Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Lemon Vinaigrette ♥

How to roast a whole head of cauliflower in the oven. Yes, I really did say a "whole head" of cauliflower! It comes out all brown and nutty and dramatic looking, easy enough for a weeknight but impressive enough for your mother-in-law. Weight Watchers? All this for just one or two Weight Watchers points! Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

So isn't it gorgeous?! There's just something so spectacular about cooking a whole head of cauliflower. I am my mother's daughter after all, she loved to cook a head of cauliflower and top it with cheese sauce. (Who remembers Whole Cauliflower with Homemade Cheese Sauce?!)

But this is even more dramatic looking, thanks to how the florets get all toasty brown in the oven. It's like a cross between the comfort food of Mom's cauliflower and ease of Roasted Cauliflower, which was the very first – first! – recipe published on Day One of A Veggie Venture back Before the Internet in 2005.
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Calabacitas ♥

Today's easy-easy concept recipe: Summer squash, onions and chilis quick-cooked in the skillet, with as much (or as little!) heat as you can stand! Low carb.

2:00 pm E-MAIL from ME: "I have a fridgeful of Hatch chilis that appeared at the grocery over the weekend, am hunting around for something interesting/easy to do with them. Suggestions?"

2:05 pm E-MAIL RESPONSE from my friend SALLY DENTON: "Yes!! Calabacitas. Sauté garlic in a skillet in olive oil. Add chopped onion, sliced yellow and zuccini squash; half a bag frozen corn; and as much green chiles as you can handle. Salt & pepper and serve topped with grated parmesan or cheddar cheese. Yum. Sure sign of fall."

2:10 pm E-MAIL RESPONSE to Sally: "Sold."

How in the world have I missed calabacitas? [How to pronounce calabacitas? kal-uh-BAH-see-tas, correction, it is pronounced kal-uh-bah-SEE-tas] Quick and easy, flexible, adaptable, healthful, fresh, cheap. That makes up half the recipes on all of A Veggie Venture!

The only caveat, know your heat. Let me put that another way, Know the LIMITS to your heat. I took Sally's challenge of "add as many chilis as you can stand" the first time I made Calabacitas, I thought that was two Hatch chilis. OUCH. The dish was great, but the chilis were left in a huge pile on the dish, not edible. I might use a whole poblano chili for this but if it were a jalapeño or another chili with heat, know what you like!

This another "concept recipes" – we do love concept recipes, right?! The basics are the onion, zucchini, yellow squash and chilis, but after that, add and subtract as you see fit. I can imagine lima beans, chopped tomatoes, chopped okra and piles of fresh herbs. What seems right to you?
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Savory Stir-Fried Sweet Potatoes ♥

Today's sweet potato recipe: An easy weeknight supper vegetable, grated sweet potatoes cooked with a touch of heat and a splash of soy sauce. Low carb and full of flavor. For Weight Watchers, the sweet potatoes add up to just one point! Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

Well hello, fall, so glad you're back.

The acorns may not yet thwack onto the roof but food-wise, I'm ready to put aside the spare bites of summer tomato and sweet corn and even this year's much-beloved okra. I'm ready to gird my table for the hibernation that is winter.

And isn't this the wonder of seasonal eating, loving each and every bite of the season's best, then moving onto the next season, ready to love each and every morsel in its own time? When I was a girl, I listened to Judy Collins sing "Turn, Turn, Turn: To Everything There Is a Season" until the 45rpm wore thin. As I listen now on YouTube, I realize how much the words guide my soul, food and otherwise.

And if this recipe for savory sweet potatoes -- published just yesterday! in the New York Times -- is any indication of repasts to come, hello fall, indeed. Chances are, all the ingredients are on hand, if not, no special trips to Trader Joe's or some specialty place are needed. Yet at least for me, this was an entirely new take on sweet potatoes, dark and toasty, sporting a little heat from a chili, something that will definitely cure sweet potatoes of the anathema of marshmallow sweetness.

I cooked the sweet potatoes an hour or so before supper, then reheated to serve with short ribs, some wonderful couscous (recipe to come, I promise!) and Me & Joe Went Hunting table conversation with two lifetime hunters. All were memorable but especially, yes, fall's first sweet potatoes.

REVIEWS
"It was fantastic!! ... Best part - my husband ate it ALL and said it was definitely something we needed to make again!! SO good!!" ~ Cher
"TWO THUMBS UP!!" ~ Molly

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Twelve Favorite Tomato Recipes

My twelve favorite tomato recipes, a perfect dozen selected especially for the last few weeks of the very best summer tomatoes.

Never take a good tomato for granted. That's the lesson folks out east learned in 2009 when the late tomato blight struck tomatoes across the eastern half of the U.S., dooming the entire crop. I felt their pain, remembering the year four days of a late-spring hard freeze nipped the blossoms on peach and apple trees. That year? No peaches, no apples, for Missouri and Illinois.

But no tomatoes? Unthinkable. I vowed to never take good tomatoes for granted. So for a couple of months, it’s red heaven on a plate, tomatoes morning, noon and night. Sliced and salted. Sliced and sugared. Sliced and slivered with basil and slippery with mozzarella. Then grilled, broiled, roasted, sandwiched and then finally, souped. One night I even drizzled a little tomato syrup over ice cream! Don't let the tomato season pass without reveling in the glory that is the summer tomato!
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Israeli Couscous Salad with Yellow Squash & Sun-Dried Tomatoes ♥

Today's latest summer salad recipe: Take sexy Israeli couscous and match it up with pretty yellow squash. What do you get? Summer in a bowl. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

Aiii, culinary nomenclature can be so confusing.

