what to do with all those veggies?

First off, I would like to say that I am so excited, because I've fallen in love with a new apartment.  It is consuming all of my waking (and sleeping) thoughts.  Michael and I are going to look at it today, as he hasn't seen it yet...and everyone should cross their fingers for us that we decide to get it and are able to move into it in 2 weeks time.  Because it would be so awesome.  Even though the kitchen is rather small.  I don't know where on earth I would put things like this rad farmers market haul:

beets, tomatoes, potatoes, summer squash, purple peppers, spring onions, and cabbage

more tomatoes, including adorably colored little ones, new potatoes, more purple peppers, green peppers, white cucumbers, and a ginormous zucchini

There is barely enough space in our kitchen for it all.  That's our haul from Saturday...we spent $30.  Which isn't too bad, considering how many tomatoes and peppers we got.  I already started freezing some peppers (this new place, should we choose to get it [hope!], is only 2 blocks from our current apartment, so transporting food and frozen stuff won't be a problem, thankfully) so that we'll have plenty when it's after their season and they get all crazy expensive in the grocery store again.  

Anyway, you might wonder what we do with all these veggies during the weeks, that we have to buy so many every Saturday.  Well, like I said, we freeze some (cabbage, besides the peppers).  And we eat a lot of them (um, tomatoes) on sandwiches.  But sometimes it's nice to do something a bit fancier.

scalloped pofabutatoes

Michael loves potatoes.  And I love noochy cheeze sauces.  Other scalloped potato recipes we've tried have really fallen short of both our expectations, but I found this one at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen.  Anything that Susan stamps with her little girl's approval...yeah, we'll love it.  And this was certainly a hit.  We totally finished that whole pan in one night. 

soup?  in the summer?

Hey, guess what?  Soup is easy.  We ate this summer squash soup, also from fatfreevegan.com, along with the potatoes.  I made mine a little differently...leaving out the celery (didn't have any), adding some zucchini and more broth.  Then I stupidly added a bunch of cayenne to it (I honestly don't know what possessed me) and some garlic powder (which got a little pervasive).  Still, the soup was awesome.  It was so creamy...velvety, almost.  I never thought that summer squash would make a good soup, but there you go.  It does.

cheezy potatoes of awesomeness

You can seriously count on Susan to make a ridiculously fabulous, failproof recipe.  I don't think I've ever tried anything of hers that I didn't like.  The woman should write a cookbook.

But honestly, all I've really wanted to eat since July started is stuff like this:

raw, honest veggies

Michael and I both work a lot of evenings now, which means that one or both of us don't get home until after 9, which in turn means that we are tired.  One night I got off work at 11:30 to fine this lovely raw and fresh plate of awesomeness.  On top are zucchini shreds, something I've fallen in love with recently.  Super thinly sliced (you'll need a mandoline) raw zucchini and summer squash make a lovely little salad with a little olive oil, vinegar, and thinly sliced basil.  Don't get me wrong, those tomatoes were rad, too, but I am a tad bit obsessed with that salad for now.  

You can even see it here, blurred in the foreground:

another very late night dinner

You'll have to pardon the crappiness of this one...it was seriously like 2 in the morning when I took that photo.  But yeah, you see?  If I'd been taking photos of everything we eat recently, you'd be seeing it a lot more (but we've been doing reruns, like ruebens and such).  Anyway, this scramble was super tasty.  It had been awhile since we had one...but the real star of this meal was those potatoes.  Yeah, they're roasted, but we microwaved them first so they only took like 10 minutes to roast in the oven.  Smart, eh?  Anyway, they only have some seasoned salt, pepper, and paprika on them, but they are so, so good.  

Next up is yet another Michael dinner (he's been terribly helpful lately with me working evening shifts).

cabbage rolls!

