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 

cucumber pomegranate salad

our friends are growing pomegranates, and while they were chicken sitting for us left one for us in the refrigerator.  i haven’t had one since i was a kid, and will had never seen one.  at least i was able to identify it and have some idea about what to do with it (not much, mind you :)

have i mentioned how much i love salads??  the possibilities are so limitless it’s crazy.  you really don’t need much to make a side dish, and sometimes the fewer things that are in it the more interesting it can be.  and now that lettuce is in season in texas (i’m sorry northerners!) we both have been craving it like crazy.

i chopped cucumber and banana peppers, and dug out most of a pomegranate (i saved some seeds to munch on later (i hear that chickens find them tasty, too ;)  i added some roasted sunflower seeds and green onion, along with oil, vinegar and cracked salt.

cucumber pomegranate salad

approximate price: $3

Garden Pasta Salad

i love pasta salad because it can’t possibly even begin to be limited by a recipe, other than maybe what to use for a dressing (and even then.....)  yup, right up my alley :)

we were still in somewhat of a food coma from spending the fourth of july afternoon with will’s folks (we eat like the gods there, and we eat a lot) so finally by the time dusk was setting in and the chicks were putting themselves up for the night we were ready for something, as long as it was light, “like a salad.”  done.

i have been fighting like mad to reclaim our collard and kale crops from caterpillars (as i push out of my mind both my childhood favorite book “the very hungry caterpillar” and the fact every single one of them will “grow up to be a beautiful butterfly someday,” as long as they feast on every single tender cell of my collards, that is!)  a few weeks of diligence on my part has brought some lovely foliage from these toughies and we had yet to eat a single leaf of their gifts, so i happily plucked a few each of collards and kale and went inside to execute the next crucial step of our sustenance, so joyfully named by yours truly :)

i think any kind of small pasta is ok for this kind of thing.  i opted for the spiral-y kind and put enough water on for half of the pound box (6 cups or so?), as i was not ready to be responsible for a whole pound of cooked pasta again just yet!  the last pound lasted the two of us (in various outfits--both us and the pasta ;) for three dinners, plus my lunches for two days in between; the gift that keeps on giving.  

while the water was boiling and pasta was hitting the jacuzzi, i rounded up all of the veggies i had at my delicious disposal to make an assessment.  baby spinach, red onion, banana pepper, celery, and cilantro (it’s green; it counts), plus the collards and kale from the garden.  sure.  i’ll take ‘em.  normally i would always cook kale and chard (it breaks them down a bit, and makes them more palatable and digestible) but these leaves were rather young so i just chopped them up and started the salad engine (it runs on biodiesel for sure ;)

the rest of the veggies got chopped up and tossed in the bowl.  use your creativity and inspiration (or just best judgement :) on how big or small to cut things.  not to play favorites, but some veggies are just prettier than others, and sometimes i make those ones a little more, uh, visible.  raw onions and garlic, and cilantro if you feel that way about it, ought to be minced pretty finely so certain mouthfuls don’t get dominated by it.

in went the noodles, and then came decisions for dressing.  the only organic mayo i had been able to find at the neighborhood grocery store was roasted garlic, which i figured couldn’t hurt anything (least of all the evening’s pasta salad!) so i dropped in a large spoonful, along with a bit of juice leftover from our last olive indulgence, and a few good drizzles of bragg’s and olive oil, as well as a dusting of cracked salt, and mixed it all together.  mayo will hide in clumps in you aren’t careful, especially in the hide-and-seek folds of durum wheat spirals, so mix well.

garden pasta salad

approximate price: $5