C to tha SA

The first few weeks of the CSA were a bit rough, between rain and hail, but we've still been getting plenty of greens each week, rain or shine- even if the emphasis lately seems to be on the former. Last Thursday when I picked up our share I did so in a heavy afternoon thunderstorm. The farmer, Luke, was kind enough to let me take refuge under his awning with the veggies.

Soaked to my bones

 I stuffed the saddle bags of my bike with heaps of freshly picked, wet, dirty veggies (my favorite!) and pedaled home as fast as my little wet legs would take me. Here's a picture of the share for the week:

Clockwise- spinach, rainbow chard, basil, snap peas, breakfast radishes

 Since it was time for a late afternoon snack after pounding out 3.5 miles as fast as possible on the bike, I decided to take advantage of the fresh spinach and make a smoothie.

 I had about two cups firmly packed, so I processed that first and then added raspberries, coconut milk, a magical banana, chia/flax seeds, and some ground ginger.

 Pretty much as soon as my food processor stopped, the sun came out. Perfect timing for a picture!


The basil was put to good use in a pasta sauce, and the chard was dumped into another smoothie. The snap peas are excellent raw, just the way they are, but hummus is a worthy companion. I grated a few of the radishes into a salad, and the remaining few are hanging around waiting for a dinner to take part in. Tomorrow we have another pickup- I wonder if this one will be rain or shine?

Breakfast is Hard. Make it Easy.

I've never been a big breakfast eater. I was usually not hungry, so I'd skip it, and then eat at around 2 p.m. when I was ravenous. I had slumps in energy this way, but it was just so hard to eat when I wasn't hungry. Bobby finally convinced me about a year ago to just start trying to eat something small, even just a piece of fruit. I did that for one week, and all of a sudden I started waking up ravenous. My metabolism kicked up, my energy evened out, and I didn't get cranky headaches late in the day. I'm a bit believer in eating only when you're hungry, but this experience showed me that sometimes one may need to kick start things. Now I couldn't skip breakfast if I wanted to, because my growling stomach flat out won't let me.

All that being said, I'm still not going to tuck into a mound of food at the crack of dawn. A light and simple breakfast is still easiest for me to eat. As a result, the first meal of the day (after a big glass of water) usually looks like this:

 My standby has become either an apple or a banana, sliced, sprinkled in apple pie spice (this doesn't have sugar) and chia seeds. I round it out with one tablespoon each of almond butter and peanut butter. The "rules" of combining proteins don't really apply as long as you're eating a varied diet, but I like to eat almond and peanut butter together because it is a complete protein, and if I'm eating one or the other, I may as well eat them together. This gets me through my morning run, or an hour of power yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays mornings. After those activities I'm much more interested in a larger meal. Plus, between the chia seeds and the nut butter I get a good head start on protein for the day, and the fiber of the apple keeps me full through my morning workout. Last but not least, a day started with apple pie spice is guaranteed to be a bit more awesome than a day without, right? Right.

Return to Tasty Harmony

I've raved about Tasty Harmony before. The all vegetarian/99% vegan restaurant is a go to for local, organic, delicious food. We stopped by weekend before last and I fell in love with a salad. Which is kind of awkward since Bobby was right there. It's called "The Meal". On their website, it is described as "Two living sunflower croquettes over baby salad greens, red and green cabbage, shredded carrots, shredded beets, avocado, tomatoes and shaved red onions. Comes with a side of our Green Onion Tahini Dressing." A synonymous description could be "Pure raw veggie goodness". Here is a slightly blurry cell phone pic of it.

I included my hand as a size reference. This thing was definitely a meal

I had the chilled hibiscus tea to wash it all down. That green onion tahini dressing was so good. I think that tahini is almost as magical as bananas. I have yet to eat anything with tahini that didn't taste amazing. Those sunflower croquettes were also good enough to warrant such a fussy name. They crumbled nicely and served as a much healthier version of a crouton.

