Meatless Monday

My sister inspired me a few weeks ago by trying out a mushroom and spinach quiche. Since then I have been thinking that would be awesome for dinner one of these Mondays. Tonight I am making this recipe with swiss instead of gruyere (because I'm not rich enough for that fancy cheese) and a ready made pie crust.

I am 99.9% sure the girls will not enjoy this, but Will and I are going to. Monday meals are really about me.

Meatless Monday Burritos

This week for MM we had bean burritos. This is the simplest and quickest meatless dish we make. It's also the one that even the most picky of us eats without complaint. I don't love it, after my pregnancy with Tally I've not felt the same way about bean burritos made at home.When I was pregnant with her the smell of them made me run and hide in my bathroom. Yet, I wanted to sniff windex? Geesh being pregnant is funny.

I don't usually buy vegetarian refried beans, nor do I make them myself, so they probably aren't really vegetarian. I also cheat and when we have soups I use the chicken stock I have in the freezer. MM isn't really about avoiding meat all day, it's about dinner not be centered around meat and introducing more vegetables into our diet (not that bean burritos have veggies, thought Rhayn likes them with lettuce!)

Meatless Monday

This week for Meatless Monday we had pita bread, falafels, hummus and tzatziki. I made the pita bread, using this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I started the bread dough that morning and it had really good flavor. The directions for baking it to get the pouf didn't work out, and the bread was more like Naan, but still a delicious flat bread that I would do again. Perhaps next time I will attempt them on the grill.

We made baked falafel, but they weren't very good. I think the problem was that we didn't have cilantro or fresh parsley and that is important.

The hummus and tzatziki were excellent.

All in all this was a meal we will do again soon.

What's in the fridge? soup

Tonight's dinner was a slow-cooker soup. This morning I decided to clean the fridge, and found a 1/2 of a rutabaga, 1/2 of an onion and some asparagus. I almost always have carrots and celery in the fridge, too. So I chopped up the veggies, softened the onions, carrots, celery and garlic for a bit in the iron skillet and then put it all in the slow cooker with some Italian seasoning, a can of tomatoes, a chopped up potato (because I had some) and chicken broth (maybe not meatless, since I used that, but it was in the freezer and homemade from a rotisserie chicken a few weeks ago.)

I added a rinsed can of great northern beans about 1/2 an hour before we ate. Otherwise they get really mushy.

Gwen didn't like it because of the tomato (I knew that) but Rhayn said it was good. Tally ate as much as Gwen did.

It was alright. I'm sure we'll have something similar again.

Meatless Monday

Every week, for quite a while I've been doing a meatless dinner on Monday. Sure we eat meat at lunch so it isn't really a true "meatless Monday" but we're trying. It also gives me an excuse to try out some recipes that I wouldn't normally.
So far the only one that seemed to really be a hit with Will and I was a curry I made. The girls groan every week on Monday.
I am going to start keeping track of what I make and whether it was good, bad or merely tolerable. Starting tomorrow. Now I just need to come up with a plan for tomorrow. I am thinking stir-fry or something Asian-inspired. We'll see how I feel in the morning.