CSA Weeks 12 & 13: Potatoes and peppers and tomatoes, oh my!

We are crazy full-up on late summer produce, kids. These past two weeks have been full of seasonally delicious delights, and we had a really good time figuring out what to do with our seemingly-random assortment of veggies. Here’s Week 12:

As promised, we made burritos, or something like them. Really, what we did was chop up the scallions and a few of the green peppers, sauté them with black beans and Mexican spices (no, really, that’s what it says on the bulk jar) and roll them up in tortillas with shredded lettuce, Week 11’s tomatillo sauce, Tofutti sour cream, cheddar Daiya, and my coworker’s luscious guacamole. Seriously, dude had never even had guacamole until about a month ago, but he’s made up for lost time and shared the wealth. The burritos were awesome. Messy and awesome. I made a quesadilla with the leftovers, and it too was fantastic.

I feel guilty for the amount of processed food that went into these, even though it was only the Tofutti and Daiya. Still, that’s a lot for us. I try not to rely on pre-packaged foods like those, considering them more of a treat than the fixings of a meal. And while, unlike many vegans, I don’t think Daiya will save the world, I will allow that its flavor is growing on me and it melts most fetchingly. I even made a decent grilled-cheese sandwich with it.

You’ll note the massive watermelon and its less-massive cousin, the cantaloupe. Do I really need to tell you what we did with these? Nom nom nom. However, we did manage to foist some of the watermelon off on Red’s parents and grandmother. For a fruit that’s basically water, it sure can be tiring to eat it day after day. I think it’s the seeds that wear me out.

We decided that we’d try something easy and comforting with the potatoes: soup! I’d say we used a recipe, but we really didn’t. We sort of did, then gave up and just made some damn soup. I think we had minestrone in mind, but with potatoes instead of pasta. We whipped up a tomato base, which was broth from cubes simmered with diced tomatoes. It came out very well, actually. Red is a champ at laying waste to tomatoes with our mandoline, I tell you! Then we added the diced potatoes, the green peppers that were not burritoed, and sliced green beans. We threw in a bunch of salt and pepper and Italian seasoning, too, then let it simmer for a while. It was really good, but it made a ton, so we froze about half of it. I managed to not overfill the jars this time, so we didn’t have any freezing-induced breakage. I still feel really stupid about the one and only time I’ve done that. When in doubt, underfill your jars!

We got a sweet little bunch of marjoram, too. I’d never seen it in its natural state before, and it’s very pretty! Actually, I was trying to find a picture for you just now, and it doesn’t look like the herb we had, so I don’t know if we actually had marjoram (like we were told) or something else. It smelled reliably herby, though, and worked well in the spaghetti sauce that I will tell you about in just a minute.

Here’s Week 13:

Another watermelon! Are they trying to kill us? Don’t they know those suckers are heavy?! I liked this one better than its predecessor, because it had fewer seeds. Still, Red ate more of it than I did, and we gave some to my parents. Spreading the watermelon love around, y’all.

Oh, yeah, that spaghetti sauce. This is probably the most ghetto spaghetti sauce ever. We didn’t bother measuring a damn thing. We sautéed those red onions with a few of the small green peppers (plus some left over from last week) and some garlic in a pot that was too small, because we needed the big pot for the spaghetti. Then we dumped in the diced tomatoes, fearful that they’d overflow and we’d really be in trouble (and out of dinner), and tried to stir that mess. We added the rest of the cheap-ass wine that is only good for spaghetti sauce, some sugar, and a frozen hunk of tomato paste (the only saving grace of many a quick tomato sauce). We tried to class it up on the seasoning front, though: instead of the holy triumvirate of salt-pepper-Italian seasoning, we used salt, pepper, a little dried basil, last week’s marjoram, and this week’s fresh thyme. I love it when we get herbs! Then, we prayed the sauce would reduce into something edible while the pasta cooked. Wouldn’t you know it, it did! It was certainly not our best tomato sauce, but I liked having the peppers in there.

I like the small Japanese eggplants much more than the huge American ones (really, I just learned that they are called American eggplants). They’re easier to slice and less bitter. We diced these and threw them into a curry with the rest of Week 11’s scallions and this week’s green peppers. I made Veganomicon’s Baked Curry Tofu, then whipped up a sauce with the leftover marinade. Everything got together in the wok, partied for a bit, and chilled out over some brown rice just in time to save us from starvation. It was a lovely curry, very flavorful but not too spicy.

