no tomatoes in winter

Tomatoes are my favourite food in the world...but I have learned to go without fresh tomatoes for half the year. I will occasionally buy a couple to make a layered dip for a special occasion (there is a greenhouse in the next town that grows organic hydroponic tomatoes and they are available at the regular supermarkets), but throughout the winter and spring I mostly rely on jarred and dried tomato products, or whatever I froze or dehydrated in the summer and fall.

Two summers ago, local tomato crops in New England were ruined by late blight. It was then that I learned to go without them for such a long stretch that now 9 months doesn't seem like such a big deal to wait for a perfectly sun-ripened local tomato.

And so I can appreciate
what we DO get more as
well. This year the winter
farm shares at the CSA
are the longest yet,
stretching til the end of
March! That means there
will only be 2 month of the
year we are not receiving
locally grown vegetables.


Winter offers lots of root
vegetables, mostly stored
in the root cellar and
divided for each monthly
pickup through the season.
Carrots, parnsips, purple-
topped turnips, potatoes,
celeriac, onions, shallots &
beets. Roasting, mashing,
and making simple soups
takes care of the majority.

The rest of the winter
share consists of kale,
swiss chard, spinach,
baby salad greens, leeks,
cabbages, popping corn,
and a little extra garlic.

Amazingly most of this
is grown in the actual
ground, just covered by
a simple frame mobile
greenhouse.

This winter saw (and is
still seeing--it's snowing
as I type) some huge
snow accumulation. But
on a sunny day the
temperature in side the
greenhouse can reach
the 80sF.




Another lower greenhouse
was added this year to
increase kale and chard
production. While the kale
from the summer still
survives in the field, covered,
this kale is much more
robust, offering sharers a
large bagful at each pickup.

Spinach with Dried
Tomatoes & Garlic

8 oz. fresh spinach, washed
1 T. olive oil
1 T. margarine (I use Earth
Balance)
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 sun-dried or dehydrated
tomato slices, soaked
salt & pepper

Soak the dried tomatoes
in hot or boiling water
for 30 minutes. Save the
soaking water! Remove the softened tomatoes and slice thinly or chop.

In a large pot or skillet, heat the olive oil & margarine over medium heat. Add garlic & tomatoes and cook for 1 minute. Add spinach, a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Toss with a fork or tongs. Cook for another minute. Add a few tablespoons of the tomato soaking water, cover pot, and cook 1-2 minutes until tender.

Pasta Quattro

Winter is when we eat the most pasta. Probably too much! But here are a few tasty dishes we enjoy again and again...

Pasta w/Squash & Sage
Mushrooms

mushrooms:
1 T. olive oil
1 T. margarine
8-10 medium mushrooms
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped
4-5 dried sage leaves,
crumbled
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp lemon juice
1/4 kosher salt

squash sauce:
2 cups steamed squash
1/2 cup water or veg broth
1 T. olive oil
2 T. margarine
1/2 a bouillon cube
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar

Pasta or ravioli of your
choice.

This is a delicious way to
use fresh or frozen squash.
Steamed butternut squash
is fantastic for this dish!

First, peel, cube & steam
the squash. Or use frozen
thawed squash.

Next, wash the mushrooms.
Slice fairly thin. Heat olive oil & margarine over medium heat. Add mushrooms. Stir occasionally. After about 2-3 minutes, add the garlic and sage. Cook for a few more minutes, stirring every 2 minutes or so, allowing enough space in between mushrooms for any liquid to evaporate. As mushrooms begin to brown and dry out, add cayenne pepper and lemon juice. You want the mushrooms brown, but not burned. Remove from heat and sprinkle with kosher salt. Set aside.

Start the pasta cooking while you prepare the squash sauce. Puree the squash in a food processor with 1/2 cup water or vegetable broth. You may add a bit more water if necessary to process. Heat olive oil & margarine over medium-low heat. Add the 1/2 bouillon cube and mash with fork and stir briskly to dissolve (do not allow to burn). Add squash puree. Stir. Add salt and sugar. Stir and heat through.

