Saturday Market

2 lbs. asparagus
12 fat orange carrots
1 baby green leaf (curly) lettuce
1 baby purple leaf lettuce
1 large green leaf lettuce
8 red potatoes
1 big white potato
5 small yellow sweet onions
1 pint white mushrooms
1 portobello mushroom cap
2 bulbs garlic
23 oz. jar of homemade apple sauce
1 oz. black pepper
1 loaf multi-grain bread
one plain bagel

Total: $36.72

Sauteed 5 of the white mushrooms with fennel seeds, onions, and pepper, piled onto a bagel with the green curly and purple lettuces and vegenaise.

Then steamed some asparagus and carrots with olive oil, Old Bay seasoning, salt and pepper. They are perfect, steamed for 6 minutes. (pictured above)

I've been baking sweet and white potatoes in the oven in the cast iron skillet, at 400 degrees, for about 35 minutes. Cut the potatoes and coat with olive oil, then toss with salt, pepper, and Old Bay seasoning, and include some crushed cloves of garlic. Makes a great side for a sandwich.


Asparagus is plentiful at the market all of a sudden, and so far we're not tired of just steaming it. But there is also this great, quick, lazy meal. Steam the asparagus for six minutes, and during the last three minutes, cook some Thai Kitchen Garlic & Vegetable rice noodles. Sprinkle some garlic powder either on the asparagus, the noodles, or both, throw the two components together in a bowl and be amazed. It's really unusually good.

Autumn soup part II, and NaNoWriMo

I missed the farmers' market on Saturday because of the Praxis exams. Mark went and only spent about $30 again. (I know, right? How? It's shady, I'm telling you.) I don't have an exact list, but it was basically:

Saturday Shopping List

about 8 sweet potatoes

2 big red peppers

1 lb of red lentils

1 head of green leaf lettuce

a wonderful loaf of white bread

a purple cauliflower

a Roman cauliflower

a portabella cap

a bunch of maroon carrots

1 oz of Season All

...some other things. It's Wednesday now, and I wasn't there, anyway, so this is obviously not comprehensive. Plus, it's November, so all I know is I went to Fu-Wah and bought 8 packs of 3-minute noodle soup. It's Thai Kitchen. Only two varieties of that are vegan - Garlic Vegetable and Spring Onion - the rest have either shrimp essence or for some reason milk fat. Garlic Vegetable is my favorite and I saute garlic and onion to add to them. Quick dinner. I did take time to make a soup, because that saves tons of time later in the week. It's the Indian Lentil soup presented in the last post. I already blogged it, so I shouldn't blog it again, but anything to keep from writing, and also, I have brilliant new pictures and a legitimate piece of information: The soup was better the second time. Much better. And redder.

I added purple cauliflower to the mix. Used more sweet potato. Red onion instead of yellow. More red pepper. Now when you heat it up, you really smell the red pepper. And more lentils. Basically, I made a little bit bigger batch of soup and made it more dense.

Oh, and I found a white sweet potato. From the outside, it looked exactly like all the other sweet potatoes. I cut it open and it was snow white inside. I baked it and it tasted like cake. I swear to god, this sweet potato tasted like cake. It was unreal. I need more of them. I put this one in the soup (the half of it that I didn't eat straight out of the oven), but I need more of them just to eat. Look at this beautiful soup and its beautiful components.

In other food news, while I was at work yesterday, my baby rearranged the kitchen. In a good way. I leave you with this.

Friday noodles

We're out of nearly everything. It's time for noodles. Picked these up at Fu-Wah this morning. You could use any type of light noodles. I cooked these with the stock packet that is provided with them, but it is very mild. The toppings are going to be the good part, anyway.

At first I underestimated the size of the portion and didn't saute enough portabella mushrooms, onion, and garlic to put on these. When I came to my senses, I increased the amount you see here by about three times. When it was done (about 3 minutes), I added the toppings, sprinkled on some oregano, and enjoyed with toast spread with a mixture of olive oil and crushed garlic.





The finished dish was surprisingly good. Nonetheless, tomorrow is Saturday, and I'll dream of grocery lists tonight. I want something different tomorrow. I'm going to do something we don't usually do. I don't know what yet. I want to buy something that's a different color or a weird shape or a stronger taste than anything we normally cook. I will, of course, report back.

Featured in this recipe: Portabella mushrooms. An excellent source of several good things, including protein, vitamin B6, potassium, and fiber.


(Source)