VeganMoFo Day 4 ~ “Don’t Eat Animals Day”

It’s World Animal Day today, coinciding with VeganMofo! Not only that, in the Netherlands it’s also unofficially “Don’t-Eat-Animals-Day”: EetGeenDierenDag. All Dutch are called to refrain from eating meat or fish today, even if it’s only for a single day in the year. If every inhabitant rose to this challenge, that would save 400.000 animals in JUST ONE DAY.*

So I hope all my fellow countrymen are joining! Several canteens from major companies will also only serve vegetarian food – yay! I wish they would do that every week for Meatless Monday though… There’s always a next step. ;)

I was too late in realising I should have invited a bunch of people for dinner and now I’m going out tonight. But I’m putting it in my calendar for next year, which will be a Friday!!! Nothing wrong with early planning. ;)

Back to the present. Here are the organic vegetables we scored in our CSA this week and the meals I plan to cook with it.

• Lollo rosso lettuce
• Carrots
• Runner beans
• Red mustard
• Corn cobs
• Celery
• Tomatoes

Menuplan Thursday October 4th (World Animal Day!) – Tuesday 9 th

I still had some carrots so they’re priority no.1! This is what I came up with. World cooking!

• Thai carrot soup, cumin bread (freezer stash) and salad.
• Indian saag (spinach), leftover dal tarka (lentils), basmati rice and papadums with chutney or soygurt-mint sauce.
• Turkish beans (taze fasulye), carrot-walnut salad with soygurt dressing (cevizli havuç salatasi) adapted from Lokanta cookbook and pide bread or a grain dish.
• Pasta avocado, peas and seaweed (instead of pickleweed) from Puur Plantaardig (p.82).
• I plan to make a dessert with some local pears that are ripe now — any suggestions?
• And with this week’s celery I finally hope to try my hand at some eggless salad.. Recipe recommendations much appreciated!

So, what will YOU be eating tonight?

Tonight I won’t be eating at home. I’m going to watch ‘Japalicious’ foodie films on the Camera Japan festival in Rotterdam: Eatrip (documentary) and Our Homeland (fiction). Alas, neither will be vegan but there is a Buddhist monk in the first one… And of course I won’t be eating animals today anyway! ;) On Saturday I’ll be going to the festival again, with Mr Gnoe and friends. Then we’ll be eating at a world restaurant, Bazar!

Any eggless salad recipe you can recommend? Or a pear dessert?

I’d love to hear it!

Last week’s menu is pimped with pictures, if you care to have a look.

* According to the host of EetGeenDierenDag, Wakker Dier.

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Back to Normal (CSA vegetables week 37, 2012)

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! ;)

What’s on the Menu? (week 26, 2012)

The week is almost over but I didn’t have an opportunity to share my CSA vegetables and menu plan before today! I bet you could hardly wait.. ;P

• tomatoes
• leek
• turnip tops
• lollo rosso lettuce
• escarole
• 3 varieties of radish

In addition on Friday I got some local organic broad beans, marrowfat peas, cilantro and (curled) parsley.

Other ingredients in my fridge that need to be used up:

• 3 stalks of rhubarb
• scapes (garic shoots)
• snow peas
• spring onions
• avocado
• carrots
• mint
• basil
• cranberries…
• open jar of cooked brown lentils
• soygurt
• soy cream
• La Bute Island’s “blue cheese style” Sheese
• firm tofu
• silken tofu
• creamy basil dressing
• rhubarb chutney & syrup
• cranberry compote

So here’s this week’s menu!

Menu plan June 27th – July 3rd

• [Wednesday] Turkish takeaway from Ana’s Kuzin for Mr Gnoe’s B-day!
  Starters: prosecco wine with mixed nuts, Lebanese & pide bread, houmous, baba ganoush, antep ezmesi (chilli peppers, tomato, garlic & herbs) and non-vegan eggplant-yoghurt spread (ali nazik).
  Entrée:  Imam Bayildi (stuffed eggplant), börülce (beans in spicy tomato sauce), kisir (summer salad), rice with chickpeas and bulgur with peas.
  Dessert: fresh mint tea with homemade (!) baklava, limoncello ice from Roberto’s and cherry, followed by ice wine.

