Small potatoes. And Wieners without Beaners.

That's what we got at the farmstand on the weekend--small red potatoes. And broccoli, and red and green peppers, and lettuce, and a few other things.

This is what we did with them. It's a recipe I clipped from Vegetarian Times a long time ago and adapted tonight to use what we had. (This is the adapted version.)

Vegetable Medley

About 10 small red potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
2 cups chopped broccoli
1 red pepper, chopped
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
salt and pepper to taste (and some cayenne pepper if you like; I don't)
1 tsp. each dried oregano and basil
(The original recipe called for frozen peas and a chopped green pepper in addition to the other vegetables, as well as fresh garlic. Since I had finished all the garlic, I used a bit of garlic powder with the other seasonings.)

Cook the potatoes in a large pot of boiling water, for about 8 minutes, depending on how small you cut them. Add in the chopped broccoli and cook for a couple minutes more, until the potatoes are done. Drain them well in a colander.

A few minutes before you're ready to eat, heat the oil in a large, deep frying pan. Add the chopped pepper (and garlic, if using) and cook for a couple of minutes before adding all the other ingredients. (Pick out any stray bits of potato skin.) Cook for several minutes, stirring gently (you are not trying to mash the potatoes).

If you need to wait a few minutes for supper, turn the heat down to low and cover the pan until you're ready to eat.

I needed something to go along with this and didn't have any small protein-type things handy; but I did have a bag of pre-cooked wieners in the freezer (that is, the last wiener left in the pan, multiplied several times--we just store the leftover ones in a freezer bag for snacks or hot dog famines). I pulled them out, drizzled them with barbecue sauce, and baked them in a covered casserole for about half an hour. So much for our healthy dinner, I guess; but the flavour seemed to go well with the potato mixture.

Dessert was Fruit Crisp (yes! it was cool enough to use the big oven today!). We had bought--very rare occasion--some mixed frozen fruit when it was on sale at Price Chopper. I poured about half the bag of mixed berries into a small pan and added several stalks of chopped rhubarb. Actually I should have chopped the rhubarb smaller because it came out with a bit of crunch left, but we like it that way anyway. (One Squirreling did ask why I put celery in the dessert...)

Anyway--one other experiment here. In the Tightwad Gazette there's a mention of using baking soda in fruit crisps and other desserts so that you can cut back on the sugar. Well, a lot of times I don't add sugar anyway except in the crumble part, but I figured I should add some today because of the rhubarb. So I tried 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp. baking soda along with the fruit, and then added our regular crumble topping. I baked the dessert along with the wieners, and there were no complaints.