Toffee Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies #ChristmasWeek

[the title pretty much says it all]

Welcome to Day Four of Christmas Week. This event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We hope to inspire you to break out those holiday sprinkles and get your bake on!

There are times when I feel like an utter failure as a food blogger. It's not the recipes/writing/photography/technical computer stuff, you know, the business of blogging, that gets to me--it's the capital F Foodie part.

I may have 6 different vinegars in my pantry and 20 recipes for beets in my Beet Recipes Collection, but I am not a real Foodie. I have eaten at only one of the 20+ fancy schmancy restaurants in my town [and that was because my book group met there!]. In fact, I'm perfectly happy with a Five Guys burger and fries or a plate of Waffle House Chocolate Chip Waffles. The recipes I share on this blog are, for the most part, pretty basic stuff like these Toffee Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I'm sharing them today for #ChristmasWeek simply because I like to celebrate all that is simple and good--from a breakfast of beet greens or a side dish of Chinese cabbage from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share to a tasty and flavorful cookie like these.

I like to bake chocolate chip cookies because the whole process fits in with my schedule. Unlike brownies which need to be mixed and baked all at once [and when you're making 8 dozen Pecan Brownie Bites for a Cookie Drive that's a big chunk of time], chocolate chip cookies taste better when they are done in installments. When I expect to have 30 minutes free I'll set the butter out to soften ahead of time, then mix up the dough when I'm ready. I will chill this dough overnight or up to a couple of days. When I'm ready to bake I scoop up what I want to use, and I can re-chill or even freeze the rest until I need it. Making cookies this way--in small chunks of kitchen time--fits with my schedule best and leaves me more time to try and get a decent shot of the dogs in their thrift shop holiday finery. Here's an outtake:

Simon is patiently waiting to be allowed to leave while Robert Barker keeps trying to eat his hat  (it tastes yummy) and Vincent in his Santa Paws coat just wishes everyone would cooperate so he can have his turn to shine. Oh, and I went and got my hair done did. It's been a year--it was time.

Swing by all the #ChristmasWeek participants to see what they've been whipping up for the holidays:

Coconut Filled Sandwich Cookies by Cravings of a Lunatic

Ridiculously Delicious Vanilla Cookies by Cookistry

Peppermint Sugar Cookie Bars by Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts

Toffee Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies by Farm Fresh Feasts

Cranberry Ginger Margaritas by Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks

Rocky Road Chocolate Bark by Cooking In Stilettos

Apple Streusel Bars by That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Rum Blondies with Cinnamon Chips by From Gate to Plate

Macerated Peach Yogurt Muffins

Sugared peaches and yogurt combined in a sweet muffin for summer flavor any time of year

I love the flavors of summer. Kristi from She Eats asked on her FB page what fresh item I'm most looking forward to this summer, and my answer was tomatoes. That's a no-brainer for me, primarily because my second favorite summer flavor, peaches, can be captured and frozen for later use.

True, my Fresh Tomato Pesto is one easy way to capture the flavor of ripe summer tomatoes, but I can't match that texture and wouldn't use it in a tomato sandwich. I love a good tomato sandwich more than anything else, and now that our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share is providing us with ripe tomatoes I am indulging often.

While I do like to bite into a juicy peach (one not packed with listeria bacteria and shipped 'a fur piece') I'm not married to the texture. I'm happy to have fresh summer peach flavor in whatever form I can put it up. Since we don't have any local peaches this year due to the extreme cold temperatures of late winter, I'm glad I put up the peaches I gleaned from a friend's tree last year.

Most of the peaches were put up using Carla of Chocolate Moosey's Peach Pie Filling recipe, but some I just chopped, mixed with a bit of sugar, and froze.  This method makes it easy to thaw and use in a variety of sweet treats like these muffins. Even though it sounds like medieval torture, macerating just means 'softening by steeping in liquid' so that's the term I used here.

While you have fresh peaches may I offer my Fresh Peaches and Cream Muffins? If you've got macerated peaches, though, and want muffins--do try these. Thanks!

Fresh Tomato Pesto with Mushroom, Olive, Artichoke and Feta Pizza (Pizza Night!)

Sautéed mushrooms, olives, artichoke hearts with feta and fontina over fresh tomato pesto

Those of you who subscribe to my blog via email or somehow grab the RSS feed [thank you!] were treated to an unwitting peek behind the scenes one week ago when the rough draft version of this post went live without my awareness.

