Crate Full of Veggies – week three

June 28, 2012 Leave a Comment

It’s time for another Crate Full of Veggies. But before we get started, let me remind you about my cookbook giveaway. That’s right, one lucky reader will be gifted a copy of Hannah Kaminski’s, Vegan a la Mode, a BRAND new cookbook with over 100 amazing looking frozen treats. If you haven’t entered yet, do it!

Okay, you all entered? Good. Now we can talk about veggies. I had a great week with a lot of delicious, fresh meals and I didn’t have to go grocery shopping even a little. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, we did eat pancake dinner twice in order to avoid the store but that’s Jason’s favorite dinner anyway, so we were both quite happy in the end.

In my crate this week:
Strawberries
Broccoli Florets
Red Fire Romaine Lettuce
Snow Peas
Snap Peas
Kale
Mustard Greens
Radicchio
Bunching Onions
Red New Potatoes
Dried Cayenne
Thyme

The very first night I made Thai Green Curry using up all my broccoli and snow peas plus a few bunching onions from the week before.

Thai Green Curry

I do it the easy way and buy my curry paste. This makes curry a very quick, simple meal. Just add a can of coconut milk, your veggies, bamboo shoots, and some Thai basil and you’ve got dinner.

The best thing about Thai Kitchen Curry Paste is the recipe right on the label. So if you are making curry for the first time, grab some paste and you have your cheat sheet right there among your ingredients.

Again I brought home lots and lots of strawberries. I froze almost all of them, enjoyed some of the fresh ones in my morning oatmeal, and turned the remaining berries into these:

Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Creamsicl

These creamsicles became a bit of a hit on the internet over the weekend which has given my blog a little extra attention, a thrill for a new blogger. Here’s the recipe. If you try one summer recipe from my blog, make it this!

I had no idea how to use radicchio so I searched the web. I found this:  a whole slew of Martha Stewart’s radicchio recipes! There were quite a few ideas and I settled on this one.

Radicchio and Endive Salad

I didn’t have any endives but I added a few more bunching onions. I liked everything in the salad except the radicchio which was too bitter for my liking. Nonetheless, I was happy to try something new and glad to find Martha Stewart’s radicchio recipes.

Later in the week we had a rare nice day (June in Portland) so we grilled some veggie burgers and enjoyed some kale chips alongside.

Veggie Burger and Kale Chips

Kale chips are fantastic, healthy, and totally satisfying. Toss the de-stemed kale in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 270 for about 25 minutes, turning over a few times.

I enjoyed many side salads this week using the romaine lettuce, mustard greens, and bunching onions.

And at the end of the week I had some potatoes, snap peas, and onions left. I added some carrots and cabbage and tossed the vegetable medley in olive oil, seasoned with salt, pepper, fresh thyme and rosemary and roasted the whole thing in the oven at 425 degrees F for about 35 minutes, until potatoes were tender.

Thyme and Rosemary Vegetable Roast

Well there you have it! How about you? Did you enjoy any seasonal meals this week? Did you try out any new vegetables? As always, I LOVE to hear from you.

Filed Under: Eating in Season, Summer, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Quinoa Stir Fry with Ginger Peanut Sauce

June 25, 2012 3 Comments

I posted this picture a couple weeks back in one of my Crate Full of Veggies blogs and was recently reminded I had never gotten the recipe up! So here it is. This seasonal stir fry is one of my favorite ways to use both quinoa and broccoli. And how can you go wrong when ginger peanut sauce is involved?


Quinoa Stir Fry with Ginger Peanut Sauce
gluten-free
serves 2
prep time: 35 minutes

1/2 cup quinoa
3/4 cup water

1 tbsp oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium-sized head of broccoli, chopped
2 carrots, cut into thin strips
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips

Ginger Peanut Sauce
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp natural peanut butter
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated

fresh cilantro or basil
peanuts

Optional: 4-6 ounces extra firm tofu cut into thin slices and prepared in my super secret, super lazy way
or my other lazy way: 1/2 package marinated, ready to eat tofu:

or really any way you like to prepare tofu.

