VeggieTalk

Hooray, yesterday was the first pick-up at my local Community Supported Agriculture farm, just a mile from my home here in the Hudson Valley. I love that the produce is grown so close by, is absolutely organic, and is harvested the same day we pick it up! Learn more about Community Supported Agriculture, and locate a farm near you.

The first harvest was a little late, since we’ve had a very cool spring. And of course, the first couple of harvests are mainly greens and more greens (there was some very good broccoli as well).

I made Pasta with Hearty Lentil Sauce, which is usually made with spinach, but is good with chard or any kind of fresh greens. Here I used an Asian green, tatsoi, that virtually disappeared into the sauce. You know how it is with greens—they are so voluminous raw, but once they are wilted, cook down to nearly nothing. In a couple of weeks, I will be so sick of greens that I will make my annual pot of “CSA soup,” a luscious green concoction that makes you feel like a paragon of health just by looking at it. I’m sure I’ll be posting the recipe. Meanwhile, here’s the pasta dish:

Pasta with Hearty Lentil Sauce

Serves 6

Based on a Sicilian recipe, this filling and nourishing pasta dish needs only a big salad and a green veggie such as broccoli to make a complete meal.

• 8 to 10 ounces penne, ziti, or other short, chunky pasta
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium green or red bell pepper, diced
• 1 cup sliced white or cremini mushrooms, optional
• One 15-ounce can organic lentils, rinsed
• One good-sized bunch fresh greens (spinach, Swiss chard, or tatsoi), well rinsed, stemmed, and chopped)
• One 28-ounce jar good-quality marinara sauce
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Cook the pasta in plenty of steadily boiling water until al dente, then drain.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and garlic and sauté over medium-low heat until the onion is translucent. Add the bell pepper and optional mushrooms continue to sauté until the onion is golden.

3. Stir in the cooked lentils, greens, and marinara sauce. Slowly bring to a simmer, then cover and simmer gently, for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the type of greens used. They should be wilted and just tender

4. Combine the lentil sauce with the cooked pasta in a large serving container and toss together thoroughly. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

A few days ago, after visiting my brother in New Jersey, my family and I decided to stop at a Whole Foods Market, which we don’t have near us. I always think how fun it would be to have one nearby, but after this visit, I’m almost glad I don’t have that particular temptation. This is just the sort of “fun food field trip” I love, but this time, it seemed more like a regular supermarket than I had remembered.

First of all, perhaps at this particular branch (let me know what your nearby Whole Foods do in this department), there was a lot of produce, but so little of it was organic. What’s the big deal, then? The produce department at my local Mother Earth’s is a fraction of the size, but everything is organic, so I don’t have to waste a lot of time looking at signs designating “conventional,” “transitional,” and organic.

Since we’d be getting home around 7 pm, we decided to pick up some prepared foods for dinner. I picked up what I thought would be the makings of a nice meal that I could just pop out of the containers: Cashew curried rice, broiled tofu steaks, white gazpacho, and blueberry muffins. It all looked so nice on the plate, but most everything was so unpalatable that most of it will go uneaten. The rice was dry, but salvageable once I put a little water in it and warmed it up. The tofu steaks were topped with, not a layer of flavor, but a layer of charcoal. The white gazpacho had a grainy almond base, though it was supposed to be made with white beans, and aside from cucumber, contained nothing but tons of raw onion and garlic, which I loathe. The blueberry muffins tasted like pastries from the sixties, you know, the kind that taste like bricks and mortar. Oh, dear, they were not good for more than one bite.

Since most of this healthy looking dinner was inedible, I quickly made some hummus, and made some wraps with lettuce and tomato. We had, luckily, picked up some good whole wheat wraps, nice and soft, so the wraps came out quite yummy.

How about you? How has your experiene been with Whole Foods Market? Do you think its nickname, Whole Paycheck, is fitting? Have you had any similar experience with the prepared foods, or have your experiences been better than mine?

This afternoon, a photographer from my local paper came to take some shots of a dinner menu for an article I’m doing for a special section called Cuisine. The article will be about family-friendly meals that will get the cook in and out of the kitchen quickly as the weather gets warmer.

At 3:15, the photographer called to confirm and said he’d be over in half an hour. I hadn’t even started the food! But was I worried? No. I did move a little more quickly than usual, but by 3:45 I had the pasta with alfredo sauce as well as the accompanying side dish done. While he lit and shot the main dish, I made a speedy and colorful vegetable platter; then as he was shooting that, I made a strawberry and blueberry parfait layered with lemon soy yogurt and a sprinkling of granola for topping. By 4:15, the photographer and I were both done, and we had a laugh over our efficiency.

