Sunday, August 01, 2010

Food... I Eats It.

We had our super dear friends Jane and JP & their daughter over for dinner a little while back. Jane and JP are organic farmers, and they grow the most AMAZING produce. I am most especially an addict of their strawberries & tomatoes... but really, everything they grow is so delish! They brought over two gorgeous salads: one with some mustardy-dill-new potatoes and the other full of fresh, fresh greens. Jane's not eating wheat these days, so in the background you can see the spelt focaccia I made... Not the most gorgeous loaf ever, but it was actually really delicious. I used this recipe.

I also made up a big batch of hummus... added in some crushed fennel seeds, sprinkled on some toasted sesame seeds, and then topped it with a dash of argon oil from our recent trip to Morocco. Wow, that argan oil has a *beautiful* flavor - nutty like hazelnuts, but lighter. Very delicious! It was a lovely little dinner affair!

This is one of Mr. Vegan Eats & Treats most favorite meals of all time. Any time I say "what should we have for dinner tonight?," he invariably says "Tofu Watercress Salad!!!!" This recipe is from The Healthy Hedonist. The whole thing comes together in under 30 minutes, and it's full of delicious and super-nutritious watercress, along with a very delicious asian-inspired dressing. Highly recommended indeed!

Here are some goodies from the garden recently. Purple Queen "green beans", delicious strawberries, and some tasty zukes. Mmmmm, garden bounty is the best!

This is a typical breakfast for me lately... a HUGE mountain of fruit. The strawberries are from my friend Jane's farm, and then I just add whatever else I've got around: blueberries, blackberries, nectarines... After I took this picture, I added a big dollop of unphotogenic plain soy yogurt. I always use Wildwood brand soy yogurt, because it is the only plain soy yogurt that is unsweetened. I like my yogurt tart, thank you very much!

Also, my friend Sophia came over recently for some pickling action! You may recall that the two of us embarked on our maiden voyage of pickling together last year... so we decided to make a tradition of it. This resulted in me running around the house all morning making up a song about "Pickle Pals for Life" and how once you have a Pickle Pal, you must stick with your Pickle Pal forever, because these are the rules of the Universe. As you can see, we even made fancy little labels for our dill pickles.

Look how many pickles!! Six jars each! Last year we made Dill Pickles and Bread and Butter pickles... but after tasting the glory of homemade dill pickles, we knew what our priorities were! 100% Dill, baby! Pickles, we has them.

You can see that it is very hard to remain cool and sophisticated when you have just finished making yourself 6 jars of dill pickles.

Sohpia with her giant bounty of pickled goodness! In order for the pickling magic to occur, we have to wait until sometime in September before we can open them. This is the worst part of pickle making for sure. So, until then, I have tucked them in the cupboard where they will not tempt me.

I have been a naughty blogger lately... though you'd never know it, I've been cooking up all sorts of lovely meals, and taking all sorts of pictures, so I promise more blogging this week. I'm gonna catch up with that memory card!

11 comments:

  1. Glad to get your posts again! Daddy and I foraged for lunch today. After our vegeburgers we walked over to Santa Cruz High and picked two pints of blackberries in no time at all. Had blackberries & yogurt for dessert. Now I'm going to go scout out the Pogonip road for a serious end-of-summer berry picking expedition. Even Daddy is psyched about cooking up a year's supply of jam. XXOO Mom

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  2. I am so jealous of your garden! Never tried purple green beans before and your bowl of berries look soooo good!

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  3. I need a pickle pal. Badly.

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  4. Oh my gosh, you and Sophia are hilarious! I'm jealous of your homemade pickles! And I love your purple green beans, they're so pretty.

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  5. this post made me miss you.

    xo
    kittee

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  6. pickles! pickles!! pickles!!!

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  7. Look at all these weird and awesome looking veggies! Those purple beans are especially alien-looking. And fennel seeds in hummus= genius, going to give that a try!

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  8. You are too adorable for words. Sounds like a wonderful time!

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  9. you always post so many delicious looking veggies!

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  10. This post is AMAZING! First of all, that tofu dish looks ridiculously good.

    And how lucky are you to be friends with organic farmers? You couldn't ask for more! Everything looks so beautiful and fresh. YUM!

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  11. The potato salad in the first picture looks very delicious! And those beans look amazing. What a great colour they have.

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