What’s in the Box? Summer 2012 CSA Week Four (Plus a Bonus Pukey Puppy Story!)

When we received our last CSA box, Madison was drought central. Soon after that post, though, Mama Nature decided to relent a little and granted us with a few rainstorms. Although the much-appreciated rain can’t undo the damage already caused by lack of water, they’ll definitely help some crops in the area perk up and start producin’. In the meantime, our farm continues to provide us with lots of tasty treats.

I spy with my little eye… sweet corn!

This is one of our most bountiful boxes yet! We received:

• Basil
• Beets
• Bell peppers (green & purple)
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant
• Garlic
• Muskmelon
• Summer squash
• Sweet corn
• Sweet onion
• Watermelon
• Zucchini

YES! It’s the first of the sweet corn! We found nine ears in our box and demolished four of them last night. S and I don’t have a grill, so we roasted them in the oven – so, so good, especially when paired with sauteed tofu, summer squash, and bell pepper. I was also pretty excited for those melons.

Cheeky watermelon!

I wasn’t familiar with muskmelon, but after devouring about half of it last night, S and I agree that it’s indistinguishable from a cantaloupe. And really, who cares about the nomenclature when you’ve got a sweet, juicy melon to enjoy?

If it seems like S and I are being a bit gluttonous, making a decent dent in our stash on the first night we welcomed it home, you’re right. But we have good reason – like I mentioned in my last post, we’re heading to Rhode Island tomorrow, and we’ll be there for five days. So we want to eat up some of our goodies before leaving them to languish in the fridge. I’m sure most of the veggies will last just fine, but we definitely want to use up that eggplant tonight!

In fact, I had grand plans last night to whip up some sort of cold pasta or grain salad for lunch today, something that would use up a ton of the veggies, and I wanted to make zucchini bread as well. Feel free to insert your favorite cliche about the best laid plans or good intentions or whatever, because Moria had other plans for us. She swallowed a good inch or two of a corn cob (totally my fault – I let her gnaw on it and then didn’t watch her closely), which is apparently Not Good because corn cobs are not digestible and can get stuck in a doggie’s innards. I ended up bringing her to the emergency vet when I couldn’t make her vomit on my own with a dose of hydrogen peroxide (per the vet’s instructions!). After the vet gave her a stronger emetic, she puked that corn cob right up. She’s fine now, and never will I ever again give her a corn cob.

Anyway, that affair took up most of the evening, so I nixed my plans to make a salad. I did make a zucchini bread, though, and put together quick fruit salads with watermelon and muskmelon. So that’s something!

Anyway, this’ll probably be my only post until next week – I doubt I’ll have time to post when I’m in RI. We’re also taking a day trip to NYC to visit one of S’s friends, and I’m really excited about that – I haven’t been to the city for maybe five years, and never as a vegan. You can bet we’ll be hitting up Lula’s Sweet Apothecary for some vegan ice cream, but what other vegan-friendly joints should we try? Blossom seems like a must-visit…

What delicious dish should I make with my remaining veggies? Where should I go in NYC? And what else should I avoid giving my dog?! (I swear I’m usually a responsible pet owner!)

Curious about what other folks are getting in their CSA boxes this time of year? Check out the What’s in the Box? link party for this week!

Sunday Snackin’: Medjool Date Granola

S and I didn’t enter into cohabitation lightly. We discussed what moving in together meant and we discussed how we’d make it work. Being the big nerds we are, we read books on the topic and came up with some plans in advance. For example, because we both fall on the introvert side of the spectrum, we knew we’d need to plan some alone time (or pseudo alone time) into our life together to avoid one of us (probably me) getting a little twitchy and eventually snapping. We told each other in advance that, hey, if one of us needs time alone, it’s not personal – it’s just necessary to recharge our introverted batteries.

We also build in together-but-alone time by switching off on dinner duties. While one person cooks, the other is free to go read a book or play Half-Life 2 (spoiler: it’s not me) in the other room. And I get some alone time every Sunday when S records his podcast in the bedroom – he shuts the door and I have the rest of the apartment to myself. Yesterday, I filled that hour by reading A Clash of Kings and making granola.

Ready for munchin’.

