I am pooped!! This past weekend was my first weekend at home in 6 weeks! Ridiculous. It was so nice to be here though. I got to do things that I wanted to do...but it ended up being a lot. On top of it being the most gorgeous fall weekend ever! 75 degrees, bright sun, not a cloud in the sky and beautiful trees. I am glad I got to take advantage of it. I finished off my weekend with a marathon. No, not a running marathon. I can't run...at all. I had myself a little cooking marathon. My fridge has been overflowing with vegetables and I decided I needed to attack it. Aggressively. I made 3 soups, chimicurri, applesauce and egg rolls. Sad thing is even after cooking for 7 hours straight, my fridge is still packed full! UGH! I may need to give some stuff away. We will have to see. This week I am going to set up my entry a little differently. Instead of listing each item and what I made, I am going to list the meals and recipes and talk about what I used since I have pictures of everything.
Egg Scrambler
Nothing better than an easy scrambler on a Saturday morning. For this one, I started with a little melted butter and quickly sauteed some cherry tomatoes. I added chopped chives with the eggs and milk. At the end, I finished if off with cheddar cheese. Paired with toast with raspberry jam, it made the perfect breakfast!
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| Scrambler with chives and cherry tomatoes |
Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
I really needed a recipe that used up a lot of cherry tomatoes. I know I could just freeze them or cook them down into a sauce but I wanted to feature them. Luckily, I ran into a Caprese Salad recipe with a twist on Pintrest! Basically, you toss cherry tomatoes in olive oil and herbs. The recipe called for coriander, which I don't really like so I used thyme. Once coated, you have to spread them on a baking sheet with the cut side up, then roast in a 225 degree oven for several hours. They came out delicious! Sweet little morsels. I roasted 1 lb of tomatoes and was able to eat all of them in one sitting! I will definitely do this again if I run into an overload of tomatoes.
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| Coating the tomatoes in olive oil |
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| Roasted morsels! -- with some roasted garlic |
Cheese Tortellini with Cherry Tomatoes and Pesto
Even after roasting 1 lb of tomatoes, I still had a lot left. This time I just threw together an easy pasta dish. I roasted the tomatoes for a little bit to get the juices hot and tossed them with cheese tortellini, fresh mozzarella, basil pesto, and Parmesan. Simple, fast and tasty. I had the basil pesto in my freezer from last summer. It was surprisingly still good. I just needed to add a little olive oil to it to add some moisture. I was disappointed I never got around to making more pesto this year. I was holding out to make some with my own basil but my plants were a little finicky this year. I will still post the recipe I usually use. It is fairly typical.
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| Cheese Tortellini with Cherry Tomatoes and Pesto |
Deconstructed Fajitas
I knew I needed to eat a lot of bell peppers this week and the best meal for that is fajitas, of course! But I wanted to be more creative. I also wanted the meal to be based more around the vegetables and less around the tortillas and other toppings. I basically got everything together that I usually put on fajitas and then ate it with tortilla triangles. It was good, but I think next time I will go back to the normal way. Why mess with a good thing?
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| Deconstructed Fajitas |
Roasted Bell Pepper Bisque with Romano Cheese
Guess what takes more bell peppers than fajitas? SOUP! I didn't even think about making this until my friend suggested it yesterday. Of course this was supposed to me only red peppers but I used red, yellow and green. I decided to use this specific recipe from Epicurious because it had Romano cheese in it -- which makes anything delicious! The recipe does call for shrimp which I think would be good but is not necessary. I am really excited to eat this in the upcoming weeks and months. For now it is sitting in my freezer.
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| Final product! Creamy, cheesy, slightly spicy bell pepper bisque |
Garlic Fried Rice
I have never made fried rice before. And after making it this week, I'm not sure why. So easy and nummy. A nice variation to my typical stir fries. This recipe also used up so much of the items in my fridge! The only thing I had to buy was ginger. Carrots, cabbage, garlic, onions and I added red bell pepper. For the brown rice, I used frozen rice from Trader Joe's. May sound strange but it is very good and super quick. 3 min in the microwave. I do recommend having soy sauce with this. It definitely adds a little salt and umami that is missing right out of the pan.
