For almost as long as we have lived in Mobile, Glenn and I have been getting our fruits and veggies from the farmer’s market within the flea market. Now I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it seems to carry such a new meaning now as we are not eating any meat. Every weekend we travel to the flea market to walk the rows, people watch, chat, and of course, stock up for the week. It is such a beautiful spread of locally grown produce that is not only natural & not super huge, but easy on the wallet. We often get out under $10 for a few bags of goods for the week. It’s pretty incredible.
We are halfway through our challenge of “No Meat November” that I expounded upon before and I’m happy to say it’s going very well! We’ve had only one failure in the recipe department (an eggplant & tomato casserole that was just too mushy on it’s own) but many more successes. I thought I’d share just a few of our favorites so far!
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| spinach & artichoke pasta |
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| hummus & roasted veggie pizza |
Two of our favorites so far have both been inspired from Pinterest with a little flare of our own. The first is a hummus & roasted veggie pizza. We had spinach, a variety of bell peppers, red onion & cheese a top hummus instead of sauce. We also tried this vegetarian sausage protein which we cooked then crumbed in the mix of veggies & much to our surprise it worked really well as a substitute! It gave the pizza great texture and a bit of spice as well. So far this one wins out. The second was a spinach & artichoke pasta. I used my trusty recipe for the dip which I blogged about previously, and just substituted milk for the mayo. We deemed it needed more artichokes for the next go round, but it was still quite yummy!
Now these last two pictures aren’t really included in this vegetarian theme, however one is a fun dessert we made & the other a great new asset to our kitchen! Since we’ve been peeling & cutting up so many veggies, I got us a garbage bowl, (which you can find here). We watch a lot of cooking shows in our spare time, and it caught my eye originally on Rachel Ray’s show as such an easy way to keep all the things you need to throw away in one place in stead of everywhere on the counter. The bottom has a nonslip grip which is great too because it stays in place. It also isolates the rubbish without you having to run back and forth to the trashcan and risk dripping (or tripping!) on the way there. It really saves a lot of time & makes for easy clean up! Plus it’s pretty ascetically pleasing as well which is always a plus. 
The other picture is of a yummy dessert I made for my birthday party (which was so much fun! we’re really starting to have a good core of friends down here & it makes me smile). I was on Real Simple and this really simple – ironic huh given the site’s name & purpose? the very reason I love it – recipe popped up. It was in the 10 Recipes for Halloween Candy article which had a lot of great ideas of what to do when your trick-or-treaters didn’t match the amount of goodies to give out. Leftover candy chopped up and mixed in with soft ice cream, then re-frozen. All in all we’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen this month and have really been enjoying it! And avoiding meat has been fairly easy. We don’t go out much as it is, but when we have we’ve been able to find other options that satisfy just as much as the old favorites. Vegetarian may last for more than just November if things keep up at this rate!