Kumquats!

No peach pavlova thing today. Sorry SMSrs, I did not have the time this week.

I heart kumquats.  They are so cool–from their name to their taste. The lazy person in me loves that you eat them whole and don’t have to peel them. I re-visited Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking and made the Clemenquat Salad with Walnuts and Parmesan Shavings. It’s a salad of celery, clementines, and yes, kumquats dressed in simple mix of lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil and topped with toasted walnuts and some parmesan. It’s fresh, sour, sweet, and very easy to make. The hardest part was slicing the celery.

Find the recipe here: Clemenquat Salad with Walnuts and Parmesan Shavings

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Shredded Green Beans with Citrus & Chives

A perfect vegan side-dish that shows off your new knife skills is Heidi Swanson’s Shredded Green Beans with Lemon-Lime Zest & Snipped Chives {you can find the recipe HERE} from Super Natural Cooking where the instructions state to slice the green beans 1/8″ on the diagonal {I cut, hence the non-uniform sizes} or use a food processor {also cut short, this post: why see HERE}.

Curried Tofu Scramble

My life is a bit unsettled right now. To help me, I have several items in my toolbox to keep me grounded. One is baking, especially bread. To me, baking bread is earthy and magical at the same time. A little aromatherapy from freshly baked bread also helps.

Another is staying active and filling up my calendar with planned activities. This can backfire a bit as the other day I had a minor meltdown when I discovered I did not have any activities planned for the weekend of August 8th. A friend had to calm me down saying, “you know, you have two weeks…something will come up. You will find something to do”.  I’m happy to report with a week and half to go I now have something written down for that weekend.

A page from my calendar--August

I have trips planned to Las Vegas (twice in October), a trip to Laughlin (don’t ask), a trip to dive with Jean-Michel Cousteau in Fiji (although I may feel a bit Life Aquatic) in November, and drives to San Diego and up the California Coast to Napa Valley are always on the radar. In September, I’m attending Blogher Food in San Francisco. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and will use any excuse to get up there.  To be fair, I didn’t need to pile on the excuses for this trip.

I’m looking forward to meet lots of bloggers I tweet, blog, facebook with: Engineer Baker, Two Peas and Their Pod, Gourmeted, Food Librarian, etc. And now I am pleased to announce a sponsor for my trip to Blogher Food: Nasoya, Premium Tofu Products.

Nasoya is the brand of tofu I tend to buy and use because it is organic and natural. I usually buy extra-firm or firm tofu because it is good for stir-fries, tofu ricotta, frittatas, and of course scrambled tofu. Scrambling tofu couldn’t be easier. It makes a quick dinner {yes dinner, I hardly ever eat breakfast food at breakfast time}. All you need to do is sauté some onion and garlic in olive oil, crumble in some tofu, add some spices & vegetables–voilà dinner is served.

The recipe I used comes from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking. You can find the recipe HERE. I served the tofu with some roasted vegetables, avocado, and vegan milk bread toast (made using almond milk & non-hydrogenated vegan  margarine).

And although this post isn’t about the bread, it is the perfect toast bread and has been making the rounds on Twitter and food blogs (originating with Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs and The Corner Loaf). You can find the original recipe HERE.

Please visit Michele at Veggie Num Nums to see what she cooked up for Vegan Tuesdays.

Spring Minestrone with Brown Rice

A perfect soup for this time of the year. As the weather gets warmer and we start wearing less clothes, we start {or continue} eating lighter. And speaking of light, I’ve started going to the farmers’ market every week. In my town, the farmers’ market starts at 6 pm on Thursday nights. I’ve been remiss in attending mostly because it’s been cold and dark. Now that we have changed the clocks back an hour and the sun is staying up, I’ve been going every week.

All the vegetables in this soup were bought at the farmers’ market and were all picked that day and used that night. Isn’t that cool? The recipe comes from Super Natural Cooking, is vegan, and is very easy to make, especially if you already have vegetable stock on hand.  It’s also the cover recipe. 🙂 I added more vegetables and garlic because that’s always a good thing.

From Super Natural Cooking

• 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3/4 cup of brown basmati rice, rinsed
• 6 cups of vegetable stock
• 2 cups sugar snap peas, trimmed and cut in half diagonally
• 1 bunch of asparagus, trimmed and cut diagonally into 1 inch pieces
• 1/2 cup of peas
• Fine grain sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat olive oil in large sauce pan over medium-high heat. Add shallots and garlic and sauté until soft, 2 to 3 minutes. Add rice and stir, coating the rice, about a minute. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat,  and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes until just tender.
2. Add the vegetables and season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and serve immediately so vegetables stay nice and green.

Serves 4

Millet Fried “Rice”

Millet is a grain seed that you probably know most commonly from bird food. It’s also a nutritious whole grain with loads of B-vitamins that has been becoming more and more popular in whole-grain cooking.

This week I made Millet Fried “Rice” from Super Natural Cooking. This was my first time cooking/eating millet and I loved it. It has a nutty taste, almost earthy but not too earthy. Just the right level of earth.

The stir-fry is made like regular fried rice. The grain is pre-cooked, you cook the egg and tofu cubes, chop the veggies and throw everything together. I’m excited  about using millet in more recipes. everybody loves sandwiches recently posted about using millet in granola which I’m making the next time I need granola.

You can find the recipe for Millet Fried “Rice” HERE. Enjoy! It’s wonderful.