Some More CSA (week 44, 2012)

So. VeganMoFo has ended and I didn’t meet my goal of 20+ posts… I got to 19! Not bad for a newbie, I think. Especially considering I’d planned to write some in advance but didn’t have the time. I also didn’t live up to the promises I made about travel-friendly recipes and how I survived my holiday in France as a vegan. Don’t worry, I still mean to make good on them! But now it’s back to normal with my weekly veggies and menu plan.

For some, CSA season has already ended. Not here though: our local organic vegetables will continue until the week before Christmas. Lucky me. :)

Here’s this week’s fall haul.

• Kale
• White cabbage
• Tomatoes
• Garlic
• Celeriac
• Radicchio

Menu plan Wednesday October 31st – Wednesday November 7th

Including veggies we didn’t manage to eat up yet (green cabbage, fennel, leek, sweet dumpling pumpkins) the following will arrive on our dinner table.

• Wednesday: Nigel Slater’s peppers & chickpeas with harissa (adapted) with Sarah Kramer’s cumin spice quick bread (freezer stash) and fennel-tomato-olive salad with fresh basil (Groentegerechten p.32).
• Thursday: stuffed mini pumpkins with rice and gyro style roasted lemon olive seitan with dill sauce (Vegan Eats World p.54, 253); radicchio Caesar salad.
• Saturday: dinner @ my aunt’s!
• Sunday: kale-celeriac-potato mash with leftover veggie dogs & chorizo tempeh (VEW promo card), cabbage salad with coriander-mayo dressing left over from Sarah’s spiced potato salad.
• Monday/Tuesday: Nigel’s spicy stuffend pittas and soup (probably freezer stash or pantry).
• Monday/Tuesday: leftovers or improvising.
• Wednesday (when @variomatic is joining us for dinner): Chloe Cascarelli’s pasta ‘Alfredo’ & salad.
• Possibles: apples from the oven with chocolate sauce (still have some left!) and Chloe’s cinnamon-espresso chocolate chip cookies..!

Bon appétit!

Veggies on the Menu (CSA vegetables week 27, 2012)

• pak choi
• red scallions
• basil
• lettuce
• broad beans
• turnip tops

Another bunch of awesome greens to plan this week’s menu with! In addition I got some green beans, carrots, marrowfat peas, courgette and fennel from another organic farm nearby.

Menu plan July 3rd – 10th

• [Wednesday] ‘Hokkaido pumpkin soup': made up from kombu dashi & Japanse pumpkin out of the freezer, rice with Teresa’s garlic shoot stir-fry (La Dolce Vegan! p.138), using mizuna instead of chard and marrowfat peas for sweet.
  
  
• [Thursday] Batavian endive ‘sajoer boontjes‘, nasi goreng, tempeh asem manis (Vegetarisch Indonesisch Kookboek p.116), emping.
  
• [Friday] Tomato soup, lentil salad (Bonenkookboek), bake-off baguette and faux tuna salad.
  
  
  
• [Saturday] Tip-top tofu loaf for La Dolce Vegan! for cookalong on NVV forum (p.154), broad beans and cajun potatoes (Groot Vegetarisch Kookboek). Red berries and cherries for dessert.
  
  
• [Sunday] Fennel beans (Puur plantaardig), pasta marinara with fresh basil.
• [Monday] Thai carrot soup, pak choi stir-fry (Groentegerechten) with spring onions & marrowfat peas, spring rolls (freezer stash) & noodles.
• [Tuesday] Tomato soup, pasta zucchini cream wine sauce, salad.

Also:

• Courgette soup
• Rhubarb-strawberry muffins

Fall Greens (CSA vegetables weeks 43 and 44, 2011)

I’ve got a lot of vegetables left over in my fridge, so it’s time for some serious menu planning!

Amelishof CSA vegetables week 43

Last week’s veggies:

• red Batavian lettuce
• cilantro
• pointed paprika
• (Batavian) endive
• leek
• celery

Amelishof CSA vegetables week 44

This week’s greens:

• pumpkin
• lollo bionda lettuce
• Elstar apples
• parsley
• kohlrabi
• green beans

Menu plan Wednesday November 2nd – Tuesday 8th

You’ll even find vegetables on the menu from my CSA loot further back!

• Wednesday: eating out with birthday boy @variomatic in Hotel de Goudfazant (Amsterdam)
• Thursday (Mr Gnoe’s piano night): leek-fennel soup (veganized version of Vega Gerechten p.134) & veggie dog with greens
• Friday: spicy sweet potato soup, chili con ‘carne’ tacos and fennel-orange salad with black olives (Vega Gerechten p.150 & 179)
• Saturday: Indonesian dinner! Osèng-osèng kohlrabi, sambal goreng tofu & green beans with white rice (Vegetarisch Indonesisch Kookboek p.50 & 94)
• Sunday (Dexter-5 Night with Elsje): garlic-Jerusalem artichoke soup, garlic or rosemary bread from Vlaams Broodhuys, 2 types of hummus (red beet & pumpkin), cooking pears and red beet salad with walnuts and balsamico (Vega Gerechten p.81, 61 & 188)
• Monday: Ethiopian lentil dish (cutting from Leven, lente 2011) with ‘faux sour creme‘ (La Dolce Vegan!), pita bread and kohlrabi salad (Groentegerechten p.32) OR Indonesian leftovers with nasi goreng
• Tuesday: eating @ mother-in-law’s

Good Vibrations! (MoFo#8: CSA vegetables week 42, 2011)

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!

Spanga Bento #149

Bento no.149 was quickly put together for a hike in the northern Dutch province Fryslân, on our way to a family photo shoot in occasion of my mother-in-law’s upcoming birthday. We got going pretty late so we only had time for the 7.5 kilometer walk in Spanga and not 19, nor 11.

