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In a food rut, would love suggestions!
Hi All,
I feel like I'm in a bit of a food rut, and was hoping you all may have some suggestions for dinner ideas that are (hopefully) healthy and either vegetarian or easily made meatless.That's basically the gist of this post, but if you want more details feel free to read on. 
Basically, I do all the cooking and H usually works nights, so what I try to do is make something for me for dinner, and then he takes the leftovers to work the following day. Lately I feel like we've been eating a lot of the same things over and over like stir-fry, pasta and burritos. H isn't much help coming up with dinner ideas--he just says "whatever you make is fine".
The thing is that I'm a vegetarian (he's not, although he'll usually eat whatever I make) and he can be a very picky eater. We try to eat as little processed foods as possible, but a lot of the foods I like or recipes that I want to try he won't touch. For example, he hates sweet potato, avocado, squash of any kind (zucchini, butternut, etc.), eggplant, spinach, hummus, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, tofu, any pasta sauce that isn't marinara (pesto, Alfredo, etc), and I'm sure some other things I can't think of. These are all foods that I grew up eating and love, so in a way I feel like I'm depriving myself since I rarely cook these foods because it's a PITA to cook separate meals and have to wash all the pots and pans afterwards. I also feel like we aren't eating as healthily as we/I used to which is driving me nuts!
Thanks in advance!
Re: In a food rut, would love suggestions!
Ha ha ha! As soon as I saw you were vegetarian, I got excited and thought...Yes! I've got a great dish for her...Then saw straight after that your H doesn't like sweet potato....
Well, I do have another dish:) Hope he likes Cauliflower...
It's a bit unique but tastes kinda Chinese like. So I call it Cashew Nut Chicken (you can replace with Qourn chicken http://www.quorn.us/ or Portabello mushrooms for your self if you like)
Ingredients:
1) 1 bag of Quorn defrosted, or 5 sliced (skinned or washed) portabello mushrooms
2) 1 cup low fat, or no fat mayo
3) 1 tbs low sugar apricot conserve
4) 1/2 cup of crushed cashews or nuts you prefer
5) punnet of cherry tomatoes (about 15 sliced)
6) 1 head of cauliflower
7) 1 cup of yummy brown rice
Mix the apricot conserve and mayo together in a bowl. Add salt and black pepper, mix well.
Saturate Qourn chicken or mushrooms and cook in a non stick pan until brown. use spray oil to coat pan first.1/2 way through before completely brown, add the crushed cashews.Mayo and apricot should create a sauce, if too sticky add a bit of water to mix in.
Chop cauliflower, and then steam in a pot for about 8-10 min. Add garlic granules and salt.
Steam brown rice with a vegetable stock cube (mix with hot water to create stock first) then add it and water to your rice. I love making mine in the microwave, but if you have a rice cooker, that works too.
When all is done cooking, take rice and serve it on the plate, then top with cauliflower, and then add Cashew Chicken.Top with fresh cherry tomatoes and Voila:)
If you try it out, tell me what you and H think. Make modifications if you like and tell me how those worked too!
Our husbands have great wives...lol
Ida
Grab a cup of tea, and visit me on my blog:)
Newly Married??? Sister, let's relate!
Wow, he really IS picky! Is he totally unwilling to try those foods mentioned? Because maybe there are some ways you could prepare them that would make it more appealing to him...Like I throw some crumbled bacon into shredded, sauteed brussel sprouts and they don't even taste like brussel sprouts afterward. Maybe there are ways to doctor those taboo foods, so he'll be more open-minded?
You don't say if you eat fish or not, but I think this is a great recipe for Salad Nicoise. It's great cold (so good for leftovers) and you could easily change out the ingredients to suit your different tastes. He could even add some shredded rotisserie chicken to his if he doesn't like the tuna.
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/classic-salade-nicoise.html?cm_src=RECIPESEARCH?bnrid=3185301&cm_ven=socialmedia&cm_cat=Facebook&cm_pla=recipe&cm_ite=maincoursesaladsalbum
This is also a great soup recipe if you eat beans. It makes awesome leftovers, is hearty, and you could easily just split if and only add swiss chard to yours if he won't eat that.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/winter-minestrone-recipe/index.html
I will try to think of some more but hope this helps.
One of our friends recently went through an elimination diet so I got really creative in cooking vegan meals. There are a couple cooking blogs I'd recommend (see below) but one of the easiest ways to approach it is look through a cookbook and adapt a recipe that you'd like to try.
One of my favorite recipes is a shepherd's pie and you can puree or chop up the veggies your H does like. I used my own mashed potatoe recipe (using only milk-free margarine and almond milk) so if you are looking for a healthy alternative with dairy I'd recommend using non-fat sour cream and non-fat or low-fat milk to cream the potatoes. I love Gordon Ramsay's recipe: http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/03/shepherd-pie/. I also love making soups and gazpachos and a healthy vegetarian one that comes to mind is Wild Rice soup. Usually made with mushrooms but you can easily replace that flavor with another vegetable (try leeks! they have a lovely flavor): http://ohmyveggies.com/recipe-creamy-wild-rice-mushroom-soup/
And for websites to check out try:
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/category/vegetarian
http://ohmyveggies.com/how-to-make-almost-any-recipe-meatless/
Good luck!