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Friday Try-out
Friday seems a good day to try things. Like those unfamiliar ingredients I bought on a whim, or that instant dessert I got sent but haven’t dared dip into yet. And don’t forget about the vegetables I don’t like much and need to find tasteful recipes for. Like beetroots, for example…
Gonna beat those beets!
Beets & I, we don’t get along very well. Can’t blame them because I used to HATE them as a child -of course that was in the time the only beet dish we knew in Holland was (over) cooked- but it beats me what my excuse is. Love their colour. ;) Okay, I guess I just don’t like the combined flavour of sweet and “earthy”. I’m more of a spicy, savoury kind of grrl; not too fond of a sweetish dinner.
Over the years I’ve found a few beet recipes that I can appreciate: beet risotto, red beet hummus, cooked beet salad or roasted beet salad, even chocolate beet cake. Still, each time those red veggies pop up in my CSA I go like: uh-oh. And I give them to my aunt. So the search continues until I root for beets!
Beet ’n Berry smoothie
Time to try a beet smoothie. I found this rather attractive looking recipe on Choosing Raw combining beet with orange (juice) and frozen berries. Many of the ingredients I usually have at hand… unfortunately not today. I was not to be deterred though and experimented with substitutes from my pantry.
Ingredients
Serves 1 (about 1 litre)
1 medium beet, steamed (cooked), cooled, peeled & roughly cut
3 handfuls frozen mixed berries & strawberries (about 200 ml)
200 ml apple juice
250 ml vanilla soy milk
splash of rice milk
1 teaspoon of almond butter, heaped
1 tablespoon hempseed
1/2 tablespoon flaxseed oil
1 teaspoon sucanat (or other sweetener)
Preparation
Blend all ingredients together in a high speed blender. I have a multi-purpose kitchen machine with blender option in which it took less than a minute.
The Verdict
Although it was not as delicious as my favourite breakfast smoothie, I rather liked this beet breakfast. I barely noticed anything earthy; only when the liquid starting warming up it appeared. Of course nothing beats the flavour combination of beet and orange of the original recipe so next time I’ll definitely try that. Still, apple juice complements quite nicely as well. I would have loved to use dates for sweetener but I hadn’t planned that: they need to be soaked for several hours. I’ve tried using dates dry once and I tell you: my immersion blender did not like that. At all. O_o Of course you need to cook, steam or roast your beet in advance as well, and give it a chance to cool down. So unless you’re using the pre-cooked kind that gives you enough time for soaking too.
I did a not-100%-successful experiment roasting my beet in the microwave… It seemed logical: if you can make jacket potatoes in it, the same goes for beets? Well, guess again (or smell my kitchen). Next time I’ll just nuke it in a normal way or cook it on the stove. If you’re lucky to have a Vitamix you can just blend beet raw!
Another thing: next time I’m going to use only frozen strawberries or raspberries. A smoothie should be velvet-y and the hard seeds of other berries annoy me. But your hearing me right: I’m talking about next time!
If you can recommend any beet recipes I’d really appreciate it!
* This post will be updated later to share whether this breakfast took me all the way to lunch or if I got hungry before that. *
VeganMoFo brings you a Month of Vegan Food. Bloggers all around the world share their favourite recipes, mouthwatering food pics, quick cooking tips, nutritional info and anything else food related to show that vegan living is awesome. It’s the best choice for animals (dûh), our planet and people! Check out the blogroll and drool… Or better yet: join us!
* Due to circumstances MoFo posts #3 and #4 are currently missing but will be updated as soon as possible *
It’s Monday, our holiday is over and things are back to normal. That means having more healthy meals at home and making my menu plans. Highly necessary because there’s a HUGE haul of veggies in the fridge.
Here’s this week’s addition to it (apologies for the bad pic).
- silverbeet
- green beans
- garlic
- mini plum tomatoes
- red beets
- red Batavia lettuce
We still got lots of veggies left from last week, and from another type of CSA haul. From the top of my head: tomatoes, potatoes, corn on the cob, leek, fennel, radishes, sprouts, spring onion, spinach, white paprika, courgette, turnips, pumpkin, pointed cabbage, carrots, string beans.
So let’s dig in and make a dent!
