Garden Beans Caeser Zaatar

One of my colleagues gave me some beans from her garden so I made a variation of green beans Caesar.

I steamed the yellow beans for about 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Make a sauce of two parts extra virgin olive oil to one part balsamic vinegar. Add about 1/2 teaspoon four color pepper and 1.5 teaspoons garlic powder.

Make crumbs of about 1/4 breadcrumbs,  2 tablespoons olive oil, and 2 teaspoons zaatar spice.

Toss beans in sauce. Sprinkle with paprika. Top with crumbs. Bake 15-20 minutes.

I put mine on a bed of shredded cabbage and cucumber.

Monday adventures

In an effort to get back into the kitchen, I decided I would stop at Bottom Dollar as part of my morning errands. The selection of Bottom Dollar was completely due to location. I wanted to do my morning errands on foot.

My husband took the car to work and so I walked the children to school (as I do every school day). I continued from there (in the rain!) to Minuteman Press where I dropped off the last issue of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group newsletter for the 2012-2013 season. I will not be resuming duties in the fall.

I need to move forward. 

So I stopped at Bottom Dollar with $12 in my pocket. My checkbook has $50 left to make it until Friday...

I spent $3-and-some odd cents. Head of fresh broccoli, corn tortilla chips and a bag of Fresh Express iceberg garden salad mix.

I came home and made hummus. Got a little too much lemon juice in there, now it's runny. Have no more chick peas to mix in. Nor do I have tahini. I'm tempted to mix in some of the calamata olives left and some of the olive tapenade from Wegmans. Tossed in some zaatar seasoning. I could add roasted red pepper dip. That could work...

Got some harissa and zaatar bread from the freezer. Maybe I'll make couscous with raj el hanout. 

Today will produce some fine adventure...

Mixed up ravioli

Last night I had a delightful dinner with friends at Valenca in downtown Easton. I brought home a lovely piece of salmon that I recycled into the following hot lunch:

- dairy free roasted red pepper ravioli
- Wegmans feta spinach peorogies

In a sauce just slightly warmed in the cast iron skillet:
- Extra virgin olive oil, cold pressed, imported from Beirut
- garlic pepper
- Italian seasoning
- a teaspoon of lemon juice
- zaatar spice

Mediterranean Feast

It's close to 100 degrees. I did a lot of work today, and it's my husband's busy time of year at work. So I opted for zaatar bread and feta for dinner from Forks Mediterranean Deli.

Now, the busier they are in that slice of heaven, the more I buy. Today I went in for their cold pressed extra virgin olive oil from Beirut, feta and their homemade zaatar bread. I didn't see their homemade zaatar bread so I got their bakery zaatar.

I got a pound of fresh Greek feta ($5.94). They also have Bulgarian and French feta.

Zaatar bread was $3.75 a pack for 2 approximately 12-inch breads. I got two. They freeze well.

The olive oil was $5.99 for 16 ounces.

Then I started adding on:
- hummus, about a pound, $4.31
- madjool dates, more than a half-pound $3.90
- 6 pieces of baklava, $3.36
- less than a half pound of roasted red pepper dip (mouhammara), $2.41
- pitted camaratta olives, 1/4 pound, $1.44
- dried strawberries, about a 1/2 pound, $3.57

Tomato Herb Foccaccia

Most of the world tends to gush and rave about garden fresh tomatoes. I'm not a huge tomato fan, so I don't get that kind of crazy but I will say it's not worth having any tomatoes unless their fresh from the garden.

So when I get tomatoes, I made foccaccia.

This is my foccaccia post from two summers ago and I don't deviate much since it's a family favorite.
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/07/foccaccia.html?m=1

Today's ingredients:
- garden tomatoes
- 2 cups garden fresh basil
- 1 tsp yeast
- 1 1/2 cups warm water
- 1 tsp local honey
- 3 cups flour
- 1 cup rye flour
- papa john's seasoning
- zaatar seasoning
- Italian seasoning
- salt
- extra virgin olive oil
- corn meal
- Parmesan reggiano cheese

Combine warm water, honey and yeast. Stir with a non metal spoon and set aside 15 minutes.

Add 2 tsp olive oil and a pinch of salt to the developed yeast mixture. Add half the flour, stir. Add another cup. Stir. Add desired dry seasonings. (in my case today: Italian seasonings, papa john's seasoning, and zaatar.) begin to knead (10 minutes total), adding the remaining cup of floured needed.

