Herb roasted red potatoes

I love this time of the year. Some leaves are already changing colors and the temperature is just perfect when the sun is out. This is also the perfect time for going to the Tuesday market, where it is much less crowded than at the Saturday market, and the amount of fresh choices are terrific.

I picked up a good amount of concord grapes, as they are finally ripe and irresistible. These grapes are probably my favorite, and having them only once a year (this is only my second year ever having them!) makes them a special seasonal treat. I also picked up a few red potatoes, a bag of field greens, a new (to me) variety of apples, and the brightest red pepper I have ever seen.

It had been a while since the last time I roasted some herbed potatoes, and decided to make some for dinner earlier tonight.

I also cut up about a half a yellow onion into large chunks, adding olive oil, garlic powder, dill, parsley, oregano, salt, and pepper, mixing well to make sure the potato pieces were thoroughly coated.

I baked them for about 40 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees, and served them on a plate next to some locally-grown field greens with carrots, tomato, red onion, and tempeh, the latter which Cameron had prepared while I prepared the salad.

The onion chunks shrunk a fair amount and had a sweet taste after roasting them, so perhaps next time I’ll use a different variety of onion or just use onion powder. Nonetheless, everything was still quite delicious.

Pasta with chicken and fresh veggies

Well.. yesterday was the last day that I was able to volunteer at the urban farm on campus (unless I have time to go tomorrow). It has been wonderful, saving me plenty of money the past few weeks. It’s a really incredible feeling to harvest my own food, and I’d love to eventually have my own garden.

Now, I hardly eat chicken, but when I do, I make sure it’s local and free range. My favorite of the area is Draper Valley chicken, and they serve it at my favorite place to get burritos. I’ve only prepared chicken once before (and I didn’t really do it myself.. I left it up to Cameron to take care of), and was hoping to find some frozen pre-cooked chicken at the market, but had no such luck. So, I opted for a pack of three thighs of the Draper Valley brand, figuring that I could probably do it myself. Well, I chose the quickest method of cutting the thigh into slices and cooking it on a pan. But when I flipped the thigh over, I was pretty disgusted and had Cameron do it instead. I just don’t like handling raw meat. Since we still have two more thighs left, I am going to use a poaching method instead, so I can just put the whole thigh in without chopping first to make a chicken salad. I’ll let you know how that goes.

For this dish, I used eggplant, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, onion, and garlic. All but the last two were handpicked by yours truly. I’m trying to be as dairy-less as possible, but it’s so damn hard. I topped my pasta with a bit of cottage cheese, while Cameron used butter and parmesan cheese. I’m not that big of a fan of tomato sauce, but maybe I just haven’t found the right one for me.

And then because I can’t help but post these adorable photos of Lucy, here are a few. She did paw at the lens a few times, and move around into harder poses to photograph, but other than that, she did well for such close-ups!

Falafels

During my birthright trip in Israel last summer, I was able to eat some Israeli-made falafels. Unfortunately, none of them were that incredible, but of course, being with such a big group made it hard to really find the local’s favorite falafel spots. While I was up in Maryland last month, I used one of my favorite websites (yelp) to find the highest-rated falafel of the area, which ended up being this place: http://www.falafelshop.com/ in Washington DC. And holy crap, how absolutely delicious! They have a huge line of garnishes to stuff your falafel with, and stuff-it I did.. and I was too stuffed myself to even finish my falafel. Too bad DC is 3,000 miles away.. but I’ll be up there again in December and won’t hesitate to stop by Amsterdam Falafelshop, though this time I will order the smallest falafel. I also liked that they had a choice of either a wheat or white pita.

Today, I decided to make my own. I bought some falafel ball mix for a few reasons: I knew I would have a lot of work to get all the sauces and veggies ready, things would be messy enough without making falafel balls from scratch, and that I didn’t want to make such a damn mess when only serving two people.

So, I used about 1 cup of the falafel mix that I got from the local market and 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp water. The directions said to mix and let stand for 15 minutes, so that’s when I decided to shred some lettuce, onion, fresh tomato and cucumber from the urban farm (from yesterday), and garlic.

On another plate, I chopped up a small pickle and pickled hot peppers, spooned some locally-bought tzatziki sauce (from when we made zucchini fritters), and made a mix of sour cream, spices, and hot sauce.

