local eats

It's official . . . locally grown produce is starting to pour into the Farmer's Market, and our garden is starting to produce!  A few meals from this past weekend, all using local eats:

A simple stir-fry dinner:

Short-grain brown rice topped with onion, carrot, red bell pepper, tofu, and local sugar-snap peas, covered in my homemade stir-fry sauce, and sprinkled with cashews for extra crunch.

A delicious, deep-dish pizza:

I used this crust recipe (halved) again, as I was in a bit more of a hurry and didn't have time for my usual Artisan Bread dough to sit for two hours.  I shaped the dough into more of a rectangle, patted it into a well-oiled jelly roll pan, and topped with more oil, parmesan, mozzarella, a big pile of spinach and arugula from our garden, cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives, and oregano.  This soft, chewy, bready pizza hit the spot last night!

And dessert:

Rhubarb crumble, made with two big bunches of rhubarb from the Farmer's Market!  We also picked up a rhubarb plant, and cleared an area behind John's garage . . . wahoo!  I may have to wait until next year for more rhubarb, (at least rhubarb we've grown ourselves,) but that's ok -- it'll spread like wildfire back there, and then we'll have all the rhubarb we can eat!

What local food are you excited about right now?

not too shabby

Here's what happens when John and I wander aimlessly through the supermarket, trolling for dinner supplies at 6:30 on a Tuesday night, feeling both hungry and tired:

Not too shabby, if you ask me! Stir-fry of rice noodles, onion, mushroom, carrot, sugar snap pea, and almonds, drizzled with a store-bought stir-fry sauce, augmented by some garlic and cayenne. Spicy-noodley good, even though the noodles stuck together en masse, and had to be carefully teased apart with two forks. Gotta love starchy-gooey rice noodles, eh?

breakfast and dinner, lower-cal style??

Although the tedium of counting calories is still kind of frustrating me, I'm really not finding this whole "diet" thing all that challenging -- I like the program I'm using to track my calories and exercise, I found a really helpful website that has made calculating calories/etc. of homemade things fairly simple, and my active lifestyle and already healthy eating habits have allowed room in my "diet" for a substantial treat at least daily -- homemade popsicle, slice of pie, homemade cookie, etc. Not bad, if you ask me!

(Is it wrong that I absolutely despise the word "diet?" Sigh.)

Anyhow, I found plenty of room in my daily calories yesterday for a truly indulgent brunch:

I made some whole-wheat buttermilk pancakes with Buttermilk Syrup, and enjoyed a side of fresh, local strawberries and a glass of iced green tea. Yum yum! (That syrup isn't healthy at all, but it's so caramelly-good, a tablespoon or two is a fantastic treat!)

Tonight's dinner leaned much more toward the healthy side, although it didn't taste that way!

Quinoa topped with sugar-snap peas, tofu, green onions, cilantro, and homemade peanut sauce.

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I've found, so far, that the biggest changes I've made in my eating habits have actually been really, really small -- I've mostly been paying closer attention to portion sizes, and have avoided mindless eating/snacking at work. (The new job helps -- there really isn't much in the way of "junk" laying around, and if I get desperately hungry, I just eat a graham cracker or a few vanilla wafers. Plain, bland, and unappetizing, I'm actually satisfying hunger, as opposed to boredom or frustration, which was often the case at my old job.)

I just hope things continue to feel this easy! I am already making appropriate progress, but definitely have a ways to go!

Single Girl Salad

First, dinner Tuesday night:

I made another round of "Chile-Cornmeal Crusted Tofu," from VCON, with sides of roasted blue potatoes and steamed sugar-snap peas (tossed with a little butter, salt, and pepper.) I STILL had plenty of breading left, but since it's been sitting in the fridge so long, I decided to toss it. Next time, I'll probably cut the breading recipe in half, but still use two packages of the 'fu!

And now . . . the Single Girl Salad!

Dan's out of town until Sunday night, (he and his brother went canoeing in southern MN,) so I'm totally on my own for the rest of the week. Other than working my way through a pile of leftovers in the fridge, I planned a couple of fun meals for myself -- Greek salads, full of my favorite veggies (and FETA!), and Sweet and Sour Tofu, which I LOVE but Dan doesn't care for.

I've decided that romaine might be my favorite salad green. Why? It's crisp and crunchy, substantial enough to stand up to a pile of veggies, and flavorful but not overly-assertive. What's your favorite salad green?