Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Dinner - July 2, 2009

This was the world's best mushrooms and green beans. These were two kinds of oyster mushrooms, some yellow and some white. We have been having something similar every week since.

This chard dish with double stems became way to much like beets for Matt to stand. I ate quite a bit but it really wasn't anything very inspired.



Dinner - July 1, 2009

Way behind. Need to post these old dishes.

Curry with local veggies. I need to find this recipe so I can make it again today.

Found it. You can find the recipe for Five-Vegetable Curry from Eating Well at http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/five_vegetable_curry.html



Dinner - June 30, 2009

It is July 14th as I write this post, but I can still taste this meal. I really enjoyed this meal and would be proud to serve it to any guests who will eat olives.

For a first course we had microgreens on top of tomato slices. I dressed the microgreens in a simple olive oil and balsamic dressing. I used the fancy balsamic vinegar that Jan shared with me. This vinegar is so good that Jan and I are known for drinking it.

For the meal we had a whole wheat pasta dish with a side of yellow wax beans. The pasta recipe is from Immer's Everyday Dining with Wine and is called Linguine with Walnuts, Olives, and Arugula. We were out of linguine and had to go with penne. I would recommend sticking with the linguine and I would also recommend using a whole wheat or partial whole wheat pasta. I left out the cheese and I can't imagine it being any better with it.

This pasta dish reminded me why I cook from recipes from cookbook writers that I like. The food is greater than its parts.

The beans were prepared in boiling water as outlined in Bishop's Vegetables Every Day.

Lunch - June 30, 2009

This was a little salad I made up for Matt's lunch. He likes bean salads to toss with a box of lettuce at work. Our local source for prepackaged bean salads has dried up.

Chickpea Salad Topper
1 cup of chickpeas drained (with 3 tbsp of liquid reserved)
2 green onions (white part chopped, green part sliced)
1 Hungarian pepper (chopped)
1 tomato (chopped)
1 yellow squash (chopped)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsp of reserved liquid from chickpeas

I used chickpeas that I had cooked up following the basic recipe in Bishop's Italian Vegetarian cookbook.

Matt really liked this. He said it was the fresh tomato that made it so good.

Dinner - June 29, 2009

This meal could be called leftovers. We had a warm dish of red beans and rice along with a cold dish of cabbage salad.
This totally faked version of red beans and rice is not worth reporting. The beans were really not up to par.

The cabbage salad was quite edible if not stellar. It was also totally made up of what was left on hand. I think the nice touch on the cabbage salad was the addition of a granny smith apple. I put everything except the cabbage through the food processor. Below is the list of ingredients provided as a stepping off place for building a better salad next time.

Cabbage Salad
1 napa cabbage
1 bunch carrots
1 cuke
1 granny smith apple
1 bell pepper
1 jalapeƱo
1/2 cup red onion
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp rice vinegar
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp honey
Salt

The veggies were all local.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Lunch - June 29, 2009

This was some great broccoli I got at the Hyde Park Farmers' Market. These are the side shoots on the broccoli plants and they take a lot of labor to harvest. They however take no time to prep and cook. Steamed these and then tossed with a bit of olive oil and garlic. We ate them with some Amy's burritos to make lunch. Basic broccoli recipe is from Bishop's Vegetables Every Day. Yummy.

Breakfast - June 29, 2009

My breakfast is usually oatmeal, fruit, and soymilk. In the winter it is often formerly frozen fruit. This day it was fresh local berries.

1/2 to 3/4 cup Old Fashion Rolled Oats (store brand)
1 Tbsp Flax Seed Meal
1 to 2 cups Fruit
1 cup Unsweetened Soy Milk (Silk)

Put all ingredients in a bowl and eat.

Dinner - June 28, 2009

For this dinner I am using up some green beans from the previous week but trying to keep it fresh with a salad of very fresh vegetables.

The green bean recipe is from Bishop's Vegetables Every Day. The recipe is called Braised Green Beans with Tomatoes, Olives, Capers, and Basil. I call it Green Bean Puttanesca.

The recipe is a standard for me in the winter. I add either chickpeas or white beans to make it a meal. Always good. I forgot the basil this time but it was still good. As a main course we eat the whole dish between the two of us.

The salad was simply dressed with oil and vinegar.

For me this is a perfect meal to make when I am too tired to cook.

Lunch - June 28, 2009

This would be my lunch and not Matt's. I made up a pound of beet salad and ate half of it with some left over lentils. On the beets I left out the herbs because I was lazy. For the lentil and beet salad recipe references see previous posts. This really is a quick and easy way to eat small, fresh beets with little mess.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Lunch - June 27, 2009


I served some Amy's veggie patties along side the leftovers from our grill out to make a light lunch.

We had the two left over green been packets. I then heated the squash that had gone un-grilled along with the remaining pesto in the microwave. Not quite the same as the grill but not bad either.

For recipes please see post from June 26th dinner.

Dinner - June 26, 2009


I don't have any pictures from this meal. I grilled on the rooftop and we enjoyed dinner under the stars. The picture is from the leftover green beans that we ate the next day for lunch.

