Easy Vegetarian Recipes

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Dandelion Greens and other tasty “Weeds”

My Mother was reminiscing the other day about how she used to love salads made from dandelion greens. She had no idea that people still eat them, much less how trendy they have become!

There are lots of wonderful uses for the under-used greens of dandelion. Try a salad of dandelion leaves with flat anchovies (drained, rinsed, dried and chopped) and capers with ricotta or cottage cheese and ciabatta bread, yum

Here is a recent article from the Wall Street Journal:

MAY 27, 2009 It’s Salad Days for Weeds By ANNE MARIE CHAKER

On a recent Saturday, Washington, D.C., interior designer Morrigan Green stopped at a produce stand and picked up some dandelion greens. $9 a pound? No problem. Says Mr. Green: “These are as good a yuppie green as you can get.”

Gardeners have long waged war against weeds but one organic weed expert cultivates them as a new form of delicacy. Anne-Marie Chaker reports.

As suburban homeowners commence their annual battle against weeds, more people are paying top dollar to eat them. The dandelion — perhaps the most common weed of them all — is seeing a huge surge in sales at grocery stores. Other long-scorned greens making the leap to the dinner table include purslane, lamb’s quarters and stinging nettles, a skin-irritating plant that can be eaten safely after boiling.

U.S. supermarkets sold $2 million of dandelion greens in the year that ended in March, a 9% increase over the year earlier, according to FreshLook Marketing, a Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based company that tracks grocery stores’ sales of produce. While sales are still small, they’re growing more than twice as fast as sales of vegetables overall. Grocery chain Wegmans Food Markets Inc. has seen a 25% increase in sales of dandelion greens for the year to date from the year-earlier period. Southern grocery chain Earth Fare Inc., based in Asheville, N.C., says it has seen a 40% increase in sales of dandelion greens for the year to date.

Greens “are trendy items,” says Beth Eccles, owner of Green Acres Farm, in North Judson, Ind., which began harvesting and selling the wild purslane and lamb’s quarters on its property about five years ago. Sales of the edible weeds, which sell for $3 per six-ounce bunch, have been rising by 20% each year.

Led by chefs and gourmets in search of new and interesting flavors, Americans have been eating a greater variety of greens in recent years. Tastes have moved from familiar greens like arugula to progressively wilder, more obscure plants. The interest in weed cuisine also taps into the current movement toward organic and local foods; as lawn owners have long complained, weeds are hardy and require no pesticides and little water to thrive. When picked in the wild, weeds also offer frugal consumers the thrill of foraging.

Cinda Sebastian waters seedlings on her Westminster, Md., farm. She sells produce, including dandelion greens, at Washington, D.C., farmers’ markets.

Bill Coleman, who runs Coleman Family Farms in Carpinteria, Calif., believes that in the recession, people are tightening their belts and savoring simple, old-fashioned cooking, rather than gourmet restaurant meals. “People are getting back to their grandparents’ food,” he says. This is an “especially good year” for edible weeds, whose sales have gone up by about 25% compared with last year, he says, and he has been raising more weeds such as dandelion, purslane and amaranth.

Until the mid-20th century, greens such as wild onions, pokeweed and sorrel were eaten in many parts of the U.S. “The wild plants and the weeds were more commonly eaten until World War II, when they were seen more in disdain and processed foods began to move up,” says James A. Duke, a former Agriculture Department researcher who has written a book on edible weeds.

Found Food: Wild Watercress Found Food: Ramps Found Food: Fiddlehead Ferns As immigrants and rural Americans moved to cities and left behind both their gardens and their ethnic origins, they turned to grocery stores for food, says Usha Palaniswamy, a professor at Excelsior College, a distance-learning program based in Albany, N.Y. Immigrants began eating more of what was considered upscale — for instance, iceberg lettuce instead of dark, leafy greens. “Eating a certain kind of food [was] considered affluent,” says Ms. Palaniswamy, who has for years studied why plants eaten in many parts of the world are considered weeds in the U.S. One weed commonly eaten abroad is purslane, which is used in French and Middle Eastern cuisines.

Nowadays, of course, it is well-to-do consumers who are leading the way back to weed-eating. Health-food fans in particular have taken notice as dark, leafy greens have gained a reputation as superfoods. Weeds carry a complex “matrix” of plant compounds that are beneficial when consumed, says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a Chicago-based dietician and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. These plants “learned how to protect themselves from the sun, the wind, the bugs,” and those who eat them “are reaping the benefits of that matrix of immune systems,” she says. “One man’s weed is another man’s wonder food.”

