Rabbit Food

Fresh from the Farm

The majority of my food now a'days has centered around the incredible produce I receive from volunteering at Spring Creek Farm.  Along with an overflowing fridge of some of my favorite veggies, I've noticed a really interesting change in the way I think about meal preparation.

 Local Gazpacho

I believe that when one begins taking an interest in cooking, one (and I'm really talking about me here) may be seduced by foreign ingredients and complicated recipes.  I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, I think the allure of exotic flavors is a wonderful way to learn about foreign ingredients, their histories, and the way they are used in current cooking trends.  Not only is one's palate able to experience a whole new world of flavors, but one may learn a bit about the cultures from which the ingredients and recipes hail.  After experimenting with many kinds of cooking styles and flavor combinations, one usually ends up becoming a pretty decent cook too.

 

A rainbow of a garden salad made with local ingredients!

Having said this, I'm really enjoying my recent shift toward utilizing local ingredients.  The local food movement is an idea I've been interested in for a long time.  It's an interesting challenge.  Rather than thinking, "Okay, I want to make this recipe, so I'm going to run to the store and buy this-and-this-and-this," my musing now falls along the lines of  "Here are the ingredients I have available to me right now, how can I combine them to make something delicious?"  It has been an entirely new outlet in which to be creative.  Finally, I have an incredible sense of pride in knowing that I helped grow the food that I'm eating, or -in the case of the food I buy at our local farmers' market- that I'm supporting the livelihoods of local growers.

A Family Affair

Now that the majority of my closest friends live under the same roof, we decided that we should try to get together for a family dinner once in awhile.  Here's a peek of some of the goods we've made and enjoyed together so far.

 

Matt's Avocado, Parsley, and Garlic Brusectta

 

Spicy Baked Potatoes and Beet Green Salad with Slivered Almonds

 

Jordan's Mushroom, Cabbage, and Lentil Soup

    
 

Jordan and Anita's delicious Stuffed Green Peppers with, Tomatoes, Spinach, Sweet Yellow Onions and Chili

 Anita's Amazing Bharta (Eggplant Curry)

No, no kitty.  Not for you.

  Anita was all smiles, as always.

    

Time to dig in!

The Veggie Bistro Is The Place To Be!

There is a great new restaurant that has opened in Lawrence, The Tenth Street Vegetarian Bistro!

The Veggie Bistro is Lawrence's only vegetarian restaurant and has plenty of delicious vegan dishes too!  I'm especially excited about its opening, because I've recently started working there!!!  After trying many of the dishes, I can't rave enough about both the taste and quality of the food.

Here's a sneak peak at some of our amazing menu items:

A recent special, The Delicious Tofu Steak Burger.  Delectable marinated tofu on a wheat bun with grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, lettuce, tomatoes, and brown sauce.  Served with waffle sweet potato fries!

  Yummy Veggie Dumplings served with House Dipping Sauce

Cutie cook James showing off the amazing Vegan Fish and Chips!

 A close up of Vegan Fish and Chips 

  Oriental Coleslaw Salad with Tofu

Eggplant Lasagna

Fried Eggplant Fingers with Marinara Dipping Sauce

The best part, these dishes are even more tasty than they look!  So come on out and try The Veggie Bistro.  We are located on Tenth, between Massachusetts Street and New Hampshire Street.

Hours: 

Monday-Closed, Tuesday and Wednesday- 5 p-9:30p.  Thursday, Friday, Saturday-11:30a-2:30p, 5p-9:30p.  Sunday-11:30a-9:30p.

Stay Cozy

Just wanted to quickly share an amazing recipe for Spicy Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup.  I think the combination of sweet potatoes, coconut milk, and sesame oil is out of this world.  The spicy goodness is sure to keep you warm and snuggle-y as the temperatures drop (I'm looking out my window right now at our first flurries falling.)

Spicy Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup

Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, rinsed
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 Tbsp red curry paste
1 15-oz can unsweetened coconut milk
3 cups vegetable broth
3 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
1/2 cup fresh cilantro sprigs

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put the sweet potatoes in (right on the rack) and bake for about 45 minutes, or until tender. Remove from oven and let cool.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Saute the onion and ginger for about 5 minutes, or until the onion softens. Stir in the curry paste and cook for 1 minute. Add the coconut milk and broth (this is where I found the whisk came in handy) and gently bring to a boil. Reduce the heat so that it's just simmering, cover partially, and cook for 5 minutes.

