Easy as pie

I love pot pie.

...but I prefer it simply with a bottom crust and no top. My husband, however, wants a solid top AND bottom crust. So we compromised and I only used half as much top crust as he wanted. We'll just save the remaining strips of crust for another pie. Apparently being married means you have to compromise. Who knew?!



Using local veggies from our CSA, and a few other everyday things we had in the kitchen, we made the yummiest, warmest, most comforting pot pie in quite a while. (We didn't make the crust, of course. What can I say.. I was tired!)

Step 1: buy a vegan pie crust. No, this is not a difficult thing to do. Yes, it will be better than the cheap pie crusts you'll find in a grocer's freezer. No cholesterol. No saturated fat. Perfect. (We still can't believe the pie crusts with lard were about a buck in the freezer section, while this healthy, vegetable-fat pie crust was like 4x as much. Ridiculous!)

But I digress..

Step 2: gather your ingredients. This is a rough estimate of what I used.

INGREDIENTS
Veggies:
2 small beets (we had a red and yellow beet)
1 med-small potato diced into bite-sized pieces
Handful of fresh green beans, rinsed and sliced into bite-sized pieces
2-3 carrots, sliced
Diced, baked tofu (just follow the recipe but dice your tofu first)

Sauce (you'll want enough to fill in around your pot pie innards):
About 2 c almond mylk
1/2 head of garlic, diced small
1 T onion, minced
1 T whole wheat flour
3 T nutritional yeast
1 t soy sauce or sea salt
Optional spices: fresh thyme, onion,

Step 3: have your tofu pre-cooked or do that first. You can also substitute seitan. Or leave it out completely.

Step 4: let one of your pie crusts thaw and flatten it out. Slice it into thin strips. This will be the top of your pie.

Step 5: mix all of your sauce ingredients in a skillet. *Cook your onions and garlic in a little oil first if you'd like to. Then add remaining ingredients on top. Mix well. Let cook a few minutes until it thoroughly mixes.

Step 6: rinse and ready your veggies.

Step 7: now layer as you'd expect. Put your raw veggies in first. Make sure it's filled to the top!



Step 8: now cover with your sauce. *You can see from the picture that I didn't have quite enough sauce so I simply poured extra almond milk on top, to fill the pie to the rim. Your veggies need the extra juice.



Step 8: Place your sliced pieces of crust in any fashion you prefer. You can even cover with an entire bottom crust.

BAKE

To get a beautiful, flaky crust and perfectly-cooked veggies, you'll want to cook it slowly.

First, 45 minutes at 325 degrees.

Then, 25 more minutes at 350.

Finally, 5 minutes (or until browned) at 400.



Trust me.. this pie is worth every second.

Enjoy!

Borscht, a summer soup

Borscht is a brightly-colored but lightly-flavored soup. Great for a summer evening when you've got fresh, local, organic CSA beets to devour.



We served it with some crisp bread. It was a great combo!


Serves 2

INGREDIENTS

3 whole beets
1 T olive oil
1-2 garlic cloves
Onion
2 med-large carrots
1 med potato
4 c water
1/4 of a cabbage, finely minced
Juice of 1 lemon
1 t dill
Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Boil your beets whole, skin included. Cook until they can be pieced with a knife and the skin can be removed.

Meanwhile, cut the rest of your veggies so they're ready when the beets are done. Now, sauté your onion and garlic until well done in a large pot. This is where you'll cook the soup.

When the beets are done, cool them so they can be handled. Remove the skin and slice thinly.

Now you're ready to put it together!

Add water, veggies - except cabbage - and spices to your onion/garlic in the pot. Cook until veggies are well done (30-45 minutes). Now add the lemon juice and cabbage and cook another 5 minutes, or until the cabbage is mildly-cooked.

Serve immediately. 

Roast anything and everything

We got a bunch of stuff from our CSA this week.. and we honestly weren't sure what to do.

So, what's my default response to a random assortment of veggies... roasting, of course! It never fails to be fantastic. No kidding. Trust me.


Serves 2. Measurements are approximate.

Ingredients
Olive oil
Fresh garlic (you're going to peel every clove in your garlic head), whole or halved
About 1 c fresh green beans (sliced in half)
1 kohlrabi (peeled and diced)
3 turnips (rinsed and diced)
1 large new potato (diced, not peeled)
Garlic
Soy sauce
Thyme

We served with tempeh and roasted carrots. Delicious!

Preheat your oven to 400 (or so) degrees.

In a bowl, put a few T of olive oil. Now throw in all of your freshly rinsed and sliced veggies until everything has a bit of oil on it. Now sprinkle with your favorite spices.

We got a lot of fresh thyme from the farm.. so you guessed it, we used a lot of thyme! Also sprinkled a little garlic and soy sauce.

Roast 30 minutes. Stir and see how everything is cooked.

Roast up to another 30 minutes - but you probably won't need that long.

Enjoy! 

Roasted carrots

These may be the easiest things you'll ever cook.. and also the tastiest. (Especially if you use local, organic carrots.) No, really.



Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

If they're large, as these carrots were, you'll want to slice them down the middle.

If they're organic, just rinse off the dirt and cut off the hard ends.

Now rub a smidge of olive oil on each carrot. Lay in your cast iron skillet and cover with your favorite spices. There's no wrong way to do this! My favorite combination: sprinkle a little soy sauce on the carrots, lay them in the skillet and sprinkle with thyme and garlic.

Cook 30 minutes. Pierce with a fork. If they're not soft, flip and cook another 15-20.

Enjoy!