  

• [Thursday] Turkish leftovers (including dessert! :)) and mixed salad with pide croutons.
• [Friday] Chloe Coscarelli’s avocado-pesto pasta with steamed snow peas and spicy sautéed turnip tops with mustard & pecans (great recipe that I will share someday).
• [Saturday] Mr Gnoe: probably something cheesy ;) / Gnoe herself: lunch & veggie BBQ  @ Viva Las Vegas Food fest > leftovers at home because I was too tired to stay for the party.
  
  
• [Sunday] Lunch: Happy Herbivore’s fat-free tofu scramble with mushrooms using black salt for the 1st time!
  Dinner: escarole mash with ‘blue cheese style’ Sheese, oven-roasted cashews and mushroom gravy, sided with cool cucumber salad (La Dolce Vegan! p.83) and more baklava for dessert.
  
  
  
• [Monday] Leek & potato soup with cilantro (La Dolce Vegan! p.109), mini crustless tofu quiches and broad bean salad (Mediterraan koken p.48).
  
  
  
• [Tuesday] Rice with Teresa’s garlic shoot stir fry (La Dolce Vegan! p.138) OR another scape recipe via PPK forum (to be decided) with eggplant.

Optionals: Wolffie’s Black Bean & Lentil Salad (La Dolce Vegan! p.72),  puy lentil-carrot salad.

What’s on YOUR menu this week?

Cabbage and Carrot Salad Recipe (CSA vegetables week 26 and 27, 2011)

The first two weeks of summer brought some really nice greens to our dinner table. Introducing a new feature on Graasland as well! But you gotta read on a little for that. ;)

Organic CSA vegetables week 26, 2011

Here’s what we found in our CSA box the previous week.

• Leek
• Spinach
• Radicchio
• Gooseberries
• Celery
• Chinese cabbage (napa, michihli)

It may seem a bit meagre but there’s something missing from the picture! Half a head of Chinese cabbage and a whole head of red Batavian lettuce. We picked up the veggies on our way to my aunt’s and since our fridge was still rather full we decided to leave some of the loot with her.

Organic CSA vegetables week 27, 2011

Now more importantly: this weeks veggies…

• Broad beans!!! Love ‘em!
• Tomatoes
• Field peas
• Basil
• Iceberg lettuce
• Pak choi (bok choy)
• Savory (bonenkruid)

I hope I won’t bore you by sharing another menu plan?

Menu plan July 7-12 2011

Due to our schedule there’s a lot of ‘easy food’ on the menu this week.

• Vegan Spaghetti Bolognese [Wednesday]
• White bean & tomato soup (freezer stash), baguette, green salad with scapes, radicchio and pinenuts [Thursday]
• In between hike and going to the vets: Indian lentil soup (dahl, freezer stash), homemade pizza, cabbage & carrot salad (recipe below) [Friday]
• Broad bean soup, rosemary focaccia from Broodnodig, leftover mashed carrot salad, radicchio salad [Saturday]
• After a day of hiking: vegan ‘shoarma’ (Vivera roerbakreepjes) with pita bread, garlic sauce and leftover carrot-cabbage salad [Sunday]
• Field peas with veggies Provençale (adapting recipe for fresh peas), baguette, salad
• Stir-fry of pak choi, leek, mushrooms and tofu with rice

New feature!

Cabbage contours by Jacqueline Tinney

Many people don’t know what to do with cabbage. That’s a pity because it’s such a healthy vegetable; loaded with vitamins A & C, potassium, calcium, phosphor. It is also thought to be anti-carcinogenic! And if you’re a CSA participant like us you’ll often find it in your box. :)

So. I decided to share some cabbage recipes I like as a special feature on Graasland! Starting of with this week’s side dish of cabbage & carrot salad. Other recipes you can expect in the future are ‘Cabbage with Coconut’ and Indonesian ‘Sambal Goreng Cabbage’.

Easy cabbage-carrot salad

This is a veganised version of Eethuis Iris’ recipe from Zonnig zomers tafelen (p.20).

Cabbage-carrot salad & orange juice

Ingredients
Serves 4.