When I was plotting out the pizza posts for July I’d tentatively scheduled this one for the first Friday. Then I thought of fireworks, changed my mind, finished up the Pepperoni and Yellow Squash pizza and scheduled it for the same day. I didn’t notice that I still had the draft of this pizza scheduled for later the same day, and didn’t even check that the pizza had posted properly when I first woke up. Nope, I went about my July 4th—packing and traveling to visit family, not even checking email until late afternoon when I was surprised to see the draft was live and sent out in my RSS feed.  Oops!

I wanted to get this pizza up because it uses Fresh Tomato Pesto and I think you should try your hand at making this tasty concoction at least once during tomato season. Even though the tomatoes in my garden are as green as the squash plants that have taken over, the nights are warm (for ripening) and we got our first tomato in the farm share this week. [I’m making a BLT out of it, not this pesto.  I have my priorities for the first tomato of the summer.]

Fresh Tomato Pesto is easy to make, stores well in the freezer, and can be used as a dip for chips or vegetables, a pasta sauce, or on pizzas. I’ve been sharing a lot of meat pizzas lately [just updated my Visual Pizza Recipe Index] and it’s past time for a vegetarian one.

Thai Turkey Cold Busting Hot and Sour Egg Drop Soup

Fight colds with this Hot and Sour Thai-seasoned Turkey, Carrot, and Rice Egg Drop Soup

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When I was in nursing school, in a previous life, Hot and Sour Soup became my magical cure-all for any bugs picked up at the hospital that threatened to take me down.  I'd swing by my favorite Chinese restaurant and pick up a quart when I first felt a tickle in my throat, and usually by the time I'd consumed the container I was right as rain.

Of course I've moved far away from that restaurant, and had good and not as good Hot and Sour Soups in the intervening lives years.

This soup is emphatically NOT a traditional version of Chinese Restaurant Hot and Sour Soup.  Instead, it's got the hot and sour-ness that I crave when I'm sick, coupled with the consistency of egg drop soup that soothes my throat, along with carrots and rice that comfort me like a good bowl of chicken soup should.  Except this is made with a turkey carcass.  Yes, part of my Thanksgiving turkey carcass if you must know.

This is an excellent reason to save your Thanksgiving turkey carcass in your freezer until you're ready for it.  No sense wasting it on some day-after-Thanksgiving soup when you've got amazing leftovers still in the fridge.  No, save that turkey carcass, along with the bits and bobs of vegetables collected in your Soup Pack, for a Real Need.

I made this soup while in Real Need for Soup.  While I was sharing sunny orange recipes here during HashtagOrangeWeek recently, I was sneezing and hacking my way around the Disney World Parks in Florida.  As if being sick wasn't enough, we traveled to/from Florida in a plane and my ears went wrong shortly after take off and still weren't right a week after returning home.  Add to all of the above I had a cough that made me gag and, well, if you've had kids then you know there are . . . consequences . . . when you are walking around having coughing attacks.  So there I am at Disney, sneezing, coughing, and consequencing all over the place, and hoping to survive the flight home so I could make soup. /rant

Thanking again my well-stocked pantry, I slept in (love my bed) and started this soup the day after I got home.  I was inspired by Lydia's Quick and Easy Hot and Sour Soup with Tofu, Shiitake Mushrooms and Noodles and Tyler Florence's Hot and Sour Soup. Now, normally I like the hands off approach of slow cooker soup stock, throwing everything into the crock pot for a day/night before straining and using.  And while that technique is awesome, there is one drawback--in a slow cooker you don't get the flavor concentration from evaporation like you do in an uncovered stock pot on the stove top.  I cooked this stock for 4 hours on the stove top, until it was reduced by about half [and took a picture so you could see**] then called it good.  Using mostly fridge and freezer items I threw together the rest of the soup, snapped some more photos, and we enjoyed a late lunch.  I was fortified for the rest of the day. And then a few more thanks to the awesome leftovers.

If you're looking for the cold-busting properties of a bowl of hot and sour soup, the consistency of egg drop soup, the comfort of a poultry-filled carrot and rice soup--this recipe is for you.


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Black Eyed Pea and Kale Salad in Salumi Cups: A New Year's Day Good Luck Appetizer

A bite size appetizer of black eyed peas and kale salad, served in salumi cups. A terrific bite to ensure good luck in the New Year.

Why is it considered good luck to eat black eyed peas on New Year's day?  Since I didn't learn about this tradition until I lived in the South as an adult, do Northerners/East Coasters/ Westerners/Midwesterners not have good luck ever?  What about folks in other countries?  Not everyone eats black eyed peas, you know.
Heavy questions for a busy time.  All I know is in addition to jumping into the New Year (from a stair, not a chair) I like to eat black eyed peas this time of year.  I'm good with these traditions--one's silly fun to do, and the other's tasty.
Sometimes I like to make Hoppin' John, sometimes I like to change it up a bit.  Here's a bite size appetizer way to get your New Year Good Luck, and if meat is not your thing, there's a bonus recipe below to an alternate salad/leftover remake.
Updated Note:  My mom emailed me that she knew salumi was not a typo but she didn't know what it was.  Salumi is the name for a category of dry cured meat.  Salami and prosciutto are examples of salumi.  I'm thinking pepperoni may be as well.  Learn something new?  I try to each day!

