Pasta Primavera with Pesto Alfredo

I am tired and just jotting down what it occurred to me to make for dinner tonight so I don't forget later when I am more tired and have to do this.  I made the garlic scapes and carrot greens into a (hefty amount of) rough pesto with some pine nuts, olive oil, and salt.  There was a lot more finished product than I intended.  I'm going to throw some of it into the Vitamix with some water, raw cashews, and seasonings to taste and make it into a pesto alfredo sauce.  Apparently you can make anything into a vegan cream sauce by running it through a blender with raw cashews and water and seasoning it to taste.  I've done this a couple times now (for pesto alfredo and a vodka-less vodka sauce) and it is easier than I would have expected and very forgiving since you fix the thickness and flavor while it's still in the blender.  Just err on the side of too thick since you can always add water but it's harder to cook it out.

I think I have Tofurky brand vegan chik'n strips in the fridge, and if I don't, I definitely have Tofurky brand Italian sausage.  They add a lot in terms of flavor and how filling the dish is.  I also have whole wheat penne for this.

I'm going to blanch the fresh fava beans and throw at least some of them into this pasta dish along with some of the fresh English peas, one or two of the little summer squash sliced, and some broccoli florets and sliced bell pepper from the freezer.  And maybe one of the fresh shallots from the farm box.  And some of the red basil.  I tried putting the red basil in a sandwich yesterday and it was not good for that.  It has a nice, fairly typical basil flavor, but it's too strong to use as sandwich greens and the stems are too fibrous to chew, so I'll have to rip off some of the leaves and just throw them into this whole thing at the end.  Or add them to the blender while I'm making the sauce.  I'm not sure which will make it a weirder, less appetizing color (red basil is the brownish color of pretty much any other red lettuce).  It should taste nice though. 

[Edited after dinner:  The sauce contained a generous scoop of my homemade garlic scape pesto, water, raw cashews, salt, some dry oregano, fresh red basil, and fresh ground black pepper.  I don't know amounts because I kept messing with it, but it was probably around half a cup each of the pesto and the cashews and maybe a cup of water (definitely don't take my word for it on the water).  The vegan parmesan on top from the produce department -- I can't remember the brand -- was a really good addition, probably because the sauce needed lemon or something equivalently tangy and I didn't think to include any.  The garlic scape pesto had a serious bite to it from CONTAINING MOSTLY GARLIC so my primary goal was evening out the final sauce so it wasn't too spicy.  The rest of the ingredients were a couple of fresh shallots thinly sliced, a few baby summer squash sliced, fresh English peas, fresh fava beans that I'd blanched and double shelled (today I learned fresh fava beans have a really nice texture), some leftover diced yellow bell pepper, and Tofurky chick'n strips lightly sauteed in olive oil.  I ended up using whole wheat spaghetti because I felt like the thicker, chewier texture of the penne would've been overpowering with all these small, tender vegetables.  Farfalle would've also worked.]

CSA Box #4

Box #4 includes:  varietal head lettuces, Tuscan kale, strawberries, baby mokum carrots, greenhouse cucumber, English peas, varietal summer squash, cilantro, greenhouse tomatoes, Swiss chard, fava beans, red basil, fresh shallots, French breakfast radishes, baby lettuce mix.


Here is what I'm making:

First I'm just going to wash and freeze the radish greens, chard, and kale for breakfast smoothies.  It's easier than trying to use them all up before they wilt.  The carrot greens are in really good condition too, so I'll have to see what I can do with those.  If you look online for what to do with any odd kind of green, the internet says to make it into pesto.

Spiced Little Carrots with Chickpea-Sauerkraut Puree (Vedge)
Vedge says this would go well with their pierogi recipe (pg. 127), which I've always wanted to try.  Hopefully I can make myself do this much cooking in one day.  All this would achieve is using up the carrots, but I really want to eat pierogi.

Grilled Zucchini with Green Olives, Cilantro, and Tomato (Vedge)
I basically already have all the ingredients for this and it'll use up some of the new zucchini ("varietal summer squash"), cilantro, and tomato we just got.  I think this would be a nice side alongside some black beans, maybe guacamole, and something else to fill out the meal. 