• 350 g pointed cabbage (I used a mix of pointed and Chinese cabbage; you could also take ordinary white)
• 100 g carrot, cleaned
• 3 tbs veganaise
• 0.5 dl fresh orange juice
• pinch of curry powder
• salt & pepper
• 2 tbs of roasted sunflower seeds
• chopped parsley (optional: it’s not in the original recipe but I added it for colour)

Preparation

1. Clean cabbage and cut out the hard core.
2. Shred the cabbage very finely.
3. Grate the carrot — or pulse a few times in your kitchen machine.
4. Make a sauce of veganaise, orange juice, curry, salt and pepper.
5. Mix vegetables and dressing, top with sunflower seeds and parsley.

On the contrary of what you may expect, the cabbage in this recipe is not overwhelming. I will make this salad again, maybe tweaking it here and there looking for an even better version: like adding a dash of lemon juice and possible some sweetener like agave syrup or golden raisins.

Do you have any favourite cabbage recipes to share? I’d love to hear them!

Join Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking with a food related post!

Recipe submitted to the July Whip Up Something New! Challenge hosted on Joyfully Retired

Savoury Summer Picnic Pie

With our CSA veggies from Amelis’Hof comes a leaflet, de Amelisbode, usually containing a recipe for some of the week’s vegetables. This week it’s a savoury ‘Picnic Pie’ with oven-roasted garlic, tomatoes and rosemary. I only had to substitute the anchovies to make it vegan/vegetarian! The rosemary came from the herb garden on our balcony.

This recipe is definitely a keeper so I’d like to share it with you for Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking and the Whip Up Something New! challenge (which I’m hosting this month btw). It’s the ultimate summer pie! And since I made a few more adaptations I feel it’s okay to rename it. :)

Amelis’Hof Summer (Picnic) Pie with Garlic and Tomatoes

Ingredients
Serves 2.

• olive oil
• 3 sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 head of garlic
• 350 gr tomatoes
• 1 small or 1/2 big red onion
• 3 sheets of vegan puff pastry
• 12 black olives
• 1 tbs caper berries
• 1 tbs of chopped rosemary
• (optional) some chopped oregano or other fresh herb of you choice
• freshly ground salt & pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat oven at 200 degrees Celsius.
2. Soak sun-dried tomatoes in hot water.
3. Separate garlic cloves — leave the skin on! — and put them in some olive oil in a high oven-proof dish.
   
4. Cut tomatoes in thick slices, put them in an oven dish.
5. Slice red onion and add to tomatoes.
6. Pour a tablespoon of olive oil over the tomato-onion mix, and add some freshly ground salt & pepper.
   
7. Roll out pastry dough and fill baking dish, punching a few holes in the bottom with a fork. Layer with beans or ceramic beads for pre-baking.
   Whatever you’re using for blind baking; it’s always smart to put some parchment paper in first to prevent your beans/beads from sticking to the dough… I often forget. ;)
   
8. Put all three dishes in the oven and bake puff pastry for 10 minutes, tomatoes and garlic  15 minutes.
9. In the meantime mince olives, caper berries (you may want to rinse these first if they’re really salty) and soaked sun-dried tomatoes.
10. After 10 minutes take your pie dough out of the oven, remove blind filling and bake for another 5 minutes.
11. Now your tomatoes, garlic and puff pastry should be ready at about the same time. Allow the roasted garlic to cool for a few minutes.
12. Peel the garlic cloves, mince, and mix HALF of it with the olives, sun-dried tomatoes and capers.
    
13. Spread the mixture on the bottom of your pie, layer with tomatoes and onion, add rosemary (& other fresh herbs of your choice) and the rest of the crushed garlic. Sprinkle with a little more salt & pepper.
    
14. Put your picnic pie into the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

BON APPETIT!

We had this quiche accompanied by a green salad with asparagus, more fresh herbs from our ‘garden’ (thyme & oregano), chopped walnuts & pistachios and a balsamic vinegar dressing with extra virgin olive oil, agave syrup, salt and pepper. I’m afraid the picture has a weird colour: we had the shades down because it was so sunny!

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Post submitted to…

& Part of Zesty Palette’s ongoing Bake Fest #4 hosted by Tomato Blues

Strawberrrrries! (CSA vegetables week 22, 2011)

• Radishes
• (Bundle) leek
• Red Batavian lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Endive frisée
• Bundle garlic (spring garlic)
• Strawberries

Yum, I’ve been anticipating those strawberries for a whole week! So much that I couldn’t resist buying some in the days in between ;) The very last one ended up in yesterday’s cold noodle bento. These strawberries in our CSA vegetable bag come from about 3 miles from our home! #greenliving ;) We immediately had them for dessert last night, so no need to come over to have a taste! ;)

I did manage to keep Ringo from devouring the endive (he haz a taste for it), so you may want to hop over one of the other nights?