First there's couscous, which we tend to think of as a natural whole grain and cook and serve like a grain, but is really just another form of dried pasta. But did anyone else love the word 'couscous' as a kid? I did. "Koos-koos, koos-koos, koos-koos" I'd try to say three times, failing except for the real point, which was to laugh out loud, that was a success.

And then there's Israeli couscous. It's still another form of pasta, toasted instead of dried, and shaped in perfect tiny pearls somehow way sexier than other itty-bitty pastas and their cousin, regular couscous. But Israeli couscous is as much a 'food product' as couscous, it's not a natural whole grain either, albeit one born of necessity and innovation. After the formation of Israel, both food and foreign currency were scarce so it was prudent to create a home-grown food source to substitute for rice.

So I love the word 'couscous' and the history of Israeli couscous – and truth be told, I love this salad too, it tasted so garlicky and summery and was oh-so-pretty to behold.

I used a Trader Joe's mix called 'Harvest Grains Blend'. (You see how the word 'grain' keeps showing up in the couscous neighborhood?) It's a mix of Israeli "style" couscous (hmm, what does 'style' mean in this context?), red and green bullets of orzo (the tiny Italian pasta), baby garbanzo beans and red quinoa. I like the mix alot, except that the garbanzo beans took way more time and way more water to cook than the rest of the blend.

But don't stress over finding the Trader Joe's blend, or even Israeli couscous. Any tiny pasta will do, American, Italian, Israeli, Martian or otherwise.

For that matter, don't stress over the summer squash either – think peas or green beans or sweet corn or olive as substitutes. I have a great source of relatively inexpensive no-oil sun-dried tomatoes (for St. Louisans, that's Dierbergs) but wouldn't hesitate to use cherry tomatoes (halved, to get the juices out, maybe with tiny balls of fresh mozzarella?) or chopped summer tomatoes.

Let the ingredient list be as stretch-y and as pleasure-inducing as, you know, koos-koos.

REVIEWS
"I used this recipe as an "inspiration" for a dish of my own: ... The verdict: DELICIOUS! " ~ Molly

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No-Guilt Grilled Corn with Chipotle-Lime Browned Butter ♥

Today's easy summer recipe for the grill: Grill sweet corn with the husks off to reveal corn's natural sweetness, then brush with just a touch of a bright and spicy butter. What a summer treat!

Sweet corn is one of the summer's most-anticipated vegetables, so worth waiting for, so worth savoring each and every kernel. But calorie-wise, corn gets a bad rap, one it doesn't deserve. Why?

FIRST An ear of corn has built-in portion control: one ear of corn yields about a half cup of corn kernels. Even for Weight Watchers, that's a small enough portion that it counts as, get this, 1 point (Old Points) or 2 points (PointsPlus).

NUTRITION ESTIMATE for CORN ONLY
Per Ear of Corn, assumes 1/2 cup kernels: 66 Calories; .84g Tot Fat; .14g Sat Fat; 0mg Cholesterol; 11mg Sodium; 14.65g Carb; 2.08g Fiber; 2.48g Sugar; 2.48g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 1, PointsPlus 2 (for the record, for Old Points, the exact points are .97, not 1.47 or something approaching 2 points and for PointsPlus, the exact points are 1.90)

SECOND Corn is often treated as a butter-to-mouth transfer vehicle – not that there's anything wrong with that, except that too much butter overwhelms the corn's own delicate deliciousness.

Grilling corn brings out the corn's own natural sweetness. We grilled corn without the husks twice last week. Subjected directly to the heat of the grill, some of the kernels get quite chewy, almost candy-like. (Toothpicks are useful, after!) Add just a touch of the spiced butter and oh my, what a treat.

It's about time we learn to love corn again, without feeling guilty, just for the few weeks in summer when it's fresh from the field.
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Sautéed Cucumbers ♥

Today's easy cucumber recipe: For all of us, including me, who stop at 'salad' when thinking what to make with a surplus of cucumbers, here's a new take, a quick sauté. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

We're eating like rabbits this year. Wait, that's not quite right, let me say it differently.

The truth is, we are not eating like rabbits because the neighborhood bunnies are. They munch-and-crunch on the garden's baby zucchini and nascent tomatillos while the resident humans chew on cucumbers the size of bats, all the rabbits deign to leave behind. The resident Mr. McGregor has declared war, preparing for battle with the big guns: bottles of hot sauce and jars of cayenne pepper.

Back to the cucumbers. I've cooked cucumbers twice this week and both times was pleased how the gentle cucumber flavor emerges while much of the crunch, albeit softer, remains.

The first time, I sautéed the cucumbers with onion and crispy bits of leftover homemade corn tortillas, then stirred in some fresh tarragon. Would you think to put an egg over top and call it breakfast? I did and applause ensued. The second time, I cooked the cucumbers with bits of commercial corn tortillas which might have gotten crispy if I'd allowed more time or more oil, then stirred in strips of fresh basil. This made for a succulent side dish, tasting way more rich and fresh than imagined.

Cucumbers: they're not just for salad anymore. Even the rabbits are thinking about trying them cooked.
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