Shaved Fennel Salad

The Shaved Fennel Salad from Super Natural Every Day is my new favorite twist on the cucumber salad I've made for the past few years.  Like many who have the book, I've gravitated toward recipes with beautiful photos, and this salad has none.  When Heidi posted it on her website, complete with photos to remedy the fact that it's photo-less in the book, I took notice and mentally filed it away to make.  Whenever we start getting new goodies from the CSA again, I like to search the sites I love for recipes I haven't tried, and I rediscovered this one.  The recipe instructs you to let the sliced zucchini sit to absorb the lemon juice and dill for 20 minutes to an hour, which I found to be too little time.  (The first time I made this, I let it sit in the fridge for 2 days out of necessity, and the second time I actually followed the instructions with poor results.)  The lemony salad is a great match for the arugula, but does not work at all with regular lettuce.

The salad also made a lovely accompaniment to the Rye Soda Bread and Dill Butter from the same book, which we took on a picnic to Duke Farms (a lovely picnic for a lovely place).

Slow Cooker Pinto Bean & Veggie Chili (Dark Days 3)

I'm a little behind with the Dark Days Challenge - I think everyone else is on their 4th or 5th post or so?  But anyway, I'm doing my best, and I managed to squeeze in one more local meal in between finals (my last ever!) and Christmas.  This dish was a chili, entirely local (except for the chili powder and cumin, which if I remember correctly are organic, so there you go) and mostly organic.  After my last Dark Days disaster, I was really excited just to have had this idea (which also uses my slow cooker!), and even more so when it came out so good!

Here's the "recipe" along with my specific sources.  All frozen things were defrosted in the refrigerator overnight.  It made a little over 3 quarts.

Beef, Pinto and Veggie Slow-Cooker Chili

THE NIGHT BEFORE: In a skillet, saute 1 lb ground beef (Cherry Grove Farm) until browned.  Set aside.  In the same skillet, cook 2 chopped medium onions (Whole Foods), stirring occasionally, about 2 minutes.  Add 3 diced small carrots (CSA) and 4 chopped giant garlic cloves (Cherry Grove Organic Farm - a different farm than the ground beef) and cook for about 5 minutes, until the mixture begins to soften.  Add 1 diced red bell pepper (CSA, frozen) and cook for 1-2 minutes.  Add 1 1/4 tsp cumin and 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp mild chili powder, stirring evenly to distribute it.  Turn off the heat and stir in the ground beef.  Let it cool for a few minutes, then put it in a container (ideally glass) and refrigerate overnight.  Pick through, rinse, and soak overnight 2 cups pinto beans (Cayuga Pure Organics).

THE NEXT DAY: In your slow cooker, spread the beef mixture to cover the bottom.  Drain your pinto beans and layer those on top of the beef.  Next, layer ~2 cups corn kernels, from 3 ears of corn (Princeton farmers' market, frozen, probably not organic), ~2 cups 1/2-inch cubes kabocha or other winter squash (CSA, frozen), and ~2 cups zucchini, cut in quarter circles about 1/2 inch thick (CSA, from frozen).  On top of this, pour 2 undrained pint jars fire-roasted tomato pieces (CSA, home canned) and 1 drained pint jar tomatillos (CSA, home canned).  Fill each of the tomato jars with water once, and pour over the pile in the slow cooker (about 4 cups).  Cook on HIGH for 8 hours.  When ready to eat, taste and add ~1 1/2 tsp fine grain sea salt, ~1 Tbsp + 2 tsp chili powder, and/or as much/whatever spices you want, to taste.  Top with grated Garlic Peppercorn Jack cheese (Cherry Grove Farm) to serve.  You can also top with cilantro, which I did have from a local source (Terhune Orchards), but when I finally got to eat at 9pm I just didn't feel like washing and chopping it.

