Chickpea and Spinach Vegetarian Tacos

These were the best accidental Cinco De Mayo tacos I ever could have imagined. You see, on Sunday I planned some meals for the week and made my usual grocery trips. It wasn't until mid-week that I realized I had planned to make Mexican food on Thursday, May 5. I tried to convince Joe I need to make margaritas to go with these delicious tacos, but for some reason he thought that was silly. No matter what you're drinking, though, these are some unique and delicious vegetarian tacos. The filling is healthy and flavorful, and the fancy toppings make these something special. I can guarantee this recipe will be gracing our kitchen multiple times this summer, and one day I'll finally see how well it pairs with a frosty lime beverage (apparently reserved for weekends!).

Chickpea and Spinach Tacos
from Epicurious

Serves 4

8 to 10 corn or flour tortillas

1 Tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon ground ancho chile (or chili powder)
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 small shallot lobe, thinly sliced
1 (15 oz) can crushed tomatoes in their juices
1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 to 2 1/2 cups lightly packed spinach leaves, stacked, rolled, and thinly sliced
Kosher or sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Toppings:
1 avocado, peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks
4 ounce feta cheese, crumbled
4 tablespoon roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
Hot pepper sauce, such as Tabasco
1 lime

Preparation

Warm the tortillas and wrap them in aluminum foil to keep warm.
Pour the oil into a medium skillet over medium heat. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the ground ancho, stir to combine, and cook until it sizzles and becomes very fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the garlic and shallot and cook until the vegetables start to soften and slightly brown, 4 to 6 minutes.

Stir in the tomato and chickpeas and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomato softens and starts to break down. Add the spinach and cook until the spinach wilts, 1 to 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Lay the tortillas out on a plate and divide the chickpea-spinach mixture among them. Top with the avocado and feta and sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds. Dash a little Tabasco on each taco, squeeze the lime over them, and enjoy!

Note:

To roast the pumpkin seeds, warm one Tablespoon of oil in a saute pan. When warm, add the pumpkin seeds, and a sprinkle of salt. Stir the seeds until they start to smell fragrant, about 4 or 5 minutes. Careful, they will pop a little!    **Be sure to buy pepitas, which are just the green inside part of the pumpkin seed. Regular seeds from a carving pumpkin are way too rough and stringy!**

Cooking Updates

As some of you know, I used to have a cooking blog. I guess I still have one, but I haven't actually posted anything there since December. I had been blogging about recipes and cooking-related topics for a few years, and got sick of always having to rehash about what I made, how to do it, and typing out detailed recipes. I'm living in the world of food right now, thanks to my job at Whole Foods, so I don't always feel like blogging about recipes on my time off.

However, I am still cooking a TON, and find that I do sometimes want to share my favorite recipes. I'm going to use this blog as a place to share occasional kitchen successes, while also talking to you about whatever else comes to mind. That's the beauty of having a blog... I can use it to talk about whatever I want!

I've updated the tabs up top. Below my header is a tab for Recipes, where I'll link up any food-related posts. I'll also continue to put links there for recipes that I like but don't feel like blogging about. Check back later today for a fantastic vegetarian taco recipe I made last week, and let me know if you're cooking anything tasty I should know about!

Latest Happenings...

It's hard to justify a weekend recap that doesn't happen until Wednesday. Therefore, I'll just say this is a post about some stuff we've done lately. It's starting to feel like spring here, and life is really good. I love feeling so happy with where I am in my life!

 Green City Market on Saturday morning. Amazing breakfast thanks to Floriole.

Pretty spring flowers!

Farmer's market goodies...

Dietzler Farms beef, fresh asparagus, Spicy Cheddar Boule from Crumb.

Catching up with friends at the DIY fair. We got great tips on gardening,

baking sourdough bread, brewing, making yogurt, and other crafty endeavors.

Joe cooked dinner on Saturday. 

I am so spoiled by this guy!

Quinoa with Zucchini, Beans, and Cumin.

Amazing bread on the side, thanks to the market!

Hanging out with the girls on Sunday, while the guys brewed some beer.

I'd like to say we helped... but mostly we just chatted and ate waaaay to much!

It was a great weekend, even though I had to work at 5 am on Sunday. 

Fun friends, good food & beer, time with the husband... pretty much all I need to be happy!

Weekend Plans

TGIF! I am lucky enough to have another Saturday off this weekend, so today's shift feels like a 'real' Friday. Overall I have no desire to go back to the 9-5 world, but there is something to be said for way Friday feels after a long week of work. Tonight Joe and I are going to eat sushi that I'm going to bring home from Whole Foods, and plan to just relax in front of a movie. We have to save our energy for Saturday, which is shaping up to be a busy day!

