Whopping Shopping

Day 5 of bar prep, complete.  Only 51 days to go–woooo!!!  Ugh.  Seriously, I cannot believe how exhausted I already am!  Even though law school amazingly does not in the slightest way prepare one to take this most important of exams, it luckily does turn one into a master of diversion and methods for taking mental breaks.  Case in point: today before sitting down for hours of practice essays, I commandeered H’s car and drove to Heaven Russo’s Market for a shopping bonanza.  For $19.85, here is what I got:

A head of Romaine lettuce, a 2-lb. bag of yellow onions, two carrots, a giant parsnip, a jalapeno, a chunk of ginger, a head of cauliflower, 4 bananas, a 5-lb. bag of Yukon gold potatoes, a buttload of fava beans, a giant head of the most fragrant cilantro imaginable, two limes, a tomato, a giant beet bulb, an avocado, and a huge fresh Syrian flatbread.

Not too shabby.

I know I’ve mentioned before how much I love Russo’s, but…dear Lord, I do love Russo’s.  It is a sprawling paradise of incredibly fresh and varied produce (including some things I’ve never heard of), yet somehow every time I go to the cash register, I get reverse sticker shock–disbelief over how little it costs.  The only possible drawback is how nauseatingly crowded it can get on the weekends.  It’s totally worth it; I just always make sure to swallow a heaping tablespoonful of patience before heading in there.

Anyway, now that I have all of this wonderful food in my kitchen, and a Sunday afternoon to myself, I’m excited to do some food prep for the week ahead.  I plan to eat a wonderful salad every day with the head of romaine I bought, so I’m going to roast the beet and shell the fava beans to throw into that, along with avocado, chopped carrots, and cilantro.  A very exciting prospect indeed!

I’m super-excited to eat the fava beans in particular. They’re waiting to be parboiled at the moment:

Giant, perfect favas! I went for big, sturdy pods this time. Seriously, look at the size of this fava bean pod! (No, I didn’t take this picture just to show off my ring :))

And check out the size of the flatbread.  This is it stretched over my stove:

I used a pizza cutter to slice it into portions, which I wrapped in cling wrap and put in the fridge for H and I to use this week.  But not before I had a flatbread “pizza” for lunch:

Spread with Tribe Forty Spices hummus and topped with artichokes, sundried tomatoes, and chili garlic sauce.  SO GOOD.

I’m also cooking tonight–yay!!!  Red Lentil and Cauliflower Curry from Veganomicon.  It’s going to make a giant vat of curry that H and I will be eating for days.  I’ll post the results later this week!

Finally, I want to briefly touch on something important that’s been on my mind.  I am approaching my three year blog anniversary (June 20th).  Though I have not always posted regularly since starting the blog (oh hay, 2010), it has always been important to me, and I love that it gives me a way to look back on so many great meals and memories.  And actually, the last time I went back to my 2008 posts, I started feeling really nostalgic, though it wasn’t clear why. Then, the other day, I read this post on Chocolate Covered Katie’s blog.  I realized that the thing I used to love the most about blogging, in fact the thing that made me want to start a blog in the first place, was my extreme newly-vegan enthusiasm for trying new foods and recipes from amazing cookbooks and blogs.  I don’t think the enthusiasm even went away, but I guess once law school started and my lifestyle changed so drastically, I just let it fall by the wayside.  When I picked up blogging again this past January, I thought that maybe changing the theme a little (to include restaurants and products I was trying) would help me regain my previous enthusiasm.  It did, to a certain extent, as my ensuing blogging regularity demonstrates.  However, from here on out, I want to place the ingredients and cooking, my true passions, at center-stage, and occasionally include the other stuff as extras.  Thanks, Katie, for helping me come to this realization–I had a lot of fun writing this post!

Ladies Who Lunch

Or, in this case, lady who lunches, I guess.  It’s finals time.  My last finals time ever (hallelujah!).  While the light at the end of the tunnel (I’m done at noon tomorrow!!!) certainly helps, nothing can truly ease the pain and irritation caused by this time of the semester.  Except perhaps some fabulous eats.

For some reason, breakfast is always a chore for me and lunch is kind of take-what-you-get, while dinner is the main event meal of each day.  The last two weeks however have been filled with some of the most delectable lunches I’ve ever had.  I have tons of photos of them so I hope you like photos.

1) Gardein crispy tenders on a whole wheat sandwich thin with honey mustard, and kale and spinach sauteed with garlic and olive oil:

By the way, this is the kale and spinach in the pan when I first put them in (kale on the right, spinach on the left):

And this is after a minute or so…amazing how much spinach wilts down in a hot pan!

2) Gardein crispy tenders on a whole wheat sandwich thin with barbecue sauce and kale sauteed with garlic:

3) WildWood southwest flavor sprouted tofu burger on a whole wheat sandwich thin with lettuce, tomato, and avocado, with a side of Sabra roasted pine nut hummus and organic cucumber slices:

4) WildWood original flavor sprouted tofu burger on a whole wheat sandwich thin with lettuce, tomato, and BBQ sauce, with a garlic dill pickle (because when is a pickle ever not the solution to all your problems?  All this time, I should have been writing “pickle” on my exams when I didn’t know the answer.)

