The Thanksgiving table is heavy, and not just with food. It’s piled high with expectation and a huge amount of pressure to perform. Add on special dietary needs and can things get dicey real fast. In other words, mess with tradition and people are keen to revolt.

I have found that the best way to come up with dishes that please a dinner table full of mixed eaters is to focus on foods that taste good in their most natural state. Most importantly, the dish should be delicious. Not just “good for being vegan.” A winning gluten free or vegan Thanksgiving recipe should be requested every year, no matter what dietary restrictions are present. Don’t try and fool Uncle Teddy with cashew cream mashed potatoes.

The idea for this gluten free stuffing came came from one of my favorite fall party tricks–squash on toast. Roasted squash, jammy onions, and fresh cheese is piled high on toast. I took the squash and onions (oh, those onions!) and mashed them up with nutty wild rice. Baked in a casserole, it screams fall and is packed with a mind boggling amount of flavor and texture. Is it vegan and gluten free? Yes. But all the really matters is that it’s delicious.

Because this is a carb-based dish I liken it to stuffing. But, it really stands up well on it’s own. I really love it with white beans to round out the protein profile. Fat and creamy Royal Coronas make a dreamy side dish. Their exaggerated shape are perfect holiday food. Or maybe it’s just a Sunday night in early December. Just drain and rinse a can of cannellini beans and stir them in before baking. A side dish pivots into a cozy main dish casserole. Together with a green salad, it’s exactly what you want on any fall night.

The post Wild Rice Stuffing with Roasted Squash and Sweet & Sour Onions – Gluten Free & Vegan Thanksgiving appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

Beans are the coziest of foods. I love them simply in their own broth with lots of olive oil, and I love this smokey-spicy-sweet baked bean variation. The Instant Pot makes beans such a breeze to make.

I know baked beans are typically seen in July as a side to hot dogs, but I love them as the main dish. Paired with good bread, apple slices, and maybe some sharp cheddar, it’s such a perfect fall meal. Instant Pot baked beans are a perfect fall meal solution when I have like, eight fall sport practices a week to coordinate.

If you are like “Meleyna! You have already given us the recipe for these beans!” you would be correct. This exists as a slow cooker recipe elsewhere on the site. But! Now you can have Instant Pot baked beans, which is what the people want. More beans, faster. Ok yes!

No soaking required here, the dried beans just bubble together in their chile and maple spiked tomato bath. The cooking liquid is higher in acid, which means a cook time that’s longer than typical for pressure cooker bean cookery. So while it isn’t a huge time savings compared to cooking soaked beans on the stovetop, it’s hands-off. That counts for a lot in my book when I have a ton of running around to do in the afternoon.

A pound of dried beans makes a lot. Freeze half for later, or just eat them all week. Leftovers pack up beautifully in a Thermos for school lunch on a chilly fall day. Eat them together with soft scrambled eggs, or poach an egg right in the bean pot, shakshuka style.

The post Instant Pot Chipotle Maple Baked Beans appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

But I really do have a soft spot for Caesar salad. I used to eat it every day after school while watching 30 Minute Meals. Because how else do you unwind after a day of trig and sentence diagramming than with a salad made with so much cheese and too many croutons to soak up all that extra Newman’s Own? After Rachael was done making chicken a la king, I’d follow it up with a marathon of Law & Order because it played simultaneously on both TNT and TBS. Cheers to you, Lenny Briscoe.

These days, I rarely order it out. Restaurants have gotten pretty great about salads with things like persimmon and tahini and spicy peanut brittle and what not so it’s hard to default to romaine. Fortunately, it’s simplicity means it’s pretty easy to pull off at home. My favorite time to make one is not unsimilar to how I used to eat it all those years ago. After a busy morning, sitting by myself, probably listening to a podcast (or let’s be honest, Harry Potter on Audible.)

My version contains the usual suspects–romaine, Parm, crunchy bread, anchovy, egg yolk, but it’s a bit topsy turvy. This is a salad for one, and I like to stick with pantry staples and keep things as easy as possible.

There are always those three packs of hearts of romaine kicking around my fridge, and I’m never without good parmesan. Anchovies? Always on hand. But rather than making an oily mess on the cutting board, I just use a few drops of fish sauce. I also skip the raw egg yolk in the dressing because I definitely want a crispy egg with a runny yolk on top instead. A final topping of Aleppo pepper and sumac spiked breadcrumbs stands in for those highly seasoned bagged croutons I rarely have on hand.