After doing all that, it ended up that the falafel mix really sat for twice as long as I had intended, and perhaps that is why they didn’t seem to stick together very well when I formed them into flat balls. I hesitated about using a lot of oil (coconut oil + sunflower oil) for the pan, so I let Cameron do it instead, while I took some photos. The falafels had a hard time staying in their formed shapes in the pan, and started to break apart which I noticed when Cameron announced the “falafel fail”.

It was time to heat up the pita breads that I had bought, which were the Ezekiel brand of sprouted pocket breads. I didn’t realize how thin they were until I took them out of the packaging and tried to slice open the seam to create the pockets. They were too thin to fill. Cameron folded his over, and I just made a salad out of the falafel balls and garnishes instead.

The falafels tasted more like they were breaded and they were a bit more dry than I would have liked, but overall, everything tasted alright for my first time at falafel-making.

Next time I make falafels: thicker pita pocket breads, made-from-scratch falafel balls and tzatziki sauce, and more people to enjoy it all!

Gerbera daisies and dragon fruit bowls

Such beautiful flowers! I couldn’t resist buying a few. They are so vibrant, I can hardly stop staring at them. I bought them at a grocery store called New Seasons, which I guess is native to the Portland area, since I’ve never seen it anywhere else. It was my first time there, but I had a purpose: to return two water bottles made by the backstabbing Swiss company called Sigg.

Why? Well, if you haven’t already heard, the resuseable water bottles do contain BPA! And wasn’t the reason for everyone buying them to avoid that awful chemical? Oh Sigg, you have made me very angry. But luckily, I had read online that the New Seasons market was accepting used Sigg bottles in return for cash back!! I returned mine and Cameron’s and got $50 for the both of them. Jeez.. I can’t believe we spent that much money to believe we were avoiding such dangerous chemicals. Despite Sigg claiming that their new bottles are lined with BPA-free material, I no longer want to support them and I don’t know if I even believe them.

I wanted to buy EarthLust instead. Unfortunately, finding a variety of EarthLust bottles in one store is hard, and I had to go to another New Seasons to get only one of which I was looking for. I am still waiting to find the 1 liter peacock feather bottle for myself, but I did get Cameron a 1 liter bottle with a zen rock spiral design on it.

Another disappointment was coming home to find that my nearby blackberry supply has been cut back, enough to where there are no longer berries to pick… But, I am hoping that Tuesday’s farmers market will have concord grapes, which will make-up for the lack of blackberries around my house (though, they won’t be free like the blackberries).

The last week of August I spent some time with family in Maryland, where I had found dragon fruit at Whole Foods. I had remembered Cameron telling me about it before, I think he had tried it in Costa Rica, so I was interested in trying it as well. It was five dollars for just one fruit and it came from my home state of Florida, so I put it in the cart. What a strange looking fruit, and what was even stranger was that after a few hours of sitting on the kitchen counter, the outer skin was so cold! Weird!

I cut it open, to make a little dessert for the family and was pretty surprised at how the flesh looked… kind of like kiwi flesh, the same little black seeds, but white instead of green.

There was a little bit of pineapple left in the fridge, so I decided to make the two half shells of the dragon fruit into bowls, and added the chopped fruit. I was disappointed that the dragon fruit tasted very bland, but perhaps it was because it was shipped from Florida and wasn’t really that fresh.

And on another note, autumn is definitely almost here. The weather has been weird this weekend… very wet and chilly. Though today was hot and sunny. Summer didn’t seem to last very long, and I know I’ll want it back once December comes around. But I am excited for the leaves to start changing colors.

Peanut butter cookies, a table full of vegetables and stuffed squash

My favorite peanut butter cookie recipe! Dairy free and delicious. The only change I made was that I used agave nectar instead of maple syrup. They definitely go well with a glass of milk, but I have recently quit dairy (so hard to do!). I made these at around noon and they keep well for days.

Then at 4 I headed over to do some garden work for two hours in which I harvested these in return for my hard sweaty work:

There was more, but that was all that I could manage to fit in the bag I brought. I can’t figure out what kind of squash the really long and curvy one is at the bottom, but I’m sure it can be cooked like a zucchini. Anyway, I was so excited!! I haven’t harvested my own food since last summer, so it was nice to be able to do that again.