Drain pasta. Toss with a little margarine or olive oil. Pour squash sauce over pasta. Top with sage mushrooms.

Tomato Bac-un Pasta

1/2 box of pasta
1/2 package Smart Bacon
1 T. olive oil
1 T. margarine
2 cups chopped, peeled
tomatoes, drained
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

Here is a super quick dinner fix.
While pasta is cooking, peel apart half a package of Lightlife Smart Bacon strips. Slice or tear into bite-sized pieces. Heat olive oil & margarine over medium-low heat. Add Smart Bacon. Cook 2-3 minutes, flipping over pieces until lightly browned and slightly crisp. Add tomatoes (canned diced tomatoes or whole peeled tomato work well here, and I save the liquid for soups). Add a sprinkle of salt and a touch of cayenne pepper. Stir and heat through. Toss with drained hot pasta.

Ratatouille Couscous

2 T. olive oil
1 eggplant, peeled, sliced
1 T. water
1/2 tsp. salt
1 zucchini or summer
squash, halved & sliced
1 onion, quartered &
sliced
8-10 mushrooms,
quartered
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 jar pasta sauce
1 box couscous (cooked according to directions)

This dish is pretty easy, but the vegetables do take a bit of time to cook properly.

Peel an eggplant, slice, and cut into strips. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large pot. Add eggplant and salt, stir, and cover. Halve and slice a zucchini. Add one tablespoon of water to eggplant, stir again, cover. Quarter and slice a medium yellow or white onion. Add zucchini & onion to pot, stir, cover. Quarter the mushrooms, add to pot, cover. Chop a bell pepper into bite-sized chunks. Add bell pepper and 1/2 a jar of your favourite (or homemade) pasta sauce, cover. Cook for 5 minutes, stir, cover. Check every few minutes until vegetables are tender.
Once everything is in the pot, cook couscous in a separate small covered pot (takes only 5 minutes). Fluff couscous. Serve couscous and ladle ratatouille sauce over the top.

Lemon Spinach Pasta

1/2 box pasta
1 tsp. salt
8 oz. frozen leaf spinach
2 T. margarine
2 T. lemon juice
2 T. capers, drained
plenty of fresh black
pepper

Another easy peasy pasta dish for when you're in a hurry or don't feel like doing much cooking...

Cook 1/2 a box of pasta with 1 teaspoon salt added to the cooking water.
3 minutes before pasta is done (we like our pasta well-cooked, usually 12-14 minutes for standard shaped dry pasta, so around 10 minutes) add frozen spinach to pot and return to a boil. Drain. Toss with margarine. Add lemon juice, capers, & black pepper. Toss. Top with extra black pepper.

cookbook challenge, week 10

Can you believe I've been doing this cookbook challenge for 10 weeks?! Still going strong.
This week's recipes from Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings are...

A very basic Cheese
Quesadilla recipe.
I think I would
personally like to grill
these, or at least spray
the pan with a little oil
to brown the corn
tortillas slightly. But the
author prefers the fat-free
dry saute method, so that's what I did. On the right I used his suggestion of salsa for a filling. On the left I made my own with spinach. For both I used Daiya vegan cheese. Everybody ate them, but I think I can improve these. The Daiya made these.

Another extremely easy
recipe was Simply Spinach.
It's really more of a method
than a recipe, telling how to
wilt spinach in a pan with a
little water, adding salt to
the layers for seasoning.
I was fine, but I prefer
blanching because dare I
say it's even easier! I ate this for breakfast (yeah, I'm weird) alongside a BBQ Sunshine Burger with vegan pepper jack cheese, onion & ketchup on a wheat bun.

My final recipe for the week was another simple one, but wow was it a good one. I thought, "it's just melon. Why would I want to mess with it? It's perfect as it is!" Given that I had fresh local organic watermelon AND cantaloupe from our CSA, I had no excuse but to try this...
The flavours of this Melon Salad with Lime and Mint were bliss. The tiniest dressing of lime juice, maple syrup & salt, and the fresh mint leaves. Whoa. Fantastic. Everybody lurved it.
Until next weekend!

sunny outside, cloudy inside

Just AJ's snack today...Ryan is home sick: blue rice w/soy cheese clouds; green beans; sesame tofu.
Our house is well over
100 years old; the basement
is not exactly impenetrable.
Check out this lilly that has
moved in at the window! I
wonder if it will bloom??