As of this posting, we’ve still got the potatoes and most of the lettuce left, along with a few red onions and that garlic. The garlic’s easy: It’s going into the chopper, then into a jar because I have discovered that making your own diced garlic is the best of both worlds. Once it’s chopped, I get the ease of jarred garlic without the weird preservatives and crazy high cost! Lazy garlic for the win!

CSA Weeks 9-11: An orgy of produce.

Okay, y’all, I feel like I’m drowning in a backlog of to-be-written posts, so I’m gonna take a mulligan and do three weeks of CSA goodness all at once. Do you mind? I hope not. If you do, tough.

Let’s start with Week 9:

Look at all that pretty stuff! I think those might have been our first CSA potatoes, and they were tasty! Once we figured out that the knobby stuff with the frilly green tops was celeriac, we made a nice potato chowder. We also added the scallions and some of the corn hiding back there underneath everything, but you’ll just have to take my word on that because I didn’t take any pictures. Plus, it was potato chowder. Not the most photogenic dish.

We had a salsa-fest that week too, courtesy of 30-Minute Vegan: the tomatoes went into one kind of salsa, and the tomatillos went into another kind that was more like a dressing. Holy shit, tomatillos are bitter. I’d only ever used them in the Manzana Chili Verde from Veganomicon, which, incidentally, you should absolutely make. Anyway, that was not bitter, but then again the main ingredient was not tomatillos. Tomatillos by themselves are hella bitter and you have been warned. The jury’s still out on whether that sauce was good; we’ve still got some in the fridge and are planning to make fajitas (or something like them) this week, so we’ll see.

Here’s the tomato salsa and the lettuce, hanging out on a spelt tortilla (blergh, clearly I’m not hippie enough for spelt) with some burger crumbles:

Ah, the cucumbers. Poor, ill-fated cukes. Long story short, Red tried to make quick pickles, and we had the wrong kind of vinegar, so the resulting product was nigh inedible. Live and learn: pickling is not for the weak.

Here’s the other picture I managed to take that week:

What you see there is a cabbage-beet slaw with pineapple-mint dressing, hacked from a Veganomicon recipe that called for parsnips or some other out-of-season vegetable. Red loved it, because he loves all things beet and cabbage, so slaw is pretty much his happy place. I’m less of a slaw person, but it was good. The corn was super—nothing like sweet, local summer corn. And the BBQ tofu was a rousing success. I think it was the best I’ve ever made. Instead of smothering the tofu with the BBQ sauce and baking it, I sautéed it to get it crispy before simmering it with the sauce. EPIC WIN.

Week 10:

Whee, more potatoes! And some weird green leafage that turned out to be sweet potato leaves! Who even knew you could eat such a thing? As it turns out, they roll up and slice like a dream, and don’t really taste like much, so we chopped them up and made Green Mashed Potatoes.

Um, there was some sad-ass lettuce that practically begged for the compost bin. I’m sorry, I try not to pitch stuff straight off like that, but it was a mercy composting.

We’ve been playing around with 30-Minute Vegan’s recipe for spaghetti sauce, so that’s where the tomatoes went. It made about a jar and a half (totally unscientific, as we used random jars that used to hold other things, possibly spaghetti sauce). Red chopped up all that delicious-smelling basil, and we used half for the sauce and froze the rest.

Those baby tomatoes (cherry? grape? is there a difference?) were probably the most delicious tomatoes I’ve ever had. Usually I find raw tomatoes too acidic, but these were perfectly sweet. Along with the scallions, some corn, and a few non-CSA goodies, they helped make my favorite black-bean pasta salad. I always double the avocado in that recipe, because avocadoes = love.

The squash hung out in the fridge until the next week’s pickup, so keep reading!

Week 11:

More tomatoes! More squash! More sweet potato leaves! Ah, that’s late summer for you. Since we had two weeks of squash hanging out in the fridge drawer, Red diced them all and we roasted them with olive oil and Italian seasoning. That’s become my default for summer squash, and it works quite well. It’s good with rice or good all by itself.

