I promised to share more of our easy veggie bowls... so here's another!

Oh how I love cooked onions.  I like them fried.  I like them caramelized.  I like them sauteed.  Oh, the sweet sweet yum!

Ahem... so I put them into a veggie bowl...

Am I the only one who gets all misty-eyed over veggies?  And not just because I was cutting onions?
Anyway.  Back to the bowl.  We had to blanch a few bags of green beans so as the onions cooked, Jemma and I snipped the ends (her term for cutting off the stems).

I really think she helps me cook just so she can sneak in extra tastes.

Once the were clean and snipped, I plunged them into boiling water until they were bright green, then put them in cold water.
I wanted to include a protein, so I grabbed a bag of beans I had pre-cooked and frozen from the freezer.  To defrost them, I just poured the boiling green bean water over the beans in the strainer.  Just as easy as canned, but cooked in bone broth!

I don't even know what greens we used.  Sorry.  But, I mixed them with the beans.

A week or so ago I posted about my love of bowls.  No, not the dish, the meal.  Although I do like a pretty bowl to eat a tasty bowl out of.

Anyway, this week I am sharing some bowls made recently.  The first is root-veggie heavy, as I was trying to use up the late spring veggies before the summer veggies started rolling in.

I really just make the veggie bowls to use up whatever I have lying around.  On this day, it was red onions, kohlrabi, and parsnips.
 I tossed them with olive oil and salt, then roasted them.
While they were roasting, I cleaned and cut up some collard greens.  I also cooked a few cups of pearl couscous in chicken broth to have for the week.  At the same time, this was going on behind me.

Yeah... I caught you!

Once I was done admiring the cuteness, I mixed the collards with the hot roasted veggies and hot couscous.  They wilted the collards nicely without rendering them mushy.
Tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette (I promise to share the recipe soon... I call it magic sauce because Jemma and Juliet (and John!) gobble up anything I put it on!), it was perfect.

See?  Easy.
John added in some leftover pork because he felt like having a heartier dish.  It was great both ways!

What do you like to include in your bowls?

I was always a huge fan of salads.  One of the things my roommate in my college apartment said she missed when I moved out was the little containers of salad ingredients waiting the the fridge, ready to go.  (After we would go food shopping, I used to clean and slice up all the veggies so that we could make a salad quickly, any time we wanted).  As time has passed, though, the salads have evolved.

It started when I added grains in.  Leftover couscous?  Throw it in.  Extra quinoa?  Yes, please!  Then, when I started dating John, I would add in the leftover hummus or baba ganoush that was in the fridge.  Over time, it became more about the add-ins than the actual salad part.  When there were no leafy greens (the horror!), I would still make it, but I was at a loss as to what to call it.

Does a salad with no leafy greens qualify as a salad?  It's one of life's big questions, I know.

So, I called it a grain salad.  Except, sometimes there were no grains.  A veggie salad, then?  I guess, but that didn't really capture it either.  I started just calling them bowls.  It was easier.  I've tweaked them over time, but the premise is the same.  Take grains, veggies, and a protein, mix them together, and top them with a yummy sauce/dressing.

It gets crazier.  (Can bowls of food be crazy?)  I started having them for BREAKFAST.  Leftover grains, nuts, and fruit.  Usually topped with maple syrup because everything is better with maple syrup.

Turns out, I didn't invent these!   I know!  Crazy, right?  Apparently they are called "buddha bowls" or "glory bowls."  Somehow I have spent a decade living under a rock and never knew this.  I still just call them bowls, and they are delish.

Some recent bowls:
Root Veggie Bowl
Green Bean and Sauteed Onion Bowl


I'll be sharing some of my recent bowl recipes in the upcoming posts.  What are your favorite combos?