A Veggie Kind of Weekend

Lately I have been feeling a little sluggish and tired so I have been trying to decrease my sugar and up my veggies, beans and grains. What follows is my trip on Friday to the grocery store. I usually get most of my veggies at the farmer's market, but since I had nothing to do on Friday night, I really wanted to pick some stuff up to make to eat over the weekend. It had been a long time since I had just gone crazy in the produce section of a grocery store and I really ended up going a bit crazy.

Green Leaf Lettuce
Red Chard
Red Grapes

Brussel Sprouts
Kale
Romain Lettuce
Broccoli
Celery
Mango

Bananas
Lemons
Kiwis
Garlic
Pears
Onions
Limes

I have made a couple of green smoothies over the last week. Kale, soy milk, protein powder, ground flax, banana, a date, some ice cubes and one time I used frozen blueberries. Really good.
I have been having oatmeal for breakfast a few days. I used to eat steel cut oats but this week I have been eating rolled oats because I can cook them quickly.

1/3 cup water, 1/3 cup oats. Cook for 1 minute. Add 1/3 cup oats and microwave for 30 seconds more. Separately microwave a banana until it gets all melty. Add that, a handful of chopped pecans, a pinch of salt, some frozen blueberries, some ground flax, a little protein powder and a tiny bit of maple syrup. This has been really a surprisingly delicious breakfast though I find that I am hungry a few hours later.

I used a small portion of this broccoli to throw together a salad I brought to a family get together yesterday. The salad took less than 10 minutes to throw together and was quite a hit. Unfortunately I do not have a picture but there are left overs so maybe I'll take one later. And then give you the recipe.

These grapes were delicious!

I mixed this sliced kale with some garlic infused olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then let it marinate. And if you can see in the back there, those are presoaked garbanzo beans ready to be cooked. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it here (I probably have) but I am madly in love with my pressure cooker. I used it three nights this week to make beans after work. It is genius.

Love.

My boyfriend recently brought me a bunch of tangerines from the tree at his moms house. Most of them sat in my fruit bowl for a long time as they had a number of seeds and were quite a pain to eat. I decided to juice them and make the orange glazed beets from Vegan with a Vengeance. The glaze never really set up, but the beets were great none the less.

My dinner last night consisted of:

Previously mentioned marinated kale topped with some sliced grapes
Tangerine Beets
Shredded Brussel Sprouts

This recipe was modified from one I found on the internet but I changed it so much that it does not even really resemble the original recipe except that it contains shredded brussel sprouts and toasted walnuts.

I melted some earth balance in my cast iron skillet and then added in the brussel sprouts that I put through my food processor and a tiny bit of liquid smoke. (The original recipe called for bacon) I cooked them for about five minutes and then removed from the heat and mixed in some toasted walnuts and a dressing of apple cider vinegar and a little sugar. I topped my serving with some nutritional yeast. This was a very delicious and nutritious dinner.

And that's mostly what I have been up to the last two days. Got any good ideas for some vegetables? Especially broccoli or chard? How about a smoothie recipe? Or oats combos?

Embrace Your Inner Consumer?

But generally only out of necessity, buy items of quality that will last, and whenever possible shop second hand.  I may not have adhered to my own advice in all of these purchases, but at least I try. 

I have 3 cats.  One of which (I'm not pointing any fingers...)

 

Jinx...ahem...

Has a love of scratching up carpet when he is locked out of a room.  I had temporarily fixed this problem by laying a piece of cardboard underneath our bedroom door to keep him from reaching the carpet.  Unfortunately that was only one of the bedrooms and I realized that he has been getting at the other door as well as a spot next to our heater.  In the interest of saving our security deposit and keeping our house from looking like it is infested with cats (which it sort of is) I decided to get some rugs to cover the spots.  I only went into a Khols for the first time a few months ago and since Mervyns closed before Xmas last year (or was that 2 years ago...?) it has sort of become my go to department store when department stores are needed.  I don't particularly care for department stores and would much prefer to shop in more neighborhood stores, but outside of the realm of food shopping I am quite unknowledgeable about where to get things.  I blame it on growing up in too big a city.  If anyone knows some good places to shop for pretty much anything in San Diego I would appreciate the info.  Particularly clothing and kitchenware although as I'll get to in a moment, I did find a decent second hand clothes store a couple weekends ago.  But back to my shopping trip.  The first thing I saw?