Form dough into ball. Pat down with olive oil and leave covered to rise until double, about 90 minutes.

Grease a large cookie sheet and dust with cornmeal. Punch dough down and press into pan. Cover again and let rise about 30 minutes on top of the stove while the oven preheats to 425.

Poke finger indentations into crust. Brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with zaatar and shreds of fresh basil. Add sliced tomatoes. Coat with more oil. Sprinkle with more zaatar and cheese.

Bake about 30 minutes

Salad Wrap

I was in a hurry and needed to eat so I used the leftover greens from my garden/last night's salad to make a wrap. I added cucumbers and carrot ribbons, black olives and Goddess dressing. I didn't really intend for it to be vegan, but it is. I also sprinkled some Zaatar on top.

Today's Zaatar Lunch

Yesterday's packed school lunch was a huge hit. Every scrap except for three spirals of pasta.

Today mimics yesterday's lunch. One of our new juice boxes, some cashews, some frozen blueberries and a slice of zaatar foccaccia.

Backyard picnic!

Today's weather was refreshingly warm and happily sunny. With my fresh baked zaatar foccaccia (that the sunflower seeds fall off of, when will I learn to knead these items into the dough), it felt right to wash off my little café table and ask hubby to grab a bagged salad and a bottle of Vouvray on the way home.

What else says summer-ish than cold French wine, Dole Asian Crunch salad ($12.71 for the wine and $3.99 for the salad) with homemade bread dipped in cold pressed extra virgin olive oil?

The whole meal would have been vegan if it weren't for the egg yolk-- I'm not sure if it was in the ginger sesame dressing or the Asian-style noodles.

Zaatar foccaccia

Ever since my bout with anemia last summer, making bread has become a chore. Because of this, gradually I have made less and less bread. But, today, with zaatar spices in hand, I wanted to make bread again.

Among my first summer entries, you can find a garden herb pesto/fresh tomato foccaccia that is a family favorite. I adapted this from a recipe from VegList, a veg*n email loop I belonged to in the dark ages before Yahoo groups.

Today, I have transformed that basic foccaccia into a zaatar and sunflower seed variation.

The DOUGH
About 1 teaspoon yeast
1.5 cups warm water
Mix and let rest 15 minutes.

Add:
1 pinch fresh ground salt
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup unbleached white flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rye flour

Stir with a wooden spoon.

Add another cup white flour and a little wheat flour.
Add a handful of flax seeds
Add a handful of roasted sesame seeds

Kneed.

Coat with olive oil and let rise abot 1.5 hours until doubled.
Lightly oil and flour a big cookie sheet.
Press out the bread.
Brush with oil. Coat with liberal zaatar and sunfloer seeds.

Let rise another 45 minutes. Bake at 425 for 25 minutes.

Errands

Last night, I asked my husband to buy a few things from Target and Wegmans. We had a coupon for ocean spray juice and another for Silk almond milk from Target. And I wanted some of those sour infused raisins from Target. They add sugar to them, so they're really not that healthy. But they fill my jelly bean craving so... That's a fine trade.

Husband bought two boxes of Morningstar breakfast patties, Market Pantry cranberry-pomegranate juice, ocean spray blueberry juice, two packages of the golden infused raisins, two cartons of vanilla almond milk and a quart of half and half... The total came to $19-something so it should have been $17-something with the coupons but the cashier missed the one coupon. But we still had a $5 gift card from an earlier promotion and my discount so I guess that works out okay.

At Wegmans, he spent $11 and bought vegan mayonnaise for the child, organic spring mix for the tortoise, broccoli and a bag of Doritos.

Now today we were heading to Kline Farm to buy eggs, meat and local honey (another attempt for alleviating the daughter's ear problems). We stopped at Forks Mediterrannean Deli because we were hungry. We spent about $13 for four portions of zaatar bread, roasted sunflower seeds and a bag of the zaatar spice. Yes, I hope to make my own zaatar bread.

Finally, we made it to the farm. We spent $38.50 and bought:
- 3 lbs ground beef
- 1 lb beef cubes
- 1 pound chipped steak
- a fairly big jar of local raw honey
- apple butter by a local artisan
- one dozen brown eggs