Garden Dining....

My vegetable garden is providing me with a daily abundance of beautiful veggies. This of course is making my vegan path quite lovely at this time of year. I think I chose pretty wisely to make this jump now. I started my day at 5:30 a.m. out in the garden picking the lovely offerings. I got 3 gallons of green beans, assorted peppers (green, banana, jalapeno), another eggplant, zucchini and about 20 red potatoes. Seems like a lot right? My garden must be huge you say? No, it's actually not. I have one raised bed which measures 16x16, another which is 4x16 (it is home to the squash and zucchini), various plants snuggled up against the house and a couple of lettuce/spinach beds that I keep on my front porch out of the blazing sun. Oh, and of course I have 10 tomato plants in containers that are kept in the little area on the side of the house.  Really not that big at all, just well plotted out and this year it is all producing quite heavily.

So here's how my day went. After starting with coffee, I did my garden work (just picking really), had some breakfast consisting of a bowl of pineapple and a Green Smoothie (lots of antioxidants and protein), worked on a few work reports (have to pay the bills somehow). Early afternoon found me in the kitchen whipping up a batch of Smoky Chickpeas (recipe courtesy of Robin Robertson and can be found here (http://veganplanet.blogspot.com/) and a Mushroom and Chickpea loaf (meatloaf style), which I slice and use in sandwiches during the week when things get busy. After I got those 2 cooking items out of the way I picked some assorted lettuce and whipped up a yummy salad. It consisted of the lettuce, cucumbers, yellow and orange bell peppers, banana pepper, Greek olives and the Smoky Chickpeas, and topped with a simple vinaigrette.

 Lunchtime Garden Salad with Smoky Chickpeas

Smoky Chickpeas...these things are addictive.

The rest of my day was spent working, picking up my grandson from school, shuttling him to his T-Ball game (which ended up being rained out), and then back home again to get dinner ready. Tonight's dinner was of course culled mainly from the garden. I sauteed zucchini, eggplant, peppers, onion and tomatoes with a little olive oil, added fresh parsley, oregano and basil, a large pinch of red pepper flakes and a bit of salt and pepper and served it over whole wheat penne. It was outstanding. I love dinner from the garden, it really doesn't get much more local than that. 

Well, that's how my day progressed. Another few steps in my vegan journey, and they have been magnificent.