Not one to waste things, I've been taking the seeds from all the sqashes I've cooked and roasting them in the toaster oven. Most people think you can only do this with pumpkin seeds, but almost any squash will do (pumpkins are squash too! Yay curcurbitaceae!). Once you've cleaned, washed, and dried off the seeds, toss with a scant amount of olive oil - just enough to coat - and some salt. Then you spread them on a baking sheet or piece of foil and stick them in to cook for ~30 minutes at 300 degrees, or until slightly crunchy. They're great just with the bit of salt, but I've also been adding some curry before roasting, which is so, so good, and also what is pictured below.
I've been doing a lot of baking as well. I made the chocolate chip cookies from VwaV (thumbs up all around, including those who received some as birthday gifts), which I forgot to photograph. They were eaten too quickly (mostly by me). I tried to make some peanutbutter cookies from VwaV for a coworker's party, but something went horribly awry and the result was not fit for human consumption. Believe me, I tried to eat them. I still have no idea what went wrong. But sometimes you just have to get back on the horse, so I made these tasty but not overly impressive chocolate thumbprint cookies with strawberry preserves.
I got some tat soi (or pak choi, depending on your mood) in my CSA share last week, and I had to figure out what to do with it. I looked at a bunch of different recipes for cold tat soi salads and came up with this cold sesame tatsoi, pictured here with quinoa pasta and more homemade tomato sauce. Yes, I know they totally don't go together, but I tend to eat my foods one at a time, so it worked out.
I marinated the tat soi in a bit of tamari, rice wine vinegar and an eensy bit of sugar. I let it sit too long though (overnight, oops), so the saltiness of the tamari was too much for me. Anyway, then right before serving, I mixed in a little sesame oil and sesame seeds. If it wasn't for the saltiness, I'd have given this a big smiley face or whatever you give yummy things.
I've also been excited by all the varieties of apples coming in to the farmer's market. A special treat my mom used to make is baked apples. I still make them her way: get as much of the core out without breaking through the bottom, fill the hole in the middle w/ a pat of [soy margarine] and a lot of brown sugar, then sprinkle with cinnamon and bake until soft. My brother and I used to douse these in whipped cream, which I kind of miss doing, but it's still tasty.
Before and after pictures. The apple shouldn't um, explode like that, but you get the idea. It was really strange though, some of the juice got on the pan and as it starting getting crispy it seriously smelled like marshmallows roasting!
I also made my first attempt at making applesauce from scratch, and it was AWESOME. I kind of winged it after reading a few recipes, but it came out perfect; hopefully I can replicate it in the future, since I plan on freezing a load of this stuff. Basically I peeled, cored and sliced the apples, put them in a pot with ~1 cup of water, ~1/2 cup of brown sugar, a bunch of cinnamon, the juice of half a giant lemon, and some long peels from the lemon (to be taken out later). Cook until the apples are soft, pick out the lemon peels, and put through the food mill (I did it on the chunkiest setting). Then taste and see what it needs; I put in a teeny bit more (white) sugar, a splash of vanilla, and some more water to thin it out because it was too chunky even for me. It is FABULOUS. Okay, I'll stop raving about it now.
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And because I am always looking for more ways to add sugar to my diet (HA), my favorite way to prepare butternut squash: load the cavity with brown sugar!
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Some wilted swiss chard and gnocchi with pesto. The chard and basil for the pesto came from my wonderful organic CSA. Yum!
These had everyone at work drooling, and inspired a coworker to make some stuffed squash like this for some friends coming over that night! So easy and tasty.
This one is brown rice, onions, tomato sauce, herbs and Morningstar Chik'n Strips thrown in because I had to use them up (wasn't a huge fan). It came out good, but my coworkers teased me about eating so many "stuffed" vegetables.
It's a little dark, but if you look closely, there are no more purple stripes on the beans! I was really confused when I made them for the first time. They would be fun for kids I think. They're pictured here with the 
It was my first attempt at making tomato sauce myself (a la Joy of Cooking), and it was so amazingly delicious, which is why I just sopped it all up with bread. I think it was because it was such a good tomato week from the CSA share. I have yet to recreate the awesomeness of this first attempt - subsequent tries where significantly more lackluster in the taste department. I will keep plugging away at it though, because hot damn, that first sauce was so good!
Holy crap, these were AMAZING. Danny doesn't even like raspberry and he said they were great (he requested future batches be made with strawberry preserves instead). My intern thought they were awesome, as did everyone else who tried them. Especially me. So decadent and delish. I never thought I'd like a blondie as much as this. Here's a pic so you can see a little more of the detail pre-cutting:
I have to say, everything I've baked from VwaV has gotten absolutely rave reviews from vegans and omnis alike. Not to mention how much I've enjoyed eating it all! The chocolate chip cookies are on deck for my next baking venture.
As a birthday gift, I begged my brother to get me popcorn, like he had for Christmas. He gave me a small sampler pack of gourmet popping corn for my air popper, and I loved it so much I wanted to try all the varieties. Here they are in all their colorful glory:
Then I had a plethora of blueberries because I can't stop buying them when they are in season. So, I decided to make the Blueberry Coffee Cake from VwaV. It made WAY more than I figured it would... I have a habit of not reading recipes all the way through (I just read the ingredients to make sure I have them) and didn't notice it required a 9x13 pan! So I brought half of it in to work, where it was positively DEVOURED within two hours, and some went to Danny's parents, who asked him to bring over more the next day. I think that solidifies the omni-approved rating for this recipe, yes? :) Here's how I had it after it cooled: 
Last week I decided to try the 
These had the recommended mushrooms & green peppers (I did leave out the tahini/cashew butter btw). I can definitely see trying this with other veggies like broccoli or spinach. They are very light, not too filling, so you'll need a lot of them for a meal, but they're very, very tasty.
These were almost entirely organic; the beans, brown rice, mushrooms, peppers, green onions, and the tortilla. The corn is actually from the farmer's market last August (I love my vacuum sealer!!), and still had that sweet summer taste. I used Amy's Organic refried black beans since they're already nice & seasoned, and a roasted tomato taco sauce (from a bottle) to top it all off. I made a bunch of these to freeze, since I realized I could make yummy burritos like the ones I buy at the store. I was kind of pissed at myself, because after all was said and done (and in my tummy), I remembered that I had also bought some organic baby spinach to throw in these too! Bummer.
My organic CSA starts next week! Hooray!
The Paradise casserole (I think that's what it was) - sweet potatoes, black beans and millet, very tasty
The spicy Cuban sandwich (wasn't mine and I didn't get to try it)
You can also see that it only occurred to me to take pictures well after we started eating, and I didn't even manage to take pictures of our dessert. I also gobbled up a chocolate peanutbutter rice milk & soy ice cream smoothie ::drool::
