Thai Quinoa and Tofu Bowl

I've been in a lunch rut lately.

Until this week, I had nearly the same thing for lunch. Every day. Since August. And many dinners too.

One grain + one bean + whatever veggies were in my fridge.

Quinoa and chickpeas with peas and corn.

Buckwheat with mung beans, lima beans and avocado.

By no means am I complaining. The meals were cheap and healthy. They didn't require refrigeration, and they tasted good at room temperature. Best of all, they kept me full until dinnertime.

Despite the ease of preparation, I just couldn't bring myself to eat the same thing again this week.

This dish helped. It's got the same basic breakdown of ingredients as my typical lunch, but it's got something a little more.

Coconut (and a little peanut butter, which never hurts).

It's fabulous. It's loaded with protein from the quinoa, almonds and tofu. The scallions, carrots and lightly blanched peas give it just the right amount of crunch. Every bite explodes with a combination of flavors.

Although it took quite a bit more work than my typical lunch, it was certainly worth it, and this dish will be entering my regular lunch rotation.

Chickpea, Freekeh and Roasted Vegetable Salad with Za'atar

The bagel shop down the street introduced me to za'atar. It features prominently in one of their breakfast sandwiches: a whole wheat everything bagel, sliced and toasted, topped with thinly sliced hardboiled eggs, and then drizzled with olive oil and za'atar.

It's the perfect sandwich for mornings when you want to really eat, like those long train rides to museums outside the city or the mornings when you rush off to a workshop and know you won't get a break for hours.

My dad sent me a huge box of za'atar. Delightfully huge. Big enough to fill a large canning jar plus some. It felt like Christmas came early.

The thing is, you generally only use a few tablespoons of za'atar at a time, which means I've got a lot of experimenting to do.

I could use up all the za'atar my dad sent in this salad, just making it again and again every week.

Whatever you call this--salad, hearty main dish, a bowl of perfection--it's just delicious. The za'atar brings a Middle Eastern flavor to the dish, and the lemon juice brightens things up. The roasted tomatoes and caramelized onions add a bit of sweetness, and the eggplant and carrots give you something to look forward to in every bite.

I ate this hot, at room temperature and chilled, and I loved it every way.

This salad does require some significant preparation, but I spaced it out over the course of two days. When I put the chickpeas and freekeh out to soak, I chopped and roasted the vegetables and caramelized the onions. The next day, I simply needed to boil the chickpeas and freekeh and mix everything together. Simple.

Chocolate Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

These only exist because I found a bag of Iddy Biddy Bunnies at the grocery store.

They're so tiny. And adorable.

Sixty fit inside one little bag.

I passed on them several times at the store, and yesterday I just couldn't resist anymore.

Because of these bunnies, I made chocolate carrot cake. Only because of these bunnies.

I now have a ridiculous amount of chocolate carrot cake frosted with cream cheese icing only because I wanted to put these bunnies on top.

This is a really, really good problem to have. It's moist and delicious, and the cocoa and chocolate chunks add something a bit different to your typical carrot cake.

I would recommend you do the same and whip yourself up a batch of these. Quickly, because Easter is just around the corner.

P.S. If you're looking for other tasty Easter treats, look at these tasty Chocolate Peanut Butter nests!

Lentils with Kale, Sweet Potatoes and Carrots

Blogging comes with its own interesting set of pressures. Checking in consistently, responding to comments and questions, writing relevant, witty (I hope!) posts, and regularly visiting the blogs I love to stay updated with everyone's posts. It's an exciting field, constantly evolving and always engaging.

With food blogging, there's also the added pressure to constantly be posting something new. That means I have to constantly be cooking or baking something new. I can't just pull old favorite recipes off the shelf and remake them each week.

I'm feeling that pressure right now. All I want to do is cook something with chocolate and peanut butter, but I can only think of making these. They really are perfect. I've made them three times, and I've loved them every single time.

I want to make them again tonight, but it means I won't have anything new to share with all of you. I've been searching for new recipes for a bit too long, and I might decide that tonight I just don't care. These cookies are worth the no new blog post sacrifice.

Luckily, it's been easier with my savory cooking lately. Since I decided to try to go dairy-free at home, almost everything I've made has been new.

This lentil dish is divine. It's loaded with tender kale, sweet potatoes and carrots that still have a bit of crunch left. The lentils provide a perfect base and add a great creaminess. Moroccan seasoning wakes the dish up, and it provides a taste I rarely see in my dishes.

p.s. If you have any favorite chocolate peanut butter recipes, please share them here! I'm desperately in need.

Tempeh and Black Bean Breakfast Hash

I needed a pick-me-up breakfast this week, something exploding with flavor and packed with energy that would help get me through the day.

It's been cold here recently, too many days of indoor recess for the kids, too many mornings walking to work where I couldn't stay warm despite the layers I piled on. I even tried out a new coffee shop, half a block from my work, because it felt too cold to carry a cup of coffee six blocks. Things were that serious.

It's the kind of weather that makes me want to hibernate, to pull on sweaters, pile on blankets and eat some comfort food.

While this certainly isn't a typical comfort food breakfast, it's got all the tastes and flavors I grew up on. Yes, all of them. Even the tempeh. I was the kid who grew with sauteed tempeh next to my bacon on the weekends, and I loved it.

