Veggie BBQ

Our veggie bbq this weekend consisted of veggie kebabs, foccaccia bread, eggplant and baked beans. For the kebabs, I used tomatoes, cremini mushrooms, red onions and zucchini. I coated the veggies with olive oil, smoked paprika, garlic powder, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper. The eggplant just had olive oil, salt and pepper. I love to eat the eggplant with the foccaccia bread made on the grill. I do all the prepping and omnivore boyfriend does a great job doing the actual bbqing.

For the bread, I used Trader Joe's herb pizza dough. I divided it into eight pieces, hand stretched them out, coated them with olive oil and seasoned them with salt. You could use whatever pizza dough recipe you have. It would be fun to turn them into actual pizzas but we love it as bread.

The baked beans are Trader Joe's organic baked beans.

I am trying to be a better consumer so I did try to buy organic, locally grown and "green" groceries for our bbq. I somewhat succeeded. The baked beans are organic but I realized that it is difficult to figure out where canned beans are grown and packaged. I am pretty sure no one is growing beans around Los Angeles so I might have to make an exception for non-locally grown beans. I will have to look into the bean issue more thoroughly being that I eat beans everyday! At least they were organic. The veggies on the kebab were locally grown and organic except for the mushrooms. They were from Washington state (not quite local-oops).

We try not to use a lot of paper towels or aluminum foil but we did use some for our bbq. I found a new product, Reynolds Wrap 100% Recycled Aluminum Foil. It's about time the leading aluminum foil people made a 100% recycled product!

It was almost twice as much as the store brand but maybe if more people buy it the price will go down, encouraging even more people to use it. I also bought Scott brand paper towels (Scott Naturals Choose-a-Size) that are made from minimum 60% recycled fiber. I think it is good when mainstream brands that are sold in major grocery stores create "natural" product lines. The more the demand for those products goes up, the better!

Overall, I did ok with my purchases but could do better!