Category: Recipes

One of my really good friends Morgan is a vegan and I love swapping recipes and food ideas with her. Last week she sent me a snap of vegan pesto that she made and I needed the recipe pronto. I knew it would be even better if she was able to write a guest blog post so I could also share with everyone! Please read on for her recipe and be sure to try it soon! I know I will be 🙂

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Hi All! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Morgan, a good friend of Ashley’s! When Ashley asked me if I wanted to write for her blog I felt EXTREMELY honored. I really enjoy reading her posts and am always looking for new recipes to add to my collection!

So for my post, I will show you guys how to make vegan pesto with zucchini noodles!

I will say that you do need 2 essential tools to make this: – A blender (I don’t think it matters what kind, I just use my nutri-bullet-thing because it’s MUCH easier to bring out than my big blender) – And a vegetable spiraler (I got mine for like $10 on amazon and I use it CONSTANTLY… just get it, ok?) PESTO FIRST! Here are all of the ingredients you will need:

– 2 cups of basil – 3/4 cup of pine nuts – 2-3 cloves of raw garlic (I usually go for 3-4, but I’m a garlic fanatic) – 1/2- 3/4 cup of grapeseed oil (or olive oil… basically whatever oil you usually cook with) – a couple dashes of salt and pepper (to taste) – 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast – 1 tablespoon of lime juice Blend all of the things! I usually blend for like 2 seconds, shake it, and repeat until I get the consistency I like. (I like slightly chunky pesto)

WHA-LA! PESTO!! See…. it’s not that hard! 😉 Ok, you can do whatever you want with that now. Orrrrrr you can make zucchini pasta! In which case, you will need the following:

– 1 zucchini – 1 teaspoon grapeseed oil (again, or use whatever oil you usually use) – Wash and trim the stem off the zucchini. – Put teaspoon of oil into a pan. – Insert cut end into the spiraler and twist over the pan. – (I usually do about two rotations then pull it up to break it off, or they get too long and it’s impossible to eat) – Once zucchini is done, turn heat on low, and sauté until warm.

(I like to just heat them up so that they are still crunchy) When cooked to your preference, put zucchini in a bowl and add a dollop of pesto on top and work into warmed zucchini.

Now you have vegan pesto zucchini pasta. You don’t have to warm the pesto at all, raw is pretty tasty as well. It’s been real and hopefully you all enjoyed my recipe! Your favorite little blonde vegan, Morgan B.

I am 100% obsessed with my freezer. My freezer is amazing. She always has my  back when I buy too much food and don’t want any of it to go to waste, not even a single leaf of spinach! (Yes, I have froze approximately 10 leaves of spinach before. …And a half of an apple one time.) She saves me money and time every month. She stores the leftovers from bulk cooking. She makes sure I am never out of ice for my cocktails or iced coffees.

She once let me store vegetable scraps in her drawer for an entire year so I could make my own veggie broth. Smoothies are readily available all year round because of her. If I wanted to, I could  make dinner for an entire month and she would keep all of my noshes safe on her frosty shelves. My freezer is on 24/7 and I know I can always count on her. (In my kitchen,) my freezer is my best friend. She’s my ride or die. I love her big and I know she loves me right back.

Some freezer-frequents in my house are soups and stews; bananas; chopped basil, garlic, and green onions; ice wine; and vegetables (of course!). My most recent addition and discovery is homemade burritos! A while ago I posted my vegan sweet potato recipe. I doubled up on this recipe and froze the extra burritos that I made which got me thinking… why don’t I make a whole bunch of burritos and freeze them all!?

#burritosfordayz

Recently I bought a 10 count pack of flour tortillas, mashed sweet potatoes, frozen bell peppers, green chilies and guacamole. I already had some spicy black bean dip and salsa so figured I would make a few breakfast burritos too.