Moroccan Carrot Salad with Savory Granola
One of the best things I've ever eaten was a soup topped with savory granola and preserved lemon at Green Zebra vegetarian restaurant in Chicago.  They have since closed and I don't remember what else was in that dish (it was a creamy sort of bisque I think -- coconut milk?) but when I looked up savory granola with preserved lemon, this recipe came up, and I'd like to try it for putting atop some of my new salad greens and some (blanched? sauteed? lightly cooked somehow) fresh fava beans that came in the box today, as well as the English peas, which are just nice raw.  I figure, even if this turns out badly with all my changes, I can try the leftover savory granola and preserved lemon again on something else.  

The French breakfast radishes (I'm so delighted we got these again as the email had just said "radishes") will end up in that avocado and tamari and nori dish again.  I just need to buy more avocados at the store tomorrow.  I have legit not gone shopping in two weeks.  Someone bringing a huge box of fruit and veg to the house every Friday makes it a lot easier.

Healthy Chocolate Truffles

This recipe originally came from The How Not to Die Cookbook.  But that version gave me a little bit of a stomach ache, presumably from all the nuts, so I replaced some of them with black beans this time around, which also cut the fat content a bit.  Simran also likes this version, which is shocking.  I think it's the first whole food plant based dessert she's liked.  I will probably keep a batch of these in the fridge going forward since they don't require cooking and one or two can sate a chocolate craving pretty well.

Ingredients
1/3 cup chopped and pitted soft dates
1/3 cup cooked black beans, drained and rinsed
3 tbs almond butter (or substitute whatever nut butter you have -- I think I used some sunbutter I'm trying to dispose of)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup date sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup almond flour (or finely ground nuts of your choice), for coating

Directions 

1) Combine dates and black beans in food processor and process to a paste.  Add almond butter and process to combine.  Add cocoa powder, date sugar, vanilla, and 1 tsp of water.  Pulse until well combined.

2) The finished product should look fudgy in color and texture and just hold together when molded into a ball.  If it's crumbly, add a little more water, 1 tsp at a time, until it can be shaped into balls.  If it's too soft, refrigerate for 20 minutes to firm it up.

3) Use your hands to shape and roll the mixture into 1-inch balls.  Then roll them in almond flour.  Place them in a container and refrigerate until firm before serving.

CSA Box #3

CSA Box #3 has arrived!  It contains:  one large cucumber, baby lettuce mix, sunflower microgreens, more Japanese turnips, strawberries, English peas, sugar snap peas, garlic scapes, romaine, a bag of adorable baby summer squash, spinach, and 2 greenhouse (heirloom by the look of them) tomatoes.  Here is what I'm planning to do with it all:

The baby lettuce mix and microgreens will end up in lunchtime salads.  I will probably end up freezing the spinach for use in breakfast smoothies over the next week.  The tomatoes will end up in salads, sandwiches, or eaten plain by Sameer.  I can use the cucumber and romaine to make summer rolls again (maybe Sunday) now that I have a small stockpile of spring roll wrappers.  The strawberries will get eaten plain today and tomorrow.  Here are the recipes: 

Garlic Scape Pesto
I'm going to omit the Parmesan to keep this vegan and use up the garlic scapes this way.  The hummus I made with them last time was good, but I didn't think they added much to it and I want to try something different.  This pesto could end up being a sauce option for a DIY pizza night or I could mix it with some homemade cashew cream and make it into a vegan pesto alfredo sauce for pasta.  I might include a handful or two of the spinach in this pesto, mostly for color and to fill it out.

Penne alla Vodka
I can use at least some of the baby summer squash in this.  It will just be my standard whole wheat penne with the Tofurky Italian sausages and vegetables cooked in the skillet before adding sauce, but I'm going to use the linked sauce recipe to make it vegan.


Japanese Turnips with Miso
This recipe sounded easy and good, and it uses both the turnips and their greens. 