One of the things we're doing Saturday is going to this DIY fair. One of my friends is a member of the Delta Emerging Leaders, and she's helping to put together this awesome event. There will be workshops and booths about all kinds of crafty stuff, plus cheap New Belgium beer for the guys we're dragging along. Although some of the workshops are interesting for the gentlemen, too. A bunch of our friends are also planning to go, so it should be a great time!

source

We're also going to try to get up early to visit the Green City Market. This weekend is the first outdoor market of the year, so we're going to try to get there before the crowds. I even suggested to Joe that we could go to the market without drinking any coffee, then try to go back to bed when we get home!  I'm hoping to get some asparagus, which I'm going to can in some kind of spicy brine. I always miss my chance to can asparagus, because I don't get into summer preserving mode until it warms up more. But this year I'm ready, and will hopefully have delicious results.

We're also hoping to brew with our friends on Sunday, after I get off work. It should be a great weekend! But I guess I have one more day of work to get through first, which means it's about time to get myself off the couch. Have a great Friday!

The day I have been waiting for!

Boulevard Brewing Company has finally arrived in Chicago!!

This was my beer of choice in Missouri, and I have so many memories that include drinking this beer. There was a keg at my graduation party, and we had bottles of it at our wedding. Most nights out included a Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat, and we did a tour of the brewery with my sister when she came to visit us in KC one summer. I can't tell you how happy I was to see these bottles from their Smokestack series on the shelf at the Lakeview Whole Foods yesterday!



See how excited I was to find some Boulevard
on a trip to Colorado last year?



A Lovely Cake in a Dark Kitchen

Last week there was a one day sale on organic strawberries, and I ended up bringing home THREE pounds of strawberries for less than $5. It was such a deal, and it wasn't until I got home that I started to wonder what exactly I was going to do with 48 ounces of lovely red berries. For the first few days we sliced those babies up and enjoyed them with breakfast or lunch, mixed with mango and pineapple at one point. Fresh and tasty, and still two pounds were left in the fridge.  I knew I needed to get serious, which usually means it's time to make dessert.


May I introduce you to the French yogurt cake, courtesy of Chocolate and Zucchini.

A bit spongy, slightly sweet, and scented with citrus from the lemon and tangerine zest I mixed into the batter. The perfect vehicle for sweetened strawberries. Whipped cream would have been perfect, but since I was already living large and eating dessert on a Tuesday, I decided a little yogurt would be more appropriate. Whipped cream on Tuesday is a slippery slope, leading to cookies on Monday and brownies on Thursday. While I love a good dessert, this girlish figure doesn't come without a bit of discipline. That being said, I would love to make this again for a dinner party, and in that case I would top with a mix of fresh berries and a dollop of sweetened whipped cream.

You can find the recipe here.

I was so focused on eating the cake that I didn't look at the pictures very closely.
Turns out it was darker in my kitchen than I realized!



Ravenswood Run!

Remember when I mentioned that I was training for a 5k race? I wanted to get a better time than previous races I'd completed, so I was specifically training with the goal of achieving a personal record. My goal overall was to be under 30 minutes, which would not even be a PR, but would be faster than the pitiful 5k I did last October. I had a couple weeks when my knee was really bothering me, which had me pretty worried. I ended up taking a couple weeks off from working out altogether, and did a lot of stretching my knee and alternating between icing and heating it. Thankfully, the pain in my knee went away, and I was able to train as I had initially planned.

The race was on Sunday, and it was great! First off, the whole week before the forecast had been saying rain and 50 degree temps, and I knew that would not be ideal weather for getting a PR. Instead, it was sunny and beautiful! Not too hot, but warm enough for running without layers of clothing. It was a seriously perfect spring morning. There were about 4,000 people running, which was enough to feel like a big race, but not so many that it felt crowded (hello, Run for the Zoo, I'm looking at you! Being forced by the crowd to walk mid-race? Not cool.).

And my time? 27:40, which is a 8:55 pace!  Well under 30 minutes, if I do say so myself :)  I felt great the whole time I was running, and probably could have shaved a little more off my time if it hasn't been crowded and slow for the first part of the run. I started with the 9:30 pace group, and I have a feeling some people had optimistically started in a faster group than they should have. It was a fun race, and I was so pleased with my result!

I've also officially signed up for an 8k in July, since this year's Bastille Day race is going to be either a 5k or an 8k. I thought it was about time I pushed myself a little more on the distance, and now I'm excited to train for a longer run. My friend Stacy and I might squeeze in another 5k in June, and I'm also playing around with the idea of doing my first 10k sometime this fall. Looks like it's going to be a busy summer!