Veg*n Cooking and Other Random Musings: Weekly Local Booty 8/31-9/5/08

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Weekly Local Booty 8/31-9/5/08

First off, I am very happy to say our oven is fixed! I was really starting to resign myself to the idea of not having one for at least the weekend. It got to be around 3:00 in the afternoon and nobody had shown up to fix it, so we phoned the office who said that they were "pretty sure" that someone was planning on stopping by. The minutes ticked by, and it got to be around 4:30, and I began looking at raw food websites and going through my thumbdrive for easy stove top recipes I have created (I have created far too many recipes, I still need to try most of them!), there was a knock on the door, and about 20 minutes later, our oven was back in action.

I am going to take something from this experience - I rely on the oven quite a bit. Having a grill, especially during the summer, would alleviate a lot of its use, but it made me think I needed to branch out, use the stove top more, and try more (mostly) raw foods - though my oven will still likely be my favorite gadget, we are such suckers for the roasted vegetable.

Anyways, on to the local grub! It's been unseasonably cool here (it feels like late October!), and, as usual it seems, rainy, I think the plants are confused. This is what we got from our container and community gardens this week.















A yellow straightneck squash (and a glass of sun tea). We were very happy that the squash was able to reach maturity considering the squash bug problem.















A jalapeno and bell pepper.















Starting from the right: roma tomatoes, a jalapeno, 3 banana peppers, butternut squash, and a couple of zucchini. I knew there was one zucchini on the plant, but was pleasantly surprised when I went back to "check-in" on the one zucchini that there were two. And the "bonus" one is actually the big one.

Here is this week's CSA quarter share:















Starting from the right: a yellow summer squash, a jalapeno, 2 mystery red peppers, another one of those mystery green peppers (I forgot to ask him what these were so I'm going to email Dan to help me identify them), a cucumber, an onion, lots of little heirloom tomatoes, more tomatoes, a green bell pepper, some apples, and cilantro.

This week's farmer's market booty ran us a whopping $31.















Starting from the right we've got: 4 red bell peppers, 2 red onions, lots of tomatoes (we really love, love tomatoes), 4 small new potatoes, 2 habaneros (Brett agreed to let me save the seeds out of these so long as I promised to mostly use them for my own food, and to use sparingly when I feed them to him - I agreed. I'm dreaming of some dried, crushed habaneros next summer!), 4 sweet potatoes (!!!), 3 cucumbers (we like cucumbers a lot too), sweet basil, locally made penne pasta, and one gigantic cantaloupe - it's HUGE!

I made a pesto pizza last weekend and somehow forgot to post about it, so I'm going to end with it. This was nothing special really, it was mostly a way of trying to use up the remaining organic all-purpose white flour that has been lurking in our cabinet for quite some time. It was really good, and the white flour is almost gone now, I could probably make one more crust with the last of it, and then we're going to figure out how to make a whole wheat (or partially whole wheat) or some other whole grain pizza crust that actually tastes good - you know, not like a slice of wheat bread, and one that has good texture. Any suggestions on recipes or types of whole grain flour to try?

Anyways, I've included my recipe in case any of you out there like white flour or have some that needs to be used up.

Just a reminder of the produce legend:
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden

















Using Up the White Flour Pizza Dough
3 cups of organic, all-purpose white flour
1 small package of active dry yeast
2 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tbsp organic sugar
1 tsp salt
(you could add herbs to the dough too, I bet that would be good)
1 cup of very hot water

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Slowly add the oil and the water. It's easiest to use your hands to work the dough.

Spread out the crust on a pizza stone dusted with flour, using your fingers to pinch the dough at the edges to create a crust.

Pesto Pizza
1 Using Up the White Flour Pizza Crust
1 batch of walnut pesto (the basil and garlic were * from the farmer's market)
3 Roma tomatoes sliced ***
6 baby portobello mushrooms, sliced
1/2 a zucchini, sliced into rounds ***

Preheat oven to 375.