The final product was just slightly more watery than I am used to having in chili - but I really liked that!  The cheese made it even that much better.  And I usually make vegetarian chilis, so the ground beef was a great touch too.  I think this is a great way to eat meat - a small amount of local, grass fed beef surrounded by a ton of local and mostly organic beans and vegetables.  The meat adds a lot to the texture and flavor for such a small input.  After this recipe, I feel a little more confident in my ability to cook without a recipe.  Maybe my best Dark Days meals in the future will be ones that I make up myself.

Spicy Vegetarian Chili

I love chili.  Now that it's getting cooler, it's pretty much all I want to eat.  I'm looking for recipes to use up the last of the summer produce - this Spicy Vegetarian Chili did the trick.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, though I used a bit less lemon zest/juice, omitted the fennel seeds (yuck) and used two serrano peppers, seeds and all.  That was a bit of a mistake - I should have knocked out a few of the seeds, as it was good but over-spicy.  My mom ended up sending it all home with me.  (I was hoping to share, but I can't say I'm too disappointed...)  For this recipe we cracked open our first jar of home-canned whole tomatoes.  They are super tasty and have a strong and delicious tomato flavor.  I can't wait to use them in more dishes over the winter.  Hopefully I'll get the chance to put up a few more before tomatoes are totally gone.

I can make variations of chili all winter, but I look forward to next summer's produce and revisiting the hearty and healthy chili recipes I've found this year.

Hurricane Pasta

In preparation for the hurricane (which seems to be winding down, and so far I still have power, yay!) we tried to eat as much as possible from the refrigerator.  Early in the day, we made some pita "pizzas" to use some of the mozzarella and other cheeses.  We roasted bell pepper, eggplant and yellow squash to put on top.  We had leftover veggies and tomato sauce, and used barely any of the mozzarella, so for dinner we decided to make a throw-together pasta dish.

We cooked 1/2 package of whole wheat fettuccine, then put the tomato sauce (5-6 oz) in a pot.  I added the already-roasted veggies, about 1.5-2 cups.  We sliced a clove of garlic into the pot, and I added fresh basil, oregano and chives, super easy since all my herb plants were inside!  Finally we added 4 diced cherry tomatoes and a big pinch of salt and we let it simmer just enough to heat up.  We topped the pasta with the sauce and then diced fresh mozzarella, finishing it off with a grating of Parmesan or Romano... not sure which.  It was surprisingly tasty.  Making dishes like this really inspires my confidence.  I know I can make something good if I just focus and put forth some effort.

Fruit and Nut Filling for Baked Zucchini

This is the second recipe I tried from Tender, and it was so much better than the first.  I did run into several issues - my zucchini didn't cook through, for one, even though I was cooking much less of it than the recipe called for - but I was able to overcome them pretty well.  One note for myself for next time is to omit the breadcrumbs.  If this amount of filling is needed, double the couscous instead.  The breadcrumbs, though I had to improvise them using lavash which may have affected their success, did not really add anything to the dish.  The yogurt-dill sauce was delicious and compensated for the slight dryness of the couscous filling.  I would also love to try this with the fat round zucchini that you can actually hollow out and stuff.  Quinoa could make a nice substitute for the couscous and would add protein to the meal.  I could also see turning this into a kind of grain salad... chop up the zucchini (maybe grill it first?) and mix it all together.

Baked Vegetables with an Eggplant Sauce

This is the first recipe I made from Tender.  Too bad I didn't like it very much.  Basically, you roast zucchini, onion, tomato, and red bell pepper, adding harissa and cumin near the end of cooking.  Meanwhile, you also roast eggplant, which you mix with yogurt, olive oil and mint (I used cilantro) to make a sauce for the vegetables.  It wasn't as exciting as it sounded.  My eggplant also didn't roast enough, I think, because I ended up pureeing the eggplant sauce in the food processor.  This is not something I will make again, but at least it exposed me to the book and the way the recipes are written - I thought I'd need a little more guidance than the book provided, but I found myself getting more involved with the cooking and looking at the book a little less.  On the other hand, I didn't like the way the recipe turned out, so maybe I need that extra guidance after all...