Those beautiful Roma tomatoes made more spaghetti sauce, only this batch was better. It must have been the tomatoes, because I didn’t do anything differently (except not bother measuring the agave nectar or the undrinkable, cheap-ass wine I added for that extra somethin’-somethin’). Anyway, we combined the sauce with the half-jar of sauce from the previous week, and made eggplant lasagna with that big mofo you see in the picture there. I took another picture that showed the eggplant’s size better, but it totally obscured the green beans and thyme! It was work slicing and salting that thing, I tell you, but it was easier with two of us. We typically go with Veganomicon’s lasagna recipe, and the tofu ricotta is so good. That’s where the rest of the basil went. Mmmm, fresh basil. We need a bigger lasagna pan, though.

Red diced up the cantaloupe (he is the best person to chop things, I swear) and we ate it. No secret recipe there.

That left us with motley crew of green beans, scallions, Japanese eggplant, and sweet potato leaves. After about 10 seconds of pondering, we came to one conclusion: stir fry! We used a bit of store-bought hoisin sauce and Korean BBQ sauce, tamari, and Dijon mustard. Stay with me here, because we discovered that mustard is the shizz in stir fry sauces. You probably already knew that, but we didn’t, so we basked in our discovery. With a handful of cashews, it made a delicious stir fry.

Also, I have just stared at the phrase “stir fry” for several minutes, and it doesn’t look like it should be actual words. Try it.

Maybe I can actually do this week’s CSA review on time! Stay tuned, and happy nomming.

A very Burnout birthday.

So, I know this is a month-plus late, but it is never too late to wish me a happy birthday, in case you’re so inclined.

Since we were leaving for Chicago a few days later, Red and I decided to keep my birthday observances simple. We headed to Great Sage for lunch, and if you are in the tri-state area and have not yet experienced Great Sage, clear your calendar and do it. When it was vegan-friendly, it was great; since going completely vegan in January, it has become amazing. It’s part of a little eco-friendly cluster of stores called Conscious Corner, which I think is cute. Roots is a natural-organic market, Bark! has pet food and toys, and Nest has all the pretty things you wish you could fit in your house. Theoretically, you could probably find everything you need at Conscious Corner. It would be expensive, but you could do it.

Now, on to the amazing.

Because we are pretzel fiends, we started with a soft pretzel. There was only one, but we shared it. It came with three yummy dipping sauces: hummus, honey mustard, and chili cheese. We ate it too fast for me to get a picture, but it was a pretzel, y’all. You can handle it.

While we were nomming our pretzel, we were entertained by the couple next to us. They reminded me of my parents. The lady half of the couple chilled out and pondered the menu, while her dude wrinkled his brow and fretted over the rabbit food on offer. He spent a few minutes trying to work out what “Daiya” was (I hope he wasn’t too disappointed), and by that time I felt bad for him and whispered to Red that maybe we should give him a hand, since his missus either didn’t care or was just as confused but not showing it. But we didn’t want to embarrass him, so we judged it kinder to let him fumble through on his own. Hope you survived, omni-man.

I spent quite a lot of time deciding what to have for lunch. Since I was feeling adventurous, I ordered the Southwest Ranch “Bacon” Wrap, which sweet fancy Moses did not disappoint. I don’t know what it was—the tempeh bacon, maybe—but everything in this wrap was in perfect harmony. It took an act of great will to avoid snarfing the second half, but we wanted to order dessert, so I restrained myself.


I think Red had the Grilled Reuben, as he is prone to having a Reuben whenever the opportunity presents itself. I didn’t photograph it, but trust me, it was a thing of beauty.

As you surely know, the most important part of any birthday meal is dessert. Usually I don’t have a lot of room for dessert, but I was determined to indulge. The dessert selection was big enough to have some variety, but small enough to not be overwhelming. After some haggling over who would order what (because we couldn’t order the same thing, as that would be boring), Red ordered the Strawberry Shortcake and I tackled the Chocolate Lava Cake with vanilla ice cream. It was coconut-milk ice cream, too, so you know it was badass. Just take a look:



I am lucky, because Red does not share my addiction to things chocolate. Unluckily for him, I love strawberries almost as much as he does, so he had to guard his shortcake carefully. Sweet man that he is, though, he let me have a taste. It was fantastic, but not as fantastic as the cake. It was like a dense little pot of heaven. Happy-mouth, happy-tummy heaven. But too much of a good thing is sometimes just too much, because try as I might, I only got about three-quarters of the way through before I had to concede defeat. You bested me, Chocolate Lava Cake, with the aid of your BFF Southwest Wrap. Next time, I’ll skip lunch and eat all of you.


