MVK Savory Roasted Carrots

Look - a real CSA post!!! We've been getting some AMAZING veggies from our wonderful CSA out of Christopher Farm. As it's very early in the growing season, we've gotten mostly greens. However, we've also gotten a ton of carrots due to the hoop houses at the farm. We eat carrots in soups and in salads, but that hasn't been enough to eat through the carrots. I was talking to my sister about this the other day and she gave me a great idea.

Recently, my sister started working at a restaurant called Mill Valley Kitchen. She is really enjoying the way the restaurant engages with and thinks about food. When I mentioned all of our carrots, she said that I could try to make something on the menu there: carrots marinated in a savory marinade and then roasted quickly in their wood fired pizza oven. I have never eaten these carrots and I certainly don't have a wood fired pizza oven, but I figured I'd give it a go. I am so glad I did, because these carrots were ridiculously delicious. Even if you don't like cooked carrots, you will like these (says Shana). Seriously, eat them now.

Vegan Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread - No Knead and Low Fuss!

I know that I promised CSA posts, but right now we've been eating things from the CSA so quickly that I don't have time to photograph them (I'm only a little bit kidding). Every week I get so excited to see what we'll get. Just yesterday I submitted another manuscript to a journal, so I hope that means I'll get back to experimenting with new recipes.

For today, though, I'd like to share a recipe for a whole wheat sandwich bread. I used to think baking bread was scary and tedious and required a master's touch. To be honest, I still think that way about a lot of bread. However, this bread is SO easy because it's a very wet dough and requires no kneading. The lack of kneading means it takes a while, but get it started one weekend afternoon or right when you come home from work and then let it do it's thing. With minimal effort you will be rewarded with awesome bread!

CSA Excitement!

Everybody. We have a CSA this year. An organic CSA.

Don't know what a CSA is? It's awesome! CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it basically works by people like me & Shana paying a farmer before the growing season for a share of the crops that are grown. If you want more information, check out Local Harvest or Wiki. Today was the first day that we got our CSA share from Christopher Farm. I am SO EXCITED about it!! Here's a picture of what was in this week's share.

From bottom-left, going clockwise: box choy, kale, spinach, carrots & greens, lettuce, cilantro, garlic, shallots.

I've decided to post our weekly shares and have created a new tag for CSA-related posts. I'm very hopeful that the CSA will force us to explore new veggies. For example, this week I'm going to try a carrot-top pesto, a carrot-top soup, and roasted garlic compound butter. I've been feeling a bit in a cooking rut (as I think I do every spring), so having all of these ideas feels awesome. YAY!

The post "CSA Excitement" originally appeared on Maggie's LesVegan Kitchen.

Vegan Frisket (Faux Brisket) for Non-Kosher Seder

It seems like I am starting every recent blog post with an apology. I've been gone for over a month, but again, my absence has a good reason: we bought a house! The closing happened early in Feb, then my dad came to help us do stuff in the house for about a week. Then I went to a conference, then I went to another conference, and then we officially moved when The Bests (what we call our best friends) came to help about two weeks ago. Since then, we've moved all of our stuff and unpacked enough that we can functionally live. There are still boxes and there's no art on the walls, both of which will make me crazy pretty soon. Here's a picture of our house right after the closing!

The doilies in the windows are going. 

The days we moved, I spent an entire afternoon organizing the kitchen. Since the kitchen is mostly my domain (and Shana hates the unpacking part of moving), Shana and The Bests just let me work. I'm glad they did, because I got the kitchen organized and ready for cooking. Less than a week later, Shana and I hosted 6 good friends for a nearly 100% vegan non-Kosher Passover Seder. It was so much fun! 

For the second year in a row, I cooked what we've lovingly referred to as frisket - faux brisket. Shana grew up having brisket at nearly every major family gathering, but she recently learned that many non-Jews didn't have the same experience. I can count on one hand the number of times I had brisket growing up. Although neither Shana nor I are religious at this point in our lives, Seder is a beautiful tradition (and I've written about loving traditions). Due to our lack of a specifically religious identification with the meal, we feel a bit more free to deviate from some of the required elements, such as all the food being Kosher for Passover. Thus, this delicious (but unattractive) main dish isn't religiously sanctioned, but it is an interpretation of a regularly served dish.

Lazy Dinner Not-Pigs in Blankets

Even though spring is supposedly on the way, the first two and half months of the year are always tricky for Shana and I when it comes to planning dinners. Our best laid meal plans are often dramatically destroyed by Mother Nature. We'll have planned a lovely dinner just to have a major snowstorm force Shana to stay in Indianapolis. Thus, I'm more often trying to figure out random things for me to eat (e.g., the other night I had Alice Salad and mini tater tots, simply because I had all of that on hand). Luckily, I've got a number of Lazy Dinners that are easy to do.

This is another one of those dinners where I don't remember how it started. Maybe we saw someone else eating them. Or maybe I saw a non-vegan recipe and decided to veganize it. Or maybe something else happened that was equally trivial. Whatever the reason, these not-pigs in blankets are SO easy I feel badly calling them a recipe. But I guess that makes them a perfect Lazy Dinner (or game-watching food or snack).

Now, before you go all crazy and start making these all the time, I just want to say up front that these are not - I repeat, NOT - the most healthy thing for you to eat. They rely on heavily processed fake meat and high-in-fat bread-in-a-can. Obviously that means they're delicious. It also obviously means don't eat them all the time! As a occasional Lazy Dinner, they're great.