Romaine is standard, but feel free to sub in whatever greens you like. Kale is obligatory these days. Remove the ribs, and slice into fine ribbons. I would toss it and let it sit for a few minutes in the dressing before preparing the egg and the breadcrumbs to let it soften a bit. Little Gems are one of my favorite variations. I tend not to slice these, but instead just removing the stem end and pulling the little leaves apart. And finally, escarole is excellent during the winter. If you’re up for a bit of extra work, it’s very good blackened. Cut the escarole in half (or quarters–they can get very big). Heat a cast iron pan over high with a bit of oil. Add the escarole cut down down, press down, and count to ten. Remove to a cutting board, slice it up, and proceed as written.

The post Solo Girl Caesar Salad for One appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

It is a salad dressing, but it is also the salad dressing in my house. The House Dressing, made in-house to drizzle and pour atop all of my house-made salads. Like a salad bar. Except instead of trying not to bang my face on the sneeze guard to reach the artichoke hearts, I am pulling out whatever random things that need using up in my fridge. (And it’s not $9/lb.)

Homemade dressing seems like this overly complicated thing to do when you can just buy a bottle. But! A simple vinaigrette is an excellent Adult thing to do to help you eat more vegetables. This is excellent both for your health and for those sad radishes in your crisper drawer you bought to fancy up Taco Tuesday but then you forgot about because you had guac and then forgot about anything else. You are saving money eating the food you already have, wasting less food, and purchasing less single-use plastic! Making your own salad dressing is basically saving the world. Oh, and it tastes better too.

I always have this dressing on hand because I always have the ingredients on hand. Both smooth and grainy mustards make an appearance, plus real maple syrup and a punchy 2:1 ratio of oil to vinegar. Bright and smooth and mildly sweet, it’s a lovely all-purpose vinaigrette recipe that loves everything from arugula to leftover salmon, quinoa bowl to kale. I love it over lentils, and it’s a great 3pm snack poured over some chopped up cherry tomatoes and avocado.

You can just shake it all up in a jar like I did here, but honestly I 100% used a mason jar for the picture. I use this OXO Salad Dressing Shaker. Do you need to purchase a specific tool to shake up some salad dressing? Certainly not. But the ability to measure the ingredients right in the jar means less mess, less dirty dishes, and it’s just easier. If something is easy, I’m more likely to do it. (I am lazy.) Totally worth the $10–it pays for itself when you make yourself a salad instead of buying one.

The post house dressing – maple mustard vinaigrette appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

Parent tip: Fade the radio to the back and crank it while you’re driving the carpool around town. They’ll have to shout to hear each other, and forget you’re even in the car. You can hear all of the gossip.

I don’t know if you know anything about a car full of fifth graders, but let me tell you, it is a wild ride. Listening to your kid talk to other kids is both hilarious and supremely annoying. Kid, you’re 11. You are not that cool.

But I get it. When you’re in those in-between preteen years, you just want to be thought of as older, wiser, better. I know because while I may be Ms. Laid-Back-Mom today, I was the prissiest, most high-maintenance, know-it-all preteen there was. I had the highest GWAM in the class (and made sure everyone knew it). I wore my hair twisted into tightest bun possible, ironed my flared jeans with a sharp crease. Oh and I would correct your grammar to your face. I was, in fact, the worst.

My prissiness extended to my food preferences. I didn’t eat “kid food” like peanut butter or pancakes. If it were up to me, every meal would be eaten at Macaroni Grill, the ultimate in everyday fancy. I could order from a menu of my favorites like fried calamari, baby spinach salad with sundried tomatoes and kalamata olives, or farfalle swimming in an asiago cream sauce. I could practice my signature on the paper tablecloths and learn Italian from the recordings when I went to the bathroom. Basically, what I thought was so ~grown up~ was really just peak 90s.

But now that I am actually grown up, here is what I know about fancy: it is extremely easy to fake it.

Which brings us (finally) to this chicken with burrata, leeks, and breadcrumbs. We’re taking a cue from 1998 and faking it til we make it. This simple one-pan chicken dinner is gussied up with a few faux-fancy friends and invited to the extremely sophisticated party in your belly.

You know how you have that one old Target maxi dress you can throw on and people will be like, “OooOOOooooH you’re so fancy!” and you’re like, “I literally just threw this on it is one piece I did nothing.” That is burrata. If you serve people burrata they will freak out and you will win with zero work on your part other than just buying the thing.