This silken tofu-based pasta alfredo tastes deceptively rich and creamy. I use whole wheat pasta to boost the protein and fiber content, and for whoever wants some, some wilted spinach and sun-dried tomatoes for topping is passed around. The recipe is adapted from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook.

Pasta with Enlightened Alfredo Sauce

6 servings

• 2 tablespoons nonhydrogenated margarine
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
• One 12.3-ounce container silken tofu
• 1/2 cup rice milk, or as needed
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• Freshly ground pepper to taste
• 12 ounces pasta (see Note)
• Steamed greens (spinach or Swiss chard) for topping, optional
• Sliced sun-dried tomatoes for topping, optional

1. Cook the pasta in plenty of steadily boiling water until al dente, then drain.

2. Meanwhile, heat the margarine in a small skillet. Add the garlic and sauté over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until golden. Remove from the heat.

3. Combine the sautéed garlic and margarine with the tofu and rice milk in a food processor. Process until completely smooth and creamy.

4. Combine the pasta and sauce in a large serving bowl and toss together. Season with pepper and taste to see if you’d like to add more salt. If the mixture needs to be moister, add a small amount of additional rice milk and toss again. Serve at once, passing around greens and/or dried tomaotes for topping, if desired.

Sometimes we have salad for lunch, so for dinner, I enjoy putting together vegetable platters (which sometimes contain fruit, like this one. I have always found this an appealing option, especially when the boys were younger. They always preferred choosing raw foods from a nicely arranged platter than picking through a salad, somehow. I still find it an easy, appealing option to serve with dinner. Here’s one we had the other night with Thai-style noodles and a stir-fry of tofu and tempeh. It features pineapple, cherry tomatoes, daikon radish, yellow peppers, baby carrots and sugar snap peas. It takes minutes to prepare, and disappears quickly!

I shop at a medium-sized natural foods market. They have a decent organic produce department, and really, everything I need. I’m sure that if there were a Wild Oats or Whole Foods market nearby, I’d gladly shop at those kinds of natural foods mecca and spend even more money than I already do on food.

My older son, Adam, is 16 (he’ll be 17 this summer), and just came home for the summer after finishing his first year of college. During his lifetime he has rarely exercised, and now, suddenly, he is doing weight training. So is my younger son, Evan, who is generally very active. They are both 5’7, slender eating machines. Adam’s trainer wants him to eat 5 meals a day. So you can imagine what our grocery bills are like! The poor checkout gal remarked on the size of my purchase, and I told her I’d be lucky if it lasted the weekend!

The shopping cart was literally running over, and it made me realize just how expensive natural organic foods are these days. Much of this food is trucked in, and I see the prices going up in tandem with the price of gasoline. With two rapidly growing vegan teens to feed, food is a major expense. Readers, what about you? Do you have any good tips to share on paring down your natural foods grocery expenses?

A few posts back, I mentioned that baking season was coming to a close (though with this cool and rainy May, I’ve had to eat my words—literally!), but for me, it’s always soup season. The soup pot comes out on rainy spring evenings, and when the weather gets warmer, it’s time for a cool gazpacho or fruit soup.

My older son, Adam, loves a simple red lentil soup that is served at a local Middle Eastern café. I asked the owner for the recipe, but she wouldn’t give. So I tried to figure it out on my own, and came up with a close facsimile. It’s virtually no work aside from chopping the onions and garlic, then blending to smooth out the texture. Serve with warm pita or with croutons.

Easy Red Lentil Soup

6 servings

• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups tiny red lentils, rinsed
• 2 vegetable bouillon cubes
• 6 cups water
• 2 teaspoons za’atar seasoning or salt-free seasoning blend (like Spike or Mrs. Dash)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• Minced parsley or cilantro for garnish, optional

Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add the onions and saute over medium heat until translucent. Add the garlic and continue to saute until both are golden.

Add the lentils, bouillon cubes, water, and seasoning. Bring to a rapid simmer, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer gently until the lentils are mushy, about 25 minutes.

Remove from the heat and insert an immersion blender. Process until the soup is smoothly pureed. Or, puree in batches in a food processor.

If the soup is too thick, adjust the consistency with just a bit more water. Return to low heat, just until piping hot. Season with salt and pepper, then serve. Garnish individual servings with parsley or cilantro, if desired.

For quite some time now, I’ve been wanting to try making vegan popovers. Since my older son Adam, came home from completing his freshman year in college yesterday, I decided that today was the day—it was pouring rain this morning, I was up really early, and it seemed like just the day to make something different for breakfast.

