Currently viewing the tag: "tomato"
The Electrician made me a garden!
I planted transplants because I’m not cool enough to sow seeds (yet).
In the ground: arugula, red bell pepper, plum tomatoes, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and basil.
My grandmother’s garden gnome is finally back on duty.
In other plant news: Addy loving the cat grass my student gave to me.
Wishes are waiting…
The gang’s all here…
Bright and juicy…
Wearing our best grill marks
Everyone’s invited to this pilaf.V & T Supermarket in Hempstead, Long Island is a place I can spend hours in. It is a huge Asian grocery store with long aisles of interesting food items–noodles, sauces, sweets, a frozen section, and… canned goodies. I visited V & T with a clear mission in mind: get some neat looking cans with the following predominant colors: green, yellow, pink, orange, red, and blue. These will be the pencil holders for my classroom tables come back to school. But before I can say “Mangosteens, there is a book left out on your table.” or “Johnny, please collect Jackfruit’s essays on the binary language of moisture vaporaters,” I need to seal and laquer them, preparing them for hopefully many years of 4th grade abuse. And before that–I needed to eat their innards. 
Starting with mangosteen. I accidentally bought 2 cans of these beautiful fruits. Knowing that the texture of this tropical fruit would be a bit mush-like as it has been swimming in sugary syrup since its trip from Thailand, I wanted to make sure I paired it with some other textures. Inspired by a very simple recipe for mangosteen salsa that incorporated all fresh ingredients, as well as ingredients to balance the sweetness, I made a salsa that hit all the right notes: sweet, bitter, and a whole lot of heat from 2 diced jalapeno. The mangosteens are sweet and delicious right out of the can. I saved the sugary syrup for a future popsicle creation. Mangosteen have received some buzz in the health food word. Their rinds (pericaps) contain powerful antioxidants called xanthones, that have been used in traditional medicines for years. But recent buzz here in the States stems from some studies that showed xanthones to have anti-cancer effects. Like other naturally occurring antioxidants with buzz (pomegranate, goji, acai, etc), of course next comes a slew of health products.
Next up, jackfruit. I first had this fibrous yellow wonder in Thailand (see post here); it is a sweet tropical fruit with a very interesting texture. Though sweet, I once had an amazing jackfruit chalupa at (post here) a place called Fud, a very memorable vegan eatery in Kansas City. I wanted to try to make a savory dish with my can of jackfruit. With guidance from Clean Green Simple‘s beautiful blog, I began by soaking my jackfruit in water to shrug off that sugary syrup.
It took some time to cook up the jackfruit. What goes in bright yellow… 
eventually becomes a fibrous brown, resembling pulled meat. Truly fascinating. And very delicious.
Behold! My jackfruit carnitas! Topped with the mangosteen salsa and some fresh tomato and avocado… and paired with grilled, local corn. What a delicious meal. I nibbled on so much of the jackfruit while it cooked that I could barely finish. 
Hard to believe such a gorgeous meal started in a can.
Next up in my can project, I am thinking mangosteen and lychee popsicles. Stay tuned…
xo, V.V.
More on cans:
It wasn’t that long ago that tomatoes were in sorry shape. Apologies were displayed in the supermarket. But with winter gone, bring on the better fruit! In honor of my easy but satisfying lunch and to balance out the hectic culmination of 5th grade test prep, here’s what I am eating this busy week, sprinkled with some fascinating facts about the beloved tomato.
Tomatoes are quite bad a**. They’re related to several poisonous plants. They got poisons flowing in their stem and leaves.
Like a lot of fruits, tomatoes are rumored to have aphrodisiacal powers. They’re called pommes d’amour (“love apples”) by zee French.
Tomatoes’ technical name means “wolf peach”. The love apple-wolf peach from the wrong side of the tracks with its poisonous relatives- – -sexy.
Lycopene is quite fascinating. It is so wonderful how we can eat all of these colorful free radicals and antioxidants like eating a treasure from the Earth. Fruits and veggies are sparkling jewels. [And dairy is spackle.] [And meat, a grey silly putty affixing to the intestinal wall.]
Organic Village‘s Shiitake-Veg “Burger”. Quite good for a raw version of a burger, however, after horrendous service I’ll likely not return to this place. We ate in the car so to escape the mess of stress within the tiny restaurant.
Finally tried Dunwell Donuts at Champs Family Bakery, which is now home to Bone Shakers too. Yes, the Kingsland location is no longer. We were pleased to find pleasant service and an offer of free cupcakes. I tried Dunwell’s jelly donut and coconut-glazed. They were yummy but a bit dry. Of course.. once you go Mighty, your standard is way high.
With the weather finally cooperating, we had grilled eggplant sandwiches for a lazy day lunch. Scrumptious marinated sweet onion and sliced eggplant discs atop grilled under Mr. Blue Sky and onto toasted Italian. Then I ate a mango.
Whipped up a batch of vegan nachos… mostly to utilize the cheese whiz-type stuff I made a couple of weeks back for the Phillies ballpark jaunt. Although I completely forgot to ground up some Amy’s burgers for the protein, they were very good! I used some refried kidney beans flavored with chipotle, the aforementioned cheese, diced tomato and avocado, salsa, Tofutti sour cream and some chopped green onion. So good, in fact, a second batch was requested. Use the cheese whiz stuff that has been taking up space in my classroom’s refrigerator – Check!
Some days are meant for doing nothing. That’s right, no-thing. Even this B.L.T. seemed to be too much effort. Toasting bread, frying up tempeh leftovers, slicing veggies and spreading Vegenaise was about all I could take. I don’t even know what I sprinkled on the potatoes before throwing them in the oven. So here, a B.L.T. the only tangible evidence of my existence today. 
