Announcing Meatless Monday from A – Z + Spinach Enchiladas {Recipe}

by Heather Blackmon on July 30, 2012 · 39 comments

I am so excited to share a fun new feature here on Better With Veggies, which I completely spoiled in the title of this post – Meatless Mondays from A – Z! I guess I’m not as good with surprises. :)

What is Meatless Monday from A – Z?

I had this idea a few weeks ago while eating out at a restaurant with Kirk. My meal had caper berries and I LOVE those, but I realized I haven’t ever cooked with them at home. Why not? Thinking about it, I realized I tend to cook with a lot of the same ingredients. It’s my own comfort zone. Well, I want to change that!

I love challenges as a way to help motivate me to step out of my comfort zone, so what about a cooking challenge?! As I brainstormed challenge ideas for myself, I thought it would be fun to go through the alphabet, building a recipe around an ingredient with the letter of the alphabet I was on. For example, starting with A – I could build a recipe around “apples”. Make sense?

As the idea evolved, I decided I might not be the only one who would enjoy the challenge – so I’m opening the up to everyone as a weekly link-up?! Since this blog is already built around a plant-based diet, we’re going to borrow the concept of Meatless Monday and start to show how many AWESOME meals can be created without meat!

<div align="center"><a href="http://betterwithveggies.com/" title="Better With Veggies" target="_blank"><img src="http://betterwithveggies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/MMAZ-August.jpg" alt="Better With Veggies" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

As we get started, my goal is to make this easy for you to join the fun! With that in mind, I’m going to share the ingredients a month at a time:

August 6: Artichoke
August 13 Beets
August 20: Caperberries
August 27: Dates

So put on your thinking caps and start brainstorming meatless meals with artichokes for next week!! I’m really excited about getting to see what you might come up with! So whether you typically eat a vegetarian, vegan, or omnivore diet – I hope you’ll join so I hope you’ll join me with sharing your meatless artichoke recipe next week! I’ll figure out how to share the image code and have the link party code by then, don’t worry! :)

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Since we’re talking about recipes, I thought it would be fun to share a easy & delicious recipe that Kirk created Friday night for us. Our plan was to use up what we had in the house, although we did pick up some tortillas before getting started. The result was amazing! Originally, Kirk intended to use the soy crumbles inside the enchiladas, but the mistake turned into a good thing as we tasted the result. I love when that happens. :)

Spinach Enchiladas

by Heather Blackmon

Keywords: saute bake entree vegan vegetarian Mexican

Ingredients (serves 2-3)

1 tablespoon safflower oil
2 cups spinach
1/2 onion, diced
1 teaspoon olive oil
cooking spray
6 corn tortillas
15oz can red enchilada sauce
1 cup non-dairy mozzerella shreds (Daiya)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat safflower oil in saute pan over medium heat until warm. Add spinach and stir until wilted. Transfer spinach to bowl and set aside.

Add olive oil & onions to pan and saute until translucent. Transfer to small bowl (not the same as spinach) and set aside.

Coat pan with cooking spray. Add corn tortilla to pan and allow to cook for 15 seconds, flip for another 15 seconds. Set aside. Repeat for remaining 5 tortillas.

Coat 12 x 8 casserole dish with cooking spray. Pour 1/3 can red enchilada sauce into bottom of dish and spread evenly.

In each prepared tortilla, add about 2 tablespoons spinach, 1 tablespoon onion, 1 tablespoon cheese. Roll to form tube and put seam-down in casserole dish. Repeat to create 6 enchiladas total.

Spread another 1/3 of red enchilada sauce over top of prepared enchiladas. Reserve remainder of sauce for another use.

Sprinkle soy crumbles & remaining cheese evenly over top of sauce.

Bake enchiladas for 15-20 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.

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Questions for you:

What do you think about Meatless Mondays from A-Z? Do you plan to join the fun?!
I’ve been on a Mexican kick this past week – any trends in your food like that recently?

Tagged as: august, link party, meatless monday, spinach enchiladas