Hummus tacos with some sides

I didn't cook anything notable for a couple days.  Trying to transition to a more plant-based diet is difficult with children.  They have extremely limited palettes to begin with, and I want them to keep eating the healthy foods they already eat.  They also need protein and they do not like meat-alternative sources of protein enough for me to stop making meat and dairy for them.  So lately I have been a bit of a short order cook, which is fine.

Tonight I tried homemade hummus for the first time.  These are my ingredients:

A lime (because I didn't have a lemon), tahini, garlic, a can of chick peas, and turmeric (because I didn't have cumin and I don't know turmeric seemed hummusy?)

Almost forgot these guys!  Olive oil and salt

I put it all in the food processor and went to town!  I read something about skinning the chick peas.  Come on!  I used a lime instead of a lemon, you think I skinned the chick peas?

I cut up some veggies I had around - a cucumber, a roma tomato, red pepper, yellow pepper...

I rosted some sweet potato fries and broccoli

I put it in a warm tortilla.  This was the end result!  I also put some black olives on the plate.  My taco dressing?  Hidden valley ranch MoFo!

Hummus:

3 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup tahini

1 can chick peas

the juice of a lime

some salt

some turmeric

Blend it up and eat!

Veggies roasted as per Bittman.  When in doubt, BITTMAN.

Vegetarian Sweet Potato Hash with Polenta

This is a vegetarian sweet potato hash on top of polenta.  It could easily be made vegan by not adding the eggs and putting some sort of vegan fat into the polenta in place of butter.  It could also be made meaty by adding sausage or bacon or ham or turkey, or the meat of basically any animal.

First, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees.  Then, I used an oven safe pan and put some olive oil in it - like a tablespoon maybe.  I used my Le Creuset pan, but you could also use an iron skillet.  Then I cooked 1/2 of a chopped up onion and 2 peeled and chopped up large sweet potatoes.  I cooked them for about 20-30 minutes, until the sweet potatoes softened and browned a little.

Browning sweet potatoes and onions.

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While they were cooking, I made the polenta.  I used Bob's Red Mill polenta this time and followed the directions on the bag.  The bag said to cook the polenta for 30 minutes, but mine only needed about 15 minutes to thicken.

This was the first time I used actual polenta.  I usually make it myself this way:

Stir together 1 1/4 cups of yellow cornmeal, 1 tsp of salt, 1/4 cup of flour, and 1 cup of cold water.  Boil 3 cups of water.  Stir in the cornmeal mixture and whisk until it boils.  Cover and simmer on low heat for 5 minutes.

I have no idea where I got this recipe.  It has been saved on my phone notes under "polenta" since October 15, 2009.

I didn't notice much of a difference between the polentas.  My only advice is to not get the polenta in a tube.  That stuff is nasty.

Back to the hash.  So then I added a can of black beans.  I rinsed them off first.

 

Once the hash was warm throughout, I made 2 egg wells and cracked 2 eggs into the wells.  Then, I cooked the whole thing, uncovered, until the eggs set.  This took maybe 20 minutes.

This was the end result:

Apparently bigfoot took this picture and cast his shadow over my delicious meal.  It turned out good!  I put some pepper, salt, and sriracha on it also.

Veggie Sweet Potato Hash with Polenta

Ingredients:
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 an onion, chopped
1 can black beans
2 eggs
olive oil
Polenta

Procedure:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Cook the sweet potato and onion in the olive oil for about 20-30 minutes, until the potato is soft and browning.  Add black beans and stir.  Make 2 egg wells and crack eggs into the wells.  Bake until eggs set - maybe 20 minutes.

Make polenta.

Put polenta in a bowl.  Put hash on top.