18 Recipes to Kick off your Post-Holiday Reset

It’s increasingly difficult to get consensus on what makes the most healthful diet, but I think we can all agree that eating more nutrient-dense plants after an overly-indulgent holiday season is a positive thing. Putting a handful of new, veg-centric recipes into rotation this time of year can help move the needle in the right direction. Hopefully this will provide a bit of inspiration! Many of the recipes are easily adaptable, and weeknight friendly. Enjoy!

1. Garlic Lime Lettuce Wraps – I love these! Ginger and garlic tempeh rice, folded into lime-spiked lettuce wraps with lots of herbs, cucumber, and carrots. A one-pan meal that comes together in no time! Get the recipe here.

2. Quick Vegan Enchiladas with Sweet Potato Sauce – These are knock-out delicious, in the oven in less that ten minutes, and a healthful alternative to all the heavy cheese versions out there. With black beans, sweet potatoes, and a stealthy turmeric boost.Get the recipe here.

3. Spicy Tahini Noodles with Roasted Vegetables – A weeknight winner! Make a simple, thinned-out tahini sauce, roast some vegetables while your pasta water is coming to a boil, toss and serve on one platter. If you like those old-school Chinese restaurant spicy peanut noodles, these are sort-of their tahini slathered distant cousinsGet the recipe here.

4. California Tom Yum Soup – The perfect antidote to holiday over-indulgence. This version is a distant relative of the vibrant, brothy tom yum soup you likely know and love. Get the recipe here.

5. Last Minute Red Lasagna – A true weeknight lasagna. No pre-cooking sauces, no pre-cooking noodles. You, literally, stir the first five ingredients together into a vibrant crushed tomato sauce, and start layering. Also, it isn’t a cheese bomb.Get the recipe here.

6. Ten Ingredient Alkalizing Green Soup – Ten ingredients in a blender and you’ve got a potent, alkalizing green soup – spinach, herbs, garlic, with silky coconut cream, and some green split peas for staying power. Get the recipe here.

7. Chickpea Cauliflower Korma – A riff on the Chickpea Cauliflower Korma recipe in Jennifer Iserloh’s The Healing Slow Cooker – chickpeas, cauliflower, combined with a not-shy simmer sauce. (conventional / Instantpot versions) Get the recipe here.

8. Vibrant, Vegan Double Broccoli Buddha Bowl – Made with seven ingredients on green overdrive. You double up on broccoli through a coconut green curry pesto and florets, then toss with a quinoa base. Get the recipe here.

9. Immunity Soup – A soup built on a monster white pepper broth. White pepper with jolts of ginger, and stabs of garlic – clear and strong topped with tofu, mushrooms, watermelon radish, and lots of green onions. Get the recipe here.

10. Orange Pan-glazed Tempeh – The best tempeh recipe I’ve highlighted to date – it features a simple ginger and garlic-spiked orange glaze that plays of the nutty earthiness of the pan-fried tempeh beautifully. Get the recipe here.

11. Chia Breakfast Bowl – So easy, so good! Soak the chia seeds in your favorite nut milk, top with smashed berries, fresh passionfruit juice, pepitas, and big flakes of toasted coconut. A bit of bee pollen adds a boost and some pretty. Get the recipe here.

12. Sriracha Rainbow Noodle Salad – A radiant, color-flecked tangle of noodles, cabbage, shredded carrots, pickled sushi ginger, and an abundance of cilantro, basil, and scallions. It has tofu and peanuts, coconut, ginger, avocado, and hemp seeds. Get the recipe here.

13. Mung Yoga Bowl – The kind of bowl that keeps you strong – herb-packed yogurt dolloped over a hearty bowl of mung beans and quinoa, finished with toasted nuts and a simple paprika oil. Get the recipe here.

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14. Vegetable Noodle Soup – This vegetable noodle soup is as simple, direct, and delicious as it gets. Vegetarian and vegans looking for an alternative to chicken noodle soup, try this! Get the recipe here.

15. Anna’s California Miso Avocado Salad – So good! A California-inspired Miso, Avocado, & Bean Salad from A Modern Way to Eat, by Anna Jones. Seasonal greens and beans are tossed with an assertive, creamy miso dressing. There are crunchy seeds, and broccoli, and avocado – it all comes together into a brilliant, beautiful, feel-good salad.Get the recipe here.

16. Rainbow Cauliflower Rice – Lightly cooked cauliflower is chopped, then tossed, with turmeric, cumin, cayenne, and a touch of ghee – add sliced avocado, hard-boiled eggs, toasted seeds, rainbow chard stems, lettuces. Get the recipe here.

17. Mushroom Stroganoff – This fantastic vegan mushroom stroganoff is a total crowd-pleaser. You can make it in an Instant Pot, or stovetop. Made with caraway-spiked vodka, and a hearty mushroom base, you get all of what you love about mushroom stroganoff, without the all the butter and cream. Get the recipe here.

