Pasta and Peppers

It is currently 39 degrees according to the weather man on our balcony. I don't doubt it... It's so hot that my greedy cats haven't asked for food since 11am...












...and my poor nasturtiums on the balcony have gone from being all perky this morning to wilted and cooked this afternoon.






What a perfect time to make a cold supper. Unfortunately, the cold supper I decided to prepare required boiling and baking which are not the best activities on the hottest day of 2015 so far! Oh well, hopefully it will be yummy.

I have two bags of mini peppers and while I love them raw, I decided to roast a few. The result is delicious!

Roasted Mini Sweet Peppers





20 mini sweet peppers
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Put parchment on a baking sheet and place the peppers in a pile on the parchment. Drizzle olive oil on them and mix them around so they all glisten. Spread them out, sprinkle with salt (I used the new trendy Maldon salt flakes and proceeded to spill the container all over the counter and floor while I had oily fingers), crack black peppers over top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Take them out and eat hot or let cool but be forewarned that they will be very hot inside! When they are in the oven, they will still be all puffy but they will collapse once they start to cool.






I baked tofu at the same time as the oven was on as we needed something more than just roasted peppers! Tofu bakes for 60 minutes.

I also decided to make a pasta salad since Corey had been saying how much he was craving pasta salad and the one at IGA is certainly not vegan (or really that good in my opinion.) Why not just boil water while the oven is on??

Creamy Pasta Salad (it never makes a good photo!)





In a large bowl, mix:
4 cups cooked pasta
Celery
Peppers
Carrots
Any other raw veggies you like

In the Nutribullet or blender, blend:
1 pkg soft silken tofu (although medium or firm would be fine but not the banana flavoured kind)
3 tsp chopped fresh dill
2 tbsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp agave syrup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Pour over the pasta and veggies, mix, and put in the fridge until you eat! Pasta salad always tastes better the longer it sits. Well, not weeks but hours or a day.

And while the oven was on for the extra half hour for the tofu, I decided to make the rhubard loaf I wrote about last week except I made into muffins. They took 40 minutes to cook.

Not my proudest energy-conscious day as now the air conditioner is going full blast.

Have you tried this olive oil? It smells delicious and has a nice flavour.






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Roasted Veggies

It's not quite officially fall but the fall veggies are coming out so we made our first batch of roasted veggies tonight for dinner. The temperature is supposed to drop below freezing at the airport so the gardens will soon be cleaned out. It did snow in Calgary yesterday... That is a little depressing as it is only September 9th.







The beauty of roasted veggies is that almost any veggie can be used. Our mix today had baby potato, patipan squash, zucchini, carrot, celery, baby eggplant, garlic, and broccoli. Normally we would have added cubes of onion but we suddenly realized that we had none! We also often add cubes of tofu.

I roasted an acorn squash and beets at the same time to eat with the roasted veggie mix. Corey doesn't like beets so I keep them separate and the acorn squash tends to get too mushy.







Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Get the root vegetables you want. No need to peel unless you are adding beets directly to the mix in which case I would peel those. Cut them into cubes about 1 inch square.

Mix all the veggies together in a large bowl. Drizzle olive oil over the veggies and several pinches of salt, cracks of black pepper, and shakes of italian herb mix. You could use any spices you like.

Mix, mix, mix then spread the veggies out over one or two cookie sheets. You don't want the veggies crammed together or else they won't cook properly. Put them in the oven and wait. After 15 minutes, stir the veggies, switch the trays if you have two on separate levels, then leave them to bake some more.

Total cooking time is about an hour depending on the type of veggies and the thickness of your trays. Darker cookie trays take less time to cook.

As for the squash, I cut it in half lengthwise, then half widthwise, then into two pieces each to end up with eight pieces. Cut out the seeds, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and place skin side down on the tray. Leave in the oven with the veggies, about an hour or so, depending on the size of the squash.

My beets I just top and tail, rinse, and put directly on the bbq. Once they are black all around and I can stick a fork in them, I take them off the bbq, let them cool and peel them. You can do the same in the oven but they won't turn black. You'll have to test them for when they are soft enough to peel. I've heard that when they are soft you can take them out and put them into a paper bag to sweat for a few minutes and the peel comes off very easily. I've never tried.




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Meat-free Monday Burgers

We just returned from Calgary where we had a great vegan/vegetarian lunch at a little place called The Coup on 17th Ave SW. There is also a bar next door but it wasn't open. The food was delicious but expensive. Everything is made fresh and the menu items are quite original. I had a tempeh dish which was very tasty. It was busy so plan on arriving before or after the meal rush. You can't make reservations.

Another place we visited was the new Spark Science Centre which had a display about climate change and what we can all do to help slow down climate change. Everyone is invited to write a little card and post it on the metal people. This was mine:

Tonight we are heading to Mum's for dinner. She is making her yummy tacos and for us she makes these awesome re-fried beans. This is not the recipe for the beans but one day I will get it from her and post it here. The burger recipe that I am sharing came from the back of the Urban Harvest Herald that we get each week with our delivery of organic fruits and veggies. If you live in the Kelowna area, I strongly suggest that you get Urban Harvest. If you do, mention my name so that I get a credit on my order! If you live somewhere else, look into this type of service. It's well worth it. I love getting a box of fresh organic fruits and veggies each week delivered to my door.

Dixie Burgers (adapted from the Moosewood Restaurant recipe)

1 tbsp canola oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 pinch salt
2 cups grated raw sweet potato
1/3 cup minced celery
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/2 red pepper, minced
1 cup chard, stemmed and finely chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 cups canned or cooked black beans
4 oz firm tofu
panko or other fine breadcrumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a cookie sheet.

Heat oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Add onions, garlic and salt and cook until translucent. Add sweet potato, celery and thyme and cook for a few minutes, stirring often. Add red pepper and chard, stir, cover and cook on medium-low heat for another 5 minutes until the greens are getting tender. Remove from heat and stir in soy sauce and black pepper.

While the veggies cool a bit, pulse the beans and tofu in a food processor until mashed but not smooth. Mix the veggies into the bean mixture. Add panko or breadcrumbs to make the mixture a bit more solid for shaping into patties. The recipe says to make 4 patties, we made 6 and even they were quite big.

Bake on the cookie sheet for 20 minutes until firm.