Long Island City’s Standard Motor Products building takes up the majority of Northern Blvd. between 36th and Steinway streets. Its huge, sturdy and unassuming slab of industrial grey, located off one of Queens’s busiest streets, has a unique claim to fame: It is the foundation for New York City’s largest rooftop farm, the Brooklyn Grange. Yes, the 40,000 square-foot farm is on the roof, growing hundreds of thousands of fruits and vegetables, including 40 types of tomatoes, within its 1.2 million pounds of soil. I visited the farm, gaining easy access in thanks to The Greek, who volunteers there–managing their compost and tending to his bees, who also have a home on the roof. On this glorious afternoon I nibbled on some delicious Sungold cherry tomatoes off the vine, fantasized about the root candy thriving under my feet high in the sky and soaked in the heaving exhale of oxygen.
The farm, which has been open since the Spring of 2010 in Queens, is a commercial farm that sells its pesticide-free goodies to local restaurants, as well as the public through a CSA and many farmers markets.
With Manhattan in the background and the countless support sticks of tomato plants in the foreground, Brooklyn Grange, named before space in Brooklyn fell through and after founders established their name publicaly, is a very special place, home to a movement that is directly linking the eater with the farmer. 
I saw so many succulent-looking fruits and veggies; I could barely resist the Scarlett O’Hara urge to chomp on them raw. Plump eggplant, bazillions of tomatoes, tomatillos… oh boy.
Lost in the green.
and in the Cubanelle pepper yellow
Lend me your ear…
A mesclun mix
American Gothic, Urban-style
The Greek tends to his bees while being recorded by an independent filmaker… and photographed by a lowly blogger.
I often sing the praises of fruits and vegetables. It isn’t because I’m a vegan… I’d be a vegan no matter what it tasted like really. Separately and as passionately, I love food. I’d love a roasted onion over a new pair of shoes, prefer a perfectly ripened tomato over a twinkling ruby. Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration but you get my point. Patchouli, Birkenstocks and essential oils aside, I want to take a bite out of the Earth; I need to take it all in. My senses, especially taste, are my best friends. And I make these romantic rationalizations constantly to justify my irrational whims of fancy and unyielding appetite, yes, but this is in direct relation to my very reasonable and responsible existence. So an onion, to me, is more than an onion. It’s a part of how I experience the world. I think too much and eat too much.
I cut some thick slices of yellow onion today. I was inspired by the fresh sliced tomato and onion appetizer I had last weekend (which was inspired by Peter Luger’s Steakhouse). Raw onion is a bit intense however. I roasted it with some olive oil and numerous grinding twists of sea salt and peppercorn. Heavenly onion. Speaking of, did you know that the Ancient Egyptians worshipped the onion, believing its shape and rings meant eternal life? I’d join that movement.
Tomatoes are my favorite, uh, fruit for roasting. I haven’t bought a tomato that didn’t wind up roasted ever I think. Make sense of that double-negative! It’s a no-fail. Cut the tomato and put in the oven. I want to tell you something spectacular about the tomato… the scientific name for tomato translates to “wolf peach”. It totally is a wolf peach! I can just see wolf fangs piercing that taunt red skin.
I made that bread a few days back, the spiced potato and onion bread. It is very unfortunate but I am a terrible slicer of bread. My diagonal attempts look more like door stops than slices of bread. But! I’ve found that these clumsy slices are perfect for hearty open-face sandwich pizza-type snacks. Like below, quite possibly the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in my apartment in months: a toasted wedge of my spiced potato and onion bread smeared with my fresh-made basil sunflower seed pesto and topped with those roasted tomatoes and onion. I can’t wait till I am hungry again so I can eat another.
With a slew of produce from Fresh Direct panting in their plastic bags in my refrigerator, tonight I was in “use it or lose it” mode. This mode refers specifically to my disgust of food waste, my want for efficiency and my need to make lunch for the week. With the weather crappy and the roommates gone, the kitchen was mine. Here’s what I made:
Roasted tomatoes. I can live off roasted tomatoes. This is my favorite form of the tomato. I slice some plum tomatoes thick and long and roast them slow at 300, swimming in olive oil and the rotating seasonings of my fancy. This time it was the standard salt and pepper along with rosemary and some parsley for some complementary color.
Roasted zucchini. My second favorite vegetable to roast. Zucchini is quite unstunning in its natural form. But roasted, its texture is like a tender fleshy eggplant. It also sucks up flavor real well. Topped on warm thick bread and you got the beginnings of an amazing sandwich.
Almond and kale pesto. Absolute deliciousness. I processed a huge bunch of blanched kale with some olive oil, nutritional yeast, tons of garlic and ample nutritional yeast for a big tub of the stuff. Pesto is one of my favorite things to whip up because it dresses up so many foods so nicely. Paired with Vegenaise, it is an absolutely perfect sandwich spread. With that in mind, I thought I’d put the pesto not just on the bread but in it!
Yes, polishing off my first bag of bread flour, it was time the week’s bread selection: Kale pesto bread! Besides the beautiful specklings of green throughout, this loaf marks big progress in my breadmaking experiences thus far. Last week’s olive French bread was far from finished so I have to slice ‘er up for croutons. My breadmaker is spoiling me.
Last but not least, beet greens. Trimming these leaves in preparation for my roasted beet sandwiches later in the week, I sauteed up these lovelies to up the greens intake for the week.
Vegan Reporting By Location
