Tasty Thursday: Italian Casserole

Recently I ordered five pounds of spinach powder.  The price was right and I had been under the impression it could be subbed out directly for flour in recipes.  This is my first attempt at cooking with it and I have to admit the results were delicious.

3/4 cup Bob's Red mill GF blend
1/2 cup spinach powder
1/2 a purple CSA onion, chopped
a couple of generous handfuls of fresh spinach from the farmer's market
egg replacer to equal 3 eggs
1 1/2 cups almond milk
a sprinkle of minced garlic
2 gorgeous CSA tomatoes, sliced
2 cups Daiya shreds
3 Tbsp Earth Balance
3/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350, coat 9x13 baking pan with cooking spray.  Mix together all ingredients except for fresh spinach and tomato.

Line bottom of pan with spinach, top with tomato slices. 

Pour mixture over veggies in pan, spreading it out to all the edges.  Bake 35-40 minutes.  Cut into squares and enjoy!

Have you ever cooked with spinach powder?  Do you have any ideas you can share with me? I promise to play around with whatever I can and post about the results.

Gorgeous Farmer's Market Onions and French Breakfast Radishes

Are these veggies beautiful or what?  Just thinking about the fact that the Farmer's Market and CSA seasons are half over is making me sad.  I recognize that I enjoy being in the environment of our CSA farm and the local Farmer's Market as much as I enjoy eating the fruits of the farmers' labor.  It is such a blessing to have access to healthy food and the diversity of what you find at a CSA or Farmer's Market is so much more interesting than going to the local big box grocery chain for the same old, same old.

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.