Beyond Rice and Tofu

It’s slow-cooker week, and it’s being hosted by Angela over at Angela’s Kitchen. I don’t know about you, but I have two slow-cookers, one basic and smaller and one big fancy one with the auto-off/warm features. Two cookers are plenty for me (but not for Stephanie, I’m sure!). And in fact, last weekend I plugged in both and had most of our meals for the week cooked by Sunday evening. It took a lot of pressure off of me and allowed me to do other things in the evenings instead of spending a bunch of time cooking. I was able to just heat dinner up! I love those nights.

Now, as a vegetarian and gluten free household, you’re probably thinking, what the heck does she do with a crockpot since she can’t throw in a slab of meat? Well, there are a lot of good things to make. Of course, soups and stews are the most logical, which I do make a lot of. Of course you can also cook up dried beans, as well as make hot beverages, desserts or breakfast in them. Some people even make homemade yogurt!

As is my habit lately, I plugged in the crockpot on Sunday and made a future meal, the Lentil Soup below, so that I could use up some of the kale I still have coming on – despite the frost. Later this week, I will also make another crockpot meal to finish off the last of the homemade pesto and tomatoes. So that makes for two “no-cook” evenings, and with the leftover enchilada bake from this weekend, also below, there is another one or two “no-cook” evenings. Yay!

But that is good since I will be cooking up a storm later in the week in preparation for our gluten free gals get-together this weekend where we are focusing on holiday favorites. And since, as usual, I can’t decide on what I want to make, I will make as many items as time allows and we’ll have leftovers to send everyone home with!

So here’s the plan:

Lentil Soup with Kale and Oven Baked Spicy Sweet Potato Fries – the soup is made in the crockpot and is a recipe from our favorite vegetarian slow-cooker cookbooks, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. I made the soup on Sunday so that we will have dinner ready-made on our two busy evenings, and although I will need to roast the fries, they are super easy and not time-intensive.

Pesto Infused White Bean and Tomato Stew over Pasta – the stew will be made in the crockpot and is also from the cookbook above.

Quinoa with Oven Roasted Winter Squash and Kale – an experiment, I will be sure to post if it turns out!

New Mexican Green Chile and Pinto Enchiladas – we will be eating these throughout the week as I made them over the weekend too. This time I made them stacked, a sort of lasagna-esque casserole with the corn tortillas forming the layers instead of rolling them into ‘real’ enchiladas – less time! The recipe made one large 9×13″ and one small ~6×8″ pan and so I think I will toss the smaller pan in the freezer for later.

So what is your favorite vegetarian slow-cooker meal?