Apparently, these were a pain in the ass to make because they have a lot of preparation, but all I had to do was enjoy them, so...  Anyway, they're stuffed with some sort of tempeh/tahini mixture and they were a totally rad use of a giant head of cabbage we had from another market haul.  So yummy!

fake meat - the ultimate in laziness

I ventured to the grocery store last week to pick up fruit and some veggies we can't get at the market, and got some sweet stuff on sale.  Like those fancypants carrots and fresh brussels sprouts, and uh...  some fake chicken breasts.  They have Gardein stuff in our Kroger now, which is highly exciting, but then also bittersweet, because it's madly expensive.  There was a dollar off coupon on this package I got (2 chicken patties in a Tuscan sauce) and I was mega tired, so I splurged the $4 on them.  And they're really good!  The texture is a little too meaty for us (checked and then rechecked the package after cutting into them...but they're vegan for sure), but the flavor was nice and the sauce they came in was seriously delicious.  It reminded me a little of a Lean Cuisine sauce...which for most of you probably sounds totally gross, but I lived off those things for about a year before I met Michael, so it was sort of a fond memory.  I mean...sort of.  Anyway, I also made the mustard sauce from Veganomicon (my favorite sauce, ever) to go with the steamed carrots and veggies.  All of it mixed together was pretty damned phenomenal.

openfaced sammies are sammiches too.

I'm going to finish up with a couple of lunches.  I've been trying to do hearty, but not weigh-me-down lunches recently, as Michael's been working doubles and then I go in to work in the evenings and need to be filled up without feeling like taking a nap afterwards.  I made this openfaced sammich twice this past week.  We had some leftover rye bread from ruebens.  Topped with some red pepper and green olive hummus that I'd made, fresh red tomatoes, and fresh basil, it hits the spot, fills me up, but leaves me ready to go for the rest of the day.  

more lunch options

I made this curried chickpea salad a couple weeks ago, and it was awesome.  I never ate it on bread, just like this, in big clumps, and I was happy as a clam about it.  I honestly don't remember what all is in there...chickpeas, onions, celery, carrots, vegenaise, leftover fake cheese that we'd made, lemon juice...and lots and lots and lots of curry powder.  And some cayenne, for a kick.  Paired with some fresh veggies, like this white cucumber (green on the inside!), it's terribly tasty.  Nom.

So don't forget to eat lunch.  And be creative with your veggies.  And...wish us luck on the apartment again!

it can't rain all the time...

But it certainly will if it's the fourth of July and you have plans for grilling.

cheating nature

Luckily, Michael and I have this lovely little electric grill (bequeathed to me by my parents) that works just fine in a pinch.  Which is good, because we had some major grill plans.

zucchini/summer squash/seitan kabobs

We'd gone to the farmers market that morning (absolutely no sign of rain at that point, mind you), and bought loads of veggies (see end of post for the haul).  I made a quick half batch of seitan and we kabobed (kabobbed?  can I make that a verb, please?) the hell outta some fresh squash and zucchini with it.  Michael is the official grillmaster because I have ladyhands and tend to get burned.  He probably gets burned too, but whines less about it afterwards.

beautiful spring onions

Hey, guess what?  Spring onions are totally rad when you grill them.  The only bad part is that we ate without knives and you can't really bite them at this point, so be ready to have an entire onion in your mouth for a bit.  Unless you care to use a knife, that is.  (wuss.) 

land of forgotten watermelon

We also grilled watermelon, but were too full afterwards to eat it.  FYI: fresh off the grill, it just tasted like hot watermelon.  

combofabulous

That all combined into this monster plate: steamed green beans with dill and lemon, new potato salad, kabobs, corn on the cob (just...corn), grilled onions, and a fresh white cucumber.  Thinking back, here's what's local from the market: beans, potatoes, squash, zucchini, corn, the onions, and the cucumber.  Not bad, eh?  It was all delicious and I just have to say that we do a pretty darned awesome holiday spread, even when it's just the two of us for dinner.

Oh, almost forgot!  Michael whipped up this lovely antipasta style salad for lunch earlier in the day.

my talented boy :)

Red and yellow tomatoes, yellow beets, white cucumber, green chili, artichokes, and basil with a nice balsamic vinaigrette drizzled on top.  All local except for the artichokes.

As for the market, here's what we got:

squash, zucchini, yellow beets, corn, jalepenos, hot green chilis, spring onions, rhubarb, red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green bell peppers, and white cucumbers.

