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Ingredients
- 4 celery stalks (chopped)
- 5 carrots (cut into sticks) [optionally use rainbow carrots!]
- 12 little potatoes (halved with skins)
- 1 onion (sliced)
- 2 garlic cloves (sliced)
- 3/4 cup frozen green peas
- 3/4 cup water
- 3 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
- salt and pepper
- 1 cup dry quinoa
- 2 cups vegetable broth
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit
- In a 13x9 cake pan add celery, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, and green peas. Pour water, drizzle olive oil and sprinkle rosemary. Salt and pepper to your liking.
- To assist with clean-up, lining pan with aluminum foil can help.
- Cover pan with aluminum foil and place in oven for 45-50 minutes.
- Prepare quinoa (takes about 20 minutes), follow directions from your packaging, but use vegetable broth instead of water.
- Serve with quinoa topped with vegetables.
Closing
Roasts are another one of those comfort food meals that are great on a cold day! Also, they are relatively easy to prepare! I grew up eating roasts with a meat, but this one does a pretty good job with flavour even without the meat and there is just something about eating the tender potatoes!
Stay warm and enjoy a comforting dish!
Vegetable Potato Hash
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 onion (halved and sliced)
- 3 large red potatoes (diced with skins)
- 2 cups frozen vegetable mix (carrots, peas, green beans and corn)
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 1/4 cups vegetable broth
- 1 15 oz can pinto beans
- salt and pepper
- crushed parsley, to garnish
Instructions
- Warm frozen vegetables (I chose the microwave).
- There is no reason not to use fresh vegetables, I just did not have any on hand at the time.
- Melt butter in large fry pan/skillet on medium heat.
- Add onion, potatoes and vegetables, and cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring constantly, until golden brown.
- Add flour and cook for 1 minute, continueing to stir constantly.
- Pour vegetable broth gradually, once again stirring constantly.
- Add beans and cook for another 5 minutes, or until liquid as burned off. Season with salt and pepper to your liking.
- Sprinked crushed parsly to garnish, then serve.
Inspired by
There is no website for this recipe since it came from a book! The recipe is called ‘Potato Hash’ on page 248 from [Ultimate Vegetarian Recipes, Dempsey Parr Book published 2000, Copyright (C) Parragon 1999], mind my citation!
Closing
I find this dish is rather straight forward, quick to prepare, and quite tasty! The hardy flavours make it a goto when you want something after being outside in the cold.
As mentioned, feel free to use fresh vegetables. I often substitute fresh for frozen if I do not have any on hand. It is likely that you do not need to thaw the vegetables first, but they will cook a little faster if you do.
Feel free to spice is up by adding some other peppers!
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A family favourite. This has much of the flavour of a traditional Chicken Pot Pie, but it is vegetarian.
Ingredients
- 1 cup thinly sliced carrots
- 1 cup frozen green peas
- 1 cup small diced potatoes (if red or gold leave peels)
- 1/2 cup thinly sliced celery
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/3 cup finely chopped onion
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
- 1/3 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper (I am a little more liberal on this)
- 1/4 teaspoon parsley flakes
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 3/4 cups vegetable broth
- 2/3 cup milk (whole)
- 1 15oz can of Great Northern Beans (drained and rinsed)
- Two 9-inch pie crusts (my recipe excluded sugar to maintain a savory flavour)
Instructions
Note: I found that doing the prep work the night before is really beneficial e.g. (the chopping, combining flour and seasonings, and crust preparation).
- Prepare pie crusts
- In a medium sized pot on medium-high, add carrots, potatoes, celery, peas, and water. Cook till vegetables are tender (about 15 minutes). You can decide to drain the water or let it absorb, I favour the latter since draining takes some of the nutrients away.
- In a large skillet/fry pan, on medium add butter.
- When butter has melted, add onions, cook till translucent (about 5 minutes).
- Add flour, salt, pepper, parsley flakes and garlic. Cook for about 2 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees fahrenheit.
