Potato and Black Bean Quesadillas

Last night I was going to make either potato enchiladas or black bean and potato tacos (which I haven't posted yet but plan to) but we have both of those so often. It was much warmer yesterday and I didn't want to turn on the oven so I came up with something similar but in a quesadilla instead.

Bill had two races in Chicago today (see Flickr for pictures) and we must have walked 5 miles! I was so happy to have these leftovers at home!

Potato and Black Bean Quesadillas

2 pounds potatoes (about 4)

2 tablespoons vegetable broth

1 can chopped chilies

Juice of one lime

1 teaspoon chipotle chili powder

3/4 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

tortillas

Cut the potato into chunks. Boil until soft and then mash along with the vegetable broth. When the potatoes are relatively smooth, add the chilies, chili powder, cumin, and garlic powder. Stir in the black beans.

Warm a lightly oiled skillet over medium heat. Place a tortilla in the pan and cover half of it with the potato mixture. Fold the tortilla in half. Cook about 3-4 minutes per side until nicely browned.

Serve with sour cream and salsa.

Kay: I thought these were a little spicy. I didn't see the salsa so I ate mine plain.

Dana (Mom): This made a lot of filling. I'm going to try freezing some of it to see how it holds up. You can use any kind of bean that you like or have on hand. If I had extra spinach in my refrigerator, I probably would have chopped that up and added it as well.

Pesto

I didn't get very good pictures but that is the pesto peaking out under the peas.

We finally had our first CSA pickup last Friday. Actually, with how cold and rainy it has been, I'm shocked anything has grown. We received Swiss chard, shelling peas, fava beans, arugula, and basil. Kay and I cooked the fava beans which were such a pain but then we sat down and ate all of them within 5 minutes! I'm not sure what we'll do with the arugula since none of use care for it. The other ingredients were all incorporated into our dinner on Monday.

We grow our own basil so whenever I get a bunch from the CSA, I make pesto. Kay and I don't really like peas but I remembered a salad recipe from Ina Garten that used pasta, peas and pesto so I decided to turn that into a warm meal. Shockingly, Kay loved it. I think it had something to do with the huge amount of garlic I put in the pesto. I cut all the ingredients in half, based on the amount of basil I had but forgot to half the garlic!

Pesto

1/4 cup walnuts

1/4 cup pine nuts

8 cloves garlic, chopped

5 cups basil leaves

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

3/4 cup olive oil

Place the nuts and garlic in a food processor and chopped for 30 seconds. Add the basil, salt and pepper and chop for 30 seconds more. Leave the processor running and drizzle in the oil until all ingredients are pureed and well blended.

This will freeze very well.

Kay: I don't really care for peas but they tasted good mixed with the pesto. The fava beans were awesome. We gobbled them up in one minute!

Mom (Dana): For our dinner, I blanched the peas for about 1 minute and then mixed the peas, some cooked pasta, and some of the pesto. Bill and Kay added Parmesan. As you can see, we also had pea pods with almonds and onions and Swiss chard and potatoes.

Vegan Egg McMuffins

July 1st is the worst day of my professional year every single year. There is tons of work and stress and time constraints but, lucky for you, I just lived it and have no intentions of rehashing the whole thing. After working about 10 hours, I collapsed on my couch to watch some TV and turned on "Delicious TV Totally Vegetarian". After a few minutes Kay wandered in and sat down as well. She was so amazed by how these sandwiches looked, she asked me to make them. So this is what we had for dinner.

First of all, the "egg" part really looks like the egg on an Egg McMuffin. I was shocked. We had ours on toasted sourdough bread with fake bacon (which we LOVE!). When eaten like a sandwich, I thought it tasted pretty authentic and I don't know that I would have realized it wasn't egg if I hadn't been the one who cooked it. Kay ate one of hers as a sandwich and the other by itself. She thought it tasted more like egg in the sandwich than alone.

These were really easy to make. I'm not sure how quick it went but it is 5:40 now and I didn't stop working until 5:00 so within 40 minutes we watched the show, fixed the food and ate it. Not too bad.

Vegan Egg McMuffin

Actually this recipe is just for the egg part. You'll have to figure the rest out yourself!

1 pound firm or extra firm tofu

1 cup cornstarch

Pinch of salt

Turmeric

1 tablespoon coconut oil

Heat the oil in a large skillet.

Mix the cornstarch and salt in a bowl.

Slice the tofu into 4 slabs. We cut ours into circles because that's how they did it on TV but it would work just as well as rectangles. Dip each slice into the cornstarch, coating well. Sprinkle turmeric on one side and place that side down in the pan. Sprinkle the top with more turmeric. Repeat with other pieces.

Cook about 4-5 minutes per side until nicely browned.

Serve with toast, bacon, sausage, ham, cheese, or whatever else sounds good to you.

Kay: If you eat it plain it doesn't really taste like egg but if you eat it with fake bacon and bread, it tastes like an egg mcmuffin but a lot less greasy.

Dana: Unfortunately our home computer is in my home office and my work computer keeps beeping at me about new e-mails. I was tempted to ignore them since if I was still on the couch, I wouldn't have even known about them, but in the end, I couldn't so I'm back to work again. At least I got a dinner break!