Mmmm.. just look at all those zucchinis! What am I going to do with them all? Well, I gave a few to my neighbor.. and will be shredding the very large ones to freeze for later to make zucchini muffins. One thing I would love to do is grill zucchinis, but of course, I do not own a grill. I’ll be on the lookout for someone that does though.

But tonight I couldn’t resist making stuffed squash

I cooked up a cup of israeli couscous and sauteed onions (with leftovers that didn’t fit into the squash), and added that to a mix of tomato, garlic, spices, and some of the innards of the sunburst squash.
I boiled the two squash for 5 minutes to soften them and scooped them out with a melon baller.
Cameron had added cheese to his squash (Oh… it was so hard to resist putting cheese on mine too) before I baked them at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. I served them on a bed of greens and home-sprouted mung beans.

It was my first time eating sunburst squash and israeli couscous, and it definitely won’t be my last.

Plum Muffins

Yes, you read that right. Plum muffins…. who knew I’d ever even think about making such a thing? Well it all happened like this: Cam and I were sitting down in our kitchen getting ready to eat lunch when our neighbor starts yelling Cam’s name. So he opens the back door, and she comes in and tells me there is a plum tree that must be picked! She had been walking home from getting a few groceries and noticed a beautiful plum tree in someone’s yard, so she asked permission to pick them. They said yes.

And now here I am, with 70 pitted and halved plums in my freezer, three large containers full in the fridge, and a dozen plum muffins. I am already plummed-out. I made a plum, blackberry, and blueberry smoothie (all hand-picked and organic, of course!) Then I proceeded to spend way too long looking for recipes on what the hell to do with 150+ plums.

Unfortunately, I am jarless, so I couldn’t make any jam (not today, anyway) but I found this: Plum Cupcakes. The recipe only made 7 muffins, in which the only things that I changed from the ingredient list was eliminating half the noted amount of brown sugar, with the other half agave nectar (and turned down the oven temp 25 degrees); added cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove; and omitted the citrus zest because I didn’t have any (but I did add a drop of orange essential oil, but I don’t think a drop did anything, and that’s okay). It baked for 20 minutes. Very tasty.

But because it only made 7 muffins, I made another batch. But this time I doubled the recipe since I am planning to take most of them to Portland to give to Cam and my family. This time, I was only able to use half whole wheat flour and half brown rice flour since that was my last of the whole wheat. Everything else I added was the same from above (just doubled) and this time I halved the plum halves and stuck them further down.

They’re pretty good for plum muffins. The second batch could have used more spices, but I wasn’t measuring.

Well… Again with the procrastination. I have a final exam in 12 hours… Okay, I’ll hit the “Publish” button and will immediately pick up my study-guide. I promise.

Nutty butter balls

First of all, I am so tired of fruit flies in this house and I don’t know where their breeding ground is. I have set up two contraptions: 1) a glass bottle with strawberry tops, sealed with saran wrap with a few holes poked in and 2) a glass jar with apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap with a funnel on top. Neither are working, though I forced two into the acv mix myself. I couldn’t even leave my leftovers out last night to cool before storing them without guarding them from those nasty drosophilas.

And man, oh man, it is HOT outside!!

But on to the good stuff.
Last night I made a delicious snack? Dessert? It’s hard for me to give them a name, as they are a mix of so many ingredients. This is an estimate of what I put in them.
1/4 c chopped walnuts
1/4 c chopped pecans
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tbsp cinnamon
in one bowl
1/3 c of raisins and goji berries
used a small blender to blend into an almost, but not quite, puree mixture, then added that into the bowl of nuts/spices
1/4 c almond butter
1/4 c peanut butter
1 tbsp honey
some raw shredded coconut
mixed well, and rolled into balls.
I chopped up a few raw cacao beans and rolled a few balls in the chopped cacao beans.

this made about 8 two-inch sized balls, that i stuck in the fridge to store. The process is really messy, but they are delicious and totally guilt-free. Plus, I have heard great things about raw cacao beans, so when I make these again, I will add some chopped pieces to the actual mix. These are also incredibly versatile, and ingredients can either be omitted or added, along with adjusting the amount of nut butter/honey to keep the mixture roll-able.

and, because I can’t get over how cute Lucy is:

It’s berry season!

Two weekends ago my mom came down to visit from around the Seattle area. We went to an organic u-pick blueberry farm. It was also the weekend of the country fair (which I decided to skip out on this year) so I had to figure out an alternative route to get to West Eugene.

