Lord, there goes Johnny Appleseed.

Recently, we found ourselves with a crap-ton of apples. (I believe that is a metric measurement.) Some were from the farmer’s market and some were from the grocery store, but the common denominator was that Red and I were tired of eating them. The Granny Smiths, in particular (from the hippie grocery), were notably less than juicy and delicious, which made me sad because I love them so. But they were still perfectly good. What to do with them?

I made Applesauce à la Burnout, basically. It’s a variation on the way my mom makes individual servings of baked apples, which is via the magic of the microwave. Probably I can’t call it applesauce as nothing gets pureed, but the apples do cook down and get soft, so maybe it’s chunky applesauce. Whatever. Here’s what I did:

Take your huge bowl of apples (10 or so).

Peel, core, and slice those babies. We actually have a fancy apple peeler that sits on the counter and you impale your apple on its spiky center piece, then turn the crank and it shaves the skin off, but it’s kind of only reliable for perfectly spherical apples. Organic, local apples are frequently lumpy as hell, so I used a hand-held peeler and it worked out great. I did use our apple corer and mandoline for the coring and slicing, respectively. When I was done, I had a mountain of apple slices:

Put them in your biggest skillet. Ours is 10 inches in diameter and is fairly groaning under the weight of all those apples. Well, there wasn’t much to do about it but crank up the heat and start cooking them down. A little brown sugar is nice for this, because it helps the sugar in the apples caramelize and get nice and gooey. At least that’s what I tell myself when I want to add more brown sugar. All told, I think I added about six tablespoons to this huge pan of apples, which is not so much when you think about it. I also added liberal sprinklings of cinnamon—you can never have too much!—and dashes of cloves, nutmeg, and allspice, because I have this problem where if I add one of those things, I have to add all of them.

How long the apples take to be finished depends on how many of them there are, how hot you have your stove, and how much you’re stirring. I think I kept the pan at about medium heat and stirred pretty regularly. It speeds up as they start to cook down and there’s more space in there, but it’s still a pretty variable process. Just cook them until they’re soft and juicy enough for your liking and they taste good. Then they’re ready to be eaten straight up (my favorite way) or in oatmeal (my other favorite way). It’s like apple pie without the dessert-for-breakfast guilt.

And now, bringing this all back around to what’s most important in life is Mr. Joe Strummer.

May you always have plenty of apples, my darlings.

CSA Weeks 18, 19, and 20: Potatoes, sweet and non.

Guess what, darlings? I just realized that I have three weeks of CSA photos for you, and I’m gonna try to get it all done right now! Fun, yeah? No promises that I can remember what we did with every random carrot, but let’s do this thing. Hold onto your squash!

First off, a programming note: Astute readers will notice that this post covers Weeks 18 through 20, while the previous one covered Weeks 15 and 16. Whither Week 17? Damned if I know. Going back through my calendar, it looks like what I called Week 16 is really Week 17, which means I lost a week in there somewhere. Through the looking glass, y’all. Who wants their money back?


We had an insanely long day of outdoor apple butter-making that started before the sun had fully come up, so I hustled to the farmer’s market and back without stopping at any of the other vendors. Here we have sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, lacinato kale, and collard greens.

We freaking love kale, and collards are pretty tasty themselves. We combined them for Vegan Soul Kitchen’s Citrus Collards with Raisins Redux, which we tried for the first time back in July and have wanted to make again since it started getting autumnal up in here. Like before, I scorned the raisins in favor of cranberries. The kale was a welcome addition.

Pretty sure we just roasted up those giant sweet potatoes with some olive oil and a drizzle of maple syrup. Best way to do it. I think in my last post I mentioned some caulipots, too, yeah? Must be where the regular potatoes went. Caulipots are great because you don’t even notice the cauliflower. Insofar as there’s a recipe for them, I use Isa’s from Appetite for Reduction—which reminds me, I need to reclaim that from a friend I lent it to in August. Caulipots are delicious on their own, but Red was feeling experimental and decided we should try a vegan gravy packet in advance of Thanksgiving (we’ll be traveling to my sister’s in North Carolina, so we’re planning ahead). It was fine. Nothing exceptional, but it looked very homey on top of the caulipots.


