CSA Weeks 20 & 21: Pizza!

Here’s Week 20’s festival of greenery:


Pizza was easily the best thing we made during these two weeks, so I’ll tell you all about it. We bought a crust and can of sauce, because figuring out what to do with all these random vegetables week after week has made us lazy. We did sweeten up the sauce with some extra garlic, mind you. As you see, we chopped some spinach and arugula, then added sliced tomatoes and Daiya mozzarella. I believe some fresh thyme and oregano were involved, too. Props go to our new salad spinner for being the awesomest use of plastic since, I don’t know, plastic isn’t used for very many awesome things, but the salad spinner is one of them. See below for delicious pizza noms:


Oh, it was tasty. I think we finished it off the next day. The tomatoes made it a little soggy on the bottom, but so what. Soggy pizza beats no pizza at all.

Umm, what else did we have this week? Thyme. We froze it. Cilantro. We tossed it, because we have a ton of it and it’s tough to give away cilantro. Try it if you don’t believe me.

We had a veritable roasted vegetable orgy: beets, white radishes, acorn squash, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and broccoli! Not all in the same pan, but close enough for an orgy. Here’s my plate, sans beets and radishes because I don’t really swing that way:


You’ll notice some parsnips and carrots among all the squash and sweet potatoes, because we used Vegan with a Vengeance’s Ginger Roasted Winter Vegetables recipe and they really do add to it. I love that flavor combo so much.

In this week’s biggest fail—and really, we haven’t had all that many fails since this CSA experiment began—we tried to reinterpret Vegan Soul Kitchen’s Yam and Mustard Greens soup using escarole. Oh, sweet merciful kittens, I did not like it. Sweet potatoes work fine in this soup, but mustard greens have a je ne sais quoi that is really essential. Escarole is just too…lettuce-y? I made Red eat it. He’s the best.

Onto Week 21 (or rather a continuation of the above, as both weeks really just smushed together):


I think we were still eating the roasted root veggies and broccoli, so not much new on that front.

See that weird-looking cabbage? Okay, maybe it’s hidden behind more of that goddamn escarole. Anyway, we got this cabbage that looked like it had come out of the cabbage mold all funny. It didn’t look sick, just misshapen. Pointy, like this:

Ripped from Hub UK. Don't sue!

As you will no doubt be unsurprised to learn, it is a pointed cabbage. Or sweetheart cabbage, if you want to be romantic like that. It behaves just like a normal, round cabbage, so don’t let its looks deter you. Red made coleslaw with half of it, and the rest was once more smothered with mustard seeds à la Vegan Soul Kitchen. That really is a delicious way to eat cabbage, and I recommend you try it.

It was pizza time again, this time with lovely green peppers and kalamata olives:


This pizza was even better, with the notable exception that I threw up right after eating the last piece for Sunday breakfast. I don’t know if the spinach or arugula got poisonous or what, but I was seriously pissed that our toilet got to enjoy the pizza longer than I did.

This, on the other hand, was a triumph. Veganomicon’s Sautéed Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach is really delicious, but Red wanted tofu instead, so tofu he got. I crisped it up, then went ahead with the recipe. We had it over rice, and it was amazing.


You’d think we’d have been happy to get mustard greens given the disaster with that escarole soup, right? Well, we were, until we forgot about them in the back of the fridge and they got too wilty to salvage. I hang my head in shame. As for the new batch of escarole, I pawned that and the radishes off on my parents. Papa Burnout loves radishes, and Mom is always willing to try a new vegetable.

After that, we still had some green peppers and mushrooms left, so we thawed some spaghetti sauce (made back in the summer when we got tomatoes every week!) added the veggies, and voila! Super-quick weeknight meal. Sometimes simple really is best.

Random food gift experience #2: Wild rice.

So, you know by now that I love the stories about how I acquired random things more than I love the random things themselves. (See: crock pot.) The bag of wild rice that took up residence in my cupboard for a month or two is no exception.

Sometime around Solstice/Christmas, I went to get my hair cut. I love my salon: It’s a happy combination of the old-school beauty parlor where everyone gossips the day away and the trendy, eco-hippie “studio” type of place. It’s family-run, the prices are good, and they send all the cut hair off to make mats to absorb oil spills. I digress. As I was getting my hair washed, one of the stylists held up a bag of wild rice and asked me what to do with it.

Now, being vegan and mouthy, I’m used to having people ask me what to do with haphazard food items. I inspected the bag of rice, then went on to explain how she could mix it with white or brown rice and make it into a nice pilaf with some veggies, or throw it into some soup, or…. You get the picture. She interrupted to explain that the rice freaked her out, that it was a random Christmas gift from some equally random client. Wild rice as a Christmas gift? That gave even me pause. We scrutinized the bag of rice as though it were some exotic species, and she admitted that the tiny black grains looked like bugs. She asked me to take it.

“I can’t take your Christmas present!” I objected.

“Please, I don’t want it!” she cried.

Well, dear reader, what would you have done? I didn’t want her to be stuck with a bag of rice she’d never cook and that made her feel like an insect assault was imminent, and I couldn’t let the rice be thrown out. So, after my hair was coiffed to perfection, I tucked my accidental gift into my bag and wondered what I would do with it once I got it home. But not before I promised her I’d blog about it and make her internet-famous for her generosity.

Eat me.

Last weekend (or perhaps the weekend before, they all blur together in a haze of laundry and cooking and naps), I sent my new bag of wild rice to its great reward: Veganomicon’s Porcini and Wild Rice Soup. I highly recommend this tasty soup, but as you will see, it had a surprise up its little soup-sleeve (or under its lid, as the case may be).