All this is good news for farmers, who are able to charge more for the former weeds. Farmer Cinda Sebastian, who sells dandelion to customers such as Mr. Green, says “there are a whole lot of cool, indigenous greens” that she doesn’t even have to cultivate on her Westminster, Md., farm — though she spends hours every week picking them — and she sells them at the same price as her fancier greens, such as tatsoi.

Another way to get weeds: Organic-gardening experts advocate foraging near your home. A tip sheet by the Montgomery County, Md., Department of Environmental Protection recommends that homeowners “make a salad” with such hand-pickable weeds as dandelion and wild garlic and onions.

But before running out to pick weeds, keep in mind that wild plants are not always safe to eat. Some guidelines:

Take care to identify the plants. “Don’t go on your first foraging hunt alone,” says Dr. Duke. Some edible weeds could easily be confused with toxic or poisonous ones. For instance, wild carrot could be confused with the poisonous hemlock.

Just because one part of a plant is edible doesn’t necessarily mean the whole plant is. For instance, the root of the potato can be eaten, but the leaves and the berries are poisonous.

Cook carefully. Some plants need to be cooked thoroughly to prevent toxicity. Pokeweed, for example, can be dangerous. It needs to be cooked well, with the water it’s boiled in thrown out and replaced at least twice.

My very faithful and hardworking computer has now been sent to techie heaven after faithfully serving myself, my staff and the Internet for years. Without a main computer for over 10 days, everything gets congested and very little gets processed. So, I am very sorry that it has taken so long to post the winner of the May Recipes contest, but I am reviewing as quickly as I can and will post before the end of the month.

In the meantime, look for the next recipe submission & blog post from our April winner, Lisa S.

Thank you Lisa for your contribution to our hungry vegetarians.

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Easy Vegetarian Pecan Crusted Medjool Dates

by April’s Recipe Winner: LISA S.! This is her first guest blog post with many more to come. Feel free to email any recipes questions to her at Lisa (at) easyvegetarianrecipesblog.com.

Hello All!

I am so excited to be the winner of April’s Easy Vegetarian Recipes Contest! I simplified my “Veggie Shrimp Creole” to make it as quick and easy and possible, without sacrificing flavor. I hope you will all like it as much as my family and friends do, and now would like to share an easy, easy recipe that tastes just like candy. It is a great dish for vegetarians, diabetics, or anyone who just loves good food.

Enjoy!!

Pecan Crusted Medjool Dates

Ingredients:

• 4 large, fresh, in season Medjool dates for each plate served
• Mixture of coarsely and finely chopped pecans

Directions:

Place pecans in a shallow dish. With a sharp paring knife, slice halfway around the pit of each date, remove the pits, and flatten the dates. Press each date firmly into the pecan mixture, shaking off the excess if necessary.

Sun dried tomato always adds a nice edge to dishes. Especially in salads and pastas. Here’s an awesome California Pizza Kitchen Broccoli and Sun-Dried Tomato Fusilli recipe.

Ingredients:

1 pound dry fusilli pasta
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped fresh garlic
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
About 12 oil−packed sun−dried tomatoes, drained and thinly sliced
1 quart blanched broccoli florets, drained (bite−size pieces)
1 1/4 cups grated Parmesan cheese (reserve 1/4 cup for garnish)

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Cook pasta until al dente, 8 to 10 minutes. Heat olive oil in a large non−stick frying pan over high heat. Add salt and garlic; when the garlic just begins to brown, add thyme and sun−dried tomatoes. Toss and add broccoli. When broccoli is heated through, add drained pasta (if pan is not large enough, combine in a large mixing bowl while ingredients are hot). Add 1 cup Parmesan cheese to all, sprinkling and stirring to mix.

Serve in warm bowls with a fresh dusting of Parmesan cheese.

I actually like to add about double the broccoli and I’m also a big fan of the broccoli stalks. It’s crunchy and sweet so I recommend not throwing it out and adding it to your recipes. Let me know what you think and if you’ve altered it in any way.

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Easy Vegetarian Butterfinger Recipe

I love the fact that candy is classified as vegetarian! This is the original Butterfinger recipe as far as I can find. I have a real soft spot for buttery and toffee types of candy, so I was stoked to find this easy vegetarian Butterfinger recipe.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Peanut Butter
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
Melted Milk Chocolate

Directions:

Cook syrup, sugar, and water to 310 F. Remove from heat. Stir in warmed peanut butter (warm slightly in microwave)
until well blended. Pour into a greased (buttered) 8″ X 8″ pan. Score mixture into desired size bars. When COMPLETELY cool, dip in melted milk chocolate (use a double boiler to SLOWLY melt) and set on wax paper until chocolate has hardened.

Now I’m sure your dentist will love you for making these, but like the awesome easy vegetarian caramel rice krispies treats, don’t get suckered into making these twice a week because they’re so yummy and easy to make (like some of us).