Cranberry Apple Pecan Tangerine Mini Muffins

These were for a gathering and I dusted them with cinnamon sugar before baking.

It's all about the leftovers, isn't it?

When I made this bread I had leftover Cranberry-Apple-Pecan mixture.  I froze it, since I am big on the "What do I do with this?  I dunno.  I'd better toss it in the freezer" method of dealing with things.

The paperwork for my taxes is not in my freezer.

Luckily, I married a wonderful man whose wonderful mom prepares taxes for a living, otherwise my tax paperwork would be in the freezer with random assorted bags of vegetables and fruits.  And Butch.

I enjoy the cranberry-citrus combination (and will soon be blessed with Band Fruit Fundraiser citrus, stay tuned for a recipe round up next month) so I decided to add some tangerine to these muffins.  I was making up a frightfully orange smoothie (Tangerine-Carrot-Banana) and since I'd gotten the blender out, I blended up a tangerine first for the muffin batter before continuing with the rest of the smoothie.  If you're not mixing up a smoothie, just chop up a tangerine and add it to the batter, or get fancy and remove the juicy flesh and toss the scaffolding* in the compost.  Alternatively, give the remnants to the composting pig as she'll eat almost anything (her late roommate would eat anything).
Don't give it to the worms--they don't care for citrus.

Roasted Pumpkin and Eggnog French Toast

French toast made with roasted pumpkin and eggnog batter for a seasonal brunch

My kids are very fortunate French toast eaters.  They are blessed with not one but two grandmothers who rock at making French toast.

Can a grandmother rock at something?  Well, these women sure do.  My kids love Grandma's French Toast--regardless of which grandma they are visiting.

When I first met my mother-in-law, she told me she was a "plain Jane cook".  She sure makes something 'plain' like French toast taste super when we visit!  She has her recipe memorized (and now I do, too):  for every 4 pieces of bread you need 1 egg, 1/4 cup milk, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.  It's a no-fail recipe that we love to eat while gathered around the large table, watching the woods outside.

My mom's contribution to my kids' Grandma French Toast Experience is her choice of bread.  Mom buys day-old bread (hmm, I wonder where I get my love of marked down food from?), usually hoagie rolls, and slices it into thick rounds.  She serves the kids breakfast on the bar while they sit on stools overlooking her kitchen.

Combining mom's bread with my mother-in-law's batter results in a delicious breakfast treat when it's just mom making the French toast.  For this post, though, I decided to kick it up a notch.  I thawed some packages of pumpkin (that I'd roasted and put up for muffins) and added it to the batter.  I had eggnog, and decided to use that in place of milk.  Because the pumpkin was pretty thick, I opted to toss the whole thing in the blender to mix it up.  This creamy concoction was so delicious I had to share.

Try this for a special brunch or just for an everyday weekend breakfast.  My kids tell me that the leftovers made a tasty school-day breakfast treat.  Even if it's not as good as when Grandma makes it!

Turkey Pesto Olive Feta FFF-a-boli, Thanksgiving Leftover Remake Pizza Night!

Turkey, green olives and feta cheese combined with pesto in a rolled pizza

I knew when I made these pizzas that I wanted to do a Leftover Remake using turkey.  I just didn't have any turkey to try it with!  Then we celebrated Thanksgiving, I got some turkey leftovers to work with, and I could make this vision a reality.  Turkey, pesto from the freezer stash, green olives, feta cheese . . . sounds like a winning combination.

Then my spouse asked for a Nic-o-boli for his birthday, and I veered off into a different direction.  What if I took that topping combination I'd envisioned, and stuffed it into a rolled pizza?

We all agreed it worked great.  If you have leftover turkey meat, and you've put up your pesto (or have a jar in the fridge) try this FFF-a-boli.  It's delicious (and what I'd be making for Friday Night Pizza Night the day after Thanksgiving if I wasn't a food blogger who has been inspired by this)!

Stupefyingly Simple Chicken, Rice, and Butternut Squash Soup

One taste of this soup, and you too will be stupefied.  And your body slammed with enough beta carotene to . . . . well to do something astounding.  Maybe even run or something crazy.

For me, making soup is not a quick or easy thing.  I think it's a Production.  I have my Soup Packs.  There's lots of chopping involved.  I plan to spend hours over my pretty purple pot.  And I generally end up with something good that my family eats happily the first time but the soup leftovers don't usually get fought over like other things.

