06 August, 2010

Two Weeks Worth of Pictures

And that’s not even all of them. The internet was down for a while and my lappy wasn’t reading my card to upload the pictures. If you’re curious about each picture just hover over it for a little bit of text (mainly because I’m lazy). Any relevant links can be found below their respective pictures.This is Sam. He's handsome. This is Neil. Also handsome. This is an avocado pit I'm trying to grow. It may or may not work.  This is the pizza we made with the last of the naked burrito filling and some Daiya cheese. It was super delicious. This is the carrot cake from Vegan With A Vengance that I made for my friend Sha on her birthday. This is Sam after he got scared by Mr. Crow. Mr. Crow is a scary guy. This is lime chili Tofu from Vegan Yum Yum. The "dry frying" method is my new favorite way to make tofu. DO IT. This is also carrots and savoy cabbage, recognize. Home made gluten free peach pie! OMG. YUM!http://www.joyofbaking.com/PeachPie.html

http://cupcakepunk.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/perfect-vegan-gluten-free-pie-crust/ 

Spoils from the farm share: peaches and maribelle plums as well as some tomatoes. My fridge after putting away all the lovely stuff from the farmshare! LOOK AT ALL THAT CORN! a lonely bag of onions. All the suppilies to get ready for my first canning adventure. maribelle plum conserve see, I told you so. the makings of tomato sauce. We made 3 whole jars of it! Veggies ready for roasing for the pasta primavera recipe that I forgot to take a picture of but was the best ever.http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/pasta-primavera-recipe/index.html 

my sage and basil plants my million hearts plant my jade plant my pineapple top that is finally showing signs of life the most recent picture of me.summer squash soup. completely Mr. Crow's idea. We switched the squash type in the recipe and added 2 small red skinned potatoes for body.http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=11079.0

25 July, 2010

Naked Burritos!

Ask your children to leave the room because these burritos gots no clothes!

NAKED OLE!

If you dumped out a Chipotle burrito like a burlap sack this is what you’d get a bowl of. . . except my rice is better.

The topping is essentially the same as the taco-tater recipe (plus beans) but the rice is what makes this meal truly great. I shall pass it on to you because I feel a need to share it. This recipe is supped to make four servings but I don’t know who could eat that much rice at once. Really this makes 6-8 servings in my opinion. . .maybe even more.

Coconut Herb Rice

2T olive oil
2 3/4c jasmine or basmati rice
3c coconut milk
1t salt
1 bay leaf
2T cilantro, minced
2T mint, minced
2 green chilies, seeded and minced
the juice of 1-3 fresh limes (I like mine REALLY limey)

1. soak the rice in water for 1 hour. drain and rinse.

2. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large pot. Add the rice and sauté until translucent.

3. Add the coconut milk, salt, and bay leaf and cook, stirring occasionally, until all the liquid has absorbed.

4. Put a tight-fitting lid on the pot, turn the heat to its lowest setting and cook for 10 more minutes.

5. pull out the bay leaf and gently fold in the herbs and lime juice.

 

This rice is SUPER good. So good, in fact that I’m using it for naked burritos today AND I’m making a tofu stir fry with peanut sauce to have on it later this week! YEAY!

Thoroughly Satisfying

Sunday morning. The heat is finally broken after a fabulous rain. The sun is out and the world feels  a little more peaceful up here in the tree house.

The big question was what to have for breakfast.

Mr. Crow ate some eggs on toast about 2 hours ago and I was still left without a clue.

I contemplated a smoothie, my usual choice, but the blender was still in need of washing so I nixed that right off.

Do I have waffles? No, I really want something fresh.

Fruit on waffles? No, I don’t really want any grain right now.

What to do, what to do. . .

Then, suddenly, it came to me! I’d seen a recipe for a salad recently that sounded too good to pass up. I checked the clock, because, for some reason, I didn’t want to eat this too early.

How totally fresh does this look!?

Ho-kay! Now that you’re tempted, here’s the recipe:

1 avocado, sliced
6 strawberries, sliced
2t lemon juice
2t balsamic vinegar
black pepper

1. Put the strawberries and avocado in a bowl.
2. Drizzle the vinegar and lemon juice over everything.
3. Toss gently.
4. Sprinkle fresh black pepper over it.

Shove this in in your face right now for it is the BEST THING EVAAAARRRRRR!

24 July, 2010

Nearly Raw Tahini Noodles from Vegan Yum Yum

As the title states, this is a picture of the Nearly Raw Tahini Noodles from Vegan Yum Yum. If you haven’t picked up this cook book yet, I highly recommend that you do with haste! These recipes can stand up to the most biased of omnivorous palettes. For instance, this cool, creamy dish was really a delight on one of the hottest days of the year. The only heat applied was to boil the noodles and I didn’t have to stand there and roast the whole time, thank goodness. Also, I used udon noodles instead of fettuccini or whatever the recipe calls for so they only took 3 minutes to cook instead of the usual 8-10. I made one other change as well, instead of the regular green cabbage this recipe calls for, I used a small nappa cabbage which I like much better for its delicate texture and frizzy appearance. This would be a great dish to take to a picnic or potluck as it doesn’t have anything that is overly temperature sensitive and it’s meant to be served cool or at room temp. I can hardly wait to have it for lunch tomorrow!