I let the bell peppers thaw overnight and then “wrung them out” with a paper towel to get any unnecessary moisture out. The next day I heated up my mashed sweet potatoes; which I got from Trader Joe’s and they save me a ton of time by not having to steam and peel the potatoes before mashing. All you have to do is pour the potato “pucks” into a pan, add 1/4 c of water and stir while they heat up.

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog for a website called Living Sunlight that explained which fruits and vegetables you should try to buy organic and which ones are okay to buy non-certified. You can check it out here and you’ll notice that sweet potatoes are a part of the “clean 15,” so I don’t fret about finding organic sweet potatoes. (You will also notice bell peppers are on the list of things you should buy organic but, unfortunately, my frozen bell peppers were just regular ol’ pesticide laden ones.)

While my sweet potatoes were in the pan, I spread my tortillas all over my kitchen. If you have a bigger kitchen you won’t have to be so creative…

Then I spread my spicy black beans on 3 tortillas (Mike isn’t a fan of the breakfast burrito so I made less of these), added scrambled eggs, some peppers, and salsa to make a perfect breakfast burrito for busy mornings.

After my potatoes were heated all of the way through, I spread guacamole on the remaining tortillas and piled a scoop of potato in the middle of each.

And then added peppers and green chilies before wrapping them up to freeze for future use!

And there you have it… 10 homemade burritos ready for my girl, the freezer! 😉

Stay tuned and eat your greens.

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** Note this blog went through a rebrand and is now veg vibes; which aligns better with the direction I organically gravitated towards. It’s all about your vibe **

We’ve made it halfway through the first week back to work! Annnnd it’s “cheese night.” If you remember, I’m trying to reduce the amount of cheese we eat since having given up meat on the weekdays and TONIGHT is the night for some added parm on my pasta!

This dinner is super easy and fast to make (as I believe most weeknight dinners should be). We paired the pasta with some roasted green beans and slivered almonds for some added veg power.

Happy hump day, y’all!

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Ingredients

• 1 c pasta
• 1 bag spinach
• 1 can fire roasted tomatoes
• 3 cloves garlic – minced
• 1/4 c onion – chopped
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions

• Cook pasta according to package
• Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil until translucent
• Add can of fire roasted tomatoes and package of spinach – bring to a boil and then simmer until pasta is ready
• Drain pasta and top with sauce
• Sprinkle on parmesan, if desired

Easy peasy, right!?

Stay tuned and eat your greens.

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** Note this blog went through a rebrand and is now veg vibes; which aligns better with the direction I organically gravitated towards. It’s all about your vibe **

Since Mike and I have been trying our hand at being weekatarians (which we did a pretty good job at maintaining over the holidays) I’ve noticed I have been relying heavily on cheese to supplement the flavor meat used to bring our dinners. Last year at least 3 out of our 5 dinners had cheese as a main ingredient so I decided to try really hard to limit our cheese intake in 2016. We aren’t completely cutting out dairy (yet) so I think it will be fine to have cheese once or twice a week at dinner but certainly not as much as we used to. So we don’t miss out on flavorful and satisfying dinners, I will use a lot of beans and herbs in dinners this year. I love cooking with fresh herbs but find that I don’t use all of them quick enough. This is why I will be buying one fresh herb a week and basically building most of our dinners around it. This week? Cilantro!

Tonight we had vegan sweet potato burritos with cauliflower cilantro lime rice and because of a HUGE demand for some recipes on this blog (ok, ok, one person has suggested I add a few veg recipes…), I’ve provided the ingredients and instructions for you below 🙂

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Ingredients:

• 1 – 2 sweet potatoes
• 1/4 cup black beans
• 1/4 cup corn
• 1/2 cup guac
• 1/2 cup salsa
• 6 flour tortillas

Directions:

• Peel and steam sweet potatoes until tender enough to mash
• Once SPs are mashed up, layer the mash, black beans, corn, guac, and then salsa on each tortilla
• Wrap, serve, and enjoy!

