Tag Archives: vegetarian recipes

Easy Peasy Cranberry Sauce

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If you’ve been following me on Instagram you know that I’ve been busy preparing for Thanksgiving and Page’s Birthday right after. We are hosting Thanksgiving , which means that I will be doing most of the cooking. I spent most of the day writing out my menu, dividing up tasks I can accomplish throughout the next few days. Today I tackled prepping my desserts which just means I weighed the dry ingredients put them in bags, labeled, and sealed them. Now all I have to do is add the wet ingredients and bake. As you can see I’ve learned over the years that cooking a large meal like this requires a lot of forethought and staggering of duties. So today one of the other things on my to do list was to make this cranberry sauce! It takes 10 minutes, you throw everything in one pot, a little bit of stirring and you’re done! So easy and super delicious and definitely an upgrade to the canned stuff. Trust me once you make this you will never go back to the canned stuff!

Here’s what you need:

Ingredients

12oz organic cranberries fresh or frozen

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1 cinnamon stick

Zest of 1 organic orange

Juice of 1 organic orange

1/2 teaspoon of allspice (optional)

Directions:

Place cranberries, cinnamon stick, orange zest, sugar, water, and juice in a medium sized saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer, stirring as the cranberries begin to pop. The sauce is done once it thickens about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool, serve immediately or place in an airtight container and refrigerate.

Pan Fried Cauliflower with Garlic and Thyme

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Pan Fried Cauliflower with Garlic and Thyme

Pan Fried Cauliflower with Garlic and Thyme

 

This recipe was born out of a pure need to get dinner on the table quickly.  I love cauliflower and on a normal day I would slice it and place it in the oven to cook, but time didn’t allow for me to do so recently.  Page was hungry and I did not have 20 minutes to spare.  The great thing about being rushed to get dinner on the table–yes there is a great thing about it–is that you need to keep it simple.  This recipe is exactly that–simple– it contains less than 5 ingredients and the best part? It only took 10 minutes!

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Ingredients:

2 cups of sliced cauliflower

2 cloves of garlic (smashed)

2 tablespoons of oil ( grape seed, or olive oil)

1 tablespoon of butter

5-6 sprigs of thyme

sea salt and black pepper to taste

 

Directions: Heat a cast iron skillet until it smokes.  Add in the 2 tablespoons of oil.  Add the cauliflower, and allow to cook for 5 minutes undisturbed.

Add the butter, thyme and garlic, take care when adding the thyme, the water in the thyme will cause the oil to pop.

Allow to cook for another 5 minutes. Once the cauliflower has browned and taken on some color,

Transfer it to a serving platter, season with salt and pepper, serve and enjoy!

 

Ginger Garlic Fried Rice

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Ginger Garlic Fried Rice

              Ginger Garlic Fried Rice

Ahh…rice. The staple food for many cultures.  In fact, rice is so important to my good friend Gina’s parents that they will not even travel without bringing along their rice maker.  It’s the first thing her mom unpacks in the hotel room. My husband and my daughter are huge fans of rice.  Page is a particular fan of basmati, and I can’t say that I blame her.  A good basmati  is aromatic, light and airy, like eating a cloud.     I don’t cook rice that often, so even a small bag could last us months.  Whenever I do make rice, as much as my husband and daughter love it, we always have leftovers.  I hate to throw it away so I always try to find a way to use it.   Page loves fried rice–who doesn’t?  She is a particular fan of my Crab Fried Rice.  But we don’t always have crab in the house.  So I use what I have, usually a few vegetables, and an egg.  One of the fish restaurants we frequent makes a garlic rice that Page just devours. So I decided to do my own take on the garlic rice which she loves so much.

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Here’s what you need:

Ingredients

2-3 cups of room temperature left over rice

1/2 teaspoon of tumeric

1 tablespoon of minced garlic

1 tablespoon of minced ginger

1 tablespoon of oil

sea salt or soy sauce to taste

Directions: Add the oil,  garlic,  tumeric and ginger to a saute pan and heat on medium heat until garlic and ginger slightly brown,

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add in the rice, toss until rice is heated.

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Transfer to a serving bowl, season with soy or sea salt, and a drizzle of sesame oil, garnish with cilantro, serve and enjoy. This is AMAZING with my Korean barbecue chicken, stay tuned for that recipe tomorrow!

