What's For Dinner? Week 4

{Week of June 23-29}

This week's veggies (week #3 of the season), picked up on June 19th:

Contents:  1 bunch kale and 1 bunch lettuce at the back, 1 green pepper, 2 tomatoes, 3 candy onions, a cluster (?) of GARLIC (wow!). 4 rainbow carrots, 1 small bunch basil and 1 small summer squash.

"Rainbow" carrots taste just like regular carrots but come in varying shades (yellow, orange, red, white).

And garlic!  I've never seen garlic in this state.  The tops look like green onions and it's a root, but the heads of garlic have skin like an onion and none of the dry papery skin like you see in the grocery store.  I'd love to watch and learn how garlic connoisseurs wrap and braid the garlic heads like you see in authentic Italian restaurants and grocery stores.

Same goes for the candy onions - no papery outer skins.  I store these in a bag in the fridge with green stalks attached.

This week's fruit:  a pint of raspberries.  Yeah!

We had early morning plans on Saturday the 23rd and then another baptism on Sunday late morning.  So we saved our bigger weekend breakfast for Sunday morning:  banana quinoa waffles again.  Yum!

Saturday night's dinner:  big salads.  Regular garden salad for Craig, caprese/pesto salad for me, and a make-your-own/shake-it-up salad for the kids.

Sophie is constantly asking to help me in the kitchen lately so she came to the counter to whisk up the dressing for me.

Buttermillk, mayo, cider vinegar, chives.

Then they each take half of the fillings from the 12-cup muffin tin and place them in a container.

Pour in a little dressing and shake, shake, shake!

And then dump!  A little fruit and grilled cheese and we've got a meal!  Craig had a grilled cheese and fruit too.  I'm usually good with just the salad.

Dinner on Sunday night was cajun chicken pasta, which I've made once before and have no idea where the recipe source came from.  I saw it on Pinterest and must have printed it without pinning it because I have no link and no web address on the print-out.  Boo.

Sorry this picture is sideways.  :(

This is a really easy recipe and really good!  In the future, though, I will add way more pasta and way less cream.  It was pretty soupy and rich, but very tasty.

Cajun Chicken Pasta

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into small strips

4 oz linguini pasta (I'd probably do at least 8 oz, maybe even 12 next time)

2 tsps Cajun seasoning

2 tbsp butter

1 green onion, thinly sliced

2 cups heavy whipping cream (even after I add extra pasta, I'll probably just use 1 cup next time)

2 tbsp sun-dried tomatoes, chopped

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp dried basil

1/8 tsp pepper

1/8 tsp garlic powder

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (maybe more?)

-Boil water and cook pasta al dente.  Meanwhile, toss chicken strips with cajun seasoning.  In a large skillet over medium heat, melt butter.  Add chicken and saute for 5-7 minutes or until fully cooked.  Reduce heat to low.  Add green onions, heavy cream, tomatoes and herbs/seasonings.  Cook until heated through.  Add pasta to skillet with Parmesan cheese.  Says it only makes two servings...  Even with the ingredients as listed, it's way more than two servings.

A new CSA recipe that I tried on Monday night:  spaghetti with garlic, kale and tomato.  Very good.  Very clean.  And very nicely filling with chopped almonds added for some protein.

Spaghetti with Garlic, Kale and Tomato

3 oz spaghetti (I used linguine again) - not a lot of pasta!

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, chopped

s&p to taste

4 cups kale/collards, stems removed, leaves torn into bite size pieces

1 cup tomato, chopped

1/4 cup almonds, chopped

1/4 cup Parmesan, grated + more for serving

-Cook pasta according to package directions.  Reserve 1/8 cup of cooking water, drain pasta and return to pot.  Meanwhile, heat oil in large skillet over medium-high.  Add onion, garlic, s&p.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown, about 4-5 minutes.  Add the kale or collards and cook, tossing frequently until tender, 2-3 minutes.  Add tomatoes and cook until softened, about 1-2 minutes more.  Add pasta, almonds and Parm to kale mixture.  Serve with additional cheese.

To go with, I served a variation of Smitten Kitchen's blue cheese scallion drop biscuits.  I love doing a search on her blog for whatever ingredient I am trying to use.  In this case, I searched garlic scapes because, though I had read they are similar to a green onion, I had no idea what to do with them.  My search brought me to this recipe because one of Deb's commenters said they substituted scallions (in her recipe) with garlic scapes.  Perfect!  Except for the fact that I don't like blue cheese.  But then Deb herself suggested substituting an equal volume of coarsely grated cheddar right there in the paragraph that precedes the recipe.  Sold!  (Oh, and P.S. - I love Deb's commenters.  They're all such devoted foodies and they have such great comments and suggestions. :) )

I adore drop biscuits.  Pretty much any kind.  :)

They went very nicely with the next night's meal as well:  twice baked potatoes and mini meatloaves.  I used the same sharp white cheddar in the potatoes as I did the biscuits so they don't appear as cheesy, but they were.

A final dinner this week for us was our friend Melissa's pineapple chicken salad.  Still a favorite.

