Not gonna lie, for a Monday today was pretty lovely: 80+ degrees here in Manhattan, had my last class of the semester (bye bye chemistry lecture!) and I even wore a cute dress! I’d say that’s a pretty great start to my birthday week.
I’ve been in a total foodie rut lately partially due to laziness, partially due to shear busy-ness. I tend to make the same 2 dishes all week long- sautéed kale + chickpeas or matzoh brie, and end up getting all my other meals from nearby eateries. While I feel lucky to have a plethora of relatively healthy options super close to my apartment and where I work, it’s expensive and cooking for myself is always healthier since I know exactly what’s in it.
My biggest downfall is being prepared with easy to make meals and snacks. After a long day of school/work or a workout I’m pretty impatient and don’t want to wait a long time for food. I decided to dig for some new, easy recipes to try out this week in addition to some old favorites.
First up was this vegan quesadilla! I used to love making quesadillas with cheese and turkey or chicken and miss this easy go to now that I don’t really eat dairy. This rendition obviously doesn’t have the gooey quality of a typical quesadilla, but still packs some flavor, is filling and pretty quick to put together.
Vegan “Quesadilla” with Black Beans and Sweet Potatoes
(side note: I’m totally not a food blogger. Dark, NYC apartments don’t make for such great food pics…)
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup of black beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 sweet potato
- 2 torillas (I used Ezekial’s corn tortillas)
- a few shakes of cumin
- a few shakes of salt
- salsa for dipping
- guacamole (or in my case TJ’s guacahummus) for dipping
- Mash up the black beans or puree them in a food processor and put into a bowl. Add a tiny bit of water for moisture.
- Bake the sweet potato by puncturing a few holes in it with a fork and microwaving it for 5+ minutes. If you’re more patient you can always bake it in the oven too!
- Scoop out the inside of the sweet potato and add to the bowl with the black beans. I ended up using roughly 3/4 of the sweet potato, but how much you use depends on the size of the potato.
- Mix sweet potato and black beans together. I added some salsa here for moisture and cumin for flavor.
- Place a tortilla on a frying pan on the stove and spread the mixture on top of the tortilla. Place other tortilla wrap on top and heat for 3-5 minutes on medium– enough to heat up the whole quesadilla
- Flip over and cook for another few minutes
- Cut into smaller pieces and enjoy dipped in salsa or guacamole.
My tortillas were pretty tiny so I ended up making one quesadilla and another “quesadita”. I think next time I make this dish I’ll add a little bit of daiya dairy free cheese, but as is it was really tasty and had the same warm comforting qualities of a typical quesadilla.
Time to quit procrastinating and get back to some studying….
Leave a Reply