Roasted Veggies and Bulgarit Hoagies

Yes these are as delicious as they look.

Roast the vegetables of your choice (zucchini, peppers and tomatoes here), add feta or bulgarit cheese, pack into hoagie bread (pita works too) and lunch is ready!

Stuffed Peppers

Tiv'ol makes some veggie burgers that , while not as good as Morningstar Grillers, come close. We buy a package every time we do a major grocery run.

Sadly, Supersol was out the last time we went, and we had to suffice with trying Tiv'ol veggie chicken patties instead. Turns out, they leave much to be desired!

But tonight we found a use for them - stuffed peppers. By dicing and frying them up in oil with sauteed onions, these patties tasted a whole lot better. Add some black beans, a zucchini, garlic, a touch of vinegar and spices, and you've got a great pepper-stuffing. I sprinkled some dry rice over said stuffing and added maybe a cup of boiling water and stirred it all together. The peppers were laid on their sides and baked in a hot convection oven. The charring of the pepper skin was totally accidental, although totally awesome.

We ate the stuffed peppers with homemade Spanish rice (onions, tomatoes, green peppers), which I like, although to be honest I've never gotten mine to taste as good as Near East's.

Fantastic dinner, and plenty of leftovers, too.

Veggie Quiche (+Homemade Crust!)

What to make for dinner is often the most challenging the night before you are planning to go grocery shopping. Since grocery shopping has been a bit of a challenge in our new location, we came up with this elaborate (or not so elaborate but full of well meaning efforts) plan to come up with a whole two weeks of menus (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and basically only go shopping once every two weeks. I can discuss menu suggestions and the challenges of this plan another time.... Like I said though, the day before a groceries trip, the fridge (and shelves) are extremely bare and lacking in dinner options. We can, of course, just have pasta and tomato sauce (or ragu perhaps?) because we seem to always have those in stock. But eh, that's not so exciting. Plus, it's hot. And pasta = heaviness.

So what are my options? I have:

two green peppers,

several tomatoes,

eggs,

onions,

and milk.

Put it all together and we have a quiche! And to make this veggie (and cheese-less) quiche more delicious, I made my own flaky pie crust. Admittedly we need to replenish our stock of food supplies but no one will be complaining about dinner tonight!

The recipe for the crust came from Food.com. (Although I did pre-bake my crust for 10-15 minutes at 200C/400F.) The recipe for the quiche came more or less from myself so here goes:

Saute the vegetables (leave the tomatoes out) with a bit of olive oil. While the vegetables are going, mix together 4 eggs, 1 cup of milk and salt and pepper to taste. When the vegetables are finished, pour them into your crust. Then pour the egg mixture over the vegetables. Slice the tomatoes into thin rounds and place on top. Bake at 190C/375F for 30-45 minutes or until the quiche is set.

Oh the things you can Roast

Now that we have our oven, the possibilities are endless. One of our favorite dinners (and only possible with an oven) is roasted vegetable sandwiches. So good and so healthy. The prep time on this is fairly short (cooking time is longer), basically just as long as it takes you to cut up your vegetables. I used:

Mushrooms

Zucchini

Eggplant

Tomatoes

Onions

Peppers

Although you can basically use any vegetables, I'd recommend using ones that are in season (that's the beauty of this sandwich). Slice up your vegetables - you want them to be sandwich stackable so slice them up relatively thin.

Lay them out on a cookie sheet, using a baking sheet. The more cookie sheets and oven racks you have the better but you can also do this in shifts, like I did. Lightly brush all your vegetables on both sides with oil. I seasoned some of the vegetables but most I let speak for themselves. Roast the vegetables at about 400F for 15-25 minutes each tray. Check on them after 15 minutes or so.

How amazing do these eggplants look?

Not only do grilled vegetables taste great, they also look great which is why I couldn't resist with the pictures. Not that these pictures do them any justice, you'll have to try this one out for yourselves.

When you've got all your vegetables roasted, sandwich them up and you're ready to go. We used pita this time but any bread will work. Extra flavoring or condiments is up to you but pretty unnecessary. These vegetables work well together. My favorites are the eggplants and tomatoes.