Market log: a salad, a stew, and courgette spread

(Nederlandstalige versie)

Here’s what I got at the market last month: lots of tomatoes for €1; eleven leeks for €1; strawberries for €1.25; six yellow courgettes for €1; seven fennel bulbs for €1; a bag of yellow peppers for €1, and a bowl of Brussels sprouts for €1.

Most of it went into soups and stews, but I also made pizza (as always), polenta with seitan and roasted vegetables, fennel and courgette salad, and roasted Brussels sprouts.

On the left: I got a mandoline on sale for €5 last month so I’ve been eating a lot of things in thinly sliced form. Apparently this method makes raw vegetables taste extra good because this courgette and fennel salad made me love raw courgette. I had the leftovers with the pesto and tomato toastie shown above.

On the right: Another good way to use up your courgettes is this courgette butter I’ve posted about before. I’m happy to report that it’s just as good with yellow courgettes, especially on fresh bread with a little pesto on top. (That’s a fennel, potato, and tomato stew on the side.)

Some of the yellow peppers also went into a stew but I’ll save that recipe for a separate post. Speak to you soon!

Courgette butter

I was looking for something savoury to spread on my toast when I came across this recipe for courgette butter on the Kitchn. I love it because courgettes/zucchini are almost always inexpensive and apart from a bit of grating and stirring, the recipe requires very little work: just grate your courgettes and sautée them over low heat with a pinch of salt and a few cloves of minced garlic until it all cooks down into a delicious butter. I used two large-ish courgettes, cooked them in a mixture of olive and sunflower seed oil for over an hour and got a generous cup of the spread for about €0,50. Courgettes are one of my favourite vegetables, and I love the mild buttery flavour of this spread; I really enjoyed it on top of bread and hummus.

VeganMoFo 14: Vegan 100

Old picture, but who cares: this was delicious! Long, thin slices of courgette, filled with sundried tomato tapenade, rolled up, and pierced with a rosemary twig. They’re are a really great snack. I should make them again. I used the oven, by the way, not the BBQ as the recipe suggests. I made the rolls after this recipe that a friend suggested when I asked for recipes using rosemary. My parents had a beautiful rosemary plant in their garden, but they removed it a few weeks ago. So sad!

Since I have no other food photos to post today, I thought I’d share with you my Vegan 100!

Bazu posted this list of food items she’s tried and I’d like to do the same. Now that I filled out, I’m a little embarrassed that I have only eaten a few of them so far. I actually had to google a couple of the foods because I had never heard of them… Oh well – at least I learned a lot! And I like to think that I’m going to end up trying all 100 things eventually.

Rules:
1) Copy this list into your blog or social networking site profile, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out or italicize any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment on this post linking to your results.

The Vegan Hundred (my comments in italics):

1. Molasses (only blackstrap)
2. Cactus/Nopales
3. Scrambled Tofu
4. Grilled Portobella Caps
5. Fresh Ground Horseradish
6. Sweet Potato Biscuits
7. Arepa
8. Vegan Coleslaw
9. Ginger Carrot Soup
10. Fiddlehead Ferns
11. Roasted Elephant Garlic
12. Umeboshi
13. Almond Butter Toast
14. Aloe Vera
15. H and H Bagel NYC
16. Slow Roasted Butternut Squash
17. White truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Freshly ground wasabi
20. Coconut Milk Ice Cream (I haven’t seen it in stores yet, but I had it homemade and at a restaurant)
21. Heirloom tomatoes (Not…sure? x_x)
22. Orchard-fresh pressed apple cider
23. Organic California Mango
24. Quinoa
25. Papaya Smoothie
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet or Habañero pepper
27. Goji Berry Tea
28. Fennel
29. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie
30. Radishes and Vegan Buttery Spread
31. Starfruit
32. Oven fresh Sourdough bread
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices
34. Sauerkraut
35. Acai Smoothie
36. Blue Foot Mushrooms
37. Vegan Cupcake from Babycakes nyc
38. Sweet Potatoes and Tempeh combo
39. Falafel
40. Spelt Crust Pizza
41. Salt and Pepper Oyster Mushrooms
42. Jicama Slaw
43. Pumpkin Edamame Ginger Dumplings
44. Hemp Milk
45. Rose Champagne
46. Fuyu
47. Raw Avocado-Coconut Soup
48. Tofu Pesto Sandwich
49. Apple-Lemon-Ginger-Cayenne fresh-pressed juice…with Extra Ginger
50. Grilled Seitan
51. Prickly pear
52. Fresh Pressed Almond Milk
53. Concord Grapes off the vine (I have had grapes from the garden, but those probably aren’t Concord grapes…
54. Ramps (So what’s the difference between these and spring onions/scallions/green onions…? the Wikipedia articles confuse me.)
55. Coconut Water fresh from a young coconut
56. Organic Arugula
57. Vidalia Onion
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics
59. Honeycrisp Apple
60. Poi
61. Vegan Campfire-toasted Smores
62. Grape seed Oil
63. Farm fresh-picked Peach
64. Freshly-made pita bread with freshly-made hummus (Well… I have made hummus)
65. Chestnut Snack Packs
66. Fresh Guava
67. Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
68. Raw Mallomar from One Lucky Duck, NYC
69. Fried plantains
70. Mache
71. Golden Beets
72. Barrel-Fresh Pickles
73. Liquid Smoke
74. Meyer Lemon
75. Veggie Paella
76. Vegan Lasagna
77. Kombucha
78. Homemade Soy Milk
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Lychee Bellini
81. Tempeh Bacon
82. Sprouted Grain Bread
83. Lemon Pepper Tempeh
84. Vanilla Bean
85. Watercress
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself
87. Vegan In-Season Fruit Pie
88. Flowers
89. Corn Chowder
90. High Quality Vegan Raw Chocolate (I’ve had a raw chocolate-flavoured energy bar and raw cocoa beans, but not actual raw chocolate…)
91. Yellow fuzz-free Kiwi (does that mean the golden kiwi? I did have something called golden kiwi… and I much preferred the green variety.)
92. White Flesh Grapefruit
93. Harissa
94. Coconut Oil
95. Jackfruit
96. Homemade Risotto
97. Spirulina
98. Seedless ‘Pixie’ Tangerine
99. Gourmet Sorbet, not store bought
100. Fresh Plucked English Peas

So that’s… 24/100! Crap. Do this mean I fail at veganism? I sure hope not.

Well anyway, glad I learned about some new vegetables and dishes that I hadn’t heard of before! And I’m looking forward to trying every single thing on the list.