Summer Squash Soup

I made this Summer Squash Soup from Super Natural Every Day with last week's zucchini, which were starting to look a little sad.  The squash is supplemented with potatoes and onions to make a pretty close rendition of a Thai red curry dish.  The key difference is that only half of the liquid in this recipe is coconut milk, and light coconut milk at that, while the restaurant dish is entirely coconut milk, presumably full-fat, and therefore has loads of calories.

I like that this dish tasted like takeout, but it did not fill me up at all.  I desperately wanted brown rice to go under it.  I ended up satisfying my afternoon craving for carbs with a terrible granola bar from the cafeteria and a cinnamon sugar donut left over from someone's morning event.  Also, the squash got pretty squishy, so I would love to try this with a heartier winter vegetable like cauliflower.

Summer Linguine

Ken made this Summer Linguine for me, from Super Natural Every Day.  Grated zucchini and cheese with a half whole grain pasta (we used angel hair).  It's an interesting way to use zucchini, which we'll all have way too much of in just a few short weeks.  One minor issue - the zucchini clumped quite a bit, which you can see in the photo.  Next time, I'd like to try to get a bigger grate on it somehow to try to distribute it more evenly.

Frittata

This beautiful Frittata is from Super Natural Every Day.  I made it as part of a brunch for friends, along with the Baked Oatmeal from the book.  I've never made a frittata before, and it was a bit of work, but it worked out really well in the end and everyone enjoyed it!  Best of all, the recipe is endlessly adaptable - you can use whatever veggies are in season.

Lemon Quinoa with Currants, Dill, and Zucchini

When I first heard about the new book Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, I was pretty stoked about it.  I ordered it not too long after I heard about it and as I flipped through, I was really excited to try some of the unique recipes.

Before I had a chance to make anything, Heidi featured this quinoa recipe on her blog, 101 Cookbooks.

A few days later I gave it a shot.  Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed.  I only had a bite.  It was not appealing to me at all beyond that.  I think it was the dill - I don't think I like dill - and the over-lemon flavor.  I had actually had doubts about putting in that much lemon juice, but I talked myself out of it and did it anyway.  Heidi halved the amount of currants, which sounded like a really good idea AFTER I had already made it, and she also added feta, which was kind of a "duh" moment for me... how did I not think of that?  It was on the recipe page as a suggested variation!

I also tried Heidi's suggestion of making quinoa patties with the leftovers.  I only had a bite of these as well.  I burned most of them (yay!) and they were pretty dry and needed some kind of sauce BUT I liked the mix much better in patty form than I did originally.  Unfortunately, I doubt I will be making this again.  If I do attempt it, I will be trying a variation that does not include dill or so much lemon juice.  But I have a feeling that some of the other recipes in the book will make up for this.

Pasta with Summer Veggies and Shrimp

We made this tasty pasta dish from the multitude of veggies in the fridge.  Zucchini and red bell peppers sauteed with onion and garlic, with torn spinach mixed in, plus pieces of shrimp and red pepper flakes, and some canned tomatoes to make it saucy.  Super tasty and full of veggies!

Grilled Vegetable Couscous

Last weekend, I made a whole bunch of grilled vegetables and had way too many left over.  After having the vegetables with pasta and in wraps with hummus, I wanted to do something a little different.  I toasted some pearl couscous and after cooking, mixed in chopped grilled vegetables and pesto (frozen without cheese).  Super quick, easy and tasty.

Zucchini Refrigerator Pickles

I got a lot of zucchini from my CSA this summer.  It piled up week after week as I somehow was never able to use my measley 2-3 by the time I got another batch.  However, with proper storage, they can last quite a while in the refrigerator.  In an effort to pare down the supply, I had been grilling them and making zucchini bread.  Then, magically, a post for zucchini pickles appeared on 101 Cookbooks.  Something new to do with zucchini!  Of course I was excited.  The beautiful and mouth-watering photography makes it impossible not to try many of the recipes from the site.