This granola was meant for the week ahead, but it’s so easy to munch a clump while walking through the kitchen that I admittedly don’t have as much as I wanted left over. But that’s okay. On Friday we’re heading to Rhode Island to hang out with my family, so I’ve got a four-day work week and don’t need full granola supplies. I will surely enjoy what remains, though – this is solid, simple, and delicious granola, a good base for any additions you might want to add. The only added fat is coconut oil, which I will exclusively use in granola in the future – it adds just the right hint of flavor without being overwhelmingly coconutty. And I’m a sucker for anything with Medjool dates – I can’t get enough of their unique caramel-y taste. The recipe is here, although I left out the chocolate chips, upped the spices, and used some agave along with the brown rice syrup when I ran out of the latter (pantry decimation, woo!). Next time I’ll add other dried fruits and perhaps some dark chocolate chips.

With any luck, I’ll have some granola left to munch during our travels on Friday. I doubt it, though. I’ll just have to make another batch next time I need some alone time.

What’s your favorite granola recipe? What’s your favorite thing to do when you’ve got some alone time?

Pantry Decimation Challenge: Shiitake Mushroom Risotto

Once I found out that I’d have a couple days to move (not just a single night and a couple hours), the Pantry Decimation Challenge I so eagerly started last month became much less of a priority. I wouldn’t be refrigerator-less, so I didn’t think I really needed to clean out my fridge or pantry.

And then I moved, combined my food with S’s food, and realized that, whoa, we’ve got a whole lotta food, and maybe I shouldn’t have abandoned that Pantry Challenge so quickly. At the very least, I should’ve tried to finish off the irritatingly small amounts of various foods that were lurking in my cupboards – the dregs of a bag of soy curls, a barely-filled jar of arborio rice, that sort of thing. But it’s not too late. S and I are trying to use up those random bits of food as we hold off on purchasing pantry staples. So last Saturday night when I was in charge of dinner, I forced myself to use pantry goods only. After poking around in the shelves brimming over with pasta and spices and beans, I concocted what turned out to be a very delicious meal.

A very brown meal.

S heaped praise on this Shiitake Mushroom Risotto, and I didn’t even bother to deny it – it was that good. I don’t have a very precise recipe, because I mostly just threw things together and hoped for the best. If you’re nervous about making risotto, don’t be! It’s actually super easy as long as you’re willing to stand by the stove for about twenty minutes. You don’t even have to stir constantly; you can simultaneously tend to whatever else you’re cooking. You just have to give the rice a good stir every minute or so and keep an eye on it. Anyway, here’s a rough list of what I used and what I did:

Ingredients:

• Dried shiitake mushrooms
• TVP (I had a tiny bit left at the bottom of a bag)
• Herbs (I used a homemade poultry seasoning mix with a dash of extra thyme)
• Arborio rice (I probably used a little over 1/3rd of a cup)
• Mushroom stock (I used maybe 1/3rd of a carton by the end)
• Diced onion (Maybe ¼ cup?)
• Earth Balance

Method:

Put the dried mushrooms and TVP in a bowl and cover them with stock. Set them aside to soak and rehydrate as you prepare the risotto.

In a small pot, add the rice and stock. For the stock, you probably want to start with 1.5 the amount of rice – so, if you use ½ cup of rice, add ¾ cup of stock. (I don’t bother to measure the liquids for risotto, though – the goal is to keep adding stock as the rice soaks it up.) Bring the liquid to a boil and then turn it down to medium-low – keep it simmering, but not boiling. Stir it frequently to ensure that no rice sticks to the bottom, and add more stock as necessary.

After you’ve got a good handle on your risotto (about when you’ve first turned it down to medium-low), heat some Earth Balance (or olive oil) in a small saucepan on medium and add the diced onion. Sauté the onions until they’re translucent, giving them the occasional stir in the pan. In the meantime, don’t forget your risotto!

Check your TVP and mushrooms. When they’re hydrated and the onions are translucent and fragrant, add the mushroom and TVP mixture (broth and all) to the saucepan with the onions. Depending on how thick your mushrooms are cut, they might take a little longer to hydrate. I added mine when they were soft to the touch. Add your spices, too.

Keep stirring that risotto and adding broth as you sauté the onions, mushrooms, and TVP. After you’ve been cooking the risotto for about 20 minutes, give it a taste – the rice should be soft and creamy, not terribly chewy. Test your mushrooms as well – you want them to be soft too.

Remove the risotto from the heat when it’s done. Add the onions, mushrooms, and TVP when they’re ready and stir everything to combine. Taste and add salt or freshly ground black pepper if necessary. Enjoy!

What’s your risotto-making technique? What’s your favorite use of dried mushrooms (we’ve got a ton!)?

What’s in the Box? Summer 2012 CSA Week Three

It’s our third CSA box already! To be honest, S and I still have some veggies left over from our last box, which we received two weeks ago. I blame moving.