18. Winter Green Miso Paste – Keep this on hand for flash-quick, healthy meals. A herbaceous, green miso paste with some garlic bite, rounded out with lots of scallions, cilantro, ginger, and some rosemary. Plus ten simple ways to use it. Get the recipe here.

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Ribollita – The Tuscan Stew you Should be Eating Regularly

Ribollita is a thick Tuscan stew – dark greens, lots of beans, vegetables, olive oil, thickened with day-old bread. It is hearty, filling, infinitely nourishing, and flat-out, the sort of food I crave. The amount of kale you collapse into each pot is impressive, and you’ll be patting yourself on the back before, during, and after you eat. Here are the details – it’s a soup I make constantly this time of year.

I should mention, with ribollita, it’s one of those things where there are as many ways to make it as there are cooks. I normally use whole canned tomatoes this time of year – torn up. But had crushed tomatoes on hand, and they worked out nicely. You can use canned beans, beans cooked from dried, or cooked beans you’ve frozen and thawed. As far as guidelines go? Your ribollita should be thick – eventually. A sloppy sounding, bread stew. Use day old bread, preferably a rustic loaf cut (or torn) into big chunks. The bread absorbs the broth and simmers into beautifully plump zones of pillowy dumplings.

Shortcuts

This isn’t a difficult soup to cook, although it does require some chopping. If you’re looking for a few ways to shave off some prep time. Use canned beans, and buy pre-washed & chopped kale.

Ribollita adaptations & toppings

There are a bunch! In addition to the tweaks I mentioned up above, I suspect a number of you will want to know how to make it GF. Yes, you can absolutely make it without the bread. it’s not the same stew, and not really ribollita, but it is still wonderful – just bump up the amount of beans you use (both the whole & mashed).  I like to add a bit of lemon zest to each bowl for a bit of brightness, and because I can’t help myself. And I also like the saltiness of a few olives alongside the kale, so that’s a little bonus as well. I’ll also drizzle a little thinned out pesto on top if I have it on hand, or, an herb oil made by pureeing olive oil, a couple garlic cloves, parsley, and marjoram together.

Freezer-friendly

This is a freezer friendly stew. I like to make an extra-large pot of it, let it cool, and transfer it to freezer-safe containers. It’s good for a month or so frozen. If I know it’s a pot primarily bound for the freezer, I sometimes hold off on adding the bread. I’ll add it when I reheat later. But really, you can do it either way.

I hope you love this, and I hope you make it. It has all the good stuff in one pot. Enjoy! -h

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Blood Orange Gin Sparkler

For a good part of the year I have rosemary floating about the kitchen. It’s typically crowded in a wide-mouth jar, standing stick-straight, quietly waiting to be called upon. Sometimes it sits on the windowsill here, other times it migrates to the island, or, on rare occasions, the dinner table. I tend to buy a bunch, then work my way through it little by little (you’ve likely seen it in the background of photos on previous posts). Said another way – rosemary is often in my line of sight, and I’m always looking for ways to use it. This cocktail caught my attention a couple weeks back, and I’ve been making my own citrus-spiked riff on it in the days since.

So…my initial idea was that I’d do a winter citrus version using freshly-squeezed pink grapefruit juice, gin, and tonic water or sparkling water. I thought the evergreen notes in the gin would blend nicely with the tart pucker of grapefruit, and I’d take the edge off with a hint of rosemary syrup.

Not meant to be.

I walked into a box of beautiful Moro blood oranges at the store, and here we are. The blood orange juice worked beautifully, it added a lovely burst of color, and generally lent itself agreeably to what ended up being a long, bright, winter-time quencher. One that goes down a bit too easily, in fact. As I mention down below, if blood oranges are hard for you to come by, this drink is great with navel oranges as well. I mean it when I say, I hope you like this one as much as I do.

I kept thinking the gin / citrus combo would make for a striking DIY cocktail set-up at a holiday party, or New Year’s brunch /gathering. Particularly if you offered a selection of juice mixers. I’m imagining small glass pitchers of blood orange juice, pink grapefruit juice, orange juice, oro blanco grapefruit juice, and or sweet lime juice? It would be a beautiful spectrum. Let me know if you give it a go.

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Favorite Cinnamon Buns

I make a version of these cinnamon buns nearly every year for Christmas. The first time I made them was in 2010, inspired by the version in Lotta Jansdotter’s book. They’re beauties. I thought I’d do a bit of an update to that initial post today, where I list off some of the tweaks I’ve made over the years, in addition to some insights I’ve had. The base recipe is for a version of Lotta’s beautiful, homemade, hot from the oven, loaded with sugar and spice, golden, buttery, classic cinnamon buns.