Menu plan June 2-8 2011

• Asian fusion: tofu in tausi black bean sauce (leftover Chinese takeaway), nasi goreng (fried rice) and toemis spinach (Vegetarisch Indonesisch kookboek p.45) [Wednesday]
• Mexican night: bean burritos with steamed spinach [Thursday]
• Bihoen with faux ‘chicken’ (leftover Chinese takeaway) and Toemis endive (Vegetarisch Indonesisch kookboek p.46), pangek brown borlotti beans (Vegetarisch Indonesisch kookboek p.51), nasi koening (freezer stash) and salad with leftover miso dressing
• Endive-potato mash with mushroom gravy (La Dolce Vegan p.181), onion and vegan sausage, salad
• Tomato-garlic pie (Amelisbode wk.22), green salad
• Gnocchi with grilled zucchini and tomato salad

I’ll leave you with two more pictures of dishes from last week’s menu plan. The noodle salad was good, especially with emping for topping (chopped nuts will probably be great too), so I’ll definitely make that again. The leek soup recipe was a bit of a disappointment though — will need to look further!

Cold noodle salad

Leek soup, noodle salad and emping kurupuk

Rhubarb-Coconut Tarts for Dessert (CSA vegetables week 20, 2011)

I always know when CSA season starts: one of the first bags is going to hold rhubarb. Now for some of you that may be a feast, but rhubarb and me? We’ve got a strange relationship. I HATED it as a child while my mom loved it…

• Rhubarb
• Spinach
• Oak leaf lettuce
• Turnip tops (rapini)
• Radish
• Plum tomatoes

Now as an adult I’ve eaten rhubarb several times and it really isn’t that bad. Still, my brain refuses to catch up! So each time I’m confronted with these reddish-pink stalks I go “uh-oh” and my mind goes blank.

Creamy Coconut Almond Tarts with Rhubarb

It was a relief to have family coming over for dinner on Sunday so I could use this veggie for dessert. I decided on the lovely Rhubarb-Coconut Tarts from Vegalicious because they look pretty and I had all the ingredients at hand except coconut flavouring. Of course I usually try out recipes before I serve them to guests… But I trust the Vegalicious website: earlier this year I made the vegan Spicy Applesauce Cake with Lemon Frosting for my birthday and it was a success.

Was I right to dare preparing these tartlets without practising first?

You’ve got to remember that I’m not my usual self right now. Actually, I’m a real scatterbrain these days: I can read a recipe ten times and still not pick up everything. That’s exactly what happened… AND — I’ve hit myself several times for this already — I forgot to make a photo of the end result!!! AAAAARGH! So here’s the only picture I took.

The base: oat-almond crusts. Looking good though, aren’t they? :)

What went ‘wrong’?

• The sharp-eyed reader may notice that something went wrong here right away. I was supposed to make the tarts in ramekins! I only discovered that when the crusts were good & ready to get ‘filled’ with coconut cream…
  But you know what? I liked it this way! It’s like having a huge cookie on a plate with toppings. :)) So this will be a fixed alternation of the recipe from now on. ;)
• I was sure I had some wholemeal flour… but I didn’t. Just took regular flour and it was fine. But I do think wholemeal will be good!
• When I was supposed to be making sugar water to ‘cook’ the rhubarb in, I threw in the lemon juice with the sugar from the start… It turned out fine; rhubarb always has a bit of a tart taste, doesn’t it? ;)

My version of this dessert may not have been as pretty as the picture on Vegalicious. I peeled the rhubarb (I hate those stalk threads, don’t you?) and it lost its beautiful pink colour because of it. But you’ll have to trust my word on this — it looked delish! I put on a fresh mint leaf for garnish (as suggested) and threw over a pinch of cinnamon as the personal finishing touch. It tasted g-r-e-a-t: crunchy bottom, creamy and (not too) sweet middle layer and slightly sour rhubarb on top. Yum! We were unanimous in our verdict, including our omnivore guests.

