I cannot believe I have made it half way already! I have four wonderful recipes to review with you today, man these recipes are coming up quickly. I’m having so much fun with it and learning lots about new food. I love being able to share it with you and with those close to me, it’s been so interesting to see what other people think too.
I am going to be posting week 3 recipe list, meal plan, grocery list and nutritional content tomorrow, so get ready! You have inspired me to try some new recipes which I am super excited about. I also have a fun finale up my sleeve, which I will also share with you shortly.
I will start off by reviewing the Smoky Tempeh Sandwich which I made on the Life Changing Bread – both found on the My New Roots blog. I have reviewed the bread already here, so this review is focused on the sandwich. This sandwich is made up of three basic parts: making the sundried tomato pesto, making or buying the bread, and marinading and baking the tempeh. I was impressed by how quick it was to prepare. If you start with the tempeh, you can make the pesto as the tempeh bakes, and then chop up any toppings for the top of the tempeh after.
I really enjoyed the flavours of the meal, very rich and flavorful pesto (love sundried tomatoes so hard to go wrong), and the tempeh was cooked very nicely. I almost felt however that it was too hearty, the bread perhaps was not the best pairing as it is dense already. I almost could have done it on salad, because of the rich texture of both the pesto and the tempeh, and then the added avocado can easily take it over the top. It was interesting too to see it’s caloric content: 773 calories (assuming you use 2 slices of gluten free bread which is roughly 200 calories), which is pretty high! However, there is no way I could finish the entire piece of tempeh in one sitting, so I could have cut that in half even. Not that I’m a big calorie counter or anything, but it is useful at times to see how dense or rich a meal is. These are all healthy calories however! The only other piece of advice on this one is finding all the ingredients, tempeh for some reason is so tricky to find in Victoria without any added flavours to it! I had a similar review back in my Oh She Glows challenge (see here).
Overall, I gave this recipe a 33 out of 40, not bad!
My next review is of the Caramelized Fennel Polenta, found in the cookbook on page 98. What I really liked about this one was that it used very easily found ingredients, and not very many, so it was great on the wallet! I have never thought to caramelize fennel before, and I was so tasty! I also like how there was some dry fennel seeds thrown in for good measure. The polenta came out incredibly creamy, and although I added some goat cheese to it, it was not needed, so creamy on its own. I gave the boy I nanny a taste, and he thought it was amazing too (which is saying a lot from a four year old!). So there you have it, a great, low budget, easy time recipe that anyone will enjoy. Seems like an all around winner! Overall, this recipe gets a 38 out of 40.
Next up, is the Genius Chickpea Tofu – and I must say it is pretty genius. Soy is getting a bit of a bad rap lately, mostly because too much estrogen can be a bad thing, especially if you are genetically predisposed to breast cancer, but I do love a good tofu from time to time. However, this tofu is made entirely from chickpea flour, which is a surprisingly inexpensive flour to buy at an ethnic store might I add (I got it at Walmart in the South Asian section for 3$ for a HUGE bag). I was a bit thrown off by the instructions on this one, it is a two day process. You have to soak the water and chickpea flour overnight, then cook it in the morning, then let it sit out all day. So prepare in advance for this one! It is worth the wait. I also had a difficult time not disturbing the bath of water when I was trying to make the tofu (if you read in directions). However, it didn’t seem to matter as it came together quickly and was very thick. I didn’t end up trying cooking it, because I had so much else going on in the fridge I ended up freezing some. I will report soon on how it tastes re-heated/defrosted! Overall, 34/40!
This last review is a very popular new recipe on the blog: The Revolutionary Pancakes. What makes them revolutionary is a couple things: it only has two ingredients, buckwheat groats and another whole grain of choice (quinoa, amaranth, millet etc.) and they are gluten free, dairy free, and packed with good grains. The other great thing about them, is they can be modified as much as you like, you can put any additions in them you want! I kind of got my creative juices flowing and made quite the combination. For the pancakes: red quinoa, buckwheat groats (make sure to soak these overnight), banana, coconut flakes, vanilla bean, lucuma powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamom. I also made the suggested cashew cream, and added some cocoa nibs and candied ginger (and omitted syrup). Man oh man did this turn out well!
The funniest part was I had such a busy day that day, I made them for both breakfast and dinner, I left some of the batter in the fridge, re-whizzed it when I was ready to make, and they turned out just as good. One note, I find the banana tends to make the batter stick to the pan. My friend tried these without banana and said the batter was beautifully stick-free. So you have to play around a bit! I can’t wait to try other combinations next. This recipe can be relatively moderate in cost if you don’t add the copious amounts of ingredients I did ;-). Nutritionally, it is a great carbohydrate heavy breakfast (58% carbohydrates, 29.8% fat, 11.4% protein). Overall, I rated this recipe a 33/40.
Okay, there is your review for the day! I am going to get the meal plan to you as soon as possible, stay tuned!
xoxo Hannah