Skin the sweet potatoes and cut into 1-inch chunks. Add them to the soup and cook for 5 more minutes.

Stir in the lemon juice and the salt. Put the soup into some bowls, drizzle with the sesame oil and throw a bit of cilantro on top.

Portland is for (Art, Food, Book, Beer) Lovers --Part 2--

Good day!  I'm back with more photos of our trip.  Just uploading these photos is making my heart hurt a little.  I miss you Portland!

I especially miss the spectacular, gargantuan bookstore, Powell's Books.  Powell's takes up a whole city block and is made up of several stories of new and used books.  They had a whole room of art books that completely blew my mind.  I'm use to the one tiny, pathetic corner of art and design books that Border's offers, so needless to say, I was in heaven.  Robert and I spent several hours perusing the many stacks of bound treasure before convincing ourselves that we should probably see the rest of Portland. 

We eventually headed down to Hawthorne Street for some vintage shopping and lunch (although we did end up in the baby Powell's located on Hawthorne as well.)  When our tummies started to rumble, we decided to try out Vege Thai.

I'll just start this review by admitting that I'm fairly bias in the Thai food department.  Here in Lawrence we are blessed with the amazing Zen Zero, an Asian fusion restaurant that has spoiled most of my experiences in Thai dining.  While I tried to give Vege Thai a fair shot, it did fall a little short on my measure-everything-against-Zen scale.  The flavors in our dishes were quite good, but fairly standard and not as dazzling as I wanted them to be.  One thing Vege Thai did have going for it was its variety of vegan proteins, with a choice of tofu, tempeh, soy chicken, soy pepper steak, and soy shrimp.  Soy shrimp, you say!  We were both curious so Robert tried his in a vegetable soup while I opted for the massamun curry.

I liked the imitation.  The shrimp was flavorful and visually appealing without tasting too much like the real deal. 

 

We spent a lot of time walking around Portland and checking out the neighborhoods.  Here is a great example of the great ways Portland uses its space and keeps things really down to earth, pun intended.

A sweet little produce market with a bounty of fall goodies.

After trotting around town, our next top was dinner.   As fiscally responsible as Robert is, his achilles' heel is fine dining.  The one thing he requested on our trip was to take me out to a schmany dinner.   So difficult, that one.  ;)

Robert picked a Peruvian restaurant called Andina.  It was hip and upscale without being stuffy or uncomfortable.  It even offered several vegan, and easily-made-vegan options!    The drink selection was also something to brag about.  They had quite a few quirky little cocktails made with exotic ingredients such as hibiscus nectar, roasted pineapple infused amber rum, pink guava nectar, acai, and passion fruit.  I ordered the ron-yki-on, roasted ginger-infused silver rum, grapefruit juice, lime juice, and cane sugar with a cardamom sugar rim.  Yum!  Our starter was warm, fresh bread served with delectable sauces including mint jalapeño, mango and habanero with cracker crumbs, and a peanut and cheese sauce.

I ordered the causa solterito as my appetizer, a cake of mashed potatoes infused with lime juice and served with avocado.  It's topped off with fresh veggies and a cheese salad, but I had them leave the queso off. 

  

 My main course was called hongos saltados which included wok-fried wild mountain mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions.  The mushrooms were out of this world, seasoned with garlic, soy sauce, and ají pepper.  The garlic rice and yukon potato french fries side dishes were just kinda...ehh.   Overall the meal was amazing and very filling;

about half of those twenty dollar mushrooms feed a homeless man dinner.

 

So I still have quite a bit of food left to talk about, and I don't like the idea of having a ridiculously long post.  Stay tuned for part three of pretty Portland.

 

More from Spooksville

I know it may be a tad late for posting about All Hallows' Eve, but more Hallowiener times were had that I think are worth sharing.  Halloween was sort of a split for me this year; I went sorta cray-cray channeling the spirit of Ms. Bouvier Beale and her love of gin (at least I imagine she loved her gin), then spent the remainder of the holiday weekend cozy-ing up/recovering with my sisters at home.  Here's a photo of all of us gals taken a couple of years ago, (what?!) doing what we do best:

And this is their incredible pumpkin from this year inspired by our crush on Mr. Jack Skellington from The Nightmare before Christmas.

I would simply call this one teenage angst.

 

In other news, our doggy Eleanor Rigby had six puppies on Halloween.  Let me lay this out there:  I DO NOT condone breeding animals.  In fact, I'm really against it.  There are too many beautiful pets out there that don't have homes, are abandoned, neglected, and put to sleep for people to pay to have their pets bread.  On the other hand, no matter how much I preach,  I can't tell my parents what to do with their animals.

