One day a week vegan

This is the most bountiful time of the year. You only need to go to the garden or vegetable market for instant inspiration for a vegan day. On slightly cooler days I like to add a few warm ingredients to salads.  Things like mushrooms sautéed in olive oil with a little crushed garlic or roasted vegetables. This time I used peppers, wedges of red onion and lime. When using warm ingredients I find a sturdy green leaf, like spinach or iceberg lettuce holds up best and doesn't get too limp. Then something like radish or celery for a bit of crunch. All topped off with your favourite salad dressing. And of course some of the amazing tomatoes that are available...sadly not too many from our garden as you can see from my harvest...Although there are still four Russian Black heritage tomatoes on the vine...The sun's shining so I think I'll keep them there a little longer to see what colour they turn out...

For lunch I made Baba Ganoush:

Ingredients:

• Two aubergines
• Six cloves of garlic
• Olive oil
• Fresh lime juice
• Chilli flakes
• Tahini sesame paste (optional)
• Sea salt

Method:

1. Char the skin of the aubergines on a naked light on the hob until blackened. This gives the dish a hearty, smoky flavour.
2. If the skin is black but the aubergine still not tender put it in an ovenproof dish in the oven on a moderate heat and cook for fifteen minutes or so until soft. 
3. Take out of the oven and allow to cool just enough so that it's not too hot to handle.  Peel the skin off and remove the stalk.
4. Place the aubergine and crushed garlic into the bowl of a blender or pestle adding a little olive oil a couple of teaspoons of tahini if using and some lemon juice and seasoning.  Pulp to a rustic paste. Check the seasoning and adjust.
5. Put into a serving dish  trickle with a little olive oil and serve with flat bread or carrot and celery sticks. 

This isn't a family favourite although I enjoyed it. I think that's probably because we are used to the Persian dip Mirza Ghasemi that's made with aubergine's fried and then cooked with lots of very ripe tomatoes and tons of garlic...a whole head.  

And best meal of the day breakfast...I sneaked a big bowl of the apples I'd stewed with raisins in grape juice sweetened with honey ready to bake another apple pie. Although we've had few apples this year we've foraged lots and had lots given by friends and pies made with them cooked in this way have been a big favourite.

So that was another one of my vegan days...

...I'm linking over to real food forager for fat tuesday...