When we got there, we saw so many cars parked on the side of the road, and I was worried it was going to be really crowded. But, it wasn’t too bad, though there were a lot of little kids running around. We both carried around provided buckets and filled them up in a couple of hours.

And apparently, you’re not supposed to wash them until you are about to eat them. I didn’t know that, and I washed about half of them to store in the fridge. Then I read that tidbit online, and stored the other half in the freezer, unwashed. Cameron and I will need to go picking again, as we’re almost out!

The other afternoon I made some blueberry bran muffins. I usually make blueberry muffins with whole wheat pastry flour, but wanted to try something different this time. I didn’t like the bran muffins nearly as much as I liked the other ones that I usually make. Oh well. the batch made 15 muffins, too much for us, so I’ll be giving some to my neighbor.

It’s also blackberry season! Himalayan blackberries are an invasive species around here, and they grow like crazy here, though mostly near water. Every day for the past week, I’ve gone out to pick some around my block. Spiders have begun to spin webs in front of some really ripe blackberries, so I have to be careful. Though the other day I was at school and felt something tickle my arm, so I looked down and a spider was climbing up a single strand of web attached to my arm…

Anyway, two days ago Cameron and I took a bike ride on a path with more blackberry bushes than you can imagine. We found a good spot and picked a nice amount, some of which we would make blackberry cobbler out of. There are a lot of fruits that are still green, or not fully ripe yet, but there are still plenty that are.

I’ve also noticed that black walnuts are coming along… but I’ve heard that they are nearly impossible to break open, but are well worth the task. There are plenty of walnut trees around Eugene, so I plan on collecting some in a few months.

fresh out of the oven… you can see the steam coming off of them.

recipe from here: baby bran muffins

Homemade croutons

I know… it’s been a while. 

But as I started chopping up an old loaf french bread (that has been sitting in the pantry, rock hard, for way too long), I thought about how I haven’t posted on here in quite some time, and decided to grab my camera and tripod. 

I melted some butter and tossed the “cubes”, adding some olive oil to make sure they were fully coated. I realized I only had one garlic clove, but chopped it up anyway and added it in. I added some onion powder (garlic powder would have been nice too, as the garlic pieces didn’t really stick on very well), pepper, and either thyme or oregano (no label).

baked it for 350F until they browned a bit, 10-15 minutes.

Kale chips, eclairs, knit hats and a cat

Throughout the past week I’ve cooked, baked, knitted, and visited my mom’s house where one of my cats takes up residence.

I made these about a week ago..
a little bit of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Really make sure to lay them flat or the entire piece won’t get crispy. They truly do melt in your mouth,
but don’t let them overbake.

Friday, March 20th was both my boyfriend and my birthday. I was at my mom’s for a few days and wanted to make him something special. He loves eclairs, and I have been meaning to make him one for a while now, so I decided it was no better time than for his birthday.
The first recipe I used was horrible. I kept stirring over the heat and the dough never dried out so I had to trash it. Then I used this recipe and it worked out well. It does take quite a while to get the dough to form one ball and separate.. actually, I’m not sure if it works, because I was too tired and still had to finish knitting something, so I didn’t want until it formed one ball. Maybe I should have though.. the dough was very dense.

The recipe said it would make about 10, but it only made 4 for me, but that’s probably because I made them pretty large. I actually forgot to set a timer so I had to use one of them as a tester.

10 seconds after I took them out of the oven, they deflated. The cream I made didn’t work out, it curdled.. So I used heavy whipping cream to just make a simple whipped cream since I had no time to try the thicker cream again.
I used 2oz bittersweet chocolate, melted it with a bit of butter and spread it on.

I also knit a squirrel for Cameron, since he thinks they are the cutest animals ever. I used a penguin pattern because I couldn’t find a free squirrel pattern that I liked. But of course I altered the penguin pattern to make it more squirrel-like, using the penguin pattern as more of a guideline. I was actually up until 2 a.m. two nights working on it. I didn’t have any black round beads at my mom’s, nor did I have time to knit on hands and feet but I’ll be doing that soon.

I finished another hat this weekend with some beautiful yarn called manos del uruguay, as well as knit some ears on an ear-flap hat made from alpaca (sooo soft!).

And an extra photo of my kitty at my mom’s.