Burrata is essentially a ball of fresh mozzarella filled with cream. When you cut into it, it’s lush insides ooze out without needing to be melted first. It is perfect as-is. But I cannot just post “plate burrata” as a recipe (even though that’s what restaurants do for $15???). And we should probably eat more than just cheese for dinner. (Thought I have 100% texted my friend “just ate a ball of burrata dinner” more than once.)

And so we’ll blanket it across chicken breasts and snuggle it up with some butter-softened leeks, and shower the whole thing with toasty breadcrumbs. The cheese warms slightly but still maintains its cool creaminess, while the leeks shine in their subtlety. A perfect Thursday night dinner on that first warm spring night.

The post Chicken with Burrata, Leeks, & Breadcrumbs appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

This Chipotle Sweet Potato Salad is the perfect bring-along to any potluck. Smoky chipotle compliments the natural sugars of the sweet potatoes, and it’s brightened with lime and fresh herbs. Black beans and toasted pumpkin seeds, called pepitas, bring protein and fiber to this to this flavor-packed side dish. If you’re looking for an easy crowd-pleasing dish, this naturally vegan, dairy, and gluten free sweet potato salad is the exactly what you need.

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post Chipotle Sweet Potato Salad with Black Beans & Pepitas appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

And this isn’t about the impossible standards of motherhood we see glorified on Instagram and Pinterest, or the how tempting it can be to just give up at any given moment. It’s the incessant reminders to “chin up, mamma!,” “stop and celebrate the small things,” or just flat-out “screw it.” 

Because mostly my days just fly by right down the middle. Like, I’m actually doing ok?

Today I went on a Costco run, threw in a load of laundry, finished up this blog post. The giant pack of toilet paper is still sitting by the front door, I didn’t actually fold any of that laundry, and I didn’t get around to replying to any of the emails I wanted to. I got a nerve-wracking voicemail from the principal about an incident at school, and then had to go in and clear it all up. I gave my kids hugs after I picked them up, we fought over guitar practice and the Lego mess in the living room, shared snacks. They ran around outside, I yelled at them to come in for dinner. I yelled again for them to come in, and then again because if I had to do it one more time everyone is grounded. Then dinner and fights over showers and a few pages of Harry Potter and bed. There were some good parts, some not great parts, but it was an overall successful day of nothing hugely significant happening. 

I didn’t have a breakdown over the expectations of suburban housewives to keep up with the mundane details of price comparisons while I was in the canned goods aisle at Costco. I didn’t have a profound moment of clarity while peeling potatoes about the privilege I have to be able to peel potatoes to nourish my family who is so grateful for all of my hard work, even if they don’t show it. (Probably because I wasn’t peeling potatoes cause I leave them on because duh, fiber.) I might have a glass of wine later, or maybe just a mug of tea.

Of course it is necessary and so important to talk about the hard stuff, the stuff we didn’t know was part of this whole parenthood thing until holy shit here we are in the thick of it. This era of parenting is increasingly done on our own, away from parents and friends and a solid support system. It is heartening knowing that some mom 1500 miles away gets where you’re at.

But you guys, it’s also exhausting. (And despite what that meme is telling you, exhaustion is not a requirement of parenting.) You can be doing just ok, and be content and happy in that and not have it be A Bad Thing. Sometimes success can be a quiet declaration of “I am doing this parenting thing!” and a whole wheat banana bread muffin.

Much like most of my days, these little guys are a celebration of the middle. They are not the stuffed and fried and frosted and dolloped indulgences in those cooking videos that autoplay in your social media feed. And they aren’t raw-vegan-paleo-“treats” made up of algae and dates and every extraction of coconut imaginable. They’re just little muffins filled with bananas and whole wheat flour and coconut oil (because it’s tasty) and a bit of brown sugar. They’re wholesome, but not taken so far down the health road that they no longer remotely resemble their predecessor. And because banana bread is delicious and no one wants want to wait over an hour for a loaf to bake before we can eat it, let’s bake them up as muffins instead.

Call the kids into the kitchen to help mash, measure, and mix up theses banana muffins as a lesson in both science and math and practicality. Or stir them together yourself as quiet therapy during nap time after an especially rough morning and eat one (or two) while letting yourself zone out for a minute at the kitchen counter. Or maybe you’re too cool and subversive to do something like bake from scratch, so you just roll your eyes at this recipe and curse about #momlife and pour yourself a glass of wine instead. (And like wine is super cool and all–two thumbs up for wine!–but so are freshly baked muffins just saying you’re totally missing out.)