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| Frying it up! |
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| Great dinner! Skinny Garlic Stir Fry |
Egg Rolls
I was getting VERY adventurous this week. I would never consider making egg rolls. It just sounds like a lot of work. Sauteing, rolling and frying. But they were a lot easier than I expected. Still a little time consuming compared to just popping one out of your freezer but I am sure these will be delicious. I ended up frying them and putting them in the freezer in hope that I will be able to warm them up in the toaster oven like the ones I buy at the store. The recipe says to freeze them before frying but I didn't want to have to heat up oil every time I wanted one. Also, the recipe calls for ground pork which I couldn't find at my grocery store, which I found odd since they have sorts of nasty offal. So I had to improvise with ground chicken. Also, this recipe makes A TON of small rolls. Instead, I made only a few large rolls. I was so pleased with how nicely the rolls fried up. I haven't tasted one yet but each of the elements were good so I am cross my fingers that the final product comes together.
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| Prepping the cabbage and carrots |
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| Making the rolls |
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| Frying up the rolls |
Guacamole
I love love LOVE guacamole. Seriously one of my favorite things ever. I try to make it whenever avocados are $1 or less. And this time, not only were avocados cheap but I also had tomatoes, garlic and cilantro sitting in my fridge. I have come to the point that I don't measure anything so each batch comes out a little different.
GUACAMOLE
2 avocados
Juice of 1/2 a lime
Salt, to taste
1 clove garlic, diced
1/4 cup red onion, diced
1 tomatoes, cored, seeded and diced
1 small jalapeno, diced
2 Tbsp cilantro, chopped
Mash avocados with lime juice and salt. Stir in remaining ingredients. Garnish with cilantro leaves.
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| Nummy guacamole |
Chimichurri
SO much cilantro. The only thing I could find that would use up a large amount is to add to the chimichurri I already have in the freezer. I love the fresh and tangy sauce on steaks, shrimp and pork. Now I just need to buy some meat!
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| Getting everything into the food processor |
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| Chimichurri! |
Week 17:
I am putting this picture in the middle of the post because the remaining recipes used more of the vegetables from this week's box instead of last week's. This week is really going to be a challenge. Things I have never had before like fava beans and turnip greens along with things I don't really enjoy like fennel. We will see how this goes.
Fava Beans, Beets, Leek, Spinach, Turnip Greens, Carrots, Fennel, Peppers and a Jalapeno.
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| Week 17 |
Carrot Ginger Soup
Oh, what to do when you get 2 lbs of carrots? Make carrot soup! Again, I didn't even think of this until I talked to my friend. She had great suggestions this week with soups! Maybe someday when I have kids I would be thrilled with 2 lbs of carrots. Every kids loves them and you can make baby food. But for me, it was a little daunting by myself. If B was around, they would have easily been devoured in a matter of hours but I just can't do it. I only eat a couple at a time so this soup was perfect. Very easy besides having to peel around 30 smallish carrots. I definitely learned a technique by the end. I will admit, when I tried the soup before I put it in the freezer I was a little uncertain. It tasted a little too much like baby food for me so I added a little bit more ground ginger and some curry powder. I may add more curry powder when I serve as well.http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/all-american-festivals/ginger-carrot-soup-recipe/index.html
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| Carrot Ginger Soup |
Potato Leek Soup
Whenever I see a leek, all I can think about it Potato Leek Soup. And even better, I had potatoes lying around from the CSA a couple weeks ago. The recipe I used starts with bacon. And as we all know, bacon makes everything better. I also liked this recipe because I didn't need to peel the potatoes. When pureed, it made it a little more rustic. The final product was good but I do think it is missing a little something. I think when we have it, I will serve it with a little cheddar cheese and bacon or many some sour cream.
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| Taters |
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| Leeks sauteing with bacon and butter |
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| Final product! Topped off with chives! |
So even though I didn't get apples in my CSA, I wanted to leave you with some pictures of my applesauce. My mom always used to make homemade applesauce in the fall. It was something that we all looked forward to. To this day, if I have jarred or store bought applesauce, I always have to throw it in the microwave for a minute to make it warm, just like it is when fresh off the stove. With my mom's method, you need to own a food mill. Though it is a very old kitchen tool, it definitely comes in handy at times. Hope everyone is enjoying fall to its fullest! For me, it is applesauce, apple pie, apple cider, donut holes, bonfires, football, and crunching through the leaves!
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| Cooking up the apples. 1 Tbsp of water for every lb of apples |
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| Putting the cooked apples through the food mill |
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