Produce Explosion

Pam's Garden Bounty

Look at this amazing selection of produce my mother shared with me! The question is: how do I use this all before it goes bad with a family of three? I don't. I use some of it and preserve the rest until later.

Hanging out in the cold water bath

Finished product.

I decided to blanch and freeze the green beans because I already had some in the fridge. I broke the rules and used scissors to cut off the ends of my green beans. I know that may be "bad" but I found it much faster, and Ethan was waiting on me to play Legos (Mom life). After trimming them up, I boiled them for three minutes and then put them in a water bath for three. After draining them, I put them in a random jar I had waiting around. Then I labeled it and stuck it in the freezer. It was quick and easy. I'll make sure to use them within a month or two.

Dinner in One Bowl

I also made a veggie spaghetti dish. I didn't use traditional pasta sauce with this one, which made me a bit nervous because kids are picky. The key to using veggies in this situation was to spice it right. I sauteed up onion, eggplant, bell pepper, corn, and tomatoes in olive oil. My spices were cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper, fresh basil and oregano from the garden, sage, and then I threw in a little sriracha sauce for some heat. It's definitely easy to over spice things, but because I had so many veggies and tomatoes don't have the same flavor as tomato sauce, I had to kick it up a notch. I boiled the spaghetti and added it to the other. Ethan ate his veggies without much complaint.

I'm going to make the okra tomorrow.

Pizza, Pizza.

Oven-Roasted

Herbs

Using the scrumptious pita bread I made yesterday, I made one of Ethan's favorites for dinner. However, this time everything was a bit more legit. My mother finally has a garden!!! She's been wanting to have an official garden for years now, and my father finally built her one, complete with a fence to keep deer from eating all the goodness. So before I left last weekend, she gave me pounds of tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, and peppers. She has a whole entire green hand, not just a thumb.

With all these extra goodies, I decided to make my own pizza sauce and use some of the veggies for topping. I started by quartering the tomatoes and oven-roasting them with EVOO and some thyme. They roasted at 300 for an hour. The cool thing about making sauce this way is that it can be made the night before. I roasted the tomatoes when I knew I'd be home for an hour. I happen to be staying home this summer and not working, so I had all day. But if it had been during the school year, I may have roasted them the night before while our family was eating dinner. It's a convenience thing.

Before 

Finished

After roasting the tomatoes, I threw them in the food processor with dashes of salt, pepper, sage, rosemary, a Tbsp. EVOO, 3 garlic cloves, and some herbs from the garden.


I grabbed a whole handful of basil, some chives(random) and some oregano from my little front-porch herb garden. They added a kick of flavor to the tomatoes, making it a real sauce instead of mere cooked tomatoes. Watching the tomatoes and spices blend together was such a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors and flavors. It was definitely the best tomato sauce I've made. The thickness of the sauce could be thinned with more olive oil or some lemon juice if I wanted a spaghetti sauce instead of a pizza sauce. 

Drying it Out

Next on the list: Tofu. One of my great friends, Mrs. Faith, encourages me to try new things. We constantly share recipes or ideas when we chat. She has a blog you can check out here. Granted, she hasn't updated it in a while, but maybe this is the motivation she needs to get back to it. A while ago she shared her favorite way to make tofu with me (I think you can find it on her blog). 

Cooked up

The key to yummy tofu is drying it out. Faith uses a pan to do this. I have done that but also like using the oven because it's less time consuming. I slice and cut up the tofu, placing it on a towel that won't stick to the tofu. There is nothing worse than towel fiber all over your uncooked tofu. I dry it out while the oven preheats to 350. Then I cook the tofu about 10 minutes on each side. You can see when the tofu starts turning golden. Cooking the tofu brings out the actual flavor of it. 


Believe it or not, tofu has it's own flavor when cooked, folks. It's a miracle.

Soy Cheese

After it's cooked, I sometimes marinade it, sometimes not. For the pita pizzas, I did not marinade it. If I make the same tofu for a asian rice bowl, I always marinade it in soy, garlic, saki, some pineapple, sesame seeds, etc. You could use the same marinade and make an asian-style pizza.

