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!

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.