CSA Week 8

Here's what's in the box this week:
bell pepper
corn
onions
broccoli
eggplant
zucchini
watermelon
potatoes
hot peppers

Extras:
zucchini from work friend
pumpkin puree

Recipes:
Cheesy Corn Bake
Zucchini Crusted Buffalo Chicken Bites
Zucchini Fries
Southwest Pizza
Spiced Pumpkin Syrup
Zucchini Bread with Spiced Pumpkin Syrup
Roasted Eggplant Spread
Sausage and Pepper Bake
Broccoli Cheese Potato Soup

Cheesy corn bake. Allison got to use her roux skills again this week with this dish. Yum yum yum.

Zucchini Buffalo chicken bites. I'm not sure what the zucchini really adds to this dish...it's in the breading, but overall the chicken was very tasty and buffalo-y. The breading had A LOT of components and then just gets covered with hot sauce....not that I am saying that's a bad thing! And for those of you that don't know what to do with the left over buttermilk that you always seem to have around, I use buttermilk powder for these type of things. I found mine on Amazon.

Zucchini Fries. I keep seeing these on Pinterest and so decided to give them a try. I just love zucchini...think this may be my last batch since the days are getting colder.  :(

Southwest Pizza. We took some liberties with this recipe. As you can tell from the grill marks, we decided to throw the dough on the grill. Since we were doing that, I mixed all the topping ingredients together so I could just spread them on the pizza. It was very tasty. I also made the avocado cream with yogurt instead. The dough was one of my no knead bread recipes, I used an olive oil whole wheat dough.

Spiced Pumpkin Syrup. I came across this recipe while going through my rss feed on Saturday morning. It was pretty chilly in the house and it sounded sooooo good. I had some squash puree in my freezer from last season and thought this would be a good use for it. I had 1 cup of squash so I doubled the recipe and added in the whole amount of squash (what would I do with that extra 1/2 cup anyway???). When doubling the syrup, I didn't double my sugar (maybe 1.5 rather than 2x), so in the end this wasn't too candy sweet as some syrups can be. This would be great over pancakes or french toast...or of course in your morning coffee.

Since I now have all this wonderful syrup, I decided to find a zucchini bread recipe that used maple syrup and just swapped them out. This happens to also have whole wheat flour...guess I'm making up for the sins of our casseroles from last week.

Roasted eggplant spread. This is when having a food processor really comes in handy. You roughly chop your veggies then roast them. Add them to your processor and whiz away. I don't usually have tahini in my house since I don't have much use for it other than hummus so I subbed almond butter instead. Yum! Great with tortilla chips, but would also be a great sandwich spread with something sweet like honey roasted ham...

Sausage and pepper pasta. I still had 2 bell peppers left over from last week so needed something to use them up. I like the idea of sausage and peppers but didn't want to make a sandwich, so trolled the internet for a reinvention of these flavors and found it in a casserole. Last week I grilled up some chicketta patties thinking I would put them in a pasta later on and thought they would be great in this dish. Chicketta is like porchetta only with chicken not pork. It's an Italian slow roasted dish with lots of herbs and fennel. These smell and taste a lot like sausage, so that's why I used it here. I get these at the Italian market down the street from my house, and I don't let myself go in there that often...they have real prosciutto there...deadly to my wallet!

Not pictured is the broccoli cheese potato soup, as I haven't made it yet. Will probably get to it tomorrow. I also have decided to make hot sauce with my hot peppers. I found a recipe that uses a similar approach to how Tabasco makes their hot sauce and it involves fermenting...I'm very excited!! Just waiting for the peppers that are turning red to fully turn, then I will be on my way to hot sauce!!

Extra weekend project:

I also decided to try making my own liquid soap from some bar soap I had laying around (and probably wouldn't use). I used this recipe. I came across it a while back on Pinterest. The above photo isn't totally accurate as I had to use 2 bars of cetaphil to get the 8 oz needed for the 1 gal of water. I had read that bars with extra moisturizing ended up being too liquidy so I added in an extra bar from Bath and Body Works for insurance. I don't think I let my soap completely dissolve the first time around since I still had some foam on top 12 hours later. I heated it up again and added more glycerin and gave it another go.

I now have a gallon of this stuff. It's still a bit more liquid than soap you buy but I think it would work great for what I want and I used stuff I probably wasn't going to! Score!!

CSA Week 7

In the box this week:

Cabbage

Cantaloupe

Bell pepper

Tomato

Eggplant

Broccoli 

Red chile

Poblano pepper

Cherry bomb pepper

Potatoes

Corn

Recipes:

Braised cabbage

Quinoa with broccoli, cheese and bacon

Jalapeño popper Mac and cheese

Pierogi casserole

Moussaka

Well, it's finally happened - I have veggies left over for next week - lots of peppers. There may be roasted peppers in my future. Also, for some reason this week seems to be very carb loaded...this is what happens when I have potatoes coming out of my ears. Apparently I'm not a huge potato eater. Who knew. 

Beer braised cabbage. I used Guinness, since I still have some left over from St Patty's. It's probably not all that great to drink, but I was great in this dish. Better than it's current use as my back door stop! I added some flour at the end to thicken the sauce. It was great for breakfast with a fried egg on top.

Quinoa side. Sometimes I should really read the recipe before I start cooking - maybe that would help! I started cooking the quinoa separately before I realized it was to be like a pilaf. Oops. It still turned out well and was tasty, so I guess I didn't perform a fatal mistake.