It was a happy birthday, indeed.

Bienvenidos...

...to everyone visiting from The Deportee’s Wife! Giselle was so kind to mention my blog in her most recent vlog (say “blog vlog” 10 times fast, and I’ll give you a cookie). We have known each other since the summer of 2004, when I had a quiet anxiety attack during our grad school orientation and she thought I was a total freak. Our relationship improved once we actually spoke to each other, and in November of 2005, I was honored to visit her and her husband in Mexico. I dream of the day that they can both visit me and Red at our home, and I can return their hospitality.

Hang out for a while, take a look around, and let me know what you think. Leave a comment if you like, or feel free to email me at shannon[dot]river[at]gmail[dot]com.

Also, Emma Watson stole my haircut:


love and puppy snuggles,
*v.b.

The bitch is back...

…as Elton John would say! Truly, beloveds, I have neglected you too long, but I hope you understand that I needed this past month to settle into my new gig. True to my nature, I’ve been feeling pretty anxious and burned out about the whole thing, but I’m happy to report that my appearance in the office was greeted with much joy, and I no longer feel like I’m going to vomit razor blades every morning.

Also, they know I’m vegan, so I’m out of that closet without much drama.

So! I’m excited to get back on a regular blogging schedule. I’ve kept up with you all as best I can, but I’ve missed being part of the conversation. To keep me on track, I present to you a list of posts you can look forward to:

1. My birthday
2. Chicago!
3. The awesomeness that ensued when worlds collided and Red and I met Cody, husband of everyone’s favorite Voracious Vegan
4. My first apple pie!
5. A CSA roundup or two

I gotta be honest with you about #5, though. We’re still getting our weekly hoards of veggies, and they are still awesome, but I hit pause on recording and photographing our meals during this past month. We stopped with Week #3, and now we’re coming up on Week #10 or something, and the thought of having to do that many catch-up posts just made me want to cry. Believe me when I tell you we’ve gotten lots of lettuce and summer squash. I’ll try to post regularly about the CSA goodness from here on out.

I now present to you the most fearsome fruit ever to escape the rainforest: MONSTERA DELICIOSA!

We found this thing at MOM’s, and $7 later, it was ours. Seriously, how could we not buy it? Its name is Delicious Monster, and if that isn’t reason enough for you, maybe you’re not my friend. I can’t yet vouch for its deliciousness, because we have to leave it in its jar until it sheds all its little scaly things. It peels itself! It’s the perfect lazy fruit! Depending on how long it takes, maybe I’ll post updates on the monstera’s progress. We’re told it tastes like a banana-pineapple hybrid, so I look forward to enjoying it.

It’s good to be back, darlings.

CSA Week 3: Who doesn’t love salad?

I know I’m about a week behind, dear readers. By all rights, you should be reading about Week 4’s veggies right now, and you are not. I apologize. You deserve a more dedicated blogger. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me. On to the veggies, shall we?


First up was the chard. I don’t think I could ever get sick of chard, but talk to me after another few weeks of getting sackfuls of green leafage. A couple years back, Joan, who runs One Straw, taught me the easiest way to cook greens: Boil some water for pasta. Throw the pasta and your washed, chopped greens into the pot. Cook like you would pasta all by itself. As the nutrients cook out of the greens, they’re absorbed by the pasta! While the chard and pasta were merrily cooking away, I sautéed some garlic, onion, and a wayward red pepper from my in-laws. I tossed everything together, and the resulting pasta dish was a simple, flavorful delight.

Yellow squash! I didn’t get creative in the slightest with these: They went straight into 30-Minute Vegan’s Zucchini-Corn Fritters, which became yellow-squash fritters. You guys, can I tell you a secret? No more fritters. They always sound like such a good idea, but by the end, Red and I are hot and tired and the kitchen is full of smoke no matter which skillet we use, and my purse smells like a deep fryer for the rest of the week. So, yes, we made fritters, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for more.