I sliced the zucchini, onions and shallots (all local, yay!) paper-thin the night before, tossed them with salt, and popped them in the fridge to drain.  The next day, I shook them off and after slicing the chile and adding the dill and spices to the jar, I filled the two pint jars with the zucchini mix and poured in the brine.  While I left them on the counter to cool, they sealed.  Oops!  Oh well.  (Note: this recipe is not tested for canning.)  I gave one to Andrea, who had given me the chile to use, and kept one for us.

We didn't get around to eating this for quite a while - about 3 weeks.  I figured since it was pickled it would be fine - pickles are pretty much indestructible.  Turns out they were delicious!  I brought them to a picnic I had with my friend Annette (yes, it is really cold for a picnic, thanks) and we ate them the way they are shown in one of the pictures on Heidi's blog post - whole grain bread smeared with goat cheese, piled high with zucchini pickles and sprinkled with pine nuts.  It was even better than I thought it would be!  They are slightly sweet, which usually doesn't do it for me when it comes to pickles, but they were truly delicious.  There may still be some zucchini around - give it a try.

Leftovers Fried Rice - Take 2

 I cook from recipes almost exclusively.  I want to try harder to foster my own creativity.  In trying to come up with a quick weekday lunch, I ended up making fried rice.  So here we have leftovers fried rice, take 2.  (Much more interesting than take 1, interestingly posted at almost the exact same time last year.)

I used leftover brown rice from my Thai food, a scrambled egg, some chunks of yellow zucchini, half a small red pepper (diced), frozen broccoli, and some scallions.  I cooked it in canola oil and garlic (not enough, though.  More next time!) and added a drizzle of sesame oil, a splash of soy sauce and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds.

As I said, this was delicious, but I need to get a better handle on the seasonings.  My timing was much better than it has been in the past, despite the mix of fresh and frozen.  More garlic!!!!

Oven Roasted Ratatouille

Browsing through one of the food blogs I read, I came across this recipe for Oven Roasted Ratatouille.  I wasn't previously very interested in ratatouille, but fortunately I clicked on the link and looked at the recipe.  The list of ingredients appealed to me: eggplant, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, onions and garlic, a little olive oil, rosemary and thyme.  The ingredients are sliced and roasted in the oven.  Simple, delicious and a great way to use up some CSA veggies - this recipe seems easily adaptable as well to your particular vegetable supply.

Andrea and I made this on the weekend to eat during the week - the recipe made a huge batch, so we split it.  (I made it in my Pampered Chef Deep Covered Baker instead of covering the top with foil - the covered stoneware really roasts things beautifully!)  I made some Israeli couscous to go with mine - I put sprigs of rosemary and thyme in the pot to add the same flavor profile.

This was absolutely delicious!  An added bonus was that it only got better and better as it sat in the fridge for a few days - I always had a big, healthy pile of veggies to eat when I was hungry.  What a fabulously delicious way to get a huge serving of vegetables, with only a little oil and a lot of flavor!

The only thing I would do differently next time is cut things into smaller pieces, especially the eggplant.  The big slices were a little more difficult to eat.  But I will definitely make this again!

Zucchini Bread

It is obvious by now that I am trying to cook my way through Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain.  There are some things in there that don't appeal to me all that much right now, but since I haven't set a time limit on working my way through the book, I'm sure I'll eventually try them.  Every recipe I've made has been delicious (even the aesthetic failures).

I've got zucchini in my fridge.  It's not that I don't like zucchini... but it's not my favorite, and it never has been.  When we get zucchini in our CSA, I usually just leave it all with my mom - she and my sister love it.  But somehow it's snuck into my home via my Nonna and her garden.  She asked me if I wanted zucchini, and I, unable to refuse fresh local produce of any kind, said sure, I can take one, I'll make zucchini bread.  She came back with this beastly monster - over a pound, maybe a pound and a half - so I made two batches of zucchini bread, and still haven't finished that one zucchini.