Note: I froze the extra 4 burritos we made for a quick lunch or dinner in the future

Stay tuned and eat your greens.

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** Note this blog went through a rebrand and is now veg vibes; which aligns better with the direction I organically gravitated towards. It’s all about your vibe **

Sooooooooo… who doesn’t love a big bowl of PASTA!? Not only is it delicious but, for me, it’s the ultimate comfort food. Something about it is just so satisfying. I could eat pasta multiple times a week but because of the carbohydrates and sugar it contains, I don’t.

…Until I discovered The Great Northern Bean and it’s magical powers when added to my beloved pasta.

Mike usually cooks dinner on Sundays and one weekend, he came across a recipe that called for a can of Great Northern Beans to be added to ravioli. I have been obsessed ever since! Not only do the beans give a nice texture and added taste to the already near perfect pasta, but they also provide more protein and volume; which means you will be, and feel, fuller longer.

I pretty much add a can of these (bean) babies to every pasta dish we have now. It is particularly handy towards the end of the week when you can use whatever veggies you have left. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I chopped a few cherry tomatoes, half of an orange bell pepper and some basil from our garden patio and mixed them with sauteed onions and a few frozen green beans. (I try to have something green every night for dinner and frozen green beans or peas have made this easy and achievable!) I added cooked ravioli and organic Great Northern Beans to the veggies and dinner was served.

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I hope you try this pasta-hack for dinner soon!

Stay tuned and eat your greens.

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** Note this blog went through a rebrand and is now veg vibes; which aligns better with the direction I organically gravitated towards. It’s all about your vibe **

So, my first step on the Veg Voyage is to only eat meat at home (or when I know where it is from) to ensure it is organic, grass fed, and preferably locally sourced. Admittedly, I have been a little shaky on the exact guidelines here (I ate meat that wasn’t organic but was locally sourced on a vacation to Tahoe and threw all caution with the wind with my hot chicken in Nashville) but I figure… it’s a process.

More often than not, I have eliminated meat when dining out.

But what about at home? Before I started this I wondered if I would go absolutely meat crazy at home because I couldn’t really eat it anywhere else. So far, that hasn’t been the case at all. I still do buy meat but typically we only have a ‘meat dinner’ once or twice during the week. Below I’ve shared 2 incredibly delicious veggie meals I’ve made this week.

**Disclaimer: I rarely actually use a recipe to make anything. Instead, I scroll through a couple different recipes for what I have in mind and alter them here and there to my liking.

Indian Lentils with Naan 

I’ve had these green lentils in my cabinet for months so it was nice to finally use the rest of them up in this recipe!

I chopped 1/2 an onion, a full red bell pepper, and 3 cloves on garlic, sautéed them in some olive oil and then blended them almost into a paste.

I added the ‘paste’ to a one can of fire roasted tomatoes, 2/3 c. coconut milk*, and 1 Tsp of Trader Joe’s curry powder, brought to a boil and added 1 1/2 c. of green lentils

I let this simmer for about 30 minutes and added a chopped up zucchini for the last 15. Then I served about a bit of brown rice and a side of naan. So good and pretty easy!

*I froze the rest of the coconut milk in ice cube trays for smoothies later

Cream of Mushroom Soup

This soup was so easy with only 6 ingredients!

I roughly sliced 1/2 yellow onion and 3 c. of mushrooms, sauteed them in a bit of butter and then blended them until smooth.

I added the mushroom puree to 3 c. veggie broth mixed with about 5 Tsp of whole wheat flour and brought to a boil and then added 1 c. of half and half, let it simmer for 15 minutes and viola! Lunch for the rest of the week!

Both of these recipes are vegetarian, hearty and satisfying. I hope you enjoy them!

Stay tuned and eat your greens.

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** Note this blog went through a rebrand and is now veg vibes; which aligns better with the direction I organically gravitated towards. It’s all about your vibe **