All for $20 on the dot.  I felt a bit nervous about our abundance of tomatoes and peppers and such yesterday (plus was being a lazy bum on the sofa most of the day and didn't feel like cooking anything too involved)...so I asked my good friends of the PPK for suggestions on just what to do with all that veg.  The perfect reply came for...gazpacho!  Honestly, I've never really liked gazpacho (salsa soup, anyone?), but Michael loves it and I needed to use up stuff, so I made it. 

yellow gazpacho

And you know what?  It was awesome!  As a confirmed gazpacho hater, I must say that my gazpacho kicked ass.  So easy too...here's what I did:

Yellow Gazpacho That Is Better Than All Other Gazpachos

3 medium yellow tomatoes

1 medium red tomato

1/4 of a large white onion

1/2 green bell pepper

3 green chilis

1 small cucumber (mine was white)

3 cloves garlic

1/2 -1 tsp cumin (to taste, really)

about 1/2 cup water

2 tsp olive oil

3 or more Tbsp red wine vinegar

juice of 3 limes

salt to taste

Roughly chop your veggies (seed the peppers), put them in the blender with everything else, and blend it.  Yeah, that's it.  Refrigerate it if you want it cold (I did and it ruled).  For a nice chunky garnish (chunks are good, friends), dice up some more tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, cucumber, and a jalepeno, drizzle with lime juice, and add it to your soup.  Mine was mega spicy, but that's the way we do shit around here.

As for the rest of those chilis?  What to do, what to do....

this'll work for now.

i love sandwiches

Or sammiches, as I prefer to call them.  Before we enter into that discussion, however, you must first see our farmers market haul from the first offical market of the season.

green peppers, pattypan squash, spring onions, white cucumbers, red potatoes, green beans (blue lake?), beets, summer squash, and a ginormous cabbage

All for around $20.  Not bad.  There were fewer stalls than usual and no greens (so frustrating!), but...  what can you do?  Michael and I still had a fun time going around and talking to the growers.  We also brought my buddy Becca with us, and it was her first time ever, officially popping her Huntington Farmers Market cherry.  Hooray!  Michael also managed to get interviewed for the evening news (his closing line was 'Eat your veggies!'), but we don't have cable or local channels, so we didn't get to see it.  That boy just attracts cameras wherever he goes.  Sheesh.  No, I'm not jealous it wasn't me they interviewed.  Really.  I swear.  Ok, maybe a little bit.  

Anyway, on to the the real meat (so to speak) of this post.  (soy protein?  wheat meat?...we need a new saying here.)  I was scanning through pictures that haven't yet made it onto the blogeroonie, and I noticed that I have an inordinate amount of pictures of sammiches.  I guess, in a regular post, they sort of get overlooked in a 'oh, they're not really a meal that's creative or fun and no one cares about my sammich obsession' kind of way.  I mean, I think that, until I look and see a bunch of neglected sammich pictures building up and begging to be shown.  Poor sammiches.  It's your turn.

monster dinner sammie

I guess I could have color-corrected that one a bit more.  Oh well.  Anyway, this is something Michael and I do from time to time, and I'm sure I've talked about it before.  At least once.  But there are evenings when we look at eachother and ask, 'What do you want for dinner?' and one of us (ok, usually him) suggests, innocently, 'Giant sammich?'.  I say innocently because, this is one mothereffer to make.  Really.  It always, always involves a trip to the grocery store, which is why I generally veto the giant sammich, even though I love it.  You see, I never buy chickn strips anymore, so there's that.  And, yeah, it has to have them.  And it's rare that we also have: roasted red peppers, artichokes, black olives, avocado, basil, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, zucchini (those last two are optional, but phenomenal), some type of Italian dressing, and a huge loaf of ciabatta bread all at once.  But seriously...once all those things go on there together...  you're in heaven.  You see, you assemble the sammich and then wrap the whole thing tightly in plastic wrap and set a heavy book on top and leave it for like a half hour so that all the flavors combine and get extra awesome.  And then you eat it.  Like, all of it.  We never have leftover giant sammich.  So anyway, that's one sammich obsession.