The zucchini bread from Good to the Grain is not your average zucchini bread.  It uses mint and basil, infused into butter, and rye flour instead of your typical wheat.  Most of my test subjects loved it - my mom and sister complained about the rye and said they wanted "normal" zucchini bread.  (Make it yourself!)  That did get me thinking, though, about possible variations - more about that later.

I truly love this bread.  I think it's amazing.  I wouldn't think of using rye flour in zucchini bread - but that's why I bought this book.  I'm almost hesitant to even change the recipe - the whole book, organized by flour, already provides the best matches of flours to other ingredients.  My first batch of this bread was a little minty - I measured more loosely in my second batch and it was just right.  The headnotes suggest having a slice with a cup of mint tea, which sounds absolutely perfect to me.  It's great to just have it around for a snack.  I expect a loaf (or half a loaf) might freeze nicely as well, if tightly wrapped.

There is so much I want to do with this recipe.  Leave it the same, but add walnuts.  Sub some white whole wheat in for part or all of the all purpose flour (being cautious about the assertive taste wheat flour can bring to a recipe).  An all whole wheat version.  Bits of different flour.  Multigrain flour mix instead of rye.  The same basic structure, but with banana and walnuts instead of zucchini and herbs.  There are so many possibilities...

CSA: June 2010

Week 4 (6/3/2010):
- 1 quart strawberries (PYO)
- 1 quart snow peas (PYO)
- 1 lb spinach
- 1 lb swiss chard (rainbow colors!)
- 4 heads of lettuce (2 green leaf, one smaller, tighter head type, and one called "deer tongue!")
- 1/2 lb arugula
- 2 bunches kale (I believe it is the Red Russian variety, different from last week's)

With the last kale of May, we made the kale chips.  They would have been delicious if they weren't so salty!  We may try again sometime, but we have been getting a different variety lately and are not sure how it would work with this type (Red Russian, I think).  The lettuce was, of course, used for salad.  Having just gotten used to having six heads, we went through it pretty fast.  Some spinach and arugula were tossed in for a mixed salad.  The strawberries were eaten quickly.  My sister Deanna made a pasta dish using the spinach, a combination of Jamie Oliver's classic tomato spaghetti and a recipe from Giada with spinach and asiago cheese (the cheese is a new family favorite).

Here is where we started to get lazy.  The kale and chard went unused as did much of the arugula.  The snow peas weren't used until Thursday when the next batch of veg had already stormed our fridge (see below).  We (well, I should probably say I) resolved to make a better effort in the upcoming week.

Berry Pine Nut Salad (29 Minutes to Dinner)

Week 5 (6/10/2010):
- 1 lb spinach
- 1 lb chard
- 6 heads lettuce (1 little weird one, 2 deer tongue, 1 green leaf, 2 red leaf)
- 2 bunches kale
- 1 bunch scallions
- 1 bunch radishes
- 2 heads radicchio
- 1 qt snow/snap peas, 1 pt each (PYO)
- a few sprigs of mint
- 4 summer squash (2 light green zucchini, 2 pattypan)

We made Asian chicken rolls (from the Pampered Chef book Grill it Quick!) on the grill - these are chicken tenderloins rolled up with a long, thin slice of carrot and one of the zucchini as well, secured with a toothpick and coated with Asian seasoning mix and a delicious glaze.  Bits of zucchini and carrot were chopped up in a rice pilaf, with some scallions mixed in.  To go along with this, I made sesame snap peas with carrots and red peppers using last week's snap peas.  That seemed to be a hit, but I thought the peas were too bitter - maybe because we waited so long to use them.  Deanna used up the zucchini we didn't use for the recipe in an omelet. 

