RECIPE (long overdue): Sweet and Spicy Leftover-Veggie Skillet

Sorry for the delay in posting...I've been in DISNEY!

Okay. So I know I technically haven't posted in eight weeks. Long story short, "Disney brain" is a real affliction and it starts very early for me.



I mean, in addition to my usual workload, I was very busy counting down, thinking about Mickey-shaped pretzels, brainwashing my boys*, buying Phineas & Ferb t-shirts, etc.

Now here we are, two months later, and I'm like, "Oh right. I have a blog."

So, as you may remember from previous eco-braggy posts, I joined a CSA this summer. (Did I mention I joined a CSA? Because I joined a CSA.) The upside of a CSA is good karma and a general sense of crunchy righteousness. The downside is having a fridge full of vegetables we're not familiar with, which have a very organic tendency to go bad after a few days, with complete and utter disregard for whether I feel like eating white eggplant this week.

So I needed to come up with a veggie skillet recipe STAT to make use of the leftover veggies. CSA pickup is on Friday, so the skillet usually becomes Wednesday's emergency-rotten-veggie dinner plan.

It's super easy. You'll need:

• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 Tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp ground cilantro (or 1 Tbsp fresh cilantro)
• 1/2 tsp Papa Joe's salt (or a mix of sea salt, pepper, and garlic powder)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a skillet.

Drop in your veggies.

Mix the spices in a bowl, and sprinkle them over the veggies until it looks pretty seasoned. Don't just dump the whole bowl in the skillet! It all depends on how many veggies you have sitting around -- you may not need the entire bowl of seasoning. No one wants to be crunching on chili powder!

Stir it all around until the veggie look cooked. That's usually about 7-10 minutes, but again, it'll depend on how many veggies you're trying to use up.

The combo of spices may sound weird, but trust me on this one.

Enjoy! The summer harvest is almost over {sniffle}**.

* "In 47 days we'll be eating breakfast with Gooooofyyyyyy!"
** That was both a mournful sniffle and the delightful sound of fall allergies. Leaves, would you just fall on the ground so I can breathe again!

RECIPE: Baked Barbecue Tofu

Tofu is a weird food. The words "bean curd" freak me out, to be honest. I mean...is it curdled soy milk? I don't actually know the answer, and I've never Googled it because I don't want to know. Just in case I'm right.

The first time I tried tofu was at a Whole Foods near my old office. They had chipotle-lime tofu in the salad bar, and compared with the rest of the lunch options at Whole Paycheck, tofu had one distinct advantage -- the salad bar charges by the pounds, and tofu doesn't weigh much. I mean, a pound of tofu is the size of a brick. (Unlike tomatoes and watermelons, which are pretty much the biggest salad bar rip-offs ever.)

But then I tried to make tofu at home, and to say it didn't go well would be an understatement. I bought a lump of tofu, chopped it up, threw it into a pan with some seasoning, and after about 20 minutes I had a pan full of what looked like spicy curdled milk. So, I resigned myself to the fact that Whole Foods was working black magic on their tofu and I'd have to keep paying them $5.99 a pound to do so.

I waited four whole years before trying again. Luckily, in the interim, someone had tipped me off to the secret of slicing the tofu into 1/2"-thick slabs and pressing it between several layers of paper towels to absorb all the moisture. Once I had that little trick in my wheelhouse, it was a whole different story.

Until now, we've mainly been sautéing tofu in a teriyaki sauce. But then I came across a few recipes for oven-roasted tofu and figured I'd give it a try -- mainly because the cook time was only 25 minutes, and I was working on taxes all day and had forgotten to cook anything. I went with a barbecue theme because, well, those were the ingredients I had in stock.

Verdict: Delicious and so much easier than sautéing!

You'll need:

• 1 lb. extra firm tofu
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1 Tbsp lime juice
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• a few shakes of Frank's Red Hot

STEP 1: Mix everything but the tofu in a bowl and stir vigorously. Once you add the tofu, you're going to need to be gentle, so now is the time to get your aggression out with the whisk.

STEP 2: After drying out the tofu per the instructions above*, toss it (gently! did I mention gently?) in the bowl with the sauce.

STEP 3: Line a baking sheet with tin foil, non-shiny side up, and spread the tofu out in an even, single layer.

STEP 4: Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until edges start to look golden-brown.

That's it! I served it with a broccoli-cauliflower Steamfresh packet and Alexia sweet potato waffle fries. Yum! Perfect summer meal (since it's apparently already summer here in the Northeast).


* I slaved over a bright computer all night** writing this post for you! Read the paragraphs!
** Okay, I was primarily wasting time on Facebook. And yes, I just footnoted a footnote. That has to be some sort of new literary device -- can we name it after me?


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RECIPE: Baked Broccoli. It's nothing short of magical.

I saw a recipe for oven-baked broccoli, and my first thought was, "Wow. That sounds like a way to make raw broccoli even more dry and bland." But then I kept seeing more and more recipes for it, so I finally decided there must be some truth to it. (Not that trendy foods can't be gross -- I'm talking to you, alfafa sprouts/foie gras/wheatgrass shakes.)

