Pepperoni and Kale Raab Soup

I had a lot of pepperoni left over from the pizza's that I made this weekend and this great looking bunch of kale raab so I thought that it might make a pretty tasty soup!  I started off by adding minced garlic, chopped onion and carrot to a medium sized pot with a little olive oil.  Once this mixture started to soften, I added chopped zucchini and mushrooms, a can of crushed tomatoes, 3 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of water, a sprig of thyme, a one inch rind of gouda parana and some salt and pepper. When this began to boil, I added one bunch of chopped kale raab and a cup of chopped pepperoni and continued to boil for about another 15 minutes, just until the raab was cooked through but still had a nice bite to it. To finish, I topped the soup with some fresh chopped basil.

With so many different flavors going on I was a little worried that it might be a bit too much. However, they all worked very well together. This also made quite a bit of food, so I will probably be freezing half of it, even after the boys come home and eat dinner!

Friday Bin 4/15

Well, again, I have to apologize for posting this so late! Last week, especially the last couple of days, have been really hectic. I spent all of last week planning, prepping and setting up for my daughters Mad Hatter Tea Party themed 9th birthday. It was a lot of fun and her party turned out great, so it was all worth it!  My daughter has amazing friends and they all have wonderful parents. As for my bin, I got a lot of items that I actually was able to use up over the weekend.

Carrots with Tops
Green Cabbage
Texas Sweet Onions
Cucumber
Kale Raab
Crimini Mushrooms
Heirloom Leaf Lettuce
Lemons
Murcott Tangerines
Braeburn Apples
Minneola Tangelos
Strawberries

For my daughters tea party, of course I had to make cucumber and cream cheese tea sandwiches! This used up most of my cucumbers. I also served strawberries and carrots, broccoli and cucumber sticks to dip in honey mustard and blue cheese dipping sauces.  I was able to use up more of the fruits for the pancake breakfast that I made for Sunday morning when my daughter and all of her friends woke up.  I made a berry topping using the strawberries, fresh whipped cream, a fruit salad using grapefruit, oranges, and 3 different types of apples, and mini pancakes along with bacon and sausage. The breakfast was a big hit and everyone loved the berry topping for their pancakes!  Also, many of the ingredients in my bin were used to make a salad Sunday night. As you can imagine, most of what I received in my bin Friday has already been used, but I still have plenty of fruits and veggies in my fridge to make some delicious meals this week.

Garlicky Swiss Chard with Mushrooms and Beans

Well, tonight happens to be one of those night's where I throw a bunch of stuff into a pan, cook it and hope for the best.  I decided on using the chard because it's big, beautiful and taking up a lot of space in my fridge.

I started by adding 4 cloves of garlic finely chopped, coarsely chopped Texas Sweet onion, chard stems, asparagus (this I had left over from a previous week), olive oil, salt and pepper to a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Once the veggies began to soften I added the rough chopped chard leaves and cooked until they began to wilt.  At this point I added some chicken stock and red pepper flake and brought it to a boil.  The heat was lowered to medium-low and simmered for about 15 minutes.  Then I added about half a can of rinsed and drained white kidney beans (because my only other option was garbanzo beans - yuck!) and continued to simmer for about 5 minutes more, just until the beans were warmed through.

While the chard mixture was simmering, I thinly sliced some crimini mushrooms and added them to a saute pan with melted butter and sauteed just until browned.

To assemble this dish I placed a spoonful of the chard mixture into the bowl, added a layer of the mushrooms and topped with a dollop of sour cream and some chopped avocado.

All in all, it wasn't a terrible meal. It had a lot of great flavor and the creaminess of the sour cream and avocado was a good idea. I think that if I were to make this dish again I would use half as much chicken broth as I did because I was hoping that the liquid would cook off but at the risk of overcooking my chard I couldn't wait that long. I also think that I would use plain white beans instead of the kidney beans, they seemed to over power the chard just a bit and the white beans would have added a milder flavor.

Homemade Pizza and Beet Salad

Earlier today, when I went out on my mission to get a pizza stone, and not just any pizza stone but an Emile Henry Pizza Stone from William's Sonoma, I was told that they didn't have any in stock and that it was on back order for another week!  Now yesterday I had started a homemade pizza dough so I knew that I absolutely had to find a way to get this thing today and was pretty much willing to drive wherever I had to to get it. The wonderful store clerk checked into his computer for me and called another store, it turns out there was one left in the entire area and Alderwood (a 20 minute drive away) had it, so it was quickly put on hold for me. Now, pizza stone in hand and safely at home, I feel that this was one of the best purchases that I've ever made!  However, when the woman at the Alderwood store asked if I needed a pizza peel, I should have said yes and brought that home with me as well (read on).
So after anxiously awaiting the one hour to bring the dough to room temperature and another half an hour for the pizza stone to heat in the oven, it was finally time to assemble it!  I spread my homemade pizza sauce (San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, Italian seasoning simmered for half an hour) on top, placed a layer of mozzarella cheese on it and it was time to finally try out my stone!!  Well, I had my pizza on top of a well floured and corn mealed baking sheet (without sides) and just assumed that it would slide easily onto the scorching hot stone, boy was I wrong!  After 5 minutes of wrestling this dough onto the stone, because well, the second it gets on the stone it starts to cook and doesn't like to be moved, I was finally able to close the oven door and cook my no longer pretty and round pizza. Needless to say, I will be going back to the store tomorrow for the pizza peel.  After just a mere 10 minutes in the oven, there emerged a little slice of heaven! Perfectly puffed and golden brown.

Meanwhile, I made the beet salad.  After an hour of boiling the quartered (because these were rather huge, even after being quartered) beets, I placed them on a foil lined baking sheet and baked at 450 for 10 minutes, just until they started to caramelize on the outside (or in my case, stick to the foil and not want to come off! I would recommend spraying the foil with some cooking spray). While the beets were in the oven, I made a quick vinaigrette with balsamic vinegar and honey, rinsed some arugula and diced some avocados. To assemble this salad, I placed some arugula drizzled with the vinaigrette on a plate and layered the beets and avocado, then topped with some crumbled goat cheese.

Well, after plating my food and sitting down to take my first bite of this wonderful meal, I realized that I forgot the basil! How could I forget the basil?? I bought a live basil plant from Whole Foods earlier today and it's been giving off it's beautiful aroma in my kitchen all day! I couldn't believe that I had forgotten it, so I quickly got up and put it on the pizza (at this point I had already taken the photo, so unfortunately, you don't get to see the beautiful green on my pizza).  I have to say that I can't imagine eating pizza from anywhere else! The dough was well worth the 24 hour wait and I'd be quite satisfied with just eating the cooked crust and nothing else! However the addition of the simple ingredients brings it to a whole new level of deliciousness. And the salad, well, it was well worth the hour it took to boil the beets. Even Dylan exclaimed, "Mom these beets are awesome!". Dylan has also decided that she no longer wants to order pizza for her birthday party next weekend and requested that I make more homemade pizza's. I'm actually not sure if I will be able to hold out an entire week before making this again though!

Friday Bin 4/8

It's finally Friday! This week I have chosen to switch out a few of the items in my bin since I have so much in my fridge already, this way I don't end up with too much of the same thing.

