Farmer's Market Spaghetti

So... I finally got around to using those homegrown tomatoes the other day that Greg acquired from the farmer's market.  I wanted to make one last spaghetti sauce with fresh tomatoes before the summer bounty is over!

I made this up as I went along, but I wrote everything down, because it was SO delicious.  I froze the batches I made, and we thawed one and had it over whole wheat spaghetti tonight with a salad.  I was too excited to take pictures of our delicious feast! 

I cooked my spaghetti sauce in the crockpot all day, but this would be even better if you could simmer it on the stove for an afternoon to reduce the water a little.

Warning: this simply will not work with store bought tomatoes.  They have no flavor.  If you want to make spaghetti sauce with canned tomatoes see this post.

Spaghetti Sauce:

Ingredients
20ish  medium homegrown tomatoes
small amount of olive oil
1 small-medium yellow onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
8 oz mushrooms, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried basil 1/4 cup red wine

• Get some water boiling on the stove.
• Prepare your tomatoes:
• Mark an X with a knife through the skin on the bottom of each tomato
• In batches of about four, blanch the tomatoes for a couple of minutes in the boiling water
• Once cool enough to handle, peel the tomatoes with your fingers. If the skin does not come off easily, you did not blanch them long enough
• Dice tomatoes, and remove excess liquid and seeds (don't worry about doing this perfectly, I just let the extra run off of my cutting board into the sink..  a few seeds won't be a big deal)
• Meanwhile you could start the onions, red pepper, mushrooms, and garlic:
• Saute onions over medium with a small amount of olive oil until they start to sweat a little.
• Add the red pepper and mushrooms and saute until softened (about 7 minutes), not browned
• Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute more. Remove from heat.
• At this point you can add all of the ingredients to the crockpot and cook it on low for 5-7 hours. If you are cooking it on the stove: combine all ingredients, and bring to a light boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer.  You could simmer this for a little as 30 minutes, but a couple of hours on very low would be perfect. 20 minutes before you are done cooking, add 1/4 cup of red wine.
• Transfer about half of the mixture to a blender and blend until the big chunks are gone. Return to pot.
• Serve over spaghetti, spaghetti squash, or any other favorite!

Summer-y Tomato-y Squash-y Yummy-y Pasta-y

I'm (hopefully) going to be completing my first 5k in about 12 hours. SO I took the opportunity to "carb up".  Just kidding.  It's pure coincidence that I decided to make pasta the night before my race, but it worked out nice. 

While I was working today Greg was so nice to go to the farmer's market for me with one request: "I want a BIG OL' bag of tomatoes."  He came through and brought be a full sack of tomatoes.  My plans for these tomatoes are some sort of slow cooker pasta sauce in the next few days, but I just couldn't wait to dig in, so I made up a little recipe out of what we had in the house.  It really turned out to be so good, that I am going to try and write it up to share!  Measurements are best guesses, and you could add lots of things to it.  The spiral pasta, with subtle vegetable flavors really added something though.

8 oz spiral multi-color pasta
Olive oil
4-5 medium home grown, very ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 medium zuchinni, sliced in half moons
1/2 red onion, sliced in half moons
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup fresh basil, minced
4 TB Earth Balance margarine

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• Arrange tomatoes and zucchini in a single layer on parchmet paper in a roasting pan, or cookie sheet with a lip. Put into preheated oven to roast for about 20 minutes
• Meanwhile, get the water boiling for your pasta, you want your pasta done around the same time as everything else.
• Saute red onion in a little olive oil for 5-10 minutes, until it's very soft and begins to brown.
• Add the garlic to the onion, and saute a minute more. Remove from heat.
• When pasta is done, drain and return it to pan with the Earth Balance.
• Toss in the tomatoes, zucchini, onion, garlic, and basil.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.  At this point I wanted a little more garlic flavor, so I added some garlic powder here.

Zucchini Bread

I bought some really delicious zucchini from the farmer's market last week and I just couldn't use it all, so I decided to make zucchini bread.  You'll probably hear this over and over again, but my very favorite baking cookbook is The Joy of Vegan Baking. So I decided to use the recipe from there for zucchini bread. (You can follow the link for the recipe on Googlebooks)   It turned out great!

Tips on the recipe:

• It tells you to grate the zuchinni, but I shredded it, unpeeled, with the shredding blade on my food processor and it turned out great!
• It also gives you the option of using Ener G Egg replacer or ground flax seeds. I used Ener G.  The stuff is great to have around even if you cook with eggs because sometimes you run out, and if you have a box of this in your cabinet you never have to go without your favorite baked goods just because you ran out of eggs!  Tip: It says to whip it in a food processor or blender first.  They're not kidding,  don't skip this! It becomes this creamy fluffy stuff that helps make it more like an egg.  I use the beater on my Kitchenaid on high for about 2 minutes.
• The recipe calls for nuts and raisins. I didn't have any so I left them out.  My friend puts frozen blueberries in hers and it's so good!  She said she tosses the frozen blueberries in flour first to keep them from bleeding into the bread.

Slow.Cookin.Chili.

The temperature drops below 105 and I decide it's Chili time! With school in session, I am happy to make anything that lends itself to a slow cooker.   Also, Greg pretty much lives for the stuff, so it's automatic praise from the hubby.  He has officially had 3 bowls in the last two hours.

So over the years of experimenting with different chili recipes, I basically just threw them all together in my head and created my own. It happens to be vegan, and every meat eater that's tried it loves it just the same! I had to sub my favorite bean combinations today for what was in the cabinet and it turned out delicious, but I still favor my original recipe.  So here it is my friends! I am considering entering it in the neighborhood chili cookoff!

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Chili

HINT: Good spices are VERY important.  I have never had much luck with store bought chili powder, it always seems too spicy.  I like to use mild chili powder from our local spice store.  You get more chili flavor without so much heat. I go to the local Spice Merchant for all of ours.

Save yourself some time in the morning by chopping your onion and green pepper before bed.


Ingredients
    1 tablespoon olive oil
    1 medium onion, diced
    1 medium green bell pepper, diced
    1 clove garlic, minced
    1 (14-ounce) can red beans drained and rinsed
    1 (14-ounce) can red kidney beans drained and rinsed
    1 (14-ounce) can pinto beans drained and rinsed
    1 (14-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, no salt added
    1 (14-ounce) can tomato sauce (no salt added)
    8 ounces vegan ground burger (e.g., Boca meatless grounds)
    1 to 1-1/2 tablespoons MILD chili powder
    1 tablespoon cocoa powder
    1 tablespoon molasses
    1 teaspoon ground cumin
    salt, to taste
(salt is to taste becuase I buy ALL my beans and ALL my tomatoes and such with no salt added) If you use salted stuff it is likely that you will not need any additional salt)
Directions:

1. In a pan, heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add onions and bell pepper; saute until onions are translucent.  Add garlic; saute for 1 minute.

2. In a slow cooker, add remaining ingredients (red beans, red kidney beans, pinto beans, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, vegan ground burger, chili powder, cocoa powder, molasses, cumin, and salt), then onions-pepper mixture.

3. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.

Serve with crackers, fritos, daiya vegan cheese, or whatever else your heart desires.