My mom had a barbecue with her friends on Saturday, which is when I found the mint which I had forgotten in the bottom of my cooler.  (Oops...)  Fortunately, Ken had trimmed the mint at his parents' house so we were able to make mojitos!  (My favorite drink.  Yum!)  With some of the mixed lettuce and snap peas, we made a Berry Pine Nut Salad from a Pampered Chef cookbook (Berry-Pine Nut Chicken Salad, minus the chicken, from 29 Minutes to Dinner), which also had toasted pine nuts, red onions, blueberries, and a raspberry vinaigrette.  It was a beautiful salad (I made quite a nice presentation, thank you) and everyone seemed to really enjoy it.  (I had it the next day, though, and I did not like it.  Oh well!)  Since it was a barbecue, we also made grilled radicchio.  Some people liked it, some didn't - I think it might have been better if we were able to marinate it.  The next day we had a lot of barbecue leftovers for a lunch with the grandparents, and we added in the roasted spring vegetables, which has become a family favorite and was the exact reason I chose radishes from the choice group this week.  Instead of chives, my mom sprinkled scallions on top.  Later in the week, I used some of the remaining scallions to make the Otsu from Super Natural Cooking (also available on 101 Cookbooks). 

After not eating our kale or chard last week, I decided to take action and get creative.  Since we are sharing all this produce, I usually don't take any of it home - we most often cook at my mom's and eat there, or I bring home the leftovers.  This week, I took home the kale.  I've never really had kale before but I know that it is a nutritional powerhouse, so I really wanted to like it.  I've heard it tastes like and is in the same family as broccoli, so I decided we should try it in one of my favorite dishes - lemon pepper shrimp.  We threw in a little broccoli, just to give us that familiar flavor in case the kale was a flop.  It was delicious!!!  We used one bunch of the kale for that, so we had a bunch left over for the next night's dinner.  I had a bunch of things that I wanted to try, but I settled on a variation of the Matchstick Pasta on 101 Cookbooks.  I left out the pomegranate seeds, crushed all the pistachios for the sauce instead of sprinkling half of them on whole, and didn't break up the pasta.  Mine certainly wasn't as pretty, but it was a very delicious quick and easy weeknight dinner.

 Lemon Pepper Shrimp

Week 6 (6/17/2010):
- 4 heads lettuce (2 green leaf, 2 red leaf)
- 2 bunches kale (1 Red Russian, 1 "regular")
- 2 bunches fennel (about 4 bulbs)
- 4 summer squash (1 light green zucchini, 3 dark green)
- 4 green garlic (bulbs and loooong stems)
- 12 heads broccoli
- 1/2 lb arugula
- a few sprigs each of rosemary, thyme, and oregano, and a bunch of chives (without flowers)

I was excited to see kale in the farm stand this week, since we discovered last week that we loved it, and I hadn't seen it on the list of available items on the farm's distribution blog.  We used it immediately in our lemon-pepper shrimp recipe, along with a few heads of the broccoli and some of the green garlic.  I chose the fennel from the choice group (the other option was the radicchio we weren't crazy about last week) as kind of a Father's Day present for my dad, who loves it and will eat it raw, roasted or grilled.  He finished it all off raw this time.  Deanna came with me this week and was super excited about the fresh herbs.

At the beach, we grilled some of the zucchini and last week's pattypan squash.  We chopped a bulb of the garlic to eat with steamed green beans - delicious!  For a quick and easy dinner when we got home on Sunday night, we made the Almond Soba Noodles from 101 Cookbooks using some of the broccoli.

Grilled Zucchini and Pattypan Squash

Week 7 (6/24/2010):
- 4 bulbs green garlic
- 2 heads broccoli
- 1 lb chard
- 2 bunches kale (regular variety)
- 2 bunches fennel
- 1 Chinese cabbage
- 1 bunch onions
- 6 heads lettuce (4 red, 1 different type of red, 1 deer tongue)

I have been trying to share with my family - it's hard for me not to snatch up everything I want and take it home with me.  I try to leave some, maybe even most, of the weekly produce for them.  However, I am discovering more and more that I eat a lot more vegetables than they do.  Last week after splitting the 12 heads of broccoli (6 for the two of us, 6 for the four of them) we used ours up fairly quickly, while they had some left over.  (We took it down the shore and made a salmon version of our lemon pepper shrimp to finish it off.)  I was disappointed to see only 2 heads of broccoli this week - it's one of my favorites.  We finished it off in our lemon pepper shrimp recipe, of course, with some kale in there as well.

