I have never liked potato salad. I think it's because it always had eggs in it, and I get freaked out by eggs on their own. Except for that one time.

So I always hated potato salad. But not just because of the eggs. I didn't like it even when I'd make it without eggs. So I just never ate it or thought much about potato salad.

While I was home for Christmas, my Dad bought a sweet potato salad. With kale. Two of my favorite ingredients, right there. So I thought i'd at least try it. And I fell in love with it. So I made my own version when I got home. 

And it's delicious.

dressing:

3 tbsp veganaise (or mayonaise/miracle whip)

1 tbsp white vinegar

2 tsp mrs dash seasoning

salt and pepper

1 sweet potato, baked and cooled

3 handfuls of kale, chopped

1/4 cup dried cranberries and pecans

3-4 green onions, chopped

Assemble the dressing. (Put all the ingredients in a bowl and stir!) Add the green onions.

Wash the kale and place in a pot with an inch of water over medium heat. Cover, and let it wilt a bit. When it's slightly tender, rinse under cold water and dry. (A salad spinner works wonders here.)

Peel and dice the sweet potato, and chop the pecans. Assemble the potato, cranberries, kale, and pecans with the dressing. This can be eaten right away, but things only get better if you let it sit in the fridge for a bit. 

Quinoa Salad

Today started as "one of those days". I had a hard time dragging myself out of bed (as I'm unemployed and not in school until January) and then I couldn't figure out what to eat for breakfast. I settled on toast from the loaf of bread in my freezer with almond butter and raspberry jam. It made my fingers sticky.
Then I proceeded to go out to check out some apartments, none of which would work for me. (They were all tiny, dirty, or sketchy. Ugh.) After viewing apt 1 i headed back home to kill a few hours before my next appointment. I was feeling lazy and uninspired so I heated up some frozen sweet potato fries for lunch. While they were tasty, that's really a poor excuse for a lunch in my world. About an hour before I was to set out to check the next two apartments, I got an email from vegetarian times with this recipe for a spinach quinoa salad with cherries and almonds. That title was enough to set my tired, apathetic brain racing, so before I headed out for another few hours I put some quinoa in the rice cooker. (Best invention ever!) Did you know you could cook quinoa in a rice cooker? I didn't until recently and it has caused even more love and appreciation for my rice cooker than I thought possible.
I also whipped up a quick vinaigrette to let the quinoa soak up it's flavors while I was out. Then when I got home, hungry again I just threw in some chopped veggies and cooked kale, and I had a delicious healthy meal in 10 mins!
This salad was soo tasty. Fresh and healthy, but still hearty and comforting (thanks to the cooked kale) which is oh so important at this time of year. My bad day has ended on a such a great note thanks to this salad. More so, in that I just made it up as I went along, and it was delicious and healthy and satisfying.) I love when that happens.
And that, is why I love cooking.




this recipe may look really long and daunting, but it's not. it's really so simple, so give it a try!


Quinoa Salad
(clearly all my creativity was used up in making the salad, so i can't name it.)

1 cup quinoa, uncooked

cook the quinoa according to directions. (Or do it the easy way and use a rice cooker! Just like you'd make rice.)

for the vinaigrette:
2-3 tbsp each: red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar (I found these complimented each other really nicely, if you don't have both use one or the other or white vinegar or whatever you have on hand!)
1 heaping tsp dijion mustard
1 tbsp orange marmalade
5-10 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (enough until it's all thickened)
dash salt and lots of pepper
1/2 tsp mrs.dash (or other seasoning)

whisk the vinegars, marmalade, and mustard together. slowly drizzle in the oil until thickened. add the salt, pepper, and seasonings.

Mix the quinoa and vinaigrette together and let sit. (1/2 an hour or several if you can.)

for the rest of the salad:
1/4 yellow and red bell pepper
1/4 cup dried cherries or cranberries

add the veggies to the quinoa.

1 cup of kale, roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
splash of soy sauce, lemon juice


dice the peppers, and chop the kale.
heat up a medium pan with the oil. once heated, add the kale and stir until it starts to wilt. add the soy and lemon juice, and garlic. keep on the heat for about a min, then remove and add to the salad.


1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
to do this just throw the pine nuts in the heated pan until toasted. watch them carefully! these babies burn fast.

Hearty Veggie Soup

The past two days have been disturbingly chilly, while this weekend past was filled with warm, sunny, glorious weather. It was a pretty big damper (pun somewhat intended) when Wednesday reared it's cold, rainy head.

So in order to comfort myself I set out to make some soup. Not expecting much, I was pleasantly suprised with what I came up with. Simple and delicous.




Broccoli, Carrot and Kale soup with Pasta

makes two servings

1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 yellow onion, diced small
1 1/2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1/4 head of broccoli, chopped
2-3 leaves of kale, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 tsp italian herbs
4 cups of water
2 tsp veg. bouillon paste
splash of lemon or lime juice
1 cup of pasta (I used rigatoni)
1/4 cup of miso paste

Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add onions and carrot and cook 5 mins. Add broccoli florets and chopped up broccoli stalk and cook another 5 mins. Next add the garlic and kale and cook another minute or so. Add the herbs, water, lemon/lime juice, bouillon and bring to a boil. Next add the pasta and cook until pasta is al dente, about 7-10 minutes depending on what you use. When the pasta is cooked, add the miso paste and simmer until incorporated. Serve topped with parmesean cheese if you really want things special.