I similarly punked out with the collards, stir-frying them with a bunch of garlic and ginger. Their stems are hella tough, so watch out. They looked nice with the fritters, though!


Time for Salad #1, a lovely Greek creation from 30-Minute Vegan. This was really good! We skipped the tofu feta, because that sounded ghetto and like more work than I wanted to do. Therefore, Red did everything! He expertly chopped our romaine and red-leaf lettuce, sliced some tasty peppers, and did all that other salad-related nonsense. No pictures, because I was lazy, but it looked like a Greek salad. Use your imaginations.

The spinach and arugula went into what may have been the week’s crowning glory, a frittata from Vegan Brunch. Isn’t it beautiful? I was worried because Twin Oaks tofu seems to be on permanent hiatus at our hippie grocery, and because I once tried to make a tofu frittata, many years ago, and it was not a success. This one was a success, and I thank my parents for the handmade pie plate in which it so happily baked. DELICIOUS.

Salad #2 is actually still in existence, because we made it this weekend. Yes, we let the green-leaf lettuce sit in the fridge for a solid week, and then we got more lettuce (of course), and what the fuck were we going to do with all that lettuce? Make a big-ass salad for a 4th of July barbecue, that’s what. 30-Minute Vegan came through yet again, with a nice Mexican salad with black beans and a carob mole dressing. Our dressing was sans mole, because you know how I feel about carob. We also got some spring onions, which were a nice addition. Non-CSA veggies included avocado (so not local) and green peppers. Everyone at the cookout seemed to like it, but I am dismayed at how soggy it’s gotten in the two days since. No matter how much Red and I love salad (and we don’t love it nearly as much as people seem to think vegans should), we couldn’t keep up with it. It might not live to see anything more exciting than the compost bin.

Oh, and Red finally cooked his beets. I am convinced that beets will always and forever smell and taste like dirt, but he likes them. And he is convinced that dark chocolate tastes like dirt, so we’re even.

That was the saddest CSA recap ever, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, darlings. I’ll try to do better with Week 4.

Speaking of, posting might be a little sporadic for a while, because your dear Burnout has gotten herself a new job. I start tomorrow, and I will be way busier than I am now. I’m also scared to death, but I hope I’m a little harder to kill than I give myself credit for.

Food plus gender? Sign me up!

Salon has an interesting piece today: “Men eat meat, women eat chocolate: How food gets gendered.” I encourage you to read it, then bring your love back here and talk about it with me. We already know what the headline points out: Certain foods are considered masculine (mmmmm, animal carcass), while others are feminine (gimme that candy bar, I’m PMSing). Of course, the heavy hand of marketing is everywhere we look, but what really captured my interest was this little factoid: In other countries, food is rarely gendered this way.

Call me a silly American, but I hadn’t ever really thought about that. The author, Riddhi Shah, points out that in Spain, men and women love chocolate equally, while in Egypt, no one really cares about chocolate at all, preferring salty snacks. (Egypt: Feel free to send me your chocolate.) In the UK, boys go for the sweet stuff, while girls are more partial to fruits and veggies. Come to think of it, our house is pretty much the same way. Red has a sweet tooth like none other, while I am pretty blasé about ice cream and candy. Geez, we are such iconoclasts, with our non-gendered, non-American food preferences!

What is really interesting is the ways in which this reflects US veganism. As Shah says, “[W]hile it seems possible that some food preferences could be put down to gender, it’s obvious that American culture has a way of exacerbating them.” US vegans are often written off as a bunch of educated white chicks, and many of us are. The movement has a homogeneity problem, and I am so grateful for those who are actively challenging this. (Sistah Vegan and Vegans of Color immediately spring to mind, as does The Discerning Brute.) It can’t be simply that men like meat, while women like tofu. (Because really? No one likes tofu in its natural state.) I wonder what the vegan demographics look like in other countries. We’re working against culture, not merely genetics, and that makes a huge difference.

Thoughts on gendered food on this Friday before a long weekend filled with gluttony and pyrotechnics in the name of US independence?*


http://www.marriedtothesea.com/


*I once heard it referred to (by a Brit) as “Good Riddance to Ungrateful Colonists Day.” I enjoyed that.