I chose fennel again for my dad, which he ate raw again, and he says he's not sick of it yet.  I brought home the kale and chard for myself this week - I don't think we've eaten any chard yet this season and we've been collecting it for weeks.  It has a much better shot of getting cooked, much less eaten, at my house than at my mom's.  Plus, last week's bunch of regular-variety kale, which Deanna insisted on taking to make kale chips at the expense of my enjoying the red variety, is still in their fridge.  We ended up having some chard sauteed with garlic, kind of like spinach.  It was pretty good, but didn't blow me away.  I used up the rest of the chard, including the stems, in Walnut Miso Noodles.

The lettuce and onions were used in a salad - the onions were particularly delicious.  (My dressing recipe has evolved into something amazing: 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup white balsamic, a clove or two of garlic, a shallot, two moderate and controlled squeezes of dijon mustard, and salt and pepper.  Easy, classy and so delicious.)  The garlic was, unfortunately, forgotten at the beach, so hopefully it's still good next weekend.  I would like to look for more raw uses.  The Chinese cabbage was forgotten by everyone, so maybe it will turn up in next month's post.

Turkey Couscous Meatloaves

For dinner I made Turkey Couscous Meatloaves.  This is one of many recipes that I find when perusing the vast depths of the internet instead of doing various relatively productive things.  I don't typically have an interest in anything named "meatloaf," or anything that is made primarily of meat, or anything that is made of turkey meat, but something about this appealed to me (probably the bacon and the glaze... more the fact that there IS a glaze rather than what the glaze is...) and for some reason, I happened to have a pound of ground turkey in the freezer, although I can't remember what possessed me to buy such a thing.

This was easy to make.  Granted, I did not shape any meatloaves, nor did I even defrost the meat.  That is not something I want to stick my hands in.  But that is why I have a live-in sous chef.  (Come to think of it, I did not chop the onions, I did not chop the sage... hmm, what DID I do?)

The cooked couscous helped to give the loaf more substance while the zucchini kept it very moist.  The bacon and glaze (essentially a barbecue sauce) gave it flavor, which ground turkey does not really possess on its own.

In an effort to make eating a pile of meat more appealing to me, I roasted some asparagus with a spray of olive oil, plus salt and pepper.  My oven was happy to multitask and waste less energy.  The asparagus was pretty good although it has been sitting in my fridge for several days.  I am sure looking forward to some fresh asparagus from a closer location than Mexico.

This recipe makes 4 loaves, and as there are only two of us, and I don't eat piles of meat often, I froze the other two.  I expect that they can be reheated in the oven and with a thermometer it would be easy to determine when they were done.  It will be nice to reach in and pull those out on a busy, exhausting day.  That is what the freezer is for.  After those two are gone, I might make this again, or maybe down the shore this summer for the family.

Zucchini Bread

Despite all our efforts, we still had a GIANT zucchini left and wanted to use it before we left. I had wanted to bake all weekend (I love baking!) so I wanted to make a zucchini bread. I remembered this zucchini bread recipe from one of the cooking blogs I like. It looked like it would make a nice moist bread... yum!

We had 3 disposable loaf pans, so we decided to triple the recipe so there would be enough for everyone to take home with them. This meant we needed 3 cups of grated zucchini, but this giant monster zucchini we had gave us 4 cups, so we just put it all in for some extra zucchini flavor. The oil and yogurt also made it very moist. My mom helped me by cutting the zucchini to fit in the food processor and helping me measure it out. Haley also helped by mixing, handing me stuff, and being my official photographer again. I am glad she likes to help and she takes a LOT of pictures - I wish I could use them all!

One of my favorite things about the recipe was that it included whole wheat flour - yay! But it still called for a lot of all-purpose flour. If I try making this again, I would probably substitute white whole wheat flour for most or all of the flour.

