Creamy Vegetable Spread
Every so often there comes along an easy, healthy, delicious recipe that becomes an instant household classic. A few weeks ago, I sampled a recipe for Creamy Vegetable Spread from the November 2007 issue of Everyday Food Magazine from Martha Stewart that I had that gut feeling about.
“We will make this forever!” I declared.
We’ve long been hooked on store bought herb & vegetable cream cheese. A staple lunch for me during the week has been a toasted bagel spread with cream cheese, topped with avocado & tomato.
This homemade version keeps well in the fridge for about 5 days, so it can be prepared on Sunday night, and gobbled up throughout the week. Using fresh veggies makes for a hearty, crunchy bagel topper with fewer preservatives and sodium than the store bought type. It’s also a good way to sneak in a serving of vegetables, and is quick, easy, and suitable for eager kitchen helpers to get involved in making.
Creamy Vegetable Spread
1 package (8 ounces) reduced-fat cream cheese (note from Robin: we use soft goat cheese instead of cream cheese since we are dairy intolerant)
1 medium carrot, grated or finely chopped
1 red bell pepper (ribs & seeds removed), finely chopped
1 scallion, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Coarse salt and ground pepper to taste
Bagels, split & toasted, for serving
In a medium bowl, stir together cream cheese, carrot, bell pepper, scallion, and parsley; season with salt and pepper. Spread bagel halves with vegetable spread, and serve. (Store remaining spread in airtight container.)
Makes 2 cups
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Ds’s staple is our adapted version of “Almost Cheeseburger”
It’s ground beef with onion soup mix and cheese that’s mixed up on the stove top. Then use corn chips to dip into the mix.
It’s great since you can use your fingers and there is the great crunching noises!
Course, if your kids were open, you can add veggies like peppers or zuchinni!
(My ds is on the veggie police patrol and refuses anything suspicious looking as it contaminates the whole meal!)
ooohhhhh.. this is a great one.
We’ve had more trouble with narrowing tastes; not with veggies and fruits but with herbs and spices. We’re pushing the blandness boundary!
This spreadable looks great and I’m chomping at the bit to try it – thank you.
What I would like to see is one of those parent-style magazine thingies where they give you a shopping list and a week of easy-ish meals or meals that can be prepared in advance. With ONE big difference. Those articles are always for families of two adults, a couple of teens, and a few little kiddos – the recipes all feed a family of ten, I swear.
We are three. Mum, Dad and three year old. Recipes for ten aren’t always reducible!
Please, Please, help me plan.
I like this recipe… we will definitely try it. One of the staples in our house is the wrap. My 4 year old won’t eat a sandwich, but put the filling in a wrap, and she loves it. One of my favourites is canned salmon, moistened with yogurt spread in a wrap. Yummy goodness! Our only challenge is finding wraps that actually contain fibre. Once I started paying attention, many of the wraps have very little, if any fibre. It just takes a bit longer at the grocery store to find one.
Another Robin, check out http://www.savingdinner.com It is a meal planning site that I use. There are a bunch of different meal plans, including regular, low carb, vegetarian, dairy-free, etc. Each week, you get emailed a weekly plan, including recipes and itemized shopping list. Then you print out the recipes and list. You can download servings for 2 or 4/6 (depending on the meal plan).
It works well for me, as I am planning-challenged. It hasn’t worked for other people I know who have tried it, so check it out and do one of the one-week-free menus and see if it works for you.
Emily@We do that one too, with pork and goat cheese. Our daughter L-O-V-E-S it and we generally get away with finely chopped zucchini, olives and sometimes a red pepper or two. I hear ya about the veggie patrol.
Karen@my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Another Robin@I am totally with you on this one! Our tiny family really struggles to come up with recipes that don’t feed 100. Leftovers are problematic around here. Christa and I are talking about how we can lend a hand right now. Check back with us next Wednesday (we always do food on Wed) and we’ll have something new for you.
Stacey@Wraps rock! Our daughter loves burritos especially. We can only eat the rice tortillas from Edible Island. So, I hadn’t thought about the fiber. What kind do you guys eat? Thanks too for the savingdinner.com link. I’m definitely going to have to check that one out as I am dinner deficient most evenings.
Stacey, try Wonder Wrapz. They are available Superstore. They are whole wheat and smaller than some other wraps. I also really like the Casa Mendosa w/w wraps available at Superstore and Thrifty’s. They are large wraps though.
Our biggest food challenge is that I am mostly a Vegan Raw Foodist and my husband is not. This means I am continually making two separate dinners every night which is a pain in the butthole. Everything is Vegan, whether it’s raw or not, but the hardest part of any dinner is not the actual making of it, it’s coming up with fresh fun inspiring meal ideas that make EVERYONE happy. SO our meals are generally 50% raw and 50% cooked. I think I could write a cookbook called “half cooked” with all the strange meals I’ve come up with!
Robin, we are recent transplants from Vancouver and I am finding it hard to get some of the stuff I totally took for granted, like wraps. I haven’t yet found the small, whole wheat Que Pasa wraps that I used to get. So we have been trying different ones. The ones in the fridge right now are Olafson’s Salsa and Black Bean, which are good for fibre, but only because of the beans, I think, as they are not whole grain.
Shawna, thanks for the tip on the small size wraps, I will check for them this afternoon!
oh reesh! I am with you! I dont’ eat meat, ds can’t have gluten and doesn’t like veg, dh can’t have nuts or wheat… it’s so hard to find food that we can all eat and like!
We do 3 different dinners… soon to be 4 with baby starting foods. Enough to make your head spin.
I use recipezaar.com to help with our specialized food needs
Wow, lots of super ideas!
Robin – are the rice wraps from Edible gluten free or just wheat free? I’m getting excited at the possibility of having found a wrap we can eat – my kids don’t like the corn tortillas.
The fave meal at our house is a “snacky lunch”. Usually we have this if the grownups are eating later or going out etc. It consists of whatever snacky things are around – cheese, rice crackers, fruit, yogurt, finger sandwiches, veggies, dips of course (the only way the veggies will go down at my house is if there is something to dip it in – we LOVE Simply Natural Organic Honey Mustard Dressing). They love picking and choosing from a smorgasbord of snacks.
I’ll have to check out recipezaar as we also have some specialized food needs at our house. Thanks for the tips.
Marieke, the wraps are gluten free (brown rice) made by Food For Life and you can find them in the frozen section at Edible Island. They are yummy. But, I recommend steaming them (we do it in a bamboo steamer) to make them really soft and pliable. Otherwise, they are really crumbly.
We LOVE snacky lunch. They are definitely a fave of ours too.
I feel for you Emily and Reesh. When one of us developed an allergy for food, the rule was we all gave it up. But, we’re all meat eaters of various kinds. So, other than having to cook no-wheat, no-dairy, no-soy, it’s a piece of cake around here:)
Thank you all, especially Stacy, for the good tips; I’m off to look at that website now.
Enjoy the sun!
This week I made this spread using a tub of spreadable cream cheese, as it was what I had on hand, and I just wanted to note- definitely use a package (wrapped up like a brick) of cream cheese in this recipe- with the spreadable type the result is a little runny
Hi Christa
I need to find a place on the North Shore that sells a variety of Dairy-free cheeses. My daughter was just diagnosed with a dairy allergy and we are trying hard to cut it out of her diet.
Any suggestions?
Dee