15 Minute Avocado Pasta

by Angela Liddon
Prep Time: 5 mins
Cook Time: 10 mins
Creamy, thick, and rich with lots of garlic flavor and a hint of lemon. This is my newest favorite pasta dish. The avocado works wonderfully in this recipe to create a sauce so creamy and thick, you will think there is cream hiding in there.

Ingredients (2 servings)

1 medium sized ripe Avocado, pitted
1/2 lemon, juiced + lemon zest to garnish
2-3 garlic cloves, to taste
1/2 tsp kosher salt, or to taste
~1/4 cup Fresh Basil, (probably optional)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 servings/6 oz of your choice of pasta
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Bring several cups of water to a boil in a medium sized pot. Add in your pasta, reduce heat to medium, and cook until Al Dente, about 8-10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, make the sauce by placing the garlic cloves, lemon juice, and olive oil into a food processor. Process until smooth. Now add in the pitted avocado, basil, and salt. Process until smooth and creamy.
3. When pasta is done cooking, drain and rinse in a strainer and place pasta into a large bowl. Pour on sauce and toss until fully combined. Garnish with lemon zest and black pepper. Serve immediately. Makes 2 servings.
Please note: This dish does not reheat well due to the avocado in the sauce. Please serve immediately.

*Tip – Try using a combination of ancient grain pastas to increase your nutrition factors. The author of this recipe recommended using spelt pasta which has 12g of protein and 3g of fiber per serving and kamut pasta which has 13g of protein and 8g of fiber.

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Chunky, Cheezey, Broccoli and Potato Soup

Can you say “oh my comfort food”! This recipe is so delicious that I can’t stop eating it! I made mine chunky because I like to chew my food but if you like a more traditional broccoli soup, you can put it into the blender before the last step.

Ingredients
2 medium onions diced
5-6 cups chopped celery
3-4 cloves garlic minced
4 medium potatoes diced
3-4 cups of vegetable broth
1 or 2 bags steamer broccoli or 2 heads chopped fresh
3T EVOO
2T nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1c of cheeze sauce (see separate recipe below for cheeze sauce)
sea salt to taste
onion powder to taste
pepper to taste

Broccoli Soup
In a large skillet or pot, saute the onion and garlic for about 5-6 mins. Add in the potatoes and the celery cooking for another 5 mins until the potatoes are fork tender. Stir in the steamed broccoli, vegetable broth, the nutritional yeast and the cayenne pepper and simmer another 15 mins. At this point you can season to taste with the salt, pepper and onion powder. If you like your soup chunky then use a Pampered Chef Mix and Chop or a potato masher and chop up the veggies in the pan to the desired consistency or if you like yours creamy, transfer it to the blender carefully and blend to the desired consistency and transfer it back into the pan. Stir in the cheeze sauce. Garnish soup with fresh chopped parsley if desired.

Cheeze Sauce
Ingredients (4 servings)

1/2 butternut squash, peeled and chopped (yields: 3.5 cups raw)
3/4 cup raw cashews
1 cup non-dairy milk (I used unsweetened + unflavored soy milk), or more to thin out
3 garlic cloves
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tsp kosher salt, or to taste
6-7 tbsp Nutritional yeast (provides the cheesy consistency)
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 tsp or a bit more of dried Italian seasoning
1/4-1/2 tsp Tumeric powder, optional (gives the orangey color)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/4-1/2 tsp Paprika + more to season

Assemble your ingredients (cashews, non-dairy milk, garlic, lemon, salt, nutritional yeast, pepper, mustard, seasonings) and add just the cashews to food processor. Process until a fine crumb forms similar to corn meal. Now add in the rest of the cheese sauce ingredients and process until smooth. Leave the sauce in the processor as you will be adding the squash. When squash is finished roasting, add it to the food processor and blend it with the cheese sauce until smooth. Adjust to taste. The sauce will thicken up with time. If at any point the sauce becomes too thick, you can add a bit of milk to thin it out. This sauce is double what you will use so save the remaining sauce for your Butternut Squash Vegan Mac and Cheeze recipe.

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Butternut Squash Mac ‘n Cheeze (Vegan w/ GF and nut-free option)

by Angela Liddon
Prep Time: 25 mins
Cook Time: 1 hour
Husband approved. Cook approved. Vegan approved. Omnivore approved. ‘Nough said.

