Lunch: Sweet corn season is finally here! We have a corn stand a few blocks from our house with corn picked fresh each day. How great is that?! So of course, lunch was sweet corn. I also made a big batch of greens & beans, using my last kohlrabi and leaves from the garden, some fresh local beets, a little zucchini, black beans, and almond butter instead of seeds. I think I like the ground seeds more than the almond butter. I think I'm not a big fan of the almond butter. Anyway, this is at right in the picture:
For housemate, I made a potato & greens dish. For the corn, instead of butter, mashed avocado tastes fabulous. I have to resist the urge to add anything to it. I didn't resist today and added a few chives and basil, but it's better just plain. Then you taste the sweetness of the corn and the added fat and flavor of the avocado. I think this is better than butter. So you don't have to feel deprived. If you don't have avocado I just like it plain. The corn is really good on its own. Of course, it's been engineered to be way sweeter than it should be probably, which explains why it tastes so good. Here's housemate enjoying her corn:
Dinner was some watermelon, leftover greens & beans dish, and an apple with almond butter. Again, I'm not a big fan of the almond butter. I did a whole bunch of food prep after this and I guess I ate more than I thought while munching on the food. I occasionally nibbled on the almond butter. Well, I must have nibbled too much because I got really full. I am still full and it's 9:40 am the next morning. I hope I'm hungry by lunch. Anyway, I made a huge batch of greens & beans to freeze and take on my trip. This version was more of an Italian take, like this post. I used eggplant, mushrooms, zucchini, tons of kale from the garden, herbs from the garden (basil, dill, garlic chives), a leek, scallions, fennel, and 2 cans tomatoes (almost done with last year's garden cans!), about 6 cups of cooked canonelli beans (at least, it was 1.5 cups dried) and almond butter instead of seeds. I thought the almond butter would go better with the tomatoes but I still didn't like it as much as seeds. I also added some nutritional yeast. I forgot to get garlic at the store so didn't have that. It was good but I felt it was missing something--maybe the garlic. Maybe a touch of vinegar would be good too. This made a huge batch. I had fun preparing it. Here are four big pots. At top left are the short-cooking vegetables (zucchini, mushroom, herbs, chard), top right are the beans (cooked 8 minutes in the PC), bottom left, ton of kale shrunk in volume using the food processor, then bottom right, the rest of the veggies. I combined the bottom two pots, cooked for 3 minutes in the pressure cooker (PC), then added the short-cooking veggies, cooked for another 2 minutes, then added the beans, nutritional yeast and almond butter. It made about 12 generous cups which I dished into 6 plastic bowls for freezing.
After this I made 4 giant collard green/spinach smoothies to freeze. Now I'm all set for my trip. We are visiting friends who's eating style is completely opposite of mine--I mean, the complete other end of the spectrum. Everyone agrees we'll all be happier if I bring my own food. I'll just bring the frozen stuff and put it in their freezer. I also made a batch of cashew-orange dressing that I froze. So if they have some salad I'll eat that too.