Sunday, August 9, 2009

Huge pot o' veggies

This is along the theme of the veggie pot I made last weekend. I just throw in whatever veggies I have, and add greens, beans, and seeds to make it have optimum nutrition, following Dr. Furhman's advice. We've been getting these giant broccoli and cauliflowers at the co-op. We had them twice this week with a guest, i.e., 6 servings, and still had a lot left. Here's what I had in the fridge from the co-op, all fresh and local:

broccoli
cauliflower
zucchini
beets (sweet!)
onion
eggplant
carrots

And from the garden:
kale
chard
1 collard green (decided I'd leave the rest for other meals this week)
tomatoes,
dill
basil
parsley (italian and curly)

I forgot to check for green peppers in the garden.

Here's a picture of the garden haul. There's a lot of kale under there:













I also had cooked up some white kidney (cannellini) beans. As I assembled the ingredients I realized I didn't have enough beans, but luckily found a can of adzuki beans in the cupboard.

I cooked this all in the pressure cooker. Some veggies take longer than others so I did it in two stages. The first stage was the eggplant, carrots, onion, beets, and kale, all cut up of course. I washed and then chopped the kale in the food processor. I cooked these up for 1 minute. It's such a big pot, it takes a few minutes to reach full pressure so it actually cooks longer, and it continues to cook while it's cooling and I'm preparing the other ingredients. Then I added the other ingredients except the beans, cauliflower and herbs. I cooked the cauliflower separately and then blended it in the blender with a bunch of hemp seeds and walnuts (portioned into however much you want per serving.) This made a nice creamy sauce. raw cashews would be even tastier than the walnuts, and a little sweeter. I added this to the final result, along with the beans and chopped herbs. pretty good! Next time I will juice the carrots and beets and it will be even tastier. This made 5 large servings (over 2 cups each), which I can then have each day this week. This will be a side dish to the corn at lunch and maybe at dinner too. Here's the result. It's more purple in real life from the beets. I froze 3 of the containers so they'll be fresher later in the week. Plus my plans might change.















This took about 1.5 hours to prepare because of all the chopping. But it was a fun thing to do on a Sunday afternoon when it was raining outside. And now food prep will be very quick the rest of the week.

One lesson learned from the pressure cooker: I'm finding if I use bean juice as my liquid, it's easy to burn the bottom. So I need to make sure to use plenty of water as my liquid, at least 1 cup for this big batch.

3 comments:

Howard Veit said...

Barb,

Thanks for you note. I haven't been getting your updates either. Don't know why. At any rate, I am curious as to how the GetAWay went. Did you find it useful. I am sure it is nice to spend the time with like-minded souls. There are a couple of people around Atlanta I can rap with, but the pickins are slim.

kneecap said...

Hi Howard,

that's weird that you aren't getting my updates either. The Getaway was really fun and I learned a lot and have improved my diet as a result (more beans and seeds). It was so fun to have all that healthy food served to you 3 times a day--such a contrast to our usual restaurant experience! I wish I could go next year but I think I'll have other commitments, also enjoyable. But who knows. I definitely hope to go the year after if not next year. Anyway, here's the link to a bunch of posts I wrote about the Getaway:
http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/search/label/Health%20Getaway

GCS said...

we found a lot of useful info on this blog , can you blog back to us and we will be happy! thanks www.pharmacia-nordica.com and www.goldcard-shop.com