Cupcakes, test recipes, lovin' summer

This weekend a friend's cousin was visiting and we headed to CT to see Gillette Castle. I packed a picnic for us which consisted of homemade New Farm cookbook rolls with greens and veggie burgers. The burgers are a test recipe from Veganyumyum's upcoming cookbook. They are mighty tasty seitan, corn and black bean burgers.

Here's a quick pic of the patties.

The castle is really neat. I took many pictures of it. This is one of my favorites.

After the castle, we stopped at another little park called Devil's Hopyard. There was a cute little waterfall there.Cupcakes were requested by our visitor, so I made pumpkin chocolate chip and gingerbread from VCTOTW.

With cream cheese frosting
Mini zucchini breads using extra CSA zukes

My lunch from a week ago. Homemade tabbouli, store bought hummus, farmer's market green beans with hoisin sauce and cracked red pepper, and sauteed green's. The greens have some leftover alfedo sauce which is also a veganyumyum tester recipe.
I've got lots more pics and post that I'll get to eventually.

Veggies, cupcakes...oh and hi again!

I've been around here...reading blogs when I can and posting occasionally on PPK. Ironically there are lots of pics on my camera memory card, but they've never made it to the blog. I'll do a short post today and try to do some longer posts with lots of photos soon.

My half share at the CSA has been great so far. Last Friday, I helped harvest the crops and it was really fun. I picked onions, radishes, strawberries and squash. I'd never picked onions or radishes before and it was cool to see how they grow and get my hands dirty.

This week's CSA haul was: 2 lettuces, 4 zucchini, 2 eight ball zucchni, 2 crook neck squashes, 1 romanesca zucchini, 1 small pint of strawberries, onions, and radishes.

Here's a photo of my pickup a few weeks back which included Red Russian kale, lettuces, onions, a few berries, and radishes.

So we seem to get lots of radishes from the farm. I'm not a huge fan of them. Do any of you have favorite radish recipes? I've been slicing them and tossing them in salads.

These are some pistachio rosewater cupckes from VCTOTW. I baked them for my friend's birthday and they went on a trip with us to Acadia National Park up in Maine. I'll post some of those pics in the future.

This is cranberry cinnamon bread which is a test recipe for Lolo's (of VeganYumYum) upcoming cookbook. It is supposed to be cinnamon raisin, but I pretty much despise raisins. Cranberries made a great substitution. This bread is really wonderful.

What else has been going on? I turned 30 last month and to celebrate, I went skydiving. ---Note, the new profile pic with Andreas my skydiving instructor. During freefall it feels more like you are superman flying than dropping through the air. Because of that, I really didn't find it scary. My guess is your brain can't process what is happening, so it doesn't feel like you are actually falling.

After jumping, my dad took me to Crazy Burger in RI for lunch. There, I got a vegan burger and vegan carrot cake for dessert. Later, my family and I got together at Elephant Walk for dinner. EWalk has French Cambodian food with a separate vegan menu. Yay!

Though I'm not a fan of the radishes from the farm, the greens are wonderful sauteed with olive oil and garlic. Below on the left is some radish greens. On the right is some mizuna from the farm. Normally, we see mizuna in field green salads. Now I know you can also cook it up.

That's all for now. I have many pics to post still and will try to catch up soon. Hope everyone is doing well.