Cool tricks!
AJ can balance a spoon
on his nose. It frustrates
Ryan enormously that
he can't do it.

I made spinach pancakes
on Easter morning yesterday.
The boys all loved them and
were stealing them before
they hit their plates.

Spinach Pancakes

1/2 cup blanched baby spinach, about 6-8oz. fresh
(press out excess water)
1 1/2 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 3/4 cups soy/almond milk (I use a mix of both)
1 tsp. olive oil

Cook spinach in boiling water
until just limp, about 1-2
minutes. Rinse under cool
water, drain & squeeze in a
collander.
Puree 3/4 cup of the soymilk
with the spinach (I use a Magic
Bullet).

Preheat large non-stick pan or griddle over med/high heat.

In a large bowl, mix next 3 dry ingredients. Then add all of the soymilk/spinach & olive oil. Mix well with electric hand mixer.

When cooking surface is hot, spray lightly with olive oil to prevent sticking. Ladle on pancake batter. Flip when bubbles form and pop leaving holes.

back to bento

Monday:May 5th was Children's Day, a holiday in Japan where carp streamers are flown to represent the family, often a larger one for the father, then smaller streamers for each child. So I cut out two carp streamer shapes out of nori and put them on either side of an onigiri triangle for AJ's snack, along with: edamame; a mini pumpkin muffin; blanched spinach; 2 cantaloupe bears.
Ryan's class was celebrating his teacher's birthday, so he brought a chocolate cupcake cone with vanilla rainbow frosting--I forgot to get a photo of it, doh!

Nate and I shared a
second breakfast of
blanched sesame
spinach and miso soup.







Lunch & dinner was a polenta lasagna. I've used rice lasagna noodles to make a gluten-free lasagna before, but using polenta really works well too! I only used half the polenta called for in the recipe though. I veganized this recipe from a Food Network show and it turned out fabulously! My husband really enjoyed it and the boys liked it too. Some of my substitutions included:
- for the sausage: Tofurky Sweet Italian Sausage with sun-dried tomatoes...I hadn't bought imitation sausage in at least a decade; this stuff was pretty good and smelled marvelous.
- for the 3 cheeses: Vegan Gourmet monterey jack; Galaxy Vegan Grated Topping for the parmesan (though I only used about 1/2 a cup instead of 2 cups); a homemade tofu ricotta of my own (this worked really well keeping the top moist so it could be cooked without covering for 50 minutes).

Tuesday:
Basketball bento for Ryan: Basketball sandwich; baked sweet potato fries; a container of ketchup; orange slices.
I recently bought some edible food coloring markers and wanted to try them out. They didn't work too smoothly writing on slippery orange soy cheese! But I have another idea which was my main reason for buying them that I will try next week....stay tuned!

I froze the remainder
of our anniversary
cake. We'll save it
to eat after the new
baby's arrival...in
only 7-12 weeks!




Here are AJ &
Ryan imitating
my 30 week
pregnant belly
with some mini
beachballs they'd
just gotten at
the garden center.
hahaha

Wednesday:
Ryan & AJ: green beans dressed with a little soy sauce; cantaloupe chunks; baked Ian's Alphatots; container of ketchup.

Friday:Ryan & AJ: grilled nutritional yeast cheeze sandwiches; mango slices; dill pickle pieces; baby carrots.

Lately Ryan has been creating some of his own meals & snacks. He calls them his Iron Chef food.

He has some very
interesting sandwich
combinations, like
sliced banana, sliced
apple, lettuce, &
cream cheese.

Or strawberries,
peanut butter, &
spinach.


What's more, he's
been handing out
sticky notes at
mealtimes so that
everyone (myself
included) can rate
the food and see
which part of the
meal is the winner!