Ingredients (4 servings or 1.5 cups cheeze)

1 fresh butternut squash (peeled and chopped) or 1 cup canned butternut squash
Extra virgin olive oil, S & P
1 tbsp Earth Balance (or other non-dairy butter replacer)
1 cup unsweetened & unflavoured almond milk (or use rice or hemp milk if nut-free)
1 tbsp arrowroot powder (or cornstarch)
5 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2-3/4 tsp kosher salt (or to taste) & ground black pepper, to taste
4 servings brown rice macaroni (8oz or half a 16oz package) makes 3 1/4 cup cooked
Mix-ins of choice (e.g., kale, spinach, broccoli, peas, pumpkin seeds, etc)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425F. Line a casserole dish with tin foil. Mix chopped squash with EVOO, S & P. Roast for about 40 minutes, uncovered, or until tender.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the cheeze sauce in a pot on the stove top. Add Earth balance over low-medium heat. In a bowl, whisk together milk and arrowroot powder (or cornstarch or flour) until clumps are gone. Add into pot and whisk. Stir in remaining ingredients (nutritional yeast, Dijon, garlic, S & P) and whisk over low heat until thickened (about 5-7 minutes or so).
3. Cook your pasta according to package directions. The sauce makes enough to cover 4 servings of pasta.
4. In a blender, blend the sauce with 1 cup of roasted squash (or if using canned, simply stir 1 cup into the pot).
5. Add cooked, drained, and rinsed macaroni into pot, along with cheeze sauce & mix-ins. Heat and serve.
Note: My 3.5 pound squash made 5 cups cooked squash, so I had about 4 cups leftover.

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This recipe is from Oh She Glows, a wonderful site with a wealth of the most fabulously delicious recipes for Vegans! I could spend days looking through her recipe archives!

Triple Lentil Recovery Soup

by Angela Lidden
Prep Time: 20 mins
Cook Time: 45-60

This is called recovery soup but I just call it comfort food. It is so delicious! Love it!
Packed with over 25 grams of protein per serving, this soup will aid with post-workout recovery and get you back in the game in no time.

Ingredients (4 servings)

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 sweet onion, chopped (~2 cups)
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 heaping cup chopped celery
1/2 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, or more as you like
5-6.5 cups vegetable broth, depending on how thin/thick you want it
1/2 cup dry red lentils
1/2 cup dry black beluga lentils
1 cup dry green/brown lentils
Kosher salt & pepper, to taste (I used about 1/2 tsp salt)

Instructions

1. In a large skillet or pot, add the oil and sauté the onion and garlic over low-medium heat for about 6-7 minutes.
2. Add in the celery and sauté another few minutes. Stir in the spices and cook for another couple minutes on low.
3. Now, rinse and drain the lentils and stir into skillet/pot. Add the broth and stir well. Increase heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, a simmer until thick and lentils are cooked, about 45 minutes to an hour. Watch closely and stir frequently so it doesn’t stick to the pot. Add more broth to thin out if desired. You can also use an immersion blender to blend some of the soup a bit. I did this, but left it mostly chunky. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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Reprinted from Oh She Glows

Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers

This is an awesome recipe and I adapted the version below by using tomato slices to serve mine on and topped it with the avocado slices. It was delicious and I am sure that if I ate bread that it would be awesome served exactly as it is below.

makes 7-8 large patties

2 cans cannellini white beans, drained
1 large sweet potato, baked/peeled/mashed (about 2 cups)
2 Tbsp tahini
2 tsp maple or agave syrup
1 tsp lemon pepper seasoning OR Cajun seasoning (or another fave spice!)
1/4 cup wheat flour
optional: additional seasoning (whatever you have on hand – I used a few dashes cayenne, black pepper and a scoop of nutritional yeast)
salt to taste if needed

plentiful Panko crumbs
safflower oil for pan

burgers: avocado, Dijon mustard, grain buns, romaine, onion, olive oil, pepper

Directions:

1. Bake sweet potato. Peel, place in large mixing bowl.
2. Add drained beans to mixing bowl. Mash beans and potato together.
3. Mash in seasoning, flour and any additional seasoning. Your mixture will be quite soft and moist. But you should be able to form a patty. Add more flour or a scoop of breadcrumbs – or dry rice to thicken the mixture if needed.
4. Heat 1 Tbsp safflower oil in a pan over high heat.
5. Form a patty from mixture and coat in Panko crumbs. Thick coating. Then drop the patty in the pan. Repeat until the pan is filled. Cook until browned on both sides. You could also bake. If baking, use less Panko.
6. Transfer cooked patties to paper towel. Cool for a few minutes.
7. Serve on toasted bun with lotsa toppings.

