Tasty Thursday: End of Summer Watermelon Salad

We've been blessed with a gorgeous yellow watermelon from our CSA share several times now.  First one went to my Dad's birthday celebration where it got rave reviews from all ages and provided some adorable photo ops with a baby who was having a ball feeding it to himself.  Last week's melon was left for my daughter to share with some company she had while we were out of town for the weekend, however she ended up not using it.  So when I picked up my share this week I knew I still had the one in my fridge and with there being little space for another one I chose the smallest one I could find and set out to make something with the older melon ASAP when I arrived home.  This is what came of it:

Into your nice, large salad bowl place the following ingredients then toss to mix:

Half a lovely organic yellow watermelon, cubed (reserve rind for pickling if desired)
Two cups organic home-sprouted mung beans
Two organic carrots, shredded
One small organic onion, chopped
A handful of organic cilantro, chopped
Sea salt and ground pepper to taste (optional)

I added balsamic to this, however one of the folks in my house doesn't have  a taste for vinegar lately so we dressed the salad individually once plated.  I served it over a bed of organic spring mix greens.

What are you waiting for?  Go cut that watermelon you have sitting in your fridge from this week's CSA share and enjoy!

Waste Not Want Not Wednesday: Pickled Watermelon Rind

So we got this gorgeous little organic watermelon from our farm share and I thought it was a shame to throw away so much rind.  I've never done anything with watermelon rind before but I really wanted to find a way to use this organic food rather than discard it so we gave this recipe from Eco Lesbo Vego a try.  Being only eleven weeks out from surgery I'm not planning to eat more than a taste but I know the rest of the family will enjoy it. 

Here are the ingredients I went with:
half the rind of a small, round, organic watermelon cut into 1" chunks, white only, skin completely removed and discarded
1 cup water
1 cup Bragg's apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup organic sugar

Simply combine vinegar, water and sugar in a saucepan until sugar is dissolved.  Add rind, stir, then turn off heat and leave mixture to cool.  Once at room temperature transfer rind and liquid to jars.  This quantity yielded two pint and a half jars.  (Did you spot my scoby photobombers in the picture above?)

This is not a recipe meant for canning and must be stored in the refrigerator.  Enjoy!

Tasty Thursday: Real Simple Cranberry Sauce

I got an email from Real Simple Magazine that featured Thanksgiving recipes.  This one caught my eye because it contained ginger, which I love.  Even better is despite the cranberry sauce being very big on flavor the ingredient list is nice and small.  No last minute runs to the store to make this.

12 oz. fresh cranberries
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tsp. fresh ginger

My Mom doesn't really like ginger so I reduced the amount in the recipe from one tablespoon to one teaspoon thinking it would be just a hint of flavor but I guess my nice, fresh, organic ginger was very much filled with flavor because it very present.  I'll make some plain cranberry sauce for Mom.

Waste Not Want Not Wednesday: Citrus Peel Air Freshener

I am a huge fan of citrus fruit.  I eat two or more a day.  So I have lots of peels.  Want a nice scent in your home?  Toss one of those peels into a pot and turn it on to simmer. 

For me, rather than burning the propane to keep the stove going for this air freshener I simmer it on my heater.  Let me explain - I live in a house that tends to be very dry in the winter from a forced hot air heater in the living room.  To combat this, we keep an old stainless steel saucepan filled with tap water on top of the vent.  As the heat blows out the water evaporates into the air.  Back when I was growing up in a house with radiators I can remember my parents having a container that hung over the radiator for the same purpose.  I drop a citrus peel into this pot and we get a nice scent throughout the house any time the heater is running.  It doesn't cost anything to heat the water this way (we have to heat the house anyway) and the peel from the yummy orange I ate for breakfast gets used a little before it is discarded.

Beautiful CSA share food.

This was our first week's bounty. It is so beautiful I've been using it as the background on my laptop and just now felt inspired to share it...with you.

Did You Know That Beet Leaves are Delicious?

No? Never tasted them you say? Well then I'm happy to report they are. Although you may have to get them from your CSA share or a Farmer's Market in order to get the crispy, earthy, delicious ones I have been fortunate enough to enjoy for two farm seasons now. They go great on sandwiches and in salads. The salad you see above was my lunch today. To give my own twist on what Mythbusters always say - DO try this at home.

Very Delicious Vegan Lunch Salad, Courtesy of our Very Adored CSA Share

1 can TJs organic Garbanzo Beans
the leaves and stems of 2 farm Beets, chopped
1 farm Salad Turnip, cut into small pieces
chopped fruit of your choosing (today all I had was an apple, so in it went)
a small sprinkle of Sea Salt
1 clove fresh garlic, chopped
Vegenaise

Enjoy the heck out of it!

