vegan zuppa toscana

My friend and I love Olive Garden. It's our go to place for lunch when we all meet up. The problem with Olive Garden is that they don't have many "healthy" choices. Quite a few of my friends are into healthy foods; vegan, vegetarian, organic, you name it.

 

I found a recipe on Pinterest for Zuppa Toscana and Eric and I made it a few weekends ago. The problem with it was that it was more Indian than Italian. It had chili powder and curry in it, so it wasn't like the Zuppa Toscana I've grown to love from Olive Garden.

 

My solution to this little dilemma was to make my own Zuppa Toscana recipe. I took the Indian Zuppa Toscana recipe and changed out the spices and a few other things to make my own. Man, am I glad I did. The second Zuppa Toscana attempt was amazing, delicious, excellent, etc.

everyone should have a rice cooker

Eric had talked about wanting a rice cooker for awhile because he just didn't like how sticky the rice came out when we cooked it in a pot on the stove. I figured it was the perfect Christmas present and told my mom he wanted one.

 

We found one at J. C. Penney for $30! Yes, it was only $30. Here's the one we got (or I should say, Eric got): Aroma 8-cup Stainless Steel Rice Cooker.

 

Rice literally comes out perfect, every time. Perfect restaurant rice, every time. 

 

Eric is not one for things. He hates clutter and having anything that he feels serves no real purpose. This is not one of those items. Does it take up room in the kitchen? Yes. But even Eric doesn't care. That's how great the rice cooker is.

 

It seriously makes it so easy to cook rice. You put it in, press a button, and then it tells you when it is done. It even keeps it warm for you until you're ready to eat it.

 

If you eat rice as often as we do, I highly recommend a rice cooker. 

peanut stew with rice

I found a tasty looking recipe on Pinterest last week and decided to give it a try this week. The recipe was for this easy and tasty looking peanut stew.

 

The recipe is VERY simple. I don't think you could mess it up, unless you don't know how to cook rice. && if you can't cook rice, see my next post (coming soon!!) about the best kitchen investment you can make!

 

Back to the recipe. It's really good and really easy so it makes a great week night meal.

 

mexican quinoa

Eric and I love quinoa. We use it a lot in recipes. It's a great alternative to rice (which we also use often). Last night I made a Mexican quinoa that I found on Pinterest and Eric told me that it needed to be added to our recipes.

 

We have a Dropbox folder called "Recipes" so that we can access it anywhere; even on our phones at the grocery store! It's one of his best ideas. It allows us to pull up our favorite recipes and see what ingredients we need if we are going to make said recipe. Now, I also make a grocery list that's in that folder too, but sometimes things are last minute so we can at least look through our recipes and find something we both like. The titles have hash tags like: #vegan, #vegetarian, #dinner so we can search the folder depending on what we want. We've even rated them so we know which ones we like more than others.

 

goals > resolutions

A lot of people make resolutions for the new year... I don't. I figure, why disappoint myself? Most of the time when people ask me what my resolutions are; I just say I don't make them and leave it at that. 

 

This year, I am taking a different approach. While no one has asked me what my "resolutions" are, I've decided to set some goals for myself instead. In my opinion, goals are better than resolutions. People make resolutions to lose weight or stop smoking, etc. and then are disappointed when they don't do it. I don't think it should be so definitive as people make it. Set a goal, work towards the goal, and if you don't reach the goal at least be happy in knowing that you worked for it, you tried. Even if you failed, you learned something about yourself.