Summer Vegetable Saute

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:49:56 -0400

This is cross posted from A Healthy Appetite. It will be a little redundant for some of you, sorry.

We moved back to Louisville a couple months ago. We were very lucky and landed exactly where we wanted to be. Our neighborhood is incredible, absolutely incredibly. It's terribly walking and biking friendly and we try to take advantage of that as much as we can. We walk or bike to the bread shop, the coffee shop, the grocery for small items, and of course the farmer's market every week. Ah, the farmer's market. At the same time my eating habits have changed for health reasons my eating habits have evolved because of food politics and philosophical issues. Those two things combined have given me some pretty strong guiding principles about what I eat, what I don't eat and where I get what I eat. In a nutshell my food philosophy is "eat as much local, seasonal produce as possible. Eat organic whenever possible. Eat more whole foods, less processed foods. Bake with really excellent ingredients. Support farmers and sustainable agriculture by buying direct from farmers whenever possible. Supporting farmers includes supporting meat and dairy farmers so buy humanely raised and slaughtered meat products and humanely cared for dairy and egg products."

So each Saturday morning we walk to the farmer's market and load up on whatever is good and fresh. Then we build our week's menus around those fresh items. Obviously we don't eat farmer's market produce at every meal but it does make up the bulk of our meals. It's glorious.

Being back home in Louisville gives the opportunity for more fresh, local produce than we can shake a stick at actually because we're now quite close to my family and the farm country I grew up on. In the past two weeks two different aunts have come to visit, each with bags full of fresh veggies from their farms. Between the two of them (I'll be seeing them both this weekend), the farmer's market, and our own backyard tomatoes we buy very little product from the grocery store and we eat glorious fresh vegetable based vegetarian dishes at almost every meal.

From this embarrassing wealth of fresh riches comes fabulous lunches and dinners including this Summer Vegetable Saute that I made last night for dinner. I didn't measure the vegetables exactly so I can't give you exact nutritionals but a good estimate is 90-100 calories per cup of veggies so 2WW points if that's your bag.

Summer Vegetable Saute

1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small eggplant
1 small red onion
2 yellow squash
1 small zucchini
1 bell pepper
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained (I used diced tomatoes with peppers and onions)
Salt
Pepper
Oregano

Dice all vegetables into small but not tiny pieces.

Over medium heat saute minced garlic in oil. Add bell pepper and onion. Cook for about 3 minutes until onions start to soften. Add all of the remaining vegetables. Cook for 8 minutes. Add tomatoes, stir the tomatoes and vegetable mixture really well. Add your salt, pepper, and oregano. I can't even give you estimates on the amount because it's completely dependent upon taste. Just experiment until it tastes well season to you.

Cover pan and cook on low-medium heat for 5-10 minutes depending on how much firmness you want your vegetables to have and how cooked you want your tomatoes to be.

Serve over whole wheat pasta. 2oz dry pasta is 4 points so if you have 4 points in pasta, 2 in veggies you've got a really hearty, really delicious dinner for 6 points. Since there are only 2 of us we ended up with a good amount of leftover veggies.

In just a few minutes I'm going to take 1 fat free tortilla, 1/4 cup 2% Mexican shredded cheese, and 1 cup of these veggie leftovers to make a simple and tasty veggie quesadilla for lunch. Yum.

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Summer Vegetable Saute