This isn’t really a recipe but more of a description of what I had for dinner last night. There were three components:

• Roasted vegetables: one beet (peeled and chopped), two large carrots (peeled and chopped), one medium potato (chopped; I don’t peel potatoes), and one onion (peeled and chopped), tossed lightly with olive oil, baked at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about half an hour, then tossed with some pesto.
• Dinosaur kale: Chop the kale and mince or press a few cloves of garlic. Saute the garlic in some olive oil, then add the kale and saute until starting to wilt. Add 1/4 cup veggie or vegan chicken broth, cover, reduce heat, and cook until done to your liking. After the kale was cooked, I coated it with a tahini-nutritional yeast-lemon juice sauce that I can’t give you an exact recipe for because it started off as leftovers from another sauce that I added things to. I was sort of cleaning out the refrigerator. I also tossed in the remainder of a home-canned jar of chickpeas for a little additional protein.
• Quinoa/millet mix: 1/2 cup quinoa + 1/2 cup millet + 1 1/2 cups water or broth. Bring to a boil in a small/medium heavy pot, cover, reduce to a simmer, and cook about 25 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes, covered, then fluff. (This makes enough for several meals.)

I recently did something I never do, which is purchase salad dressings (I vastly prefer homemade), but Trader Joe’s has these refrigerated Green Goddess and Carrot Ginger Miso dressings which are vegan and looked really good, so I couldn’t resist trying them, even though I could probably have easily made both of them at home. They are in fact really good and although I probably won’t use them on my regular tossed salads, I really enjoyed them mixed in with this meal. I realize that between the pesto on the roasted veggies and the tahini thing on the kale, this is a lot of different sauces in one bowl, but what can I say: I’m a sucker for sauces.

And for today’s bonus, here are some photos I took on a kayaking trip in Elkhorn Slough near Monterey on Sunday, which was absolutely delightful. Elkhorn Slough has the highest concentration of sea otters and I’ve been dying to go there for a long time. It was great!

There are also sea lions and harbor seals:

And lots of pelicans:

I love where I live!