Popovers rely on egg and high heat for that “popped over” effect—they rise very quickly, pop over the pans, and then collapse as they cool. It’s quite a treat for kids of all ages to observe, then eat and enjoy. So I decided to go with the basic recipe that’s in The Vegetarian Family Cookbook (it’s probably one of less than a handful in the book that isn’t either vegan or that details a vegan version). The only change I made was to replace the 4 eggs with 1/2 package of silken tofu.

So far, so good. But after 15 in the oven, the poor little things just sat there forlornly, not having risen at all. The dough was still doughy, despite the 450-degree oven. My son Evan inquired whether I had put any baking powder in them. I had not, because the original recipe doesn’t call for it. “Don’t you think you should have put some baking powder in them, since there’s no egg?” asked my younger son, who we affectionately call “the vegan cop.” Indeed I should have.

Not wanting to end this adventure in disappointment, I made another batch, this time with a tablespoon of baking powder for good measure. This time, they did “pop over,” but the only difference is that they don’t have the air pockets inside that traditional popovers do, nor do they collapse. They do taste remarkably like popovers, though. My older son Adam just got up at the reasonable time of 10:30 a.m. (he was planning to sleep most of the day, to recover from a week of finals)—maybe he smelled the popovers. Here’s the recipe, hot out of the oven:

Vegan Popovers

Makes 12

Classic recipes for popovers often call for popover pans. I don’t have any, nor do I know anyone who does, so muffin tins work just fine.

• 1/2 (12.3-ounce) package firm silken tofu
• 1 1/2 cups rice milk or plain soymilk
• 2 tablespoons safflower oil
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Nonhydrogenated margarine and/or all-fruit preserves

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Combine the silken tofu with the rice milk in a food processor, blender, or container with immersion blender. Process until smoothly pureed. Stir in the oil.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt, and stir together well.

4. Pour in the tofu mixture and stir together until smooth.

5. Divide the batter among 12 well-oiled nonstick muffin tins.

6. Bake for 15 minutes, until golden and puffed up. Don’t open the oven door during this time! Remove from the oven, and just as soon as they can be handled, serve warm with margarine and/or preserves.

Valencian Rice and Red Beans is a classic Spanish dish; I’ve had the recipe hanging about in my notes for years but it has never made its way into any of my books. It’s the perfect thing to make when you want something easy but interesting.

This is my favorite kind of meal to make, with only one dish that requires a recipe. The other items can vary according to mood and season. Here I’m serving the rice with cauliflower and grilled polenta sices (the kind that comes in tubes—I used an 18-ounce tube, but I could have used the 24-ounce size, as my sons were looking for seconds after it was gone; they like it on a separate plate—with maple syrup!). Instead of a salad, I served a platter of sliced yellow bell peppers, orange sections, artichoke hearts, celery sticks, and cherry tomatoes. The entire meal can be made in the time it takes to cook the rice.

Valencian Rice and Red Beans would also go well with roasted asparagus and a salad of mixed baby greens with cucumbers, orange sections, and walnuts. Here’s the recipe:

Valencian Rice and Red Beans

6 servings

• 1 1/4 cups uncooked brown rice
• 3 1/2 cups water
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large onion, quartered and thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 green bell pepper, finely diced
• One 16-ounce can red beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 1/2 cups diced ripe tomato
• 2/3 cup pimiento-stuffed green olives, sliced
• 3 scallions, thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• Cayenne pepper or hot red pepper flakes, to taste
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro or parsley

1. Combine the rice and water in a small saucepan and bring to a rapid simmer. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the water is absorbed, about 30 to 35 minutes. If you’d like a more tender grain, add another 1/2 cup water and cook until absorbed

2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a wide skillet. Add the onion and sauté over medium-low heat until translucent. Add the garlic and bell pepper and saute until all are golden.

3. Once the rice is done, add to the skillet along with the remaining ingredients except the last two. Cook for 5 minutes, or until everything is well heated through.

4. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the cilantro. Serve at once.

My older son Adam is home for a few days for study period before he goes back to college for finals. Rather than gaining the famous “freshman fifteen,” he seems to have lost a few pounds this year—not something that makes a vegan Jewish Mother happy! So at least for these few days, until he comes home for the summer, it’s my mission to bulk him up a bit.

Gaining weight rather than losing it is not a problem most people have, but for kids and teens who need some extra calories this smoothie is a rich, tasty drink—like a milkshake with a nutty flavor. The recipe is from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook. You need not follow the proportions here exactly; I usually just eyeball it.

Nutty Chocolate-Banana Smoothie

2 servings

• 1 large banana, broken into several pieces
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate soymilk
• 1 heaping tablespoon peanut butter or cashew butter

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and process until smoothly pureed. Or place in a container and process with an immersion blender. Serve at once in tall glasses.