CSA Weeks 15 and 16: Finally, fall.

For a summer-loving gal, I sure am happy with the change of seasons. Of course, it’s hard to feel autumnal when the odd 80-degree day keeps popping up, and the leaves don’t seem too keen on changing, but overall, I like it. Week 15’s veggies don’t look too seasonal, but just go with it:

There we have some beautiful chard, another green leafy thing, garlic, and spinach, all of which may have been from One Straw, although I can’t recall if they do spinach or not. The peaches and cauliflower definitely came from other vendors. I don’t even know, you guys. I was too busy mourning the last of the peaches.

I didn’t get too wild with this week’s haul, I’m afraid. The spinach went into this tester wrap (I’m lucky as hell to be testing for Tami Noyes and Celine Steen’s upcoming sandwich cookbook o’awesomesauce!), with some totally-out-of-season strawberries and a delicious hazelnut dressing:


Hold on, let me back up. I need to properly thank Tami and Celine for having me as a tester, because Red and I have enjoyed some of the most amazing sandwiches over these past few months. Both of them are recipe-creating geniuses, and it is awesome to eat food that doesn’t require silverware. Double-mega thanks to Tami, for whose upcoming book Grills Gone Vegan I’m also testing! It’s testing mania in my house! As if I haven’t been blessed enough by the vegan cooking goddesses, Tami was also kind enough to send me a copy of her first book, American Vegan Kitchen. I love it, and it is the best cookbook a homestyle-food-loving guy like Red could ask for. It is fan-freaking-tabulous. We love you, Tami!

Wow, it is so much better writing about how awesome other vegans are than about what we ate all week. Seriously. But I promised you I’d take you through our CSA, and I’m doing it—slowly and with long gaps between posts because I am by turns lazy and mental, but mostly lazy. So, back to my lackluster photos!

After those ballin’ strawberry-spinach wraps, we had…some other stuff. I honestly can’t remember what in hell we did with that chard and the other green leafies, but I am sure it was delicious. Some of the cauliflower went into (I think) a tester recipe, and let me just state for the record that cauliflower is perhaps the longest-lived fridge vegetable I have ever met, except maybe for garlic. We had a bunch of cauliflower left over and no desire to do anything with it, so it sat. And sat. And did not get moldy or mushy or gross. Finally, this past weekend (so, like, after it had been hanging out for three weeks), we used the rest in a squash soup and some caulipots. And it was as good as the day we brought it home. Cauliflower, you are the long-distance runner of the Crisper drawer.

I did a little better with Week 16:


I forget what kinds of apples we got, but they’re all good, so eat more apples, okay? The carrots went to a variety of uses, including just plain microwaved and diced into raw chunks for Lucy. One ended up in that squash soup, as well. You’ll see that sooner or later, I swear. I mean, it doesn’t look like much, but it was delicious. That smallish broccoli we just steamed and ate as a side. Here’s that butternut squash, roasted up all pretty:


I do love me some winter squash. The squash, broccoli, onions, and garlic all came from One Straw; the carrots, apples, and mushrooms were from elsewhere.

You can’t really tell from the photo, but that’s a whole bunch of shrooms. Enough for two mushroom-centric recipes. Here’s one of them:

That’s Salisbury-Style Seitan with Mushrooms from American Vegan Kitchen. The seitan recipe from that book is killer. I am by no means a seitan expert, but I’ve tried a few different versions, and this is one of the best. Those dumb-looking mashed potatoes are the byproduct of another AVK recipe, Tempeh Stroganoff-Stuffed Potatoes (no picture because I was mad at myself), and they are dumb-looking because the fuckers wouldn’t bake, then they fell apart when I tried to scrape out the insides for the stuffed part of the recipe. So, once I finished crying (because yes, I cried over my stupid defective potatoes), I put them in a pot and mashed them like I was mashing the brains of my worst enemy. They still didn’t get creamy and fluffy like proper mashed potatoes, but when you’re putting delicious tempeh stroganoff and/or seitan with shrooms on top, it doesn’t make much difference. The tempeh stroganoff was boss, too, in case you’re wondering.

