My perfect pizza

A few months ago, based on the positive experience of a friend who had done the same thing, we signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program.  In a nutshell, members pay a fee to the farm early in the season, and then get weekly shares of whatever fruits and vegetables are ready for harvest.  Kind of our own farmer's market.  Sandhill Organics is the farm that is providing our bounty, though they are one of many who do this kind of thing.  We missed the first week of the season, so this past Thursday was our first trip to the farm.   My son thinks it is fun to go to the farm for vegetables, my husband and I both really like the idea of supporting local farmers, and the produce is so much tastier than anything I could find in a grocery store.

The farm puts out a weekly newsletter that tells you a little bit about the crops and the going's on at the farm, and then provides a list of what is expected to be ready for that week's pick-up.  We were not signed up for the spring share, but I had been reading the newsletters and was beyond excited to finally get our first pick-up once June rolled around.  They also provide tips for the different items for storage, cooking, and even some recipes, which I find almost as valuable as the actual produce.  It opens a whole new world for us of things we've never eaten before, ways of preparing that we've never tried, and a little extra motivation to use all of produce before it goes bad and we have to throw it away.

This week's pick-up needed two 5-gallon buckets to tote home.  We got raspberries, strawberries, carrots, lettuce, kale, garlic scapes, turnips, baby leeks, a garlic bulb, zucchini, kohlrabi, and popcorn on the cob.  Since we had the newsletter before shopping for the week, we were able to plan our recipes ahead of time to ensure we knew what to do with all of those things.  And surprisingly enough, by the time we have dinner tonight, I bet we'll have eaten through 80% of it in four days.

I can imagine you're asking at least two questions.  First, what is a garlic scape, and who in the world eats kohlrabi?  Second, do you really expect us to believe that your three-year-old is eating all of that?  The answer to the first is that a garlic scape is the flower stalk of a garlic plant, and I don't know who makes a regular habit of kohlrabi, but we used it in a cole slaw and it was quite nice.  As far as my son, well, he eats some of it and some he doesn't.  But since he treats chicken nuggets the same way (he is three, after all), I take that as a victory.

Today's lunch was a meal that I can guarantee I have never eaten before in my life, and it was fantastic.  I sauteed turnips, kale, garlic scapes, and baby leeks in butter, salt, and pepper.

Next, I put it all on top of a store-bought pizza crust, topped it with feta and mozzarella cheese, and put it in the oven for ten minutes.  This beautiful thing is what came out of the oven.  It tasted just as good as it looked.  The sauteed kale and garlic added a zing of flavor, the turnips were buttery and soft with just enough crisp when you bit into them, and the cheese held it all together nicely and added a smooth topper to it all.  Amazing.  Without the recommendation from the Sandhill Organics newsletter, I never would have dreamed of this combination, but I'm so thankful I tried.




I will admit, it is extra work to prepare this kind of weekly menu and the vegetables themselves, and I can image there will be some Thursday nights where I just don't feel like putting forth the effort.  Since one of my initial goals for this year, when I started this blog, was to cook more good meals for my family, this is a home-run solution for at least five months of the year.  I am very excited to be a part of this and hope that it becomes as much of a normal summertime habit as marveling at the impressive locations that weeds take root in my garden.

Pickled

I think it is safe to say I have never had any experience cooking Polish dishes.  But, my husband has Polish heritage, so I've eaten my share from my Mother-in-law's kitchen.  Thanks to her for sending me this totally unique recipe for Polish Dill Pickle Soup. Watching the snow fall and the wind whipping around the neighborhood, tonight was a perfect night to try it out.

I would put dill on ice cream if I could, as it is one of my favorite tastes, so this soup intrigued me.  I want to try it again in the summer when our garden dill is in full bloom.  Today I pretty much stuck to the recipe, with a few minor changes.  First, we had leftover pork roast from earlier in the week, so I didn't cook it from raw.  I don't think I used quite as many pickles as it calls for.  I also added carrots to get a vegetable in there.  There is nothing hard about this recipe, basically chop, simmer, eat.  Perfect type of recipe for me.

There was something strangely satisfying about two steps of the prep process.  The amount of dill pickles and ketchup that the recipe called for offered a unique opportunity to use a LOT more of those ingredients than I ever do.  So I actually opened a new jar of pickles and used the entire thing at one time.  Usually those jars sit in our fridge for several seasons.  And I got to squeeze a whole cup of ketchup out of the bottle at once.  When else do you ever have the chance to squeeze a ketchup bottle for longer than half a second?  I know, I know, the little things in life amuse me.

The flavor is one I've never tasted, and very good.  It's a hearty soup, you'll be full very quickly.  It's not bad on the healthy scale, a lot of vitamins and minerals, but also pretty high on sodium.  I think the next time I make it I will opt for water instead of pickle juice, and will use a little less pickle and add lots of fresh dill.  I did a search for pickle soup recipes, and it is interesting to see all the different ingredients people put in it.  I really enjoyed this basic recipe though, and besides those few changes I just mentioned, I'll stick with this one.

Success in spite of myself

When all was said and done, this recipe turned out to be a really good one.  But the process reminded me why I have fallen out of habit of cooking anything that requires more than 5 ingredients and/or 20 minutes to create.

