Main Dishes

Warm Lentil Salad with Roasted Red Peppers and Spinach

May 13, 2013 by Erica

At first, I wasn’t going to post about this meal. I started out following Grab a Plate’s lentil salad recipe for dinner one night, but turned it into something slightly different when I didn’t feel like making yet another roasted red pepper dressing. It came out amazing, but I still thought maybe I didn’t need to blog about it.

Then Nate went back for seconds. And in case you didn’t know, that is rare enough to qualify a recipe as blog-worthy 100% of the time.

Warm Lentil Salad with Roasted Red Peppers and Spinach

So here we are with this weeknight lentil salad. It fits the mold for what I’ve been making so often this spring (grain or green + roasted vegetables + sauce or dressing), but with one thing that sets it apart: To me this feels very much like a recipe rather than a loose set of suggestions (the opposite of my usual salad posts)… because I wouldn’t change a single thing.

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Grilled Asparagus and Crispy Black Bean Tacos

April 24, 2013 by Erica

Grilled Asparagus and Crispy Black Bean Tacos

I couldn’t let the spring pass by without posting at least one asparagus recipe.

Grilled Asparagus and Crispy Black Bean Tacos

The blog world goes gaga for asparagus, but until recently, I wasn’t the biggest fan. Then I discovered that when you grill or roast asparagus, it turns into an entirely different vegetable.

I should have known. I seriously don’t think I’ve ever met a grilled vegetable I didn’t like.

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Roasted Veggie Lentil Bowl with Charred Red Pepper Sauce

April 12, 2013 by Erica

Roasted Veggie Lentil Bowl with Charred Red Pepper Sauce

Well, I think I can say that I’m a changed woman.

After just a brief period of cooking with strictly what I have in the house, my creative juices are starting to flow. It really wasn’t that difficult, either. Granted my “pantry cleanse” has turned into more of a fridge cleanse, but that’s OK. I’m realizing that both are a great source of inspiration for new recipes, and I’m getting more comfortable throwing things together without knowing how they’ll turn out. Not everything is blog worthy, that’s for sure, but nothing has turned out too badly, either. I know it comes as second nature to some, but for this type A planner, this is a light bulb moment!

So I’ll chalk up a win in the creativity column, but unfortunately, my cabinets still merit hoarder status. While I’ve used a lot of pantry items that had been languishing for a while, I haven’t necessarily used up any of them. And so it continues…

Roasted Veggie Lentil Bowl with Charred Red Pepper Sauce

My go-to dish during this effort has been a big bowl of roasted veggie goodness, like Wednesday’s sushi bowls: Some sort of grain + roasted veggies + sauce or dressing + a little extra flavor on top. Here I picked lentils instead of a grain for some extra protein, especially because I was already using starchy potatoes. Also, you saw in Monday’s post that I have a ton of legumes, so I had to use at least one kind this week! I realized afterwards that this dish is actually pretty close to my cauliflower steaks with lentils and this same sauce. This time, though, I only had half a pepper to use in the sauce, and successfully resisted the urge to run to the grocery store to grab another one. I also had most of a big can of tomato puree that I wanted to use up, so I just threw it all in. Despite those changes, the sauce was just as good as I remembered; I honestly couldn’t even tell the difference with less pepper and more tomato. Veeeeery flexible – I like it.

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Spelt Berry Sushi Bowl with Roasted Cauliflower

April 10, 2013 by Erica

Spelt Berry Sushi Bowl

Good morning and happy Wednesday!

I wouldn’t be so chipper (I feel morning chipperness is generally uncalled-for), but just look at all these colors. Food like this makes me happy to be alive.

(If you’re still half asleep and don’t feel like eating sushi yet… I apologize. I kind of have a thing for colorful food.)

Spelt Berry Sushi Bowl

In case you missed it, this is Pantry Week here at Coffee & Quinoa: a week of me attempting to simultaneously clean out my cabinets and teach myself to put a meal together without a trip to the store.

This dish is a random weeknight creation that truly belongs in my pantry series. Pawing through the fridge after work one night, I found some leftover veggies and cooked spelt, plus some cauliflower with only a few more days of life left in it. For some reason my sweet potato sushi bowl came to mind. I decided to go for it, but was pretty doubtful as I whipped up the dressing… an Asian dish with cauliflower and spelt, really?

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Macaroni & Many Cheeses

April 9, 2013 by Erica

Macaroni & Many Cheeses

I am loving your comments on yesterday’s pantry post! It seems that a lot of you are like me, and cook from recipes only to have to do a pantry cleanse a few times a year. On the other hand, there also seem to be many people who love to be inspired by what they find in their pantry at dinnertime. I am working my way from the former group to the latter this week!

It happens to be great timing for my pantry cleanse, because it is coooold and rainy here in Salt Lake. And although my car is about 15 feet from my door, the rain somehow still discourages me from heading out to the grocery store. I can’t complain about the rain, though, because April is one of the only times that the Salt Lake Valley actually looks green, which I love.

Macaroni & Many Cheeses

Oh wait… that was a lie. I can complain about the rain, and I do. For example: This morning I got to work late, had to park at the back of the parking lot and battle my way through a monsoon to get into the building, and then realized I’d left my laptop in the car. WHAT. My feet still still aren’t quite dry.

Thank goodness I live in the desert, where it rains about six days a year. You just happened to catch me on one of them.

Anyway, let’s talk about the first item on the menu, which happens to be perfect feet-warming food.

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