All went well with the soup preparation. My dried mushrooms (porcinis? I have no clue) are ancient, so I soaked them for much longer than the recipe called for, and they reconstituted beautifully. The broth was made, fresh mushrooms (I subbed baby bellas, I think) sliced, herbs added, and wild rice stirred in for a deliciously fragrant brew. It looked great. It was nowhere near dinner time, so once it was done, I turned the stove off and let it sit for a wee while to cool before I put it in the fridge.

MISTAKE.

When I came back to the kitchen and lifted the lid of my big stockpot, what greeted me had long since left soup territory behind and was rapidly approaching the outer limits of what could be described as stew. That bastard rice had soaked up all the liquid and looked ready to eat my soul, as well.

“What the hell!” I shouted at it, visions of this demon-grain eating my mushrooms along with the broth clouding my vision. Fuming at this disagreeable development, I stirred the pot to see if any broth at all was left. A scant bit was—not enough to reclaim the title of “soup,” but enough to keep the—pilaf?—moistened and tasty.

And tasty it was, dear reader. Once I calmed down enough to stop cursing the weirdo salon client whose fault this clearly all was—seriously, next year just get a gift card—I acknowledged that whatever I had made, it was yummy. It was still wet, and I still needed a spoon to eat it, and it still had mushrooms. Not a triumphant charge over the finish line, perhaps, but a respectable showing.

Seriously, Vcon readers, make this soup. Only don’t expect it to stay soupy for long.

Comfort food.

As promised, I did make dinner last night! Quinoa Kitchari with Boca burgers and Mushroom-Onion Gravy. I think Red would have helped, but I was snappish and frazzled and thought he was making fun of me when he said the gravy looked good. *hangs head shamefacedly* I apologized and he got me a Blue Moon and I felt better.

Kitchari simply means mixture, and that’s what it is. It’s quinoa and red lentils simmered to a mush—a very tasty mush that is reminiscent of mashed potatoes. It probably won’t win any beauty prizes, but neither will anything else I make, so it’s all good. It would probably taste fine with other lentils, but the red ones really bring the mushiness to the party. I know that shouldn’t sound appetizing, but it works. It really does. It’s warm and filling, even though despite the spices and tamari, it’s pretty bland and can be dry. (See: quinoa and lentils.) Then again, so can mashed potatoes until you dress them up. If I eat it plain, I add extra salt and pepper and finish it off with some soy butter.

Last night, of course, we were in the gravy groove. It was fairly basic: onions, garlic, and mushrooms with herbs, broth, and a spelt flour-vegetable oil roux. Easy and tasty. It added a nice touch to the kitchari and acquitted itself admirably when we poured it over Boca burgers. I foresee it also being ladled lovingly over biscuits in the near future.

I can’t say too much about the Boca burgers, other than that I splashed them with a little tamari as they cooked. They always taste blah to me, even with all the delicious toppings in the world. Yet, for some reason, they are an integral part of Dog Food Surprise. Maybe I OD’d on them during my early vegetarian days, when the worlds of soy and vegetables seemed so alien. They must have offered a familiar, processed comfort. Now I don’t even want to take them to a cookout because they look so sad sitting there on the grill.

Anyway, dinner was a success. An ugly, monochromatic success, because when you have brown food and pale golden food and you cover it all with light brown gravy, you get the opposite of food porn. Hence, there is no picture because even if there was, you would have had to squint to tell that it wasn’t cat puke.

I digress. Can anybody really tell the difference between soy sauce and tamari? Am I wasting my money on the latter?

Shroomin’.

I am a mushroom fiend. I speak, of course, of the perfectly legal and edible varieties that do not cause me to trip my face off. I’ve never done that kind, actually. If I did, I would probably tell you. No, my affection is reserved for plump portabellas, cute little creminis, and that humble-but-worthy standby, the white mushroom. Mushroom risotto, down-and-dirty stroganoff (so named because it involves packaged burger crumbles and Tofutti sour cream), and clam chowder where the clams are really oyster mushrooms: Mmmmmm.

Aside: I once saved my friend from alcohol poisoning through the use of mushrooms. She hates mushrooms, loathes them with an unholy ardor. The smell of mushrooms sautéing makes her nauseous. One evening, she came home rather drunk. Drunk enough to curl up on the bathroom floor and moan. Clearly, she needed to puke and go to bed. She knew it, too, but just couldn’t seem to manage. I’m not one for sticking my fingers down someone else’s throat, so I told her that I was going to cook some mushrooms. As I had hoped, the very idea made her spew rancid booze vomit. After a few rounds, she was recovered enough to stagger to bed, where I held her hand and smoothed her hair and told her she’d be fine in the morning.

So, anyway, Red and I made 30-Minute Vegan’s Stellar Stuffed Mushrooms the other night, using four big portabella caps. It was ridiculously easy: blend spinach, mushroom stems, green pepper, cream cheese, and spices, then plop into caps. (Stick blender represent!) Twenty minutes in the oven, and you’re good. Each of us only needed one, they were so big and satisfying. (Let’s see what Google searches this blog comes up under now!) They would definitely be a good appetizer using smaller mushrooms, which is what the recipe originally calls for, and the filling would be a delicious dip or spread.

My only gripes: portabella juice can make whatever it touches look kind of blah and muddy (hey, it’s a superpower) and while the rosemary was pleasant, I have issues with anything twig-like. Maybe I need fresh rosemary, as the dried version is very twiggy indeed. Or maybe I’m just sensitive about the whole, “Huh, do you eat, like, twigs and bark and stuff?” thing.

Portabella 'shroom photo ripped from What's Cooking America.