Chicago Marathon Val

Hi friends!  Happy September!!

I’m glad you all liked my D.I.Y. ideas - I LOVED my warm and toasty cup of “pumpkin spice” coffee this morning – and it didn’t include a long line at Starbucks, or forking over $4+!

Last night I made an interesting dish that I want to share with you…. it started as a take off Eggs Benedict, and then kind of morphed into its own thing. It’s kind of hard to describe so I’ll just tell you how i made it…

From the bottom layer on up….

Layer 1: Toasted bread or English muffin.  This would be awesome with some cubed oven fried potatoes too!

Layer 2: Amaranth greens… aren’t these gorgeous?!?! They look like beautiful tropical flowers to me.  I wilted this with a bit of lemon juice and salt.Layer 3: Roasted chocolate peppers (and white peppers which are unpictured).  Y’all know about my obsession with purple peppers..This is what it would look like so far….Layer 4: Sliced tomatoes

Layer 5: Seitan – either already flavored, or marinated.  I like a marinade of:

* maple syrup

* soy sauce

* EVOO

* tomato paste

* garlic

Layer 6: Sauce, made from blending:

* 2 c. parsley

* 1/2 c. tahini

* 2 T. EVOO

* 2 T. lemon juice

* 1 T. red wine vinegar

* 3 T. miso paste

* 1 c. water

* 1 scoop nutritional yeast

* 2 T. dijon mustard

* garlic and pepper to taste

Layer 7: sprinkle capers generously (or olives would be great too)

This is Mike’s plate……….

And my plate

I don’t know why I bother to try to get fancy haha, as you can tell plating is NOT my specialty!  It’s an odd-sounding dish but I promise it tastes good! You could probably stray a bit from the ingredients quite a bit too, using different veggies, altering the sauce, etc.

***

Today is my last day of summer before I go back to work tomorrow!!  Of course my summer off has been amazing, but I’m looking forward to going back for these reasons:

1) I love feeling productive and as if I am contributing to society…. I’ve gotten a paycheck over the summer, but it doesn’t exactly feel like I’ve earned it while I’ve bummed around all day

2) I look forward to seeing some of my old students again, and meeting new ones! I think it’s going to be a great year!

3) I look forward to seeing my favorite co-workers again

4) My birthday is 2 weeks from today!!

5) After my birthday comes lots of other exciting holidays, like our first anniversary, Mike’s birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas… I LOVE fall and the holidays!!!!

6) Speaking of fall…I can’t wait to go for long runs in the cool autum weather with leaves crunching under my feet!

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What are YOU excited about the end of summer the arrival of fall?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 8:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.