Oh, right, here’s where some of those carrots ended up:



This is a tester recipe from Tami’s grill book, and it is enough to make you want to fire up your grill in the middle of winter, although I punked out and made it indoors, because when you have a cast-iron skillet you can take it from the stove to the oven to the flames of hell and it will be fine. Behold, Tempeh Chickpea Stew with Harissa Biscuits! I had never had harissa before, and this is but one example of why Tami is cool: She makes me buy weird sauces and things I would have ignored otherwise and now love. I’ve got harissa and sriracha and sambal oelek and I even made my own freakin’ berbere spice. This is the second time I’ve made this recipe, so you know I really like it. The next time anyone gives me shit about where I get my protein, I am handing them a bowl of this and saying, “You’re welcome, douchebag.” Chickpeas! Tempeh! A whole bunch of vegetables! Delicious savory biscuits on top! This will keep you full until you see that Chocolate Pirate’s Booty (Marla, you’re a terrible influence) on top of the fridge and decide it’s time for dessert.

And that’s all. In case you’re really excited for that squash soup, I’ll try to get the next recap up before Thanksgiving.

CSA Week 14: This should be more exciting.

I mean it should be more exciting for you guys. I, for one, am having a blast picking out our veggies each week and cooking them up, and I am already enjoying being back on a regular schedule (see: no more class), but this most recent week might seems a little pedestrian to you. No matter! Pedestrians are better than the rest of us, because they walk while we drive our stupid polluting cars.

We already had quite a bit of food in the fridge, so we basically grabbed our One Straw stuff and went home. There you see another humongous sweet potato—even bigger than the one from the previous week! they grow them HUGE at One Straw!—some chard, a stalk of broccoli, and an average-sized butternut squash. I think it was average, anyway. Seeing it next to that mutant sweet potato makes me doubt myself.

I flaked out on the pictures, my darlings. The broccoli we steamed, and you don’t really need to see that, do you? I should have really done better on the rest of our meals, because Red took the lead this week, and his efforts are always exceptional. Example: We had that chard, some onions, and random portabella stems in the fridge. I had meant to sauté them, but I got busy or tired or sad or something and went to my last class after leaving him with vague instructions to…do something with our orphan veggies. When I came home, he had diced and stirred and simmered everything with marsala and Bragg’s for a lovely improvisational meal. It was excellent over rice. And you can’t see it, because I suck.

He brought the noise again on Friday, while I sat in traffic for two hours trying to get home. (It was rain, Baltimore. Not the zombie apocalypse.) Friday happened to be the autumnal equinox (remember?), so of course we wanted our food to match. While I sat at red lights and read random articles on my work phone (I still hate you, Crackberry, but you stopped me from committing rush-hour homicide), my awesome husband mashed that sweet potato into submission and popped our first risotto of the season into the oven. Soon after I finally stumbled through the door, we enjoyed cinnamon-spiced mashed sweet potatoes and that fabulous butternut risotto with sage and red onions. I didn’t get a pic of the mash, but here’s the risotto in all its glory:

If you get right up close to the monitor, maybe you can smell it.

He is a fucking keeper, I tell you what.

CSA Weeks 11, 12, and 13: Potatoes and power outages.

Week 11 looks to have been a bust, since I evidently forgot to take a photo. Sorry about that. I’m guessing we didn’t make anything too special with it, either, because I only have this one meal photo:

And honestly, I think those were Week 10’s potatoes that we made a nice little pan of hash browns out of. Look at those beautiful matchstick potatoes—Red is a magician with the mandoline. The peppers, onions, and mushrooms were a great mix. I wanted to toss them with the potatoes, but someone likes his potatoes separate. And covered in ketchup.

Week 12 was much better:

Most photogenic peach ever.

Doesn’t all that stuff look fabulous? And we scored it all during the quickest-ever trip to the market, because Hurricane Irene was coming to visit. Luckily, she didn’t stay long and didn’t make too much of a mess, but we did lose power for two days. This was not impressive to me, because thanks to Hurricane Isabel in 2003, my personal best for rocking out sans electricity and hot water is six days. It was not as terrible as you might imagine, either. Bottom line, I was immune to the panic-shopping and hoarding of bread/water/toilet paper that heralded Irene.