rad lunch sammich

Next up is the lunch sammich.  Lunch sammiches are, generally, lighter.  The bread isn't quite as serious.  There's probably some fake lunch meat on there.  What makes this one particularly awesome is the lunch meat that Michael's mom got from Indiana that's like cranberry and tofurkey or something...I can't remember, but it's Thanksgiving themed.  Oh, and this was right after I learned that I love raw squash and zucchini (they are sauteed on the giant sammich, by the way), so this one has thin slices of both of those.  Ok, honestly?  The real reason I eat sammiches most of the time is to have a vehicle for mustard.  I had some fancypants mustard that I put on this one.  And you probably know about my mustard obsession.  Sometimes, I put 2 different types of mustard on one sammich.  Just to see what will happen.  Also, for those of you who love avocado, but don't know how to eat it on a sammich without it slipping out all over the place, do this:  mush it up on the top piece of bread.  Use a fork.  That way, it's more like a spread.  

the emergency sammich

Chances are, you have the makings of a sammich in your fridge in case of emergency.  If not, the components of a sammich are not that expensive.  This particular sammich came about the other night when our city had a water main break and there was no water for like 5 hours.  I know you don't REALLY need water to make a decent meal, but...  well...  you sort of do.  But you know what you don't need water to make?  That's right.  A sammich.  We happened to have some leftover lunch meatses and fake cheese (from the seitan parmesan night) and bread and lettuce and avocado, so when I learned the water was out, I just walked to the corner market, purchased 2 tomatoes, 2 gallons of drinking water, and a case of beer, and I was set for the night!  These we fried old school style in the cast iron skillet (just the cheeze and meats inside, then added the toppings after the bread was nice and black).  Once we ran out of lunch meat, I made a cheeze and tomato sammich and Michael had a PB&J (another classic, of course).  We did have this with a huge salad, in order to get some nutrition out of the meal.  I also, for the record, like how this sammich looks like a face with blueberry eye-stalks.  

the smooshed sammich

I really like paninis.  I like paninis so much that I will put just about any type of sammich in the Foreman grill and squash the hell out of it.  There is just something about a seriously compact sammich that was once huge and hard to put in your mouth.  Especially if the bread is big, like this bread was.  Plus, they're crispy and pretty and warm and lovely.  I remember this sammich in particular because we made them for a late afternoon lunch in between episodes of Jekyll (awesome show for the first few episodes, then it gets stupid and sucks).  Sammiches are good to eat while you watch tv or movies because you don't have to look at them to make sure you're getting all the good bits in your mouth at once.  That's the beauty of the sammich.  All the good bits are there, all the time.  I mean, if you make it right.  

In conclusion, you do not need to work at Subway to be a sandwich artist.  It's better to be a sammich artist in your own home with better ingredients and you don't have to wear gloves and your kitchen probably doesn't smell like pizza subs as soon as you walk in.  

The end.

simple dimples and famers market and other things

I really do mean to post more often...  but things have been a bit crazy around here.  Michael found a new job (yay!) and I put in my two weeks notice at mine (also yay!).  Still, it's been stressful, and though I think about blogging every day, I only seem to have the time on weekend mornings.  So...  you're getting the best I can do for right now, friends.  Explanations aside, lets discuss some more interesting things.

We went to the farmers market this morning for the first time this year!

the basics

And there was only one seller and we bought mostly everything they had!  Well, one basket of everything, anyway.  And it wasn't as cheap as usual...  but the real deal farmers market starts officially June 27, so you bet your bottom dollar we'll be there for that.  I was a little disappointed that there were no greens...  But I can make do.  I'm always a fan of little red new potatoes.  And those tomatoes don't look completely ripe, but I'll make it work.  I'm most excited about the beans and zucchini though...  Mmm.  Spent $9.25.  We've been discount shopping like crazy lately because of our tentative job situations, and cheap produce is perfect right now.  

Have you been wondering about our garden?  Well, it's been a tad stunted because the light on the porch has been dwindling since the trees outside got more leafy, but...  progress!  Look!

teeny tiny pea pod

Our babies are growing!  So far, this is the only sign of actual items producing veggies, but it means there is hope.  And hope is damned fine for me, thanks.

What with it getting warmer (though it's been raining here all week, go figure), I've been craving raw veggies like nobody's business.  Thankfully, I remembered this, and have been making my own rendition.

i may never cook kale again.

I didn't even watch the video again before making the salad, I just remembered seeing it once and decided to wing it.  Basically, you just wash and tear your kale into bite sized pieces and massage olive oil and salt and lemon juice into it until it looks nice and wilty.  Then add in an avocado and mush it around so it coats the leaves (I do whole bunches of kale at once, so that's one whole lemon's worth of juice and an entire avocado...I do skimp on the olive oil though).  Then just add cracked pepper and whatever other veggies you like.  I put radishes and strips of summer squash in this version...and I've learned that I also love raw squash.  And zucchini.  