Peas and Carrots with Jamaican Curry (Vedge, pg. 56)
I've been wanting to make this for awhile, and allegedly fresh English peas are the key ingredient.  This dish involves firing up the oven to roast some carrots, so the plan was to make it on one of the days it isn't scheduled to get too hot.  Not sure how this will work out since English peas are allegedly supposed to be eaten as fresh as possible because they start tasting worse immediately and it's 91 degrees here today.  I might just pan cook the carrots and make this tonight and throw it all atop some rice.  Sameer is fasting today, has planned all his meals for tomorrow, and is fasting again Sunday, and I'm not sure how Simran will feel about dinner after getting a stubborn baby tooth pulled at the dentist this afternoon, so I might just end up shelling the peas and eating them plain.

I'm going to try just steaming the sugar snap peas and grinding some black pepper over them.  Or something like that.  Trying to reduce my oil and general processed fat intake since so many recipes call for butter, oil, or mayo.  I also have to figure out which peas are the sugar snap and which are English because I'm pretty sure I have a bag of each.

CSA Box #2

Our second CSA box of the season has arrived.  Here's what we got:  baby bok choi, three unripe greenhouse tomatoes, popcorn on the cob x3, spring onions, Russian banana fingerling potatoes, radishes, lettuce, strawberries, asparagus, cilantro, shiitake mushrooms, micro red mustard greens, pickling cucumbers, and baby Japanese turnips.

Here is what I'm going to do with them:

Hakurei Turnips with falafel crumbs and creamy sesame (Vedge, pg. 84) 
This will use up the Japanese turnips.  The greens are nice and lush, so I'm going to do what I did with the radish greens (and extra sorrel and arugula) last week and cut them off, wash them, and throw them in a bag in the freezer to go into green shake.  This turnip recipe involves oven roasting, so I'll do it tomorrow when it's supposed to be in the 60s.  Maybe we can finish off the garlic scape hummus I made a few days ago with this.  They might be good over a bed of some of the lettuce too.  We've got a lot of salad greens to use this week.  Since we have cucumbers and tomatoes and cashew yogurt and chickpeas too, I might just make this whole thing into a weird take on a falafel platter.

[Edited 6/18/2020:  I didn't love this.  I ate it all, including leftovers, but the turnips weren't amazing and the falafel crumble was bitter.  I assume I did something at least a little bit wrong since I think this is a the first Vedge recipe I wouldn't want again.]

Heirloom Tomatoes with Grilled Shiitakes and Green Goddess (Vedge, pg. 36)
I didn't end up making this last week, but we actually have shiitakes from the CSA box this week (I ended up just steaming last week's creminis and eating them plain, which it turns out I like a lot) and a decent amount of basil is ready to be picked for the green goddess dressing.  I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow, so I'll see if I can find any nice heirloom tomatoes since the tomatoes I've got aren't ripe yet.  I can serve it all on a bed of the micro red mustard greens.  I love micro green so much.

[Edited 6/18/2020:  I get why the cookbook said this was a take on BLTs.  I think I cooked the shiitakes a little too hot, but it was still a really great BLT sort of flavor.  I replaced most of the vegan mayo in the green goddess dressing with fresh avocado (I consume way too much Vegannaise), and I didn't oil, salt, or pepper the heirloom tomato, and I stand by both those decisions.  I would definitely make this again.]


Radishes with Nori, Tamari, and Avocado (Vedge, pg. 34) 
Our radishes this week are the round ones I'm used to seeing in salads, not the French breakfast radishes like the recipe calls for or like we got last week, but this recipe was so delicious last week and Vedge doesn't have any "normal radish" recipes, so I'm just going to use them to make this recipe again and hope for the best.  They will have more bite to them than last week's, but hopefully they'll still taste good.  The radish greens, like last week's, will go into the freezer for green shake.  This recipe will also use up some of the spring onions and the last avocado in my fridge.  This involves no cooking, just cutting and mixing and marinating, so I might make this tonight while it's hot out.

[Edited 6/18/2020:  This wasn't as good with normal round radishes as it is with French breakfast radishes, but we still ate them all.  It's just that it's exceptional with the French breakfast radishes and even Simran devoured them.]

