Thursday, Friday pizza, Saturday, and Bob's Red Mill

Saturday Shopping List

canteloupe!
1 lb. baby lima beans
5 tomatoes
3 yellow peaches
3 white peaches
1 pint blueberries
6 onions
10 carrots
3 ears of corn
1 pint shiitake mushrooms
12-oz jar of strawberry jam
and a 16-oz iced coffee

total: $28


Thursday Shopping List

1 bunch curly kale
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 quart green beans
1 pint raspberries
1 pint blackberries
4 heirloom tomatoes
1 spaghetti squash
6 ears of corn
1 loaf country white bread

total: $36

Mark has made a soup with rice, red beans, corn, onion, carrots, and cayenne pepper. Overall, it has a sweet taste, from the corn, carrots, and cayenne, and of course a hot taste.

Ordered Papa John's last night, with onions, mushrooms and black olives. I tried putting Diaya's mozzerella cheese on it, but the cheese had been in the fridge and was too cold, so it didn't really work with the pizza, which wasn't quite hot enough. I only tried that on one slice. We got that cheese for a pasta last week, and it was amazing. They have it at Fu-Wah. Daiya cheese is not a soy product. The ingredients are: Filtered water, tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and /or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, coconut oil, pea protein, salt, vegan natural flavours, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, xanthan gum, citric acid (for flavor).

I forgot to stop at the Slow Rise Bakery table today for more granola. I usually only stop there if I want sweets, so today I skipped it, completely forgetting that last week I bought a lb. of delicious maple granola there and meant to get more. May have to visit the store for some granola or cereal. On the topic of cereal, I have to recommend Bob's Red Mill products (grain products). Not only because they are good, but because the owner earlier this year transferred ownership of the company to the employees. I will vote for that company with my dollars every chance I get. The people who do the work should reap the rewards.

Papa John's

Everyone wants junk food once in a while. I recently had a depressing experience in which the facilitators of a group I was part of ordered pizza for everyone as kind of a surprise treat, as we were all exhausted and had been working long hours. Of course, it was all cheese, even though it's fairly easy to get vegan pizza in Philly (or anyplace there's a Papa John's). I know my group did not intend to exclude me, or the other two vegans in the group, or our lactose-intolerant colleague. It's just that people don't typically think of pizza as a vegan food. But pizza is actually one of my favorite foods.

Shortly after the above-mentioned incident, our group had pizza again, but this time it wasn't a surprise, and I was able to put in a request for no-cheese pizza, which was no problem. The local place we ordered from didn't really know how to do it, and there wasn't much flavor, as they apparently relied on the cheese and meat for flavor and didn't bother with the sauce or crust, but at least we all had something to eat. Papa John's, on the other hand, makes a delicious and flavorful cruelty-free pizza. Counterintuitively, even their "butter" garlic sauce that comes with the pizza... is vegan.

So, for your informational delight, here is a suggestion for a cruelty-free pizza you might order. This is a screen-shot of my actual online shopping cart on the Papa John's website.

It's as easy as that. No animal cruelty anywhere in there. Papa John's online menu allows you to select "No Cheese" from a drop-down menu. We've ordered this several times (except we don't usually get pineapple, because I'm the only one in the house who likes pineapple on pizza), and it has never once turned up with cheese on it. Interestingly, the one time we ordered from Papa John's face-to-face, they did screw it up and put cheese on it. But every time we've ordered online, it's gone well. And during football season, you can often find specials where you get extra toppings depending on how many touchdowns your home team scores. Fun, huh? And not a bad deal.

First Farmers' Market in December

Here it is, December 5th. First snow in the forecast. And we've just come back from shopping at the farmers' market.The Clark Park market was back, after its unnerving hiatus last week. It was 66 degrees on Thursday. Today it's in the 30s. Kind of exciting and cozy. We bundled up and walked down to the park. It was raining a drizzly rain, but the air is so cold it bites your face a little bit, and my boots did not sink into the mud the way they do in summer and fall. It feels like winter out there, for sure. It smells like winter. Yesterday, we rearranged and cleaned the living room. Now that we're back from shopping, the plan is not to leave the house again.

So what do you get at a farmers' market in December?

Saturday Shopping List

about 3 pints of chestnuts

1 quart or so of yukon potatoes

1 bunch of curly kale

1 head of green leaf lettuce

1 stalk of brussels sprouts

1 giant head of cauliflower

1 quart of white mushrooms

a lot of purple carrots

7 smallish red tomatoes

4 yellow onions

2 green peppers

a jar of strawberry jam

1 loaf of white bread

1 loaf of red onion sourdough bread

3 chocolate-banana muffins

total: $52.45

On the way home, we stopped by a small grocery for bagels. That's what I had for breakfast, with sauteed tofu and onions. Still have red lentils and plenty of beans, along with sweet potatoes, sauerkraut, broccoli and some dark kale. The dark kale actually makes a good salad green if you shred it up. I had a dark kale salad last night, with onion, garlic, mushrooms, and topped with tiny bits of crispy fried potatoes, with poppy seed dressing. Have also been eating a lot of rice noodles (Thai Kitchen instant noodles), topped with sauteed peppers, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, whatever we have. A staple lately has been brussels sprouts with sauerkraut. The only seasoning it needs is garlic and a little bit of salt.

Thursday night, we had a pizza from Papa John's. The first time they delivered it, it was mistakenly covered with cheese. By the time they delivered the correct pizza (tomato sauce, mushrooms, onion, black olives, green peppers, and banana peppers), we were starving and the pizza was delicious.

I'm watching HGTV for the rest of the day.