I liked it so much that I ate the leftovers for breakfast the next day.  Then went home and used the other bunch of kale I had to make another raw kale salad.  I am a woman obsessed. 

ok, not fully raw, but we do what we can here.

To this one I added thinly sliced zucchini (you really must try raw zucchini if you haven't...it's amazing.  So much better than cucumbers.) and scallions and radishes and also a few splashes of red wine vinegar.  Michael made some seitan and we topped our salads with it, and it was freaking amazing.  I ate the leftovers for lunch, then went out that evening and got more kale and lemons and avocados, and plan to make more salad today.  It's been like 3 days.  I miss it.  Yeah, it's got a lot of fat in it, but it's healthy fat, so suck it up and go make this.  Because it's awesome.

More on budget meals that are also quick and/or relatively easy:  Thai tempeh with veggies and rice noodles.

this was amazing.  i impress myself sometimes.

We've had a lot of tempeh floating about since Michael's mom brought us 3 packages of it, and we had 2 already in the fridge.  And we're out of tofu, and seitan sometimes takes longer than my poor hungry (aka grouchy) belly can handle.  Anyway, I got all this coconut milk at Aldi for like 90 cents a can, and a bunch of zucchini and frozen broccoli...  We had all the other stuff on hand: scallions, frozen peas, carrots, tempeh, rice noodles, ginger, limes, soy sauce, etc.  I steamed the tempeh and while that was going on, made a marinade of coconut milk, ginger, lime zest and juice, a little cumin and coriander, soy sauce, and red pepper flakes.  Drain tempeh, marinate for about a half hour, scoop out with slotted spoon and pan fry...  While that was going on, I sauteed the veggies and cooked the rice noodles.  Add tempeh to veggies, add marinade on top of that to act as the sauce, heat through, and bam!  Dinner's ready.  That might seem like a lot of steps, but if you're good at multi-tasking, it's not so bad.  

Ok, so I just noticed that the next 4 pictures are really strange looking...because there was a lot of yellow in the meals and I took them in sort of bad lighting, so pardon.  I always forget about the white balance button on my camera because I'm hungry when I'm photographing the food.  And I color corrected the best I could without making them look like food from Mars.  I will try harder, haha...

Anyway, here's some more tempeh and discount meal stuff:

maple dijon tempeh is the best thing on this planet...and it wasn't my idea.

So, at the market down the block they have discount veggies sometimes, which I love, obviously.  This time I got a pack of leeks, some sweet potatoes, and some roma tomatoes.  They all went into this carb-filled meal.  The tempeh was simmered in some broth, and then Michael pan fried it and made this amazing sauce out of maple syrup, dijon mustard, hot sauce, and water.  It was so creamy and fabulous and decadent...I can't even think about it.  It makes my mouth water.  We also roasted the sweet potatoes with some red potatoes we already had and a bunch of whole garlic cloves (amazing!), and I made a risotto with the leeks and tomatoes.  This was all relatively easy, except for my stirring for half an hour.  It was kind of a chilly evening, so the oven being on wasn't a big deal.  Anyway, it was all delicious!

Next is a weird bean and millet salad we concocted one night when it was really hot and we were being lazy.

creamy beany

It's just two cans of beans, some millet, avocado, celery, and Nayonaise.  I actually kind of had an aversion to this because I've somehow become like, incredibly over sensitive to the taste of soy mayonaise and I officially hate it.  I mean, I never really liked it, but I could tolerate it in salads and sauces.  Now, it's on my black list, which sucks because I used it a lot in those things.  Maybe I need a new brand.  But I digress...  This salad was good though, in theory.  I added a bunch of nutritional yeast and lemon juice to my portion, which made it way better.

Oh, this one's old, but was really yummy:

vwav alfreda

I got some orriechette, which is my absolute favorite pasta shape and wanted to use it in some kind of creamy sauce with broccoli.  Never having tried the alfreda from Vegan with a Vengeance, I decided to give it a go.  And...wow.  This sauce is seriously the best creamy sauce ever.  It calls for a lot of nutritional yeast, but somehow doesn't taste noochy.  We added some sausage style tempeh (basically the tempeh sausage crumbles from the same book, but I didn't look at the recipe and just winged it).  Fabulous.  I don't often call things fabulous, unless they really truly are.  And this is.  Ok, so I called the maple dijon tempeh fabulous as well, but it was.

