day 50: vegan colcannon
The last couple of days have been so beautiful here that it’s tough to drag my butt to the gym. Especially on leg day, like today. Especially when my arch-nemesis is at the gym doing chin-ups like an soldier and making me feel weak. But I did manage my workout (although I might have gone a bit easy on the HIIT– I only did 10 intervals).
My weightlifting yesterday and today was pretty consistent with last week. Next week, though, I’m going to start increasing my weights again, decreasing my reps, and adding on another set. Basically I’ll be doing about 4 or 5 sets of 4 to 6 reps. I could really use a spotter, if anyone’s interested 
I decided to make colcannon for dinner tonight since Matt and I have other stuff going on tomorrow night. And, ya know, I thought heck I might as well has yet another serving of cabbage today.
Umm… why isn’t cabbage in mashed potatoes all the time? I’ve never made this dish before, but it was phenomenal! I even veganized it by swapping butter for heart healthy olive oil and milk or cream for some starchy water that I boiled the potatoes in. If you haven’t made plans for your St. Patrick’s day dinner you might want to think of adding colcannon to the mix:
Vegan Colcannon
Ingredients:
- 4 starchy potatoes, peeled & chopped
- 1/4 head of red cabbage
- 2 leeks, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- salt and pepper
- olive oil
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400F
Boil the potatoes until tender and drain, but reserve some of the water they were boiled in. Mash the potatoes, adding about 2 tbsp olive oil and enough of the starchy water to get the desired consistency. Add nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste.
In a separate pot blanch the cabbage in boiling water until just tender. Rinse in cold water, drain, and transfer to a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste. Put under the broiler in the oven until the cabbage begins to crisp, stirring occasionally. Add to the potatoes.
Meanwhile, sautee the leeks and garlic in a separate pan with about a tbsp of olive oil until tender. Add to the potatoes.
Mix everything together, and voila!
That’s chicken tikka on the side there. Not exactly Irish, but what the heck. There are Indian people in Ireland too I suppose.
Tonight I was a bit ambitious in the kitchen. I baked some bread too! That’s 2 different type of bread in 3 days. Not too shabby. None of which I can eat, of course, because of my cleansing diet but I’ll probably give this bread away. This is another recipe from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Pain a L’Ancienne. If you don’t know what that is (and I didn’t) it’s basically french bread but instead of proofing at room temperature you proof it in the fridge.
The dough was really soft like a ciabatta dough, but I like working with this type of rustic dough. I think they turned out really good!
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Mmm…I like the sound of colcannon!! How unique and creative. I’ll bet the cabbage adds a nice lil’ crunch too. Yumm!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Mmmm homemade bread. I’ve never tried to make my own, but yours looks great! Happy St. Patty’s!!
Mmm I’ve never heard of that type of potatoes before, they look wonderful and have added veggie health!
Mmm that vegan colcannon is unbelievable- what a great great idea! I’m going to definitely add cabbage to my potatoes. Color alone is beautiful.
And did you really make that bread? It’s bakery beautiful!
I love the color of the colcannon (which I’ve never even hear of before). ANd the bread looks straight out of a bakery. Serve that warm along side some olive oil and I’m in carb-heaven.
You should skip the gym if it’s pretty outside! A good run or walk in the sunshine would do too, right!?
heavy lifting, nice job girl!!! I love to switch it up from time to time, some days heavier, some days lighter…keep tricking your body thats what its all about!
Colcannon sounds good even though I’ve never had cabbage in my potatoes I always like a good mash.
Haha…no shame in mixing two foods like that if they both look so tasty! I’ve never made Colcanon…yours looks great!
Mmmm. Never tried mixing cabbage into mashed potatoes, but it sounds so delicious, I’ll love to try it with sweet potatoes!
That bread did turn out wonderful! It looks like it should be in a fancy bakery!
Oooh, way to go on the bread! Looks awesome.
I can almost smell that bread it looks so good!