A plant-based recipe journal from Chef Katie — vibrant dishes designed to eat the rainbow, savor slowly, and bring everyone you love around the same table.
I focus on food that heals — vibrant, plant-based recipes built from the full color spectrum of vegetables, fruits, and herbs, designed to nourish the body and the spirit.
Food should be savored slowly and shared often. It's the ultimate tool for building community — and the meal that took an afternoon to make is the one nobody forgets.
Based in Kansas City, I love plant-tweaking recipes from my travels — bringing international flavors home to a Kansas City kitchen without losing what makes them special.
The joy of making the food is just as vital as the act of eating it. I'll never apologize for a smudged page, a tasted sauce, or a kitchen that smells like someone actually cooked in it.
Extra-firm tofu is the quiet workhorse of a plant-based kitchen. Pressed dry and cubed, it barely has a flavor of its own — which is exactly the point. Its dense, porous texture is built to soak up whatever marinade it sits in, and a hot grill or pan turns that same blank canvas into something with real char and bite. Cheap, high-protein, and endlessly adaptable, it's the base we reach for whenever a dish needs something hearty to build around.
Here, it's cubed and marinated in a savory soy, garlic, and herb blend, then skewered and grilled alongside rainbow peppers and zucchini for recipe N° 17. The marinade caramelizes into a deeply charred, almost sticky crust while the inside stays tender — proof that tofu doesn't need to hide, it just needs the right marinade.
See recipe N° 17 →
There's no vegetable that says "summer's here" quite like sweet corn. Its natural sugars caramelize into something almost smoky the second it hits a hot grill, the kernels go from milky-sweet to deeply charred in minutes, and a single ear can go savory or sweet without ever feeling like a compromise. It's a vegetable and a starch in one, endlessly shareable, and it tastes like the best kind of backyard evening.
Here, it's grilled whole until charred and smoky, then shaved off the cob and put to work two ways — folded into the deeply golden, herb-flecked patties of recipe N° 15, and tossed through the brown rice and black bean salad served alongside them. One ear of corn, doing double duty on the same plate.
See recipe N° 15 →
N° 15
Grilled corn on the cob, charred until smoky and sweet, gets shaved off the cob two ways — folded into deeply golden, herb-flecked corn cakes pan-seared to a craggy crust, and tossed through a hearty brown rice and black bean salad with cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, shallot, and fresh cilantro and mint. Plated over peppery baby greens with ripe avocado wedges, it's a full rainbow of a summer dinner that comes together straight off the grill.
N° 16
One big tray of oil- and pepper-crisped chickpeas, put to work two ways. Half get crumbled into a long-simmered sauce of sweet carrot, celery, and onion soffritto and crushed tomatoes for a rustic, meaty rotini bolognese. The rest stay crisp and whole, tossed through massaged baby kale with toasted pecans and a creamy garlic dressing for a bright side salad — a full, plant-powered dinner from a single sheet pan of chickpeas.
N° 17
Extra-firm tofu cubes soak up a bright, herb-flecked marinade before hitting a hot grill until the edges char and crisp. Rainbow bell peppers and zucchini get skewered and grilled alongside until just tender, then everything is piled over peppery greens. Served with a hearty rotini pasta salad tossed with white beans, cherry tomatoes, olives, and arugula, it's an easy, colorful backyard dinner built entirely on the grill.
Every recipe here is written to be made for more than one. The lasagna feeds eight, the paella feeds six, the quinoa salad gets better on day two. That's not by accident — that's the point. Food is the excuse for a longer afternoon, a louder kitchen, and a table where nobody's in a hurry.
So pull a chair up. Bring someone with you. Stay a while.