Valentine's Day Feast

Zach and I had a lovely Valentine’s Day this past weekend. I had originally planned to make a special five-course meal for us on Saturday to celebrate, but the weather ended up being so nice (65 degrees!) that I didn’t want to spend the day cooped up in the kitchen. So on Saturday we went on a lovely hike. It felt pretty surreal for February, which is usually unbearably cold and snowy. Then Sunday I made the fancy meal that I wanted to share with you.

Here's us on our hike Saturday. We're smiling even though we're pretty sad about the lack of snow.

The appetizer course was stuffed mushrooms from a recipe we made up using flavor affinities listed in The Vegetarian Flavor Bible. These are actually the best vegan mushrooms we’ve ever made (and we’ve tried a lot of recipes), so I’ve shared the recipe for these at the end of this post.

First Course: Spinach and fennel stuffed mushrooms

The next course was a lovely pea and Boston lettuce soup. This was very light and spring-y and matched the uncharacteristically warm weather we’ve been experiencing.

Second Course: Green Pea and Boston Lettuce Soup

Following the soup course were these scrumptious smoked Salmon pizzas. This was the first time I’ve tried making individual pizzas and I think I’ll actually do this more often. This allows Zach and I to add toppings individually so we both get the exact pizza we want.

Third Course: Smoked Salmon Pizza

After the main course I served a grapefruit and fennel salad. Serving salad after the main course is pretty fancy for Zach and me, but it was a nice follow-up after the rich pizzas and it got us primed and ready for the best course of all…

Fourth Course: Grapefruit and Fennel Salad

Dessert! To celebrate this silly holiday I made one of my favorite desserts ever, chocolate cream pie. I made the crust from homemade graham cracker crumbs, filled with this chocolate filling, and topped with coconut cream whipped from coconut milk.

Fifth Course: Mini Chocolate Cream Pies

So all-in-all we had an excellent Valentine’s Day. I hope all of you enjoyed the weekend as well. As promised here’s the recipe for perfect stuffed mushrooms:

Spinach and Fennel Stuffed Mushrooms

vegan, makes enough for about 15 large mushrooms

Ingredients:

15 large mushrooms, stems removed

1 fennel bulb, diced

1 large garlic clove, minced

2 large handfuls spinach, chopped

Juice from ½ lemon

½ cup of ohsheglows.com Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

Sauté fennel with garlic and lemon juice in a non-stick pan for about 5 minutes. Add spinach and cook for another 2 minutes. Stuff mushrooms with fennel mixture, then top with “Parmesan cheese”. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes (I baked mine in silicone cupcake wrappers to stabilize them).

So yummy...

Townhome Tuesday: Picture Shelves

Today I want to share our charming floating picture shelves. Besides being a pain to install (since it's hard to get them to hang flush against the wall without scratching the wall while installing them), they went up pretty quickly and provide a unique way to display pictures.

Food Friday: Sugar-Free Banana Pancakes

Zach and I are creatures of habit, especially when it comes to food. We have a few food traditions that we've stuck with for years: 1) we eat out at Thai once a week for lunch every Thursday (and we always order the same thing), 2) every Wednesday morning we break away from our traditional green smoothie (for me) and oatmeal (for Zach) breakfasts to eat bagels, and 3) every weekend I cook banana pancakes. On this food Friday I want to share my delicious, near-perfect pancake recipe that Zach and I have enjoyed every weekend for over three years. It's easy to put together, has no added sugar or fat, and tastes great.

Banana Pancakes

makes 8 pancakes, vegan, sugar-free, fat-free option

Ingredients

1 cup oats

1 ½ cup almond milk

2 small bananas*

½ cup whole wheat flour

1 T flax meal

4 t baking powder

½ t salt

¼ t lemon extract (optional)

Coconut oil for cooking (you can use another oil, but coconut definitely tastes the best; leave this out if you want fat-free pancakes and have a really good non-stick pan)

Blueberries (fresh or frozen)

*The size of the bananas has a huge affect on how thin or thick the pancakes are. If you only have large or medium bananas, add an extra 1 T of flour for every large banana used.

I consider these bananas "large," so I added an extra 2 T flour to my batter when I used these.

Instructions

      1.       In a blender blend oats and milk together.

      2.       Add in bananas, flour, flax meal, baking powder, salt, and lemon extract and blend until smooth.

      3.       Let batter sit for 5 minutes.

      4.       Cook in non-stick pan with coconut oil for extra yummy-ness. Drop blueberries on top of pancakes while they are cooking.

Here's the batter in the blender. It's good to let the batter sit for 5-10 before cooking.

This is my awesome pancake cooking station. Complete with easy to access batter and coffee for energy on the right, non-stick pans on the stove, and coconut oil and berries on the left.

I add frozen blueberries to the top but chocolate chips would work if you don't mind adding a bit of sugar to your breakfast.

Here's the finished product. I eat them without any topping, but you can also top with peanut butter and honey - which is what Zach does - or maple syrup.

Food Friday: Mexican Veggie Bowl

I really enjoy cooking and usually I don't mind laboring in the kitchen for hours prepping yummy meals from scratch. But lately the weather has been so nice and it's resulted in me losing my desire to cook elaborate meals because I'd rather be walking around outside. I made up this recipe because it's good for lazy people and it actually turned out really well considering how easy it is. There is a bit of work upfront since you have to chop a lot of veggies, but I just prepped everything on Sunday and then all we had to do on the weeknights was throw everything into a big bowl. Yum.

