Veggie Paella

Yesterday's spaghetti sauce met with approval; the Darling Devoted Husband was strangely proud of the spaghetti he boiled, and we both liked the sauce. Huzzah!

This morning I've put together a veggie paella that will hopefully be tasty despite its lack of meat (the perennial lament of the DDH. And I'm planning another meatless meal for tomorrow. THE WOE).

I boiled some chicken stock and set the brown rice to simmering (to make this vegetarian, just use vegetable stock). While that simmered, I chopped up a bunch of vegetables, tossing them with some olive oil in a saucepan:

In there are an onion, two shallots, a small zucchini, and a big fat sweet potato. As the rice neared completion, I added a teaspoon of turmeric, a half teaspoon thyme, three or four garlic cloves, and a small can of mushrooms. I then added the rice and what stock was left (it was almost but not quite done) and stirred it all together:

It cooked on low, covered, with occasional stirring, for about 8 minutes, while I chopped up some tomatoes. I tossed those in:
stirred it all up, and let it simmer a bit, covered. Tada! Paella:

I was going to put some shrimp in, but apparently we're out. That or chicken would be good in here, as would peas, artichoke hearts, maybe green beans. I suppose if you like bell peppers you could stick those in. Jalapeno peppers and sausage would probably also be a good combination.

This took awhile to chop all the vegetables and cook actual brown rice. Minute rice would make it go faster (though they remove some of the grain in order to make it quick-cooking, so brown minute rice is not as healthy as normal brown rice, if that's important to you), as would using frozen vegetables that were small (like peas) or chopped already (cut green beans) and/or canned tomatoes and other veggies. But it's not difficult, and it makes a good all-in-one meal. We'll get the official DDH opinion tonight. ^_^