But maybe you just have a few spotty bananas that need using up. So you take the ten minutes and stir these whole wheat banana bread muffins together, unloading the dishwasher while they bake, pulling them out of the oven and pausing to steal one for yourself, schmearing it with peanut butter while it’s still warm. And then you stash the rest of them in the freezer, ready and waiting to be sensibly doled out into lunch boxes, for breakfast, as an after school snack on another one of those mundane, just-ok days that we are so lucky to have.

The post Whole Wheat Banana Bread Muffins appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

So then I just end up getting up and sitting on a kitchen stool and staring at the counter those four minutes I wait for the French press to be done like legit spaced out. But then the coffee happens and some small voice is yelling from the couch that they are still hungry and so now it’s time to kick it into gear and provide second breakfast.

If it is Sunday, it is often waffles or something of that ilk. But if there’s a Saturday morning Little League game or it’s just a Tuesday I’m not breaking out specialty appliances because I am too busy looking for that damn baseball belt or brushing out pig tails or hey maybe I just want to drink my coffee. But also holy hell you guys my third grader is eating me out of house and home these days and I cannot send him to school with just a bowl of Cheerios and a banana in his belly. 

So then I offer him all of the things but a bowl of cereal and a smoothie and two eggs is still not enough. Like, what? How do you need so much to eat? And so these Maple Turkey Breakfast Sausage Patties. 

These take little time to put together, but make busy morning so much easier. Some ground turkey, a handful of pantry ingredients, and a half an hour and you’re setting yourself up for pre-8 AM success. Freeze your extras and you’ll have an easy but filling breakfast within arm’s reach when you’re still mid-coffee and frazzled.

I like to stuff these turkey breakfast sausage patties into easy breakfast sandwiches. I prefer them in a whole grain English muffin with smashed avocado, a runny egg, and hot sauce. I am also the only one in the house who likes them like this. Big kid likes his muffin and sausage only, with ketchup (of course), scrambled eggs “on the side Mom don’t put them in the sandwich you know I don’t like it like that!” Little kid likes her sandwich.. not as a sandwich but as a toasted English muffin with butter, sausage on the side, and a boiled egg cut into quarters. Husband just likes his turkey sausage on a plate on the side of his three bowls of cereal.

Alternatively, you can forgo the patties, and just cook the turkey breakfast sausage in crumbles and add them to breakfast burritos, egg scrambles, or serve them up solo as an easy finger food for toddlers. 

So you know, you do you. (Or rather, you do whatever you need to do to get your kids to eat breakfast.) 

The post Maple Turkey Breakfast Sausage appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

Welcome to Rotisserie Redux, where we tackle that $5 chicken that you bought, again. You know, those ones all scooted up together under their heat lamps at the big box store and they’re not the greatest food in the world but they’re $5 and they’re already cooked and heyyyy who wants dinner? We can do better–let’s do it!

So is anyone else just really sick of cooking?

February was basically just illness after illness and like, rainrainrainrain and then some more rain. 

And now, the sun! It’s out and shining bright! And then you go outside and it’s… not actually warm. Like when you wait all week for your avocado to be ready and then you cut it open and it’s mush and what the hell why can’t even the simple things in life go well. (Never mind um, everything else in this world right now.)

But for real I’m so over cold weather food. Long-cooked braises, squash-potato-cabbage, and oh hey look is that a sweet potato? Oh, just kidding it’s just more squash.  Coaxing the flavor out of scraps and bones and remnants of pasta boxes and casseroles thrown together with all the bits and ends floating around the fridge. And while it is good and comforting and sometimes even necessary to create something out of seemingly nothing, I just want to eat a peach or slice up a tomato or throw some meat on the grill while I hang out with a glass of something chilled in hand and call it a day. I don’t want to have to *do* anything to my food. 

Guys I’m just tired. 

So I bought another rotisserie chicken. 

But also I like to make life difficult for myself so instead of just eating the chicken here I am, turning it into this White Chicken Chili because it’s 55 degrees and that’s cold here and ok, I *maybe* ate the drumsticks, but everyone else still needs to eat dinner. And so, chicken soup, ramped up. 

White Chicken Chili was not something I was ever familiar with growing up. Chili came in two variations. The ground beef-and-bean classic was my dad’s post-divorce dinner of choice for us kids–cheap, easy, and kind of hard to screw up too badly. Or, the Arizona kid that I am, it was chunks of tender braised beef in a deep chili gravy wrapped up in a tortilla served at every restaurant on every corner. 

