brussel sprouts

Whenever I read about the experiences of others with CSA's, one of the things they are most excited about is that they are exposed to new vegetables. But I've been participating in a CSA for 5 years now and ate a lot of different vegetables before that as well. So I always sigh and think that unfortunately that aspect of the CSA is no longer available to me, my vegetable world can no longer expand. But I realized recently that I was sorely mistaken. Not only does my farmer occasionally introduce new vegetables to her repertoire (this year the daikon radish) and thus our share, but also there are plenty of vegetables that we get that I don't truly appreciate. The brussel sprout is one such vegetable.

We generally have brussel sprouts in at least one share each fall. Despite being right there in my refrigerator, I have never really taken the time to properly prepare and explore them. In fact I am sure there has been more than one year where I have found the bag of brussel sprouts still in the fridge months later all ready for the compost pile. This year I was determined to learn to love the brussel sprout, or well, at least give it a fair shake!

I started with a simple steamed brussel sprout, carrot, and leek dish with a horseradish sauce. We thought the strong sauce would disguise the taste of the brussel sprouts well. To our surprise, when steamed up fresh (this was only a day after they were picked), brussel sprouts don't need a strong sauce -- they tasted great! So the next time around I made a rice steam pot with the last of my basil in a pesto sauce. Again yummy yummy brussel sprouts. So I decided to let them be the core of a dish and made this pizza...

In addition to all those lovely brussel sprouts it has a nutritional yeast cheese-like sauce, caramelized onions, sun-dried tomatos, and capers. K said it was "yummylicious" which sounded like a complement to me. In fact we were filling out the farm survey after eating this and he considered putting brussel sprouts in his top 3 vegetables. Now that is one serious hat tip.

So I'd say we were extremely successful in learning to love the brussel sprout, now next year maybe I can figure out how to love those lovely chicories or maybe that odd-looking kohlrabi. But first I have just one more handful of brussel sprouts left. These will not go to waste this year!! But alas I must decide how to cook them. What is the best way? As I am just learning about this vegetable I need some more ideas.

grilled pizza

The last few days have been miserably hot and humid again. Yesterday I made K whisk the little guy and I off to a restaurant as soon as he got home from work. I wasn't craving any particular food, but was eagerly seeking a blast of cold AC. My seat in the restaurant was directly over a vent. Had I spent the entire day in an air conditioned office I would not have liked this but as I had spent most the day in our hot house I loved that my legs were turning numbingly cold.

Although the rains today did help cool things off I still was not eager to turn on the stove let alone the oven in order to cook dinner tonight. And we have too much delicious farm fresh produce to splurge with a restaurant meal again tonight. So we fired up the grill for a delicious seasonal flatbread.

• fresh basil pesto
• grilled zucchini and yellow summer squash
  
• grilled onions
• and as always passed the hot pepper flakes at the table

Despite my indifference towards zucchini and summer squash this was a tasty pizza. I'll give it an 8.

BBQ pizza

It was a cold and dreary spring day yesterday but that didn't stop us from tasting a hint of summertime thanks to modern transportation which brings us all sorts of produce off-season! We didn't venture out to the grill for this one though if the weather had cooperated grilling the toppings and the pizza on this one would have been superb.

Toppings:

• BBQ sauce
• tempeh (pan-fried in a splash of soy sauce and then tossed with BBQ sauce)
  
• Eggplant (sauteed until soft)
• onions (sauteed until almost crispy)
• bell pepper (this was grilled - leftover from a grilled meal a few days ago)
• slices of fresh tomato
• and, of course, we passed the nutritional yeast and hot pepper flakes at the table

This was a schweeeeet pizza. It was tasty but I'll only give it a 7 because I thought the BBQ sauce was too sweet. We used a jarred sauce that K got as a holiday gift from work. It had good flavor but was just too sweet - I prefer a BBQ sauce that tends towards zippy and away from sweet.

kale and tofu calzone

Mmmmm, such a tasty calzone. The filling which I sauteed before stuffing in the whole wheat dough consisted of the following:

• olive oil
• onions
• garlic
• tofu
• herbs (oregano, thyme, basil)
• lemon juice
• nutritional yeast
• salt
• kale

I also added kalamata olives to my calzone, K has no clue what he is missing... After baking we topped our calzones with marinara sauce and K added some red pepper flakes (I passed on those today.) Delicious!

drab in color but not in flavor

Here are the details:

• A homemade herb crust
• Tahini based white sauce spiked with diced fresh jalapeno
• Thinly sliced potato
• Sauteed (I was hungry they didn't quite get carmelized) sweet onion and garlic
• For protein I threw some chick peas which I had in the fridge in with the onions and garlic
• Passed hot pepper flakes at the table (nutritional yeast was already in the sauce)

The chick peas were a little annoying because they rolled off the pizza and flavor-wise they didn't add much. I think I'd just do the taters and onions and skip the chick peas next time. The tahini-sauce wasn't what I was looking for either but I was getting hungry and it was quick to make. I wanted a white suace that is a little less tangy but still zippy - does that make any sense?

