veggie black bean tacos and salad

we played some music down at a farmer’s market last weekend and traded our loot straight for veggies, and locally made pasta and rosemary cheese curds.....oh heavens!  sooooo fun to come home from that and decide what to make for dinner :)

i’ve been trying to eat less gluten and dairy lately....(not doing very well on either count!) so i got corn tortillas instead of flour, and fancy cheese instead of the Big Block Standby.  i’d been craving peppers but hadn’t wanted to get them at the grocery store because the red ones are almost $4 apiece and i knew i could get them straight from the farm for much less, i just had to wait a bit.  (contrary to popular practice it really is good to have to wait for some things before you have them!  ;)  and our local grocery store chain now has organic cilantro AND green onions!  very good news :)

i wasn’t feeling up to making a pasta dish worthy of our Spinach, Basil and Garlic Fettucini yet, so i opted for soft tacos.  first thing to do was put on half a fresh yellow onion and two small red peppers ($1 each! :) to saute for a bit (with a touch of organic pasture butter).  

i then opened a can of black beans and put them on low heat in a small sauce pan.  as they heated up i added a bit of salt, ground flax seed, and nutritional yeast to give them a more interesting flavor (“interesting” is all i go for sometimes!  it usually works! ;)

when the onions and pepper started getting soft and a bit browned i added a clove of minced garlic, and used the time to put some salad mix in a bowl and chop up some preparatory cilantro and green onion.  our standby salad these days is mix/lettuce + cherry tomatoes from the garden, sunflower seeds, ground flax and cilantro/green onion.  um, YUM.  

when toppings were ready i put the corn tortillas in a pan with some grated smoked gouda on low heat ‘til the cheese started to melt.  i put the tortillas on a plate with a dose of black beans, peppers and onions, cilantro and flax, and a drizzling of  Mama's Miracle Dressing, along with a small mountain of salad and we had a delicious dinner!  will got to guess what the flavors were...one of my favorite parts of this game ;)

veggie black bean tacos and salad

approximate price: $5 

mama's miracle dressing

when i was growing up i was not the biggest salad fan.  not that i disliked vegetables in general, but salad dressings were never very good and salad, for the most part, felt pretty darn boring.  i always ate it dry, most often as finger food.  (i was as fine with that as a kid could be ;)

and THEN....my mom made a dressing from three ingredients, and three ingredients only.  

olive oil

soy sauce (or tamari)

garlic

that was it.  about a half/half liquid ratio, and as much garlic as you can or can’t stand.  (it stays separated so it needs to be mixed with a spoon and scooped out to get some of everything.  we keep a stocked tupperware container on hand.)  and suddenly i was eating as much salad as was humanly possible.  oh my god.  sometimes we crave brownies.  sometimes we crave soy sauce and garlic.  i have no trouble attempting to satiate the latter.  

i made the dressing for Will recently and we both have turned into raging salad monsters.  plus i have realized that the dressing is good to put on all sorts of other things, like, well, pretty much any other savory thing i may be eating at the time.

fried/scrambled eggs?  YES.

pasta of any kind?        YES.

stir fry of any kind?       YES.

grain dish of any kind? YES.

try it!  grow list, grow!  :)

red pepper and chard pesto-less pasta with grilled eggplant

so pasta is just one of those things that you don’t realize is so much better it’s a small locally made batch....i mean, i love pasta already.  it’s one of my favorite things, but local pasta?  it’s above and beyond in ways that i couldn’t imagine before i had it.

we got spinach, basil & garlic fettucini from the farmers’ market and i couldn’t wait to come up with something delicious for dinner!  our poor garden finally surrendered to the cold nighttime temperatures, and after the first morning of waking up to sad, dark droop i harvested what i could from the tomatoes (hoping that with some tricks suggested by friends will ripen indoors :) and chard, which was already looking a little sad from absolute obliteration by caterpillar.  unfortunately the basil turned brown overnight so i didn’t have any for pesto, but i still had my eye on the chard for, well, pesto-less pesto :)

we also had some local red peppers and yellow onions, which i put on to saute with a li’l butter, and an eggplant (also loot from the farmers’ market), which i sliced lengthwise into pieces about a 1/2 inch thick.  i also put them in a lightly buttered frying pan on low, flipping them within five minutes or so to get some oil on the other side as well.  (it tends to soak up quickly.)

