Nachos with ques"no"

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at Huber's. We picked pumpkins from the pumpkin patch (we got two quite large ones, and one baby). We shopped for deliciously fresh apples (after a while in the pumpkin field we didn't think the girls were quite ready for picking their own yet), and the best apple cider you'll ever drink. Then Rob and I shared a bottle of wine as we watched the girls frolicking in what will surely be one of the last 86 degree days we'll see for awhile. After a long and restful afternoon in the sun I didn't feel much like cooking when we returned home.

A while back when I was reading over at The Veggie Patch, I saw a link to a recipe for vegan queso. I also received my VegWeb weekly recipe e-mail and there is a very similar recipe there as well. Now, I haven't really missed cheese at all, except for queso. There have been a few times that we've eaten at Q-doba and I have longed to dip my chip in some of that warm, gooey queso. There happen to be lots of vegan queso recipes that involve melting soy cheese (which can sometimes prove tricky, and quite honestly, just grosses me out a little), or involve some combination of ground nuts. Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon a soy free, nut free cheese recipe!! I put it on my list of things to make soon, and a day when I didn't feel like cooking felt soon enough!! I whipped up some of the queso (which takes about 5 minutes), poured it over a pile of tortilla chips, with some black beans, diced onion, black olives, and chopped cilantro. Voila, nachos!!!


This queso is fabulous!! It has been awhile since I've had queso, but I do think this one is very close in flavor and texture to it's dairy laden counterpart. It hasn't been quite so long since Rob's had queso, and he too thought this one was amazingly close to dairy queso. I've got so many ideas for this deliciously cheesy dip, you can expect that it will be made around here quite often. And as an added bonus......you don't feel fat, gross, and guilty after you eat this queso, even if you eat a ton!!

Saturday's Eats.

After all of that playing in the snow, you better believe we were all hungry!! We'd started off our morning with the chocolate chip muffins I posted about earlier. After lots of sledding, snow angel making, and even a little shoveling we were all ready to head inside to warm up.

First up was the Hot Coco-Cocoa from the previous post. After we'd enjoyed our cocoa I got started on lunch. Mairin had requested nachos, that sounded good to me, so I headed to the kitchen to whip some up. First I made the lentils from the lentil taco recipe. When those were finished I poured them over some tortilla chips and topped it with some diced onion, tomato, and avocado. Then I sprinkled it all with some chopped fresh cilantro and squeezed the juice of one lime down over it all. These were so good that none of us even missed the cheese at all!

After our lunch we all laid down and took a nap. I have to admit, it was so awesome to lay down in the middle of the day and sleep. I felt soooo good when I woke up! After our nap we bundled up and went back out in the snow again. This time the powdery snow of the morning had started to freeze and stick together, so we had us a little snowball fight. After that the girls did a little more sledding and then we headed in for dinner.

While Rob and the girls warmed up in front of the heater watching a movie, I got dinner going. We had "Fettuccine with Red Lentil Sauce" from Vegan Planet, only I used whole wheat linguine instead. This sauce is very quick and easy to make, however, it is lacking in flavor just a bit. I added about 2 tsp of dried basil to it, and that helped bring it to life. On the side we had some grilled asparagus and portobello mushrooms. I just put the veggies on the grill and drizzled them with olive oil. Once they were cooked I removed them from the heat and sprinkled them with sea salt while they were still hot. Oh man, they were good. I could have made a meal out of just the veggies. We also had some simple garlic bread to go along with it all.