Week in review

I have been slacking in blogging, but I'm still cooking! Here are some creations of the past week:



This is "tofu parmesan" - tofu coated in beaten eggs and bread crumbs, then baked for about half an hour. It came out pretty well, but didn't have a ton of flavor. The tomato sauce and cheese added lots of flavor though. On the side is some braised greens, which I didn't like that much. We got a huge bag of "braising greens" last week, and I cooked them following this recipe, but they came out very fibrous and not very tasty. That might be partly because I forgot the steaming step, or maybe they needed more seasoning.



This dish is terribly unphotogenic but tasted really good. I followed a Cooking Light recipe that I clipped out recently but I can't find it on their web site, so no link. It's basically a casserole with eggplant, zucchini, cheddar cheese and wild rice. Yummmm.



There are no vegetables in here, just CHOCOLATE and PEANUT BUTTER. I had to make a dessert to bring to a picnic, and originally was going to make brownies. Then I got the idea to make peanut butter brownies, then decided to make them brownie bites using my adorable mini-muffin tin, and voila. I essentially followed this recipe (but used a mix).

We got a new veggie delivery yesterday, and I did not take a group photo but it included corn, tomatoes, kale, carrots, eggplant, soybeans, basil, onions, peaches and canteloupe. Quite a haul. Last night we just had leftovers, but today I made corn and soybean succotash, loosely following this recipe. (I left out the red bell pepper and garlic.) Fresh corn is SO good. We didn't get a huge amount of soybeans from the farm, so I threw in some frozen ones as well.



And I had to take a picture of this omelet I made this morning, since it is the first omelet I can remember making that actually vaguely resembles an omelet and not scrambled eggs with vegetables.



I just need to make sure I let the eggs cook long enough before trying to flip it. This is the same problem I always have with pancakes too, but I am gradually improving.

Broccoli fiesta

Last year, the broccoli patch at our farm got flooded, washing away most of the broccoli crop. Of all the veggies, my favorite ones had to get flooded! But so far this year, we have gotten broccoli three or four times. This week, I decided to make a broccoli and corn salad, since we also got four ears of corn. This was one of those dishes that I turned over in my mind for a day or so before making it, and my visions became more and more elaborate. My first thought was to mix the broccoli and corn together with some chickpeas and add soy sauce for a nice Asian flavor. Then, after we had lemon salad dressing on Friday night, I thought I might use that instead of soy sauce. But, I forgot to save the extra dressing and we had no more lemons. But... we did have a lime! This took me in a new direction - cumin-lime-olive oil dressing, with black beans instead of chick peas. That's what I ended up doing. This is one medium sized head of broccoli, kernels from four ears of corn, one can of black beans, and about half a cup of leftover brown rice. The dressing is 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil, about a teaspoon of cumin, and juice from half a lime.



We snuck two small Tupperware containers of this into the movie theater yesterday, since we went around lunchtime and I knew the movie (Julie and Julia) would make me hungry. The movie was great, and so was the salad.

So many veggies!

Just look at all of this:




Friday is CSA pickup day, so we are inundated with veggies (and fruit). What you see in the photos is the full share - we are splitting it with a friend who is out of town right now, so we are "babysitting" his veggies until he gets back. I don't know how we will eat even half of this. Well, actually I'm sure we can :)

Generally my philosophy when planning meals based on the CSA share is to use the veggies most likely to spoil/wilt first. So, last night's dinner featured lettuce. To make it a more substantial meal, I topped the salad with salmon (Trader Joe's canned wild Alaska) and brown rice. There are also some dried cranberries and feta cheese tossed in there, and a dressing I made from olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It doesn't look all that pretty, but it was very tasty. On the side, we had some green/yellow beans that I sauteed with garlic, olive oil and dill. (The yellow beans were leftover from last week so they were a priority to be eaten.)

No veggies here...

...just lots of fruit! Normally I am an oatmeal for breakfast kind of girl, through and through, but lately it's been way too hot for a hot breakfast. Luckily I discovered the fabulousness of the yogurt parfait. This lovely concoction has nonfat French vanilla yogurt (Stonyfield Farm), a banana, handful of blueberries, Kashi GoLean Crunch cereal and some homemade granola. Topped with the secret ingredients that really MAKE this dish: maple syrup and shredded coconut (unsweetened). SO good.

Peachy

Dinner tonight wasn't all that exciting, but I wanted to post a photo because I finally figured out how to get non-horrible photos. The "macro" setting, whatever that is, must be ON for close-up shots. So here is a lovely photo of my salad: CSA lettuce, Trader Joe's blueberries, walnuts, feta cheese, and Newman's olive oil and vinegar dressing.



And just for the heck of it, a photo of one of the peaches we got from our farm. These weren't actually the greatest peaches, but they look pretty!

Sage

Tonight's dinner was simple but yummy: Annie's mac and cheese, doctored up with some roasted farm veggies - summer squash, purple carrots, purple pepper and onion. I roasted the veggies with fresh sage, also from the farm. Most weeks the CSA gives us a choice of herbs, and it's usually basil or cilantro, sometimes dill or rosemary or thyme, but this is the first time I've seen sage there. I love sage but normally just use it with roasted butternut squash, which is obviously not in season, so I decided to toss it in with some summer veggies. It worked really well. I used about 15 sage leaves, chopped, and roasted everything (plus olive oil, salt and pepper), for about 30 minutes, then mixed it in with the mac and cheese.



This whole process massively overheated the kitchen, so we were forced into the living room to actually consume dinner. Why do I insist on using the oven AND stove when it is 90 degrees out??

P.S. A fun fact from "In Defense of Food," which I am reading now: The average American spends only half an hour a day preparing food. Yikes. It sometimes takes me that long just to pack my lunch (and snacks!) for the following day. Which I admit is a little ridiculous....

Ratatouille and blueberries

It happened that this week we got all of the veggies necessary for ratatouille, which I haven't made since last summer. Check these out (I love the purple pepper!):



After much chopping and sauteeing, the veggies were transformed into this:



I loosely followed this recipe from Rachael Ray, but instead of putting the ratatouille into wraps I was lazy and served it over whole wheat couscous, with goat cheese crumbled on top.

After dinner, we had some friends over for Blueberry Fest '09, which I devised as a way to use up some of the ridiculous amount of blueberries we picked last weekend. I made blueberry crisp, blueberry-lemon cheesecake squares and blueberry daquiris (!!!). There may have also been some blueberry beer :) I forgot to photograph anything except for the cheesecake squares:



These were probably the most popular item of the evening. The blueberries we picked are almost gone, but I bought two more pounds at Trader Joe's yesterday (they were on sale - I couldn't resist). Trying to decide if I have the energy to try to make blueberry jam or if I should just toss them in the freezer...

Purple haze

One of my favorite new vegetables I've discovered through my CSA is purple carrots. (Yes purple is my favorite color.) They taste about the same as regular orange carrots, but are a little less sweet. I was very excited to get them today because I saw a recipe on Smitten Kitchen a couple of weeks ago for roasted carrot and avocado salad and have been dying to try it ever since. Here are the carrots, pre-roasting:




I roasted the carrots with some olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper for about 30 minutes. Once done, I added about 1/4 of a sliced avocado and squeezed on a little lemon juice. The sweet roasted carrots and cool creamy avocado were really a nice combination. The original recipe is here.



Sorry for the blurry photos - I should really learn to take better photos if I am going to be a good food blogger! :)