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 →
Slow-dried and packed in oil, a sun-dried tomato is a fresh tomato's flavor turned all the way up — its water gone, its sweetness and acidity left behind and concentrated into something chewy, deeply savory, and almost sun-baked. A few slices do the work of a whole handful of fresh ones, and they hold their character through a long toss with pasta or a hot pan without ever going watery.
Here, it's sliced and tossed through cavatappi with white beans, kalamata olives, and sautéed mushrooms for the pasta salad in recipe N° 19, served alongside a plate of seared black bean patties. Concentrated tomato flavor in every bite, no simmering required.
See recipe N° 19 →
Raw cashews are the quiet backbone of a dairy-free kitchen — mild enough to disappear into whatever they're asked to be, with a fat content that behaves like cream when it's blended and like cheese when it's ground fine and dry. Pulsed with nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and a little salt, they turn into a golden, savory dust that melts into a hot dish the way real parmesan does — nutty, salty, and just sharp enough.
Here, it's ground into a snowy cashew parmesan and showered generously over the bubbling rotini, roasted vegetables, and marinara of recipe N° 20 straight out of the oven. One bowl of ground cashews, and suddenly the whole pan smells like a cheese counter.
See recipe N° 20 →
A good teriyaki sauce is just soy sauce, a sweetener, and a little patience — simmered down until it thickens into something glossy enough to cling to whatever it touches. Built on the stovetop with fresh ginger and garlic and finished with toasted sesame seeds and a scatter of chives, it turns from a thin, salty liquid into a deep, mahogany glaze in about ten minutes, no cornstarch required if you let it reduce.
Here, one pot of it does double duty in recipe N° 21 — brushed over seared sesame-oat burger patties until they go dark and lacquered, then tossed straight through a bowl of brown rice with charred brussels sprouts, broccoli, and mushrooms. One sauce, two dishes, the whole plate tied together.
See recipe N° 21 →
A raw red bell pepper is crisp and a little grassy. Roast it until the skin blackens and collapses, let it steam, and peel it away, and what's left is something else entirely — silky, slippery-soft strips with a deep, almost jammy sweetness and just a whisper of smoke. The jarred kind works in a pinch, but homemade peppers hold their shape and color better and skip the tinny brine, and a squeeze of fresh lemon keeps them bright for days in the fridge.
Here, a whole batch is roasted, peeled, and sliced into ribbons, then tossed with lemon and folded through red lentil rotini with slow-roasted Roma tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, and black olives for the pasta salad in recipe N° 22. Every forkful gets a little sweetness and a little char.
See recipe N° 22 →
N° 21
Hearty white bean and oat patties, crusted in toasted sesame seeds and pan-seared until deeply golden, get glazed in a glossy soy-maple teriyaki sauce built right on the stovetop with fresh ginger, garlic, and chives. Served alongside a big bowl of brown rice tossed with the same sauce and a tray of charred brussels sprouts, broccoli, mushrooms, and bell pepper — one pot of teriyaki, two dishes, a whole weeknight dinner.
N° 22
Whole Roma tomatoes slow-roasted until their skins blister and wrinkle, silky roasted red peppers brightened with lemon, and charred green pepper strips, all tossed through protein-packed red lentil rotini with sun-dried tomatoes, black olives, red onion, and a fistful of garden basil, then finished with a tangle of baby spinach. Alongside it, turmeric-gold chickpea patties flecked with fresh herbs and topped with sesame seeds bake four trays at a time — a big-batch dinner that covers the week.
N° 23
Dinner opens with a big bowl of chopped romaine, herb-dusted chickpeas roasted until they crackle, juicy tomato wedges, Kalamata olives, and ribbons of shaved onion, all tossed in a creamy, garlicky cashew dressing that clings to every leaf. Then comes the main event: a slow-simmered bolognese of savory plant-based crumbles, onion, red bell pepper, and crushed tomatoes, spooned over protein-packed red lentil rotini — a salad worth lingering over, and a pasta worth waiting for.
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.