French Bean Casserole
Serving Size : 6
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
2 medium Potatoes, peeled & chopped
1 Carrot, peeled & chopped
1 small Onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups water
5 ounces Tofu
1/3 cup Nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon Lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon Garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt (optional)
1 1/4 cups Brown rice, instant -- uncooked
20 ounce bag Green beans, Frozen French cut, thawed
4 1/2 ounce jarred or canned sliced Mushrooms, drained
3/4 cups water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Place potatoes, carrots and onions in a small saucepan with 1 1/2 cup water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and cook until tender - about 10 minutes.
Place tofu, yeast, lemon juice, garlic powder and cooked vegetables from step 1 and water in a blender until smooth and creamy. Add salt if desired.
Pour into a 3-quart casserole dish.
Add remaining ingredients. Mix well.
Bake for 45 minutes.
From "Your Good Health" newsletter and The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart (page 338)
recipe by Mary McDougall
Mary has used that carrot/potato sauce in a number of recipes, but I used to just substitute my own favorite nooch sauce instead. Today I'm finally using it. The veggies got cooked a little longer than written because we were watching a recording the finale of America's Got Talent and I didn't want to miss anything and waited until the commercial break to go turn the pot off. No problem, I'm sure.
and
I'm gonna miss you, Taylor!
Instead of 5 ounces of an unspecified type of tofu, I used half a block of Naysoya extra-firm, which comes out to about 7 ounces. I'll save the other half block for tomorrow's breakfast. A scramble will go nice on a cool and rainy morning like tomorrow's promises to be.
I skipped the optional salt. I'll probably put some on at the table, and knowing my husband, if the dish needs anything he'll use his sriracha sauce. Sometimes I regret the day I first bought that for him, because he got to the point where he doesn't taste anything first to see if it needs any seasoning, he just reaches for the bottle and starts squirting.
Luckily I have a box of instant rice around from the days our grocery store had no Success brown rice.
And for the mushrooms, I used a 4 ounce can of store brand no-salt added stems and pieces. Next time I make this I'll use a larger can, since over half the can was water, leaving only about a quarter cup of mushrooms.
The instructions didn't say to cover the casserole dish but I did. I felt that was the only way to assure the rice gets cooked, otherwise the water will evaporate and the rice will stay crunchy.
The final result:
Once again, a new recipe was a bit on the bland side to me, but my husband loved it just the way it was and didn't bother with the rooster sauce.
The recipe said it feeds 6, but we only got 4 servings out of it, and we were both hungry afterwards and had some fresh fruit. Maybe this made 6 side dishes, but this was listed as a main dish. We were both still hungry when bedtime rolled around.
My husband liked it enough to say he wouldn't mind if I made this again in the future, but next time I'm using 2 bags of regular cut green beans, not French cut, and twice the amount of mushrooms, perhaps a whole 8 ounce box of sliced ones. And a shake or 2 of some non-sodium seasoning, like one of the Mrs. Dash ones. It needed something in the spice department. I wound up putting salt on mine, then had 2 extra pounds on me on the scale in the morning, so clearly I can't do that again. There are many no-salt seasoning mixes out there so I'm sure one of them will do this meal justice next time.
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