What’s for Dinner? Rice Bowls

Over here, dinner is my deal. Generally speaking, it's my job to plan, chop, cook and serve everything my family eats. I know how this sounds but it's not about gender roles really. It's about me having gone to school to study food and eating, and then taking a job that pays me to think about food and eating. It's about me enjoying the process of planning meals (as well as cooking them) and about Jon hating this chore—the planning part—with all his being.

Yet there are some weeks when I don't participate in this enjoyable process of planning meals. When this happens, behold The Rice Bowl. Simple, customizable and lightening-fast, this fail-safe dinner solution will please the pickiest of eaters. It will easily accommodate your favorite vegans and gluten-free friends. Think: taco bar with much, much more flexibility. The recipe is essentially rice (or "rice" - quinoa, farro, bulgur also work great) topped with whatever you can find in the fridge, the freezer or your pantry.

But I always appreciate a "recipe" so I'll share tonight's rice bowl spread and I'll give it a fancy name and a proper hednote. Enjoy!

Low-Hanging Fruit Rice (or "Rice") Bowls 

This completely customizable one-dish dinner is inspired by the absence of a dinner plan. Every ingredient is 100% interchangable with whatever you have on hand.

Ingredients:

• Black rice

• Canned white beans (cannellini), rinsed

• Napa cabbage (CSA share from a few weeks back), shredded

• Avocado, cubed

• Red onion (CSA share from at least a month ago), diced

• Cheddar cheese, shredded (by Julian)

• Pepitas, toasted (taking 3 minutes to do this makes a huge difference)

• Frozen veggies (the gross-looking weird ones with unnaturally square carrots - my boys love them), nuked.

Directions:

Cook rice, according to package instructions. Put everything else—rinsed, shredded, diced and nuked—into small bowls and let anyone eating pile on what they want.

Tip: If you have a five-year-old, or a greedy eater of any age, remind him (her) that it's not polite to serve himself (or herself) ALL of the avocado.

Nude, Ninja Gingerbread Men for Christmas!

Dear Friends:

The next time I imply that I am time-strapped and overwhelmed by responsibilities, please remind me of that night when I decided to spend the good part of an hour driving to a nearby friend's  (at 10:30) to borrow back our shared bottle of corn syrup, whipping up (stubbornly runny) vegan royal icing to dress my army of whole-grain, vegan ninja men. With a fancy cocktail toothpick. Obviously unsuccessfully. Attempting to painstakingly build eyes, and a random red belt, from artificially colored, artificially everything did not help.

I give up. The rest of my wholesome—and truly delicious—ginger ninjas will run nude. All natural sweeties. Plus, looks don't matter, right? It's all about the stuff you're made of. How you treat other people. These spicy dudes treat well—and they kick the asses of those seriously sandy (in a really bad way) gluten-free Sandies I attempted a few years ago.

That is all. Good night.

#fancycookiefail

"Vegan Till Thanksgiving” Takeaways

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the official end date of my first my "Vegan Till Thanksgiving" experiment, which has been a totally enlightening and fun challenge. Before I list what I learned in the process, a couple of confessions (my Catholic upbringing has raised me to reveal these sorts of transgressions): 

• I splashed real milk into my coffee on three occasions.

• I ate many, many bittersweet chocolate chips (which I assumed were vegan and then learned that the brand I bought were not).

Now, what I learned: 

• I can live without ice cream and cheese pretty easily. This came as a major shock to me.

• I'm not a huge fan of non-dairy "milk" products, particularly in my coffee. The coconut milk creamer was acceptable; soy lattes (purchased only out - I only bought almond milk and coconut milk creamer at home) were good.

• I drink less coffee and more green tea when I'm not doing dairy.

• I eat more and less healthfully when I'm following a vegan diet: more vegetables and beans and far fewer saturated fats (and fatty "junk") but probably more carb-y snacks, like tortilla chips and Triscuits.

Also... 

• Homemade vegan cookies taste as least as good as non-vegan ones.

• For me a vegan diet is not a way to shed pounds. I didn't weigh in (weight loss wasn't a goal) but suspect I stayed the same or gained, as I ate loads of avocados and nuts - which are staples in my diet typically anyway - and extra servings of higher-cal carbs (wild rice, say) in place of fish.

• Speaking of fish, I missed it a lot - particularly when we went out for sushi. (I ordered a sweet potato tempura roll - again, not as healthy as my typical yellowtail scallion... but perhaps comparable to a spicy tuna).

• Eating out wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be. At even the "super-meatiest" of restaurants, I had the most amazing meal... just requested that my roasted beet salad come without the cheese and the dressing and that they leave the smoked bacon butter off the pickled tomatoes on toast. Which were AMAZING.

• I should have been better about taking a multivitamin. (I did OK with the calcium supplement and somewhat OK with the omega-3s but didn't pick up a multi till last week). And when my arm broke out in hives the other night after prolonged content with a wet sweatshirt sleeve (incurred during bath-time duty) I was convinced I had a vitamin B12 deficiency and would soon start seeing signs of irreversible nerve damage. Ridiculous given that I'd had my fair share of fortified veggie products.

• I have such respect for the commitment it takes to follow a 100% vegan diet, 24/7/365.

• I thought even more about where my food comes than I normally do. The other night, when the boys didn't want to finish their milk at dinner, I found myself saying, "it's fine if you don't want to finish but next time let's not take so much. The cows work really hard to make that milk."

Tomorrow, I will eat on turkey and likely lots of buttery sides. Yum! After that, I will live on a little more vegan than I was in October - "veganish,"  a la Mark Bittman, as a friend pointed out. (Here's what's definitely coming back: milk in my coffee, fish, non-vegan foods served by friends, probably yogurt, definitely "good" cheeses.)