Carrots with Tops
Cabbage
Texas Sweet Onions
Artichokes
Kale Raab (although this week it looks more like a collard with a bit of kale raab mixed into it)
Rainbow Chard
Red Leaf Lettuce
Crimini Mushrooms
Braeburn Apples
Navel Oranges
Ataulfo Mangoes
Murcott Tangerines

The chard this week is really beautiful! The leaves are huge and colorful and I'm really looking forward to cooking with it. This week is going to be a busy one so hopefully I'm able to make some quick and tasty dishes that will showcase the wonderful flavors of all my veggies.

Grilled Kale Raab and Mashed Potatoes with Arugula and Goat Cheese

I couldn't decide on which of my veggies I wanted to use for my meal tonight and finally went with kale raab and arugula.  I knew that I didn't really want a salad though and after some further investigation in my fridge I found some potatoes! I decided that this is how I would use the arugula.

I started off by peeling the potatoes and boiling them for about 20 minutes.  Once they were done I added them to a bowl with some goat cheese, fresh thyme, a little butter, salt, black peper and milk.  I mashed these until all of the ingredients were fully mixed. Then I added chopped arugula to the potatoes and stirred until just combined.

For the kale raab, I decided that something simple would be the best way to cook these.  I started by trimming them and placing them in a bowl. They were then drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and mixed to coat.  I heated a grill pan on medium high and grilled the kale raab for about 2 minutes per side and sprinkled with red pepper flake.  To finish I drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

For garnish I added a bit more goat cheese to top the potatoes and I used a cashew snack mix that I picked up from Whole Foods (it's from a brand Sahal and the mix was Sing Buri, a mix of cashews, peanuts, dried pineapple and sweet chile flakes).  I also served this with a side of coconut curry tofu that I discovered, it was a tofu snack pack, all I had to do was warm it up!

I think that everything turned out really good, although I started my grill pan off on high so the first few pieces of kale raab had a nice burnt flavor to them, but other than that I'm pleased.  The tofu was also a great addition and rounded out the meal quite well.

Collard Greens and White Bean Soup

After a couple of week's now, acquiring collard greens in my bin each week and not being quite sure how to use them up, I decided to try and use them in a soup.  I figured why not? I've got carrots, celery and onion, which are a perfect base for a soup that I need to use up too! So I started chopping. 

I started off by heating a bit of olive oil in a medium sized dutch oven. I added chopped onion, celery, carrot and gold bell pepper (this I decided on at the last moment, I thought it would go well in the soup).  Once the vegetables began to soften, I put in some sliced garlic (4 heads) and a sprig of fresh thyme along with some red pepper flakes, chicken broth and a can of fire roasted diced tomatoes. When this began to boil, 5 cups of chopped collard greens were added and the heat was reduced to a simmer for just under 10 minutes. A can of drained, rinsed white beans were added and the soup was cooked just a few minutes longer to heat the beans through.

I have to say that as good as this soup was, I felt that it was a bit lacking in flavor. I feel like the vegetables worked really well together, but maybe it would have been a good idea to add more spice. I also think that the addition of some cooked chicken or maybe even cubed tofu might work well in this soup.

Zucchini Pasta with Mushroom Bolognese

Tonight's dinner actually comes from an idea that my mom gave me. I mentioned to her over the weekend that I had no idea what to do with all of this zucchini and she said that I should make zucchini pasta. I'd never heard of such a thing - using zucchini strips in place of pasta - so of course, I had to try it out!

After a little bit of research looking for a tasty sauce to go over top of the zucchini I found a recipe for Mushroom Bolognese. Now, I have to admit that I almost didn't make this because I didn't get mushrooms in my bin this week and I usually don't like to use vegetables that I don't already have on hand, but this sounded so good that I couldn't pass it up.

I started making the sauce by adding chopped portobello mushrooms, celery, carrots, leeks and minced garlic to a sauce pan with some olive oil and garlic and cooked this over medium heat for about 10 minutes just until the vegetables began to soften. This mixture was removed from the pan and place into a larger sauce pan.  To the original pan, a bit of white wine was added to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom and poured over the mixture in the new pan.  To the mushroom mixture, I added a little over a cup of beef broth and a spoonful of tomato paste, brought this to a boil, reduced the heat to a simmer and cooked, partially covered, until the broth was almost completely absorbed, this took about 20 minutes. While the sauce was simmering, I added a bit of butter and olive oil to the original sauce pan and cooked about 3 ounces of enoki mushrooms until just browned over medium heat, removed them from the pan and chopped them before adding them to the sauce. Once the enoki mushrooms were added, the sauce simmered for another 5 to 10 minutes before adding salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste with about 4 tablespoons of heavy cream.

For the pasta, using a mandoline slicer I sliced the peeled zucchini into thin strips, lengthwise.  Dylan and I then set out to cut each of the slices into 4 thin strips (making about 4 cups of sliced zucchini), resembling fettuccine pasta.  I added the strips to a large saute pan with some butter, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.  This was cooked until the zucchini was just tender, about 8 minutes.

I topped the "pasta" dish with some shredded asiago cheese and served it with a side of kalamata olive bread.  I have to say that I will probably be making the zucchini pasta more often. As I'm sure you are aware by now, I am not a huge fan of pasta dishes, so this was perfect for me!  I'm happy that I now have an alternative to pasta so that I can make more sauces (because I love sauce, just not so much the noodles)! This is also great idea for anyone trying to cut down on carbs!

Friday Bin 4/1

Okay, so I'm a bit late in getting this post up but I still wanted to make sure that I let all of you know what I received in my bin this week!

Beets with Tops
Broccoli
Green Leaf Lettuce
Arugula
Collard Greens
Kale Raab
Zucchini
Garlic
Lemons
Rio Star Grapefruit
Navel Oranges
Kiwi
Strawberries
Murcott Tangerines

I've got a lot to work with this week! I've never used the Kale Raab before but it looks similar to the Broccolette that I had in my bin last week and it looks like I've got some pretty good sized oranges to make something tasty with too!

Enchilada's....My Way!

I seem to have a fridge full of vegetables! I was brainstorming trying to come up with a creative way to use some of them up and came up with a take on enchilada's.

I started off by placing chopped gold bell peppers, fennel, spring onions, asparagus and savoy cabbage into a large saute pan with about 4 tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil.  This was sauteed until the peppers and the asparagus began to soften and the cabbage starting wilting, I then added the leftover chicken from my soup the other night, shredded carrots and some chopped arugula.  I continued cooking until the arugula was beginning to wilt and added a mixture of 1/2 cup of sour cream and 1/2 can of green chile enchilada sauce. Once the sauce was fully mixed with the vegetables and the chicken warmed through, I removed from the heat and began to assemble the enchiladas.

I placed a few spoonfuls of black beans (rinsed and drained) onto a large flour tortilla, added a few large spoonfuls of the vegetable and chicken mixture, topped with shredded sharp white cheddar and sprinkled some cooked shredded beets on top, rolled the tortilla to close and placed into a rectangular baking dish. I repeated this until I couldn't fit anymore filled tortilla's into my dish, which turned out to be about 4, however if you use a larger baking dish I'm sure that you could easily make twice that.  When the tortilla's were all filled, I poured a can of green chile enchilada sauce over top, sprinkled with aged white cheddar cheese and chopped spring onion (green parts only).  This was then baked in a 425 degree oven for approximately 25 minutes, until the cheese was melted and beginning to brown and the enchilada's were warmed through.  To finish this dish, I sprinkled some chopped fennel fronds on top, just before serving.

