O what an unfortunate dearth of blogging! I blame my laptop, whose keyboard broke on the way home from Costa Rica, who now must be accessed via a full size keyboard plugged into the USB, which is extremely unergonomic. Also Kate Middleton must be removed from the vicinity every 45 seconds which slows things down.
Last week I braved my crummy farmers market but there was nary a pumpkin to be had. I did buy a million dollars worth of apples and dahlias and a giant kale and what I thought was a neck pumpkin. Also I had to stand in line for ten minutes next to a stall selling an enormous pile of sheepskins, so disgusting. I can almost overlook how fully half the market is always selling meat in coolers because I guess that’s sort of better than factory farming but just WHY with the sheepskins especially accompanied by a truck with a sign picturing an idyllic field full of happy sheep. What a bunch of creeps. BUT I DIGRESS.
How nice is that giant kale. It is Russian. It came with a free seasonal halloween spider.
Anyways, look at my CSA.
Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA week 5A
SO MANY GREENS. Mustard, cabbage, collards, kale, and mei qing choi, which as far as I can tell is baby bok choi. It is totally stressing me out trying to eat all these greens.
Well the first priority was to use the cabbage from last week so I made galumpkis. These are stuffed cabbage rolls. Normally they have ground beef and white rice inside. I think when my dad makes them he uses soy crumbles. I put tempeh, brown rice, onion, celery, a bit of caraway, and fresh dill. It was ok. I didn’t want to put too many weird things in there but next time I would.
galumpkis and charming mashed potato presentation
I cooked all those little eggplants in the style of Imam Bayildi. I say “in the style” because my understanding is that the point of imam bayildi is to contain a ridiculously enormous amount of olive oil. I used a cast iron skillet and greatly reduced the oil and it still resulted in delicious eggplants.
kale, braised eggplants, pita, hummus and olives
The neck pumpkin from the farmers market turned out to just be a squash inside, so I really do not understand this neck pumpkin thing because the first one I had was definitely pumpkiny inside. Anyway then I had 7 cups of roasted squash, which luckily the dog goes crazy for so at least someone will eat it. I used 3 cups for the pumpkin pie from Vegan Pie in the Sky. I think the filling is a bit soft for my liking but the spice and sweetness levels are quite nice. It might not be as soft with canned pumpkin but I did drain my squash thoroughly. Plus it would be better with an actual pumpkin.
pie.
Coming up:
cabbage science project, potentially disgusting.
a use is found for a million expensive apples.
we drown in greens.
The only changes I made were that I forgot to add the breadcrumbs/cornstarch to thicken the sauce, but it thickened after the lemon juice was added and I didn’t even realize until I saw the breadcrumbs still in the Wegmans bag the next morning. My casserole was still super creamy the next day, while there are some comments on the recipe page about it getting dry, so I suspect that was fortuitous. I think the lemon juice becomes essential for thickening in this case though so don’t skip both, that is my vague notion. Or, maybe it has to do with using the Vitamix vs a food processor for the cashews. Anyway, it was quite thick. Also I had to bake my casserole for much longer than 45 minutes before the potatoes were done, maybe I cut them too thick or my oven sucks.