Menu plan September 16th – 19th
- SUN ~ Saffron garlic rice (Veganomicon p.119) and Italian style sautéed spinach & tomatoes (p.106) with a tofu burger that’s a souvenir from France and radish salad with sprout greens and mustard dressing (inspired by Zonnig zomers tafelen p.21).
foto
- MON Indonesian ~ Nasi goreng and leftover tofu tausi takeaway (= black bean sauce) with some extra veggies added, simple cabbage salad (Feestmenu’s p.68) and emping.
- TUE
Mexican ~ Chilli with tortillas and a little leftover rice, corn on the cob, guacamole and coleslaw with avocado (Groentegerechten p.58).Change of plans: Indonesian ~ rice with sambal goreng boontjes á la Mr Gnoe.
- WED ~
Sautéed silverbeet (Veganomicon p.106) with smoky tempeh (p.130) on mashed potatoes and a sweet beet salad (Feestmenu’s p.68).Yesterday’s plan: Mexican ~ Chilli with tortillas and a little leftover rice, corn on the cob, guacamole and coleslaw with avocado (Groentegerechten p.58).
- THU ~ Sautéed silverbeet (Veganomicon p.106) with smoky tempeh (p.130) on mashed potatoes and a sweet beet salad (Feestmenu’s p.68).
I hope Wednesday’s loot will be on the small side! ;)
As I was planning on baking a chocolate-beetroot cake this weekend (!), I was hoping immensily for red beets among Wednesday’s CSA vegetable loot. And YAY — a wish come true!
Other nice veggies too, like fennel which I needed for a fennel-bean dish I meant to make that evening for my visiting brother: a surprisingly good recipe from the new Puur Plantaardig (‘Purely Plant-based‘) cookbook that I mentioned in my Cookbook Sunday Salon.
Here’s the complete list of this week’s greens.
- Dill
- Fennel
- Silver-stalked Swiss chard
- Bundel of young beetroot
- Lollo Rosso lettuce
- Goudreinette apples
I’ll leave you with a preview of my unfinished beetroot pie: only the chocolate couverture topping left to do. That’ll have to wait till morning — so you must have patience as well. I hope you can handle the suspense..? I know I’m finding it difficult! ;P
This food-related post is also submitted to Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking!
Even MORE strawberries this week! We have to thank that to a mix-up with our vegetables: at first only iceberg lettuce and dill were delivered to our CSA pick-up point… Now that won’t do, right? ;) When it was fixed later in the evening we got even more lettuce, dill — and two boxes of strawberries which we weren’t supposed to get at all since we had them last week. Lucky us!
- Bok Choy
- Strawberries
- Red beets
- Iceberg lettuce
- Chard
- Garlic flowers (scapes)
- Red bundle onions
- Dill
So there’s actually another head of lettuce and a hand of dill in the fridge; they didn’t feel like coming out for the picture. ;)
Menu plan June 9-11 2011
Dinner plans for the next couple of days:
- Salad with couscous, orange-basil tempeh and sweet miso dressing (Vegan Family Cookbook), Moroccan tajine (freezer stash) [Thursday]
- Japanese meal at a friends house. Our contribution: Ginger Miso Soup with Kombu Dashi (Vegan Family Cookbook) [Friday]
- Szechuan Noodles with Hot Spicy Peanut Sauce and Pak Choi (Vegan Family Cookbook) [Saturday]
I’ve already shown you our Mexican dinner (bento) and Summer Picnic Pie, so I’ll just leave you with a picture of the Hollandse pot (‘Dutch dish’) from last week’s menu plan: broad-leaved endive mash & bangers with mushroom gravy.
On this Blue Monday I had a VERY yummy bento to ward off the evil eye!
Beet pancakes and bean salad (left over from last night’s dinner) both from the Dutch vegetarian website De Vegetariër, on a bed of lettuce and topped with soft goat’s cheese & parsley. It was my first time testing recipes from this site and I will definitely try some more! :)
Fruits: mandarin, banana, dried cranberries.
Raw veggies: celery stalk, cucumber, carrot.
Other: marinated black olive, sesame bread sticks, peppermint and hazelnut bonbon (not shown).
Home-grown: basil
Local & organic: choggia beets, kohlrabi
Organic: flour, egg, parsley, butter beans, lettuce, banana, clementine, celery stalk, carrot, olive
Our third season of CSA has come to a closing. Now we’ll need to decide on which veggies to buy all by ourselves again… Not an easy task! #lazybums
- purslane
- leek
- thyme
- red cabbage
- choggia beets
- apples
- variety of onions: shallot, red and white
When I got beets last time I made Nigel Slater’s Beetroot Seeds Cake and it was goooood!
