Tortilla Pizzas (and the triumphant return!)

....I'm back!  For real this time.  I recently freed up a LOT of time by prioritizing my life and I am quite happy with my decision and what is to come... but more on that later.  

Freeing up time to cook and eat healthy again is GREAT, but so is quick and easy meals utilizing "What's Lyin' Around"!

Tortilla Pizzas

(Really you can make these with whatever you'd like; these were just what I had in my fridge needing to be used -- even though I just had Pizza Fusion's Very Vegan yesterday... mmmm!)

Ingredients:

Flour or Whole Wheat Tortilla of Choice

Pasta/Pizza Sauce (I used my friend Paul's secret pasta sauce that we use for everything. Yum!)

Diced Garlic

Diced Tomato

Diced Red Onion

Fresh Parsley

Follow Your Heart Vegan Mozarella

Italian Seasoning sprinkled on top

Cooking:

Preheat oven to 350° F

Lightly coat tortilla bottom with oil (I used coconut)

Add sauce, toppings, cheese, then seasoning.  

Bake for 10 minutes then broil for 2 minutes. 

Before Cooking:

After Cooking (and more cheeze):

Review: 10/10  One of my new favorites (and Paul O's too!)

Spicy Veggie Mix

Lately I find myself buying random vegetables at the Saturday Morning Market and just figuring out something to do with them during the week.  I love doing this because I add new vegetables that I normally wouldn't cook with to my diet and get a chance to experiment with cooking!

This week I had left over zucchini, yellow squash, and sweet potatoes and decided to mix them all together.

This is a really rough recipe to make however you want!

Ingredients:
Oil (I used Coconut)
Creole Seasoning
Zucchini, thinly sliced
Yellow Squash, thinly sliced
Sweet Potato, cubed

Put just enough oil at the bottom of your pan to coat it.  Cube the sweet potato and cook until softened.  Add zucchini and squash and cook until slightly soft.  Add creole seasoning to taste and mix.

The spices remind me of my mom's old breaded zucchini she used to make.  Mmm mm!

Chunky Cream of Vegetable Soup

Chunky Cream of Vegetable Soup

Ingredients:

4c vegetable broth

1 head brocolli, chopped

6 stalks celery, chopped

2 carrots, thinly sliced

Add vegetable broth, all but 1 stem broccoli, 1 sliced carrot, 3 stalks chopped celery with tops and the tops from the other 3 celery stalks to a pot and cook on medium until all vegetables are soft.  Strain vegetables while keeping the broth.  Add vegetables to a food processor or blender until finely chopped; then add broth and silken tofu and puree until smooth.  

Add remaining carrots, celery, and broccoli florets to a pot with a small amount of water to keep it from sticking.  Sautee until soft.  Add soup mixture to pot and heat until warm.  Add fresh ground pepper or other spices to taste.

If you prefer all puree, you can cook all the vegetables together in the first step and finish once smooth.  

This recipe worked great for all the vegetables I had laying around in the fridge that I needed to use before they went bad.  I have a habit of buying more things than I use in a week.  Next time you have vegetables ready to spoil, grab some broth and make a soup! Perfect for colds nights such as this.  Mmmm.  

Mexican Rice

Today is another "left over mash-up"! 

Throughout the week I have accumulated left over: Black beans, diced tomatoes, and enchilada sauce. I thought: What is a quick and easy meal I can make and combine them?

I decided to cook up some brown rice and toss it all together and voila! 

Mexican Rice

Ingredients
2c cooked Brown Rice
1c Black Beans, drained and rinsed
1c Diced Tomatoes, drained
1c Enchilada Sauce
1Tbsp Chili Lime Seasoning or Taco Seasoning (or more to taste)

Not bad for leftovers!  Lately too many things have been going bad in my fridge because I don't know what to do with them, and my goal is to have bad food no more; so expect many other "experiments" in the kitchen coming soon!