When Life Give You Lemons...

Or in this case: When your CSA gives you limes and cilantro.

Two weekends ago my CSA included a bunch of cilantro and a few limes. While I like both of those ingredients on a normal basis, my love for them has blown up over the last two weeks. My work was having a pot luck last Friday for Halloween and I decided it would be cool to bring some orange and black hummus and some dips. For orange hummus I went with roasted red peppers (I cheated and used a jar from Trader Joe's). I have actually made this a couple of times now as my boyfriend loves the roasted red pepper Sabra which is a fairly expensive habit. For the black hummus I decided to make it with black beans. I was going to go about it in the same way that I make normal hummus but once I got the beans opened inspiration struck! I added a couple cloves of garlic, a handful of cilantro, juice from a couple of limes, a little olive oil and a pinch of salt to my food processor and created one of the best things ever. My boyfriend was jealous that I wasn't leaving it at home and he could only try a bite.

I put the two hummus's (hummi?) together and created a festive little bowl. I then added some dippers around the side (secretly they were also to be sandwich toppings for me as I brought full pita bread for myself as I don't eat much at omni pot lucks).

Pita chips, pita bread, red and green bell peppers, cucumbers, pepperoncinis and some green olives.

Then, a few days later, I was reading Oh She Glow's latest post at work and saw her recipe for Avocado Lime Black Bean Salad and decided to continue the flavor combination love. No pictures of this one but it was delicious!

A few months ago I made some rice and decided to gussy my own serving up with some lemon and cilantro because I didn't think my bf would like it. Turned out he did and the other night he asked me to make it again. Having no lemons in the house at the time, I altered it by making it with lime juice. Delicious!

Then last night when I got home from the gym all I could think about was making black beans with cilantro and lime and then making a burrito out of it. So that is what I did. I had the most delicious burrito (which I neglected to take a picture of) with lime cilantro beans and rice, heirloom tomato and mashed avocado...I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Do yourself a favor and try some lime and cilantro with anything and everything.

A Chocolate Giveaway and A Good Cause

Wow, I cannot even believe the whirlwind I have been in since I last posted.  Since then I have moved, cleaned the hell out of my old apartment, been to a concert, been to the ER for my boyfriend being sick, and am currently sick myself.  I had almost forgotten the stress that comes with being busy.  It really makes me appreciate my normal routine of calm evenings at home when I have time to prepare fresh foods and my weekends of leisurely grocery shopping and prepping foods.  These past few weeks I have been eating so many pre prepared foods and I think my body is starting to cry out for better nutrition.   I am still not completely unpacked or settled, but I cooked my first meal on Sunday night that wasn't spaghetti, soup from a can or a burrito.  It didn't turn out spectacularly brilliant, as I was making a tofu scramble and instead of pouring in a handful of nutritional yeast I poured about a cup and a half.  I scraped out what I could and it was decent.  Meanwhile, I have discovered through Shelby that Trader Joe's carries an amazing assortment of vegan products.  Last night I got these mini spinach cheeseless pizzas.

I combined them with some falafel and hummus lettuce wraps and a pickle for dinner last night.  They were incredibly delicious.  My main reason for going though was to see if they had the pizza dough Shelby had blogged about.  Indeed they did.  Hopefully some yummy pizza will be made this weekend.

But, what this post is really about is that Chocolate Covered Katie is giving away chocolate!  To enter, go to this page.  I don't know how many people actually read this blog, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case anyone did.  And while you are on Katie's blog, you might as well take a look around.  She is one of my favorite bloggers around and she is doing an awesomely thoughtful charity fundraiser right now, where you have to do nothing more than read her amazing site.  To read more about it, check out this page.

And I will leave you with the one decent picture I managed to snap during the past few crazy weeks.  This was a simple combination of apples, bananas and cinnamon.  I cannot remember at this point who suggested apples with cinnamon, but it was a great combo!