Today was a pretty frazzled day at home with my son.  Add six inches of snow and a long commute for my husband, and that makes for a late and completely unenthusiastic dinner preparation.  But it was on the menu for today, the meat was already defrosted, and we had to eat, so I popped in two Tylenol and cracked open a  Diet Coke, and went to work.

Thanks to my sister-in-law for sending me this Weight Watchers recipe for Cheeseburger Casserole.  For full disclosure, I am not participating in Weight Watchers and did make some alterations to the ingredients, so I can't give a completely honest opinion on the taste of the dish according to the whole points thing.  But the dish I made was very tasty.

I mentioned before that I was reminded why cooking involved recipes is no longer common for me.  There are several reasons for that.  First, it's just really hard for me want to do this at the end of a long day, and between work and parenting, most days feel like a long day, no matter how enjoyable they might be.  Second, I seem to have forgotten how to prepare for events that don't involve a diaper bag.  When I started and actually read the entire recipe, I realized the potatoes were supposed to be already steamed and cooled before anything else could be done.  Rats.  So I got those going and did all the chopping and preparing of other things while I waited.  And waited. Oh yeah, and did I mention I didn't actually read the entire recipe before deciding to make it?  After cooking for what felt like an eternity, I looked to see what the recipe said for time estimations, and yep, it sure does take every bit of 90 minutes to finish.  Having 90 straight minutes to devote to anything is a rarity in my life.

The recipe calls for peeling the potatoes before slicing them.  While doing that I couldn't help but think of being in my Grandparents' kitchen in Norway.  Steamed/boiled potatoes are a pretty regular side dish in Norway, at least it was with my family.  My Mormor (Grandmother) had an amazing skill at peeling scalding hot potatoes in 5 seconds flat.  She poked it with a fork, held the fork in one hand and a knife in the other, and peeled off the skin like one would peel the skin off a piece of fruit.  I'm pretty sure to this day that she has no nerve endings in her thumb, otherwise that would be an impossible feat to accomplish.  But as I continually burned my thumb doing the same tonight, because I had no patience to wait for them to cool, I figured out that given another 30 years of this activity, when I'm a Grandma, I probably won't have any nerve endings in that thumb either.

Besides putting the potatoes in the oven before it had a chance to heat up to the appropriate temperature, the rest of the meal preparation was uneventful.  I substituted ground beef for ground turkey because it is what we had.  After reading a review (yep, took time to read reviews, but didn't think to read through the whole recipe) that said the dish wasn't cheesy enough, I opted to double the amount of evaporated milk and cheese to make sure that didn't happen.  And that worked out pretty well.  Sorry dieters, that won't work for your point system, but it sure makes it tasty.  Pictured here is my finished product, without the perfectly placed food bits and pretty green napkin.  The recipe will stay in the rotation, though I'll be honest, now that I know how long the prep time is, it probably will be a while before we see it again.

Are you going to make this?  Please send me a pic and let me know how it goes!

It looked good in the picture...

There are some people who can look in their pantry, create a meal, and put it on the table with no exact measurements or instruction.  I am not one of those people.  But I am really good at following recipes, and have had much success coming up with new meals by using the direction of those who have tried it before me.  As long as everything goes according to plan.

I like to use the internet now to look for recipes.  I've learned that if I keep them in my email inbox with the intention of printing and keeping them, I end up deleting them a few weeks later.  If I print them and put them on the counter with the intention of putting them in a book, they end up being used as coloring pages.  So, I created a folder in my email creatively called "Recipes," email the link to myself and file it away.  When it's time to cook, I bring the laptop in the kitchen, and presto, the recipe is there for use.

To get new recipes, I don't have the patience to just browse and find something that looks good.  I search based on the ingredient I want to use, which in the case of tonight's dinner, was baked beans.  I found an easy recipe with a yummy-looking picture and was very excited to try it. The Deen Bros (of Food Network fame) Ground Beef and Baked Beans Casserole seemed to me to have a lot of promise. (pic to the left) Looks good, no?

 
It was easy to make, hard to screw up, but it turned out just ok.  The problem, I think, was the sauce.  The majority of the liquid that makes up the sauce comes from the baked beans.  When I opened the can of baked beans I used for this, I even thought to myself that the sauce was pretty watery, but didn't realize it would matter as much as it did.  The taste itself, I thought, was very good.  So I guess next time I have to use a fancy baked bean brand to make sure that the sauce is nice and thick like the picture.  I also have to move the oven rack down one before I put it under the broiler so the bacon gets more overall crispy instead of crunchy tips and just-cooked middles.  And I bet it would help the picture if I made it at 3 pm and put it on a pretty tablecloth as the sunshine beams in.  But alas, here is my version:

Thanks to my husband and brother-in-law for thanking me for the lovely meal, even if they didn't actually think it was so lovely.  If you'd like to try and make this even better than I did (please send pictures, I'd love to see it), here is the link:

http://thedeenbros.com/index.php/recipes/recipe_detail/ground_beef_and_baked_beans_casserole/. 

Here's hoping my next blog, regardless of topic, isn't so watered down.