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Fried Cauliflower Florets with Creamy Garlic Tahini Sauce

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Fried Cauliflower Florets with Creamy Garlic Tahini Sauce

Fried Cauliflower Florets with Creamy Garlic Tahini Sauce

Whenever I eat out at a Mediterranean restaurant, I find it hard to not just compose a meal from the appetizer menu.  With things like lentil soup, lemon and garlic potatoes, hummus and pita bread, fattoush salad, grape leaves, and fried cauliflower on the appetizer menu, who needs a full entree!  I often find myself struggling not to order one of every thing on the appetizer menu.  I usually settle upon the potatoes or the fried cauliflower.  The fried cauliflower is amazingly simple.  Unlike most fried things that come dusted in flour or some other type of breaded base, this doesn’t.  This recipe calls for only one ingredient, cauliflower!  The tahini sauce is great with this, but the cauliflower is pretty amazing on its own.  Your kids will love these cauliflower florets, mine did!

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Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 5-7 minutes

Ingredients:

1 small head of cauliflower

2 cups of grape seed oil or another high temp oil

Sea salt to taste

Ingredients Creamy Garlic Tahini Sauce

4 tablespoons of tahini paste

8 tablespoons of water

1 tablespoon of lemon juice, more if you like

2 cloves of garlic grated

Directions: Pre-heat the oil to 320F in a deep fryer.  Add ingredients for the tahini sauce to a small bowl and mix until well combined and creamy, then set aside. If you want this to be extra creamy, place all ingredients into a food processor or blender and blend until creamy, then transfer to a bowl.

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Cut the cauliflower into florets.

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Add the cauliflower florets to the deep fryer.

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Fry until golden brown.

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Transfer to a paper towel lined plate, season with sea salt, serve and enjoy!

 

 

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Roasted Cabbage Wedges with Cider Herb Vinaigrette

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Roasted Cabbage Wedges with Cider Herb Vinaigrette

Roasted Cabbage Wedges with Cider Herb Vinaigrette

One of my favorite winter vegetables is cabbage.  I love it in a hearty soup, braised in a crock on the stove, or roasted in the oven. Cabbage seems to be one of those vegetables for me that not matter how I cook it, it’s comforting in every way! This recipe is a favorite of mine, the roasted cabbage alone is awesome, but the vinaigrette really takes it to another level!

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Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 15 minutes

 

Ingredients:

1 small head of cabbage quartered with core intact, so it doesn’t fall apart

3-4 tablespoons of oil

4 cloves of garlic sliced thinly

sea salt and black pepper to taste

Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons of Apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon of mustard oil

1 tablespoon of finely chopped cilantro

sea salt to taste

 

Directions: Add the ingredients for the vinaigrette to a bowl, mix well and set aside.

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Pre-heat the oven to 425F.

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Add the cabbage to a foil lined bake sheet, then drizzle with oil  and season with sea salt and black pepper on both sides. Lastly top with sliced garlic, and place in the oven.

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Cook  for 10-15 and cabbage takes on some color.  Remove from oven, drizzle each wedge with some of the vinaigrette, serve and enjoy!

 

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If you like this recipe check out my recipes for Indian Spiced Cabbage and Ground Chicken and Cabbage Curry!

Follow and Like me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lazygirldinners

 

Roasted Garlic-How to Roast Garlic

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How to Roast Garlic

How to Roast Garlic

Can you image cooking without garlic? I can’t! I love it! Garlic lends so much flavor to a savory dish, it’s hard to imagine not having it to use. I love garlic in every state, raw, blanched, powdered, and roasted.  Each has it’s own unique flavor. Roasted garlic is so delicious, and there are so many uses for it. I add roasted garlic to a plain tomato sauce to instantly take it from bland to fantastic! I add roasted garlic to one of my favorite roasted eggplant dishes. I spread roasted garlic on a good piece of crusty bread and dip it into a balsamic, red pepper, and olive oil vinaigrette, and of course, I add roasted garlic to mashed potatoes, or my cauliflower potato mash! There are a plethora of uses for roasted garlic, (like using it for my Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken recipe), once you learn how to roast garlic, you will wonder why you’ve been cooking without it!

