After getting several green tomatoes and green beans from our CSA, I decided to go on a frying spree. Using this recipe from blogger Bianca Phillips from Vegan Crunk, featured on One Green Planet, I made some of the most amazing fried green tomatoes. Having grown up part of my childhood in the South and still having many extended family members living there, I developed a taste for fried vegetables. Once, when I was in high school, I almost burned down our kitchen making fried green tomatoes for the first time after a frying pan of oil caught on fire. Luckily no one was seriously injured and I’ve become more aware of kitchen safety. We don’t fry up too many foods like this, so I don’t feel too guilty doing it every once in a while. These were good tomatoes, but the hubs thought they could have been crispier.

I was also craving fried green beans after having some amazing ones at a local restaurant. Using this recipe from The Neelys on Food.com, I made fried green beans for the very first time. I think it could have been improved if I had been more effective in my battering style. I didn’t get the coating of batter on each green bean evenly and it affected the cooking. Also, more spices could have been added to the batter to give it more flavor. I did use Chipotle Vegenaise as a dipping sauce for the green beans, which was divine!

To add to the meal, and to use up some of the red tomatoes we got in our CSA, I made a spicy chickpea casserole based on a former recipe I created and posted about for spicy chickpeas. The only difference is that I put this recipe into a glass Pyrex dish and put slices of tomatoes on top and baked it in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately 30 minutes.

We’ve had abundance of corn lately that we’ve gotten from our local farmers market. Adding it to this dish seemed quite appropriate and balanced out the spicy and fried foods quite well.

Overall, we’d rate this meal as 3 out of 5 carrots on the veganlicious scale!