Yummy Monday

 Monday morning breakfast was some oatmeal with walnuts and some of the apples I cooked up Saturday.  It was nice and filling.

Lunch was simple toast with hummus.

But Dinner more than made up for Sunday's bland food.  We had some vegan street tacos with sauteed veggies, beans and lettuce and tomato.
The beans cooked all day in the crock pot and around the afternoon I added a bit of sea salt, a pinch of cumin and chili powder and some mince garlic and fresh oregano from the garden. 
The veggies came from the co-op.  One package of mushrooms, one squash and an onion sauteed in olive oil.  It was all served on corn tortillas and topped with lettuce and chopped tomato.  The beans were so good, I had a cut of them by themselves for an evening snack.

Sorry the photos are so fuzzy.  I was still half asleep when my husband made the oatmeal breakfast and I was just to happy to have my yummy tacos to actually pay attention to how the photo turned out.

Yummy lunch from the grill and Bland Dinner

 Sunday Breakfast was some apple, cranberry and walnut muffins made with the green apples we got in the co-op and cooked all day in the crock pot. 
Lunch was a vegan kabob on the grill with some brown rice and fruit.  The vegan kabobs were made with Field Roast apple sage sausage, squash, mushrooms and onion and marinated in a sauce made from oil, dijon mustard, lemon juice, white wine, salt pepper and fresh basil.  The wine was one I had in the fridge that wasn't recorked properly, so I figured it needed using in cooking.  It really brightened the marinade.

Dinner was made by my son.  I will only say that I wish I had been more specific about what veggies he should use.  I keep forgetting that he likes really bland food, and dinner was bland as a result.
It was a vegan shepherd's pie adapted from my Grandma's War Time Cookbook, green beans and an orange.
The mashed potato part of the shepherd's pie was half russet potatoes that I purchased and half cauliflower.  C used the Hearty Vegetable Broth from Trader Joe's  and it had onion, clery, garlic and frozen peas and carrots.  If I had made it, it would also have had mushrooms and squash and I would have baked it longer to brown the "potatoes" more.
The green beans were just bland, and that was probably my fault.  I am not fond of the texture of these green beans, and as a result I just don't really take the time to cook them properly.  I used some salt, the Organic No-Salt from Costco, some onion and the beans and cooked them in the crock pot.  What I really think I did wrong was use too much water to cook these.  The broth made from them smelled wonderful, but the beans themselves were eh.  

Co-op and gardening planning

OMG, that is a lot of food.
This week from the co-op we chose 2 shares, a lunch box pack and a bread variety pack (not show, because there wasn't enough room on my table).
This means we got:
18 bananas (5 from the lunch box pack)
3 cauliflower
4 packs of mushroom (one was my selection for volunteering)
2 heads of lettuce
2 bags of green beans (I really hate snapping these, but I will do it, which we got a different variety that wasn't such a pain)
1 bag of grapes (also from the lunch box pack)
1 lb bag of baby carrots (lunch box pack)
4 pears (lunch box)
4 apple pears (lunch box)
4 squash
2 bunches of green onion
4 cucumber
2 celery
15 tomatoes
2 pineapple
3 honey dew (one was my husband's choice for volunteering)

Also I had some baby carrots, a bit of spinach, peppers , 1 banana, some cutie oranges, and celery left over from last week.

I made plans and to be honest all the running around we did today already blew that out of the water as we ate out.  I got to have a veggie buger at Mooyah, which is way too good, but not the healthiest choice and then we had taco bell bean burritos for a very late dinner.  But breakfast was healthy in the form of vegan banana oatmeal pancakes.

Also on my meal plan I have green beans tomorrow for lunch, but that isn't happening because I didn't get them snapped.  Now I don't really have anything against snapping beans per se.  But when I was growing up we had to snap a lot of pinto green beans, which were these nice fat and flatish bean.  They were much easier to deal with than these skinny round things, and you got more food for your effort as well as them just tasting better. 

  But despite the set backs, I think I can get back on track and eat healthier starting tomorrow.  I think I will move the veggie kabobs to tomorrow and maybe throw the green beans into a soup later in the week for lunch.

And to supplement the whole co-op thing, we have been trying to garden.  It has not born fruit yet (sorry for the pun).  The tomatoes are blooming like crazy, but not turning into tomatoes.  I am very sad over this.  What seeds I did have come up either died in the replanting process or  just came up today from being directly sown into the bed.  Only the fava beans and carrots have sprouted.  I am hoping the spinach,  and the spinach-chard will start to sprout soon. 

I did give up on the Brussels sprouts and bought some plants (nine of them actually).  Along with the Brussels sprouts we also purchased and planted a yellow squash, a zuchini, a strawberry (the strawberry went into a pot and I don't really expect any fruit from it, I am just hoping for it to make more plants for next year), some bell peppers, some more oregano (my last one died while we were at WorldCon), some more basil (it seems to have partially died while we were gone), onions, and some potatoes in a trash can since they were already making roots in my pantry.  We also noticed that the beets in the fridge were making some new leaves, so we planted those in hopes of getting some chard out of it.

The sweet potato plant on the other hand is thriving.  We had one that was turning into a plant in the pantry at the old house, so we held onto it and planted it when we moved in.  It really likes the heat.

My goal with the garden is to be able to go back down to only one basket from the co-op a few times a year and still be eating mostly fresh produce.

My next focus on the garden is fruit.  Seems I need to plant that in late October or early November.  I am thinking of starting with blackberries, plums and figs for my first year.    I also need some more rosemary.