Each bite has something different. There's crunch from the tempeh, sweetness from the sauteed tomatoes and roasted carrots, and satisfying protein from the tempeh and black beans. To bolster it for dinners, I added a fried egg and avocado.

I made a cast-iron skillet full on Sunday and heated up servings each morning for breakfast. It was certainly worth getting up a few minutes earlier each day so I could heat it up.

I'm linking up to Healthy Vegan Fridays! 

Vegetable Pot Pie and a Changed City

It's been crazy living in New York City for the past week since Hurricane Sandy hit.

Our sense of normalcy has been upended.

I weathered the storm at a friend's house, with full power, incredible food, and lots of crafting. I took a cab home from their house on Tuesday afternoon, and we drove by downed trees, crushed cars and signs warning us to keep out of the parks.

I returned home to a neighborhood that was relatively untouched, other than branches and leaves littering the streets. Restaurants, bars and coffee shops were all open and flooded with people who were unable to get to their jobs in Manhattan.

We ate, laughed, went for long walks and cooked. It felt almost normal at first, almost like a vacation.

But then we turned on the news and saw such wide-spread devastation that didn't fit at all with the reality we were living. We received emails about coworkers who had lost their homes overnight. We volunteered at local high schools housing hundreds of displaced citizens, some of us serving breakfast or working overnight shifts and others providing entertainment to people who so badly needed a break from reality. We saw low-wage workers desperately in need of their paychecks walk across the boroughs to their early morning jobs.

It's days like these when all I want is comfort food.

Like this pot pie. We made a huge batch of pot pie filling and pie crusts on our fourth day off of work because of Hurricane Sandy. We cooked with the TV off, with our phones that had been constantly feeding us updates on the state of our city tucked far away. 

These pot pies are loaded with potatoes, carrots, peas, lima beans, corn and onions, smothered in a homemade gravy, and topped with a savory pie crust. We made eight, baked them until they were almost done in the oven, and then froze them.

The recovery from Hurricane Sandy will not be quick. I worry that when most of us have our lives back to normal, when gas stations once again have gas and subway lines connect us through the boroughs, our efforts to help those who will remain in need for a long time will decrease.

As a school, as a community, as a city, we must keep asking, "How can we help?" 

If you're interested in donating to a local organization doing fantastic work supporting rebuilding  Red Hook, Brooklyn, consider the Red Hook Initiative: rhicenter.org. 

Zucchini Carrot Coconut Cream Cheese Muffins

Blue Sky Bakery has me spoiled. I used to think a really great muffin could be just one flavor.

Blueberry. Pumpkin. Lemon. Chocolate. Chocolate chip.

Not anymore.

Every Blue Sky muffin has at least three different components to it. On any given day, they'll have blueberry-pineapple bran muffins, pumpkin-apple walnut muffins, and chocolate chip, peach and raspberry muffins, to name just a few favors I've seen (and tried).

They're unique and complex, and they're certainly worth the lines on the weekends. The only downside is, they don't open until after I'm at work on weekdays.

So I had to attempt a muffin of my own that Blue Sky would be proud of.

Here it is: a zucchini and carrot muffin, stuffed with barely sweetened cream cheese and topped with toasted coconut flakes.

Every bite has something a little different to it, either with taste or with texture, and I think the appearance is just delightful.

Best of all, I froze all of these muffins after baking them, and they reheat in the microwave in about 45 seconds. That means they fit into my breakfast schedule.

Carrot Cake Muffins

Easter has got to be one of my favorite holidays.

I mean, you wake up in the morning and get to hunt for a whole basket of chocolate and treats that's just for you to enjoy.

Dark chocolate bunnies. Cadbury mini eggs. Coconut nests. Jelly beans.

And the list goes on. Everyone has their preferences.

As a kid, I was in heaven. I could sneak off to my Easter basket whenever I wanted and dig in.

I just had to use a little moderation because I knew I had to have room for a sweet-filled Easter brunch.

That's where muffins like these come in. I love carrot cake with Easter brunch, but when you add in cream cheese danishes and chocolate croissants it gets to be a bit much for one day.

These muffins have almost everything I love in carrot cake (minus the cream cheese icing and some of the sweetness), but they're much healthier. They're loaded with carrots and walnuts. They're absolutely divine warm.

If you serve these for Easter brunch, your guests will still have room for dessert. If you make them just for yourself, you'll be extra delighted. These freeze incredibly well and are easy to reheat in the mornings for breakfast.

Amhari-Atklit (Ethiopian Vegetable Stew)

I think amhari-atklit is my favorite Ethiopian dish. It's a mild vegetable stew, filled with chunks of potatoes, green beans, cabbage and carrots. The vegetables cook up evenly, and they absorb the mild spices they are cooked in. The stew doesn't require any Ethiopian spice mixes, and I had most of the ingredients in my pantry at home. After my big Ethiopian dinner, I ate this dish twice a day for almost a week.

Slow cookers are a necessity if you are planning a big Ethiopian dinner. I made this dish in advance, and I transferred it to a slow cooker to stay warm. If you're like me in a small apartment with no room to store slow cookers (or just don't have a lot of slow cookers lying around at home), borrow them from the guests who are coming to the party.

This stew is a nice contrast to the protein-heavy dishes usually found in Ethiopian cooking.