virgin olive oil and combined oregano, cilantro, garlic powder, crushed red peppers, and a tiny bit of cumin. 

To add a third multitask cooking event, we didn't have vegetable broth, but we did have vegetable bouillon so we microwaved about a cup of water and added one cube then stirred. Bam! - vegetable broth. 

Back to pot 2. 

In pot 2, BSod then added a small can of tomato sauce and about 3/4 of the vegetable broth to the spices. It looked like tomato soup or boring chili at that point. He would NOT try it but I thought it tasted good. 

While pot 1 of the quinoa and pot 2 of the sauce were simmering, we opened the corn and black beans. I added a tiny bit of season salt to the black beans (I accidentally bought the healthy/less sodium yucky plain black beans). 

Now it was time to mix it all together. Quinoa (water drained of course), spicy tomato vegetable broth, corn, and black beans. If I had ANY other vegetables I would have considered adding them to the mix. Maybe squash or zucchini or even carrots. None the less, we had somehow come up with a tasty soup type invention. We added wheat crackers with sea salt for a little crunch. I'll be honest, this ended up tastier than expected. 

The quinoa did expand the whole time, which brought out more and more tasty swirlys. 

Someone made a happy bowl! 

The End! 

The move to Denver was as expected: a lot of driving, weird gas stations, hourly phone calls between the drivers to check in. The scenery was very flat right up until the drive into Denver. What a beautiful city we have chosen. The mountains are breathtaking. Here are a few pictures from the drive. We have not had much time to explore, but will be posting more shortly. 

This is blog of love and travel. This is a blog of adventure and revolution.  This is a blog of blissful wonder. Welcome to the world of Ashley and Brian.