CSA Salad

Wow this was a great salad, all fresh, all local, all good!!!
It is starting to feel a bit like summer in Kansas, warm and muggy. This is a nice change from the extended cold rainy spring we have had.
Every Monday I will be picking up our produce from the Rolling Prairie group, a farm collective that provides weekly distribution of the freshest picked that day produce. I like the variety of things that we get. Much of the produce is things that you would not find in the average grocery store, or in fact any store!!!! It is fun to bring it home and figure out what to do with it.
This week I received pea shoots, baby greens, sorel, chives, asparagus, leaf lettuce, shittake mushrooms, and radishes. I made a quick dressing with Extra Virgin olive oil, garlic, white vinegar and salt and pepper. All of the veggies are so flavorful on their own that the dressing really needs to be basic not to smother the other flavors. Soon we will start getting veggies that will be cooked, I will keep you posted!!!!

Farm Fresh Soup and Salad

I love the early part of summer, everything is green it is warm, but not hot, and there is loads of good local produce. When you are vegan this is a really special time of the year!!!!!
All of the ingredients for this meal came from the Rolling Prairie farm collective.
From some reason I was one of those weird kids that really liked veggies, and asparagus was one of my favorites, I like it grilled, roasted, stir fried, steamed, raw and in soup.
I made asparagus soup, with shitake mushrooms, and green onions. I cut up the asparagus, mushrooms, and onions and covered with water and simmered until just soft. Then I put them in the Vita Mix and pureed. I did add a bit of No Chic Bullion and black pepper. The soup tasted great, but I over pureed so it was a little too frothy!!!!

I also received a big bunch of radishes, so I sliced them and added green onion. I dressed with lime juice and olive oil, wow it was great. The radishes are super crunchy this year, it must be form all of the rain!!!

First Florida Corn

Growing up I always looked forward to the first corn of the summer and it usually disappointed. Growing up in South Eastern Idaho was not the first stop for the best produce, we were lucky to get iceberg lettuce, onions, and believe it or not we had more potatoes than you could shake a stick at!!!! When I moved to Boulder in the late 80's I started seeing Indian River sweet corn in high end restaurants. This corn was only available for a few weeks in the spring, but it was extremely crisp and sweet! I can remember one night after a busy shift the kitchen staff boiled up a whole case of the Indian River corn and we ate it all, man it was good. Well I have to say that the corn in these pictures was just as good. I did not see it advertised as Indian River and I picked it up at the local discount grocery, 3 ears for a dollar, it was awesome. I am usually a big proponent of eating local, but local corn is at least 2 months away, and it just looked too good.
I made Gimme Lean burgers, and sliced red new potatoes, that I baked with garlic and black pepper.
Carter really enjoyed his corn, finally getting a hang of the cob!!!!












Teaching Sofi(the Berner) how to eat corn on the cob, she got the hang of it pretty quickly. Tucker(the Lab) just wants to take it away and rub it all over the carpet.

Don't be Alfredo!!! It's vegan!!!

Man... I miss the 1980's. Being young... no responsibilities(aka kiddos)... Back to The Future Movies.... kick @sS electronic music.... and all you can eat pasta bars!!!!!!
Man noodles were cool, pasta was king, sauces were liquid gluttony!!!
I had the good fortune to work in some pretty outstanding restaurants in the 80's and 90's and got to experience a range from Contemporary American renditions of of European classics to working in a very polished northern Italian place complete with a cleaver wielding maniac chef from Florence, Italy. He taught me how to make Farfalle alla Brava and Capellini Alla Checca(I will divulge those secrets another day)
I have always been a noodle snob and being vegan has made it easier for me to not have to order pasta at a restaurant, because I am not easy to please when it comes to pasta!!!
The sauce must match the pasta!!!!!! This sauce is basically the same as my Mac N No Cheese recipe - minus the carrots(or the sauce would look like cheddar) and I add extra garlic, white wine and black pepper. This sauce has a big flavor, is thick, and goes well with regular spaghetti - linguine, or fettuccine. Green onions are nice garnish, but chopped capers would have been better.
The salad was basically red leaf lettuce and Annie's Goddess Dressing, we bought a big, giant bottle at Costco, and it took 3.5 months to use it all. Honestly though it is one of my all time favorite dressings!!