Grilled Baby Bok Choi with Tamari and Chinese Mustard Sauce (Vedge, pg. 83)
I want to make this tonight because the bok choi looks perfect and I can grill it on my grill pan.  The only ingredient I don't have is Chinese mustard, so I'm just going to use this recipe to make my own because I do have all the ingredients for that.  Since I'll have the grill pan out anyway, I'll also make this tofu to add protein to the meal.  Considering steaming some brown rice or cooking some buckwheat soba noodles to go with it all.  I feel like soba noodles should be in a some kind of dashi or something though, and that's a lot of stuff to make for one night.

[Edited 6/18/2020:  This was good, though I feel sure I did something wrong because grilling the baby bok choi sufficiently in the white bulby part wilted the leafy part.  It'd make it again, mostly because I don't know what else to do with baby bok choi and I did eat all the leftovers.]

Easy Refrigerator Pickles
To use up the fat little cucumbers.  Rather than buy fresh dill tomorrow, I'm just going to use dried dill and make these today.  I have no idea if this will ruin anything, but it's a chance I'm willing to take. 

[Edited 6/18/2020:  These are great and so easy to make.]

We'll eat the strawberries after lunch and dinner today.  I'm steaming the asparagus to keep chilled in the fridge for snacking.  The fingerling potatoes might again become fingerling potatoes with creamy worcestershire sauce (Vedge, pg. 80), which I've made a few times but never quite perfected.  I like them though.  The various greens will end up in salads or sandwiches.  The popcorn on the cob will be a movie night snack, so Simran is excited for that.  Apparently you just put it in a paper bag and microwave it.

What I'm Going to Make from the First CSA Box of the Season

The first CSA box came from Nichols Farm today and it contained:  asparagus, strawberries, tomatoes, green garlic, garlic scapes, spring onions, cremini mushrooms, French radishes, arugula, sorrel, gold potatoes, pea shoot micro greens, and cucumbers.  Some of these vegetables are new to me, so I'm figuring out how to prepare them.

One of the best things I've ever eaten was a butter lettuce and seven herb salad with champagne vinaigrette at Aquaknox in Las Vegas.  I don't have butter lettuce at the moment, but I do have a bunch of odd herbs and greens, so I'm going to try making a salad of this nature for dinner tonight while everything is fresh.  It will include some of the sorrel, micro greens, and arugula, along with some chives, basil, and cilantro.  I'll try throwing a small amount of the greens from the radishes in there too since they look fairly young and soft and the internet says you can eat them in salads.  If they aren't great in the salad or seem too tough, I will combine them with the rest of the arugula and cook them like ravioli with arugula minus the cheese and ravioli (i.e., lightly wilt them in a shallot vinaigrette).  It's a nice green side dish Sameer and I can eat by the plateful.
 

For the asparagus, of which there is about twice what I'd normally buy from the store, I will just steam it all and make lemon-caper mayo for dipping.  Sim eats it steamed and plain.  This should be easy to use up over the course of a few days.

I'd never heard of garlic scapes before, but based on what I've read, I'm going to try making a garlic scape hummus.  I'm using the recipe for warm ramp hummus from the Vedge cookbook because the whole cookbook is vegan and reliably good, and it sounds like garlic scapes should have a flavor profile that will work nicely in place of the ramps.  Also it's a dip, so if something seems off, I can add things and fix it as I go.

There is a recipe for French breakfast radishes with nori, tamari, and avocado in Vedge that I've been wanting to try for awhile, so I'm going to make that as part of dinner tomorrow.  This will also use up some of the spring onion greens from the CSA box. 

Sameer says he wants to make some kind of potato au gratin from the potatoes.  I'll leave that to him.  The Vedge cookbook also has a recipe for pierogies I'd like to try.

As for the tomatoes (there are quite a few in the box) and the mushrooms, they aren't precisely what the recipe calls for, but I'd like to try a recipe from Vedge called heirloom tomatoes with grilled shiitakes and green goddess.  My tomatoes aren't heirloom and my mushrooms aren't shiitake, but I think it will still taste good.  If I get closer approximations of the recipe ingredients later in the summer, I'll try again.

