Continuing on from my last blog post, another tasty idea using zucchini sheets www.tiffanyhaugen.com – Zucchini Sheets

Brainstorming led me wanting to incorporate the sheets into a pie, lining a baking dish with them. Kind of imagining a vegetarian option of a cross between shephard’s pie and chicken pot pie.

Ingredients:

• 9oz tempeh
• 3/4 cup Maya Kaimal Coconut Curry sauce (I find this at Costco)
• 1 cup Abborio rice
• 1 onion
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1 carrot, I used purple cause it’s pretty
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 orange bell pepper
• 1 small zucchini
• 1 head broccoli
• 2 tsp garlic
• Salt/pepper to taste
• Zucchini sheets
• Plum fruit leather
• 1/2 c peanuts

* Bonus 😊 I was lucky enough to have fruit leather on hand. It was made from this recipe www.tiffanyhaugen.com – Fruit Leather

Directions:

• Slice tempeh into thin strips and place in dish with the coconut curry sauce and let it marinate for a few hours
• Preheat oven to 425°. Slice tempeh into stripes and bake for 15 minutes, then flip and bake for 15 more minutes
• Make rice according to directions on container, using the onion and vegi broth
• Cut up all the vegis and make a pretty design on baking sheet 😉

• 
• Drizzle vegis with olive oil and toss with salt, pepper and minced garlic. Bake at 425° for 25 minutes.
• When all the elements are finished cooking. Layer zucchini sheets in a 8 1/2 x 11 sprayed baking dish

• Fill with rice, tempeh and vegis. Top with plum fruit leather strips and bake for 10 minutes at 425°. Because I wasn’t sure how the fruit leather would turn out, I only covered half of the dish, just in case it was horrible. Good to leave your options open. 😊

• When done, top with chopped peanuts

Another winner! Can’t wait to see what is next🤔

One of the biggest perks and most fun aspect of this blog is sharing food and ideas with my fun, foodie friend. At only 1.5 miles away, it’s super easy to trade all of our creations back and forth!

So, you can imagine my excitement when she stopped by with her newest masterpiece, zucchini sheets. Or as she coined them, flavor layers, because you can go as wild as you want, flavoring them with herbs, spices; the possibilities are endless.

www.tiffanyhaugen.com – Zucchini Sheets

Brainstorming ideas of how to incorporate them into a casserole, led me to eggplant. I was thinking either Mexican, replacing the corn tortillas or Italian and replacing the lasagna sheets. When I saw the eggplant cutlets at Trader Joe’s, the heavens opened and sang.

Ingredients:

• 1 box Eggplant cutlets
• 6 zucchini sheets
• 1 onion
• 1 zucchini
• 1 orange bell pepper
• 8 oz mush
• 1 tsp garlic
• 1 Tbsp parsley
• 1/2 Tbsp oregeno
• 1 small bunch fresh basil
• Pepper to taste
• 1 2 lb jar marinara sauce

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425° and grease baking sheet. When ready, bake eggplant for 10 minutes. Flip, bake for 5 minutes more. Then broil for last 5 minutes.

Chop vegetables and saute over medium-high heat until soft. Add in garlic. Saute for 30 sec. Add in herbs. Mix. Add half of the jar of marinara sauce. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Once eggplant is done and the vegetable/sauce is done. You can start assembling the casserole.

In a sprayed 8 1/2 x 11 casserole dish, layer zucchini sheets. 2 fit perfect. Then eggplant. Top with the vegi sauce and repeat. Dump the rest of the marinara sauce over the casserole. I ended with zucchini sheets on top.

Bake in a 425° oven for 10 minutes.

Remove and let cool slightly.

I topped with grated Parmesean cheese, more basil, because yumm! and a few cherry tomatoes from our garden.

I was really pleased with how this tasted. I just wish you could see the layers better. But, that’s why my momma always said, you can’t judge a book by its’ cover. It may be ugly, but it’s yummy! 😋

Apparently I like to do things in threes, when I look back at my most recent posts; there’s definitely a theme.

I’ve been collecting these recipes and decided today was the day to make THEM ALL! 😊. Go big or go home!

Lemon tofu cheesecake. With extra meyer lemons from a current food adventure, that I will definitely be writing about soon, they’re still fermenting. And a freezer full of tufu, it seemed like a no brainer.

Following this recipe for the cheesecake.

www.vegetariantimes.com – Lemon Tofu Cheesecake

And an almond flour recipe for the crust, I almost went sans crust cause I didn’t want the graham cracker version, but I decided at the last minute to experiment with this one.

www.wholesomeyum.com – Almond Flour Crust

I used vanilla flavored ghee and added no sugar!

This ghee is the bomb. I’ve been ordering it from Thrive Market.

I was really happy with how the cheesecake turned out!

I’m still looking for ways to eat a million zucchinis…. Why not in brownies?

www.cleanfoodcrush.com – Zucchini Brownies

I liked that this incorporated different ingredients; oats, peanut butter, honey, unsweetened applesauce and of course zucchinis. They came out of the oven super moist and yummy!

And since it’s such a hot day here, ice cream was a necessity. Definitely not traditional ice cream, but very tasty and so pretty thanks to the beet powder.

This is another fun find that I’ve ordered from Thrive Market and today was its debut!

The hardest part was remembering to freeze the bananas prior. I sprinkled cacao nibs on top, the recipe also suggested rose petals, but I’m just not that fancy.

www.unconventionalbaker.com. – Beet & Banana Ice Cream

Here are all three deserts looking so pretty and complimenting each other well. I did add a blackberry compote on the lemon cheesecake because it was in my fridge from my kids experimenting at grandma’s house. Now, if I just hadn’t had so many tastes before dinner 😉

Planning my first overnight backpacking trip was super exciting, with one of the main reasons being the food. Of course! I loved the challenge of brainstorming food ideas with my friend. Lightweight, portable, non-perishable and with an emphasis on carbs. When she mentioned croutons, I ran with it!

I visited a local bakery, 100 Mile Bakery, which I love because of their philosophy of using ingredients sourced within 100 miles.

http://www.100milebakery.com

I bought a day-old loaf of wheat bread for only $2.50 and went home to begin the transformation!

Since I’m still somewhat recipe dependent (hey, it’s something I’m working on 😉) I started looking for recipes; we wanted fun flavors! When I stumbled across this website, it spoke to me.

www.theyummylife.com – Three-Way Croutons

As an added bonus, I already had everything in my kitchen. No last minute runs to the grocery store!

I divided the loaf into thirds and made the garlic-parmesean, pesto and fiesta flavors. I don’t like store bought taco seasoning so I also followed the recipe for the fiesta seasoning.

The naked bread just waiting to be dressed up!

 

And just like that; three fun, flavorful options. With minimal effort and barely any expense!

It was a super enjoyable treat!

I was pretty proud of this little crouton buffet and when our dinner was freeze dried cheesy enchiladas, the fiesta croutons were the perfect addition!

Happy Backpacking 🗻😊