i prepped my chard, washing and removing the thickest part of the stems, and cutting it just once or twice to make it a bit easier to fit in the pot of boiling water.  i left them cooking for a bit longer than i would to serve them as greens, in order to make them more agreeable to a blender.  i removed the greens from the water with tongs, letting them carry some of the liquid with them, and put them in the blender, adding a quarter or so cup of olive oil, three cloves of chopped garlic and a half teaspoon-ish of salt, blending until smooth.  

the pasta instructions were to cook for six minutes, so they were saved until the end.  i used the chard water to cook them (why not?) and prepped a handful of cilantro.  (one might argue that cilantro doesn’t necessarily go with basil, but it wasn’t fresh basil....and i really like cilantro!)  

i drained the noodles in a colander and put them back in the pot with the lovely green sauce from the blender.  i served it onto the plate, with a big scoop of red peppers and onions, topped with cilantro and accompanied by tender slices of eggplant drizzled with Mama’s Miracle Dressing and sprinkled with flaxseed.  

red pepper and chard pesto-less pasta with grilled eggplant 

it was one of those dinners we didn’t say much over, other than how good it was!  (and how much it looked like christmas :)

approximate price: (i won’t lie, the pasta was pricey!) $12

beet rice with baked eggplant and grilled zucchini

i boil beets to cook them, though i know it’s nutritionally better to do it some other way.  it’s just that everything else is so slooooooowwwwwwwww!  (if i ever claimed to be a patient person, i take it back!)  i chop them up into bite sized cubes and boil them for ten or fifteen minutes, leaving a pot of gorgeous magenta colored water.  i really need to get more creative with this in the future!

i saved the water to do something with, even if it was just to throw it out onto the tree in the backyard (i do live in a desert!) and decided that cooking rice in it would be brilliant (brilliant pink if nothing else ;)  

we had locally grown eggplants, which i sliced into half-inch or so rounds and put on a baking pan drizzled with olive oil.  oven was preset to 300, and the eggplant was covered (loosely) with aluminum foil.  i didn’t set a timer.  (it usually works out ok for me, but you might not agree!  be safe :)  this was the first thing to start cooking, as i wanted to try and give it at least 45 or so minutes.

the rice was short grain brown, which i like very much.  it seems soft somehow...the ultimate comfort food!  it’s also a little bit sweet, and i believe it’s more nutritious than white.  one cup rice to two cups (pink) water was brought to a boil and then turned down to simmer.  i kept a good eye on it, in case the beet water was thicker and didn’t absorb as well.  it did just fine :)

who knows when eggplant is done....as long as it’s softer than when it went in it’s probably ok!  a fork shouldn’t meet much resistance, but other than that, it’ll be fine :)

i put a little butter and ground flax in with the rice, and put the eggplant rounds on top.  yum!

sides were grilled zucchini and green salad.

beet rice with baked eggplant and grilled zucchini 

approximate price: $4

alfredo and spinach pasta

half of the jar of alfredo sauce went to last week's tofu and collard pizza, and half went to this week's pasta dinner that couldn’t possibly go wrong.  (trust me, not once you’ve had just a little bit of practice ;)

healthy things i’ve been craving lately:

kale chips

green salads with tamari and oil dressing

pickles (i am NOT pregnant!)

pasta

(as opposed to the UNhealthy things i’ve been craving lately, like chocolate and espresso and expensive port.....)

so: pasta dinner with green salad and pickles to snack on while i cooked.  perfect.  (i even managed to creatively get the kale chips in there too, which i’ll tell you about in a bit ;)

i put about six cups of water on to boil (ok, i asked will to put about six cups of water on to boil ;) and really didn’t have a lot to do until the noodles were done.  

the salad didn’t take long at all to throw together, the standbys these days being leaf lettuce, whatever peppers we have on hand, sunflower seeds, cilantro or green onions (or both!) and a sprinkling of ground flaxseed with a fair drizzling of olive oil and tamari (soy sauce).  it’s best with some fresh garlic too, but if anyone could over-garlic a meal it’s yours truly!  ;)

when the noodles passed my consistency test, i drained and rinsed them and put them back in the pan with the alfredo sauce.  (i could have used another pan to preheat it but i figured i’d save a dish :)  

i chopped up some spinach into smallish pieces (1/2 inch or so) to allow them to mix better with the sauce rather than dominating mouthfuls, and let it heat in the mixture for ten or so minutes to soften up a little, but not lose its beautiful color!

that went into a bowl while clever me took a handful of exquisitely crunchy kale chips and crushed them on top for seasoning.  (when made right they definitely crush! :)

alfredo and spinach pasta

approximate price: $3