...and the puppies are awfully cute.

Fianlly, we chowed on the three different kinds of amazing chili my stepdad made:  one regular, one without any beans (my mom's allergic to pretty much everything,) and one vegan version for me.  It's quite comical when I try to cook with my mom.  She is allergic to soybeans-which means no tofu, soymilk, or about half the products I consume-so we have to be really, really inventive.

I can't vouch for the other versions, but my chili was incredible!

The Perfect Sunday

Went like this:

-Convinced Robert to sleep in too late with me.

-Ate a yummy breakfast of (not-so-sufferin') succotash and did our internet-ing at The Merc.

-Went car shopping and picked out a new ride for Roberto.  (He was in a nasty wreck awhile ago.  No injuries on either end, thank goodness.)

-Took a really long nap.

-Had a bowl of the best soup I've ever made!

 
Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients:

2 medium butternut squash

1 can light coconut milk

1 cup almond milk

1/2 tbsp nutmeg

1/2 tbsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp milled flax seeds (I use Hodgson Mill)

1/2 tablespoon salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut butternut squash in halves.

Cook in oven until soft (About 25 minutes if I remember correctly.)

Blend the squash in food processor.

Add coconut milk and almond milk and blend some more.

Heat mixture on stove top and add the rest of the ingredients.

Garnish with sliced almond if desired.

So, so easy and it tastes amazing. With all of that nutmeg and cinnamon added it almost tastes like pumpkin pie filling but with a savory twist.  Oh my damn.  I must make more soon!

-Started reading The People of Paper which is already really wonderful.

-Went for a long run downtown.  For a Sunday night, there were quite a few people out on the town which was nice and distracting.  The weather was warmer than it has been lately and everything smelled like fall (plus there were leaves for a-crunching beneath my feet.)   

-Went and saw Where The Wild Things Are with a bunch of my friends including my good friend Melissa in town from Nashville.  I wrote about her stinkin' incredible photography in this post.

Despite the mixed reviews it received from our crowd, I thought it was absolutely beautiful and funny and better than I had hoped for.  Mr. Jonze did an excellent job of telling the story through the eyes of a child -especially in terms of the PERFECT dialogue- but addressing adult-ish themes that moved the plot right along.  Plus the soundtrack by Karen O (who is Spike Jonze's ex-girlfriend? Who knew?) was absolutely incredible and brought me to the verge of tears so many times.

-Visited mah darlin' while he was workin at Henry's.

-Came home and started cookin' for a big dinner for my babes tomorrow while watching Art 21 episodes. 

-Unfortunately, the combination of the ridiculously long nap and the coffee I drank whilst visiting Robert has made it impossible to sleep.  It's now early morning, so I suppose it was both a very good and very long Sunday.  Work tomorrow-I mean today-shall be interesting.

See you in the a.m.  Oh wait.

Garden Gumbo

    I think Typepad has a way of dulling my photos.  My images are all nice and bright before I upload them, but appear really drab and muted on le old blog.  Why blog, why?  I can't figure it out.  Any suggestions?

Anywho...

    I made some gumbo!  Almost every ingredient -except for the soyrizo, mushrooms, and can of tomatoes-is from my mom and step-dad's garden.  My step-dad Tom showed up at my apartment awhile back with some huge, overgrown okra.  (My neighbors must wonder about the shady veggie dealings that go on around here.)  The okra were too thick for eating raw or cooking, but perfect for a nice crock pot gumbo.  I also had some potatoes, green peppers, onions, and zucchini from their bounty to add in as well.

I can't really post a recipe because I think the whole purpose of both gumbo and crock pots is to just throw in all the ingredients you want and let the magic happen.  I used two cups of vegetable broth; an insane amount of garlic, six or seven cloves, I think; basil; Cajun seasoning; and the ingredients mentioned above and let them cook on low for about ten hours.  I added the soyrizo (half a package) and mushrooms about four hours before the batch was done since they don't need as much time to cook.

I stinkin' love my crock pot.  It really great for thick stews or gumbos because you can put most of the ingredients in at once, allowing lots of time for all the flavors to get acquainted.  Plus the whole shebang requires very little effort and the results are almost always incredible.

I also need to find a home for all this pretty squash from zhe garden.  I almost don't want to cook it at all and just have it around for looking...almost.

Yay Fall!