Even with those couple of edits the pizza was still quite good. I give it a 7. The jalapeno was a great addition to the sauce - the spicyness really made the pizza work.

Spicy Red

Oooooo, spicy!!! I had planned to do pizza one night this week and I had pondered a few different ideas but then when it came time to actually make the pizza we were starved and hadn't prepared any sauces or anything yet so it ended up being a quick turn on the oven and toss whatever we have on the dough kind of pizza. And well, it turned out pretty darn good, we just felt it was a little too spicy. And when K admits that something is too spicy you know it has got to be HOT!

Here is what I put on the store-bought whole wheat pizza dough...

• a little bit of salsa
• chipolte seasoned kidney beans (this is where our heat came from - we used a little too much chipolte, oops!)
• onion
• tomato
• red bell pepper
• avocado (put on the pizza as it came out of the oven)
• No need to pass the hot pepper at the table but we did pass the nutritional yeast

We both rated this an 8. It had great flavor, just a bit too hot. We also felt that more tomato would be good (I only had a rather small tomato to slice up). , I'm not sure which would be better - either more fresh slices or some extra tomato sauce mixed in with the salsa on the base. I also might try this on a different kind of dough next time. With just a scaled down spiciness and more tomato this pizza would be pushing the 9 or even 10 rating (could we really eat it every day? )

spinach

I've been having a love/hate relationship with food throughout my pregnancy. The last month or so my stomach has felt much better but food still tastes just so-so and some things like winter squash, sweet potatos, and some cooking greens are paricularly unappealing. Needless to say this means I have not been particularly creative with pizza (or really any meal) lately. But at least now I have the energy to post our pizza. (I noticed a couple pizza's from November on my camera when I uploaded last night's pics that apparently I completely forgot about.)


Last night's pizza

• homemade whole wheat crust
  
• pesto sauce (from our freezer!)
• onions and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil
  
• spinach
• green bell pepper
• and of course, we passed the nutritional yeast and hot pepper flakes at the table
  

I always love the thought of spinach on pizza and often fall for it when ordering at a pizza place. But of course, especially without any cheese on top of the spinach it always turns crispy and flavorless on a restaurant pizza. We had a pizza like this recently that was very disappointing. To keep my spinach moist and flavorful I saute it just until softened before placing it on the dough. Using frozen spinach would work as well.

This pizza was only so-so, we both rated it a 6. The spinach was great but it just needed a stronger flavor to accompany it. I'm thinking that faux feta would be good or perhaps (for a soy free option) some pickled jalapenos.

Sweet & Spicy Hawaiian Seitan Pizza

As is standard lately, I started with a whole wheat crust - maybe next time I'll make a different crust. The Sweet & Spicy Seitan sauce had most the toppings directly in it. That included onion, bell pepper, seitan, and kale. I topped that sauce with some chunks of pineapple. And as always passed the red pepper flakes (did skip the nutritional yeast this time although it probably would have tasted fine.)

We decided to start rating our pizza on a 10 point scale. 10 being "Wow, I could eat this every day" and 1 being "Yuck, I couldn't even finish eating this one piece." This one gets a 7.5. The sauce was a little juicy (I should have thickened it) but the flavor was delish. Tempeh would be a great texture on this one in place of the seitan if only K could eat tempeh again . sigh...

Peanutty Pizza

I topped a basic wheat dough with a quick and easy homemade Zippy Peanut Sauce, rings of red onion, broccoli florets and slivers of orange bell pepper. It was really tasty! And yes, even with this stir-fry inspired pizza pass the red pepper flakes and nutritional yeast at the table.

Roasted Red Pepper & Taters

About this blog... My husband and I eat homemade vegan pizza at least a couple times a month and decided that it would be nice to keep a log of what we do so we could repeat some of the better combinations (and avoid the less than stellar ones). I haven't decided yet if this will only be a blog of those pizza creations or other vegan culinary adventures. For now, here is today's pizza creation.

Delicious!! A roasted red pepper spread made our pizza even look like a somwhat normal pizza. With K. allergic to tomatoes we can't do the standard pizza sauce. But the roasted red pepper sauce both looked and tasted great on the pizza. We added thinly sliced potatoes, carmelized onions, and, of course, our favorite topping, fresh arugula.