Green garlic is new to me, so I'm just going to use it in place of mature garlic in recipes and see how it tastes.  I tend to like anything with a green, herby, or garlicky flavor.

I don't know what I'm going to do with the cucumbers as they are massive.  I can make them into some kind of salad though, or just eat them plain.  Simran will want to put slices of them on her eyes and have a "spa day" though that won't use much.  We could also make sandwiches of potato, tomato, cucumber, and coriander chutney like Sameer and I used to do.  If I can't finish off the tomatoes, I'll just dice them up and throw them in the freezer to make into soups or sauces later.  Most of the Indian dishes I like involve cooking tomatoes into a sauce.

I'm also considering making some kind of savory crepes and filling them with whatever spring vegetables I have left (especially asparagus, greens, and mushrooms) and a vegan sour cream-based dressing with fresh chives in it.  I made a recipe of this nature before that I found somewhere, but it was summertime vegetables and had ricotta cheese.

We're eating the strawberries plain.  We've already eaten half of them.

Flatbread Pizzas from leftover naan

Simran and I made personal flatbread pizzas from last night's leftover naan.  They turned out well.  Sim said it tasted almost like normal pizza but slightly Indian because it was naan.  I was proud of the naan because I've gotten it down to 25% white flour (50% whole wheat, 25% spelt) as of yesterday.  Sameer and Sim couldn't tell the difference from the half whole wheat / half white version I made last time.

For Sim's pizza, she just put pizza sauce, mozzarella, black olives, and veggie pepperoni on hers and we put it in the toaster oven until melty (350 degrees for 4 minutes).

For mine (pictured), I sauteed some mushrooms with olive oil, shallots, roasted garlic (it was already roasted and in the fridge -- I'd just use fresh garlic otherwise), thyme, parsley, and salt and fresh ground pepper.  I added a fistful of arugula and let it wilt a bit in the pan after everything else had cooked.  More arugula would be good.  I added white truffle oil to the mushrooms but didn't think it added much.  I used shiitake and cremini mushrooms because those were the most interesting ones available at grocery store.  More flavorful mushrooms like trumpet mushrooms or pretty much any wild mushrooms would be preferable.  I didn't cook my pizza in the toaster oven, so I warmed the naan by sprinkling it with water and microwaving it for about 20 seconds before putting toppings on it.  The yellow sprinkles on top are nutty parm from The How Not to Die Cookbook.  The light green dip is green goddess dressing from the same cookbook.  Next time I'd use more garlic in the dressing.

I'd like to make Indian flatbread pizzas from naan sometime with a sort of makhani sauce in place of the pizza sauce, chopped green bell pepper and onion, a little Amul cheese (or not, to make it vegan), and some fresh cilantro on top.  I feel like there should be something else on it, but I don't know what. 

Meal Planning

It's going to be a hot week, so I'm planning on meals that don't require me to heat up the oven.  Here is what I'm making:

DIY Flatbread Pizzas
I'm making these today to use up the whole wheat naan I made last night to go with soy curl tikka masala.  I need to write up the mushroom/shallot blend and green goddess dressing I made last time I tried to do this with normal pizza crust (good flavor from the toppings but wrong texture from the crust, I wanted softer, like naan).  This time I want to include baby arugula too, mostly to fill it out and add texture.  This is a vegan no-oven pizza recipe based on my vague but fond memory of one of the dishes I ate at Vicia in St. Louis.  I used rehydrated black trumpet mushrooms and some frozen wild mushrooms the last first time I made the topping (Vicia used trumpet) and the flavor was good but the texture of the dried mushrooms never got fully back to normal, so this time I'll just use whatever the most interesting mushrooms are that I can find fresh.


Summer Rolls

Pasta Salad

Ravioli with Arugula
To use up the last of the cheese ravioli in the fridge.




Veg Beef & Broccoli
I make this whenever with the Gardein beef tips and broccoli in the freezer.