I have one word...Wow!  These turned out every bit as good as I imagined that they would! I had even hesitated on putting the shredded beets in, since I know not everyone in the house likes them, but I'm really glad that I decided to keep them.  Not only did they add a nice flavor, but they gave the dish a beautiful pink color too.  Everyone ate two plates full (well, except for Dylan, she had three!) and even my boyfriend who really dislikes beets loved it!  Although, he did ask what the special pink sauce was and I wouldn't answer him even though he already knew what it was (and he still went back for more). 

I've also decided that one photo just wasn't going to do this dish justice, so I had to include another!

Strawberry Mango Crisp

I've been on a mission to find something tasty to make with my strawberries, so when I found out that I was getting mangoes in my bin you can only imagine the ideas that started running through my brain!  I decided to make a crisp.  It sounded really good and the thought of warm fruit with a crisp topping alongside vanilla ice cream just seemed to be the way to go!

I used two cups of sliced strawberries and two cups of mango cut into chunks. I combined the fruit with a mixture of flour, brown sugar, granulated sugar and oats (reserving about 3/4 cup for the topping) and mixed until all of the fruit was coated.  I then poured this into a glass baking dish, covered it with the remaining flour mixture and poured half a stick of melted butter mixed with the juice from one fresh squeezed lemon over top.  This was baked in a 375 degree oven for a little over half an hour.

Needless to say, it turned out really good! I have a feeling that I may be craving this quite a bit and everyone else in the house seemed to really enjoy it too!

Chicken and Vegetable Soup with Dumplings

I figured after almost four weeks of being sick now, and since I can't seem to eat much of anything, that it was about time I made a chicken soup.  When I brought up chicken and dumpling soup, Dylan got extremely excited, so I figured we should make it together.

We started off by placing a whole uncooked chicken in a pot with about four cups of water and some chicken bouillon cubes and brought to a boil.  I reduced the heat until just simmering, added some chopped carrots, celery, fennel, potatoes, gold bell peppers and spring onions. This was covered and cooked for just over an hour, until the chicken was fully cooked.  About thirty minutes into cooking the chicken and veggie mixture I added some broccoli and cauliflower (this way it wouldn't over cook and become mushy).

When the soup was done, we took the chicken out and let it rest for about ten minutes, until it was cool enough so that we could separate the chicken from the bone and skin and tear into bite sized pieces.  We then made the dumplings, with a little Bisquick, some milk, fresh parsley and black pepper.

The vegetables were brought back up to a simmer and Dylan added the dumplings.  This was allowed to cook for about 10 minutes and then we added in the chicken.

I am really happy with the result. This chicken turned out so amazingly moist! It was falling off the bones and the pieces were pulling apart so easily!  I will definitely be making this chicken more often. As for the dumpling  soup, well, Dylan did a great job on the dumplings, they turned out perfect! This soup was a huge hit and after making a large pot even, it resulted in very little leftovers.  My favorite part, I was actually able to eat it! Yay!!!

Friday Bin 3/25

I think that it's safe to say spring is officially here! It's about time too, because some of my favorite fruits and vegetables will be in season soon!!  This week I have quite the selection going on...

Carrots with Tops
Celery
Arugula
Zucchini
Broccolette
Russet Potatoes
Fennel
Spring Onions
Ataulfo Mangoes
Strawberries
Murcott Tangerines

Looks like I have the perfect ingredients for a soup and I'm extremely happy to have mangoes in my bin! I can't wait to make up a big plate of sliced mango and strawberries.  Also this week I have something called broccolette, which I've never heard of, but it looks like really long, skinny broccoli.  I'm looking forward to trying it out!

Stir Fry Yumminess!!

I absolutely had to find a great way to showcase some of these wonderful vegetables, so a stir fry seemed like the right thing to do!

I made a sauce using minced garlic and ginger in a little vegetable oil over high heat.  I added in a mixture of rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, chicken broth, soy sauce, sugar and white pepper, brought this to a boil and added a cornstarch and water mixture to thicken.  To the sauce I added broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, spring onions, red and orange bell peppers and some water chestnuts.  I cooked this just until the sauce was thickened and the asparagus was just beginning to soften.  This left the veggies still a bit crunchy (exactly the way that I like them, because I won't eat mushy vegetables) and only slightly softened.  I served this with a side of fragrant jasmine rice.

I have to say, this is probably my favorite stir fry ever.  Way better than any restaurant or store bought sauce and everyone had seconds tonight, so I have no leftovers (yay!).  I was even able to get the older boy in the house who eats nothing but cheese pizza, mac and cheese and canned pineapple to eat two plates of it!!  We were all pretty impressed that he was actually eating something that was good for him.  Dylan came to me and asked, "What is this stuff smothering my vegetables? It's delicious!".  I thought that was a pretty awesome thing to hear.

Shepherd's Pie

I figured that since I am Irish and I missed being able to make a meal for St. Patrick's Day that I should probably make up for it this weekend.  Especially since I have so many vegetables to use up!

I started off by making the potato crust. First I boiled the potatoes and a lot of garlic cloves, then added sour cream, butter, salt, black pepper and a bit of beef broth, mashed this really well and set aside for later use.

Then I made the filling. I used about two of my spring onions, coarsely chopped, and sauteed them in some olive oil until soft. I added a bit of sugar and cooked just until they started to caramelize and then I added about a pound of ground beef. This was cooked until brown and then I added chard (yellow and red), gold beets (because I am out of carrots), frozen peas, a bit of chopped red bell pepper, minced garlic and some salt and pepper. I cooked this just until the vegetables became soft and added a bit of flour and some diced tomatoes until mixed. A bit of beef broth and a can of beer was added next along with some chopped fresh rosemary.  I let this simmer about 20 minutes until the liquid started to cook away.

Once the filling was done, I sprayed a glass baking dish with non-stick cooking spray, added the filling to the dish and topped with the potato mixture.  I baked this, uncovered, for about 40 minutes and then I sprinkled the top with shredded cheddar cheese and paprika. This was then baked for another 10 minutes.

This turned out great! It was a bit more liquidy than I think it was supposed to be, but everyone, including the picky eaters, loved it!! I also got to make some room in my fridge. I especially loved that I was able to get everyone to eat beets and the potatoes with the cheese on top was a really good idea!

Friday Bin 3/18

It's that time again!! I love Fridays!  Even if I haven't felt well enough to do much cooking lately, I still look forward to getting my bin full of fresh fruits and veggies! I've got quite a few tasty ones this week too...

Asparagus
Spring Onions
Cauliflower
Zucchini
Collard Greens
Zucchini
Red Chard
Red Leaf Lettuce
Russet Potatoes
Fuji Apples
Navel Oranges
Strawberries
Murcott Tangerines

I've never had spring onions before, but they look a lot like purple leeks! I bet that they taste excellent just sauteed in some butter maybe to go on top of potatoes or steak? Also, my baby bok choy was substituted for collard greens this week. Even though I was looking forward to it, one of the many reasons that I love New Roots so much is that she substituted them for the greens this week because the supply just wasn't up to her standards!  I think that it is excellent that she does this, that way we aren't left with something that we are unhappy with.  I do hope that I get to make more dishes this week than what I have over the last few weeks, however now that I have discovered something called Blue Apple (a blue plastic apple that has a packet in it to catch the ethylene gases which make fruits and veggies ripen quickly and not last very long), my fruits and veggies are staying fresh longer and I have to say, I've got quite a bit to choose from which should make for some very good dishes.