Reprinted from kblog.lunchboxbunch.com

The Assigning of the Call

Yesterday after praying for a friend, God directed my attention to the devotion in My Utmost for His Highest for September 30th. After reading it I immediately knew it must be shared with my friend, because it spoke so clearly to her situation as well as mine. So, since we are all working on the wall together, I think it is appropriate that I share it with all of you.

The Assigning of the Call | My Utmost for His Highest | September 30th

I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church . . . —Colossians 1:24

We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, “If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!” But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed—you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

Reprinted from utmost.org

Rubbish in, Rubbish out!

Before the wall could be built, they had to clear away the rubble (rubbish) because they had to be able to build on solid foundation (Christ).
As I ran across this scripture today, the word “Rubbish” jumped out at me. And I thought it might be a great scripture for everyone to meditate on – in fact to memorize and keep handy as they continue to clear the rubbish from their perspective
gates and walls:

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as RUBBISH, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righeousnes of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoing like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:8-11) So as we clear away the Rubbish, it might help to keep up focused on why we are doing it.

xoxo

Naked Burrito Daniel Style

This is actually called Burrito Bowl with Guacamole and Salsa from Straight Up Food There are plenty of wonderful recipes on her blog so be sure to check it out.

Ingredients
1 cup dry, short-grain brown rice
2 cups water

6 Romaine lettuce leaves, thinly sliced
1 cup very thinly sliced cabbage
1 can black or pinto beans (or about 1-1/2 cups home-cooked beans)
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1/2 of a sweet yellow or red onion, chopped (or two scallions)
1/2 cup black olives, sliced in half (about 20 olives)
1/2 cup cilantro, parsley or basil leaves, chopped
1 cup corn kernels (or kernels from one cob), cooked or raw
1 avocado, diced
2-3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

guacamole (optional, see recipe below)
salsa (optional, see recipe below)

Directions
1. In a pot, bring rice and water to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover and cook for 50 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes with the lid on. Remove lid and set aside.

2. Using two or more large soup or salad bowls, layer all of the ingredients equally into each bowl and squeeze lime juice over the top. Or in one large salad bowl, toss all ingredients together, including lime juice, then serve into your individual bowls. Top with salsa and/or quacamole (see recipes below). The cooked beans and rice may be used warm or cold.

Preparation: 15 minutes (to chop and assemble)
Cooking time: 50 minutes to cook rice
Makes: 2 large entree servings or 4 salad servings

Guacamole
3 small to medium avocados, diced and somewhat mashed
2-3 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 yellow onion, small diced
1/2 cup cilantro or basil leaves, chopped
1-2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin

In a bowl, blend all ingredients with a fork.
Makes about 2 cups

Salsa
6 Roma tomatoes, small diced
1/2 yellow or red onion, small diced
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/2 cup cilantro or basil leaves (about 20 basil leaves), chopped
1 clove fresh garlic, minced
2 scallions, chopped (optional)

In a bowl, blend all ingredients.
Makes about 3 cups

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Simple Salad Dressing

Dressing

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp apple cider vinegar (optional)
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4-1/2 tsp garlic powder, to taste
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, to taste (less if you don’t like spicy foods!)
1/4-1/2 tsp ground cumin, to taste
1/2-3/4 tsp kosher salt, to taste (I used 3/4 tsp)
freshly ground black pepper

Whisk together all ingredients in a bowl.

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Power Breakfast

Breakfast Idea #1

This morning before leaving to go work on the Wall, I sat down to nourish my body for the morning with a bowl of Kashi Crunch Cereal topped with a few almonds and strawberries and almond milk. It was a most excellent start to the day.