Tasty Harmony has specials that change often, and on this visit they were featuring a stuffed poblano pepper plate with their cashew cheese and vegan sour cream. It was also very good. It was similar to a chile relleno, but not quite. It wasn't my favorite relleno type dish, but it was definitely up there.

 Tasty Harmony rolled out their summer menu, so I'm sure we'll be visiting them a time or two over the next few months. In the meantime, I want to own whatever machine shredded the beets in my salad. I would never cook again, I'd just shred everything. This might be why I shouldn't own such a machine...

The Joys of the Simple Salad

I think the best thing about giving up animal products is that your taste buds start to change. I crave raw veggies like never before, and I've gotten to the point where previously reviled foods- mushrooms, coconut, raw carrots- are in the regular rotation. Nowhere is the change in taste more evident than in the arena of salads. Previously I always put cheese on a salad, and usually some croutons* and some creamy dressing. When we first gave up cheese, I will admit that I felt like something was missing. Now, though, a raw salad packed with veggies and drizzled in a vinaigrette dressing is something I often crave.

This was a random lunch salad. I tossed spinach, red leaf lettuce and kale together for the greens. To that I added baby heirloom tomatoes, red and orange bell peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, and about half a cup of canned white beans. I added avocados and a generous two tablespoon serving of chia seeds**. Then, I crumbled up one of my favorite salad additions- a Sunshine Burger. I've mentioned them before in this post. They crumble really nicely into a salad, they have about 10 grams of protein, and they are soy free (made from rice and seeds). This is an incredibly filling salad. I ate it after a morning that included biking to the gym and back (7 miles), lifting free weights while at the gym, and then running two miles upon getting home. This kept me full and happy for 5 hours until dinner time. If it's been awhile since you've had a simple salad with basic ingredients, give it a try. It might feel like something is lacking, but eventually you might surprise yourself with the kinds of cravings you start to have. I willingly eat coconut, after years of being almost nauseated by the smell. People and their tongues can definitely change. Amen.***

*My salad as a child consisted of croutons and ranch. True story.

**Please buy these in bulk and do not allow yourself to be fleeced! I have never paid more than $7.99 a pound for chia seeds, and that's on the high end. Lots of retailers are charging outrageous prices for dinky little bags. It's highway robbery. Get thee to a bulk bin.

***I dunno, it just started feeling like I was testifying of my changed life, so the "Amen" felt right.

CSA Potluck Muffins

I've talked before about how much I love having a CSA. The CSA we had last year was incredible, but we ended up switching to a newcomer on the scene this year. This was primarily because our new CSA is right off of one of the bike trails, and we happen to live only a mile and a half a way off of  said bike trail. The charm of biking along the creek to pick up freshly picked, local, organic veggies direct from the farm was too much to deny.

Last week was the CSA kickoff pot luck. I love pot lucks, because they're such a good return on investment. I only have to make one dish, but I still get to choose from a buffet of various food. That's sound economics right there, ya'll. I decided to make an old standby, the blueberry banana muffins from How it All Vegan. As usual I cut the sugar in half and added a bit more blueberries- 1 1/2 cups instead of 1 cup. These are made with whole wheat flour, but even with half as much sugar they are still an excellent sweet bread.

 The recipe says that it makes 12 muffins, but even when I fill the tins up to the top, I always have batter left over. Since I only have 2 muffin tins and I don't want to have to wait, I just pour the leftover batter into a bread pan and bake it along with the muffins. This lets me add in random things to experiment. In the past I've added chocolate chips, nuts, or  more fruit.

This time I added in a generous portion of unsweetened/unsulphured dried coconut. It went really well with the bananas and the blueberries. We kept the bread for ourselves, and loaded up the muffins on the back of our bikes to take to the CSA.

 Biking along the trail...

 the creek...

 and one of several wooden bridges you cross.

 When we got to the farm we parked our bikes along with everyone else. Check out all the bike trailers for  hauling little nuggets. I sometimes wish someone would haul me around in a trailer. Kids. They get all the breaks!

