Tag Archives: lettuce

Vegan Mofo 2016 Day 15: Rainbow Hummus Bowl

November 15, 2016

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I love a good bowl. I don’t eat them often, as I tend to be the type of person who just makes one big dish. Curries, chilis, soups, stir-fries, and casseroles are more up my alley. But truthfully a well balanced vegan bowl is easy to do, especially if some prep work is done before hand. For example, I use already prepared hummus, some frozen protein balls I’ve made earlier, and the eggplant was pickled a few days earlier. All I had to do was pop everything in the oven and cook the couscous!

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Funny thing is that making a dish with as many colors in the rainbow can be hard. But I tried my best here using all produce from my CSA. I love being able to eat a dinner that is almost all from the same place. So what is what in the rainbow?

Red & Orange: bell pepper, last of the season
Yellow: pickled turmeric eggplant (again last of the season)
Green: green leaf, arugula, and radish greens
Blue: the bowl- duh!
Purple: roasted beets
Brown: hummus & chickpea beanballs
White: Pearl Couscous tossed in soy yogurt

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Overall, it took about an hour for dinner to cook, but there was a lot of down time. The beets that took the longest to roast. It might take longer than an hour if you choose to make your own hummus and beanballs/falafels. But I strongly suggest making doubles of a falafel/beanball recipe and freezing the extras for bowls like this.

For anyone who is wondering- you will need to prepare the eggplant two days ahead of time. I am a big fan of this refrigerator pickle recipe, and it is a great way to preserve some extra eggplant from the summer. If you aren’t a huge eggplant fan, this really alters the taste and the traditional mushy texture. I personally used Wegman’s brand hummus, just the good old classic hummus, though you could go for any flavored hummus if you like. And finally the balls were the Chickpea Eggplant Hemp Veggieballs from Protein Ninja. But there are lots of falafels now that you can find in the freezer section, like Trader Joe’s.

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Posted by Jennifer in Recipe, Vegan Mofo, Vegan Mofo 2016 Tags: beets, bell pepper, eggplant, hummus, lettuce, pearl couscous, pickles, recipe, Vegan MOFO, vegan mofo 2016

3 comments

My First Garden: The beginning

May 13, 2016

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I’ve done gardening in the past. When I was younger I had a garden underneath our old swing set. But let’s face it, I was more interested in picking flowers to go in the garden than actually maintaining it. As I got older I went through many apartments that kind-of made gardening something unmanageable. I’ve always lived on the 2nd floor, making the only plant option indoor ones. I also lived in Philadelphia for a few years, and if plants went outside I risked someone kicking and breaking the pots. When I moved back to the burbs, I was still on the second floor and the rules of gardening was really murky, so I chose to avoid it.

So when we bought our row home, it was the first time we had a small plot of land to grow things in. The problem was that the previous owners wanted more patio space and filled the soil with rocks and stepping stones. At first I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal, just pick out the big stepping stones and then pick out the smaller rocks. In fact my bosses took the stepping stones to use in their own gardens, so I just had to pick out the smaller rocks in-between the stones. I think my tip off that it would be hard was the fact that there wasn’t any weeds. So. Many. Stones. There was a layer of pretty store bought stones, and then just a foot of stone filled soil. It took about 2 months of random rock picking with my husband to get the stone situation to an controllable state. Even still, there are a good amount of rocks in our soil.

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Aside from that we have had a few challenges- mostly squirrels. I brought out my amaryllis plant that I got this Christmas. I also tried starting seeds for a few flowers and herbs, starting them inside but putting them outside on warmer days. Well, it turns out that the squirrels were still pretty hungry from the winter and kept digging through my plants. I pretty much gave up hope for the flowers and herbs, but a few of the Black Hollyhocks have lived, though I still need to transplant them. None of the Purple Perilla have lasted, they seeds got washed away.

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As for the herbs… I don’t know what is growing. Well, I do know some of the cilantro is growing. I know this because I saw some of the seeds stuck the sprouts and because the leaves are starting to get all cilantro-y. I am excited because it is one of the herbs at my CSA that gets cut down fast. I also planted mint and basil, but squirrels pushed the dirt around so much that I think some seeds got buried too deep. Everything got moved all over the place.

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There are two more edibles that I planted, lettuce and hops. I planted two types of lettuces, one I can’t remember the name of (oops) and the other is arugula (or rocket). Again I planted these because my CSA isn’t the best suppliers of lettuce. We might a head or two in the spring and another 2 heads in the summer, then that’s it. So I figured it would be nice to have more.