So this weekend, we tried it. And it...was....AMAZING! Okay, that's a strong word. Usually, the biggest compliment I can muster up for a vegetable recipe is "edible" or "tolerable." But these were straight-up delicious.



You'll need:

• raw broccoli
• 1-2 Tbsp. olive oil
• salt, pepper, and garlic to taste*
• lemon juice (or a lemon if you're feelin' fancy)
• parmesan

Chop the broccoli into bite-size florets. Toss them with a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic. Lay them on a lightly greased cookie sheet and bake at 425 degrees until the tips of the "trees" start turning golden-brown. For us, that was 10 minutes, but our oven cooks with the power of 1,000 suns. Then take it out, squeeze some lemon juice over it, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

How delicious is it? Um, my hubby walked out of the room and I snuck a few florets while he wasn't looking. Yeah -- I STOLE BROCCOLI. Usually (much like a 3-year-old), I save my veggies for last, eat five bites, announce that I'm full, and scrape the leftovers onto his plate. So for me to sneak broccoli because I didn't want to share -- that's huge. I want to make this every night. And maybe for breakfast too.

Sorry, buffalo chicken -- you're only the second-tastiest thing on my plate tonight.

* Just shake it until it looks about right. As usual, I subbed Papa Joe's salt for all three.

RECIPE: Slow Cooker Farmer's Market Veggie Wraps

I'm trying to be more of a locavore. My inner hippie knows I should probably stop importing beef from New Zealand and start eating more fresh veggies from the local farms. I mean, I do live in the Garden State. And it's not just an ironic nickname.

Really. It's not.

During the summer, there's actually a farmer's market in my town every weekend, which is super-convenient. I figured that was a good place to start.

I usually pick up some free wine* and a picklesicle**, but this week I vowed to branch out and buy some proper veggies.

I ended up with a sicilian eggplant, which is the yellow thing; a zucchini; a ton of peppers in varying degrees of scary hotness; two cloves of garlic***; and a bunch of cilantro.

I also bought three cannolis but they were gone long before I took this photo. 

Then I got home and had no idea what to do with any of it. But after looking through my fridge, I got inspired by a half-eaten bag of Pepitos mini tortilla shells and decided to make a veggie wrap, and in lieu of marinating and grilling, let the crockpot do all the boring work.

You'll need:

• some veggies (I used eggplant, zucchini, four mushrooms, and three hot peppers)
• 1 T. garlic (um, I used the minced despite having fresh cloves on hand, sorry)
• 2 T. soy sauce
• 2 T. balsamic vinaigrette
• one small jar of roasted red peppers (I chopped it up and dumped it in with all its juices)

Chop up the veggies. Everything goes in the pot on LOW for 3-4 hours. If you work during the day, this would be a good recipe to use a timer, because there's no raw meat involved. If your crockpot doesn't have a timer, just plug it into a normal outlet timer and set it to turn on halfway through the day.

Once the veggies are cooked, strain them well and scoop into wraps. I added a slice of gouda cheese on mine. <-- Yes, I have gouda in stock. I'll explain my fancy-cheese philosophy one of these days. But almost any cheese would work.

Mmmm. Tasty veggies!


* Oh, did I forget to mention they have FREE WINE?!??!

** Okay, they don't call it a picklesicle. But they should. It's a pickle with a popsicle stick in it.

*** I use garlic in almost every recipe but have literally never used fresh garlic in my life. I had to ask the girl how to use it. She said, "You can chop it or grate it." I'm sure she wanted to say, "Um, you're 32. You should know this."

RECIPE: Cilantro Soy-Bomb

At the farmers' market last week, I bought a bunch of fresh cilantro and promptly realized that I don't know what you're supposed to do with cilantro.

Then I came across a super-complicated recipe for cilantro soy chicken or something like that, and realized that a lot of the ingredients (soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger) were in my trusty bottle of Mikee teriyaki sauce. Coincidentally, I keep the Mikee sauce around because I don't know what you're supposed do with tofu, either, so I usually just dump some teriyaki sauce on it and call it a day.

It made sense to combine the two because, like cilantro, tofu is something I feel like I should be eating because it's Good For Me. But I don't have a fun way to prepare it. So, inspired by the recipe (but not inspired enough to go digging around for 14 separate ingredients), I chopped up the cilantro using the Pampered Chef Chopper (which everyone in the whole world should own) and dumped it into a half cup of Mikee teriyaki sauce.

I cooked the tofu by handing it to my husband and saying, "Cook this?"

Then I poured the cilantro-teriyaki mix over the tofu, and TELL ME THIS DOESN'T LOOK PROFESSIONAL!

To recap:

• chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/2 cup teriyaki sauce (the thicker the better) (that's what she said)
• one package of extra-firm tofu

Cook the tofu until most of the water is out, then heat up the sauce however you want (microwave? I won't judge) and pour it on. Done.