Happy Monday, friends! Last week was one of my favorites in terms of recipes that I’ve made. From salmon and my favorite sweet potatoes to a creamy vegan pasta, I loved all of my meals and so did Bill! Although I am only sharing two recipes this week, I did cook more than that. One night we were feeling a little bit tired and lazy so we had pizza (I had the Trader Joe’s cauliflower pizza and it was really good) and one night we had a repeat of the vegan pesto pasta I shared in last week’s post – see that recipe here! One thing I’ve learned since I’ve been trying to eat dairy-free, healthier, etc. is that the recipes don’t need to be difficult to be delicious. In fact, I try to steer away from recipes that have tons of ingredients and steps. I’ve been focusing on quick and easy recipes with simple ingredients because personally I feel like I am 10x more likely to enjoy/make a recipe again if I know it only takes about 20-30 minutes to pull together! With that thought it mind, the two recipes below are definitely simple with minimal ingredients and the pasta recipe is my favorite dairy-free meal I’ve made to date! See below for the recipes…
No. 1 – Fit Foodie Finds’ Creamy Vegan Pasta with Sautéed Kale and Tomatoes
This recipe is everything. I made a few tweaks which I will outline below, but it really is a TEN. For being dairy-free, it’s very satisfying and I didn’t even miss cheese or a creamy sauce. What were my changes? First off, I used lentil pasta instead of regular pasta. I buy a bag of the red lentil pasta from Trader Joe’s every time I’m there so I always have it on hand. It’s packed with protein and for this recipe I used the whole bag and it worked out perfectly. For the sauce it says to soak the cashews for 24 hours but I only soaked mine two and it worked out fine. I feel like I could have even soaked them for one hour and the sauce would have come out the exact same. I think it just depends how much time you have! My last change was adding four cloves of garlic to the pan while I sautéed the kale and tomatoes. I threw them in whole and then removed them before adding the pasta and sauce. I’m a huge garlic fan so this is a pretty standard move for me. Something else that’s awesome about this recipe is how well it heats up a day later. We had lots of leftovers so I packed them for lunch the next day and it tasted just as good heated up!
PS – I’ve never had more people reach out to me about a recipe. I posted it to my Instagram story and received so many replies and questions. Some friends of mine have even made this recipe since then and loved it too!
No. 2 — Baked Salmon with Epicurious’ Thyme-Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Once a week we eat salmon for dinner. We probably could up that a little bit, but for now once a week works for us. Bill has taken on the role of salmon cooker in our relationship and I don’t hate it. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t follow recipe, but I know that he marinates it in lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and basil for a little bit and then bakes it for around 35-40 minutes. It comes out delicious every time. When Bill cooks salmon I typically figure out the sides. This week I had a bunch of sweet potatoes at the apartment so I decided to make my favorite sweet potato recipe of all-time! I found this recipe online about two month and have made it a bunch of times since. It’s super simple and they are seriously addicting. There’s a whole sweet, salty, spicy thing going on here and it does not disappoint. They are a great side for pretty much any meal and I think they would also be great in a power grain bowl or something like that. Similar to the other recipe in this post, these heat up really nicely the next day and you’ll want to make them at least once a week!
Do you have any healthy recipe recommendations? I would love to hear from you!
Outfit details here!
Photo by Courtney Ann Photography