Jalapeno popper mac and cheese. Kinda hard to see the pasta at this angle. Once again, I should read my recipes before I start to make them. I was under the impression that this was baked in the oven, but it is actually a stovetop dish. This week could also be known as "teach Allison how to make a roux week". A roux is a very powerful tool in the kitchen. A roux is equal parts fat (usually butter) and flour that is cooked into a paste. This is then used as a thickening agent in a bechamel sauce - add milk to roux and you have bechamel (as an aside, if you add chicken stock instead of milk you get veloute, these would be 2 of the 5 classic sauces of French cooking. A veloute would be used for something like chicken pot pie). Then add cheese to bechamel and you have a cheese sauce and for our purposes, mac and cheese. This was very yummy and creamy with the addition of cream cheese.

To add insult to the carb injury, we have pierogi casserole. Basically the components of pierogis in casserole form - mashed potatoes, pasta and deliciousness. It was really easy to put together and in the end very good. I did have to do some advanced math to determine how many potatoes would make 4 cups of mashed potato - after some research, I decided that 2.5 lbs of potatoes would make about 4 cups mashed, if you were wondering. We used turkey bacon for both the quinoa and this dish, so that we don't feel totally bad about all of this very heavy food. I think I need to make a green salad....

And finally moussaka. I knew once we were getting eggplant, I wanted to make moussaka. This also goes along with "teach Allison to make roux week" - that's her bechamel handiwork there. The thing I love about moussaka is the meat - there's cinnamon in the meat and it's not enough for you to know it's cinnamon but you know it's different. It is sooo delicious. Perfect for today, which is nice and cool compared to yesterday.

The cantaloupe was devoured quickly with prosciutto. The corn was stripped from the cob and put in the freezer. All that is left is chiles...roasting sounds like a great idea...maybe then preserve in oil? Will have to think on that for next week. 

CSA Week 6

In the box this week:
potatoes
broccoli
cabbage
watermelon
onions
cherry bomb peppers
bell peppers
tomato
corn
japanese eggplant

Extras:
large baking zucchini
thai basil
sweet basil
oregano
tomatoes
 

Basil and Oregano. Look at the size of that!!

Thai Basil

Bruised, overripe and ugly tomatoes. Perfect for sauce!

Recipes:
Pesto
Caprese Salad
Zucchini bread
Cabbage Thoran
Thai Corn Soup
Soba Noodle Salad
Yellow Curry Eggplant
Apple Zucchini Muffins
Zucchini Pizza Casserole
Spicy Savory Sweet Watermelon Rind Pickles
Pickled Watermelon Rind Salad with Feta and Salami
Southwest One Pot Pasta

Well the box this week was super full - guess it's a good thing I had an extra day to cook it all because I needed it!!

Pesto galore! Both the sweet basil and the oregano pesto were made in the typical pesto way - nuts, oil, cheese, herbs. I didn't have pine nuts so I used walnuts, just as good and not as expensive. Amazing how so many herbs can pack down into something so small! I decided to put the pesto in ice cube trays then pop them in the freezer. The Thai basil was mixed with coconut oil and cashews. Looking at some recipes online AFTER I made the pesto, some people added fish sauce and sesame oil, which would be a nice addition. I may add that to what's left after making the soba noodle salad...

Here's my version of a Caprese salad - tomato, mozzarella and a pesto vinaigrette. Yum!

Zucchini bread. Different recipe than I have used before. We made these at my friend, Patty's house. We were very liberal with the add ins - cranberries, golden raisins, almonds, cherries, sunflower seeds, chocolate chips and Heath Toffee bits. Very tasty.

Cabbage Thoran. This is an Indian dish we made at Patty's house. She just had her cousin visit and had all fresh new spices for us to play with. It is a very quick dish - so the shredded cabbage is still somewhat crunchy. There's nice heat from the chiles and the coconut helps cool the heat some. Very good.

Now on to Thailand. Found this recipe for a corn soup without cream. Was disappointed to not be able to find Kaffir lime leaves but used lime zest as a replacement. Subtle heat and complex flavors in a short time.

This soba salad was something I made up on the fly. I knew I wanted to use the Thai basil pesto in a cold noodle salad, so then added some broccoli, grated carrot and sesame oil. It turned out better than I would have thought!

This yellow curry eggplant is a real winner. Simple to make with coconut milk and curry paste. Just throw in your ingredients and it's done pretty quick. Lots of flavor!!! The recipe calls for sweet potato but I substituted regular potatoes, since that is what I have the abundance of. Served over rice, it would be a great weeknight take out substitute.

These strusel topped apple zucchini muffins are sooo delicious. We used applesauce I canned last year in my first canning adventure (still delicious, by the way) and apples from the farmstand. Homemade at it's best!

Taste of Home has something here with this zucchini pizza casserole. It's really good and filling. It also uses a lot of zucchini, for when you have a lot! We used our homemade sauce for this, and that may be why it's soo good. I was quite surprised how much the sauce cooked down! We took half and put that in the oven to make tomato paste and the other half to make sauce. I think we got 3 dishes worth out of the batch - so one went into zucchini pizza casserole, one went to Patty and I took the last. Kinda sad how all that work went into so little...now I need to think of the perfect dish for that delicious sauce!! The tomato paste went into the ice cube trays and now in the freezer - you only use a few tablespoons at a time anyway...

More watermelon rind pickles! This is a sweet pickle, which I will have to decide what to do with. It is also much softer, since you boil the rinds before you pickle them. Probably would be good with roasted meat on a sandwich, or anytime you want a sweet pickle. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the salad I made with the other pickled watermelon rind...probably because I was so excited to eat it each time I made it that I dug in before getting the picture! Check out the recipe, it sounds weird, but it's really good.

The only thing left to make is the Southwest One Pot Pasta. I'm about to start on that for dinner. It will use of the last of the corn and I'll probably end up putting most of it in the freezer for later. Happy Labor Day everyone!