The Weekly Catch-Up

Last night I made what I consider kind of boring. We'll keep this one small.an “all American” style meal. Those are Gardien BBQ skewers, riced potatoes and the corn from the CSA. It was super-filling and I felt kind of hyper after eating all of those carbs in one go but Mr. Crow really seemed to like it. mmmm.

 

So, I’m sure you saw all that lovely squash we got. I wasn’t really sure quite what to do with it all since we never really ate a whole lot of it growing up that wasn’t breaded and fried. This is what I came up with:

I made some “sausage” from a package of tempeh I had in the fridge (see Vegan With a Vengeance for the recipe), then I took a vegetable peeler and sliced a yellow squash and a zucchini into ribbons and sautéed it over very high heat just until it was cooked a little. I poured arribiata sauce over all of it an called it dinner! Another winner with Mr. Crow but I kept biting my lip (TMJ) so I didn’t enjoy myself very much.

A squash application that I REALLY really liked was my zucchini bread except I used used yellow squashes instead of zucchini.(Is that right? “squashes”? “Squash” is a funny word. squash squash squash) I also used Ener-G instead of eggs and I left out the nuts because Mr. Crow is not a fan.

I couldn't even manage a picture of the full loaf before I started eating it. . .

. . . let alone a full slice!

I forgot to take a picture of today’s haul because I was preoccupied with getting the periphery grocery shopping and cleaning done but I’ll take pictures as I go along instead so don’t feel deprived, okay!

18 July, 2010

The Last Of The Swiss Chard Soup

Sorry about not posting this sooner but I was out of town Saturday and the internet was down Sunday. however, I’m sure you’ll be glad you were patient because this post has some Wonderful things in it.

I’ll start with the soup and work backward, okay?

So Saturday I was visiting my mom and she showed me her Volumetrics cook book. Inside, there was a picture of a swiss chard soup that looked SUPER-yummy. So I used a little imagination and recreated it this evening for dinner. You even get the recipe since I (kind of) made it up as I went along. This soup turned out hearty and totally satisfying. I thought the amount of spice was perfect but if you’re a spice-wimp feel free to leave it out.

ZUPPA!

Swiss Chard and Garbanzo Soup

1/2lb. pasta shapes (I used brown rice tubatini)
2-3T olive oil
1 small onion, minced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/4 - 1/2 red pepper flake
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
4 cups of vegetable broth
1T tomato paste
1T Braggs Liquid Aminos
1 bunch of swiss chard, stemmed and chopped
Nutritional yeast for sprinkling

1. Put a pot of water on to boil and cook the pasta according to the package directions.

2.  Meanwhile, heat the oil in your favorite soup pot. Add the onion and sauté for 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute. Add the garbanzos and red pepper flake and sauté for another 2 minutes.

3. Pour in the broth. Stir in the tomato paste and Braggs and simmer for 10 minutes.

4. Add the swiss chard and simmer for  more minutes.

5. Turn off the heat, add the pasta, and serve with a generous sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

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Yesterday, Mr. Crow picked up our CSA! Look what we got!

What will I make this week?!?

Nothing too exotic but I’ll see what I can do about that!

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Last Saturday I showed you a picture of my zephyrs. Today I show you a picture of what I did with them:

Boud and leap like a zeypher set free!

So, this is the Hurry-Up Alfredo from Vegan Yum Yum but I added about 1/2 a cup of sundried tomatoes to it. What a discovery! I tossed that with some whole wheat linguini and we topped it with some breaded and baked zephyr. This was super-excellent and a definite “keeper”.

11 July, 2010

Blueberry Muffin-Bread Thing

The hardest part was waiting until it was cool to cut it.

Well, I used up about 25% of my blueberries on this magnificent bread/muffin. I still have SO MANY left but I don’t mind, I might just make 2 of this sweet baby.

I found this recipe but I had to make a change because I ran out of Earth Balance. So, instead of EB I used canola oil and only 3 of the 4 ounces called for. If you’re going to go this route drizzle the oil in a little at a time while using a fork to mix/fluff/chop up the bigger crumbs of oil until the mixture looks like home made breadcrumbs. If it comes together before you add it all STOP! If you think it needs more, go for it. Just remember you’re going for breadcrumbs.

The recipe is really straightforward except for a few things for those of us here in America. A lot of the ingredients are given in weight, which is fine if you have a kitchen scale but the amount of berries it called for was a unit of measure I’d never heard of: the punnet. So, for those of you who may go on to try this recipe, a punnet of blueberries is 150 grams. YEAY!