(My poor husband. He hates extreme weather. But he tolerated it well and I am very proud of him.)

Cool thing number approximately one million about being vegan: When the power goes out, your food spoils much more slowly than your omni friends’. Soymilk? Fine! Produce? A little wilty, but totally edible. Ice cream? We ate it all as soon as the freezer crapped out. We lost a container of hummus and that was it. And, let’s face it, that hummus might have been fine, because it tends to smell kind of weird anyway, but I didn’t want to roll the dice on it.

A few weeks back, we had picked up an American Flatbread Vegan Harvest frozen pizza on a whim, so we slapped that baby on the grill:

It was okay. I mean, it was a frozen pizza. Vegan or non-, they are only so titillating.

We also had leftover spaghetti and un-chicken seitan cutlets in the fridge, so we heated all that up on the grill too for a fabulous dinner:


Aside from that, we just chilled. We read a lot, and snuggled Lucy, and took naps with the windows wide open to feel the breeze. I barely missed the Internet, and you know I love all of you very much.

We got the biggest sweet potato I have ever seen during Week 13:

That sucker must have weighed three pounds. Seriously, it felt so wrong to cut it up, like the biggest knife we have wasn’t sufficient. I needed a sweet potato butcher to do my dirty work for me, which was fine because Red was there. He slew the beast, and we roasted it with ginger and a drizzle of maple syrup. It tasted like fall, and I was happy.

Red had a birthday that weekend, so for breakfast, we roasted potatoes and made another pepper-and-onion hash. Here’s his plate, with the demon ketchup:

(I don’t mind ketchup, actually, but I wouldn’t be sorry to never eat it again. A little vinegar on my fries? Yes please. Ketchup? Away with you.)

Fall continued to creep up on us with the season’s first winter squash. I roasted this lovely spaghetti squash simply, and it was very warm and comforting. Of course, we’re still having 80-degree days here, but not long ago the temperature was topping 100, so it’s starting to feel rather autumnal indeed.

I’ll be back soon with more bloggy goodness. My summer class ends in two weeks, so feel free to poke me about getting back on a regular schedule, my darlings.

CSA Weeks 8, 9, & 10: Is that a watermelon in your basket, or are you just happy to see me?

We had some great stuff during Week 8, which explains why I forgot to take a picture of it. However, I did get my shit together enough to take a picture of the best part:


A heart potato! We really felt the love from One Straw. Thanks, you guys.

We also got some tomatillos. “What are we going to do with these?” I asked Red, who had done the marketing solo that morning. (I had gone to aerial yoga class, which is a ridiculous amount of fun.)

“Use them to make tomatillo sauce,” he suggested.

“Uh, like the jar we already have in the freezer?” I asked, pulling it out to show him. I think I made him feel bad, so I quickly decided that we would use the tomatillos, together with the potatoes and our cute little Lodi apples, to make Veganomicon’s Manzana Chili Verde:


It’s never too hot outside for this chili, which is an automatic success with anyone you love. Well, I guess it was too hot for Red, because he added some ice cubes. His internal thermostat is set so differently from mine. It never ceases to amaze me. Anyway, this chili is delicious and I can’t recommend it enough.

Here’s a picture of a pita pizza, though I can’t remember where the spinach and tomatoes came from. One thing’s for sure—toaster-oven pita pizza is where it’s at if you want a quick one-person dinner.


I don’t remember where we got this squash, but it wasn’t from the CSA. Anyway, we sautéed it with some dill and olive oil, then had it with quinoa for a light but surprisingly hearty dinner:


This photo should hopefully make up for the one I missed:


Look at that watermelon! Look at those peaches! Look at those peppers!

