Wo Wisdom Weeth? Weat Wummus!

If you suggested that I had my wisdom teeth out as an excuse to eat hummus, you would not be far off.  Of course, if you added tomato soup, mashed potatoes, chocolate pudding, apple juice, and ice cream to the list, you'd be closer.

Hummus

 

Put the following ingredients in the blender

 

two and a half cups of cooked chickpeas

three tablespoons tahini

three tablespoons olive oil

two tablespoons lemon juice

a clove or two of garlic

a third cup water

salt to taste

 

Blend



Winoa and Womato

Quinoa stuffed tomatoes sound terribly impressive, but are ridiculously easy plus delicious.  I preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  I slice a thin piece from the top of each tomato.  I scoop out the guts and sprinkle the teeniest bit of salt in each.  I turn them over on a tea towel and leave them to drain for about ten minutes before I fill them with leftover taco filling (quinoa with sautéed bell peppers and onions, salsa, cumin, oregano and red pepper flakes) top them with cheese and bake them for fifteen minutes.  Then I eat them.  Well, I let them cool, then I eat them. 



*This post is part of series.  I'm thinking about how I do meat and giving it less space on my plate.  On Wednesdays this space is reserved for wegetables.*

Wegetable Woup...Wit's Wednesday

I don't remember ever having enjoyed a bowl of vegetable soup until now.  When I found this recipe, I thought to myself, "Red curry paste and coconut milk?  Delicious!"  And they were.  But it was the lime that made me warn my husband, "If you like it, have some.  But this is not one of those dishes you need to horf down and push off onto every child who strays into your path to prevent its being lost behind our freezer door.  I will eat it."

Wegetarian Wednesday Wagain!

I've found a recipe I really enjoy.  I tried these Black Bean Quesadillas this week, and they met all my criteria for a good vegetarian meal--delicious (and not just to experienced vegetarians), meatless, and nutritious.

I haven't figured out where I stand on meat.  Several years ago now I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  The experience left me bruised.  I felt compelled to recognize that the way I feed myself and my family does not meet my criteria for ethical eating.  The animals I eat have lived miserable lives...often raised in ways that harm my home planet...sometimes by people working in poor conditions.  When I mix this awareness in with questions about GMOs and bees dying and seed monopolies and pesticides and veterinary antibiotics and diminishing numbers of family farms and micronutrients and food processing I feel a little overwhelmed.  And then I go back to making three squares a day the only way I know how--with meat.  This is my effort to learn how to make three squares another way--without meat.  I feel uneasy about the smallness of my effort--the cow who produced the milk for the cheese in my quesadilla was most certainly not a family cow named Daisy spending her summers in a meadow and living to a ripe old age.  It's a beginning, though.  The beginnings of great things are sometimes small.

So are the not fair-trade chocolates I'm enjoying right now.

Wegetarian Wednesday!

The jar of quinoa in my cupboard has been there a year.  It's perfectly good quinoa that I've just never thought to cook.  That changed last week when I paid my grocer too much money for a delicious quinoa salad made from basic ingredients, most of which I had on hand.  When you put quinoa in bowl with corn, red pepper, spinach, green onion, cilantro, feta, and a favourite vinaigrette like I did, you will never pay your grocer too much money for delicious quinoa salad again...like I won't.