For dinner we had grilled squash with pesto, green bean and bell pepper packets roasted on the grill, and some potato salad that I had made up downstairs.

The squash and the green beans recipes are from the August, 2009 Eating Well Magazine. Links to the Eating Well recipes are below. The potato salad recipe is called Potato Salad with Caramelized Onions and is from the Healthy Hedonist cookbook.

Pesto-Topped Grilled Summer Squash

Packet-Roasted Balsamic Green Beans & Peppers

We liked all of the dishes. I was not completely wowed by the green beans but that roasted flavor grew on me. I am going to give the a version of squash a try again today. I would take any of these to a grill-out to share.

The squash, potatoes, green beans, and basil were all local.

I used a yellow zucchini and a variety of colors of pattypan squash. I thought the pattypan squash worked very well on the grill. The problem was the amount of space it took to cook enough squash to serve us as a main part of our meal and not just as a little side. I doubled the squash but some ended up going uncooked.

I did not use the cheese in the pesto. I did grind the pine nuts with a mortar and pestle. This held the chopped basil together with the other ingredients pretty well.

The potato salad reminded me of a German potato salad but without the bacon.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Dinner - June 25, 2009

I am trying to rethink our meals so that they are more vegetable based and less grain based. So far that means I have some strange looking meals. This is a beet salad made with yellow beets, collard greens, and a lentil dish with lots of vegetables.

I enjoyed this meal but I won't be making it for guests.

The lentils are from Bishop's Italian Vegetarian and are called Spicy Lentils with Aromatic Vegetables. I doubled the vegetables, kept the oil unchanged, and used 2 cups of lentils. I thought this was a good ratio. The carrots were local.

The collards are from Immer's Everyday Dining with Wine and have been a regular for us for years. The collards were local.
The beet salad is from Bishop's Vegetables Every Day and is called Grated Beet Salad. This recipe is easy and requires no cooking. The beets were local.

Dinner - June 24, 2009

This meal was based on Berley's Pad Thai recipe from Fresh Food Fast. I used rice instead of noddles and I added bok choy and sugar snap peas.

With my modifications this was not the beautiful dish that it should have been but it still tasted great. I would probably serve Berley's version to guests but this version with the increased vegetables will probably be a regular for just the two of us.

This time I used just regular tofu instead of the smoked or flavored tofu and I think I might like this simpler approach better. There was a time when we thought the flavored tofu was a great invention but now we tend to enjoy dishes with plain tofu.
This picture included some ginger and hot pepper that were not local. They did not go in the dish. The rest of the vegetables were local and went in the dish. I used garlic scapes in place of the garlic in the recipe.

Dinner - June 23, 2009

I cooked up some chickpeas during the day because I had some. I used garlic, bay leaf, and cilantro in the cooking water. For dinner I turned the chickpeas into an entree by following a recipe in Bishop's Italian Vegetarian called Chickpeas Simmered with Tomatoes and Rosemary. I did not make the full recipe which would have used up all my chickpeas.

I served this along side a simple salad of fresh local lettuces.

I really enjoyed this meal. Matt wanted to have the leftover chickpeas on top of a salad the next day for lunch but we were out of salad greens.

I would make these chickpeas again and eat them hot or cold. I could probably only serve this to guests as part of meal but for us it is a nice simple and satisfying dinner.


Dinner - June 22, 2009

This first dish is from the Eating Well magazine for August of 2009. This is Roasted Squash and Fennel with Thyme. I made a double recipe. The fennel we had was local and while beautiful it had a much stronger flavor than the grocery store style. I also tried using some of the stems from the fennel which I would suggest skipping for this recipe. The double recipe took an entire head of garlic but fit nicely in my roasting pan. There are some before pictures of the ingredients at the bottom of this post.
This is a cold dish of steamed chard from a recipe in Bishop's Vegetables Every Day. After the chard is steamed and chilled it is served with a bit of lemon juice and olive oil. I think it was a little much lemon juice on the first serving I made. I went with just the olive oil when I had the leftovers. This was beautiful small chard leaves and I think they were great this way. There is a before picture of the chard at the bottom of the post.
This is a tofu recipe extracted from a recipe called Spicy Stir-Fried Broccoli Rabe with Lemon-Basil Tofu from Berley's Modern Vegetarian Kitchen. It is a lemon flavor tofu bake which I thought would go with the rest of the meal. I think it did taste pretty good with the meal but it took at least twice as long to bake as the recipe had indicated and the basil turns the dish rather unsightly.

Lunch - June 23, 2009


I made this on June 22nd so we would have something to eat for lunch on the 23rd.

This is a broccoli recipe from Bishop's Vegetables Every Day called Broccolli with Orange-Ginger Dressing.

This was edible but not all that great. I used a giant head of broccoli from the farmers' market that I forgot to taste before I added this dressing. There was something quite sharp about this dish and I don't know if it was just a result of a deteriorated ingredient.

Making this recipe made me realize that I want to stick with simple flavors while I have fresh, local produce. This recipe would be something to try in the dead of winter.