No, really, look at them:


Have you ever seen a more beautiful pepper? My camera couldn’t do it justice. It’s a lush red color with shades of deep green, like someone painted it. Prettiest freaking pepper I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t bear to part with them, so it’s been only this week that one has met its destiny in this frittata I sort of ghettoed up:


I was feeling too lazy to follow the instructions, so I sort of just winged the bits I didn’t want to do. I was really psyched to add a bit of spinach, too, only to find out I’d left it on the counter for three days. In my defense, it was in one of our pillowcase produce bags, and spinach is so light and fluffy, I thought the bag was empty. Who am I kidding, I sniffed that wilted spinach and it smelled fine, so I chopped it up and threw it in the frittata anyway.

Red was over the moon for that watermelon. He loves it like whoa, and as you can imagine, this beast gave us a ton of fruit. We gave half to his parents and had pounds of it left over. Delicious, messy, sweet watermelon, you are summer itself.

Those peaches were pretty fantastic, but the apples were the star this week on account of their name: RAMBO. Rambo apples! For real! How could we not buy them, after that? They are similar to Granny Smiths, and a little firmer and tarter than the Lodis. Excellent eating apples.

Here’s Week 10:


This was just last Saturday. We’ve still got the potatoes, but I think we’re going to make a hash out of them and throw in the stems from those portabellas. Suddenly I can’t remember if we got those shrooms from another vendor at the market or from the hippie grocery. I’m losing it.

The chard went into that rice-chard-chickpea thing from Veganomicon that I make all the damn time. I haven’t made it since Week 1, actually, so I was overdue. I didn’t take a picture because you’re probably sick of seeing it, and you should make it yourself because it will rock your face off.

We ended up with a ton of tomatoes, most of which were from family. We made a great quick spaghetti sauce (we riff on 30-Minute Vegan’s recipe), then turned to bruschetta (also 30-Minute Vegan). We had quite the Mediterranean dinner the other night: bruschetta with artichoke hearts and two different kinds of olives. It was decadent.


And that’s it. I know I promised you an ice cream post, and I’ll do it, I swear! Just…not today. But it’ll be worth the wait. Dessert always is.

CSA Weeks 5-7: We ate some food.

Like I told you last time, I forgot to take a picture of Week 5’s veggies, but I do know that we got kale, and that Red once again made Adam’s Kale Salad with it. I remember this mostly because he hit the Bragg’s a little too hard while whipping up the dressing, so it was a touch salty. Mouth-puckeringly so. Still, it was kale. Salty, overdressed kale beats no kale any day of the week.

God only knows what else we had that week. Whatever it was, we ate it and it was good.

Here’s Week 6, which should look beautiful to you after the picture-free-fabulousness of Week 5:


The red lettuce, peppers, and onions came from One Straw, and I’m pretty sure the tomatoes did too. Those were great tomatoes, and I am not a tomato-lover. We made many a tasty sandwich with them. We ate a lot of hummus with those peppers, too. It’s been too damn hot to turn the stove on very often, I tell you what.

More Lodi apples. Mmmm. I think. They could be Pristines, about which I will tell you in a minute. And don’t those peaches look amazing? They were, but the bastards wouldn’t slice. I could not split one in half to save my life. The halves simply would not twist apart. It made for some messy peach-eating.

Here’s Week 7:


Corn! Glorious corn! Red and I love local corn, and this was the first week that One Straw had it. There’s no picture, because we just boiled it and ate it, like you do. Rest assured, it was delicious, and I flossed after. We also picked up the lettuce, garlic, and onions at One Straw.

You see those tiny little two-bite apples? They are everywhere recently, like Lodi apples 2.0. They are called Pristines, and they are very small and green. We tend to buy twice as many, because we estimate that two of them equal one regular-sized apple. I find their size kind of annoying actually, because I could easily chomp right through one if I wasn’t paying attention. Still, they’re tasty.

Lots of greens! My mom wanted some mesclun greens, but not a whole lot, so we split a bag. It feels so fun to eat flowers, doesn’t it? So I made a couple small salads that I didn’t bother photographing, but they did the job. We still have some spinach, and it is delicious. Mmmmm, baby spinach. The only kind of baby to eat. (Okay, baby corn counts too.)

Though not strictly CSA-inclusive, here is a pizza we made with zucchini a friend gave me:


Red was inspired by this Vegansaurus pic, and I am so glad, because it was delicious. We already had the zukes and the artichoke hearts, so we scored some Daiya and a crust and went to town. Zucchini pizza FTW.

