Friday, January 1, 2010

A New Year and a new promise


Happy 2010! Yikes, I can't believe it's been more than two months since anyone last posted anything on this blog! I have actually had some ideas, and some pictures, but life just moves too fast sometimes; and it seems like there is so little time to just sit down at the computer and compose anything that is not work-related. Bah! That is clearly not a good way to look at life.
So I hope to get back to blogging as I originally intended, that is to say, as a means of sharing ideas and recipes about vegetable-based, hopefully vegetarian, meals.
To start, sometime back in the Fall of 2009, I found a recipe for Pumpkin Turkey Chili. Now, of course, I know that Turkey Chili is not a vegetarian meal; however, the point of interest on this recipe is the addition of pumpkin puree to the chili. One could easily adapt this recipe to a veggie chili meal. I found this delicious recipe on the Whole Foods Market website, somehow, by accident I suppose. I highly recommend the recipe and the website.
Since this is a new year and the air is replete with New Year's resolutions and all that good (or bad?) stuff, I have decided that I want to incorporate meatless meals into my weekly dietary plan. I don't necessarily want to become a vegetarian, but I sure could use less meat in my diet. And my husband, too. For one thing, we could all stand to shave a little cholesterol out of our diets. We don't eat that much red meat, but it would just be nice to have a nice, filling, and healthful meatless meal at least once or twice a week. Last night, I started off by fixing myself a sweet potato filled with black beans and chopped tomato. This one I don't have a picture of, so you will just have to imagine a luscious baked sweet potato topped with black beans, tomatoes, and a dollop of Greek yogurt (which could easily be Tofutti sour cream if necessary). The beans and tomatoes were tossed with olive oil, cumin, coriander, and black pepper. This recipe came from the Eating Well website which is a website I check almost daily for recipes. The nice thing about Eating Well is that they include nutritional information with their recipes.
I have several new ideas that I intend to try beginning this week, so check back for more excitement! Haha. And Happy New Year again!