We mixed the wet ingredients (and sugar) together, and the dry ingredients together, and then combined them to make the batter. We added walnuts (the recipe suggested them) and that added a nice textural difference. I like how you can see the flecks of green from the zucchini throughout the bread and on the top too.

My only regret is that I forgot to bring some for lunch today! I would love to try making these as muffins, since we all know how much I love muffins...

Zucchini Gratin

As I mentioned in my last post, we needed a way to use all that zucchini we had down the shore this weekend, and I remembered seeing a recipe for Summer Squash Gratin on one of my favorite sites. My mom thought it would go well with the rest of our dinner so we made it.

The recipe can be made with any summer squash (the yellow and green look nice together in the picture) but we just had so much zucchini that we couldn't really play around with it. We also used much more of pretty much everything than called for in the recipe. 2 pounds of potatoes is about 3-4 potatoes (not big ones), and just didn't seem like enough, so we used more of everything.

My mom cut the zucchini by hand while I sliced the potatoes with the food processor. I haven't sliced anything with my food processor at home yet, but now I am super excited to do it. How incredibly convenient! We chose to do it this way because the potatoes need to be sliced much thinner than the zucchini and we figured it was easier to slice thickly than thinly by hand. In the end, the potatoes were still sliced slightly too thick, although I think this could have been remedied by making sure the slices all came apart from each other. I also used the food processor to grate the Gruyere (and kept sneaking tastes... YUM).

The sauce was extremely easy to make, and we doubled it to account for the large amount of veggies we were using. We used fresh parsley, but dried oregano (2 Tbsp.). Everything else was doubled. I roughly chopped the garlic before tossing it in. I also couldn't really taste the red pepper flakes at all, so I might add more of those next time (I didn't measure). I did this in the blender because our food processor is an attachment to the blender, and of course my mom forgot the regular blade for the food processor at home! But I found that the blender worked just fine, and possibly better because we had a lower capacity food processor. This is a liquid so you don't want any leaking out of your food processor from having too much liquid.

For the bread crumb topping, we ran into a few minor problems. My super assistant Haley handed me a stick of butter from the fridge and I put it in a pan over the stove to melt and "brown." In the meantime I measured the bread crumbs. I had doubled the butter, so I thought I would double the bread crumbs to 4 cups (my mom says, "we like bread crumbs!") After measuring out 2 cups of bread crumbs I realized there was no way they could possibly fit in the pan I was using. I called my mom over to fix my crisis and she poured the butter into a bigger pan and got it going again. After a while it was just kind of coagulating and not really doing anything. I was getting a little frustrated because this seemed so straightforward. Finally my mom realized that Haley had handed me some margarine or something like that, not butter. So we found a way to dump it and got some real butter going in the bigger pan. Things were MUCH easier from here. It did exactly what it was supposed to! I had Haley standing by to measure 2 more cups of bread crumbs (they would not fit in the bowl) so when my butter was brown I dumped my 2 cups in and started mixing. At this point I realized there was NO way that 2 more cups of bread crumbs would fit in the pan. Oh well! This looked like plenty. I mixed them in with the butter and turned off the heat.

The veggies are tossed with the sauce, then with the Gruyere and half the bread crumbs. You put them in the zested (of course) baking pan and then top with the rest of the bread crumbs. It was a LOT of bread crumbs. In the oven, it was in the middle, but the bread crumbs were getting burny looking on top, and the potatoes were not done. So this problem was solved with some aluminum foil and moving the pan to the bottom rack. Luckily the bread crumb topping did not cook more after this.

When it was finally done the zucchini gratin was delicious. Everyone loved it at dinner and it was definitely a perfect accompaniment to the rest of the meal. 1/3 of the sauce is reserved to drizzle over it on your plate, which was especially yummy. It was kind of a lot of bread crumbs and I think everyone agreed on that... but it was delicious and definitely something to make again. My mom suggested that it was kind of Thanksgiving-y. I don't know if there will be many zucchinis around at Thanksgiving, but I could definitely try it with another kind of squash.