I forget about sweet potatoes until about Christmas time, but this is a nice easy vegetarian Boston Market Sweet Potato Casserole Recipe that is great all year round. I would even put in both the categories of sides and desserts.

Ingredients:

3 large sweet potatoes
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 stick butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Crunch Topping:
1/3 cup melted butter
1/3 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
1 tblsp. cinnamon

Directions:

Boil potatoes until tender. Take skin off when cooled and able to handle. Put in a large bowl and whip them until fluffy. Add all other ingredients. Pour into a greased casserole and top with the crunch topping. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

This is not so sweet I wouldn’t serve it as a side, but let me know your thoughts/opinions and if you have a variation.

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Easy Vegetarian Boston Market Dill Potato Wedges Recipe

Somewhere along the way, regular old french fries stopped working for me.  Since then I’ve just made up variations of my own fries and here’s an easy vegetarian Boston Market Dill Potato Wedges recipe that’s got a nice kick.

Ingredients:

• 7 or 8 new red potatoes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced fine
• 1/4 pound butter
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. celery salt
• 2 tsp. dried dill weed

Directions:

Wash potatoes well and boil until barely soft. Drain, and cut potatoes in wedges. Melt 1 stick of butter, in large frying pan (use only real butter) and saute garlic for about one minute. Add potatoes and the rest of the seasonings. Pan−fry the potatoes until they are lightly brown.

These are great with a nice dinner, but this is also great in bulk for parties.

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Easy Vegetarian Black-Eyed Pea’s Baked Squash Recipe

I LOVE squash! I know this sounds funny but those funny shaped veggies have always been a favorite because even if they are just steamed with a little butter, it’s yummy. Of course I feel great after eating a meal full of veggies, so that’s just another perk.

Here’s a hearty easy vegetarian Black-Eyed Pea Baked Squash Recipe.

Ingredients:

• 5 pounds medium−size yellow squash
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup bread crumbs plus additional bread crumbs for topping
• 1 stick butter or margarine
• 1/4 cup sugar
• Salt, to taste
• 2 tablespoons chopped onion
• Dash of pepper

Directions:

Cut tips off squash and cut each squash into 3 or 4 pieces. Drop squash into a large saucepan with enough boiling water to cover. Return to boil, reduce heat and cook until tender. Drain in colander and mash. Combine with beaten eggs, 1 cup bread crumbs, butter, sugar, salt, onion and pepper. Turn into 3−quart casserole that has been lightly greased or sprayed with nonstick spray. Cover with light layer of bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly browned.

This is a great alternative to a baked potato. Let me know what your thoughts are and if you have any variations to this recipe you’d like to share.

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Easy Vegetarian Applebee’s Spinach Pizza Appetizer

There are a couple of vegetarian raw and cooked pizza appetizers that I’ve loved for years. This is a yummy easy vegetarian Applebee’s Spinach Pizza Appetizer recipe that is sure to be a hit!

Ingredients:

• Pita Bread (2 or 3 whole)
• 1 − 10 oz. pkg frozen spinach
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 med. onion
• 5 or 6 plum tomatoes
• 8 Ounce pkg fresh mushrooms
• 3−4 cloves garlic
• 1 Teaspoon of each of the following spices:
• basil, parsley, cayenne pepper
• 1/2 to 1 cup rice milk
• 4 Tablespoon flour

Directions:

Thaw spinach completely, press out all water. Heat milk in saucepan, when hot but not boiling stir in flour. Stir until sauce begins to thicken, turn heat down. Add nutritional yeast and spinach. Stir constantly until thick and gooey, only about 3−4 min. In separate pan, saute onion, garlic, until onion is tender. Stir in tomatoes, mushrooms, and spices. Saute until just done. Preheat oven to 425. Using a very sharp bread knife, split each pita bread so that you have two round flat pieces instead of one thick one.

Place each piece of bread on a cookie sheet or pizza pan. Spread spinach sauce over each. Top with tomato mixture, being careful to avoid the juice. Bake for 5 to 7 min. Watch closely so that the edges of the pita don’t burn.

Let me know what you (or more importantly your guests) think of this recipe.

Thanks to everyone for the amazing recipes we got for our April’s contest which you will see posted throughout the month.

2nd Runner Up: Kellie F. – Kellie’s Minestrone Soup

1st Runner Up: Esther S. – Vegetarian Sausage Rolls

1st Place April Easy Vegetarian Recipes Contest Winner:  Lisa S. – Veggie Shrimp Creole

Congratulations and thank you for your contribution! You can check out their recipes in our posts or just click on their names.  We look forward to tasting more of your creations ladies.

May’s Contest is well underway. Enter our contest Here.