One of the great things about them, is that you can prepare them ahead of time, and freeze the pre-baked rolls. The night before you’re ready to bake them, leave them to thaw, covered, on your counter, and bake them in the morning. I’ve done versions with whole grain flours, different spice blends, and boozed-up icings – which I’ll note in the recipe and headnotes. There are some great insights in the comments as well.

Cinnamon Bun Basics

To make cinnamon buns you start by making a buttery yeast dough. I know some of you shy away from all recipes yeasty, but these really are fun to make. They take some time, because you need to let the dough rest and rise at various points, but most of that time isn’t active. Once you get the hang of things, you can play around with all sorts of different fillings in future batches. If you want to explore something beyond cinnamon sugar, the filling can be anything from jam, a sweet compound butter, a flavored cream cheese filling…you get the idea.

How to Make Cinnamon Buns: The Process

So, in short, making cinnamon buns goes like this: Mix the dough. Let it rise. Roll it out. Put down the filling. Roll. Slice. (Freeze here, if you’re going that route). Another rise. Bake. Lotta sprinkles her cinnamon buns with pearl sugar before baking, which gives them a nice crunchy top, but I know a lot of people like a thick slathering of icing – to the horror of some Swedes, I might add ;)… I served these w/ raw sugar on top and icing on the side, and used the icing from these hermit cookies. Might I suggest a splash of bourbon as well? You can actually flavor the icing any number of ways…

Happiest holidays and Merry Christmas to all of you. xo -h!

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What to Eat Christmas Morning (12 Recipes)

After the blizzard of wrapping paper quiets, a cozy (but casual!) brunch is one of my favorite Christmas traditions. Everyone is in good spirits and happy to celebrate together. My family typically does a Christmas dinner later in the day, but having a little something special in the morning is always welcome. That said, preparing for the holidays can be tiring, and everyone appreciates recipes you’re able to prep ahead of time – which is (thankfully) a lot of breakfast recipes. Here are a dozen recipes to consider for Christmas morning – a little mix of both naughty and nice. 😉 xx, -h

1. Green Shakshuka – (Bon Appétit) Probably not what your 7-year-old wants to see on her plate, but it will bring a smile to the faces of grown-ups, especially if they’ve had one too many glasses of prosecco on Christmas eve.

2. The Best Waffle Recipe – (101 Cookbooks) My friends and family might be tired of these. But, seriously, they are so good. These waffles are a year-round go-to, and perfect for Christmas morning. Setting up a waffle bar with toppings is always a hit.

3. Breakfast Baked Sweet Potato – (Ambitious Kitchen) This one’s a wild card – a baked sweet potato for breakfast? I get that not everyone is going to be on board, but it’s such good for you food with the almond butter and bananas. Maybe a dollop of Nutella to convince the younger eaters?

4. Wild Mushrooms on Truffle Toast – (By Rosie) I love a savory breakfast, and mushrooms are my jam – so, this has my name on it. Source the best bread you can find (or bake your own!), mushrooms and this is simple perfection.

5. Classic Cinnamon Buns – (101 Cookbooks) This is a great recipe to prep a day ahead. And if you’ve never baked cinnamon rolls, this is a totally doable recipe. Start a Christmas morning cinnamon bun recipe this year.

6. Black Bean and Tofu Scramble – (Anna Jones) Yes, to this. If you are over cookies, mulled wine and the rest, this is going to be a good first post-holiday breakfast.

7. Roasted Sweet Potato Kale Hash – (Minimalist Baker) Welcoming a solid dose of sweet potato and kale into your morning will give you the energy to face cleaning up that mountain of wrapping paper. Laugh / cry.

8. Perfect Healthy Granola – (101 Cookbooks) If you have a household of granola lovers, consider making a double batch of this. You can set up a topping bar and make granola parfaits. 

9. Spinach and Mushroom Quiche – (Low Carb Maven) Another recipe for the savory breakfast lovers. This one has an interesting flavor profile: a hint of nutmeg, Dijon mustard and smoked cheese.

10. Heuvos a la Plaza de Mercado – (Sprouted Kitchen / Tara O’Brady) Sara’s version of Tara’s recipe is a reminder to let your friends and family bring their influences to your table. Make the red sauce and the charred green onion dressing (!) a day or so ahead of time and it’s much easier to put this one together on Christmas morning.

11. Coconut Baked Oatmeal – (101 Cookbooks) There are certain recipes people tell me (in person) are their favorites and this is one of them. I think the reason is the coconut and grapefruit elevates oatmeal beyond basic.

12. Vegan Pumpkin French Toast – (Love and Lemons) French toast that works for the vegans in your family as well.

13. Chia Breakfast Bowl – (101 Cookbooks) I couldn’t leave out this quick California-style breakfast that you can prep the day before. A diverse array of toppings will make everyone merry.

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