A Dinner Quickie

Sadly, you can't have dessert for every meal. Moms have to feed our families something for dinner. I have recently been experimenting with vegan dinner options. (I've always been a borderline vegetarian. More on that another time.) My hope is to provide ideas for delicious, approachable, healthful, predominantly vegetarian/vegan family meals. Some will be quick and easy to prepare - things that can be made after working all day and then stopping at the store on your way home and after you've prepared, enjoyed, and cleaned up dinner you still have time for a round of princess bingo before putting the kids to bed. Others will allow more lingering preparation, for rainy non-workdays when you want to enjoy cooking with music and a 4pm glass of wine.

This is a quickie. It's not groundbreaking. It's not miraculous. But it's easy, nutritious, and good.

1 cup brown basmati rice, cooked in 2 1/2 cups water

A bunch of broccoli - maybe 2 cups, chopped

1 red pepper

2 carrots

ginger

2 large cloves of garlic, minced

1 box of Vegetarian Plus brand Ginger "Chicken" (I got it at Whole Foods)

olive oil

sesame oil

soy sauce

toasted sesame seeds

When the rice is about almost finished cooking, heat a small amount of olive oil and sesame oil (about 1 TBSP each) over medium/low heat. Add veggies. Add garlic. I keep my ginger in the freezer and grate it as needed. This way it doesn't go bad before I use it up and I don't even bother peeling it (thanks, Mom). Grate ginger (still frozen), eyeballing an amount about equal to the garlic, right into the pan. Add a little hot water (less than 1/4 cup) and a generous drizzle of soy sauce. It will spatter a bit. Cover. Shake it a little. Simmer for a few minutes until done.

Assuming the rice is finished, place it into a large bowl. Pour the cooked veggies on top. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Heat a little sesame oil in the pan. Add the "Chicken." When I was making this I realized the box said to defrost it first. I didn't. Nothing bad happened. I sprinkled sesame seeds on while it was cooking. Cook until it's browned on the outside and hot in the middle.

We weren't sure how our little meat subsitute was going to taste, so I served it on the side instead of over the veggies and rice. I also kept the seasoning on the veggies and rice pretty mild (sometimes I add ginger, garlic, sesame oil to rice when it's cooking, but this time I didn't), thinking that the meat substitute would possibly be overly seasoned. It all balanced out well and the VegPlus tasted like General Gao's Chicken. It was maybe a little bit chewy (possibly because I didn't defrost it first?) but then, so is General Gao's Chicken. And there were no gristly globs of animal fat. Win.