Rinse the quinoa several times and add it to boiling water. Cook covered for about 20-30 minutes, until water has evaporated and quinoa is light and fluffy. Leave covered, with heat off, for an additional ten minutes.

While quinoa is cooking, get to work on the vegetables. Heat oil in a cast iron skillet or heavy-bottom pan.  Add garlic and saute for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Toss in the remaining vegetables and stir fry until just tender. Do not over cook. They taste a lot better when there is still a snap to them. Remove from heat and set aside.

Mix the ingredients for peanut sauce together. Because I don’t like cleaning my blender and I never can fully mix it with a fork, I place all the ingredients in a small mason jar with a lid and shake it for several minutes. I found it to be the easiest, cleanest way for peanut sauce. Once well combined, pour over vegetables and stir to combine.

Serve over cooked quinoa and top fresh cilantro, peanuts and tofu (if desired).

I hope you all had a great summer weekend!

Filed Under: dinner, gluten-free meals Tagged With: , , , , ,

A crate full of veggies – week two

June 20, 2012 3 Comments
Last week I started my CSA diary as a way to encourage myself to let no vegetable go to waste and hopefully to get others excited about eating seasonally. And I ate well this week! Having limitations forces me to move past my go-to recipes and think more creatively about food and flavors.
This was my crate full of veggies this week:
buttercrisp lettuce
bunching onions
strawberries
broccoli
new red potatoes
kale
beets
mint 
oregano

This week I had so many strawberries. Not only did I come home with a few extra pints in my crate (the perks of having a farm share from your parent’s farm), I also took Eden on her first strawberry picking expedition on Sauvie Island. Looking for a good work out? Strawberry pick with an infant.

Anyway I was able to enjoy a lot of fresh strawberries this week.This Strawberry and Cream Oatmeal might be my new summer breakfast.

Strawberries and Cream Oatmeal

I made another attempt at my Neapolitan ice cream cake, but I’m still having problems with the chocolate layer’s texture. Of course trial and error is never a bad thing when it ends in three layers of ice cream. Note the mint garnish from the CSA.

Neapolitan Ice Cream Cakes

With my remaining strawberries I removed the stems, washed, and froze them. Make sure to freeze berries in single layer on a cookie sheet and wait until completely frozen to bag them. Last year I was impatient and bagged up my raspberries too early and ended up with a brick of mushy berries in my freezer.

Okay moving on. Last week I learned that broccoli needs to be used up pretty fast so the day after picking up my crate I turned my broccoli and potatoes into broccoli quinoa fritters. It was a total experiment that turned out great!

Here’s a quick summary with approximate amounts: 3 cups steamed and diced broccoli, two cups boiled and mashed potatoes, 2 cups cooked quinoa, 1/2 cup daiya “mozzarella” cheese (totally optional), 2 tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix it all together in a bowl. Form patties with about 1/4 cup batter and cook on oiled skillet over medium heat for about 9 minutes both sides. Makes about 15 patties. Great with a bit of vegan sour cream and served over a bed of (buttercrisp) lettuce.

Broccoli Potato Pancakes

I was able to enjoy these fritters for most of my lunches this week by keeping the batter in the fridge and cooking up only a couple at a time.

What’s left? The kale, fresh oregano, and onions were mostly used up on this tomato asparagus pizza. (I still have a couple onions left over.) The kale got all crispy in the oven and it was like eating kale chips on top of pizza…wonderful.

Asparagus, Kale, and Tomato Pizza

And because one pizza just wasn’t enough, the next day I made another which turned into my favorite meal of the week: beet and cashew “goat cheese” pizza or as it was referred to by a reader “Beetza”.

Roasted Beet and Cashew “goat cheeese” Pizza”

I will definitely be making this through out the summer.  and you should too! Here’s the recipe.

This week was a lot of fun as I tried and enjoyed new things. I am amazed at how much easier it has been to be creative when ingredients are limited rather than the other way around.

Have you tried any new recipes lately? Do you have any seasonal vegetables you don’t know how to use? This week I received some radicchio in my crate, a vegetable I have never used. We’ll see what happens…

Filed Under: Eating in Season, Summer, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,
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