Meatless Monday

Have you heard of Meatless Mondays?  I didn't until a few weeks ago.  According to Wikipedia (that site knows everything), Meatless Monday is an international campaign that encourages people to not eat meat on Mondays to improve their health and the health of the planet.  In this household,  we've been trying it for a few weeks now to improve our waistlines.  The boys didn't even know they were participants until tonight.  I got to say, so far so good. 

Tonight was Risotto Primavera from The Pioneer Woman.  Yes, THE Pioneer Woman. You know, the one all over the blog world, the food channels, and now in all the bookstores.  I've only been to her blog a couple of times now but if all her food is as great as this dish, I'll be back again.

OK, technically this isn't meatless since I used chicken stock, but hey this is pretty darn close and in my world "pretty darn close" is close enough.  Let me show you how to make it.  It is very simple.

Let's begin:

Dice up four cups of vegetables.  You can use any kind you like in any combination (more hidden vegetables just like my post yesterday).  This meal is great for veggies that need to be used up.  In my case I chopped up: 1 small red onion, 5 broccoli florettes,  3 whole carrots, 5 cauliflower, a handful of left over mushrooms, and 1 small yellow squash.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large pan and saute the veggies till soft, about 5 minutes. Remove them from the pan.

Heat the pan back up and add another tablespoon of butter and another tablespoon of olive oil.  Saute 1.5 cups of arborio rice.  Let the rice get nice and toasty for a minute or two.  Then add in 1.5 cups of white wine.  Nothing fancy, something cheap.  We still had wine in the the refrigerator from the holidays so IN IT WENT, adios old wine!  Stir, stir, stir.  Once all the rice has soaked up the wine, start adding chicken stock about 1/2 cup at a time.  Stir, stir, stir.  Once all the rice has soaked up the stock, add some more.  You'll do this until you exhausted yourself the chicken stock.  This step takes about 30-35 minutes.

Once the rice is done to your liking, add in 4 oz of goat cheese.  In my house, only 3.5 oz made it to the pan (yum) and 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese.

Dump the veggies back into the pan. Mix.  Serve.

Our meal was paired with a nice spring mix salad and big glass of milk.

Oh and the smurfs joined us for dinner tonight.

Give Meatless Mondays a try yourself and come back and tell me the great recipes you made.

Till next time: "La,la,la,la,la,la,la,la,la,la,la!"

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Because you all should have this song stuck in your head too :)