- Slowly add vegetable broth and milk. Reduce heat to medium-low, and cook till thickens (about 5 minutes).
- When sauce is thickened add vegetables and beans.
- In a deep-round casserolle dish (you can use a pie plate, but I found doing so often had overflow), fit the bottom pie crust. Add the pie filling, then fit the top pie crust. Add a few slits on top. Place in oven for 30-35 minutes.
Inspired by
This was in majority borrowed from the following recipe. I substituted a few ingredients and added beans (I have used chickpeas in the past but I prefer the former) as a protein.
Closing
This meal has become a comfort food favourite during the holidays. Its rich flavour is absolutely delicious and it keeps well in the fridge for leftovers. So try (even though it may be hard) not to eat too much in one sitting and it may just last you a few days!
Edited 2019-12-01 to consolidate the crust recipe
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Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 onion (chopped)
- 5 garlic cloves (minsed)
- 1 teaspoon dried bay leaves
- 8 1/2 cups of water
- 2 cups split peas
- 1/2 cup barley
- 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 carrots (chopped)
- 3 celery stalks (chopped)
- 3 potatoes (diced)
- 1/2 teaspoon basil
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
Instructions
- In a large pot add oil. Heat on medium-high. When warm add the onion, garlic and bay leaves. Cook till tranlucent (roughly 5 minutes).
- Add water, peas, barley and salt bring to boil and then reduce to low.
- When at a simmer add carrots, celery, potatoes, basil, pepper and thyme. Let cook 2 hours or until vegetables are tender.
Inspired by
I would like to give some credit where credit is due! I started off with this link for inspiration. I made slight variations with the bay leaf and by adding the vegetables sooner with an additional cup of water since I felt it was light in that regard.
Closing
I love all of the textures in this soup, the barley adds a nice touch. Also another neat facet about this recipe, there is no call for any vegetable broth base as it is very flavourful in its own right. There is enough in this batch that you can store some in the freezer and it keeps very, very well. I have to say, I had some leftover split pea soup last night, which was frozen (then reheated!), it was fantastic!
A Strategy Game
Antiyoy, is a, highly addictive, opened source game available for Android. According to a wikia.com article it is based off of a game called Slay, from the mid 90s.
Premise
The object to the game is to conquer your opponents. However, this game is very organic in the sense of how your empire/kingdom(s) can expand or contract. Each collection of hexagonal territories has its own town hall and governance, whether through treasury, expenses, and military. In the event that two or more of these territories combine, so do their economies as well.
You have a basic set of units, (i.e. peasants, spearmen, barons, and knights), and they grow stronger (and more costly) respectively. There are also 4 types of buildings, (i.e. town hall, village hut, tower and magic tower), all except the village hut offers protection for your territory, the latter increases the income for a hex.
There are also trees that can grow and they actually sap your resources, in the exception of taking them for lumber you can gain coin.
Aside from all of this, that is the game, in a nutshell. I have only left out a few details.
Strategies
There are a host of strategies you can take. You can use the old adage, “divide and conquer,” literally since you can halve your opponents strength if you can divide their empire. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the moment you cannot pay the wages of your troops they are gone the following turn! So you must manage your funds wisely!
Opponents
The android game offers five players with 5 levels of AI competition with the option of hotseat multi-player! While the AI may be really challenging, it is not impossible to be the victor on the hardest setting! You even have the option to watch AI pit against each other without having a human player.
Closing
As I mentioned this is a very addictive game. I love the simplicity of it, but there is always a challenge. It has the feel of a boardgame (and it could almost be one) and I feel that is one of its charms.
The developer for this game is not done, they intend on extending it by adding some diplomacy/relations along with a fog of war. After a little refactor of course.
When I play, I always imagine these empires rising and falling like the great empires of history.
I suggest you take a chance, and make your own miniature history. I am certain you will not be disappointed!
Seasoned Code