Valentine's Day Recap and a Veggie Recipe

First, thank you to all of you who left such nice comments on my last post! It means so much to us to know our friends and family support these irrational choices =).

Valentine's Day at our house is never a big holiday, and this year I relied on that knowledge and the fact that Josh brought me flowers on my first day of work when I made the decision to treat Valentine's Day like any other day. Namely, going to work, spending time with my adorable mentoree (eating pink cupcakes and drinking coffee), riding my horse, and going grocery shopping. By the time I got home at 9:45pm there were a dozen red roses, a clean house, a card, and chocolate waiting for me! I was SO surprised. And happy.

See the top middle piece? This was my favorite- milk chocolate and honey. YUM.

I've made vegetarian meals all week, and so far it's going well. I am not missing meat, but I don't know if I can give up milk and cheese. We'll see.

The first recipe I want to share is this colorful, flavorful, filling baked dish: I modified the recipe from the New York Times (original here).

Veggie Bake

Brown 2 tablespoons, 1 chopped carrot, 1 chopped celery rib, 1 chopped small onion, 4 cloves garlic in large saucepan

Add 2.5 cups of water, 1 small can tomato paste, 1 can butter beans or lima beans or white beans, 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoon herbes de Provence, 1 teaspoon parsley, salt and pepper to taste, and simmer

Rinse well 1 bunch of kale and rip into small pieces and add to saucepan (leaving out the stems), and stir

Transfer contents of saucepan to 13x9 pan and bake for 2.5 hours at 250 degrees. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs on top and bake for an additional 10 minutes at 300 degrees.

I served it with pita, hummus, and a sliced apple. The pita was really good dipped in the casserole. I hope some of you try it and let me know if you liked it! Also, I almost didn't purchase the herbes de Provence thinking it wasn't very important, but I think they really made the dish!

This picture doesn't really do it justice- it was actually very pretty =).