Seafood Pot Pie

I've been wanting to make pot pies for a while now, I figured tonight was as good as any to give it a try. So, off to Whole Foods I went to buy some seafood to go into them!

I started off by putting butter, onion, garlic and chopped chard into a large saute pan and cooked until the vegetables were soft.  Then I added a bit of flour, cooked for a minute or two and added some dry sherry, shredded gouda parrana and Old Bay seasoning.  When this was mixed, I added the heavy cream and cooked just until it began to thicken, removed from the heat and added crab meat, cooked shrimp, bay scallops, some chopped cooked potato and gold beets and mixed just until combined.  I divided the mixture between two individual serving dishes, covered them with puff pastry and brushed the tops with melted butter.

I baked the pot pies for about 40 minutes on 350.  By the time I removed the pies from the oven, the house smelled amazing! When these came out of the oven, they smelled even better and had a wonderful golden brown, flaky crust.  I couldn't wait to try it, but had to, because well, they were really hot! So after an impatient 5 minutes of letting them sit, I finally served it up and had my first bite.  Wow.  They turned out better than I had imagined and were well worth the wait and the effort.  Although, I won't be making this all of the time, because well, it was a bit on the pricier side to make, I will keep it in mind for special occasions.  Dylan and I are now pleasantly stuffed and got our seafood fix for the weekend.

Artichokes with Butter Sauce

Well, I promised Dylan artichokes, so it only seemed right to follow through with my promise tonight.  I placed some orange slices, onion chunks, capers, pink peppercorns, salt and pepper in a large pot.  After trimming the artichokes I added them to the pot and brought the water to a boil.

While the artichokes were cooking, I made the butter sauce.  It was supposed to be a hollandaise, but for some reason I haven't been able to get this to turn out since my first successful trial.  So, after whisking the egg yoks, lemon juice, white pepper and worcestershire and adding the melted butter, it started to separate.  I knew after the last time, that it would still taste good, it just isn't exactly what I was going for.  However, I put it into the small serving dishes anyways, and sprinkled it with paprika.  The sauce, turned into more of a two layer butter sauce. The first layer, the egg yolky one, had a melted cheese-like texture and tasted smooth and creamy.  The top layer, was a clarified butter.

When the artichokes were done, it was time to eat them!!  The artichoke leaves dipped in this sauce were SO good!  It was by far the best dipping sauce that I've ever made to go with artichokes.  I will be making sure that I remember this and I don't think Dylan will let me go too long without making it again.

Friday Bin 3/11

I got my bin today and although a lot of the items are similar to what I've been getting I do have a few new items this week too!  These mixed with my veggies left from my last bin should make for some really tasty meals this week now that I'm feeling better!

Gold Beets with Tops
Rainbow Carrots
Yellow Onion
Artichokes
Collard Greens
Red Leaf Lettuce
Broccoli
Klamath Pearl Potatoes
Zucchini
Fuji Apples
Navel Oranges
Strawberries
Murcott Tangerines

I'm happy to see that I have artichokes this time, I still owe Dylan after my artichoke fiasco.  I'm also looking forward to the gold beets and rainbow carrots! It's been a while since I've had either of these and they are both delicious!  I've also got a feeling I'm going to be making a few potato dishes this week (I'm starting to acquire quite a few!) and have something in mind already for these yummy looking zucchini.  I can't wait until tomorrow so that I can start cooking with these veggies!!

Broccoli Soup

I'm sad to say that shortly after getting my bin full of goodness last Friday I got sick.  I didn't eat for nearly four days and after going to the doctor yesterday and hearing that I need to stick to bland foods for the next couple of days, I wasn't a happy camper.  However, not all bland foods have to taste bad, and bland doesn't necessarily mean flavorless, it just means little flavor or nothing that will irritate your already tender throat (such as in my case).  So I decided on a nice and simple soup.

For my first real meal in almost a week, I knew that I needed to use up my broccoli since I have an abundance of it from two bins now and figured I would try my hand at broccoli soup.  I started by sauteeing some garlic, onion and gold bell pepper in olive oil until soft and adding all of my broccoli and 4 cups of chicken broth.  Once this started to boil I took it off the heat and let it cool for a couple of minutes.  Working in small batches, I poured the broccoli mixture into a blender and pureed until smooth.  The pureed mixture was added to a clean pan with cream cheese and shredded aged white cheddar cheese.  I cooked this over medium high heat until all of the cream cheese was melted.

To finish the soup, I garnished it with a little arugula (to add a bit of crunch and an additional flavor element) and some shredded cheddar cheese.

I have to say this soup was pretty tasty, it was mild in flavor but smooth and creamy.  This was also a nice light meal, which I feel was well within the rules of what the doctor ordered.  I only hope that I am feeling even better tomorrow so that I can start cooking again, especially since I get my new bin and now I really have a lot of catching up to do!!

Friday Bin 3/4

This week's bin is pretty similar to last week's with just a few changes.  I love having the challenge of keeping the same veggies interesting each week! Plus, it looks like I will have the opportunity to try another version of strawberry cupcakes and see if I can get them to turn out or not!

Beets with Tops
Savoy Cabbage
Yellow Onions
Arugula (Yum!)
Red Leaf Lettuce
Broccoli
Red Potatoes
Gold Peppers
Honey Gold Grapefruit
Gala Apples
Navel Oranges
Strawberries
Murcott Tangerines

I love arugula and I'm excited that I have it in my bin this week.  It has such a great flavor!  Also, the Honey Gold grapefruit is absolutely delicious, the perfect addition to any weekend breakfast or dinner salad.

Balsamic Strawberries

I promised a very tasty strawberry dessert this week and it's been quite the journey getting here.  My first idea was to make strawberry cupcakes, however these turned out a dark purple muffin (which I feel tasted quite similar to blueberry muffins).  I was extremely disappointed.  So, Tuesday I set out my second attempt at making them, altering the recipe a bit and chopping the strawberries rather than pureeing them and adding them to the mix.  What I ended up with was more of an eggy, spongelike muffin than a cupcake.  Again, it tasted like blueberries to me, but it wasn't purple!  Dylan actually loved both versions and ate several of them, but I'm not happy with either and decided that I would give my strawberry cupcakes a rest for the week. 

I spent the next couple of days this week trying to figure out a fun way to use these strawberries and decided on using the balsamic vinegar.  I've never had balsamic strawberries before so I wasn't really all that sure what to expect when I sliced them up and added them to the balsamic, sugar mixture.  I patiently waited the next hour until it was time to try them and heated them up on the stove just until warm, finally pouring them over top of vanilla ice cream. (I opted out of sprinkling black pepper on top, I still find this a strange combination, but maybe next time...) When I finally took that first bite of warm strawberries soaked in balsamic and vanilla ice cream...I didn't think I liked it.  It wasn't until about the 3rd or 4th bite that I decided it really wasn't so bad and started to really enjoy it.  Dylan however, loved it from the beginning, which definitely surprised me (although, I guess it shouldn't, she has quite the taste buds)!

I do think that I will be making this again and I'm looking forward to finishing off the strawberries for tomorrow's (or maybe even tonight's) late night dessert!

