What's in the (CSA) Bag?

What's in that over-stuffed bag?, my kitty was wondering last Thursday, as I hauled our 5th weekly CSA pickup into the house. Although we get a day's heads up of what to expect, opening our weekly bag is still like opening your stocking at Christmas. Well, we made a slew of great meals this week, courtesy of this weekly haul of local, organic veggies!











Here's everything out on the table including: fennel, cabbage, broccoli, 4 huge cucumbers, kohlrabi (purple this time!), onions, chard, salad greens, dill, and some big stalky green leaf veggie that I have yet to name (it's the one at the top, with the long white stem and big green leaves). It wasn't on the list, and while I thought it might be collard greens, I'm not sure that's what it was.


At any rate, last week's greens (chard) went into Fat Free Vegan's Savory Swiss Chard Pie. It was pretty easy and quick, and looked tantalizing as it came out of the oven, a few minutes early...








Turns out, it was delicious as well! The spices were rockin' and the chard was great, but the silken tofu was just a little too mushy for our taste. I think that regular firm tofu (the Chinese, water-packed kind) would have made for a firmer pie/quiche thing. At any rate, it was edible, and Mr. PLV even went back for seconds. Yeah! Three stars for flavor, two for texture **.




Alongside that, was this awesome Summer Corn Salad, from Rawvolution. This was easily my favorite recipe from the week - it was so sweet and fresh and even had some spice (curry powder)! It did get a little over-saturated with the dressing as the days went by, but it was a great, quick lunch. The corn wasn't in our CSA bag, but at least it was local and fresh from the farmers' market!



We also had some zucchini kicking around from last week's pickup, so I put my new Spiralizer to use! Yeah! So much fun!! This would be an awesome way to get kids to eat their veggies - just make these great, long, curly "noodles" out of them! Or fry or bake or dehydrate them for snacking on! Machine was easy to use and quick to put together/clean. Got a great deal on it through Amazon.



Here's a closeup of the zucchini pasta with a raw tomato sauce, from Rawvolution. Actually, the noodles were kind of crunchy - not watery as suggested in the book, so they didn't have to sit out. I wonder if I could have softened them up by letting them sit in the sauce for a while? The sauce was only OK- needed some herbs and spices to kick it up a notch. Three stars for the pasta (and only because it was fun - it was too crunchy to fool pasta lovers) and two stars for the sauce **.

Here are the noodles with our favorite jarred sauce, along with some Red Star nutritional yeast. Yum!











Last week also brought us some bok choy, and this Crunchy Bok Choy Salad from Cooking Light was refreshing and yummy and quick. Mr. PLV even commented how good it tasted and how good he felt, eating something so fresh and recently picked! No kidding! He really said that...I ate this as part of lunch leftover this week, and it was great except of course the Ramen noodles got soggy... Three stars and a half for sure, for this dish! ***.



Finally, we were ready to start cooking up this week's produce! First up, Roasted Fennel Salad with Roasted Shallot Dressing, Hazelnuts and Cranberries from Veganomicon. I'm too lazy to go check my recipe notebook for the exact title of this dish, but that's basically what was in it...except, I added LOTS of other veggies, to make it a well-rounded salad meal. I was just in the mood for salad that night! So, summer squash, radish, tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, and baby carrots filled up my bowl along wide the greens and roasted fennel (which was amazing!) and the roasted shallot dressing which was superb!!! Four stars for this dish ****. I loved, loved the warm dressing.
Three of those huge cucumbers ended up in a Cucumber Dill Salad from Rawvolution for lunch this coming week. I didn't have enough garlic and didn't have any red onion at all for this dish, so I think the yellow onion I had to use was a factor in my low rating of this recipe. I only give it two and a half stars. It was fresh and fun (I used a crinkle-cutter tool from Pampered Chef to cut the cukes), and a great way to use up the ginormous bunch of dill from the CSA bag, but I wasn't blown away.

Since I was up with the cats (and a head cold) this morning, I also whipped up a raw Eggless Salad, also from Rawvolution. This was way better than the cuke dish - and pretty, too! The creamy texture didn't taste like real egg salad, but I am years past trying to make meat-like meals. This was just plain good! Three solid stars ***.






I was blown away, however, by the BBQ Seitan with Crispy Coleslaw from Veganomicon, though. We made this just tonight, and wow! I served it up alongside sauteed chard and those mystery greens with a light agave-mustard dressing, and brown rice. The coleslaw was the perfect cool, tangy accompaniment to the sweet, hot BBQ seitan. A pretty quick recipe, too! Three and a half stars ***1/2.


Mr. PLV had his on a non-vegan sandwich bun, and it looked darn good!

The rest of the week looks to be leftovers and a Quinoa-Black Bean-Mango salad that has nothing to do with local produce and everything to do with just plain cravings. Who knows? Maybe I'll work some kohlrabi into it.

Only four more days till our next CSA pick up, but who's counting!