I’m combining this post with my weekly logging of our CSA vegetables since I got to use several of the greens in our lunch! As you will be able to check out for yourself down below. :)

Both containers carry blue potato salad (Eliza potatoes, apples, red onion, gherkins and a raspberry dressing) on lettuce, corn on the cob and parsley. Mr Gnoe’s tier also has a non-vegan vodka candy. Oh – and he had to drive! ;) A cup of golden mandarin green tea accompanied this yummyness.

Amelishof organic CSA vegetables week 32, 2011

• Lettuce
• Fennel
• Corn
• Red onions
• Blue Elize potatoes
• Collina apples

As you can see the only thing that didn’t make it into Spanga Bento is fennel!

- – –

Something Missing. Again. (CSA vegetables week 31, 2011)

Often when we’ve picked up our CSA veggies there will be a curious kitty checking out the new stuffs. So in most of the photo series we took there’s at least one picture with either Ringo or Juno — or both. Alas, with Ringo gone there was no cat interest this week :(

• Parsley
• Red beets & chioggia
• Red lettuce
• Carrots
• Leek
• Shallots

Menu plan

• [Thursday] Carrot-lentil soup with aubergine caviare (starters, Met machtig mooie menu’s de wereld rond p.60+61), tortilla with chilli leftovers and cabbage salad with avocado (main course, Groentegerechten p.58), faux sour cream (La Dolce Vegan!) and avocado purée for side dishes.
• [Saturday] Asian beet soup (Groentegerechten p.49), Indonesian takeaway leftovers with home-made sambal bawang, lalab, tempeh térik (Vegetarisch Indonesisch kookboek p.117) and possible sambal goreng cabbage.
• [Sunday] Home-made gnocchi (Groot Vegetarisch Kookboek p.) with Italian veggies.
• Cold avocado-tomato soup (Groentegerechten p.17), eggplant pilaf (Zonnig Zomers Tafelen p.39), sweet root vegetables in ginger coating, salad.

Today I’ll be eating out at Happy Herbi’s huiskamerrestaurant with a friend and Mr Gnoe will get his chance to cook something for himself.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Ringo seizing the bag I use to pick up my veggies :)

There’s Something Missing in this Picture… (CSA vegetables week 30, 2011)

• Basil
• Turnips (white & golden)
• Fennel
• Prunes

If you’re thinking we came off badly this week, rest assured: we didn’t. There’s just something missing from this picture… Since we changed pick-up points this CSA season, we have to bring our own bag and select the vegetables we’re in title to instead of just grabbing a pre-packaged selection. That’s fine with us because it’s greener that way! But you have to pay attention… and that doesn’t always go well. ;) So I had to make a second run this week. Collecting:

• Red Batavian lettuce
• Broad beans — yay!

Menu plan

The beans went into a potato salad right away. Tomorrow we’ll be having a dinner guest and I plan to make taco’s with Mexican frijoles, salsa picante, guacamole, tri-coloured veggie mix (corn, courgette & red paprika) and fennel-tomato salad. The turnips will go into salad (grated) and I want to try mamichan’s spicy crispy umami salad. It’ll be Wednesday again before we know it!

The Last (CSA vegetables week 51, 2010)

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???

The End is Nigh

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!

Eating a Rainbow (CSA Vegetables Weeks 46 & 47, 2010)

When making bentos I always try to stick to the ‘rainbow rule’: to use at least five different colours. Not only is this appealing to the eye, it has health benefits too! Their looks tell you something about the essential nutritients these foods contain. Of course I’m talking about plants and fungi, not artificial colouring ;)

Now I know this is not a bento post ;) Just look at the nice colours in my CSA vegetable bags from the past two weeks!

Amelishof organic CSA vegetables week 46, 2010

• Corn salad (green)
• Beets (purple/red)
• Bok choi (green)
• Carrots (orange)
• Cilantro (green)
• Tomatoes (red)

Amelishof organic CSA vegetables week 47, 2010

• ‘Slobber Cabbage’ (yellow, white, green)
• Raddichio (red)
• Romanesco (green)
• Lettuce (green)
• Parsley (green)
• Red Belle de Boskoop apples (Rode van Boskoop; white, yellow)
• Spring onions (green, white)

If you look closely you’ll see this week’s loot was not completely vegetarian… Not to worry: we saved the poor little guy ;)

About colours and their nutritional compounds

• Red: anti-oxidants and lycopene, beta-carotene and vitamin C.
• Blue & purple: anti-oxidants (anthocyanins). Those in grapes and olives might be one of the reasons red wine is thought to lower the risk of heart attack.
• Green: carotenoids; leafy greens are high in dietary fibre and excellent sources of potassium, magnesium and folate (B-vitamins).
  Quote from Wikipedia: “People consuming diets rich in carotenoids from natural foods, such as fruits and vegetables, are healthier and have lower mortality from a number of chronic illnesses.”
  (A. T. Diplock1, J.-L. Charleux, G. Crozier-Willi, F. J. Kok, C. Rice-Evans, M. Roberfroid, W. Stahl, J. Vina-Ribes. Functional food science and defence against reactive oxidative species, British Journal of Nutrition 1998, 80, Suppl. 1, S77–S112)
• Yellow and orange: beta-carotene, potassium and vitamins C, A & B2; yellow fruits are rich in the mineral potassium, orange food provides zinc and selenium.
• White (tan & brown): anthoxanthins (flavonoids which exhibit antioxidant properties). White produce such as garlic and onions contain allicin (which may help lower cholesterol and blood pressure). White fruit and vegetables contain nutrients that help provide powerful immune-boosting activity and are good sources of the mineral potassium too.

Note: I’m no expert on nutrition and I’ve used several sources on the Internet to compile this list, so it might contain errors and is probably not complete.