Lazy Saturdays

The last couple weekends I've done some fun cooking and baking with local fruits and veggies. I made some cute tiny blueberry-peach pies in muffin tins, but didn't take a picture. I also made this tart with the same filling and crust. The peaches were from the farmers market, and the blueberries were frozen from picking a couple months ago.





The other weekend I made a really good tempeh scramble for breakfast. I steamed the tempeh to make it less dry and take away the bitterness, and steamed some chopped potatoes along with. Then I browned the potatoes in a little oil, added the tempeh, garlic, and onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme, and sesame oil. Then I added zucchini, tomatoes, and scallions, and when they were cooked and the potatoes and tempeh were brown, I added some soy sauce and nutritional yeast. I ate it with some salsa and spinach salad. And probably coffee.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins

No recipe with this post, because I used the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe and didn't make much in the way of changes. After a second round of blueberry picking, I wasn't motivated to bake a pie so I made these, ate a ton of berries, and froze a huge ziplock bag of them. I'll probably bake a pie with some of those later.

I'd like to try these with some whole grain flour, but don't know if they'd be too heavy considering they're already half cornmeal. Has anyone out there tried baking with a combination of cornmeal and whole wheat flour?

Brief gripe: I like all the muffin and cupcake recipes I've tried in Vegan with a Vengeance and that whole line of books, but the proportions for the recipes as a whole are almost always way off. This didn't really make 12 muffins. It made 12 really short muffins that aren't really muffin shaped. I should have made it into 8 or 10. This sort of nonsense is ok with cupcakes, cause you can frost them and make them look more normal, but really. Just scale up the recipes ladies.

Bad blogger!

Me, not you. You're great.

I'm going to try posting more frequently. Since I cook every day, that really shouldn't be so hard. I'm just starting to get the hang of it, or so I think, but not so much that I can't change it up. Let me know what you like, don't like, want to see more or less of, and I'll try to accommodate! (I also just love getting comments...they make me feel fake internet-popular).



I'm not going to post about food I made today, really. Why? Because last night I roasted this beet and this turnip to put on salads, and after I turned the oven off and was making the rest of the salad, I forgot all about them sitting in the oven. Until this morning! (Don't worry - I am still eating them). So who's a food authority? Not me, that's who. Not today at least.

But you know who is?

Jeff and Amanda - www.bluehousegreenhouse.blogspot.com
All you Portlanders can buy organic heirloom veggie and herb starts from them. Can and should!

and

Jamie Oliver - http://www.hulu.com/jamie-olivers-food-revolution
This show (Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution) is about transforming the way the unhealthiest town in America eats, and it's actually really good so far. Kind of cheesy, but has a lot of good information about our food system and school food in particular. I can't believe ABC is actually airing it. I think it's on Friday nights on real TV.

It's not stuff I made, so I'll post this chana masala from an Indian restaurant a bunch of us went to in Eugene, OR last month. It was pretty good, not too exciting.



And here's some vodka I infused with blueberries I picked last Summer. I couldn't freeze them, because I was moving across the country, so I dried some, baked as many as I could into pies, and made this. I poked about 6 holes in each one with a toothpick, because someone on the internet told me to. It probably helped infuse the flavor and color some, but might not have been necessary considering most of it is still infusing 8 months later. I think most of the alcohol ended up in the blueberries somehow, because they're pretty gross tasting at this point, and the blueberry flavor entirely ended up in the liquid. Weird.

More pies, and a correctly oriented picture

This seems like a good time to rehash some pies I made last Summer. Oregon is as good for berry picking as Minnesota is cold in Winter, so I picked a lot of berries last Summer. Then I had to move, so freezing them wasn't an option. They ended up dried, infused in vodka, and baked into pies instead.

U-pick blueberry farms are great, and I picked a ton of them, but wild huckleberries are amazing. This pie had both. It was really good despite the fuzzy dim pictures.
For real though, if you're in the Northwest, go huckleberry picking. Even if you can find them at the farmer's market they cost about $8 for a pint. We picked about 3 gallons in a day. Take that, farmer's market!





There's a magic place with a grove of unsprayed cherry trees near Portland, and if you're in the know you can pick buckets and buckets of rainier and bing cherries for free. It's even legal! If anyone knows where that happens in Minnesota, let me know and I'll meet you there. Usually I thicken fruit pies with arrowroot, just a few tablespoons for a pretty big pie. This was mostly rainier, because we picked more of those than bing. I know sweet cherries aren't traditional for pie, but I just used less sugar and it turned out great.



Look! I figured out how to turn pictures! Just to show I'm not totally inept. I promise once I run out of old pictures this blog will be less about how great Portland is. Minnesota has berries too, and it will have pies of its own.