Buddha Bowl

This one dish meal hits all nutritional punch points: vegetables,
grains, and protein.  (I am so sorry for the dreary colors!  This
dish was exciting with it's rainbow of fresh foods.)

 "Buddha Bowl" seems to be the token name these days for "throw together" vegan meals with delicious flavors.  Some call it the fast-food of healthful eating.  My family is not vegan, but I do go through common phases where all I crave are vegan meals.  My meat-eater men have to suck it up and go along with what is presented at the dinner table.  And, luckily, they don't seem to mind.  We call it a cleansing meal or week.  No one feels guilty or bloated after these meals.  (Well okay, sometimes I get a whiner who wants meat.  I will cook something small for them on the side.)

The Buddha Bowl mix above is suggested by a favorite blog "Oh She Glows", written by Angela Liddon.  I swapped a few ingredients from the original but that is what is great about these recipes.  Use what is in season or what you have in the pantry.  This wonderful medley of farro, roasted broccoli and cauliflower, roasted garbanzo beans, and tofu, was dressed with a cashew nut sauce.  It made my family happy,  If you need to limit gluten, swap out the farro for quinoa, rice, or other grain or seed.  Just remember to keep it balanced.

We will revisit Buddha Bowls because I think they are the next generation of "pull-together" dinners for families on the go.  The idea that one can pull a can of beans out, line a bowl with lettuce, add different vegetable toppings, and whether it is vegetable only meal or animal protein included, this is a really healthy family meal concept.  My family really likes a lemony tahini salad dressing, but a basic vinaigrette works as well.

serves:  5
prep time:  30 minutes

Mixed lettuces
1 head broccoli, cut into florets
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed and dried on a towel
1 block firm tofu, about 14  ounces, cubed*
2 Tblsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
Cooked Farro, 5 servings worth

Cashew Sauce

1/2 C. raw cashews, soaked overnight, drained
2 Tblsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tblsp tahini
1 large garlic clove
1/4 C. nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp fine grain sea salt
6 Tblsp water, or as needed to thin out

*You can either serve the tofu raw, or roasted.  For roasted, place on a pan and toss with a little Tamari and oil.  Roast as you would the garbanzos.  They can even cook on the same pan.  They become chewy and my boys eat them as snack food.

After the cashews have been soaked, add all ingredients to a blender and whir on high speed until smooth.  Set aside.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place garbanzo beans on a baking sheet.  Toss with a tablespoon of olive oil and season lightly with salt and pepper.  Cook for 15 minutes.  Stir garbanzos, then cook for another 15 minutes until golden and slightly crisp.

Start by roasting the garbanzo beans.

Roast broccoli and cauliflower the same way as the garbanzos.  Place on baking sheet, toss with olive oil, and season lightly.  Bake 15 minutes, turn veggies, and bake another 15 minutes or until they are roasted to your satisfaction.

In the same 400 degree oven, roast the cauliflower and broccoli.

Build your Buddha Bowl by lining a serving bowl with lettuces.  Then top with your choice of vegetables, in this case roasted broccoli and cauliflower.  Add a quarter cup of farro and a quarter cup of garbanzos.  Add a half cup of cubed tofu (this may be roasted or served fresh), then top with cashew nut dressing.

This is a simple side salad of avocado and tomato.  You may add this to the bowl,
or not.

  

Another side salad, this one fresh fruit.

For information on Oh She Glows Buddha Bowls, here is a link.... http://ohsheglows.com/2013/03/05/roasted-buddha-bowl

- Kim Fielding

Tarragon Vinegar

Fresh tarragon from the garden

After several failed attempts to grow tarragon, I was not about to waste a single leaf of this herb when it finally began to thrive in our garden beds.  I added it to salmon and chicken, salads, and finally to vinegar at the end of the season.

French tarragon is the variety most used in cooking.  In Asia, this herb is used to flavor sodas and in Europe to scent pastries.

Since this was our first attempt at making tarragon vinegar, we decided to keep it simple.  We sterilized canning jars, packed each jar with fresh tarragon, then added vinegars.  After screwing on the lids, we put them away on the pantry shelf for a few weeks before using.   Some vinegar recipes we looked at suggested heating or cooking the mixture but we decided not to follow that path.


We used three different vinegars, a different one in each jar.  Champagne vinegar
is on the left, rice wine vinegar is in the middle, and white wine
vinegar is on the right.  They have very different outcomes.

The champagne vinegar tarragon mix offered the mildest overall taste.  The champagne vinegar is not very potent and doesn't overpower the tarragon.  Rice wine vinegar and fresh tarragon produced the strongest tarragon flavor and a very pleasant seasoned vinegar taste.  The white wine vinegar mixture had the strongest acid overtones which somewhat masked the lovely fresh tarragon.



Salad vinaigrette (French style) and Bernaise sauce are two
favourite uses of the above vinegars.

To be fair, we eyeballed the amount of tarragon to vinegar ratio.  I used the white wine vinegar tarragon mix to make Bernaise sauce over the holidays and it worked just fine.  Afterwards I replenished the vinegar to the jar.  The smell in these jars is amazing if you are a tarragon fan.

Experiment and Enjoy

- Kim Fielding