Before I show you what’s in the box this week, I want you to look at something else. This is what my backyard (by which I mean the “quad” outside my apartment building) looks like right now:

Moria surveys the drought.

This is what happens when the Madison area undergoes a drought. It’s not pretty. You can see, in the distance, some green grass – that’s where the sprinklers are. But the grass that doesn’t get water is more like straw – it’s yellow, bone-dry, and crunchy. Not good. Unsurprisingly, many small farms in the area are not doing well. CSA farms without proper irrigation aren’t able to provide their share owners with many veggies… and it doesn’t help that we’ve had record heat this summer, upwards of 100 degrees. Luckily, though, my CSA farm has the infrastructure in place to keep its crops irrigated, so my box this week was not at all lacking:

More colors than just green this week!

So – what’s in the box?

• Basil
• Beets
• Bottle onions
• Broccoli
• Cucumbers
• Fennel
• Garlic
• Head lettuce
• Rainbow chard
• Summer squash
• Sungold tomatoes (!)
• Zucchini

Not a bad selection at all. If you can’t tell by that exclamation mark, I’m very excited for the tomatoes. Please excuse the shoddy photo, though. I had to take it indoors at 10:00 PM last night because I was out late doing a volunteer project (more about that later).

I’m glad that my CSA is continuing to produce lots and lots of yummy veggies, and I’m glad I invested in it and threw my lot in with my CSA farm. Because that’s really what the CSA model is all about – shared risk and, hopefully, shared rewards. Folks like me who shell out a couple hundred dollars before the growing season even begins in earnest make it possible for our CSA farms to do what they do. We share in their successes, but it also means that we have to share in their failures, too. If my CSA didn’t have the irrigation infrastructure it does, I might have received a very different box yesterday. But that’s just the way it goes – farming is not a guaranteed success (duh), and when we purchase a CSA share, we’re acknowledging that fact.

So what about you? Is there a drought in your area, too? Have you noticed its effects in your CSA share or at a farmers’ market? And, of course, what would you make with these veggies?

Curious about what other folks are getting in their CSA boxes this time of year? Check out the What’s in the Box? link party for this week!

Chicagoin’ it Up

WHEW.

That was me giving a big huge sigh of relief. My move is complete! We are safely installed in our new place (thanks in part to some hastily hired movers who hauled our two sofas up to the third floor when we utterly failed to do so ourselves)! I can now settle in and enjoy living with two of my favorite people, S and Moria. Yes, Moria is people.

I’ll talk a bit more about that settling process eventually, but for now let me take you back in time. In the midst of our moving preparations, S and I escaped to Chicago for a weekend to visit some friends who moved there a couple months back. I really enjoy Chicago, especially when I’ve got a place to stay right in the city and I’m hanging out with folks who have done all the touristy things already. This trip was pretty relaxed – we saw a movie, went suit-shopping for our friend Aaron (and helped him select one snappy number!), waxed nostalgic at the American Girl Store (I had Addy and Molly, and I loved them both to bits), and just hung out and enjoyed each other’s company. We also ate food. Duh. Half the reason I travel is to try new vegan eats.

First, we headed to Standard India Restaurant for a late dinner on Friday night. I didn’t take pictures (mostly because I wasn’t feeling well at that point), but let it be known that this restaurant is incredibly vegan friendly. The servers are courteous to a fault (seriously – the service was a hair overbearing) and know exactly what vegan means. They typically bring out a small starter soup before your meal, and our server exchanged the non-vegan soup for a delicious chana masala for S and I without our even prompting him. Then, when my pakoras took longer than the rest of the food to arrive, the server gave me a samosa on the house to tide me over.

We all ordered from the a la carte menu rather than do the buffet or thali meal, and I only had the pakoras because I’d actually already eaten dinner. S enjoyed samosas, while our dining companions had something meaty. I wish I’d been hungrier, though – the buffet had clearly labeled vegan options that looked fantastic. The food was delicious, perhaps even more so because the restaurant is BYOB and our server kept our wine glasses filled at all times. The only slightly unpleasant aspect was the very irritated reaction a server had when we asked if he could prioritize running our credit cards because we were running late for a movie. I think it was because the restaurant is fairly traditional and prides itself on its slow, impeccable customer service, and he perhaps felt offended by our rush to leave. Still, his knee-jerk look of irritation was off-putting. Beyond that, though, it was a pleasant experience with good food and attentive service.