 We picked up our share for the week. Lots of greens- kale, chard, lettuce. Mmmm, salads and smoothies.
 The  muffins were added to the communal food table and then we chowed down. Turns out our co-members are good cooks as well as interesting people. We hung out for an hour or two, and I was happy to see that the muffins were quickly polished off. I admit that is one thing that is a bit nerve wracking about pot lucks- you don't want your dish to go untouched or left out, like the last kid picked for the kickball team.

If you're interested in getting a CSA for yourself, check out Local Harvest. You might be surprised at what your local community has to offer. I can't promise you'll have a full scale farm a mile and a half from your apartment off of a bike lane, but I can bet that you'll be able to find a good network to plug into.

Sausage and Biscuits

When I made this jalapeno corn gravy, I knew there would be a lot left over. In fact, part of the reason I decided to go ahead and make it was because Gimme Lean breakfast sausage was on a great sale. I figured we'd have th gravy on some potatoes for dinner, and then I'd make some whole wheat biscuits from scratch, fry up some veggie sausage, and douse it all in the gravy. Well, that's exactly what happened, and it was excellent.

 Truth be told, Bobby is the resident baker. He's usually the one who gets up on weekends and makes biscuits from scratch, or busts out my Great Granny's 1950's waffle iron and makes banana waffles from scratch. Because of this, it's nice for me to make biscuits for him sometimes, too. He found this recipe online about a year and a half ago, and with some tweaking it has resulted in the best vegan biscuit I've ever had.

Despite being whole wheat, it's not super dense and heavy. I used coconut oil in place of the lard or butter that most biscuits call for and they tasted great. The biscuits only take about 5 minutes total to measure, mix, separate, and put on the baking sheet. They cook for 12 minutes, so while they were busy making my kitchen smell great I cooked the veggie sausage and re-heated the gravy.

The finished product

 This was very good. I liked the gravy even more the morning after, because the jalapeno had a chance to really permeate everything and it tasted a bit spicier. Some fresh cracked black pepper on top made it just about perfect. I think this might also be a good gravy over some breakfast potatoes sauteed with red and green bell peppers. Who knew I could love a creamed corn look-alike so much?

Daiya Makes an Appearance

The vegan world has been raving about Daiya since mid 2009. Bobby and I were excited to try it during our long road trip all over the Western U.S. in late 2009. We tried it for the first time at the enormous Whole Foods in Las Vegas. It was on a freshly made to order pizza, hot off the pizza stone. Bobby loved it. I found it to be a bit too sticky. However, as far as cheese replacements go, this is one of the best. I just prefer nutritional yeast and/or cashew cheese, personally, and Vegan Gourmet makes the best mozzarella substitute in my opinion. All that being said, Bobby adores Daiya, so I made some enchiladas the other night just for him. No, really, I didn't eat any of this. Bobby still has some leftovers frozen for future lunches. I did try a bite though, and it was good despite my Daiya dislike.

Fresh out of the oven

 So, I can't find the pictures of the process, or of the plates- sorry, friends! Basically I roasted up a bunch of veggies, and then pan fried white corn tortillas, rolled up some Daiya and the roasted veggies in them, and then doused the whole thing in some tomatillo and enchilada sauce. More Daiya went on top, and then it went in the oven (covered with foil) for 30 minutes. For the last 10 minutes I took off the foil so that the Daiya could brown.

On the side I made Spanish "rice", but I used cauliflower. I've talked about replacing rice with cauliflower before in this post. I just sauteed up some garlic, red onions, various bell peppers, and finely food processed cauliflower. Then I added in tomatoes, cumin, and chili powder. At the end I decided to just dump the black beans in with it, too. This was really delicious and would be excellent with some tofu scramble in a tortilla in the morning with a side of hash browns.

The Daiya cooked up really well in the enchiladas. I think it would be important to utilize the foil in any casserole style dish until the very end, just to keep it from getting dried out. A great thing about Daiya is that it isn't soy based, which is excellent for those with soy allergies, or people like me who try to steer clear of too much processed soy. You can find it in Whole Foods, and Sprouts has it as well. Plus I imagine that any quirky health food store would stock it, too.