The Happy Herbivore Meal Plan–Easy Enchilada Bake

This is pretty good, although I would double the enchilada sauce. The entire recipe seems to make more than 4 servings in reality. It's great with a dollop of vegan sour cream on top. With eating a smaller serving, I think you would balance out the calories of the added sour cream and the extra sauce. (I used the Happy Herbivore Enchilada Sauce on page 260 and reduced the chili powder a little.)

Changes I made: I added the corn into the enchilada layers. I cooked half in the microwave and half in the toaster oven. I used more olives than called for.

Changes I would make in the future: Double the sauce–it seems a little dry. Add the sauce in each layer. Use whole black beans instead of refried. Whole beans would be easier to add to each layer. Maybe throw in a little Daiya cheese in each layer, watching out for total calorie count.

Reviews
The Man and Me: Liked it. Thought it was a little dry.
The Girl: Tried it, but said the sauce "Tasted funny."

The Happy Herbivore Meal Plan-Pineapple Teriyaki Chickpea

This may look familiar to you since it is very similar to Lindsay's "Hawaiian Chickpea Teriyaki" featured a couple of posts earlier.

This is a simpler version with fewer ingredients. You can use bottled teriyaki sauce or make your own (many recipes on the internet). Two changes I made: 1. I used cooked millet in place of the quinoa. 2. I put most of my pineapple IN with the garbanzo beans when I sauteed them in the sauce.

I like this as did The Man. The Girl doesn't like garbanzo beans any more so I didn't try. I LOVE millet now, which I made in my rice cooker after dry-toasting in a skillet.

We also had this for lunch cold on a bed of romaine lettuce. Great way to add greens to this!

The Happy Herbivore Meal Plan-Crisps

I'm taking a little side-trip here to report on The Happy Herbivore's 7-day Meal Plan items. I'm not doing them in order, since I am trying to use up food I already have before shopping again or making things I know (think?) The Girl might actually eat. As with all the recipes on this site, I make reference to what I might have changed, but I won't be posting the actual recipe. If Lindsay has it on her site, I will link it. I'll refer to these as "MP" for meal plan.

One of the breakfast recipes is Pineapple Crisp, but since I have a lovely bag of frozen mixed berries, I made a Mixed Berry Crisp the first day and an Apricot Crisp the next. Couldn't get The Girl to eat either of these, but everyone else in the family liked them. For those not dieting, the crisps are excellent topped with either ice cream coconut cream. I also had mine with a dollop of plain unsweetened soy yogurt, which I think is still within the spirit of "low-cal."

 

When I followed her instructions for mixing the crisp ingredients with agave, I got a bit of a hardened lump, but when I accidentally forgot to use agave and used sugar instead, the crisp was much crispier. I simply substituted frozen mixed berries (after thawing in the micro) and then fresh apricots in my two versions.

The Happy Herbivore webpage lists a similar recipe, but with added sugar. Blueberry Crisp.

Hawaiian Chickpea Teriyaki

Hawaiian Chickpea Teriyaki, The Happy Herbivore, p. 127

Even though it's a little reminiscent of all those restaurant teriyaki dishes we've had to endure as vegetarians (you younger folk may have missed that era), this dish goes beyond "Let's throw some teriyaki sauce on vegetables and call this a vegetarian dish."

I like some sweetness in my food, and this satisfies me. The dish I created for the photo had just a little spinach on it for effect, but in reality, I would heap a whole bunch of spinach (or any other kind of green) on some rice and top it with the nice hot chickpeas to wilt it a little. Throw it in the micro or steam the greens if you want them cooked a little more.

One change I would make to the recipe is to double the amount of sauce. Lindsay says this recipe serves 2, but with this amount of garbanzo beans, it could easily be stretched to 4, especially with enough rice and a handful of greens. I might also add a little more water or other liquid to the sauce since mine seemed to evaporate quickly and didn't leave me with as much sauce as I would have liked to spoon over the whole dish. So maybe even triple the sauce amounts.

I don't keep szechuan sauce at my house, but I whisked together a quick bit (no real recipe) with some agave, dried pepper flakes, tiny bit of sesame seed oil, apple cider vinegar, some powdered garlic, powdered ginger and a bit of sriracha sauce. I used a teriyaki sauce similar to "Soy Vay" (the Trader Joe's brand).

I used a sweet salsa I had in the cupboard–peach and mango–which further enhanced the sweet side of this dish.

This would be a great meal to throw together at the last minute and really impress someone. Most or all of the ingredients can be kept in your cupboard–bottled teriyaki, bottled szechuan, canned garbanzos and a jar of salsa. You could even keep some of the pre-cooked rice on hand (I've seen it at Trader Joe's) and then just heat the beans with the sauces and throw it all together with some fresh greens! Voila! (Or "Viola!" as Phoebe would say.)

Did the DD eat it? She won't eat garbanzo beans anymore...so she did not try this.

Would I make this again? Yes

Rating: 5 out of 5 Forks (with some changes–more sauce!)

Tamale Casserole, Cornbread

 

 

Tamale Casserole, The Happy Herbivore, p. 167

 Cornbread, The Happy Herbivore, p. 49

This was a fun recipe to make since I got to use my really darn cute new individual casserole dishes! I loved the flavor of this dish and it truly is pretty low-cal. If you make the whole recipe of cornbread (you are supposed to use just half on the casserole), and make some muffins too, just watch out how much cornbread you end up eating, and of course how much "butter" and agave you slather on!

I made mine gluten-free with a new GF mix recipe my sister told me about (see below), and I think it held up. My daughter tried a bite of the casserole (she likes cornbread), but said it was "too sweet." I thought that was interesting. The recipe calls for some salsa, and I did use a sweet fruit salsa, so maybe a regular tomato salsa would have reduced the sweetness for her.

Did the DD eat it? She said it wasn't bad, but "too sweet." Husband ate all of his!

Would I make this again? Yes

Rating: 4 out of 5 Forks

JP's GF Flour Mix

2 cups Rice Flour
2/3 cup Potato Starch
1/3 cup Tapioca Flour
2 tsp Xanthum Gum