Green Bean French Fries (Roasted Green Beans)

We got the world's biggest bag of green beans from our CSA this past week -- and I had a plan for them! But when I got home from school, P rejected that plan, causing me to scramble at the last minute to come up with something else for dinner. What I finally settled on was roasting up the green beans, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper -- plus a little onion powder and garlic powder. It is super-easy to roast green beans; just throw them in the oven at 400° for about 12 minutes, periodically checking on them and shaking the pan around so they don't get crispy just on one side.

We were calling them green bean french fries, because that's basically what it tasted like! P said he would much rather have green bean french fries than the breaded zucchini sticks that are at diners everywhere, though that particular menu change doesn't seem all that likely. I had a hard time getting a good picture of the beans, because this kept happening:

So . . . I guess that's a good thing?

I think these pictures speak for themselves -- the green bean french fries were a hit!

Summer Squash Cakes

Last summer, I made some zucchini cakes -- a vegan version of crab cakes, the way I remember them from my childhood when we would head to the shore every summer. I've been a vegetarian for sixteen years now, but still -- in the summer, I think about crab cakes.

When we got our first summer squash of the season from our CSA this week, I instantly knew that it was time for some vegan crab cakes. Technically, these are squash cakes and not zucchini cakes -- since they are made with a green summer squash that isn't zucchini -- but it is basically the same thing.

These cakes might not taste exactly like crab cakes, but they definitely serve the role -- flaky, moist, buttery, and extra-delicious. The kelp gives it that sea flavor -- with almost a fishiness to it -- while the Old Bay calls on a classic crab cake seasoning.

The only time-consuming part of this recipe is grating the squash, but I took care of that as soon as I woke up this morning -- so at dinner time, it was a simple matter of throwing everything together in a bowl and then pan-frying. This recipe easily scales up or down, depending on how much squash you have -- but my one small green squash yielded the cup and a half of grated squash called for in the recipe. This amount of squash produced four big squash cakes -- plus one small one for Zelda.

Zucchini or Summer Squash Cakes

• 1 1/2 c grated squash or zucchini, patted dry
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 c plain bread crumbs
• 1/2 tsp Old Bay seasoning
• 1 tsp kelp granules (I use this, but really any kind of powdered/granulated seaweed works)
• 2 tbsp flour
• oil for pan frying

Mix together the squash, olive oil, bread crumbs, Old Bay, and kelp in a bowl. Form into patties, then dredge in the flour on both sides. Drizzle some oil into a pan and let it heat up over a medium-high flame. Once the oil is hot, pan fry about three to five minutes per side, until it turns a lovely golden brown.

Kale Pesto

The other day, as I stared at a huge bunch of kale from our CSA, a thought occurred to me. I love basil pesto; I've heard of spinach pesto; why not kale pesto? We had two small sprigs of basil this week, so they were recruited -- along with said huge bunch of kale -- into pesto!

There wasn't anything fancy about the recipe itself -- it was a very standard pesto recipe, but with kale stepping in for the bulk of the greenery. It's extremely easy to make pesto; just put everything in the food processor and process the food until it has a nice smooth texture. This pesto was made of pine nuts, rice-parmesan, olive oil, garlic, kale -- with the stems removed and coarsely chopped, basil leaves, and a little salt and pepper.

It took just as long to wash and chop the kale, assemble the other ingredients, and prepare the pesto in the food processor as it took for my pot of water to boil and the pasta to cook. Quick and easy! And, to make it even easier next time, this recipe made three times as much pesto as I needed for tonight's dinner -- so I froze two individual servings of pesto for the next couple of times!

As easy as tonight's dinner was, I didn't have the energy even for this much work last night after I got back from doing work at school. I present you with a bonus photo of last night's dinner -- roasted CSA broccoli and farmers' market potatoes plus salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper.

I love roasting -- you just throw your vegetables in the oven and forget about them, then -- BAM! -- dinner's ready! Despite my intense love for both roasting and broccoli, I'd actually never had roasted broccoli before -- but this will certainly not be the last time. Roasting the broccoli gave it a fantastically nutty flavor; I may have just found my new favorite way to prepare my favorite vegetable.

Indian Potato-n-Kale Stuffed Peppers

We got some tasty-looking green bell peppers at the farmers' market last week, but I wasn't sure what to do with them -- maybe stuffed peppers? -- and then inspiration struck. With some red-skin potatoes (also from the farmers' market) and a bunch of kale (from our CSA), I would make an Indian-flavored, spicy mashed potato and sauteed kale mixture to stuff the peppers with.

P chopped up the kale nice and small so that there would not be big chunks mixed in with the smoother texture of the potato, while I chopped and boiled the potatoes until they were soft enough to mash and got the peppers ready -- cutting off the tops and scooping out the seeds inside. I sauteed the kale in a bit of olive oil and some Indian spices, including the hot curry paste I use for just about everything. Once the kale was cooked and the potatoes were mashed, I mixed it all up together -- it already tasted delicious, but I managed to get (most of) the mixture into the peppers anyway.

Once stuffed, I stuck the peppers in the oven at 375 for about 20 minutes, until the peppers were nice and soft -- but not too soft! The texture of the peppers was perfectly balanced between tenderness and crispness, and the top of the stuffing peeking out the top got delightfully crunchy from being uncovered in the oven. Fabulous!

We have one pepper left, and you can bet that we are going to be fighting over it for lunch tomorrow!

Grilled Kale

Last weekend, we barbecued with my dad -- and he had the idea to grill some kale along with our corn and veggie burgers. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical at first -- but he talked me into it. And I'm so glad he did! The kale turned out amazing.

It had that delicious smokiness from the grill, and was crisp on the edges while the rest of it was still nice and soft. We made sure not to cook it too long, so the kale wasn't bitter -- and it turned out with a perfectly rich, smoky flavor.

The preparation was simple -- we tossed everything in some olive oil, salt and pepper, and a little bit of cayenne pepper. First, we grilled some CSA carrots and spring onions with the chopped up pieces of kale stem; once those started to get nice and soft, I threw in the leafy part of the kale. I made sure to keep stirring up the veggies so that the kale didn't get charred on one side, but the whole cooking process only took about ten minutes.

You can see our farmers' market corn and black bean burgers in the background, but the grilled kale was definitely the star of this meal! Grilled kale is definitely a must for our future barbecues!