Here’s the fun thing about kids though, neither of mine eat either of those variations. (Kids are so fun you guys.) And so we turn to this White Chicken Chili. Quick enough to throw together during the week, or stir it together on a weekend for dinner on both Sunday and Tuesday night–it makes a lot. (Or freeze half of it for down the road.) It’s mild enough for me to pass it off to the kids as, “uh, it’s just chicken soup.” Because let’s be real, I don’t really see White Chicken Chili as a true chili, but when you have hearty but not heavy soup that’s easy to throw together plus a smidgen of spice and all the toppings? Who cares what we are calling it. Just pass the hot sauce, please.

Summer, I’m ready for you, but I’ll make do with a pot of this warmth on these early spring nights. The tiniest kick of heat as a reminder of warmer days to come is ok with me for now.

The post Rotisserie Redux: White Chicken Chili appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.

Weekend breakfasts? Breakfast carbs. My husband um, doesn’t eat eggs (why???), so I default to a pancake/muffin/waffle situation because who doesn’t like those things? Ok actually I don’t but no one asked me what I wanted for breakfast because I was the one shouting, “Hey what do you guys want for breakfast?” And more often than not, the answer to that question is waffles.

Here is a fun story about waffle irons. 

When my husband and I moved in together, we ended up with two waffle irons. His was a newer model, so I ended up donating mine. Turns out, his waffle iron was complete crap and turned out nothing but soggy-floppy-gridlike waffle impersonators. And so the waffle iron got tucked away on the shelf, forgotten next to his slow cooker that was missing a lid, but which he refused to get rid of because “it was perfect for mini meatballs.” (Note: he has never once in our many years together made me mini meatballs.) 

When we got married, I jumped at the opportunity to register for a waffle iron because I was tired of having to get dressed to out to breakfast to get waffles. (I prefer a Sunday morning in my robe, please and thank you.) When I asked him, the waffle connoisseur, if he wanted a regular or Belgium waffle iron, his very articulate response was, “I don’t know? Regular?” And so then I registered for one and we got it and it worked great and yayyy so many more waffles.

Except this regular waffle iron only makes one waffle at a time. Do you know how annoying it is to make one waffle at a time? (It’s really annoying.) So for Christmas, I asked for a four-slice waffle maker, and now I stand there making waffles for less than half the time it took me before.

If you’re wondering what motherhood is, it’s asking for a four-slice waffle maker for Christmas, when you don’t even like waffles.

Now that we’ve got the hardware out of the way, let’s talk about the software.

Please do not put pancake batter in your waffle iron. Like, for real please don’t do that. Pancakes are pillowy soft cakes, gently labeled out and coddled in a pan. Waffles may share the same tender middles, but sport crisp-edges thanks to more fat in the batter, and then being encased in a hot grid of metal to cook.

The recipe I use practically every time I make waffles is based off of a recipe from a restaurant in Tennessee that I’ve never been to, but hey, that’s the internet for you. I could not resist a waffle titled “Aretha Frankenstein’s Waffles of Insane Greatness,” and neither should you.

Perhaps it is blasphemous to adapt a recipe already deemed to be insanely great, but well, here we are. The original recipe calls for a good amount of cornstarch in the batter, which seems funny, but it’s gluten free characteristics yield a more tender waffle. In my version, gluten free oat flour stands in for the cornstarch, bumping up both flavor and nutrition. No oat flour in your cupboard? Grind rolled oats in your food processor until you reach a flour-like consistency. (Or if wrangling two appliances before 9 AM is not your jam, just sub in the cornstarch you likely already have in your cabinet.)

And the whole wheat pastry flour? You certainly can use regular whole wheat flour, or even white whole wheat flour. Your results will be a touch heartier and more toothsome, but it will work. But if you’ve ever dismayed in the often stodgy results baking with whole wheat flour can result in, I highly suggest you pick up a bag of whole wheat pastry flour. Check the natural foods aisle or even the bulk bins.

Now let’s talk about the matter of the short 20 minute rest required before cooking. While it seems like an inconvenience, it allows the flour to absorb the liquid and gives your waffle an overall better texture. It also allows me to drink my coffee and eat my own breakfast, because um, I am probably not going to eat any of these waffles.

But you? Get down with your waffle self. Slather with butter and maple syrup (the real stuff, please), or clouds of whipped cream or almond butter or your favorite jelly/jam/marmalade or throw caution to the wind and go for it all. Or, my kids’ preference–with fresh berries and a dusting of powdered sugar. 

They don’t even ask for the syrup.

The post Really Great Multi-Grain Waffles appeared first on Making it with Meleyna.