With quick and easy meals, sometimes it's not worth taking a picture.  Like the beans and rice we had last night.  Or the pesto we put on pasta a week or so ago.  But sometimes the leftovers from those meals become something totally photo-worthy.

if i could only get a decent photo when the time comes!

The leftover pesto went onto a pizza crust...  toppings were onions, garlic, cherry tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, black olives and vegan parmesan (all of which we just had one hand!).  I don't often like a pizza without a tomato sauce, but this one was perfect.  And easy.  And quick.

Lastly for today, I leave with with deliciousness and a good photo.

spinach artichoke dip!

Yes, that does deserve an exclamation point.  I used to luuuurve spinach artichoke dip.  I made a vegan version once before and it was horrible.  It called for all this soy sour cream and cream cheese...and it tasted just like those.  Of which I am not a fan, by themselves.  This recipe came from the idiot cookbook.  And it was...I'm running out of synonyms for delicious again.  But it was all of those synonyms put together into one giant flavor explosion of happiness.  We liked it, in other words.  Plus, it was easy peasy and didn't call for any specialty ingredients except for nutritional yeast, which is only specialty for some people (like me, who have to drive a bit to get it).  Michael and I devoured this with crostinis (discount bread, hell yes) and the Greek salad that I blogged about last time.  I'm loving this idiot cookbook, by the way.  At first, the recipes seemed too simple to bother making, but it turns out that simple is good when you're in a hurry (duh) or it's hot out (duh) or the flavor combinations just plain old work (double duh).  

So simplify your life.  And enjoy your weekend!

mexi night and farmers market

Last night, Michael was in the mood for a meximeal. However, we didn't have the ingredients on hand for our usual quickfix of nachos... So we got creative! A lot of chilies were involved in the making of this nicely spicy meal.

stoplight chilies

Since we didn't have any 'meat' crumbles or tvp on hand, we gave some tofu a quick marinade of hot sauce, lemon juice, rice vinegar, cumin, and smoked paprika. It was then pan seared on the lovely cast iron skillet. The tofu we used was different from our usual brand, and it was delicious! The tofu only sat in the marinade for about 5 minutes, so the flavors were very light, but spicy, but the tofu itself had a really nice, smooth flavor unlike any tofu I'd had before, so it turned out very nice.

sizzle sizzle

I made a mexi-style couscous with a can of diced tomatoes, chilies, scallions, chili pepper and cumin. Again, the flavors were subtle, but very fresh.

lovely fluffy couscous

For a nice edible garnish, I whipped up a quick and inauthentic pico de gallo. I cubed up some red and yellow tomatoes, added some chilies, sliced scallions, and parsley, then finished with a squeeze or two of lime and a pinch of salt.

yummy fresh delicious

All this came together with some toasted whole wheat tortillas and some clover sprouts for a nice, earthy crunch. Hot sauce for added awesomeness points.

michael's plate... he's so good at presentation :)

This morning we went to the dwindling farmers market. There are less and less vendors and the veggies get less and less interesting... But we still managed to get a good haul!

like 5 different types of peppers, october beans, yellow cherry tomatoes

Teehee...Michael went a little nuts with the hot and sweet peppers while I was off searching for sweet potatoes. I think we might have to eat chili for the rest of the month to use all these up!

cabbage, sunflower head, new potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, apples, sweet potato squash, and an apple gourd

Right now, we are a tad obsessed with silly looking gourds. They're so funny looking and fun... Michael saw this apple gourd and couldn't resist, and I have to agree that it was too silly to pass up. I'm not sure about that sweet potato squash, I've never heard of that before, but... We'll cook it up and see what happens. I'm into new stuff. I've never cooked turnips before, either, but there ya go.

After a nap, we woke up and had some more apple pancakes. Those farmers market apples are so good as a warm, sweet topping for pancakes.

yumtastic fall breakfast

Off now to do laundry. Big Saturday cleaning fest today, wooo...