The next morning, we broke our fast at Handlebar, a vegetarian and very vegan-friendly hipster-tastic establishment with a great variety of sandwiches, breakfast foods, and traditional (and not so traditional) bar food (fried pickles?!?). I enjoyed a cup of coffee and these melt-in-your-mouth tender slices of French toast:

Toast-tastic.

This was remarkably filling, for being only two triangles of toast! It was actually a side order, and I complemented it with a side order of breakfast potatoes. They were perhaps the least memorable part of my meal, because the toast was just so delicious and the potatoes were pretty average. I love that the French toast came with pure maple syrup, too. So yummy. S also wholly enjoyed his breakfast – biscuits and gravy:

Vegan Bloody Mary in the background!

That seitan sausage gravy was a savory, meaty treat! I’ve never really encountered biscuits &andgravy before, but now I see why so many people love this meal – more on that later! S thoroughly appreciated the opportunity to consume a veganized version of this meal, and I felt the same way about my delicious French toast. If only Handlebar had a location in Madison – I’d be brunchin’ it up all the time!

Because we brunched around 11:00, we didn’t have a full lunch. Instead, we stopped at Big Bowl after finishing our suit shopping for some refreshing drinks and appetizers. A couple of them are vegan; S and I shared summer rolls and… something else I can’t remember. But we ate light because we were saving our appetites for dinner. We’d intended to head to Karyn’s on Green for a fancy-pants meal, but the timing didn’t work out so we decided to hit up Native Foods instead. I never say no to Native Foods!

My stomach wasn’t terribly happy by the time we got there, and I knew I needed something loaded with veggies. The Soul Bowl was the perfect choice. It’s a big gigantic bowl of brown rice, red beans, steamed broccoli & kale, ranch sauce, BBQ sauce, and a couple pieces of Native Chicken. And by “a couple pieces” I mean one normal piece lying atop the bed of veggies and one skewered, BBQ-slathered piece proudly standing tall like a fake-meat tower:

A majestic sight.

Insane, right? And a HUGE amount of food! I barely got through half this bowl, which meant I had lunch ready for work the next Monday. Win! It was just what my upset tummy ordered – veggie-rich and delicious. I could’ve done with a little less ranch sauce, but I’m a big weirdo who’s not actually very fond of ranch.

S and one of our dining companions ordered the Portobello and Sausage Burger, which happened to be the special, so S enjoyed a free side of sweet potato fries. We all shared the Native Nachos as an appetizer, and they were fantastic – the Native Chipotle Crema and Native Cheese made for an appropriately cheesy platter, and the entire dish was loaded with guac, veggies, black beans, and taco meat. Perfection.

S and I rounded out our meal with dessert to go – a Peanut Butter Parfait for S and a Double Delight Brownie for me. We saved them for later and enjoyed them while watching a movie. The brownie was nothing to write home about, but it was certainly worth $2.95. I very much appreciate the accessible prices at Native Foods – no $7.00 desserts there!

The next morning, we all brunched at The Chicago Diner before S and I headed back to Madison. I was extremely excited to finally eat there – it’s a veggie institution, but in all my visits to Chicago I’ve never made it there! (Although S did bring me back a treat that one time.) We all sat in their semi-outdoors back patio area, which is fully covered by a yellow tent. Hence the lack of pictures – the tent gave my pictures a hideous, radioactive mustardy glow that made all the food look very unappetizing. However, it was very appetizing indeed. I stuck with my brunchy theme of ordering sides and had a bowl of fruit and a small plate of biscuits and gravy. Y’all, I’m totally sold on this biscuits and gravy dish – it’s so perfect! It’s got a carby element that’s undeniably welcome at breakfast time, it’s savory and filling, and it’s incredibly satisfying to mop up that salty gravy with a flaky biscuit. S also had the biscuits and gravy, and rated them on par with those at Handlebar.

After our meal, S and I got two cinnamon buns to go, and we stickily devoured them on the drive back. They were melty, sweet, soft, and totally perfect. Chicago Diner, I think I like you.

For a two night, one point five day stay in Chicago, this trip was full of noteworthy eats. Our hosts were incredibly gracious in accommodating our veganism, never once complaining about being forced to eat mostly meat-free for a weekend. Our friend Aaron remarked a few times that the non-meat in his meals was good and not really noticeably fake, and I think both our hosts enjoyed all our meals. So hooray for Chicago and its omni-friendly veg eating establishments!

Where have you traveled lately? How do your omni friends react to eating at veg restaurants?