Sweet Potato Biscuits, Baked Zucchini and a Beet, Avocado and Apple Salad

Well, since I haven't had much of an opportunity to cook this week, I knew that tonight I had to make dinner using several of my veggies.  I've heard about sweet potato biscuits quite a bit lately but have never tried them, so I decided to make my own.  I made a simple biscuit mix using self-rising flour, butter, milk, shortening and added some cinnamon and allspice.  To this mixture I added some mashed sweet potatoes and mixed just until blended.  I formed biscuits after kneading just a bit and baked for about 15 minutes.

For the baked, stuffed zucchini, I first split the zucchini in half and boiled it just until tender and let cool.  In the meantime, I mixed cream cheese, sour cream, chopped crimini mushrooms, shredded gouda, aged cheddar and garlic together in a bowl.  When the zucchini was cooled, I scooped out the seeds and filled with the cream cheese mixture and sprinkled with paprika. The zucchini baked in the oven for 15 minutes just until the cream cheese was warmed through.

I'm most excited about my beet salad.  I found a suggestion online to place the beets in a bowl with 1/4 cup of water and bake, covered, in the oven for an hour.  I've never heard of that before, but decided to give it a try.  While the beets were baking I made an apple cider vinaigrette from, apple cider, white wine vinegar, mustard, oil, salt and celery seed. I also sliced the apples, onions and avocado, thinly.  At the last minute I decided to segment a blood orange and add that to the mix.  When the beets were done, I peeled and sliced them and added them to the vinaigrette to marinate for about 20 minutes.  To assemble the salad, I put a layer of spinach down on a plate, and topped with layers of the beet, apple, onion, avocado and blood orange.  To finish the salad I drizzled a bit more of the vinaigrette on top.

I have to say that dinner tonight was very light, refreshing and tasty!  The word that was used to describe tonight's meal was "superb" which made me feel pretty good.  The sweet potato biscuits were probably the best biscuits that I've ever had.  Light and buttery with a sweet flavor, resembling more of a fluffy cookie than a biscuit.  They went extremely well with the salad, which had several different flavor combinations going on, a little sweet and slightly spicy, turned out quite good.  The beets had a wonderful flavor and went very well with the vinaigrette.  I love the pinkish hue that it turned my salad!  I have to say that the zucchini was probably the biggest hit though.  It was very garlicky, but that didn't seem to bother anyone at all, since we all love garlic. Also, I'm a huge fan of just about anything with a cream cheese filling, so I was quite happy with this dish.  Needless to say, I really don't have any leftovers and my fridge is now ready for my new bin tomorrow.

Sweet Potato Curry

Tonights recipe is actually an adaptation of a recipe that a reader gave to me! (Thank you again!)  Although I have made a few changes and feel that it resembles more of a curry than a stew.

I put chopped onion and garlic in a large pot with some oil along with some curry powder and Sriracha (like my reader suggested) and satueed until soft. I then added julienned sweet potato, sliced onion, gold bell pepper, stalks from the gold chard (chopped), white beans (not garbanzo, because I don't really like them), a can of coconut milk, just under two cups of chicken stock and chopped ginger.  This was cooked until the sweet potatoes began to soften.  At this point, I added the chopped chard leaves and cubed tofu.  When the sweet potato was cooked completely, about 5 minutes more, I added chopped spinach, parsley (because I didn't have any cilantro), tumeric, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

I also cooked some jasmine rice while the curry was cooking.

This dish turned out absolutely amazing!!  I am not normally a huge fan of curry, but I'm hooked on this.  I almost can't wait until tomorrow so that I can have it again! (And you all know how I feel about leftovers.)  I didn't add as much of the curry and the Sriracha as called for in her recipe, since Dylan was sharing dinner with me tonight I thought I should keep it on the less spicy side.  Dylan also loved it! She ate two bowls and although she still found it a little spicy, she said that it was the best meal that we've ever had, next to the root beer pot roast of course.

Pasta with Marsala Sauce and Pork

Tonight I wanted to make a dish using the mushrooms and zucchini that I have, so I came up with the idea to use it in a pasta dish.  I decided to make a Marsala sauce and added mushrooms, gold bell pepper, chopped zucchini and shredded gruyere cheese.  Although the sauce turned out a bit on the sweet side for my taste, it was pretty good.  I think that next time I will just use a little less Marsala wine.

I also picked up some pork, precut into strips, and simply cooked these in a little olive oil, salt and pepper.  The pasta that I used was fresh linguine, which I cooked and put back in the pot with a little of the sauce and added chopped spinach just to wilt it a little.

I finished the dish with some cheese sprinkled over top and some fresh crusty bread.  All in all I'd say tonight's dinner turned out pretty tasty.

Friday Bin 2/25

My bin today is full of oranges, reds and greens!  It is very beautiful and once again, I have a huge variety of ingredients to work with.

Gold Chard
Hass Avocados
Red Butter Lettuce
Spinach
Broccoli
Cameo Apples
Garnet Yams
Navel Oranges
Murcott Tangerines
Crimini Mushrooms
Gold Bell Peppers
Strawberries
Zucchini
Cara Cara Oranges (Blood)
Garlic
Honey Gold Grapefruit

I'm extremely excited to have zucchini in my bin this week!  It's one of my favorite vegetables.  Also, I've got a really good idea in mind for these gorgeous strawberries this week, so stay tuned...

Collard Greens with Smoked Pork

I wanted to find a really tasty way to cook these collard greens that I have.  So, after a little internet research, I discovered a recipe that had actually used beer to cook the greens in. I had never thought of cooking them this way and decided that I needed to try it out.  I started off by sauteing some onions and red bell pepper in a bit of butter.  Once the onions were soft, I added some wonderfully tasty smoked pork, that I found at Whole Foods the other day, and the chopped collard greens.  When the greens started to wilt I added a cup of water and a can of beer.  I brought this to a boil, lowered the heat to just a simmer and cooked it for about 20 minutes. 

While the greens were cooking I made some rice. Now, I forgot (again) that I don't have any white rice!  After rummaging around in my pasta/rice drawer, I found a couple of bags of leftover rice (this is the rice from mixes, bags, etc. that never gets used but I, for whatever reason, decide to keep). So I put these into a pot with some water and boiled it until cooked.  The rice turned out quite tasty actually.

I placed the greens on top of the rice, sprinkled some cheese on top and called it done!  For being such a simple dish, it really turned out quite good.  Dylan loved it so much that she decided I need to make it more often!  I just might do that, however I'm really looking forward to my new bin tomorrow so that I can come up with some new dishes to make too!

Haddock with Spinach and Tomatoes

Well, I feel that I should start off by apologizing for the lack of a blog in a couple of days. Last night's meal was just too disappointing for me to even deal with until today.  It was supposed to have been a tasty meal of blue crab cakes with lemon aioli, roasted artichokes with hollandaise and some tasty bread.  I should have stopped immediately the second I had to restart my hollandaise.  The first time it cooked too quickly! The second time, Dylan added too much water (when I said just a little, she poured pretty much the whole cup in), so I thought if I cook it just a bit longer maybe it will thicken up. No, it did not. So I gave up on the hollandaise, and made my aioli (mayo, dijon mustard, lemon zest, lemon juice, capers, parsley, salt and pepper) which, surprisingly, next to the apricot walnut bread, was the only thing that turned out good!  The crab cakes turned out okay, although a little over cooked and the artichokes well, they never stood a chance.  I put them in a pan to bake with some lemon juice, white wine and salt and pepper.  They were supposed to cook and be happy! The ends were cooked to a crisp and after an hour and a half, the heart still wasn't soft.  So, I ended up making a salad with the red butter lettuce, orange segments and apple slices, mixed with some papaya poppyseed dressing, walnuts and pomegranate craisins.  The salad turned out fine, but I was so unhappy by the time I actually sat down to eat, that I barely touched any of it.  Although, I have now come to terms with it. I suppose after all, that this is the very reason why I have titled my blog "Trials and Tribulations..."

