Look Who's Back!

And by who I mean what. And by what I mean a vegetable I featured a few months ago.

But first! Check out my breakfast this morning. I call it my all natural protein oats.

 Oats and 1 tablespoon chia seeds soaked in coconut milk (carton) for 15 minutes and then cooked. Topped with homemade coconut butter, SunButter, and chocolate almond butter.

Oh man was that delicious and filling! About three hours later, though, I was looking for breakfast number two. Enter my mid-morning snack: pumpkin spice vegan soft serve. [Inspired by Mama Pea's original recipe].

This took less than five minutes to prepare and about one minute to devour.

I used my nifty new hand blender to blend one frozen banana with 1/8 cup almond milk.

I topped this concoction with pumpkin pie spice. It was a mid-morning snack success.

For dinner today, I decided to experiment a little. It didn't turn out exactly how I'd planned. It turned out BETTER!

I've never mentioned that when I cut the stems and leaves off of the beets, I keep them in the fridge to use later. The first time I tried beet greens, I was a bit ...surprised. Since then, I've gotten used to the amount of chewing necessary to digest the greens.

I'm saving some of the greens for this weekend. I took just a handful today and sauteed them with olive oil and salt.

Shrinkage to the max!

That was part one of my dinner.

Part two: beet hash. When I began preparing this, I envisioned something similar to hash browns, or even similar to my spaghetti squash hash browns.

Ingredients:

• 1 cooked beet, finely sliced or grated
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup butternut squash, cut into small cubes
• 1/4 cup seitan, cut into small cubes
• 1 teaspoon whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon Smart Balance

Add the beets and garlic to a bowl.

Oh, one tip: don't rinse an already cooked beet. It bleeds more than an un-rinsed cooked beet.

Add the seitan.

And the butternut squash. Side note: I used frozen butternut squash cubes (convenient, eh?) so I slightly thawed the cubes before cutting them into smaller cubes.

Add the flour. Spray a pan with non-stick and then flatten the mixture on the pan. Add Smart Balance to the top along with salt and pepper.

Allow it to cook over medium heat for a while, about 7 minutes. Afterwards, I attempted to flip the hash, and unfortunately it didn't all stay together. However, it did seem quite crispy! After flipping/mixing, let it cook for another few minutes.

Luckily, this experiment turned out fabulously. It was just the right amount of crispy, and the butternut squash and beet combination was better than I had expected.

I highly recommend trying this recipe. If you're a fan of beets, of course.