5) ED&BV Lemon Chickpea Lentil soup with rustic bread and Smart Balance light:

6) ED&BV Lemon Chickpea Lentil soup with a beet medley (roasted bulbs; stalks and greens sauteed with garlic):


I had never eaten beet stalks before and let me tell you, they are a delight.

7) Flat bread with Sabra pine nut hummus, cucumber, and tomato, with the fava beans from my last post, sauteed with garlic and olive oil:

The fava beans were SO GOOD! I wished I had more.

8– Leftover Ancho Lentil mix from this recipe, on a whole wheat sandwich thin, with lettuce and a swirl of dijon mustard, a side of kale sauteed with garlic, and a pickle (duh):

9) Leftover Ancho Lentil mix on a whole wheat sandwich thin, with lettuce, chopped tomato, and a side of roasted beets:

I should have had a pickle.

Some of these were repeated one or more times. Ya know…lather, rinse, repeat.  Plus, when something’s this tasty, why change anything about it? I have to say, #3 might have been the best lunch I’ve ever had.  The WildWood southwest flavor is my favorite by far (I’ve also had shiitake and original), and my avocado was heavenly.

So ripe and creamy.

Also, how much do you love Sabra hummus?  I’m not plugging them for any reason other than that I love them…I mean, look at this perfection:

I loved this lunch so much that I took a couple extra beauty shots:

A perfect burger

MMM sabra sabrosa…sorry it’s a little blurry, I was too hungry to focus, I guess.

The next time I post, it will be posting as a non-law student! Woo!!

Me:  Someone found my blog yesterday by searching for “deformed chocolate chip cookies.”
H:  That’s a funny way to spell delicious.

Unpretty

It’s no secret that I love food.  Nor is it a secret that I sometimes find myself totally in awe of the amazing beauty that occurs in nature.  The vibrant colors, the interesting yet somehow perfectly symmetrical shapes…it really is kind of crazy to think about.

However, just like people, not all foods are naturally beautiful.    Today’s post is dedicated to some of the unpretty members of food society, because they should know that I love them anyway.

First, let’s say hello to fava beans.  Being a huge fan of Middle Eastern cuisine, I’ve eaten favas (or “fool” [ha] as they’re sometimes called) many a time.  But I had never actually cooked them myself until yesterday.  Whole Foods had fresh favas in the pod on sale and I just couldn’t resist.  So I bought them and brought them home.  And found myself looking at this:

They look like a witch’s fingers. Unpretty.

And they have a weird, soft texture when you hold them.  Also, I had no idea what to do with them.  So I turned to the trusty interwebs and learned that to prepare favas, you must first take them out of the pods.

Yeah, the inside of the pods is weird and fuzzy.

Then, you parboil them for 3 minutes in a pot of salted water.  After three minutes are up, drain the boiling water and immediately shock the beans by dumping them into a bowl of ice water.  Let them sit for a minute or two.  Then pull them out and slide off their outer coating with ease.  

Here they are with coating still on:

After pulling off the coating, you are left with this:

Beautiful, deep, vibrant spring green.  See?  Inner beauty is a real thing. From this point you can either eat them raw, put in a salad, or saute them up with a little salt and garlic and enjoy that way. A+.

Next up is a cherimoya.  A what?!  So, a little backstory…I saw this on the Vegan Favorites blog two days ago and thought three things: 1) what in God’s name is a cherimoya? 2) How cool is it that there are still so many fruits and vegetables in the world that I’ve never even heard of? and 3) Hot damn, that thing looks weird.  It looks like an apple and an artichoke had a deformed baby.  Anyway, in the VF blogpost they described the cherimoya as tasting like a cross between an apple and a banana.  Huh??  Also, they mentioned that it was only available in the Bay area for a very short time each year.  So I’m thinking, well, if ever I do travel to California, I’d like to try this wacky fruit.

Then yesterday I go into Whole Foods and wouldn’t ya know…they’ve got cherimoyas.  And a little placard description that characterizes the taste as being a cross between a pineapple and a banana.  Now my curiosity was really piqued.  And…they were $8.99 a pound.  Eight friggin ninety-nine a pound!  So that, my friends, was my May Whole Foods splurge.

I brought the fruit home, and took the above photos.  We stared at each other for a few minutes.  Then I went to talk to the interwebs again.  Turns out, this fruit has its own website.  Yup.  Cherimoya.com is a real thing. Unpretty fruit celebrities do exist.

This is the inside:

UNPRETTY

Unlike the fava beans, the cherimoya is not pretty on the outside or the inside.  Here is the fruit:

Appearance: yech.

Plus, it’s a huge, messy pain to eat because you need to remove the seeds.  This is the refuse left from me extracting the edible pulp of one fruit:

Double yech.

But what does it taste like? you ask.  Let’s just say that after I took my first bite I actually laughed out loud.  It tastes like all of the things the descriptions promised, and I also think it tastes like eggnog.  Or, more specifically, it has a creamy texture and faint nutmeg flavor.  I know, weird.  If, like me, you live in a place that maybe once a year gets a shipment of unusual produce from the west coast or some tropical region (my Whole Foods was also selling fresh starfruit and passionfruit yesterday…I have never seen those here before), my advice is to snatch it up.  Trying new things is so much fun, and so worth your time and a few extra nickels.  Who knows, you might just discover that your outsides are cool and your insides are blue…

Yeah, it’s been in my head since I came up with the idea for this title’s post yesterday:

You’re welcome.