Clicking on the picture will bring you to Flickr, where I’ve put up the link to the on-line recipe and some adaptations I made.
Yesterday was another Meatless Monday (Plantaardig Maandag) and supposed to be December’s #twitterfoodparty about squash, so I made a vegan Indian curry with basmati rice and (prefab) mango chutney with last week’s hokkaido pumpkin. The picture didn’t turn out too great but it tasted better than it looks. ;) Anyway, the food party got postponed due to too many ‘twabsentees‘…! If you want to join in, just make something with squash on January 10th, use the hashtag and tweet a picture!
So, no more CSA (b)log posts until the first week of May 2011. Some of you might think that a good thing… But hopefully not all???
We’re halfway December and the end of our CSA season is nearing. Next week’s bag will be The Last!
But you haven’t even had a chance to enjoy any of this month’s organic vegetables… So, here are my veggies of weeks 48, 49 and (freshly picked up today) 50.
Amelishof organic vegetables week 48, 2010
- leek
- kale
- capsicum
- corn salad
- red beet (waiting for me to make Nigel Slater’s red beet cake…)
- pumpkin
Amelishof organic vegetables week 49, 2010
- brussels sprouts (on the stalk, just for fun!)
- parsnip
- corn lettuce
- kohlrabi
- onions (red & white)
- Elstar apples
Amelishof organic vegetables week 50, 2010
WOW, what a mega bag of vegetables we got today! Remember the Invasion of the Broad-Leaved Endive Heads? This time there were even more! It makes a nice green background for the rest of the veggies ;) And Ringo totally went for it… Crazy cat :)
- kale
- endive
- carrots (not washed, so they’ll keep longer)
- root parsley (on the left of my pile of carrots, hiding behind the…)
- kabocha pumpkin!
- celeriac
- cooking pears
- Jerusalem artichoke
I’m not planning our menus and we’ve been eating out, visiting relatives et cetera so next to this HUGE new batch we still have some veggies of the previous weeks to use up: beetroot — but like I said; I’ve got great plans for that ;) — parsnip, kohlrabi, leek and 1 small pie pumpkin. Maybe I would be wise start planning again ;)
Say, Elsje: if you see anything you’d like to use for our 24 mini-marathon dinner next Friday, just give a shout!
This first bento of the month should definitely make up for my bento-less last week!
Two years ago we went to Cappadocia, Turkey in October and had an amazing time. This bento contains some leftovers of Turkish take-away (dôh not that old of course). YUM! Unfortunately I don’t know the correct names for these mezze dishes, but I will try to add them later on.
Upper tier:
Hot pepperspread, eggplant spread (I don’t think it was baba ghanoush), summer couscous salad with watercress leaf, blue grapes, fishy with dressing, sundried tomato.
Lower tier:
Bean salad with paprika and onion, choggia beet stars, snow peas, dill and red batavia lettuce.
On the side:
Organic butterfly biscuit, mandarin (and I also took an apple and some toast for the vegetable spreads).
Last time I got some choggia in our weekly veggiebag I cooked it like ordinary beet, but then it became a homogeneous red. Now I kept it raw to preserve the beautiful pink and white pattern ;) When cooked for just a minute or so the pattern stays alive as well, but not as fresh as it is now. Someday I’ll try steaming it!
BTW a tip for Dutch people who would like to try more organic g/foods: until November 7th you can collect EKO-marks of products and swap them for fun fair trade and environmentally friendly Goodforall products!
CSA & organic: grapes, beet, lettuce, dill
Organic: watercress, biscuit
Deze week is de groententas van de Aardvlo weer lekker gevuld.
- bramen
- basilicum
- tomaten
- knoflook
- andijvie
- chinese kool
- rode kropsla
- lieve kleine bietjes
- 2 meiraapjes… of wacht even: het zijn chioggiabietjes; hehe a bento-er’s dream! ;)
We hebben toevallig heerlijke buffelmozzarella in huis dus dat wordt weer lunchen met salade caprese :) De andijvie gaat in stampot met rooktofu en ik had laatst op het web ergens een recept gezien dat speciaal voor kleine bietjes was bedoeld… Surfen maar!
Graasland 