 

 

Can you tell why I fell in love with these rugs instantly and had to have them?  It's like they were designed for me.  The only thing that would have been more perfect is if they had had one of these as well.

 

While at Khol's I couldn't help but peruse the kitchenware and pine over the many gadgets and gizmos I did not need and could not afford.  But then I happened upon a sale on something I have wanted since the very first time I saw the infomercial for it.  That's right:

The Magic Bullet!

I had debated for quite some time on whether or not this purchase would be worthwhile.  Finally, after Katie talking about hers all the time I asked her if she thought it was worth it to have.  She told me that she uses it just about every day.  That topped with the fact that it was on sale and since I was making so many purchases I figured I would open a Khol's cc and get 20% made it a great buy. 

So far I have only used it to make salad dressing and an attempt at a smoothie that wasn't so great but I can't wait to use it to make fudge babies!

The clothing store that I mentioned above is apparently so new that it is not listed on google and even in google maps when I pull up the building it is a for rent sign.  Haha.  The address I believe is around 8270 La Mesa Blvd and hopefully I will be heading back there and can report the name when I do.  I found this shop to be so much different than my usual second hand clothes shopping which was always way over worn clothes with holes.  These clothes were in top condition and the jeans I bought were in fact brand new with original tags still on them.

Regardless of the fact that I do not care so much for the bedazzled look, these jeans fit me incredibly well which was my whole goal.  I also got a shirt and a dress that I am not sure I have anywhere to wear but I loved it.

And now, since this is me we are talking about, I leave you with some good eats from the past couple of days.

 

Tofu scramble with spinach and hash browns.  Sadly the hash brown was a bit too oily for my stomach.

The most surprisingly good meal.  Remember the kale I was talking about?  Monday night I mixed it in with some mashed potatoes and added some mustard.  This along side a homemade black eyed pea burger and some roasted veggies was soo good I repeated it for dinner again last night.

Till next time!

CSA Box #1

Today I picked up my first CSA box from JR Organics at the Hillcrest Farmers Market.  Every other Sunday I will return one of these:

And get one of these:

Beets
Lettuce
Curly Kale
Purple Carrots
Peas
Blood Oranges
Mineola Tangerines
Pink Lady Apples
Sorrel
Leeks
Broccoli

I already had some kale, carrots and cauliflower from last weekend so I had to get busy.

I decided to make a vegetable soup.

 

I started out by slicing the leeks, some onion, carrots, garlic and a little bit of ginger and sauteing them in some oil.

  

Then I added some red cabbage and pequito beans I already had, the peas shelled, some more carrots, the beet greens, sorrel and the broccoli in large chunks.  I added a little dried parsley, paprika and salt and pepper.  Surprisingly, it turned out incredibly gingery.  It is still good but I didn't think I used that much ginger but it really took over.  Also the broth turned purple from the red cabbage which was totally cool.

Yesterday morning I went garage saling and found an estate sale with many kitchen gadgets.  I was lucky enough to find something I have wanted for a long time.

A citrus press!

With two full bunches of kale I thought it was a perfect opportunity to press some citrus and try out massaging kale.  Unfortunately the press is a little on the small side and so I had to quarter the lemon and lime instead of halve, but it worked incredibly well.

 

No juice left!

See this lime?  Looks innocent enough, right?  Wrong!  This lime has a peel that is tough as can be imagined and when I tried to cut it in half what happened?

The knife slipped and tried to cut off my fingertip!  Luckily, though I was panicking at the fact that I could have cut off my finger, my boyfriend was kind enough to wrap my wound (which thankfully was not that deep) in a Spidey bandaid and I was able to return to conquer that lime.

 

 Here is the kale earlier in the massaging process.  It is now quite a bit smaller and all dark green and tender.  I am still not sure what I am going to do with it all but I am thinking some sort of simple kale salad.  I guess I will figure that out tomorrow.  

Stay tuned for some home made chocolate peanut butter cups and pizza made with my home made vegeroni!