Unlikely Vegetarian Eating plants and living to tell about it

Despite the Boston heat wave, I have been cooking in my tiny, hot kitchen. Never before did I realize the necessity of a kitchen window. I’ll put that on my wish list along with a dishwasher, drawers, a counter, a Kitchen-Aid, four working burners on my stove…

And what have I been slaving over a hot stove for? First, a few dinners for moi:

I had some sweet potatoes from my Boston Organics box, some Nashoba Brook wheat bread, and a few eggs in the fridge. I oven roasted the sweet potatoes, scrambled the eggs, and toasted the bread for a very quick dinner for one. Thanks to my herb garden, I topped the eggs off with some chives. Eggs are probably the most basic food to cook that I have yet to perfect. With 63 calories and 6 grams of protein in one tasty egg, they’re worth the effort, so I’m working on it.

A few days later, I dropped by the Copley Square Farmer’s Market, and these beautiful heirloom carrots caught my eye. I bought the whole bunch along with a big bunch of chard and headed home to make it all into dinner. I glazed the carrots using Mark Bittman’s recipe in HTCEV (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian). Glazed is really misnomer here since the recipe does not involve the thick, syrupy sauce that usually comes along with “glazed” anything.

Rather, the recipe calls for cooking the carrots in a bit of water or vegetable stock with a tablespoon of olive oil. The carrots ended up cooked but not mushy and flavored just right. This will be my go-to cooked carrots recipe. For the chard, I just washed it, let it dry for a bit, then tossed it in a pan with warm olive oil. I topped it with salt and pepper. The potatoes were also from Boston Organics, so I just boiled them, and then roasted them in a pan with some olive oil and rosemary for a minute. This was one of my favorite summer meals so far: light but tasty with lots of local vegetables.

These delicious, but simple meals are great for a party of one. When I recently had dinner guests over, I knew I had to come up with a more robust menu. I love cooking for friends, and many of them are very vegetarian friendly–even gracious enough to cook me a vegetarian dinner when I eat with them! That said. my biggest dinner party fear as a vegetarian is that my omnivore friends would dread coming over to eat my crunchy, weird vegetarian food. Thus, I’m always on the lookout for recipes that please everyone. With five meat-eating friends on their way over, including three hungry guys, the pressure was on.

101 Cookbooks saved the day with two great recipes: Double Broccoli Quinoa and Giant Black Bean Salad. I also served some green beans I had on hand and a loaf of crusty bread with hummus and olive oil. With just a small amount of left overs, I’m assuming everyone walked away full!

Notes: I could not find Giant Black Beans for the salad, so I used some regular black beans that I had cooked myself. For the quinoa, I did add the optional feta and avocado, but not the basil or fire oil. They would probably be great additions, but not necessary if you run out of time like me!