Vegan Pizza

So I promised you last week, I'd show you the vegan pizzas I made with all of those roasted veggies.

First I made two different sauces -- a red sauce from the roasted tomatoes and garlic and a white sauce from white beans, herbs, and roasted garlic. I had a couple of packages of flat breads and my family and I made a bunch of different combinations. Our favorites:

- Margarita Pizza with the white sauce, fresh basil, fresh sliced tomatoes and topped it with toasted walnuts.

- Grilled Corn and Onion Pizza made with the roasted tomato sauce, fresh thyme leaves and the grilled veggies

- Roasted Eggplant and Pinenut pizza - I don’t know whether I like this better with the white sauce or red sauce--they were both amazing.

Rutiz Farms CSA Box

Thanks to my wonderful CSA -- Rutiz Farms . . . look at all the wonderful meals we had this weekend made from food in Friday's CSA box.

Roasted potatoes, beets, cauliflower and broccoli; strawberry-blueberry pancakes (using the multi-grain pancake mix from The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook); Minestrone Soup; and to relax a lovely cup of lemon-balm tea made from leaves of my new lemon balm plant!

Local Olive Oil and more

After tasting the olive oil at Global Gardens in Los Olivos, CA, I joined their "club" so I can get a basket 4 times a year with their own olive oil, vinegar, and other products. Here's a video featuring what I got in my first one . . . and what I did with it.

10 Scary Reasons to Avoid GMOs (or at least require labeling)

This is from the Organic Consumers Organization newsletter--10 Scary Reasons to Avoid GMOs (based on this article):

#1 Monsanto's Bt-toxin, in its Bt-producing GMO corn and cotton (used in food in the form of cottonseed oil), was found by Canadian doctors in the blood of 93% of pregnant women and 80% of the umbilical blood of their babies.

#2 The authors of the Canadian study conclude that the women and their babies were exposed to Monsanto's GMO Bt-toxin through a "normal" non-organic Canadian diet, including non-organic (so-called "natural" and "conventional") meat, egg, and dairy products from animals fed Bt corn.

#3 Monsanto's GMO "Bt" corn and cotton plants are engineered to produce a insecticide in every cell of the plant that kills insects by breaking open their stomachs.

#4 Mice fed Monsanto's Bt corn had elevated levels of immune system substances that are also higher in humans who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, cancer, allergies, Lou Gehrig's disease, autoimmune disease, and colitis.

#5 Young mice in the same study had elevated T-cells, which are increased in people with asthma, and in children with food allergies, juvenile arthritis, and connective tissue diseases.

#6 Monsanto's GMO Bt-toxin has properties of known allergens - it actually fails the World Health Organization's allergen screening tests.

#7 Monsanto's GMO Bt-toxin has been found to bind with the small intestines in mice and with intestinal tissue in rhesus monkeys.

#8 In addition to its GMO "Bt" crops which are engineered to produce insecticide, Monsanto also produces GMO "RoundUp Ready" crops, engineered with a bacterial DNA that allows it to survive otherwise deadly doses of its herbicide RoundUp.

#9 In the only human feeding study ever published on GMOs, Monsanto's GMO "RoundUp Ready" soybeans were found to transfer Monsanto's "RoundUp Ready" DNA to the bacteria living inside human intestines.

#10 According to Jeffrey Smith of the Institute for Responsible Technology, the transfer of Monsanto's GMO Bt DNA to human digestive bacteria could create a "living pesticide factory" that could be responsible for the "increase in gastrointestinal problems, autoimmune diseases, food allergies, and childhood learning disorders - since 1996 when Bt crops came on the market."

If you are concerned, there are ways to take action here.

More roasted veggies . . .

My latest adventures with roasting vegetables are just getting more and more delicious--I wanted to work on vegan pizzas and thought that roasted veggies would give the pizzas lots of flavor so the cheese wouldn't be missed. I roasted more garlic but this time added thyme. I also roasted tomatoes, which I had not done before (who knows why--it was even easier than roasting garlic and, oh my gosh, so good). And one of my favorite roasted veggies--eggplant. Next post will be about what I did with all those roasted goodies--but in the meantime, here are roasting directions.

Thyme Roasted Garlic

4 bulbs garlic
olive oil
4 sprigs fresh thyme
Preheat oven to 400 degress F. Peel most of the white papery skin of a the garlic bulb, leaving enough so that the cloves still hold together. Slice off about 1/2 inch off the top—just enough so that most of the cloves are exposed. Place garlic bulbs cut side up in a small baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil. Place a sprig of thyme over each bulb. Cover the dish—if it doesn’t have a cover use foil. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, or until cloves are soft and outsides have started to brown. Let cool slightly before pressing the paste out of each clove. Keep any unused paste in a covered container in the refrigerator up to one week.

Roasted Eggplant
I love to roast a bunch of eggplant and keep it in my refrigator to put on sandwiches, pizza, pasta, salads—I have even been known to just snack on it plain--really!

Preheat oven to 400 degreees F. Oil large baking sheet. Slice eggplant into 1/2-inch slices. You can slice horizontially or vertically depending on whether you want big or smaller pieces. Lay the slices onto the oiled baking sheet. Brush more olive oil over the tops of slices. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until bottoms are browned. Flip slices and baking until brown—another 5 or 10 minutes.

Roasted Plum Tomatoes
A wonderful, easy way to concentrate the tomato flavor. I recommend the parchment paper because otherwise, the baking sheet is really a pain to clean.

16 plum tomatoes, sliced in half (horizontally or vertically, doesn’t matter)
Olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper if desired (otherwise oil the baking sheet). Place the tomatoes on the baking sheet cut side up. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle tomatoes with sea salt and olive oil. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until skin is blackened. Let tomatoes cool slightly before squeezing the tomatoes out the skin.

Blue Corn Crackers

I don't buy crackers very often as they always seem to have ingredients I prefer not to eat like hydrogenated oils or non-organic corn or soy ingredients that are most likely genetically engineered. Crackers are easy to make though -- pretty similar to making pie crust. I have many recipes in both Simply Natural Baby Food and The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook, but here's a new one I came up with recently. My daughter's friend liked it spread with freshly made peanut butter and sprinkled with sea salt.

Blue Corn Crackers
Crispy, flavorful, perfect with soup or as a snack. If you don't have blue corn meal, the regular yellow variety works just fine.

3/4 cup blue corn meal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/3 cup oil
1 tablespoon agave
3 – 4 tablespoons water, as needed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Large a medium cookie sheet with parchment paper. Mix cornmeal, whole wheat flour, and sea salt in large mixing bowl with fork. Add oil and agave and mix with fork until it begins to hold together. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time and mix with hands until mixture holds together.

Press dough into parchment lined cookie sheet. Roll out dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Score into squares with knife or pizza cutter. Bake 15 minutes, or until edges are golden. Cool 10 minutes before serving or remove to rack to cool completely.

Makes about 2 dozen crackers

Easy roasted vegan dinner

I am just all about roasting lately. It's easy, makes the house smell great, but mostly everything just seems to taste spectacular when it's roasted.

Here's my latest creation that we all loved. And it really has all the food groups--maybe add a nice warm, crusty bread to round it out!

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 head cauliflower, broken into bite size florets
1 3/4 cups or 1 (15-ounce can) garbanzo beans
1 large onion, peeled and cut into wedges
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary (thyme would also work well)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. In a large bowl, toss everything together with enough olive oil to coat. Spread on a large baking sheet and sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper. Roast in the oven about 30 minutes, or until the squash and cauliflower are tender. Stir and flip veggies once or twice to keep once side from getting to brown.

Serves 4-6