Back on track

Getting back into the fresh food prep.  Looking forward to the start of the CSA season in 3 weeks!

The first three are from the Eat to Live Cookbook:

Super Slaw with cabbage, apples, and beets among other things

3 Bean Mango Salad over greens

Veggie lasagna with sliced zucchini instead of noodles

This one is from the Crazy, Sexy Cancer Cookbook, and it is my favorite of the day:

Asian Stir Raw- also good over greens

And finally, my sister's favorite- the You Are What You Eat Cookbook's Shepherdess Pie in the making:

Summer goodness

Saturdays in the summer are splendid.  I simply adore seeing what is in my CSA box, and this week was a great share.  Blueberries, snap peas, new potatoes were among my favorite items in this box.

I had a rough week and hadn't used up the veggies from last week's share, so my mom and I spent today prepping a lot of veggies and cooking up some delicious food.  My mom has been a huge help to me this summer, since I'm having some health issues.  I couldn't have done any of this without her.

We sliced zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes, and layered them in a baking dish that had sautéed onions on the bottom.  We stuck fresh basil in between the veggies.  We baked this in the oven for a while then added a topping of ground almonds and nutritional yeast, and put it back in the oven until the topping browned.  Tasty, mediterranean type dish.  I forgot to take an "after" picture of this one.

Next, we made a cole slaw that used raw cashews as the base for the dressing, with raw ACV, water, onions, and honey mixed in.  This cole slaw is fantastic.  I've eaten several bowls already.

I get two dozen free range eggs every week, and we had 4 dozen in the fridge, so I thought some quiches were in order.  We made a bacon and cheddar quiche, and then two bacon, cheddar, broccoli, and onion quiches- one with a crust and one without.  I don't know if I was just starving today or what, but I had a couple pieces of quiche, too, and I'm contemplating another.

I have more bacon and more cabbage, so tomorrow I plan on making bacon wrapped cabbage in foil. Then I will attempt to make beet chips for the first time.  Good eating weekend!

Feeling the burn

Yeah, that would be the burn of the 10 jalapeño peppers I chopped with bare hands.  I don't know why I can never remember to put some gloves on before I start with the peppers, but I can't.  So, now I'm typing this up with some flaming fingers.

The blog has been on hiatus, because life has thrown us a lot of curve balls.

Today was my first Sunday cook-a-thon of 2014.

First, I started out slicing a bunch of meat and tossing it in some marinade so that I can make my husband some beef jerky in my dehydrator.  I hope he likes it.  I forgot to take a photo of it, so I'll just put up a picture of the finished product.

I did a lot of veggie chopping today.

Next, I made a coconut chicken curry.  It is sweet and delicious.  I made a batch of brown rice to go with it.

Then I made an apple/jicama/pomegranate winter salad.  My sister tried some and said it was tasty.
This was a Pinterest recipe.

Then I started the veggie fermenting.
This one is a salsa starter.

This is Waldorf Salad.

This is called Electric Kraut.

I had so much cabbage left over that I sautéed it up with some red onion then added some chili pepper flakes,
apple cider vinegar, real maple syrup, and some salt and pepper.  I cooked it until it was tender
and just a little brown and crusty.  Tomorrow, I may regret the amount of this that I ate.

I had plans to make more, but the day just got away from me.  I'll have to add another cooking day on to the week.

All in a day's work

Well, it appears that all-day Sunday cook-a-thons are going to be the only way to deal with all the produce until CSA season is over.  It was nice to have all the things I made last Sunday to eat throughout the week.  I'm sure I'll be glad for this Sunday's food, too.

So, first, I chopped and washed a bunch of salad greens so that I can easily pack a salad for lunch every day.

This gorgeous red cabbage came out of my garden this morning.

I shredded the cabbage in my Cuisinart, and it was positively purple.  Can't wait to toss some of this on my salad.

I also chopped up celery, jicama, peppers, radishes, and green onions to toss into my salads.

I had bought supplies to make lasagna with brown rice noodles, so I thought I'd carmelize the beautiful eggplant and one of the onions from the CSA to add to the lasagna.

The lasagna turned out quite delicious, if I do say so myself.

This is going to be a high-cal week! Lol!

I used up all the pasta sauce for the lasagna, and wanted something to put over the spaghetti squash that I baked in the oven, so I used some lemon balm from my garden, leeks and garlic from the CSA and peppers.

I added some chopped tomatoes from my garden, and made it all into a ragout.

The ragout over the squash was yummy!

I used the rest of the CSA garlic, CSA potatoes, & CSA green beans to make this scrumptious mix.

I chopped up a bunch of mixed kinds of peppers to ferment.

Mashed sweet potatoes!  I mixed in some butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, molasses, & maple syrup.  It's like a dessert.

Everything ready in the crockpot for overnight oatmeal- oats, raisins, cinnamon, allspice, fresh grated ginger, and some of the apples from the CSA share.  Breakfast should be good.

The times, they are a-changin' . . .

So, we're not homeschooling this year, as I've had to go back to work outside the house for now.  The kids are in public school, and making the adjustment far better than I am.