Vegan Lasagna Mac

OK... I try to make things that both look and taste good, unfortunately the photos do not always turn out as nice as the food tasted. I have found that it is universally difficult to photograph tomato sauce, and well the veggie crumbles are tricky too!!!
This was a simple dish for a busy evening. Martha Gooch big macaroni elbows(kids totally love those), Ragu Garden Veggie sauce, Boca Veggie Crumbles, fresh thyme, fresh oregano, extra extra virgin olive oil, and extra fresh garlic. We topped with Vegan Parmesan. We also had a nice big salad, and we would have had crusty bread but I did not have any!!
I love lasagna but it is kind of a hassle to put all of the ingredients together in advance and wait for it to cook, this dish basically achieves the same goal in one step. This is also a very inexpensive(about $10 for 6 servings), tasty and quick vegan meal. It takes about 20 minutes from opening the pantry to putting it on the table!!!

Vegan Sliders and oven fries! Oh My!!

I love burgers and fries!!!! I had a hard time getting used to Boca, Garden Burgers, and Morningstar Farm patties over the years. Before becoming vegan Nikki would eat them while I had "regular" burgers(of course in retrospect I feel like a $@&! for doing that, but I cannot travel back in time). Although for many years Nikki was vegetarian and I was not, I very rarely cooked any meat at home, I could not get into "earth" burgers, too dry, too bread-like.
After becoming vegan, we ate the traditional Bocas and Morningstars on occasion, but once we discovered Gimme Lean burgers moved back into regular rotation. The Gimme Lean comes in a tube and is easy to handle (although it does gross me out how it feels "meat" like). Once the patties are shaped they are pan fried for about 5 minutes on each side, or until brown. So very easy!!!!
The texture is great, you can finish with soy sauce and a bit of water and they are remarkably juicy!!! I like to load them up with all of the toppings and have the juices dripping off my elbows!!! I did these one slider style with onions, tomato, spinach, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. The rolls were from a local bakery, they had caraway seeds.
The fries were fresh potatoes, tossed in a bit of oil and baked on parchment at 400, til brown.

Vegan Nachos (Not Yo's)!

We love Mexican food!!! We love Mexico!!!! We love Mexicans!!!! Swine flu be damned!!!!
Nachos are an easy meal to whip together in a flash and it is generally well received by the little people!!
These nachos have Follow Your Heart cheddar, Follow Your Heart jack, black beans, Boca Crumbles, onion, green peppers, jalapenos and Tofutti Sour Supreme.
I layer every thing up and cook at 450 until the chips start to brown, then I broil for a minute or so until cheese bubbles!!!!

The rice is simple instant brown rice, with green chili enchilada sauce on top!!! This meal took about 15 minutes to prepare and was on the table 25 minutes after starting.
I try to follow as many other vegan food blogs and blogs about the challenges of being vegan. There are so many people who beat themselves up for not doing enough with activism and I like to encourage those people to reach out and share the joys of veganism with others and to share your story of compassion choices.
Just keep in mind that your compassionate choices make a difference. And even if your voice is not real loud it makes a difference for those with no voice at all. Leading one person to understand why you choose to be vegan is helping open the door for others to make the SHIFT. I tell my kids when they are given grief about being vegan to hold their heads high in the knowledge that they can go to bed each night with a clear conscience knowing that they make deliberate choices with the intent to do no harm to animals!!!!

CSA Salad #2, Wasabi No Oil Dressing

Get used to it!!!!!
This is going to be something you will see many times of the course of the next few months. I will go and pick up the Rolling Prairie CSA produce on Monday's and we will have a big salad!! But these salads are local, organic and fresh picked!!!! I will be adding new dressings and toppings as we move along.
Local items: baby spring greens, with extra arugula, spinach, shitake mushrooms.
From the store: red pepper, green pepper, white onion, garbanzo beans.

I decided to do a light dressing to complement the wonderful greens, so I took a teaspoon of wasabi and mixed with a tablespoon of soy sauce, a half teaspoon of powdered ginger, and a quarter cup of water. I just mixed the ingredients until well combined. The dressing had just enough bite to stand up to the nuttiness of the arugula, but it did not overpower the rest of the salad.
I really like to make my own dressings, they really can take a boring salad and take it to surprising places! I made a sweet style choke cherry dressing once that was pretty and exciting. Let me know if you have any exciting dressing ideas to try!!!!!
The salads were topped with a Boca Chik'n Pattie, lazy but tasty!!!!

Jalapeno Man

It's not all serious here at SHIFTvegan.
This is Jalapeno Man, he was spotted on Nikki's plate after his amigos burned her tongue real bad!!!!!








This is Jalapeno Man's cousin Pancho.... Looking hot!!!!