CSA-adjacent but still delicious is this Spaghetti Pie with Arrabbiata Sauce (with Daiya on top) from American Vegan Kitchen. It is like lasagna without the drama. Actually, there was a little drama, because it turned out to be really hard to dish out spaghetti noodles using a spatula while trying to maintain the integrity of the casserole. It worked much better when the pie had spent the night in the fridge and I sliced it for lunches, but next time I think we’ll make it with penne or rotini or another, more scoopable pasta. Regardless of logistical difficulties, it’s super-tasty and very satisfying. We had too much sauce, which is a great problem to have, so we just boiled up some more pasta and were good to go!


Here’s Week 19:


That broccoli hung out until this past week (Week 20), but no worries—it has a happy ending. I made the prettiest miso soup with the bok choy:


It was good, Red was weirded out because I added some kelp granules to the broth, which it made it grainy. My bad, babe.

Here’s that butternut squash soup I couldn’t shut up about last week. It’s got squash, carrots, some of that ancient-yet-still-crisp cauliflower, and probably some onion and garlic. I am totally blanking on where the recipe came from. If I can solve the mystery, maybe I’ll update the post. Maybe I won’t. Anyway, it’s pretty basic, but good and very comforting as the nights get colder. As I was cooking, we realized we didn’t have any nice crusty bread to go with it. Red ran out to the crappy grocery store down the street (sorry, but it’s true), and the only vegan breadstuff was their generic dinner rolls. First-world problem, ahoy! Trust us, we survived.


Remember when I raved about Tami’s seitan cutlets? That was nine days ago, you guys. Anyway, the seitan recipe basically makes double what you need for any of the recipes in American Vegan Kitchen. Half became the Salisbury Seitan of my last update, and the rest met its destiny as Mexicali Seitan in some fabulous burritos:


When Red took a bite, he said, “Holy shit, this tastes like a grilled-steak taco.” I don’t speak the language of omnis very fluently anymore (what is this “bacon” your people rhapsodize about so obsessively?), but I could tell he was pleased that all the tastes of his former meat-eating life were not forever lost to him. They were goddamn amazing burritos.

Week 20, ready for its close-up:


More potatoes and sweet potatoes! Whatever will we do?

Here’s some excellent potato-and-corn chowder, veganized from a random Internet recipe:


There’s that broccoli, in addition to some carrots, corn and potatoes (obviously). We had bought oyster mushrooms because Red wisely thought they’d be a good addition. Unfortunately, I forgot to add them. Fortunately, we still had miso soup in the fridge, and oyster mushrooms seemed like they’d be a good fit. As you see, they were:


We’d also bought a bunch of portabella strips, some of which ended up in here:


That is Brewpub Tater-Tot Pie from American Vegan Kitchen, and it is why Tami is going to take over the world someday. Let me say it again.

TATER. TOT. PIE.

Regardless of your feelings on Napoleon Dynamite (I am apathetic but find it irresistibly quotable), tater tots are the shit. Red and I were stoked to be able to put them on top of a veggie casserole (carrots, celery, onions, shrooms, TVP, tomatoes) and call it dinner. Oh, there was beer involved, too.

The rest of the portabella strips we got for a dollar because they were getting old. The mushroom lady told us to cook them that very day, so we did:


We added them to the leftover spaghetti pie sauce. When in doubt as to what to do with your random/tired veggies, add them to a sauce!

Our final dish was African Sweet Potato Soup from 30-Minute Vegan. We’d made it before, but I couldn’t remember what it tasted like, so it was a pleasant surprise. Looking back through my old posts, I described it in 2009 as “half hearty vegetable soup, half creamy peanut-ginger bisque.” That is a pretty apt description, I must say. We didn’t have fresh ginger this time, but I think the powdered stuff worked fine. It’s a nice change from regular vegetable soup. We had maybe two cups of diced sweet potato left over, so I just roasted it while the soup simmered.

Thanks for hanging with me through this year’s CSA craziness! Four weeks left. You all are champions. Next week I’ll be back with a post about what I did with a million leftover apples and some Halloween/Samhain photos! Have a happy and blessed holiday (or just a fab weekend).

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.