green apples, purple peppers

Splendor in the grass:

These apples I got at the farmer’s market and they are sour and complex and awesome. Can I remember the variety? No. But I’ve been eating lots!

We’ve had picnic lunches at work every day. It’s been so nice. Nice for Americorps teammate bonding, nice for my Vitamin D uptake, nice for soaking up the end (*sob*) of summer.

My well rounded lunch today, featuring a Greatest Hits of my favorite things.

There’s a perfect autumnal apple (check), a coffee yogurt (CHECK! I want to spread the coffee yogurt love), and one of my faaaaaaavorite sandwiches:

Hummus and avocado. On a pita, on bread, in a wrap, in a box, with a fox. Whatever. It’s amaze.

Another great combination that was meant for afternoon snack but since lunch was eaten after… 4 and a half hours of CPR training, we went ahead and just combined them:

Carrots and peanut butter!

Carolyn: Is that carrots and peanut butter?
Me: Yes! It’s so good!
Steve: I love carrots and peanut butter!

Team building at its finest. Asking questions. Learning and supporting one another.

Let’s discuss the hummus in the aforementioned hummus and avocado. Notice those herby flecks?

This is the easiest hummus I have ever made. I opened the fridge, saw the chimichurri, and went “That has fresh herbs and lemon juice and olive oil! Aka everything I love in hummus!”

Can o’ chickpeas+ chimichurri+ a bit of extra lemon juice cause I love it so+ water for thinning= chimi hummus? Can people help me with a cute name here?

We’ve been enjoying it for cocktail hour. By cocktail hour I mean I finish making dinner and my mom and I drink wine because we’re tired. Cocktail hour typically precedes Netflix hour.

More fun on my kitchen counter (notice how the hot pepper carries over?).

Check out these adorable miniaturized vegetables grown by my mom’s coworker:

The 20 is to show the scale. Not to show how rich I am. I just spent it on groceries, actually.

The eggplant went into a rawther delicious polenta thing, which I rawther unfortunately erased from my camera.

But look at THIS!

 

That is a PEPPER! Nifty, eh?

It went into a salad for work lunch that mostly consisted of things leftover from our Mexican fiesta that I STILL haven’t used up.

Lettuce+ (last of!) jicama+ (almost last of!) tomato-pumpkinseed dip+ of course, the purple pepper

 

The pepper definitely  had more of a BITE to it than most peppers I’ve had. I don’t know if that was about age? Soil? I’ve had purple peppers before and they tasted basically identical to green bell peppers. Oh, plants! So fun!

Lunch also included a bowl of plain yogurt (my wonderful mother who loves me bought FAGE! It’s a decent-ish-well-less-frighteningly-expensive-anyway price at Costco) with chopped apple and cinnamon:

Annnnd the remainder of that apple found its way into my afternoon snack, along with some roasted almonds.

Apples and roasted almonds really is the best, most filling snack of all time.

  

I stacked up everything to go (along with a muffin- gotta get my carbs!) and then Sheila was like “ummm do I want any of this?”

       

And finally we get to this evening.

I had kind of a peculiar commute home when I got in my car and heard for the first time about the hostage sitch over at Discovery. Since I have two family members who I love rather a lot *working* at Discovery, it made me a *wee* bit anxious.

Plus then driving home this guy started honking profusely at me because… I got into his lane to let an ambulance go by. I guess that guy isn’t planning on ever having an emergency and needing help?

Like most times, coming home and chopping some things and turning on some burners eased away those things and left me feeling warm and fuzzy.

Project number one was for our Americorps potluck (!) tomorrow night.

I made Mango Dal for the second time. Just for kicks, I cooked the lentils in a mix of water and mango juice (!). I also added extra lentils, since it was too thin for my liking last time.

And now I have a whole whole whole bunch of mango dal. Success.

   

For actual dinner, I dug up the last of the chayote (an ingredient I will definitely buy again!) from the crisper and made chayote soup. Using my immersion blender makes my heart so happy.

The soup was pretty standard, with nothing too wild and crazy in terms of ingredients. I really like the taste of chayote- it’s one of those magic things (like fennel) that tastes totally different raw and cooked.

For the proteinaceous aspect of the meal, I made my current favorite grain (and the only one that’s a complete protein!), quinoa.

And then mixed it with the *last* of the tomato pumpkinseed dip! Score.

For lunch tomorrow, I mixed that mixture with avocado, tomato, and leftover roast chicken…

 

And for dinner tonight I topped it with avocado and tomato…

And then realized I’d forgotten the most crucial thing, freshly toasted pumpkinseeds!

Crunch!