The blog will just be about food for a while, until we can hopefully resume our homeschooling adventure.

I've been too busy and depressed to get my vegetable pictures taken every Saturday.  The CSA shares have been delicious and colorful.  I've enjoyed eating them and making dishes with them.

Today, I did a little bit of cooking to get me through the work week, so I decided to share.  I kind of felt  like warm casserole-y foods on this first day of fall.

I made a variation of my brown rice spaghetti, grass fed ground beef, onion, spinach, tomatoes dish.

Sautéeing up some corn and green onions to make some more quinoa salad with honey lemon garlic vinaigrette.

Made a sauce of veggie broth with a little cornstarch to thicken it up, then added brown rice, chicken, & peas.

My sister bought me a gluten free crust, so I filled it with a bacon/cheddar quiche.  Can't wait to eat this puppy for brekkie tomorrow.

What happened to my picture?

I swear I took a picture of my CSA share yesterday, but it is somehow not on my camera/phone.  Hmmmm.

It has been a busy day.  Fitting ending for a busy week.  I'm wiped out now.

Spent the day cooking.  And cooking.  And cooking.  Didn't take photos of everything, but here are some of the delicacies.

Fried green tomatoes from my garden.  These were freaking awesome.

Two batches of pickles being fermented.  CSA cukes.  

Beans and onions with bacon bits.

Cole slaw from the giant cabbage in the CSA box.

It was a bacon-y kind of day.  I wrapped some bacon around slices of the other half of the giant cabbage and baked it in the oven.  I cooked the onions and beans with bacon.  Then, I fried up a package of chicken legs in the bacon fat.  Oh, yes, I did.

Aside from the dishes above, I made some hard boiled eggs, chopped up some veggies, and peeled and sliced up beets, which are now bubbling away on the stove.  Speaking of which, I should probably go check on them. I may have made something else, but my brain is foggy and I can't remember.

Have a good week, people.

Giant Cauliflower!

CSA share #5

Contained this enormous cauliflower,

So, I made this cauliflower gratinée.  I guess I fail at being a vegan.  

Oh, well.

Help! There are veggies exploding out of my fridge!

That's how I felt this weekend, so I decided to do something about it.  Most of yesterday, and a good part of today have been taken up with prepping, cooking, and storing a bunch of food.

First, I made a bunch of spring rolls (my new favorite treat) with avocado, mango, lettuce & our own garden's mint leaves.

This one had some issues, so I decided to gobble it up first.

Then I made a brown rice & bean, tex-mex kind of salad.

But- to use up the bulk of those exploding veggies, I made veggie fritters for the second time in a month.  These are definitely NOT low cal, but they are soooooo yummy.

I took a bunch of kohlrabi, some carrots, some broccoli, some green beans, some snap peas, some parsley, an onion, garlic scapes, and possibly some other veg that I've forgotten.  I chopped up a giant bowl full of veggies and then ran them through the food processor in several batches.  A couple batches I pureed pretty well, then I left a couple of the batches a little more chunky.  I poured those in a mesh strainer over the sink and pressed them to drain out some of the fluid.  

I put the pureed veggies in a big glass bowl, and mixed in enough eggs and gluten free baking mix and almond meal to make it stick together and look like this.

Then I poured some olive oil in the frying pan and let it heat up a bit.  Then I dropped scoops of the batter into the pan and flattened them out with the back of the spatula and fried them until they were dark brown on both sides.  These are very delicious, especially with a little Goddess Dressing drizzled on top.

To placate the picky people, I also made a pot of my homemade chicken noodle soup.  It does smell really tasty.

I also washed, chopped and bagged 4 heads of lettuce for easy use in salads.  Now I'm tired and don't feel like doing anything else!  Lol!

Me likey the spring rolls!

This time I tried mango, avocado & spinach.  I made a sweet and sour dipping sauce for them and they were good.

I'm loving the vegan thing!

Trying out the vegan-ish lifestyle, and here are a few of the things I've made recently.

I've made this before, but this time I tried it with tricolor quinoa.  It's so tasty that I want to spoon it in my mouth directly from the bowl.  Technically not vegan because the dressing contains a little honey.  But I did use olive oil in place of the butter it called for when sautéing the corn and green onions.

My friend Lisa would be able to eat this one with me.  It's an oil-free stew made with red potatoes, kale,  tomatoes & cannellini beans from the Forks Over Knives people.

I took some of the quinoa dish and sprinkled it on some spinach and zucchini slices that stuffed into some Engine House 2 brown rice wraps, spread with a spicy black bean dip from Whole Foods.

Try this!

This is Raw & Radiant soup I found on Pinterest.  It tastes mustardy and very fresh! Has turmeric in it, which is a plus!

Spring rolls

For my first attempt at making spring rolls, they came out pretty well.  They contain carrots, cucumber, avocado, alfalfa sprouts, arugula, fresh mint, and fresh basil leaves.  I made a tamari, rice vinegar & oil dipping sauce, but I think I'd make a ginger and red pepper sauce the next time.