Dinner

This is a good time of year to have oriental yams for dinner.  There isn't any fresh local produce to tempt me away from the yams just yet (sweet corn season is a few months away!).  The California veggies are good so I have them too.   This is one of my most favorite meals ever (beside my lunch potatoes and my breakfast grains), so I've been having this most nights.   As I described in this post, I cook a big pot of veggies every few days and distribute it into 2-cup bowls for lunch and dinner (lasts me 2-3 days).  I cook up a baked potato and yam every night or morning to have for lunch and dinner.   I just eat the oriental yam plain.  It is sweet like dessert.  It needs nothing else.  I eat the skin first so I can enjoy the inside all by itself.   yum yum yum.  The veggies are great too.   Here was last night's dinner.  As with lunch, I was too lazy to make a proper salad so just ate the Romaine leaves, which were quite good:

Today's included some blackberries for dessert.  My plate of veggies was bigger than usual because I had some leftover after serving up tomorrow's and the next day's into their bowls.

weekend cooking

It's fall and my food choices are changing with the season.  It's winter squash time!   Here's what I'm planning to try this week:

And that's just for lunch and dinner.  I'm thinking sweet potatoes for breakfast.  I made a huge pot of soup using veggies from the garden mostly.  This has white lima beans, purple barley, onion, eggplant, collard greens, leeks, mushrooms, 2 cans of garden tomatoes, broccoli, and italian spices.  I froze it into several containers to eat during the week.  I still have some containers from my last batch of soup so I can have some variation.  Here's my plan for the week--don't know if I will like it, I'll know tomorrow--brekky will be sweet potato topped with bean soup--I'm usually hungry after exercise class.   Here's an example from today's lunch:

This also has banana, fresh ginger and cilantro.  It tasted quite good.  

Lunch and dinner will be salad (cabbage, spinach, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, seed mixture, vinegar) topped with squash, soup, apple, and pomegranate seeds, and probably some fresh ginger.  The squash I'm hoping will be easy to prepare, just baking in the oven.  I'll microwave it to heat it up.  I have no idea what this will taste like, but I expect it will be pretty good.  I mean, almost any mixture of veggies and fruit and greens tastes good.

Here's a quickie large salad I made tonight:  cabbage, spinach, romaine, broccoli, then some pomegranate seeds, seed mixture, and fruit-infused vinegar.

Here's one of my most favorite treats.  I ate this yesterday while making house mate's smoothies.  It's just frozen mango, frozen blueberries, and a little d'angou pear vinegar (optional).  I love this.  It's easy to make thoroughly enjoyable food out of simple ingredients.

Creamy Orange Sweet Potato Sauce

This is so decadent tasting, it's hard to believe it's both healthy and easy!  I had it with steamed kale but I will have to think of other things to eat it with!   It reminded me of Hollandaise sauce.  It even looked like it because I used an oriental yam, which is yellow.

Ingredients:
1 medium sweet potato
2 Tbsp pignolias (mediterranean pine nuts)
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 Tbsp riesling raisin vinegar

Peel the sweet potato, cut into cubes, and steam or pressure cook until tender.  Blend everything including cooking water in a high-speed blender until really creamy!  Pour over something.  Here it is with steamed kale:

I bet this would be good with asparagus!   Do you have any other suggestions?

creamed vegetables

Yum!   This is good.  I made some kale and sweet potato sauce for dinner tonight and had way too much sauce so added it to tomorrow's veggies.

Ingredients for sauce:
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and chopped
some cauliflower (1/4 of a head?), chopped
2 Tbsp black fig vinegar
1-2 Tbsp pignolia nuts (or walnuts or cashews or any favorite nut or seed)

Veggies:
Whatever you want!  I had on hand:
broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, red cabbage, onion, and mushrooms
A cup of beans would be a good addition too.

Herbs or spices:
I used what is growing in my garden:  dill, basil, cilantro, and rosemary.  I'm not a good judge of spices and herbs, but I thought the dill added nice flavor.

Steam or pressure cook the sweet potato and cauliflower (separate from the veggies).

Steam or pressure cook the veggies.

Blend the sauce ingredients in a blender.  Pour over the veggies and stir up.

I will have this over lettuce.  Sounds weird if you aren't a nutritarian but lettuce is a great grain substitute.  Here are tomorrow's meals all ready to go (have to leave early to meet colleagues at a working breakfast and then to my job).  The creamed veggies on lettuce are at bottom left and right.   Normally this time of year (summer) I'd have a bunch of sugar snap peas and kohlrabi too but the store was out today.