Quick Gnocchi with Pumpkin Sage Sauce

So my mother loves a good deal. As long as I can remember she's been finding the best way to get the most for her money (and best quality too) for her 6 girls. She recently came across a wild deal on canned pumpkin and kindly shared. Needless to say, since then we've all been eating A LOT of pumpkin. I'm normally all for the fresh stuff (like our pro gardening sister talks about here), but, when you've got it, use it.

So...how to use all of this pumpkin. Seeing flat after flat of canned pumpkin reminded me that a few years ago, my non-cooking husband made me a knock-out dinner for my birthday. He really went all out. Pumpkin coconut ravioli (all hand made) with brown butter and sage. It took him about 7 hours. (No, I'm not kidding.) I really loved that meal, and with all of the pumpkin around, I thought I'd try a deconstructed, super simple version of that to share with my family for Valentine's Day. It was a hit.

Smashed Potatoes and Leeks

I made up this recipe a few months ago when I was scraping around for something to eat and didn't have much to go on. You know what I'm talking about - you dig around in your kitchen only to find a few sad ingredients straight from the Island of Misfit Toys and no hope that they would possibly make a meal - and a decent one at that. 

In this case, I emerged from the depths of my refrigerator with a couple of potatoes, a quickly-withering leek purchased for a recipe I never actually made (I can't tell you how often that happens), and some cabbage. Let's be honest - at first blush that doesn't exactly sound too appealing. On a whim I cooked up the potatoes, sauteed the leeks and cabbage, combined them, and seasoned the whole mess. Delicious! I'm sure I'm not the first person in the entire world to make something like this, but it was new to me and I felt a little like a potato genius. 

Baked Chimichangas- Two Ways

At Everyday Veggies we are big fans of adapting favorite dishes into healthier versions. These chimichangas are made without the deep fryer and will rock your world. My old roommate and good friend Katie used to make baked chimichangas for us in college. I'm not sure if it was the starving student without a home cooked meal in weeks that created the love for these crunchy burritos, but I love these. In memory of those great college days here are not just one but two adapted versions that are a major hit at our house. I have a chicken version and veggie version that are equally as good (our favorite is a mix of both the chicken and the veggie together).

Breakfast Quesadillas

My husband and I love breakfast burritos. It's just our thing. Saturday or Sunday mornings are perfect for spending an extra 20 minutes making breakfasts burritos since my husband doesn't have to leave at 6 am. The rest of the week we don't have as much time to prepare breakfast. I don't know about you, but I get sick of "fast" breakfasts, really easily. I can only handle so many bowls of cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, and smoothies.

Last month my son started eating solids. Since we are going the baby-led solids route, it has forced me to eat a very well balanced diet since my child eats whatever I eat. I try to get a big chunk of protein in at breakfast and since we don't eat a lot of meat around our house, we naturally rely on a lot of Greek yogurt and eggs. The other morning I was really wanting a breakfast burrito but wasn't feeling like doing the whole hash brown, meat, cooking and assembly deal, and this recipe was born! It's a great go-to breakfast for something warm, hearty, filling, and quick! I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Potato and Quinoa Stew

This is the last entry for soup month! We hope you've enjoyed making and eating these soups as much as we've enjoyed creating them for you. We're finishing things off with one of my absolute favorite soups (for making and eating!): Quinoa and Potato Stew.

A few years ago I checked out Love Soup by Anna Thomas from the library. I love soup and I'm vegetarian, so I was intrigued by this cookbook: 160 vegetarian soup recipes (hooray) plus it boasted a James Beard Foundation award winner sticker (extra bonus). Boy was I ever happy I took that book home. I cooked my way through it for weeks. Friends and family members started complaining of "soup fatigue", but I was undaunted. The recipes were outstanding! I kept that library book an embarrassingly long time. I exhausted all of my renewals and returned it to the library, only to check it out and exhaust all of my renewals again. I think I repeated this process 3 or 4 times. A family member caught wind of this ridiculousness and finally bought the book for me, likely out of pity and a bit of disbelief.

In my defense, this recipes in this book really are outstanding. There are several recipes for different types of broth and they are really delicious. I particularly liked the dark vegetable broth (it makes an amazing, if time consuming, French onion soup!). The recipes are grouped by season, which I really like, and all of the recipes I made (which was an awful lot!) were really terrific with loads and loads of flavor. My only bad experience was with the persimmon soup, but I probably should have seen that one coming. :)

One of my absolute favorites is the Quinoa Stew with Potatoes, Spinach, and Chard recipe. The quinoa and potatoes make for a really hearty, stew-like consistency and the flavors are really lovely. I've made this so many times that I've lost count, and it is always a crowd pleaser. Even people who normally give quinoa and hearty greens the side eye end up loving this soup. Over the years I've played around with it a bit. My version barely alters the original, mostly just reducing it to make a more manageable amount of soup (the original recipe makes A LOT of soup!) and adding zucchini to up the veggie count. I hope you love it as much as I do!