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 

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