Salad

Next I put the pizzas together, using the sauce, tofu, some flax seed for added nutrients, green onion, Trader Joe's Roasted peppers and Kalamata Olives, and Soy Cheese. Soy Cheese is really important to this recipe because cheese is the dairy product I need to avoid. Ethan sometimes has trouble digesting lactose, so we often find ourselves eating dairy-free meals. This is problematic when your 7-year-old's favorite food is pizza. This particular soy cheese, bought at Trader Joe's, was great and tasted identical to cheese. Fake cheese can be a disappointment if you just eat it plain, but baked on the pita pizzas, I really couldn't tell a difference. I cooked them at 350 for 8-10 minutes. The cheese melted but didn't really turn brown.

Chill Ethan

I threw a salad together with spinach, tomatoes, and cucumber from my mother's garden. We used leftover Moe's dressing from Tuesday night, when kids eat free at Moe's, and our dinner was ready.


I think I went over well.

Pita Pile

Pita bread is delicious. That's all there is to it. And the great thing about pita is it's versatile: the classic pita sandwich, cut into strips with hummus or spinach-artichoke dip, served with salad, and my family's current favorite, the pita pizza. We've used all kinds of brands before, including Toufayan, Damascus, Thomas', Trader Joe's, etc. However, we found our favorite pita pizzas were made with homemade pita bread. And the best thing about it? Homemade pita bread is super cheap and easy to make.

I am the queen of taking recipes and giving them my own flair. Sometimes these experiments turn out to the benefit of all, and sometimes they wreck and fall apart moments after they start. This pita recipe is one of the easiest and most flexible baking recipes I've found. I was living on a different planet yesterday when I made them, putting the dry yeast into the flour without dissolving it in water first, and the bread still came out perfectly. Because the recipe is so simple and pliable (unlike many baking recipes) I was able to salvage my mistake. The following recipe is based on the "Pitta Bread" recipe in 500 Greatest-Ever Vegetarian Recipes (I have the 2004 edition and doubled the recipe). 

To make 12 pitas, I used: 

• 2 cups unbleached white bread flour
• 2 cups white whole-wheat flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 oz. dry yeast (I buy a jar of yeast at a time)
• 1 1/3 C. lukewarm water
• 4 tsp. EVOO, plus extra for coating

I mixed all the flour and salt together, whisking it so all four cups and the salt are completely combined. Then I accidentally dumped my yeast in, but managed to get most of it out and into a separate bowl. Some of the flour came with the yeast, by default, but didn't affect the yeast's development. The beauty of this recipe!!!

I dissolved the yeast/flour mixture into the water, but you should just dissolve the yeast into the water. I walked off and left it for five minutes, changing the laundry load and briefly checking my email. Then I stirred the EVOO into the water/yeast mixture and added it all into the flour mixture.

They always say, "Stir the ingredients together to form a dough."  I always find it necessary and more efficient to just wash my hands and dig in, especially with bread. I could have used my Kitchen Aid for this one, but because the recipe creates a small amount of dough, I just used my hands. After mixing the dough in the bowl, I floured a counter top and kneaded it out for about 10 minutes. I never, or rarely ever, use my Kitchen Aid for kneading. There is some kind of stress-energy released when I knead bread for 10 minutes once or twice a week. It's therapeutic. I'd suggest it to any baker, spouse, or parent. Then put the dough back in to bowl, coat it with EVOO, and let sit in the sun or a warm spot in your house for an hour.

When the dough has doubled in size, knock it back and divide it into 12 equal pieces. I started by just dividing it in half, so on and so forth. Let the doughballs sit for a few minutes to chill out and then pull out the rolling pin. Roll the balls out to make oval-ish shape at about six inches long. You can see mine is not perfect, but the finished product looked fine.

Place them on a floured dish towel with olive oil on top and let rise for about 30 minutes. While they're rising away, heat the oven to a whopping 450 degrees with a cookie sheet pre-heating as well. This seems really hot, but the heat is important if you want the pita to end up with an pocket of air in the middle.

Place the bread on the cookie sheet and bake for about 4-6 minutes. Some of my pitas made a pocket and some didn't. I took that opportunity to use the ones for sandwiches and the others for dipping or pita pizzas. After they turn a bit golden, take them out and let them cool. My house smelled amazing.

While I was baking, both Ethan and Tyler came home from a friend's house and work, respectively, and commented on the smell. They were disappointed we weren't eating the pita immediately. Now they can look forward to pita pizzas tomorrow night. 

Another amazing moment of baking pita bread was the cleanup. Tyler washed the dishes. Even after a long day of sitting in front of a computer, Tyler found it in his heart to clean up the mess I made in the kitchen. Thankful does not even describe the feeling.

Tomorrow I'm making pita pizzas, vegan style!

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