So tonight, I knew that I had no choice but to redeem myself and that is exactly what I believe that I have done.  I placed my haddock fillets in a pan and sprinkled with my lavender salt and a little black pepper. I then sliced some lemons and placed this on top (covering the filet's with lemon slices).  Then I layered fresh spinach on top of the lemon slices and poured a can of diced tomatoes with roasted garlic (and the juices) on top of the spinach.  The entire pan went into the oven at 350 for about 25 minutes.

While the fish was cooking, I boiled some broccoli florets and sauteed some butter and garlic in a pan.  To the pan I added chopped red peppers and parsley, salt and pepper.  When the broccoli was done, I added this to the pan and cooked off any liquid.

To finish my meal, I warmed some butternut squash puree (that I found at Costco, yum!) and put a spoonful of this on the plate and placed the fish on top.  Then I warmed up some mini croissants that Dylan insisted upon getting from the grocery store. 

I'm very impressed with the way this turned out.  Dylan loved it, she had two plates!  The flavors were amazing, very light and fresh!  The fish seemed to melt in your mouth and the red pepper added a sweetness to the broccoli that made you forget that you were even eating vegetables! 

Haddock, by the way, is a fish that I was not familiar with up until today.  It has a mild flavor and just might be the best white fish that I've tried yet!

And now that I've redeemed myself, I can go on to plan my next meal. Although, I do now owe Dylan some artichokes.  She was quite disappointed to hear that they were destroyed.

Chicken with Brussel Sprouts and Mashed Potatoes

While I can't fully claim the wonderful taste of the chicken (because I found this super tasty preseasoned and marinated Kalbi chicken at PCC Market), I did manage to roast it to perfection.  It was very moist and the flavor was really awesome.  If you're in a time crunch and you live close to a PCC, I highly recommend picking some up, it takes only about 20 minutes at 425 degrees.

For the brussel sprouts, I made them my favorite way.  I quartered them and sauteed them in some butter with chopped onion.  While that was cooking I mixed together some softened butter with lemon zest and crushed hazelnuts.  When the brussel sprouts were nicely browned, I removed them from the heat, placed them in a bowl and mixed them up with the butter.  I then drizzled lemon juice over top to finish it off.  These have a nice texture to them, not at all like the mushy ones that we usually think of.

For the mashed potatoes, I simply boiled the potatoes and the garlic cloves until tender. After draining the potatoes, I mashed them with some butter, cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, salt and pepper.  I topped the potatoes off with some salsa and aged cheddar cheese.  These turned out very creamy and delicious!

I'm extremely happy with the way my dinner turned out tonight and it took less than 30 minutes from start to finish!

Pasta with Romesco Sauce, Shrimp and Romanesco

Now, I have to admit, before yesterday I had never even heard of romanesco.  I had no idea what it was or what it was supposed to taste like. What do I do with this funny, spiky looking thing?  So, I did some research.  It turns out that romanesco is a cross between a cauliflower and a broccoli (I'm still not sure why it's so spiky though).  After I told my mom about it, she sent me a link to a recipe called romesco sauce.  To which I immediately though, this would be so good with baby shrimps and the romanesco!!

So, my mission today was to make this tasty sounding sauce, that actually has hazelnuts (because I didn't have any almonds) and crusty bread, along with some red bell pepper (I didn't have the jarred roasted peppers, so I used fresh), canned tomatoes, ground red pepper (since I apparently don't have any paprika) and some garlic. I also added a bit of onion, which I think helped the flavor quite nicely.  This is then blended in a food processor (or blender in my case) and poured out onto a baking sheet and baked in the oven for 15 minutes.  I've never heard of baking a sauce in the oven!  The caramelized effect that this gives it really is quite nice though.

While the fresh pasta that I picked up from Whole Foods today was cooking, I placed the sauce in a small pot added some cooked romanesco and the baby shrimps and I warmed this over low until the baby shrimps were warmed through.

To top this pasta dish I shredded some gouda parrana (so tasty) and chopped some fresh parsley.  I also served some fresh bread and mixed olives.

This was one of the tastiest pasta dishes that I've ever had (since I'm not a huge fan of pasta, this is saying a lot from me). Apparently everyone else thought it was pretty good too, because my boyfriend had two big bowls of it and Dylan had no problem at all scarfing hers down. I think that I will definitely be making this again!

As for the romanesco?  I loved it! I think that I actually like it better than broccoli or cauliflower and I love both! In fact, everyone loved it and said that they thought it had a wonderful flavor to it.

Friday Bin 2/18

Yay, it's Friday and my bin is here!!!  By far, my favorite day of the week.  I love how the ingredients in the bin are starting to change a bit now that spring is getting here and I find myself getting even more excited to see what's in my bin each week.  This week I've got a large variety to work with:

Red Beets
Romanesco (which I've never even heard of before, but is apparently a cross between a cauliflower and broccoli, so I can't wait to try it out!)
Yellow Onions
Bosc Pears
Broccoli
Cameo Apples
Minneola Tangelos
Russet Potatoes
Artichokes (yay!)
Brussel Sprouts (I love these!)
Red Leaf Lettuce
Spinach
Red Peppers

It's going to be a fun week!  I am looking forward to finding out how the romanesco tastes and coming up with a creative way to use the beets this week. Also, is there really anything better than fresh brussel sprouts?  I find it sad that these get such a bad rap when we are young (often we are too traumatized that we never even try them again!), but let's face it the ones that we were usually forced to eat when we were little, really never tasted that good.  Cooking them when they are fresh, seems to give them a whole new flavor that has no resemblance to how we remember them.

Meyer Lemon Cupcakes with Blood Orange Buttercream Frosting

When I saw that I was getting Meyer lemons and blood oranges in my bin, I was really excited! My first thought, of course, was to make cupcakes with them and I've been anxiously waiting all week to make them (today is really the first day that I've had the time to).

I have to say, these are definitely worth the wait.  The lemon cupcake is light and fluffy with a delicious lemon flavor.  The blood orange frosting was a wonderful idea too!  It tinted the buttercream a beautiful light coral hue and gave it a light, not too sweet, orange flavor which worked great with the lemon.

I think that I may have to add these to my ever growing list of cupcake flavors! (Please visit http://www.cupcakesbyjess.com/ for my cupcake website.)

Meatloaf and Roasted Root Veggies with Broccoli and Cauliflower.

For some reason, I started craving meatloaf today.  Now, those of you that know me know that this is a strange thing for me to crave, since I don't eat a lot of meat, and I chose the one thing that has the most amount of meat in it! I've never made my own meatloaf before, at least not one where I came up with the recipe myself, so I thought that this might be more of a challenge than it was, given my previous experiences with actually cooking meat. However, I have redeemed myself in the meat cooking department and managed to make quite a delicious, moist loaf of meat.