So yes, next time I might plunge in at the deep end again and serve a new dish without trial! And this rhubarb recipe goes on the pile ‘For Keeps’.

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New recipe(s) tried for the Whip Up Something New! Challenge!

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The first! (Of the Season)

Hooray, CSA season has started again!

Yesterday Mr Gnoe went to pick up our vegetable bag for the first time in 2011. It’s the 4th year we’ll be getting a bag of local organic veggies from Amelis’hof garden (formerly known as De Aardvlo) every week till Christmas. And the 3rd year I’m consistently logging them with a picture on Graasland.

For those of you wondering what CSA means — have you noticed the Glossary of terms on Graasland?

• Herb flowers
• Leek
• Tomatoes
• Rapini (or turnip tops)
• Spinach
• Lettuce

I already used some spinach and tomato in a pasta salad I had for lunch today. Those beautiful white flowers accompanied last night’s vegan pasta with white asparagus. So now I need to think about what to make of the rest… I guess it’s back to menu planning for Gnoe!

Some of you may have seen my FourSquare tweet last Friday in which I talked about picking up some CSA veggies… #confusing There’s another organic farm nearby from which we get additional vegetables: Groenekans. It’s different in that we aren’t ‘shareholders’ but we do pay a certain amount in advance which enables the farmer to invest in seedlings etc. It also varies from our regular, real CSA in that we get to pick our groceries from a list of availabilities, instead of receiving a surprise packet. And that’s exactly why it is such a good addition to our weekly mystery bag of Amelishof goodies. :)

Any tips on what to cook this week?

Whatever happened to my weekly vegetables?

Has anyone been wondering what happened to my weekly (b)logging of CSA vegetables? I omitted 2 and missed 1 because we #failed to pick up our veggie bag when we were on a short holiday in week 26. Time to catch up!

Veggie loot week 27, 2010

• rocket
• radishes (French breakfast & icicle)
• romaine lettuce
• cucumber
• sweethearts cabbages
• field peas

Cukes are always met with a big ‘hooray’ because they taste so good — recalling cucumbers from past times. Strangely enough their organic siblings from the supermarket do not bring the same sensation. That probably has to do with the time and effort invested in the product.

Fresh field peas are great too; I only came to know of them last year thanks to our CSA veggies! (Weeks 30 and 31) They’re completely different from their tinned congeners; tasting a bit like fava beans — not ‘mealy’ like brown beans.

The radishes are the last of the season and the white ones have gotten a bit thickskinned, but nothing a potato peeler can’t take care of ;) They’re obviously related to daikon. We could have used them like that but mostly ate them as a snack or salad anyway.

Other dishes with the greens: pointed cabbage patties (YUM!) and spicy cabbage with foe yong hai (egg foo young) and nasi goreng (fried rice).

The field peas were stir-fried & stewed shortly with garlic, sundried tomatoes and served with fresh basil & ground pepper. Really nice as a side dish to ricotta cheese filled omelet with tomato and herbs!

This week’s vegetables (week 28, 2010)

• lettuce
• radicchio
• fava beans
• Chinese cabbage
• tomatoes
• basil
• rosemary

Menu planner for the week

• Broad beans with cheese sauce, served with oven-baked potato, veggie bratwurst and radicchio salad with bell pepper, cranberries & red dressing (mayo, mustard & ketchup). [Friday]
• Spicy stir-fried Chinese cabbage with cashews & cilantro, rice, emping and salad. [Saturday]
• Salad of Chinese cabbage with homegrown radish cress, spring onion and orange dressing, served with tomato rice and hazelnut ragout. [Sunday]
• Ratatouille with couscous and Parmesan cheese, salad. [Tuesday]

On Monday we’ll be eating out :) And on Wednesday… well, the next batch of veggies will arrive!

Do you plan your weekly menu as well?

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About Stalks and Stems (veggies week 24, 2010)

I’m pressed for time so I’ll just briefly log this week’s local organic vegetables, including a call for help: do you know what the greens below the rhubarb are called in English? In Dutch it’s raapsteeltjes, which would literally translate into… turnip stalks? :\

Clockwise:

• swiss chard
• snow peas
• rhubarb
• raapsteeltjes > turnip-tops
• red Batavia lettuce
• plum tomatoes