FYI, I don't believe I'd ever had fresh garlic until last year when we were finally lucky enough to make it from CSA waiting lists to CSA Shareholder. Let me say that the extra effort it takes to peel garlic whose outsides haven't been dried into little bits of paper is well worth the taste. Yum.

Chop, mix, enjoy the heck out of it!

Frustration at the Farmer's Market

Today I went to the Farmer's Market. Our local market is quite small but always worth stopping by. I got my hubby some nice dry Italian sausage at one stand.

At another I inquired as to whether the beautiful gluten-free items were also vegan. I was quickly told no, all items had both eggs and butter. I smiled, said 'thanks anyway' and started to walk away. The vendor stopped me to hand me her card. I told her I appreciated the effort but I am a vegan, and my daughter (who was not present), while still eating eggs, is an otherwise animal-ingredient free vegetarian. She seemed to become short of patience with me when she started to tell me she could make cupcakes that were vegan. I nodded and told her that baking vegan/gluten free was not easy, was a challenge I'd been up against for years and that I understood. She persisted in telling me how hard it is to make cookies vegan/gf, etc. I finally extracted myself from the situation wondering what she had hoped to accomplish. Did she expect me to suddenly not be sensitive (morally or physically) to animal products?

As I made my way back to my car I spotted nice quarts of sour cherries for $3. Stopping to buy some I experienced frustration #2 of the local market. I asked the woman not to bag them, since I had bags in the car. She nodded vacantly at me and picked up a plastic bag. I held out my hand and said, 'no bag necessary' thinking that maybe she hadn't heard me the first time, but she continued to bag them, then set them in front of me and asked 'is that bag, ok?' I gave up, it wasn't worth trying to explain when she clearly wasn't listening. So I hand her a nice, crisp $10 and apologize for not having a smaller bill. She hands me back two singles. I stop a minute, waiting for the $5 but she starts to go back to her chair. I politely tell her I gave her a 10, to which she says 'and I gave you back 7'. Meanwhile I'm standing in front of her dangling two singles from one hand and one single in the other hand which had originally held $11 till I gave the $10 to her. She stood there a moment, then begrudgingly gave me a $5 bill.

I guess I'll stick with my CSA, despite the fact that I don't get much fruit there. The people are such sweethearts I must be spoiled by them.

The Best Produce Bags You'll Ever Use.

I made these produce bags and quite a few more from a remnant purchased from my local fabric shop (not the big, chain place, the Mom & Pop place) for $2.70. Oh, how I wish I'd purchased more of it!

The fabric was a not very attractive looking mauvey-pinkey gauze with lots of space in the weave. Whatever it was intended for, in the pre-washed state it wasn't very pretty and was just a bunch of pulls waiting to happen. For all I know it might have been intended to be waste fabric, because it certainly couldn't have stood up to much. But one of my favorite things to do with fabric is to buy things that aren't intended for washing and wash them to see what I end up with. This turned into a lighter pink, seersuckerish gauze that makes a bag intended for a large bunch of carrots with the tops still attached weigh about .07 on my postal scale!

I didn't make them with concern for weight since their intended use was for our organic farm share pickups but once I discovered how well food kept in them I continued using them once the farm season was over. Cashiers often panic or get annoyed when they see them, thinking they have to take the produce out of the bag to weigh it for me. I solve this in two ways - use the self-service line and avoid the cashier totally or tell them right off that I'm using fabric produce bags (as well as fabric grocery bags) and that there is no need for them to remove the produce to weigh it. I had a young guy in his 20's get a little annoyed with me, trying to convince me they weighed too much and I shouldn't be 'charged' for them each time they were used. I told him how much they weighed on my scale and that I'd also weighed a store plastic bag and found a difference so small I was willing to take it.

Produce stays so much longer in these bags. The moisture that icks up produce in plastic bags is absorbed by the cloth bag, keeping the fruit and vegetable surface nice and dry. If the food isn't used right away, I'm told the moisture captured in the bag keeps it moist. Whatever it is, I love these bags! Just like my cloth napkins, they're tossed into the laundry allong with our towels. They take up next to no room in the wash and come out nice and fresh every time. They cost so little it won't bother me at all when it is time to toss one on the compost.

I haven't found that great fabric again, but I have invested in twenty yards of a similar fabric in white. I plan to make a good supply of these to offer to folks who might want to have some. Can anyone think of a fun drawing I might run here?