I have no idea what I am doing with hops. I am taking a chance and trying to grow it on our fence, and I think a neighbor is using the community fences, so I think it is allowed (technically we own the inside of the house, and not the outside, so it makes things a little weird). I picked the Cascade Hops plant because it sounded like it might do well with my soil and it sounded like it would be nice and fragrant. We have no plans on using the hops for brewing, though maybe we can get some extra cash on the side. Where’s the dollar sign emoji face when you need it? Anyways, after a lot of waiting I THINK I see the the hops starting the grow. Either that, or it is a weed. So fingers crossed.

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Other things? Well, we got a beautiful gnome for the garden, with a golden cone hat. And he is planted to a bush that I got on sale at Lowe’s. Sadly I can’t remember what the bush is. Womp womp. It was really pathetic when I bought it, all dried out. Now it looks like there are fresh shoots coming out, so that’s reassuring. Maybe at some point I will be able to tell what it is by searching the flowers.

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There also two stepping stones jointing out porch area to the sidewalk, and I bought these cute succulents that looks like some sort of stonecrop/sedum. Again, I am an idiot who forgot to save or label the plant. It will hopefully crawl and fill in the spaces over time, might not happen for a few years though. I might have to ask my boss if I can steal some of his succulent plants to help fill in the gaps.

Speaking of my boss, I’ve been getting some other freebies from him. See he LOVES gardening, and all the companies he orders from tend to give out free bulbs and the like. (for example I got free dill seeds when I ordered from Thyme Garden Herb Co.) So I planted some Balloon Flowers and Gladiolus. So it looks like we will have a fairly full garden for the first year.

So that is what is going on with my garden right now. Hopefully I will try and post updates ever month or so as my garden fills out.

Posted by Jennifer in The Girls Tags: amaryllis, arugula, black hollyhocks, cilantro, flowers, garden, gnome, herbs, home garden, hops, lettuce

14 comments

Vegan Mofo 2015 Day 22: Miso-Harissa Roasted Acorn Squash Tacos

September 22, 2015

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This was kind-of a weird prompt since I pretty much eat “seasonal” all year long. Why? Well my CSA gives out a LOT of food. Unlike most CSAs that just give you a basket full of food, my CSA is only one farm, that we go to each week. There they have some pre-picked foods and some we need to pick ourselves. There is a big board that says how much we are allowed to take. Some of it is a “pick and choose whatever fills this bag” sort of deal, others are you can pick one of various foods (for example I could of taken two heads of lettuce this week, two bundles of chard, or one of each), and some is take x amount of food. There are also other foods we can buy from other local producers, like pickles, coffee, meats, veggie burgers, and cheeses. Sometimes with the food we are allowed to pick we can take as much as we can if the produce is super abundant. And sometimes they sell some of the extra produce.

We get so much shelf stable food at the end of the year that we usually still cook with it in November and December. So I guess I stop eating seasonally from January to May when I don’t have any incoming produce. I could sign up for their winter produce sales, which I think they just store some of the fall crops but I usually just want to relax and skip it. For todays prompt I tried my best to use 100% all food I got from CSA. I used some other foods, but hey, it probably would be impossible otherwise, right? I mean outside of something like a salad.

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So this dinner is a nice mix of crops that are on their last legs, and crops that are just coming in. I started by making a freaking harissa paste with a bunch of red jalepenos. I used the recipe from Terry Hope Romero’s Vegan Eats World cookbook, but you can get the recipe off of her blog. Pretty much you just roast some peppers, peel them, and puree them with some spices, tomato paste, lemon juice, and garlic. So the tomato paste, lemon juice, and garlic aren’t seasonal. No biggie right?

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Then I proceeded to mix the harissa with some miso and olive oil and toss it in some acorn squash. It seemed a little early this year, but they were so cute and small. I grabbed three. I roasted them along with some peppers and onions (both were from this week at the farm!). I placed them on a flour taco wrap with some lettuce and cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes are pretty much on their last leg at the farm, which is nice and frustrating because they keep popping open! Ack! The lettuce isn’t something that is normally grown in the fall, but you can trick plants into growing.

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And I think that is what we all need to remember when buying local and seasonally. Sometimes you can trick crops and still get great results. I remember first learning about this when I was reading about growing peas. Sites suggested that you can grow them again in the fall by planting seeds and constantly spraying the seeds with cold water in try and “trick” the seeds that it is early spring. There are also foods that we don’t think about getting “fresh” like onions, garlic, and roots. And it is true, they don’t NEED to be fresh exactly. But my CSA divides these up through out the year. For example we get spring beets then again in the fall. We get a few heads of garlic when the pick them from the ground, then we get them again in the fall once they are done curing. Oh and the garlic scapes too!

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This dish was insanely easy and I was really excited how tasty it was! I will happily make this again (next week even if I get more peppers!) You can easily wrap it up in a burrito with some brown rice too!

So to sum it up, these are what I used that AREN’T seasonal produce