I picked The Gluten-Free Vegan by Susan O’Brien as the cookbook of the week this week. More and more people are going gluten-free these days, and gluten has been in the news as causing all sorts of health problems. Even if you don’t have celiac disease, you may have a gluten intolerance and not realize it. Gluten is the protein found in wheat and is difficult for the body to digest. I challenge everyone to go gluten-free for a week and see how they feel. You’ll probably notice an increase in energy and things like brain fog and body aches going away. I will admit that I’m not 100% gluten-free, but I try to avoid it whenever possible.

I started out the week by making Spinach Tofu with Peanut Sauce. I served it over rice noodles. This was so simple and so good!

The word paella always conjures up images of Estelle Costanza yelling “what am I supposed to do with all this paella!” because the Seinfelds don’t want to go over for dinner. So I just couldn’t help but make this Vegetable Paella and walk around saying the same thing. I cheated a little here because I made a huge pot of rice at the beginning of the week and heating it up each night for each meal. I served the dish over raw spinach, and the heat ended up steaming it. You can do that with just about any leafy green, and it’s a good way to get greens into your meal.

Lately I’ve been picking a casserole to make at the beginning of the week so I can just heat it up on busy nights, and I’ve had a lot of busy nights lately. This week I made Spring Casserole, which is basically just a bunch of vegetables cooked together. Because I have a tendency to not measure my ingredients, I added too much broth to this dish. I also added some chickpeas because everything’s a little better with chickpeas.

These Veggie Stuffed Peppers were really delicious and since there are only two of us, we got two meals out of the dish.

I was intrigued by the Vegetable Ratatouille over Rice because it contained carrots, chickpeas and sweet potatoes, which all ingredients that aren’t traditional to ratatouille. This was pretty much just a large veggie stew, and it was really good. This is another dish that made several servings, so we were set for lunches for a few days.

Like what you're reading? Become a fan on Facebook!