June 12, 2012

I wanted to use up the spinach before it got slimy so I decided to make a pasta dish. I put a pot of water on the stove to boil while I did some other things.

First, I made a garlic scape pesto with scapes, walnuts, nutritional yeast, olive oil, and lemon juice. I didn’t follow a recipe, since pesto is so forgiving. I roughly chopped the scapes (discard the bulbous seed pods from the ends) and put them in a food processor with a handful of walnuts (maybe 1/4 cup), a tablespoon or so of nutritional yeast, a little lemon juice, and enough olive oil to achieve the consistency I wanted. I seasoned with a little salt and pepper. The pesto is really tasty, but I might cut the scapes with basil or other greens next time. It’s mighty garlicky!

Since I already had the food processor out, I also made a batch of hummus. I used two cans of chickpeas, the green parts from the CSA scallions, a little tahini, olive oil, and the remaining juice from the lemon I used for the pesto. Hummus makes a great veggie dip and is also delicious with chips or crackers. It’s more hummus than we can probably eat in a week. I may have to give some away to a friend.

By this point the water was boiling so I tossed in a box of penne pasta to cook. Meanwhile, I chopped up some broccoli and red bell pepper I had on hand (not from the CSA), along with the fresh spinach. I sauteed the veggies in a little olive oil for a few minutes, then put the lid on the pan and let them steam while the pasta finished cooking.

I drained the pasta, then tossed it with about 1/2-cup of the garlic scape pesto. I tossed in my sauteed veggies and Voila!, I had a lovely pasta dish full of healthy organic produce. I ate some for lunch and put the rest in the refrigerator for dinner.

It might sound like a lot of work, but making all of these things took me less than an hour.

During the day I also had a glass of vegetable juice and ate the rest of the radishes as a snack.

We haven’t touched the butter crunch lettuce yet and we still have some of the spring mix. I’m a vegan, and even I get tired of eating salads. I might toss the lettuce into a juice if I don’t use it up by Thursday.