The Vegetable Challenge

Okay, enough dessert recipes -- I'm challenging myself to cook with vegetables for one week. I've mentioned before that I belong to an organic vegetable & fruit co-op. Every two weeks, I get a laundry basket full of seasonal, organic, mostly locally grown produce. The fruit is never a problem to consume, but the vegetables -- well, that's another matter. I like to think that I eat and cook healthily, but the reality is that I don't. The vegetables often rot in the crisper and end up as compost. So, this week I will cook and consume ALL the vegetables. Here's what I got today:

Parsnips
Carrots
Romaine lettuce hearts
1 giant sweet potato
Several white sweet potatoes
1 cheese pumpkin
Sweet peppers
Celery
Dandelion greens

Looking over the list, it doesn't look like all that much. How hard could it be to cook it all in a week? I've already decided to let myself off the hook with the dandelion greens and give them to a vegetarian neighbor. I don't like dandelion greens, no one else in my family will eat them and I just can't think of anything creative to do with them.

Right, I'm off to peel and cube some veggies for roasting tonight. Check back in for recipes.

Sausage French Toast Bake

This is recipe cribbed from the Fleischman's yeast website, but I've made significant changes to it. For one thing, they call for more eggs and much more butter than I use. They also suggest you mix it all in the pan (in fact, they call this "One Dish Sausage and French Toast Breakfast".) You can do it that way, but I find that it makes the final result stick to the pan annoyingly, so just use a bowl and transfer it to the pan. We all have dishwashers, right?

Sausage French Toast Bake

Batter:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

3 TBS flax meal

3 tsp Rapid Rise yeast

2 TBS sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 cup milk (very warm, 120 - 130*)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 TBS cold butter, cubed

Topping:

3 TBS cinnamon sugar

2 eggs

2 TBS milk

6 pre-cooked sausage patties (I like to use soy sausage)

3/4 maple syrup

1. Spray 8 x 8 pan with cooking spray.

2. Mix batter ingredients together in a separate bowl

3. Scrape into pan and let sit with you make the topping

4. Cook the sausage patties

5. Mix eggs and milk together

6. Top batter with cinnamon sugar and sausage patties. Pour egg mixture on top.

7. Place pan in cold oven. Set to 350* and bake for approximately 30 minutes, until even brown on top.

8. Drizzle maple syrup on top when serving.