Post VVCon Dinner

The stars aligned and I was able to buy a cheap last-minute ticket to Vida Vegan Con this past weekend. Among many other things, my ticket afforded me a gorge fest with an array of rich, sometimes less-than-healthy, foods. In addition to that, Matt and I played host to our Couchsurfing guests and ate out quite a bit in the past several days. (More on the conference in the next post!)

Today I was craving simple, fresh foods, so I made a tasty tabbouleh salad and majadra for dinner.

The tabbouleh contained our first ripe tomatoes, our first lemon cucumber, and some parsley from the garden, as well as bulgur wheat, minced onion, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
The whole grain bulgur wheat added quite a bit of earthy nuttiness, and I just let it soak in water instead of cooking it.
After enjoying majadra for years at Middle Eastern restaurants, I watched an episode of Everday Dish and decided I should make it myself. Well, that was a while ago, but I've finally gotten around to making this simple dish. The dry fluffiness of this slightly salty dish is enhanced by the sweetness of the caramelized onions. It's a really comforting dish. And guess what. I followed this recipe exactly. That's almost a first for me.
Quite a nice pairing I think.

Food from our garden

Apparently, our growing season here is off to a late start, but since this is the first garden Matt and I have had, we don't really know the difference. All we know is that we're excited to reap the benefits of our hard work in prepping and maintaining our garden!

Our teeny plum tree has lots of delicious, marble-sized fruits.

Last night I made collard wraps along with some pineapple ginger couscous.

From the garden: collards, a beet (pictured above,) parsley.

The wraps contained black-eyed peas, quinoa, carrot, tomato, yellow bell pepper, parsley, and a sunflower seed spread that I whipped up. It was so good that I want to share it with you!

Lemony Sunflower Seed Spread

Ingredients:
1/8 cup sunflower seeds, soaked for a couple of hours, then drained
juice from 1/2 lemon
2-3 tbsp miso paste
1 large clove garlic
cayenne powder to taste
sprig of parsley
handful of black-eyed peas

Directions:
1. Mix everything in a food processor. I added the black-eyed peas because I had a batch already cooked up and the consistency helped bring everything together.
2. Resist eating the spread right from the food processor, instead plopping it inside your favorite wrap.


Our collard leaves were tiny and we had lots of 'innards' left over, so I just made them into a side salad with a fresh beet from the garden!

With our 70ish tomato and pepper plants, I expect to soon be over-run by tomatoes and peppers. In the mean time, it's fun watching the progress, like the tomatoes growing on this volunteer plant that popped up among our strawberries. Roma tomatoes, perhaps?
Lastly, a photo of the carrot we pulled up today in order to gauge their progress.

Happy summer!

Lately, we've had a delightful paring of warmish days and cool evenings in Portland. I love it. And the boys are certainly loving it.
Tonight we honored the coming of the season with yummy (and appropriately named) summer rolls! We were told by our Vietnamese friends that this is a relaxing meal, meant to be enjoyed with loved ones, as you put together your summer rolls just the way you like.

The fillings included baked tofu, homegrown spinach and lettuce, sauteed carrot and onion, homegrown spearmint, orange bell pepper, and cucumber. I made two dipping sauces: a sweet tamarind peanut sauce and a chili garlic sauce. Really yummy!

(This photo doesn't really make the summer rolls seem appetizing. I think it needed a dash of dipping sauce to liven it up! They were good. I promise.)

I also made a batch of herbal sun tea and cooled it down with a couple of frozen boysenberries.
Aaaand we had our first strawberry harvest of the season. They were deeelish!

Happy summer to you, folks in the Northern Hemisphere!

Tomato Babies

Even though our vegetable garden currently looks like this:
Doc and I have been feverishly planning, preparing, and beginning our gardening activity. This is the first time either of us has had a garden and we're beyond excited. Just take a look at our outrageous seed collection.
I started our tomatoes and peppers last week and fretted over them until a couple of days ago when the first tomatoes started to pop up. So far 38/72 tomatoes and 3/72 peppers have appeared. Cute little babies!
I'm still concerned about them becoming "leggy" without overhead lighting. Hopefully keeping them near the bright window and rotating them everyday will suffice.

Last week we also planted a large bed of natives in our front garden. They're all very tiny, but once they get a bit bigger and the threat of major doggle tramplization has passed, many of them will be transplanted out back. I'd take a photo, but we're in the middle of a snow storm.