Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Using up our veggies

The CSA pick up at Blooming Glen is tomorrow, so we wanted to use as much of our produce as possible today. Jason and I had salads for lunch and dinner was a yummy vegan stir fry.

I prepared some baked tofu (easy-peasy recipe here: http://www.fatfreevegan.com/soy/baked.shtml), sauteed a sliced onion for a couple minutes, added four sliced garden green peppers and a couple handfuls of string beans, then some water and covered to steam for a few minutes. Next, I added some frozen corn (for color), stirred everything up and re-covered. While the veggies were steaming, I mixed about four tablespoons of golden South River miso with a few splashes of soy sauce.

Once the tofu was done baking, I cut it up, threw it in, mixed in the miso, cooked for a few more minutes, then served over rice-consistency Textured Vegetable Protein (reconstituted in veggie broth). Yumm!

I also figured, that since the oven was already on, it would be a good time to use up the eggplant we had from the CSA last week. My awesome neighbor Peggy, recommended a simple roasting recipe and told me to salt the eggplant for 20 minutes before I baked it.

I cubed the eggplant (three different varieties, but about one medium-sized eggplant in total weight), and tossed them with a couple pinches of salt in a metal bowl. While that sat, I cut up a quarter of a purple onion, halved the remaining cherry tomatoes we had in the fridge, and chopped up the rest of the dill and thyme (also from last week's CSA pick up). I added the veggies and herbs to the bowl with just a bit of olive oil and pepper and let everything sit until the tofu was done. The mixture was spread onto parchment paper - given to me by Peggy :) - and baked at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.










(I like the second picture - it looks like a vegetable rescue boat.)

The stir fry and the roasted veggies were done at the same time, and we enjoyed them under the living room ceiling fan. Our dinner was vegan, but Peggy did say that a bit of fresh grated parmesan cheese is deee-lish when thrown on top of the eggplant right before it's done baking.

Oh, and did I mention the cooking and roasting was happening during the latest heat wave? Seriously? It was like, a gazillion degrees in the kitchen. Which actually made the rest of our un-air conditioned home feel cool.

And the ice cream we had at out local scoop and serve after dinner helped, too :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The roasted vegetables looks great and so does the stir fry. I hear ya about cooking during this heat wave. I've been inside more because of it which leads me to do more cooking and baking. Go figure.

Anonymous said...

I'm not normally a fan of eggplant, but this was good.

Mikaela said...

Vegan Diva, you are so right about trying to stay in to keep cool, but then end up cranking up the stove :P

Anonymous, you're not anonymous, you're Jason! Unless someone came into the house last night and ate the roasted veggies...?!