CSA Box #2

What could be inside?  Precious wants to know too!

Omnomnomnom.  Farm fresh organic fruits and veggies!

This weeks box features:
Swiss Chard
3 Avocados
5 Navel Oranges
Carrots
Strawberries
Rosemary
Radishes
Red Leaf Lettuce
Butter Lettuce (I think)
Broccoli Leeks
3 Apples (I think Pink Lady)

So far I have used the broccoli and the rosemary to make this:

Baked tofu, marinated in lemon juice and mustard, rosemary garlic potatoes and steamed broccoli.  The tofu texture was awesome but the whole meal was a wee bit bland and the potatoes just did not come out right.  Whenever that happens I am so happy to have a fridge full of condiments.

Ketchup and mustard to the rescue! 


We also enjoyed some of the carrots and the rest of the broccoli steamed for dinner last night (my tummy was a wee bit upset and I overcompensated by eating almost a whole sleeve of saltines so I wasn't very hungry come dinner time).

The oranges are delicious and have a texture that reminds me a lot of a grapefruit but they are very sweet.

The avocados were a bit under ripe but luckily I had a couple left over from visiting my love's grammy's house (she has an avocado tree, grapefruit tree, a couple lemon trees, tangerine and orange trees.  <3)

The strawberries I sliced up and ate a few of and then used the rest to make this out of some failed biscotti and the chocolate I used to dip them.

I have a mountain of failed biscotti.  I made two recipes for my boyfriend's mom for her birthday.  The first one from the People's Co-op cookbook turned out great, the second one from the interwebs, not so great.  Of course the failed one made twice as much as the non failure.  And it just occurred to me that I took no pictures of the finished biscottis.  Next time I suppose!

Inspiration

When I started this blog I pretty much just wanted a place to record some of the yummy food that I made and possibly to show to friends and family if they ever asked what I eat as a vegan.  If I happened to gain some followers, all the better.  I am pretty sure that it was vegan blogs that are solely responsible for my being vegan and I have a lot of love for many bloggers I have never had the pleasure of talking to.  One blogger I have talked to and who continues to be a source of inspiration and a downright motivator for living an optimistic life is Chocolate Covered Katie.  Katie has such an enthusiastic view towards life and food that I find it hard to look away.  In fact, I spent a good portion of the weekend looking over her past posts.  This led to my making a few things and making a list of another gazillion that I want to make some day.  I have a few posts coming up about those adventures along with some cupcakes that I made for my Moms 60th Birthday which turned out so fantastic!  Tonight however, you'll have to make due with my Stir Fry dinner.

It wasn't my intention but once I saw it I couldn't resist recreating what Katie did here.

Stir Fry with Rice

What?  You say there's no rice?

There it is! (Katie, I hope you don't think I am crazy)

This was a really good stir fry.  The rice was just cooked with some carrots and peas and a little Bragg's.

 The veggies I actually steamed and my boyfriend stir fried the tofu (I could do without tofu to be honest).

 And now that he knows how to stir fry tofu, I never have to do it again.  Muahahahah.

Mini Tofu Quiches

The other day I bought 3 green bell peppers because it was a good deal.  When I got home I had no idea what I was going to do with 3 bell peppers when my boyfriend doesn't even like them.  I thought about stuffing them but that didn't really sound that great.  Finally Monday night I decided to slice them and roast them with some red onion and mushrooms to eat along with the cheetahs.  I had a lot of that mixture left over today along with some broccoli and cauliflower from this and I thought it would all make a nice filling for some tofu quiches.

I used this recipe from Fat Free Vegan.  I really upped the veggie proportion and so they didn't stick together quite as well as they should have but they still turned out delicious.

I meant to put some spinach in them as well but I forgot which was good in the end because I already had a huge pile of broccoli, cauliflower, tofu scramble with chard, bell peppers, red onion and mushrooms.

To compensate for the forgotten spinach, I decide to serve them over spinach.  This turned out to be a fantastic idea.  Nom

Vegan Pizza Rolls and Other Stuffed Pastries

So, can you tell I cooked up a storm this weekend?  It was strange because it was almost all hearty an hardly any sweet.  Here is my attempt at vegan pizza rolls.  I decided to switch up my dough recipe and use the one from Vegan with a Vengeance.  I also decided that as long as I was making dough with stuffings, I might as well attempt a hot pocket like creation as well.  So I gathered up my pizza ingredients, some tofu stir-fry with chard and mushrooms and some broccoli and cauliflower.

 I was going to do the broccoli cauliflower with some mushroom soup except that once I opened the soup and looked at the can I realized that it had cream in it.  I am not sure when I bought that soup but I really need to pay more attention to these things when I am in the store.  I also bought some soy cheese on Saturday only to get home and realize it had casein in it.  Since my boyfriend hates fake cheese it was either drive all the way back to the store to return it, toss it or suck it up and eat it.  I settled for the latter.  I just couldn't justify throwing it away when it cost $4!  And since I had nothing else to put in the broccoli cauliflower hot pockets, I tossed that in there.  Teach me to read labels... >(

The rolls turned out mostly great.  The dough got a little thin and started tearing and so toward the end I just started making them a little bigger and thicker.  Also, I cooked them on a pizza stone and since it was in the oven preheating I decided to just line the rolls up on the stove as I filled them.  This seemed to work great until I went to put them in the oven and realized the first ones had started to melt and stick to the stove.  Oi!

Not too shabby, but I see some definite improvements to be made.

I had made a second batch of dough thinking that I would make some more non vegan rolls for my boyfriend, but by the time I got to this point I was exhausted.  I decided to just use the second batch of dough for 2 pizzas.   I rolled out the dough for my boyfriends and topped it with mozzarella and vegan pepperoni.  When I went to transfer it to the pizza stone, it wouldn't budge.  After much lifting and a little tearing I decided to just say f it and flipped it in half and made a calzone.  Mostly it worked just fine.
By this time, I was done, but I still had my pizza to make.  So I decided on a calzone for me as well and stuffed my dough with tomato sauce, vegan mozzarella and broccoli and cauliflower.  I have yet to try it and it is currently residing in my freezer.  I will most likely take a picture when I eat it.  Meanwhile, here is the non vegan one.