Late Summer Meal Medley

Another quickie post: a collection of the past month or so's meals, all made with at least one homegrown ingredient (sorry for the bad lighting and blur, I need both a new camera and lighting source):
Chreezy B.akon, S.pinach & T.omato (& spicy sprouts) english muffin sandwich for brunch. With homemade dill pickles, edible nasturtium & chipotle hash browns (not seen). Eaten outside in garden. Chreeze = Gee Whiz spread again.
Lightly steamed Emerite haricot verts & carrots w/ quinoa and white bean herb gravy, garnished w/ toasted slivered almonds and edible gem marigolds. (herbs = chives, tarragon, marjoram, thyme & a bit of oregano + sage)
MmMmm this was so good. Marble poundcake & fruit salad w/ vegan sweet cream topping and shaved chocolate. Blackberries and mint were fresh from the garden. (though I saved some time and got the poundcake store-bought from Candle Cafe). Eaten outside in garden too.
This is a super blurry pic - sorry. It was dim romantic lighting. But wow did it taste good! From left to right: moroccan-spiced steamed green beans & carrots from my garden + a bunch of stuff from Trader Joe's - some kind of tasty millet-bulgar multigrain thing that takes 30 sec. in microwave, chik nuggets & indian chutney, + olives, garnished w/ edible nasturtiums & marigolds. This meal was like an explosion of flavor. The moroccan veggies were so good. Also, btw, low fat - everything I'm cooking lately uses only a few teaspoons of oil.

Here we have the haricot verts and grape tomatoes lightly sauteed. I'm not a huge fan of tomatoes - you would never see me picking a tomato straight out of the garden and eating it. But I do like them diced, pureed or in sauce - so that's why I like to cook them just a bit.
We had the sauteed beans and tomatoes that night, stacked with polenta, oatmeal-nut chreeze & basil. It was slippery and didn't quite cooperate with the plating in my head, but it sure did taste delicious! (sorry again for the mood lighted-pic)

And here's my favorite gazpacho recipe - spanish style. Made almost entirely with ingredients from the garden (tomatoes, cukes & peppers) I just needed to add a bit of garlic, vinegar, oil, & salt. I only used 1/8 cup olive oil this time, and it was still good.
Snacks - everything flatbread w/ oatmeal chreeze, grape tomatoes, jalapeno & bell peppers.

Another stack: Oat Chreeze Caprese. This one stayed put (in a tower) a little better than the polenta. Thinly sliced Rutger's tomato + oatmeal chreeze + basil. Also had a green bean basil salad in the background.
My favorite: texas caviar. I make it every New Year's Day for good luck and mentioned the recipe before in this post. Now it was even better since most of the ingredients were fresh picked in season - I also added diced bell pepper since I had them. I could seriously eat this stuff every day.
Texas caviar served on a multi-grain rice cake w/ more oatmeal chreeze.

Honestly, it is tough to actually use all of the veggies and herbs once you grow them! Harvesting and preserving is almost as much work as planting and cultivating. The good news is, it's TASTY work! I can't wait to eat the fall crop. :-)