Today's vegetable quick 'n' easy supper recipe: A quick skillet from pantry ingredients, just five ingredients, not counting the water, salt and pepper, that is. Surprisingly tasty for something so simple. Just 4 PointsPlus for Weight Watchers. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". It’s a great defense to the onslaught of Easter and Passover sweets that will be tempting us over the next few weeks. Gird thyself! ~recipe & photo updated 2006 & 2014, & reposted 2014~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ 2005 ORIGINAL POST Yum! A definite keeper! The start is pretty typical, just sautéed onion and bell pepper. The tomato and spinach are added later, then comes the secret ingredient, peanut butter! It adds flavor, texture and protein – though skip the boring details and tell the kids only that it tastes good. Will kids love this? Maybe? New lesson: Sauté vegetables in water or chicken broth, not fat, especially if there's fat (in this case, the rich pea

Tonight was a disappointment. The taste was okay but the color unappealing, thanks to the soy sauce. Still, it'd do in a pinch, since it's Fast and Easy. Another time, I'd use fresh broccoli, hoping it wouldn't absorb the soy color. But we're learning. New Veggie Venture lessons include: In general, to serve four people, start with a pound of the main vegetable. In general, a pound of vegetables cookied with 1 tablespoon butter or olive oil will result in each serving with 1 point in the Weight Watchers world, whose regimen, by the way, I recommend for both weight loss and every-day healthful eating. BROCCOLI WITH GINGER & GARLIC Active time: 5 minutes Time to table: 12 minutes Serves: 4 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon fresh ginger (see ALANNA's TIPS) 1 tablespoon minced garlic (from a jar!) 1 pound frozen broccoli heads, thawed slightly if time permits (see TIPS) 1/4 cup water 3 tablespoons soy sauce 2 tablespoons rice vinegar Salt & peppe

Today's vegetable recipe: Diced rutabaga (also called 'swedes') boiled, then finished in a glaze of butter, brown sugar, soy sauce and lemon juice. Weight Watchers 1 point. ~ recipe updated & photo added in 2008 ~ 2005: Have you had rutabagas before? You'll find them in the produce section along with other root vegetables. They're often cooked like that too, roasted alongside parsnips, potatoes, carrots. This recipe comes from my mother's (and my!) long-time friend, a fellow Home Ec grad and terrific cook. She says she 'loves' these though her family only 'tolerates' them. Me, I'm somewhere in between -- including reminding myself how important it is to taste a new food more than once. But the real magic here may be the cooking technique, so I'm going to suggest it as another "For Instance" recipe, a basic technique that can be applied to other vegetables. Tonight, for instance ;0), rutabagas, another time carrots or broccol

~ recipe updated & photo added in 2008 ~ 2005: (F)ED, that is Easy and Delicious but no, not even close to Fast. Thus Baked Beets are a definite keeper but best saved for (1) eating some night when supper is 60 - 90 minutes away or (2) making ahead some time when the oven's already on anyway. 2008: Beets have turned out to be one of the great convenience vegetables. Once they're baked or roasted or cooked some way, they make for great quick salads. So I often throw a few into the oven whenever the oven's on for something else. For more ways to cook beets, check out (what's turned out to be, as A Veggie Venture continued past its first intended month) a huge collection of beet recipes . BAKED BEETS Active time: 5 minutes Time to table: 60 - 90 minutes Serves 4 1 pound fresh beets, stems on 1 tablespoon butter, optional Salt & pepper Wash beets well, cut off all but about 1/2 inch of stems. (See ALANNA's TIPS.) If desired, peel. (See TIPS.) Wrap in foil and

Acorn squash stuffed with protein-rich nutty-tasting quinoa, slightly sweet with dried cherries or cranberries, maple syrup and fall spices. A great choice for Meatless Monday during the fall. Fresh & Seasonal, an Autumn Classic. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free. The Recipe Has Moved Please see Acorn Squash with Quinoa & Cherries , merging great fall flavors plus a funny story about quinoa. A New Lesson About Vegetables On Day 23 of A Veggie Venture's first year of trying a new vegetable recipe every day, I recorded a lesson. Try new foods more than once, even if you don't like them so much the first time. Here's why: Acorn squash is one of my favorite foods, reliably delicious. But tonight, it turned out bland and watery. Was it a problem with the recipe? No. Then why? I don't know though it's possible that it was old, given that squash is harvested in fall not spring. But if I'd never h

~ recipe updated & photo added in 2006 ~ A real FED (Fast, Easy, Delicious) -- my favorite this month so far! I bet you've never had beets like this. I bet, once you do, you'll cook 'em this way again and again. The recipe caught my eye because I well remember röesti, a traditional Swiss dish of wide, flat, crisp discs of grated potato often served with an egg: mountain-top ambrosia. It comes from 'The Minimalist' Mark Bittman's 1998 How To Cook Everything, a terrific reference cookbook, very contemporary where the traditional ones (Betty Crocker, etc.) now seem dated. I turn to it often in learning mode and find 'just enough' detail. And it has nearly 90 pages of ideas for vegetables alone! BEET RÖESTI Active time: maybe 10 minutes Time to table: maybe 15 minutes Serves 4 1 tablespoon butter 1 large beet (about 1/2 pound), peeled and grated (see ALANNA's TIPS) 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped (see TIPS) 2 tablespoons flour M

Yippeeeeeeeeeeee! From now on, when I think about vegetables, I want to be FED: Fast, Easy, Delicious. It was a clean-out-the-freezer night and somehow I happened onto a great dish -- and, maybe, a new concept. First, the dish: a simple sauté with bacon fat, some frozen vegetables and at the end, a splash of vinegar. Second, the "for instance" concept: Perhaps the trick for cooking vegetables night-in-night-out is to have a few techniques, each one that works with several vegetables. For instance ... tonight I cooked a mixture of beans, carrots and peppers but it might as easily have been fresh broccoli or cauliflower. I'll continue to test this concept and report in! FOR INSTANCE I (bacon fat saute with herbs & vinegar) Tonight, For Instance, MIXED BEAN, CARROTS & GRILLED PEPPER MEDLEY Active time: maybe 5 minutes Time to table: maybe 10 minutes Serves 4 1 tablespoon bacon fat (see ALANNA's TIPS) 16 ounces frozen vegetables (see FOR INSTANCE)