Pasta with White Beans and Kale

The holidays are an indulgent time, and when we made it back, weary from our travels, we wanted something for dinner that:

1. Had a lot of dense, green vegetable content, and
2. was only going to take, like, two minutes to make, because we were pretty tired.

Well, let's get some kale. And let's make some fettuccine with white beans and kale.

This is easy stuff: cook you up some long noodles, and, while the noodles cook, wilt up a whole mess of chopped kale.

Throw a pinch of chili flakes and a couple cloves of chopped garlic into some oil in a big pan, like a wok. I just used a wok.

After the garlic is just fragrant, heap up a mound of kale and stir a little, just so the garlic doesn't burn. Keep adding kale as your pile wilts down. When it's all dark and dense and cooked, tip in a can of cannellini beans and a splash of olive oil and toss with your pasta.

Serve it with some hard Italian cheese or a sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

Vegetarian Sloppy Joes

So we just got back from a week out of town -- four days of which were spent on the Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania turnpikes -- an environment not conducive to vegetarianism per se.

Anyway, now we are home, and perhaps we can indulge ourselves in a little junk food after thousands of miles of highway billboards for tacos and hamburgers.

Not too junk-y, though, I still have to get some whole grains and vegetables into our bodies somehow. To that end: vegan sloppy joes.

So they're not really sloppy joes, they're really just glorified beans on toast, but they were really good and I will totally make them again.



It's almost too simple to be a recipe, but here you go:

• half an onion, diced
• 2 carrots, grated or diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 8 oz button mushrooms, diced
• 1 Tbsp molasses
• 1 Tbsp nutritional yeast
• 2 oz tomato paste
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 4-6 oz water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 can Heinz vegetarian beans

Sweat the veggies in a little olive oil, then add everything else. You win!



I got six sangwiches out of this. It might not even have needed the beans, but I like beans, sooo...

Scoop some up on a roll, such as these whole wheat kaiser rolls, with whatevs on the side: some french fries, perhaps, if you are not recovering from a nutritionally dubious American road trip.



We had a little green salad with some tahini-mustard vinaigrette. It was excellent.

Kidney Bean and Potato Curry

Sometimes it seems like every dang kind of vegetarian food is just another delicious brown goop. Yummy and nutritious, but hardly photogenic.

I had this can of kidney beans, in the cabinet, for, like, a while, and every time I would open up the cabinet to get some stuff out the beans would be all like Matt, why did you buy us if you were just going to put us in the dark.

These conversations rarely happen at meal-planning time, but I wanted some curry potatoes, and I wanted some beans to go on them, and I thought, yes, kidney beans. High five. It is your time to shine.



I diced up a small onion, crushed 5-6 cloves of garlic, grated a couple inches of ginger, and measured out a heaping tablespoon of garam masala, a scant-ish two teaspoons of turmeric, a hefty spoonful of cumin seeds, a poetic spoonful of mustard seeds, and lots of black pepper. I diced four yukon golds and opened and drained the kidney beans.



Get a couple of tablespoons of canola oil in a medium-hot pan, and it's curry time.



In go the whole spices for six seconds. In go the powdered spices for ten seconds. In goes the garlic and ginger and the onion and a tyrrany of salt.

When the onions are soft, in go the potatoes and then start a little rice. You have to sort of chaperone the potatoes so they don't stick, but you can leave this about 70% unguarded on a low-ish flame while you conduct other business.

When the potatoes are soft, stir in a cup (maybe a cup and a half) of liquid and add your beans. Bring it up to a bubble, and then turn it down. You're done!

Serve with rice and hot sauce.