Spicy Soup!

Please forgive the less than steller photo in this post, because this is a really stellar soup! I finally got a new camera but have yet figured out how to get a good macro out of it. And since when I made this it was dark, the little bit of lighting I do have in my apartment really didn't do much to help the situation.

It all started when I set out to make this white bean kale recipe from 101 cook books. I started out making the tomato sauce (with a few adaptions) until I realized that I had to be at work in less than an hour, and since this recipe had a 45 min baking time that was just not going to work. (I really need to plan these things better.) So I decided to take the same ingredients and make a soup out of it!

This is an incredibly easy, healthy and hearty stewish soup that would be great on a chilly day. Or any ol' day will do!



Spicy Tomato Kale and White Bean Soup
makes one super serving, or two smaller ones

14 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp oil
1 tbsp red chili flakes
1 tbsp italian herbs
1 tbsp chili paste
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp lemon juice
few tbsp of sriracha, to taste (optional, throw in if you like things spicy)


1/2 can white beans
2 stalks of kale, washed and chopped well

Simmer the garlic and oil in a small pot until fragrant. Add the can of tomatoes, as well as the spices and other sauces. Let simmer 5 mins. Next add the beans and kale and let simmer another 10-15 mins.


I'm really looking forward to the little bit of this I had left over for tomorrow's lunch. I think I will enjoy it with some sauteed mushrooms thrown in and some crumbled feta on top.

Apartment Soup v.1

First some exciting news:
I have moved to Vancouver! Woo-hoo! I have always had an admiration for this city, and I am so happy to finally be living here! I love it so much, except for one factor.
The heat.

I've been here a little over a week and every day it has been sunny, hot, and muggy. Not at all what I expected from a city in the pacific northwest that is known for rain and overcast skies! I love the rain, and have been very sad that I have not had any to enjoy. There has only been one overcast day so far, and it only sprinkled then.

But through all this heat I am craving one thing and one thing only. SOUP! Why? My only guess is that maybe I am trying to make my new apartment and my new city feel "homey" and I guess soup does that for me? I don't know any other reason why making soup in almost 30 degree weather seems like a good idea.


But alas, since I moved in a little over a week ago, all I could think of was making a big pot of lentil soup. It's just something I had to do. So on my first (and so far, only) overcast rainy day last week, I decided to take a walk to Granville Island to check out the farmers market. I ended up with a pretty bounty of fresh and cheap vegetables, all begging to be put in a soup.

So with a combonation of farmers market loot, and some kitchen staples I bought at a swanky Save-On downtown, my first Apartment Soup was born.




My biggest problem with making this soup was only one thing-I have no blender! As I was doing my apartment shopping back in Alberta, I kept telling myself I have no need for a blender. I told myself, "It's just so big and bulky, and all i'd need it for is to make smoothies, which I can do much easier in my Magic Bullet." Of course the one thing that a blender is good for that a bullet isn't would be BLENDING SOUPS. I stupidly realized this when I really wanted this soup blended, and so in a haze of hunger and impatience did a few quick blitz of the soup serving by serving in my magic bullet. It was a bit scary, since the bullet is plastic and I had hot soup in a little container. But all turned out fine. There were a few remaining chunks as seen in the picture, but that's okay since it adds more of a rustic feel.
The point of all this is that if you have a blender, feel free to chop the peppers and veg to any size you like. If you are like me and are sans-blender, I'd reccomend chopping them very small, unless you like big chunks in your soup.


Red Lentil, Pepper, and Kale soup.

1/2 yellow onion, chopped
1 large red pepper, chopped
1 small yellow pepper, chopped
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp curry power
1 tsp paprika
a few generous cracks of black pepper
1 tsp salt
16 oz can of chopped tomatoes, with juice
1 cup of water
1 1/2 cups red lentils
1/2 bunch of kale (no idea how to measure this really, just throw in a few handfuls.)
hot sauce (optional)

Finely chop the onion and add to a medium sized pot with the olive oil. After the onions begin to soften*, add the salt, pepper and spices. After about a min, add the red and yellow peppers and a little more olive oil if needed. Add the canned tomatoes, water, and lentils. Cover over medium heat about 20 mins, or until lentils are ready. Chop up the kale, and throw into the soup during the last few mins. Blend if desired. For added heat, add a few squirts of hot sauce.

I have made this soup similar to this in the past with all different sorts of veggies added-carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, etc. Feel free to play around with what goes in here.

*A lot of lentil soup recipes advise to put a tbsp or so of tomato paste in this step. I would be all for it if i could get my hands on tomato paste in a tube. But since I cannot, and I have no other use for a can of tomato paste, I omit this step.