I stopped at Whole Foods Market today and picked up some ground beef and ground pork, this was a mix suggested by the nice gentleman at the meat counter (he also suggested that I use ground veal, however they were out of this just as I got there, but it apparently takes it to a whole other level).  When I got home I put the meat into a bowl, added fresh bread crumbs, two eggs, chopped onion, minced garlic, a little Worcestershire Sauce, a bit of flour, salt and pepper.  I mixed this up really well, squished it into the loaf pan, topped it with a mixture of ketchup, chopped onion, salt and pepper and finished it off with some very yummy looking dry rub applewood smoked bacon (also from Whole Foods).  This was then baked in the oven for about an hour.

While the meatloaf was cooking, I chopped up sweet potatoes, yukon gold potatoes, red onion, celery root and carrot and placed these into a big bowl.  I poured some olive oil over the vegetables, added some minced garlic and fresh ginger, chopped fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, mixed it to coat and dumped it on a foil lined baking dish.  This baked for about 25 minutes. I finished this off with some sour cream (which I think is my favorite way to top root veggies).

Once the meatloaf was taken out of the oven and resting, I boiled some cauliflower and broccoli.  I drained these, added some garlic salt and butter and covered them in some Seastack aged cheddar (the guy at the cheese counter recommended this).

Thanks to the guys at Whole Foods, I was able to take these comfort foods and add a whole new dimension of flavor to make them even tastier.  I also managed to walk out of there with about 5 other cheeses, some smoked pork and a wonderful fig dip. All of which I can't wait to have later during my late night movie.  I figure if I'm going to do the comfort food thing today, then I may as well go all the way and enjoy every minute of it that I can!

Celery Root, Sweet Potato and Greens Stew

Even though, I made and finished this stew several hours ago, I am just now sitting down to eat it! I've been making cupcakes for my daughter's Valentine's Day party at school tomorrow and, after she raved about how good this dinner turned out, I've been dying to try it!  It is SO good!  This being only the second time that I've made anything using the celery root, I'm beginning to think that it would taste good in just about any meal.

I sauteed up some red onion, garlic, ginger and chard stalks (which I still have reserved from last week) in a little butter.  Once this was browned, I then added some chopped (into large chunks) sweet potato, carrot, celery root and the rest of the fennel from yesterday's dinner.  I boiled this until the sweet potatoes were soft and then I added some arugula, collard greens and broccoli and cooked just until the greens wilted so that they kept their bright green color.  I garnished my stew with some sour cream, diced red bell pepper, fennel fronds and smoked gouda.  The flavors all worked extremely well together, so I'm quite pleased with the results!  It also made a lot, so we will probably be eating this for dinner tomorrow again, since I may not have time to cook.

Chicken Drummette's and Scalloped Fennel, Celery Root and Potatoes!

My dinner tonight was inspired by the fact that I had fennel and potatoes in my bin, which is really all you need to make my favorite dish ever, scalloped potatoes and fennel. However, tonight after trying to figure out what in the world to do with celery root (which I'd never before cooked with, let alone had any idea what it even tasted like), I decided to add this to my scalloped dish.  That was by far the best idea!  It turned the already incredibly creamy dish into an even more flavorful creamy dish (sliced fennel, potatoes and celery root, drenched in heavy whipping cream with a little white pepper and salt, then baked in the oven for 45 minutes).  Celery root has officially become one of my favorite foods to cook with.  I am actually already trying to figure out what else to make with it!

After wandering through Whole Foods with Dylan and her friend this afternoon, I finally asked them what they thought I should make with the potato dish.  They immediately decided chicken, but not just any chicken, chicken drummette's.  So, I referred back to my favorite way to eat these (thanks to my wonderful stepdad, who first introduced me to them).  I sprinkled them with garlic powder, black pepper and lavender salt (because I didn't have and couldn't find anywhere, the hickory smoked salt that should have been used) and baked them in the oven for about 25 minutes.  Dylan's friend exclaimed "This is the best meal that I've ever had!", meaning that she loved the chicken and the bowl of mixed fruit that I had made for them.

I also threw in a salad, just some greens (arugula and red butter lettuce) topped with some blood orange and manchego cheese, and some cooked green beans.  I meant to have the hollandaise sauce on top of them too (because this was so wonderful, that I've been thinking about it all day long), but apparently you aren't supposed to warm that up in the microwave.  Although, it still tasted like it was supposed to, it definitely didn't look like it was supposed to.  I figured it wouldn't make for a very appetizing photograph, but definitely a nice addition to this meal too.

Green Beans with Hollandaise and Dylan's Salad

I often find that some of the best meals are not only the simplest, but the ones that I am able to make with my daughter.  When I calm down and take the time to teach her how to do things in the kitchen, I am all of a sudden at peace. I think that if all we made was cut up apples it would be the tastiest meal ever, if for no other reason than the fact that we did it together.

So, tonight, I cooked up these beautiful green beans and smothered then in the best hollandaise sauce that I've ever made and covered them in manchego cheese. Can I just say, I did all but lick the plate (and you know how I feel about eggs!). So good! Even Dylan exclaimed, "Mom, this is SO good!"  (So, here's a tip, if you can't get your kids to eat green beans, pour hollandaise over it and watch them disappear!)

Dylan made the salad, by herself, tonight.  I'm quite proud of her.  She washed the arugula and red butter lettuce leaves.  She put the avocado in a bowl and covered it in lemon juice and then she segmented the grapefruit.  I'm dubbing this Dylan's Salad, because it seems to be her favorite and she had a lot of fun making it.  We then put some blue cheese dressing on top. A simple, flavorful salad.  The red grapefruit by the way is what did it, I don't think that I've ever had such sweet grapefruit (not very tart at all!).

Friday Bin 2/11

This is by far my favorite and most exciting bin yet!  I have all sorts of amazing, new ingredients this week!

Cauliflower
Celery Root (which I've never used before)
Grapefruit
Red Onions
Arugula
Hass Avocados
Meyer Lemons (I've never used these either, but can't wait to try them out!)
Red Butter Lettuce
Blood Oranges
Cameo Apples
Garnet Yams
Yukon Gold Potatoes (these are baby sized)
Fennel
Green Beans
Kiwi

I can hardly wait to get started!! With so many different ingredients to work with, I know that this week will be filled with wonderfully tasty and healthy meals.

Bok Choy - Stir Fry My Way

Tonight I wanted to find a way to showcase this bok choy that has been waiting patiently in my fridge to be eaten. I took off some of the larger outer leaves, sliced the baby bok choy in half and simply sauteed them in some butter (this allowed the flavor of the bok choy to come through nicely and wasn't overpowered by any additional flavor).

For the stir fry to go with my bok choy, I chopped up the large bok choy leaves, cabbage, red bell pepper, onion and carrots.  I sauteed this mixture in a little ginger, garlic and butter.  About halfway through cooking, I added some soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, salt, pepper and a little red pepper flake (my new favorite secret ingredient, yum!). This turned out to be quite a tasty dish!  Very flavorful, nothing overpowering.  You can taste each of the ingredients individually and the soy sauce was just enough so that it didn't mask the other flavors.  I'm very happy with this.

I also figured that you can't really have a stir fry without rice, however when I went to get some rice to make...I didn't have any!  I did find some wild rice pilaf (Seeds of Change) which wasn't too bad.  I think that this was a nice way to compliment the flavors of the other dishes, the white rice would have been a little too bland I think, since there wasn't a whole lot of sauce on the stir fry itself for the rice to soak up.

Tomorrow I get my new bin, which I am very excited about.  I need to go make some room in my fridge now!

