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.