Garden Eating

Mondays are tough enough, but even worse coming back from a week long vacation of fun. And it’s been tough getting back into normal eating mode after a lot of fabulous eats, but not having much in the kitchen and not feeling like grocery shopping helps. We have a build up veggies from the garden that piled up last week, so I’ve been trying to use them up starting with this white cucumber from a very active plant.

White cucumbers are sweeter with less bitter skin compared to green cucumbers, so I decided to try spiral slicing it for an interesting salad with corn, chopped apple, avocado dill dressing, and hemp seeds.

The salad came out very good and the creamy dill dressing was perfect with the chilled cucumber “noodles”. But next time I might peel the cucumber before spiral slicing because the skin was a little tough even after spiral slicing.

Since we didn’t do a traditional 4th of July BBQ this year, we decided to have one last night using more veggies from the garden – corn, eggplant, and a mutant zucchini.

The pups watched us intently waiting for one of us to make a mess on the floor, it’s usually not long with me.

I sliced the zucchini into 1/2″ slices and seasoned with a little olive oil, Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute, salt, and pepper for the grill.

And I experimented with a new pressure cooker baked bean recipe.

While hubby got creative seasoning the eggplant slices with oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon pepper seasoning, garlic powder, and salt.

And handled all the grilling.

We had a grilled vegan 4th of July feast that was very filling.

The pressure cooker beans came out good, my elaborate sauce involved putting dates and an apple in the Vitamix, but it still needs a little tweaking. The eggplant came out wonderfully with a hearty texture that was not spongy or soggy and nice amount of flavor grilled in from the balsamic and seasonings. The zucchini was also great with a soft, but firm, texture and nicely distributed flavor.