Holy black rice

I made a couple new-ish dishes over the past couple of days that just blew my mind, and I can say that they'll become frequent meals in my house. Here's a picture of the first thing I made, baked (at 350) sweet potato, parsley root (eaten with ketchup), turnip and golden beets. I had to stop eating half way through to take a picture, that's how good it was. There's stuff like oregano, basil, parsley and garlic powder on everything but the sweet potatoes, which have cinnamon and turmeric. All of it was drizzled with olive oil.

Here's the second thing I made, Italian straciatelli soup, which has a veggie broth, pastina/pearled couscous (your pick), spinach and egg.

And this amazing black forbidden rice and herb-sprinkled pinto bean dish, which blew my mind. I didn't cook the rice with anything, but I put spices, herbs and sea salt on the beans. I cooked the rice separately and followed the package directions, while I baked the beans in a tiny bit of olive oil at 350 for ten minutes. You can buy the black forbidden rice at vitacost.com or at Whole Foods.

And then Shawn decided to experiment today with what we had left from our last shopping trip, which happened to be red, yellow and orange bell peppers, brown rice, red onion, carrot and portabella mushroom. He turned all that into a lovely stir fry with grapeseed oil and sesame seed oil. I was in shock at how good it was. I'm beginning to think that when you become a vegetarian you can pretty much throw anything together and it will taste good. Last time he experimented with brown and wild rice mixed up with a little grapeseed oil and then added Gardein veggie beef tips that we found in the frozen food aisle, and we were drooling. Shawn kept repeating, "But it tastes like real meat!"

When I haven't been experimenting with different recipes I've been chugging chocolate coconut milk like it's nothing. I swear I can't tell the difference between chocolate coconut milk and that Trumoo chocolate milk. And if it's not chocolate coconut milk (from the soy milk aisle) then it's frozen coconut popsicles, or organic coconut milk that I found at the end of the fruit juice aisle, mixed into my smoothies. I've also rekindled my love for baked chickpeas. Did you know they have a whole healthy food section at Meijer? There's one that's all gluten-free, two sections in the frozen food area that includes healthy pizza and vegan mac & cheese, and another area for harder to find items like rice flour and organic cereal.