Did I tell you we got an ice cream maker? Hooooo boy, when I get some time to write that up, you’re gonna drool like whoa. For now, content yourselves with Fuck Yeah Vegan Ice Cream.

CSA Weeks 3 & 4: Yeesh, I’m a bad blogger.

First, the good news. My awesome husband, who ably handled Week 3’s CSA run solo, took a picture for you. Like I mentioned at the end of Week 2’s post, I was in yoga teacher training all weekend and had not a moment to spare for all the foraging we vegans must do to feed ourselves. I haven’t mentioned it here before, but in April I started my 200-hour program, which I hope to finish within a year or so. Training days are tiring, but so much fun and I’m learning a lot.


The bad news is, I’m not sure I can remember what we made, and I flaked on taking a picture for Week 4 (and Week 5, so don’t expect much there). Anyway, you can see that he scored us some garlic scapes, broccoli, kale, and a cabbage from One Straw. The other stuff came from random vendors, but allow me to mention the Lodi apples. These freakin’ things are everywhere this summer. I never knew there existed an apple tarter or greener than a Granny Smith, but lo and behold, the Lodi is it. They’re supposed to be for turning into applesauce, but I eat them straight-up because that’s how I roll. Not as juicy as Granny Smiths, but they’ll do. Also, their seeds are white. White apple seeds! My mind, it was blown.

I just realized I have no idea what became of those carrots. Husband, what did you do with them?

Anyway, here’s this spinach-strawberry salad from Becoming Raw. It’s amazing. We made it once last summer, and only the short season for strawberries keeps me from making it every day. I even stuffed some into a tortilla and made a very drippy but delicious wrap. The dressing is this orange-poppy seed combination that is like being kissed by a unicorn.


Here’s a picture of the baby birds who lived outside our front door. They’re fledged now, and I miss them. It was funny to see them sitting on top of each other. You’d think Mom would get a clue and build a bigger nest, but maybe she doesn’t want her offspring to get too comfy. Empty nest, har har har.


Healthy dinner ahoy! Steamed broccoli, brown rice, and some spicy cabbage from Vegan Soul Kitchen. Even though on my best day I am sort of meh about cabbage, it’s tasty. I think I’m still recovering from childhood mushy-stinky-cabbage trauma. A head of cabbage goes a long way, so Red fixed himself some coleslaw as well.


You absolutely want to make this, but I’m a bitch and can’t give you a recipe, so I apologize. We call this Adam’s Kale Salad, because this dude Adam would bring it to Vegan Pledge Program meetings, and it always disappeared like rapacious vegan aliens had abducted it. I don’t think Adam used exact proportions, but Red is really good at approximating it, so I let him carry on. It’s garlic, Bragg’s, lemon juice, and maybe one or two other things? Ask Red, he’ll tell you. Then you just toss your kale with it and go to town. Anyway, Adam is a ferocious activist, and you can read a rockin’ interview with him here. He doesn’t talk about kale, though. MORE KALE, ADAM.


I think we’re into Week 5 now, but who knows. Our house is like a time warp sometimes. I’m lucky I even get to work. We picked up two purple peppers from One Straw, and I knew exactly what I’d do with them. I’d agreed to test this Greek barley salad for Tami, and it is like all of Greece is having a party in your mouth. Spinach, olives, sundried tomatoes, lovely grilled peppers and red onions…and barley! I’d never cooked with barley before, and I really like it. Oh, don’t be scared of purple peppers. They taste pretty much like green peppers, only they’re purple and therefore better.


Here’s the first frittata of the CSA season! I tend to stick to the Vegan Brunch recipe because it’s reliable and easy. Here we have red chard with garlic scapes and a few portabella stems mixed in. I didn’t really notice the shrooms, but I sadly noticed the scapes a bit too much in places. They tend to get woody, don’t they? Scape-lovers, how do you know how much to trim off so you’re not munching twigs?


We got some beets, too, but those are Red’s domain. He roasted them, dog bless. I don’t like beets, so I’m glad to have him.