Mexican Veggie Bowl
4 servings, vegan, low-fat, low-sugar

Ingredients

2 portobella mushrooms, sliced

3 bell peppers, sliced

1 large onion, sliced

1 jalapeno, sliced

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 T fresh thyme leaves, chopped

1/3 cup sherry cooking wine

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 avocados, chopped

1 bunch cilantro, chopped

1 bunch green onions, chopped

2 limes

Lettuce

Tortilla chips (optional)

Instructions

1.       Sauté mushrooms, peppers, onion, jalapeno, garlic, and thyme leaves in sherry.

2.       Serve grilled veggies in a large bowl with beans, tomato, avocado, cilantro, green onions, lime juice, and lettuce.

3.       Top with tortilla chips if you want to add a little crunch.

Grilled veggies - I cooked them all ahead of time and just heated them before serving.

Finished plate with all of the add-ins.

Thursday Travel Tales: A Unique Food Trip

So there’s this fancy restaurant in Salt Lake City that Zach and I have been obsessed with since we found out about it. It’s called Forage and it’s so fancy that they don’t even have a menu. The chef prepares a 13 course meal each night and he just makes what he wants and you, as the customer, are supposed to deal with it because he knows better than you what’s good. Also, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, the restaurant is very expensive (about $300 for two people with the wine pairing and tip). For months Zach and I have been making little bets about what would have to happen for us to go to Forage. A friend of mine from college asked me to recommend her for a job at our company out of the blue. If she got the job I would have received a $1000 referral bonus, so we said if that happened we’d go to Forage, since that would be unexpected money. Zach also bet that if we both won our company’s wellness competition (which has a reward of $7000 and is very unlikely because there are a lot of other competitors), we’d go to Forage. And our bets went on like this for about a year. Then finally one of our bets came through and we earned some unexpected money, so we went to Forage to celebrate!

This restaurant was incredible. The food was amazing and was definitely the prettiest food I’ve ever eaten. I’m including this meal in my “travel tales” section because Zach and I both agree that eating there felt like taking a special food journey rather than just going out to eat. Here are some shoddy iPhone pictures of each course (minus one dessert course which I ate before taking a picture of it).

Pumpkin soda with cilantro salt on the rim. I know that some people have soda makers at home, but I'm not friends with any of those people so this is the first time I had homemade soda and it was great.

Quail eggs on a buckwheat patty. I had never had quail eggs before and these were nice - they have a more delicate flavor than normal eggs and these particular ones were cooked perfectly.

Those black strings are walnuts and the white things are pieces of cheese. 

Roasted beets with a stem sticking out of them to make them look earthy (the stem wasn't edible).

This was a fermented summer bean from last summer served with an egg yolk sauce.

The first part of our main course was smoked trout. It was simple but really yummy.

Really yummy salad with frothy mozzarella on top and a fancy cracker that you can see in the background.

This is a very sophisticated version of shells and cheese. There was also hen there, which tasted like really tender chicken.

Lamb tartar with carrots and beans. The lamb was ground and raw (hence the tartar part). It was a little crazy eating raw lamb, not my favorite thing in the world, but not so bad.

This was the best dish of the night. On the side there were potato dumplings served on old book pages. And the bowl had a yummy potato puree topped with roe and some trout broth.

Sturgeon and leeks, very fresh.

Perfectly cooked elk.

Time for dessert! We started with iced beet on top of a cream sauce. The earthy beets actually mixed well with the sweet cream.

This is acorns topped with a frothy cream. The acorns were surprisingly amazing - now I know what the squirrels are flipping out about.

(Like I said earlier, I missed one of the desserts because I ate it so quickly. It had rhubarb and ricotta meringue).

They brought these edible rocks out with the check (only the top two brown ones were actually edible).

 So dining at Forage was an awesome, memorable experience. I definitely want to go back, but I want to wait awhile so that going there remains a special treat that feels just as unique as traveling and exploring a new place.

Townhome Tuesday: Hidden Corkboard

Today I have a super short post to showcase a recent organization tool Zach and I installed in the kitchen. 

I didn't really have a good space to keep all of my paper stuff that requires action (like coupons, recent mail, receipts to be split in mint.com). This is stuff that I want to keep close by and in sight (so I remember to do something about them), but they are also messy looking. I used to hang them with magnets on the side of the fridge, but it looked all cluttered and gross.

I didn't want to add clutter to the fridge and take the focus away from my pretty homemade calendar.

To solve this problem I went to Michaels and got cork board panels for less than $10, then Zach used the staple gun to attach them to the inside of this cabinet. Now I can keep all of that paper mess close by, but hidden. Yay!

This is a frequently used cabinet so I see this stuff all of the time, which is good so I can remember to actually use all of the coupons I save.

Food Friday: Buffalo Hummus

Zach and I are obsessed with hummus. We always have it in the house, so a few weeks ago I decided that we should probably learn how to make it so we can save money and doctor it up however we like. We've been through a lot of iterations of this recipe and our buffalo version this hummus is the winner so far.

Buffalo Hummus

serves 4-6 (the picture below is 1.5x this recipe)

Ingredients

3 T lemon juice

¼ cup tahini (I use the Trader Joe’s brand)

1 small garlic clove

2 T olive oil

½ t salt

½ t cumin

1 15 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

½ red pepper, roasted at 400 degrees for ~15 minutes

Frank’s hot sauce to taste

Instructions

1.       Cream lemon juice and tahini together in a food processor or blender for about 30 seconds.

2.       Add in garlic, oil, salt, and cumin and blend for another 30 seconds.

3.       Add in chickpeas and red pepper and blend until smooth.

4.       Add Frank’s hot sauce 1 T at a time until the hummus tastes delicious to you.

I brought this hummus to a party recently and served it with grilled pitas and broiled cauliflower (cauliflower becomes deliciously buttery once cooked and provides a nice change from traditional veggies and hummus) - it was super yummy.