Meatless Monday: Pumpkin Cheesecake

I had my in-laws in town for Thanksgiving, so things were a little busy for a while, what with cooking preparations; squeezing everyone into our little house; and touring here, there, and everywhere. We had lots of fun . . . and consumed monstrous amounts of food. I can't even begin to calculate the number of calories consumed in the course of their visit, but I'll tell you one thing - I don't regret one bite!

I'm happy to report that everything in our Thanksgiving meal came out excellent. There were no major mishaps with any of the dishes this year - not even with the one recipe I'd never made before. (My philosophy is that you should stretch the limits of your cooking comfort zone by making at least one new recipe each Thanksgiving). I had a pretty good idea it was going to be amazing though because my friend had already made the recipe and posted a picture of the results (see her picture above). I reasoned, "How could anything that looks that gorgeous NOT taste amazing too?!" I'm happy to report that I was not wrong, or as my grandfather used to like to say, "Seldom am I wrong, but I was right this time."

Pumpkin Cheesecake
Recipe

My friend suggested the following adjustments to the recipe (which I followed):

• Bake at 325 in a water bath for 45 minutes.
• Turn off oven and allow to cool in oven for 60 min.
• Cool on counter for 60 min covered.

The only other thing I did differently was to use neufchatel instead of cream cheese. You know, to make the healthy version. . . .

What? . . . Okay, so maybe you'll have a little trouble fitting into the holiday outfit you recently purchased after eating this cheese cake (even with the nuefachatel/cream cheese swap), but that's okay because everyone knows that "no one likes a skinny Santa" anyway! ;)

Got any favorite vegetarian or vegan recipes?? Please share!

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Meatless Monday: Carrot Cake

I'd been wanting to make a carrot cake for long while, but I'd kept putting it off because there are just the two of us at home and consuming a whole cake by ourselves is just a recipe for health and fitness disaster. Luckily, we had Matt's dad visiting this past week, leading up to Valentine's Day, so I used the excuse of the 'holiday' and our guest to make the cake. (Matt's dad has a major sweet tooth, so I figured I could count on him to put a sizable dent in any dessert I might make.)

I'd seen a couple of recipes that looked good but required more than one round pan and slicing the cake with a large pastry knife into multiple layers. Um, a little more complicated than I wanted to get to satisfy my - I mean, Matt's dad's - sweet tooth this time. Maybe next time. The recipe I chose could be made in a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Easy.

Carrot Cake
Recipe

Matt and I both commented that the frosting seemed a bit more than was necessary . . . . Then again, neither of us exactly left any extra frosting on our plates after having a slice, . . . so you be the judge when you're frosting your own.

In addition to frosting, I toyed with the idea of garnishing the cake with thinly sliced pieces of heart-shaped carrot but ditched that notion after deciding that it sounded like even more work than slicing round pieces of cake into multiple layers. Grating a little bit of carrot on top as the recipe suggests turned out to be a pretty enough touch.

This recipe may be high in calories, but it also has many good-for-you ingredients - carrot, pineapple, coconut, Neufchâtel instead of cream cheese. If you're going to be bad and have dessert, this certainly isn't the worst you could do. And, remember, the beta-carotene in carrots is great for your eyesight . . .









. . . eyesight you'll be grateful for unless, of course, you find this is what you're looking at:













The sight of a nice piece of carrot cake may entice your sweet tooth, but there's just nothing like the vision of Carrot Top pubes to positively kill your appetite.

Got any favorite vegetarian or vegan recipes?? Please share!

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Meatless Monday: Spinach Mushroom Pasta

In a previous Meatless Monday post, I extolled the virtues of a great searchable recipe database. I mentioned a few ways you could use the search features, but I failed to mention one way that can be a real life-, er, meal-saver - you can search by ingredients you have in the kitchen and see what comes up.

The other day, I didn't have time to run out to the grocery store and the dinner hour was fast approaching. So, I took a peek in the fridge and saw that I had some spinach and mushrooms on-hand. I thought they might be good together in a pasta dish, but I wanted to venture out a bit and not fall back on my usual preparation methods (a little evoo and garlic). So, I went to the search engine and ran an 'enhanced recipe search.' I typed 'spinach' in the search window and then chose 'pasta' under 'main ingredients,' 'main dishes' under 'courses,' 'quick/easy' under 'conveniences' (figuring quick/easy would also mean less ingredients), and 'meatless' under 'dietary considerations.' After pulling up the results for that search, I typed 'mushroom' in the 'search within these results' window and VOILA! This recipe and 5 others came up. I scanned them quickly to check ingredients and preparation requirements and this one looked perfect . . .

Spinach Mushroom Pasta
Recipe

One substitution that I made, that I would recommend, was swapping out the cream cheese for Neufchâtel. Used for centuries in Europe, the American version can be found pretty easily in most U.S. grocery stores nowadays. It's substantially lower in fat and, because it's softer in consistency, it's also easier to work into a sauce.

Another good substitution recommendation would be to swap out the spinach for kale. If you do though, keep in mind that you'll want to add the kale to the sauté pan with the mushrooms earlier than you would spinach because it takes longer to wilt.

As with most recipes, this one instructs you to "season to taste with salt and pepper." I would advise not being shy in seasoning - a fair amount of salt will really bring out the flavors of the vegetables, and a generous sprinkling of fresh cracked pepper will balance the creaminess of the sauce with a nice little kick.

Got any favorite vegetarian or vegan recipes?? Please share!

Other Meatless Monday posts