I had a Tupperware party to go to this night so I was grateful to have this salad ready in advance for a quick meal before leaving Craig with the kids while I shopped for awesome new plastic storage pieces.  ;-) 

Oh!  And let's not forget dessert on this night!  S'more bars from Pinterest.  YUM!!

What's For Dinner? Week 3

{Week of June 16-22}

Our veggies for the week, picked up on June 12th:

Contents:  3 red beets, 2 tomatoes, cluster of collard greens, bunch of garlic scapes (say what? what's a garlic scape?), large head of red leaf lettuce, sweet baby onions, small head of broccoli, baggie of sugar snap peas and 2 cartons of yellow cherry tomatoes.

I selected the yellow tomatoes from the exchane bin where I'd turned in two of our other items.  Can't remember what I turned in though... more kale or napa cabbage?... just something I didn't think I'd be able to use this week.  But cherry tomatoes go verrrry quickly in our house.  As Will says, "they're like candy."

Our fruit this week was sweet cherries.

The kids were psyched about the red beets in our bag because that inevitably means red beet pancakes for breakfast.  I really don't care for these, but the kids love them!  And what else am I going to do with beets?  They're not my fave.

I had some red, grape tomatoes from the grocery store too, so on Saturday I used a combination of both (looks pretty that way) to make one of my favorite easy and ridiculously flavorful dishes:  chicken breasts with tomato-herb pan sauce from Bon Appetit.  LOVE IT!!!  So flipping good with the marjoram, garlic and paprika herbed butter.

The whole thing is done very quickly in a skillet.  Only one pan to clean and it just tastes like summer!

For our Father's Day picnic at Craig's parent's house, I made the utterly devine spring salad with new potatoes (best potato salad EVER!) from Smitten Kitchen, along with watermelon slices and homemade strawberry shortcakes.  We always grill out and everyone contributes sides.  We were eatin' goooood that day!

I could eat that potato salad every single day of my life.  Love it.

Here is another recipe from last summer that came with our CSA newsletter:  BBQ sausage with potatoes and greens.  A tasty use of collard greens or kale.

And with the cherries, I made the same cherry mustard chicken that we did last year during cherry season.   Don't scrunch your nose!  The combination is unusual but wonderful!

I used radishes from our garden and lettuce & carrots from the current week's CSA (not pictured yet)  to make a garden salad on the side.  Delicious!

One thing I never got around to making were the tortellini, tomato and snap pea skewers with dill dressing that I made last year.  Those are really good and are nice to serve for company.  But we've been eating the snap peas raw for snacks and lunches.

What's For Dinner? Week 2

{Week of June 9-15}

This year, our weekly CSA pick ups are a little bigger.  We still have the same "split" share of vegetables (1 grocery bag full).  But this year we've also added a "split" share of fruit (1 fruit item each week) and three loaves of homemade spelt breads delivered five times over the course of the 20 week season (so about once a month).  A "standard" share would be two bags of vegetables (WAAAAAY too much for our size of family) and/or two items of fruit each week.  So when I say "split", it just means half of the "standard".  You just have to decide what is right for your family.  When I decided on the fruit share, I was thinking about how much time we spend at u-pick farms throughout the summer and how we sometimes have fruit coming out of our ears.  But with as much fruit as our family consumes, I will definitely take a standard share of fruit next year.  We'll go through it.  Vegetables, though, are plenty with just one bag.  I would be drowning with two bags.  And as for the bread, well... this is the first week we've received it (hence the two green bags) and it was very good and hearty tasting.  It's a little pricey and so I'll consider throughout the season how valuable it is to us.  But I'm enjoying it for now!

Here is our vegetable share for week two, picked up on Tuesday, June 5th.

Contents:  1 bunch kale, 1 bunch green leaf lettuce, 1 bag spinach, 1 bunch napa cabbage, 1 bunch asparagus, 3 tomatoes, 1 pint of sugar snap peas, 1 bunch basil, 1 cucumber and 1 bunch sweet spring onions.

I've gotten in the habit of immediately making a batch of basil pesto (Riehm Farm's recipe using walnuts instead of pine nuts and no parmesan cheese - I always have the ingredients on hand) whenever we receive basil in our bag.  I have basil in my garden for whenever I need it for a recipe and I almost never have an immediate need for that much basil on our menu.  So it's the most efficient way of using a large bunch of the stuff when we get it in our bag.  Pesto freezes very well.  If I make a whole batch of their recipe, I freeze it all together to save for the pesto veggie pizza recipe that I love from them.  But if I can only make a small quantity, I freeze it in an ice cube tray to thaw out a cube at a time for whenever I need it!  I have a great salad recipe that I love to pack for lunch using pesto and a little extra olive oil as a dressing.  It's just lettuce of your choice, haled grape tomatoes, diced mozzarella cheese and pesto dressing.  It's like caprece salad on top of lettuce.  Sooooo good!

Aren't these so pretty?  They are the exact thing I was looking for last year when I first made Smitten Kitchen's Spring Salad with New Potatoes.  And I had no idea what she was talking about when she called for "spring onions".

And oh my goodness!  Their strawberries were some of the best EVER!  This was our fruit item for the week.  They looked about as perfect as a strawberry could look and they tasted amazing.  We used these for spinach salads and to top ice cream.  ;)

And here's a look at the breads we received.