Finger Food

This week involved lots of finger food! I love eating with my hands (that's why I enjoy Ethiopian, Indian, and other similar foods so much!). I've been overwhelmed with all my new cookbooks (not that I have stopped purchasing them!), but trying to make a dent in the recipes I want to make. Here are the treats I made for my friends on Valentine's Day and for our recent Sierra Club meeting. They are the Peanut Butter-Chocolate Squares (or were they bars?) from The Joy of Vegan Baking. They actually made more than the recipe called for (I cut them pretty small, since they taste so rich!), but they were so completely easy! I used up some rice krispie cereal I had (it was still good, don't worry!) and there was no baking involved, so it was a win-win situation all around. They were smooth, a little crispy, and completely yummy! One of my favorite vegan desserts ever, due to their Reese's Peanut Butter Cup flavor!
Here is another shot, take more from the side, so that you can see that they really are pretty thin. I wonder how they'd be in a smaller pan? Anyway, not healthy one bit but soooo very good! So, I had to move on to some healthier grub.







Like I said, it was the week of finger food. I was still on a sandwich kick this week, and trying to save some money, so here was the cheap and easy (ha, ha) Eggless Salad Sandwich, from The Everyday Vegan. It reminded me so much of the egg salad sandwiches I devoured every week when I was a kid! I used to make my own lunch every night before school the next day, and I always made egg salad sandwiches at least once a week. It amazes me how many children (at the school where I teach) have their entire lunches made for them every day, when they are in the upper elementary grades! Get kids into the kitchen, get them involved in their food choices, and let them do some work, for goodness sake! These were filling and flavorful. Tofu has a ton of protein and calcium, and it's perfect for 'faking' egg textures.
Also for the Sierra Club meeting, I made the Roasted Red Pepper-Almond Hummus from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. I am trying to make as many of her hummus and dips as possible - there are so many! This was excellent, too, and pretty quick to make. Great with pita bread and veggies sticks. The only problem I had was when I was roasting the red pepper. It calls for jarred peppers, but I can't afford those and it's so easy and healthy to roast your own! However, I hadn't done it in a while, and I used Veganomicon's recipe for roasting peppers. In the past, I have used high heat until they are black, then you throw them in a baggie and wait for the steam to loosen the skins for peeling. However, the book doesn't call for getting them black or peeling them, so the temperature was much lower. I had to keep them in the oven so long, they almost completely dried out and I couldn't peel them. So, I threw the pepper into the hummus batch with the burnt skins and all.... and it was still good!
All in all, it was a great week for vegan finger food. Tonight, I move on to make The Everyday Vegan's Black Bean and Millet Patties (I have lots of millet to use up!) and for the week's lunch, Peanut Sesame Hummus with rice crackers and snap or snow peas. Loved reading everyone's posts this past week! I still laugh when people ask me, "what do you eat?" My answer....everything and anything I want!

Fast and Delicious

After a busy, busy weekend (catching up after our trip the weekend before!) I not only had little time to plan meals, but little time to cook them. So, I thought this would be a great opportunity to try some quick recipes. As you can see from the first photo, I was getting some "fast meal" ideas from Sarah Kramer's adorable little book, Vegan A Go-Go!, which has a lot of older recipes in it but is really perfect for taking with me when I travel to the in-laws with meal ideas!

First off, I reverted back to college days, when all I could afford was beans and rice and this amazing Bayou Magic Cajun Seasoning that I bought while living in Tennessee. I could never find it after I left, but the miracles of the WWW brought me to their site and their seasoning to my pantry! Unfortunately, I forgot over time just how spicy this is! With the cilantro added (next pic) it was much more manageable. Phew! I was sweating. But, cheap and very fast. Just cook the rice (brown, of course!) in your rice cooker, add the beans from a can (the heat of the rice warms them up just fine) and then season to taste! Two and a half stars (way too spicy).














Later in the week, I had a little more time, but still, Tara's Pad Thai from Vegan Fusion World Cuisine was wicked quick. Just press the tofu while you open the mail and feed the cats, then chop up a couple things and start cooking! The rice noodles take no time at all (3 minutes, to be exact) and I added canned baby corn and canned bamboo shoots (on the sale table - only a dollar each, if that!) along with chopped peanuts and cilantro. Great spice to this meal, but a little dry due to too many noodles and not enough sauce. This was a great way to break into my tamarind paste, which I found at a local (but hidden) Asian market! Three stars ***.

Just last night, my husband requested this Kale and Cannellini Stew, from The Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook. Another pretty quick meal, with only some peeling and chopping to do. Very few ingredients but great spicy taste! We added extra kale and it could have used fewer beans. Also, I exchanged a sweet potato for one of the regular potatoes, and it added a nice sweet balance (very light!) to the spiciness of the stew. The only problem was that the sweet potato cooked much more quickly so it was a bit over-cooked by the end. Overall, three and a half stars! Almost perfect!
So, here are some other meals from the past that are great ideas for when you have little time and want something good and vegan!

Olive-Oregano Wine-Baked Tofu...
(click for the recipe!)







Any kind of smoothie is almost instant! Great for lunch.












Don't forget that mac and cheese made with nutritional yeast or Chreese!












Tempeh Salad (made with grapes and agave nectar) is a delicious, quick lunch idea, and especially nutritious served over baby spinach!










Cumin-Lime Tofu can marinate while you're at work and then bake while you prepare a grain and veggie!
















And of course, "eggstra" quick Eggless Salad sandwiches made with firm tofu always hit the spot.

Next week, we'll be at a Supper Club, so I'll spend the week picking out my yummiest desserts to make- any suggestions??