Scallops, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Roasted Cabbage

I have to apologize. It's been a few days since my last meal posting.  It's been a rough week for me and I learned a long time ago that it's best if I don't cook when I'm in a terribly bad mood (I tend to ruin everything and nothing turns out as it should).  So, I knew that tonight I needed to make up for it. 

I've been craving scallops for a while now, but I couldn't figure out what to make with them.  I've been thinking about it and today it just came to me!  I simply seared the scallops with a little salt, pepper and red pepper flakes in a little olive oil and butter.  Then I made some wonderfully tasty mashed sweet potatoes with a little salt, butter, pepper and cream cheese mixed in (these turned into the creamiest, tastiest mashed sweet potatoes that I've ever had!). To top off the sweet potatoes and scallops, I added a mixture of red bell pepper, onion, garlic and chopped rainbow chard stalks, cooked with a little butter until soft (this also turned out pretty amazing!).

 After much debate on how best to cook my cabbage for tonight's meal, I decided on roasting it.  I've never roasted cabbage before, so I wasn't entirely sure how it would turn out, but I gave it a shot anyways.  Turned out I was right to take a chance with it.  After topping it with olive oil and a mixture of sugar, salt and pepper and roasting it for 20 minutes in the oven, the result was a creamy, sweet, melt in your mouth mixture of goodness.  And, just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I decided to top it with some blue cheese dressing and crumbled bacon! Wow!  I also served some asiago cheese bread from Panera Bread with it, but after the tasty cabbage, the bread was completely forgotten.

I do think that I have out done myself with tonight's meal.  In fact, I think that it will be at least a couple of hours before Dylan is hungry again (she finished off her plate and part of mine). 

Next up, I have to tackle this baby bok choy!

Broccoli and Cauliflower Salad, Chard Stuffed Pita's and Arugula, Bacon and Apples.

It's game day!  I figured that since I have all of these vegetables in my refrigerator that I should put them to good use and come up with some healthy appetizers to eat during the game today.  The first thing I made was a salad to use up my broccoli.  I chopped broccoli and cauliflower, added onions, pomegranate craisins and chopped pepper bacon and topped this with a dressing of mayo, white wine vinegar, garlic and salt and pepper.  I love this salad.  The addition of the sweet pomegranate craisins added a very nice touch, while the dressing had a bit of a tang to it from the white wine vinegar.

I then made a filling for some mini pita's using rainbow chard which I cooked just until wilted.  To the chard I added some onion, sour cream, cream cheese, a little hot sauce, worcestershire sauce and chopped water chestnuts.  I chose to stuff the pita's rather than dip them, because I thought it would be a no mess finger food.  Dylan proved me right, every time I see her she is stuffing another one in her mouth!

The last thing I made was very simple.  I sliced up some apples, topped them with honey goat cheese, arugula and bacon.  These were a huge hit.  A little spice from the bacon and arugula toned down with the crunch of the apples and the sweetness of the cheese. It was a great balance.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

I needed to figure out how to use up all of these carrots. I decided that the best way to do that would be to make carrot cake! But, not just any carrot cake, it had to do these beautiful carrots justice.  So, I went with the cupcakes.  The cupcakes turned out amazing, having never made carrot cake before and having to substitute vegetable oil for olive oil (because half way through making the batter I found out that I didn't have any vegetable oil!), I was quite pleased with myself for the way that they turned out.  The olive oil worked out perfectly! It gave me wonderfully moist cupcakes and they weren't very greasy at all, which is a common problem with carrot cake.

For the frosting, I decided to put a twist on the traditional cream cheese frosting by adding some orange juice and zest, since I needed to get my oranges used up too.  The orange was a wonderful addition and the flavor really complimented the carrot nicely.

To top the cupcakes I decided to try and candy some carrot strips.  Now, I was a bit nervous after my previous incident with the candied orange zest, so you can imagine I was paranoid that I would burn these too.  I watched them very closely.  They didn't burn! Instead they turned out really tasty and they look really pretty on top of my cupcakes.

Simple Salad

When I saw the arugula in my bin today, I knew right away that I had to make a salad.  I love arugula!  So, I mixed some arugula and butter lettuce together in a bowl with some pear ginger salad dressing and fresh ground black pepper.  Then I segmented an orange (squeezing the juice from the remaining orange over top of the arugula mixture), sliced some red pepper and apple, cut up some broccoli and added this to the mixed greens.  I topped it off with some sliced carrots, shredded manchego cheese and a little more dressing.

The end result was tastier than first imagined and I'm glad that I didn't try to add anything else to it!  Now, both Dylan and myself will have enough energy to get through the next few hours of derby practice.

Friday Bin 2/4

This week's bin is filled with greens!

Baby Bok Choy
Broccoli
Rainbow Chard
Red Butter Lettuce
Arugula
Green Cabbage
Carrots
Red Bell Peppers
Anjou Pears
Fuji Apples
Minneola Tangelos
Russet Potatoes
Yellow Onions
Grapefruit

I'm looking forward to cooking with the baby bok choy and getting to use more of those beautiful red bell peppers!  This week I will also have to figure out how to use up all of these carrots and broccoli that I have acquired (I still have some of these left over from last week's bin!).

First off, I'm going to make a quick salad so that I can hopefully redeem myself after all of the not so healthy junk foods that I've eaten over the last couple of days!

Veggie Pizza and Mixed Greens

Tonight, I decided to pull out all of my veggies from the fridge and figure out how to use them up. Since I'm going to be getting my new bin full of goodness tomorrow, I needed to make some room!

I thought, why not try a pizza?  I made a simple white sauce using butter, flour, milk, garlic, smoked gouda, salt and white pepper. Then I topped some pita bread with the sauce, added chopped sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli and beets and covered it in a mixture of shredded gouda parrana and manchego cheeses before baking.

It turned out to be the best veggie pizza that I've ever made (considering it's the only veggie pizza that I've ever made, the odds were 50/50). Although, I think that it would have been a good idea to parboil the root vegetables first.  I ended up having to take the pizza's out of the oven before the veggies were completely cooked, but it still turned out great.

While the pizza's were baking, I chopped up a mixture of leafy greens (beet, chard and collard) and added this to some simmering chicken broth with garlic and red pepper flakes.  I'm very happy with the way that the greens turned out, very simple, but full of flavor!

Now I have plenty of room in my fridge for tomorrow!!

Rainbow Chard and Black Bean Tacos

After last nights disappointing steak, I figured that tonight I had better stay away from meat altogether and find a way to make up for it.  So I spent a few minutes researching a new way to use some of this beautiful chard that I have (the colors really are amazing, pink, orange, pink/white and yellow/green!) and found a recipe where someone had cooked up some chard and put it into a corn tortilla to make taco's out of it.  I thought that sounded like a great idea and decided to come up with my own version.

I sauteed up some chopped onion and the colorful chard stalks, added the chard leaves and cooked until just wilted.  I then warmed up some black beans and added a little cilantro for added flavor and warmed up some flour tortilla's (because I really don't care for the hard, crunchy corn tortilla's).  To top the taco's, I chopped up several cheeses that I found at Whole Foods today (smoked gouda, chili chive onion gouda, muenster), two different types of salsa (tequila lime and smoked tomatillo) and some sour cream.  I am a huge fan of variety, so the fact that I had so many toppings to choose from allowed me to mix it up a bit.

I'm extremely happy with the way that my taco's turned out and have officially been forgiven for last night's meal.  I think from now on I will just stick to what I know best....veggies!!