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Prep time: 2 minutes

Cook time:30-45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 large bulb of garlic

1 teaspoon of olive oil

sea salt and black pepper to taste (optional)

1 sheet of foil–must be big enough to fully enclose the garlic

Directions: Pre heat the oven to 400F. With a knife slice the top off of the garlic. Place the garlic inside of the foil, pour the oil over the top of the garlic, making sure to cover all exposed garlic. add sea salt and black pepper if using:

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Fold all sides of the foil, making sure that the garlic is fully enclosed. Place the garlic bulb in your oven:

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Cook  for 45 minutes, or until garlic is beautifully golden brown:

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Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes, then remove by squeezing, or by removing each individual clove of garlic with a pairing knife, and enjoy!

Eggplant Fries

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Eggplant Fries

Eggplant Fries

One of my husbands absolute favorite vegetables is eggplant. If I made it every night for dinner for three years straight that would not be enough for him. He loves it! The problem with his love for eggplant is not that I don’t love it, because I do. It’s that it’s hard for me to find organic eggplants.  Short of me growing our own private stag of organic eggplants, which I have tried, and failed at, I just have not been able to appease his love for this vegetable. Whenever, our Whole Foods has organic eggplants a buy them, no matter what they cost. Fortunately for me, my husband will eat eggplant anyway I prepare it.  Page on the other hand is just getting acquainted with eggplant, so preparation for her is a much less forgiving thing.  She loved these eggplant fries which made my heart happy. The key to cooking eggplant in any kind of oil, is to bring your oil up to temperature before adding the eggplant. If you add the eggplant to the oil before the oil is hot enough, you will get an oil logged disgusting piece of eggplant. Eggplant is like a sponge in that way, it soaks up the oil, so make sure your oil is nice and hot before you add the eggplant.

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Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes

Ingredients: 1 medium sized eggplant, julienned but keep them thick

1/2 teaspoon of turmeric

sea salt to taste

4-5 tablespoons of safflower oil ( can substitute with grape seed, or another high heat oil)

Directions: Add the eggplant, turmeric and sea salt to a bowl and toss well, and set aside. image Heat the oil in a cast iron pan, once the oil is hot, add in the eggplant, make sure not to over crowd the pan. image Brown the eggplant on all sides, then transfer to a paper towel lined plate. image Season with more sea salt if necessary, then Serve and enjoy!

White Bean Salad with Lemon Cumin Vinaigrette

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White Bean Salad With Lemon Cumin Dressing

White Bean Salad With Lemon Cumin Dressing

This salad represents all that this blog is about.  It’s lazy in every sense of the word lazy and it’s fresh and vibrantly flavorful.  I was talking to a girl friend  of mine the other day about food and little ones.  She was in need of some advice about healthy choices for her little one. We went through the list of what she currently feeds her little one.  On her list was a simple salad of canned white beans drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil.  I thought it sounded delish, and I set out to make my own version of that salad.  I make a lentil salad that is similar to this, but I think this one is much better.  Pair this salad with a crusty piece of sourdough rubbed with a little garlic and grass-fed butter and you’ve got a rustic and delicious meal,which didn’t require you to turn on the stove.  Lazy–yes, absolutely! But it tastes anything but lazy–that counts right?;-)

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Ingredients:

15 ounce can of Organic White beans (drained and rinsed)

1/2 cup of feta cheese crumbled

1/2 cup of organic rainbow radish diced

1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes quartered

1/2  cup persian cucumbers diced

1/2 cup of red bell pepper diced

1 Tablespoon of fresh organic Thyme leaves

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

 

Vinaigrette

5 Tablespoons of fresh lemon juice

3 Tablespoons of olive oil

1/2 teaspoon of cumin

1 medium clove of garlic finely chopped

Sea salt to taste

Directions: Add all of the ingredients except for the sea salt to a large bowl and toss well.

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Add all the ingredients for the vinaigrette to a mason jar cover and shake until well combined.  If you don’t have a mason jar, just whisk together all the ingredients for the vinaigrette in a bowl, and set aside. Salt the salad ingredients just before serving, this will prevent the tomatoes and cucumbers from becoming soggy, toss, then drizzle with a generous amount of the vinaigrette, toss  again to combine, serve and enjoy!