Spread pesto on the crust and top with tomatoes, mushrooms, and zucchini.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.

This was really yummy!

It's making me hungry! I'm off to make some sort of Mexican-ish (surprised?) hash using all the goodies we got from the farmer's market.

Oh, and we got most of our seeds in for the greens, herbs, and "kitty fodder" for our attempt at an indoor winter container garden. I'll be starting some of those goodies today, but more on that in the garden update.

'Til next time.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

yum..... pizza.

you guys like tomatoes as much as i do. sadly jason doesn't like them much. or maybe thats good because that means i get them all to myself!!! :)

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

So glad that your oven is fixed!! And hooray for lots of fresh produce and pizza :0)

J said...

Selina - I know, I wish I were more creative with what to put on pizza though. There has to be a whole other world of ideas!

We really love tomatoes. My favorite foods period are probably cantaloupe, really hot salsa (which has tomatoes in it, obviously), and raw tomatoes with just a little bit of salt. So good! I'm a little bit depressed that the tomato season is going to be coming to a close soon. We can usually get them into October here, but with how wet and mild it's been, I don't think we're going to have them much longer than a couple more weeks.

Hahaha, I'm just sitting here wondering how someone could NOT like tomatoes! I'd look at it that way too, more for you! Mmmm, I can't eat 'em like candy. Especially the cherry ones. Maybe I should grow some next year...

I contemplated starting some seeds for our indoor winter garden, but we already have tomatillo seeds going and those are big plants, I don't know that we have room for all that! Although, maybe we can make room somewhere...

Veggie Girl - Thanks, me too. And hooray is right, wahoo!

Anonymous said...

Happy to hear the oven is fixed! When mine was broken, I realized how much I used it too...and once it was fixed I was a crazy baking/cooking person for a while--I had missed it!

Your pizza looks delicious. I really like spelt flour--I am thinking it would work just fine in your original crust recipe if you just sub in the spelt flour for the wheat flour. I have had good luck substituting it in cup for cup in recipes that call for white flour. I also like barley flour a lot--both can be found pretty cheaply in the bulk bins at my co-op :o)

Courtney

ChickPea said...

I am totally envious of that locally made penne!
That pizza looks great too--I will put the walnut pesto on my "must try" list!

Lisa (Show Me Vegan) said...

Hasn't this weather been weird? I've been enjoying the mild temp, but really hate to see summer go. I remember the first weekend in Oct last year was crazy hot, so who knows how long this will last. Glad that your oven is back to working!

Bianca said...

Yea for the oven! And I love sun tea. My mom used to make it all the time, but I never have. Now I really want to though.

J said...

Courtney - Thanks. Hahahaha, as soon as the oven was fixed, I got out my thumbdrive to look over my sweet potato recipes - wahoo!

Thank you - and thanks for the suggestions. I will see if they sell spelt or barley flour at the bulk section of our local grocery stores.

Chickpea - This pasta is fantastic, the purveyor sells lots of different varieties included whole wheat. AND they sell it at the grocery store too, so over the winter I can still get my hands on this tasty pasta.

Thanks, we have really enjoyed the walnut pesto, we hope you will too.

Lisa - It HAS been. I've been enjoying the mild temperatures too, but feel the same way you do, winter is right around the corner.

I KNOW, last year was something else here in Missouri, it was flippin' hot even up through fall.

Me too.

Bianca - Sun tea rocks, and it is so easy to make. We use a gallon jug we got apple juice in awhile back. 4 bags of Darjeeling black tea and 1 bag of peppermint herb tea - nothing better, nothing better.

jessy said...

mmmm - that pizza = awesome! i love the title of it, too - made me giggle! :) all the booty looks soooooooo good, too! the tomatoes - and those cute little heirloom tomatoes - yay! glad you guys got the oven fixed. w00t!

J said...

Jessy - Thanks, I'm not very creative with naming things as you can probably tell... ;-)

We have really been enjoying all the tomatoes, I am in denial that they are on their way out here in the Midwest. :-(

We were too, we were too.

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