Um. What else? Right now, when I’m not at work, my life is pretty much cooking/testing (I love you, Tami!), yoga (although I could use more), and school. I’m getting my certificate in web graphic design, and one day in the distant future I do hope to pretty up the blog a bit. Come fall, I hope I have time to read a book or maybe just comment on y’all’s blogs, but right now I’ve decided to just do my best to keep up with these recaps. Please love me anyway? I’ll bake you a pie!

CSA Week 2: Going somewhere in a handbasket.

Dear readers, I have a confession to make: I don’t have a picture for you this go-round. I know, I’m a total failure as a blogger, and you should spend your employer’s time elsewhere. I know I would. But here’s what happened: There was a 10-mile race across the city that was poorly signed and extremely poorly publicized, because not even the people running the farmer’s market knew about it. So no matter which way Red and I tried to get into, and then across, Baltimore, we were met by roadblocks and bored cops and thousands of people dicking around in valuable travel lanes. Had I been driving, I’d probably be locked up for vehicular homicide right now. I love my city, but there is no 10-mile route nice enough to want to run through. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Anyway, we eventually managed to park about a half-mile away, then hoof it down one of Bmore’s sketchier streets, past a rusted-out car and a lady distressed that the stupid race meant the buses weren’t running on schedule (see, Baltimore? it wasn’t just my morning you ruined), and finally make it to the market. I’ve never been so glad to be somewhere and simultaneously wanted to go home so badly. We were not in the mood for market chaos, so we grabbed our veggies and ran. I think we ended up with spinach, collard greens, broccoli, and kale. Yes, that sounds right. From the other vendors, we scored some onions and strawberries. Or maybe I made up the strawberry part. I mean, I know we had them, but we might have bought them at the MOM’s afterwards. Whatever, I’d kneecap a nun for strawberries.

Our market highlight was this awesomeness:


As you see, that is mango-curry hummus from The Wild Pea, a small local hummus operation. One of their guys had given me a sample the week before, and I was so in love with it, I wanted to snarf it all down right then. But I still had some homemade hummus in the fridge, and I knew I had to finish it before it got moldy and I got guilty for wasting food. I promised him I’d be back, though, and this week I got my mango-curry hummus. You may be thinking, “WTF? Mango in your hummus? Bitch, please.” Scoff if you like, but this shizz is delish. Sweet mango and warm, savory curry…mmm. I don’t know if I’d try all their combos (does the world really need PB&J hummus?), but I sampled the pizza flavor when I bought my tub of mango-curry, and that might be on deck for next time. They even have a vegan sour cream-and-onion flavor!

By the time we finally got home, quite a bit later in the day than we had anticipated thanks to all the pedestrian mayhem, we threw everything in the fridge. As soon as we finished, I wailed that I had forgotten to take the photo, and that everyone would be so mad at me. Then I probably took a nap and got over it.

Red sautéed up the kale with some garlic, and we didn’t bother taking a picture of that because you all know what sautéed kale looks like. It made a great lunch over brown rice, spritzed with some Bragg’s. Is there a hippier vegan lunch imaginable? I doubt it.

Here’s the broccoli, next to couscous and some spicy tofu I tested for Tami at Vegan Appetite (it was good!):


I ate much of the spinach in hummus wraps throughout the week—hummus wraps are my favorite pre-yoga snack, and spinach makes them even better. There came a day, though, when the remaining spinach was looking pretty wilty. I didn’t have time to cook anything from scratch, so I dumped two cans of Amy’s lentil soup into a pot and added the spinach. I highly recommend sexing up your canned soups this way!


That left the collards. These were this week’s surprise hit, starring in Vegan Soul Kitchen’s Citrus Collards with Raisins Redux. We didn’t have any raisins and I don’t like them, so I used dried cranberries instead. AWESOME call on my part, if I do say so. These collards are sassy and bright, with enough garlic to keep them from being too sweet. They’d be a great holiday side. You should make them right away.


Week 3 teaser: Red hit the market by himself because I was in yoga teacher training all freakin’ weekend! Check back to see how he fared.