A traditional focaccia:

An Italian baguette:

And a sandwich loaf (far left):

I actually froze the focaccia and baguette for later use. They freeze very well.

This week, we ate a LOT of pizza leftovers from Will's party.  A LOT.  I also met my mom and sis mid-week for pedi's and dinner at P.F. Chang's.  So mostly what you'll see this week is various salads to incorporate our vegetables into our week. :)

But first... weekend breakfast:  whole wheat oat pancakes from Weelicious.

Here's a sideways picture of the Napa Cabbage Slaw I made with the cabbage we received this week.  It also called for some green onions, which we still had leftover from last week.  I ate this with pizza for dinner one night and then packed for lunch several times in the week.  (This was a packed lunch pic from my iPhone.)

Napa Coleslaw

1 tbsp tahini (I used peanut butter with a little lemon juice mixed in)

2 tsp mustard

1 tbsp honey

2 tbsp favorite vinegar (I used rice vinegar for this)

3 tbsp veg oil (I used olive oil)

2 tsp sesame oil

6 cups thinly sliced Napa cabbage

3 carrots, grated

4 green onions

1 (5oz) can sliced water chestnuts

1/3 cup roasted peanuts or sliced almonds (I used peanuts)

-Whisk together miso/tahini, mustard, honey and rice vinegar in a large bowl.  Slowly whisk in oils until well blended.  Add remaining ingredients and toss to combine.  May be made a day ahead.

Also made my mom's asparagus salad with a delicious thyme dressing that I love over regular dinner salads as well!

Asparagus Salad

1 bunch of cleaned, stemmed asparagus

1 sliced red pepper

-Cook asparagus and pepper in a skillet with 1/2" of wtaer.  Boil, reduce heat, cover and steam for 3-5 minutes until crisp tender.

Dressing:

3/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

 1 medium clove garlic, chopped

3 tsp dijon mustard

3 tsp lemon juice

dash worcestershire

1 tsp minced fresh thyme

salt and pepper

-Whisk all and drizzle over vegetables.  There's always a lot of leftover so try it on salads as well!

The ever popular spinach strawberry salad.  Our kids LOVE these!  LOVE them!  They will often have second helpings when we serve this for dinner.  And with all the pecans in this salad, I've served this as their main dish and it's kind of an all-in-one meal!  I've posted my favorite poppy seed dressing here before.  I prefer to use that to dress this salad and Sophie agrees.  But Will likes bottled raspberry vinegarette.  Whatever suites your fancy!

And finally, I still love Weelicious's Kale Avocado Salad as a great menu item to use kale.  One bunch of kale can often make several different dishes, so I like to have a handful of recipe ideas in mind for when we receive it.  It's very tasty!  In this recipe it's thinly sliced (love the wavy edges!), and tossed with lemon juice, olive oil and a little salt.

Then you mash an avocado and incorporate that into the greens with some pine nuts...

And voila!  Tangy, crisp, creamy, crunchy, delicious.  All in one.  It's filling and so good for you!

Also this week, we had breakfast for dinner one night and also burgers that went along with the kale salad.

Happy eating!

One Final Strawberry Hurrah

With as much as we had going on during Will's birthday weekend, figured we were going to have to give up the idea of any more strawberry picking for this season.  But when I said this to Craig, he sounded as if I'd just told him we were never going to eat dinner again.  "What? That's it?"  Mind you, we had already picked ~13# and ~8# at our two previous trips respectively.  :)  So instead of trying to squeeze one more thing into our weekend, we just went on a weeknight later that week, packed sandwiches and veggies for the kids dinner... and picked another ~14# of the sweetest berries I've ever tasted!

The e-mails from Whittaker's kept saying that the extreme heat my shorten the season but that the berries continue to be beautiful and plentiful for the time being.  We didn't want to wait till the following weekend and risk missing them!  And this evening was very comfortable and beautiful.  It wasn't at all crowded and we picked in a different location than I've ever picked here before since it was the later season variety.

Such a pretty farm and beautiful view.

Our pickings.  So let's see... 13# + 8# + 14# (approximately) = 35# of strawberries picked this season!!!  And we didn't make jam or freeze any of the berries!  Just ate them all!  :)

Back home, the kids have had their fill of a light dinner and lots of berries, so it's bath and then bed time!  Love fresh-scented kiddos all wrapped up in towels.  :)

Will looks like a goob in these last two but Soph is always so animated.

Normally, at this time of the month, we'd be finishing up sweet cherries and anxiously heading into raspberry season.  But cherries were a no-go because of the extreme heat in really early spring and then re-freezing later on.  And our favorite raspberry farm has pulled out all their red raspberry bushes and are replanting, so they only have black raspberries available for u-pick this year.  We've gotten a pint of red raspberries in our last two CSA bags and we're just debating if we want to drive such a long hall for black raspberries only... or just buy what we want at the farmer's market and wait till the "fall" raspberries start in late August at Whittaker's.  Hmm.  Decisions.

Either way, we will absolutely be picking blueberries and peaches in the next two months and are looking forward to that!!!