Breakfast Rice Bowl

Get creative when it comes to breakfast. J and I have taken to preparing shakes every morning before work because they're portable and packed full of fruits and veggies. But on the weekends, I really enjoy sitting down with a good book, a cup of coffee, and a nice breakfast that I can eat with a utensil! 

Enter Breakfast Rice Bowl. You can really make this however you want - different veggies, different dressings, add fruit, etc. But here follows my version this Sunday morning:

Breakfast Rice Bowl

1/2 to 3/4 cup of brown rice luke warm or cold (I used leftovers and microwaved them for 30 seconds)

5 cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 cup shredded purple cabbage

1/4 cup julienned raw beet

2 Tbsp tahini 

1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar 

1 tsp lime juice

1-2 Tbsp nutritional yeast 

Serves 1

Mix it all together in a bowl and enjoy! If I had a navel orange or clementine on hand I likely would have added some sliced, in addition to a splash of orange juice mixed in with the rice. You could also add blueberries or strawberries. If you wanted something sweeter but don't have fruit, you could add some agave, honey, or maple syrup as well. 

Multi-Grain Pineapple Stir Fry

Multi-Grain Pineapple Stir Fry

1 1/2 cups medium grain brown rice
1/3 cup quinoa
3/4 cup millet
1 veg. bouillon cube
5 or so cups of water

1-2 Tbsp olive oil
4-5 small crimini mushrooms, sliced
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
1 cup broccoli, chopped
1/3 cup pablano, chopped (optional - we like it spicy!)
1 cup fresh pineapple, in one-inch cubes (you'll be sorry if you used canned - it's just not the same!)
8 oz of tofu, drained, pressed, and cubed
1 1/2 Tbsp Braggs Liquid Aminos or Tamari
1-2 Tbsp Thai Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce (optional - any kind will work, just make sure it's vegan. You can find this in the Asian foods aisle at your food store or at a local Asian market.)


Prepare the grains by rinsing and then placing them in a rice cooker. Crumble the bouillon cube on top and pour in water. Start your rice cooker and let it work its magic. I will usually lift the lid every once in a while to stir just to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom. If you don't have a rice cooker, you can make this on the stove, too.

Next, dry fry the tofu in a cast iron or non-stick skillet. Heat the skillet up to med-med high heat. Once it's reached temperature, add the cubes of tofu. Let them sit! Don't play with them other than pressing down or you will end up breaking them. Once the tofu is easy to flip (it comes right off the pan and doesn't stick - if it still sticks it's not ready!), flip it on the other side and follow the same steps. You can dry fry all four sides if you wish - sometimes I'm lazy and just do two. When you're finished, remove from the pan and set aside.

Using the same hot pan, cook the carrots in some olive oil or canola oil, whichever you prefer. Add bell pepper, broccoli, and pablano and a splash of Braggs Liquid Aminos. Add mushrooms after a few minutes. Finally add pineapple and cook until everything is a little browned or charred. Add sweet chili sauce and stir to fully incorporate. Remove from heat.

Your grains should be finished by now - add grains to the bottom of a bowl, top with veggies and a few tofu squares.

Serves 4

Sushi Night

Although it's time consuming, J and I love making sushi together. It's a great meal to make with someone and there are so many combinations to try - it never gets old! We got hit with yet another snow storm today and decided not to risk driving to restock our fridge, so it was a let's-see-what-the-heck-is-in-the-fridge-and-wing-it kind of night. Wing it nights might be some of my favorite. Somehow we always end up with awesome results!

First, I started by making the rice (while J was kindly shoveling) because it needs to cool before you can handle it. I used Alton Brown's sushi rice recipe and it turned out nice and sticky. While the rice cooked, I chopped up a bunch of different veggies. It's fun to cut up all the options hanging out in your fridge and use whatever you end up using without worrying about not using it all. If you don't use it all, you can throw it into a salad for tomorrow's lunch, or save it in a container for a stir-fry later in the week. In other words, don't sweat it!

So tonight I sliced yellow bell pepper very thinly, some dinosaur kale, sautéed some thinly sliced mushrooms in a little oil and Braggs, julienned a few carrots, diced up a 1/4 cup of cilantro, thinly sliced a 1/4 of a cucumber, and 1/2 of an avocado. I also sliced some tofu in long, thin rows after it had been pressed.

Then J took over and started the assembly process! To accompany the sushi, we made a delicious tahini miso ginger sauce from This Rawsome Vegan Life which J used inside one of the rolls and we also served as a dipping sauce on the side.

While J assembled the sushi rolls, I made a Seaweed Salad similar to the recipe we posted about a year ago. This time, I added some of the sautéed mushrooms and didn't marinate the tofu, but just tossed it in. 


I used some of the leftover sticky rice to make two rice balls which had avocado in the middle. To make rice balls, you'll want to wet your hands with cold water to prevent the rice from sticking so much. Pick up a handful, create a little crater in the middle, and mash the avocado into the crater. Then cover it by patting and rolling the rice into a ball. Sprinkle some sesame seeds and kelp granules in a dish and roll the rice ball around to coat.

We made the table up all fancy and served dinner with sake shipped to us by my best friend straight from Japan.

All fancy sake comes in a juice box with a straw :-)

Rice & Wheat Balls

Our fridge was empty last night - we're talking baron. We haven't gone food shopping all week because I wanted to clear out a lot of foods before starting to try out the anti-inflammatory diet on Monday. So last night felt sort of like that show Chopped where they put random things in front of you and tell you to create a meal.

Surprisingly, I was able to pull something together that was really tasty and, with the addition of more veggies next time, I think it's a keeper. We had a few of Nate's Savory Mushroom Meatless Meatballs floating around our freezer, about a cup of broccoli florets and stems, an onion, garlic clove, and the butt of some ginger. Oh, and rice. We always keep a stock of grains on our shelf, all lined up in Ball jars. There's rice, lentils (green and multi-colored), quinoa, polenta, arborio rice, couscous, amaranth, millet, buckwheat, and steel cut oats. It's nice to always have a stock of various grains and legumes - I recommend everyone stock their kitchens this way. It makes nights when the kitchen's bare go a little easier!


Rice & Wheat Balls

2 cups uncooked brown rice
5 cups homemade vegetable stock, or water
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 inch of ginger, grated
1 cup chopped broccoli
5-6 Nate's Savory Mushroom Meatless Meatballs (or whatever brand you choose)
1/2 cup fresh basil
olive oil

Sauce:
1/4 cup Hoisin Sauce
2 Tbsp roasted red chili paste
2 Tbsp toasted sesame oil

Cook your rice in a rice cooker with the vegetable stock (you can also use water, but the veggie stock really imparts a great flavor and I recommend you try it at least once).

Defrost the Meatless Meatballs in the microwave.

While rice is cooking, put a little olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and cook the onions. Once onions are translucent, add garlic and ginger. Then Meatless Meatballs and cook until nice and browned. Add the broccoli and basil and cook. I like it when things get a little charred - but cook it to your preference. Then remove from heat and set aside.

Mix together the sauce ingredients - those aren't exact measurements as I don't normally measure things out when I'm making sauces so just taste and make sure you like it.

To serve:
Put some rice in the bottom of a bowl (you'll have more rice than you need - yay! left overs for another dish) and top with veggies. There were enough for 2 servings, but if you added more veggies you'd get 4 probably. Serve with sauce on the side. I'd like to try adding some mango in the future - I think it would go with the flavors really well and add some natural sweetness.