The day I made this, I had 2 kids home sick with colds, and I was busy with baking.  I didn't have time to devote to soup, but I thought the kids would benefit from a warm bowl for lunch.  The oven was on anyway, so I selected a small butternut squash from the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in the corner of the breakfast nook, split it, scooped out the guts, and roasted it upside down on a rimmed baking sheet with a cup of water for 45 minutes until it was tender.  That part was easy.  I kept going.

Since I wasn't Making A Production out of the soup, I grabbed a large saucepan, preheated oil in it over medium heat, and dropped in about half a cup of carrots and celery from a freezer bag of pre-chopped veggies.  After they had started to soften I tossed in some Onion Onion and minced garlic.  I also tossed in 4 bullion cubes because I didn't have any soup stock on hand.  After my electric kettle had come to a boil I added about 4-5 cups of water to the pan.  Then a can of chicken, half of a squash, and let it simmer gently until lunchtime (give it at least 30 minutes, could go up to 2 hrs).  When it was time to serve, I scooped out the remaining rice from the rice cooker (last night's dinner leftovers), added it to the pot, and dished up bowls of warm soup.

Stupefyingly easy and surprisingly tasty, especially given the utter lack of effort on my part.

Cheddar Apple Onion Bacon Pizza

Two notes!  First, I've installed a print button, with options to remove images and non-recipe verbiage, in case you'd like to print a recipe.  It's down at the bottom of the post, let me know if you like it.

Second, I wrote the CSA Cookoff segment this week on HOMEGROWN.org, since I was merely walking a half marathon while Jennifer was having a blast at Farm Aid.  You can check out my Slow Cooker Sweet Potato and Chicken Curry recipe here!

In the pre-braces life, a favorite 'I don't want to cook' supper when it was just me and the kids was popcorn, apple slices, and cheese cubes.  I liked to make it with Gala apples, though my favorite apple is the delicious Larry variety from the Shenandoah valley that I got in a fruit share in our first ever CSA farm share. That easy meal satisfied the sweet, the salty, the need to chew and the desire not to be hungry in an hour.
Until we embark on the post-braces life, I will miss that meal . . . and corn on the cob, and everything bagels with lox, cream cheese, red onion, capers, and summer tomato.  Note to self, sneak out and get a bagel with the fixings before all the tomatoes are gone.  I never was a fan of Laffy Taffy, so I can't say I'm missing it.
Last week my mom brought me a red delicious apple, and since I'm not a fan of eating red delicious plain, I was primed to think of pizza.  When I saw this Apple Harvest Cheddar at Costco (with apple pieces and cinnamon--how cool does that sound?), I thought it would be good on a pizza with apples and something else, so I bought it.  I didn't really think I wanted to try corn on the pizza to recreate my easy supper, but caramelized onions and bacon sounded like good replacements.

Conveniently, I'd caramelized a mess of onions in the crock pot (I used and love Dorothy's method, though I'm going to try Alanna's Sweet, Dark and Dreamy method next time.  For research purposes) and froze them in recipe-size portions, so it was easy to grab what I needed.  I also had bacon baked and frozen.  My freezer can be a magical place.  Is yours?

In the interests of full disclosure, in addition to my mom giving me the apple, my neighbor gave me a big bag of onions that I used to make these caramelized onions.  I bought the rest of the stuff.

It's possible I'm becoming a foodie.  The jury is still out, but go ahead and try this pizza (with any type of cheddar cheese, of course, if you're not near a Costco) while the deliberations continue.

Roasted Acorn and Butternut Squash with Corn and Smoked Sausage

A savory late summer or early fall supper of roasted cubes of simply seasoned winter squash, topped with corn and optional bits of smoked sausage.

My friend Heather, of garlic oil on a pizza fame, knows her way around good food.  No, she doesn't cook it much--her spouse does--but she sure has great ideas for what goes well together.  She was raving about her leftovers for lunch and the combination sounded so good I had to try it.  Heather's lunch was loosely patterned after Ina Garten's Caramelized Butternut Squash, but her spouse added canned corn to pump up the veggies.  Heather combined another leftover and cheese on top for her leftover remix.

I'm a gardener who has helped teach elementary school aged kids about gardening, so when I hear "squash and corn" I immediately think of a Three Sisters garden.  Native Americans would companion plant squash, beans, and corn together--known as the Three Sisters.  The Three Sisters helped each other:  the corn would provide the scaffolding for the beans to climb and the squash would spread around the base, shading the soil, holding in the moisture, and preventing weeds.  When it works, it's a thing of beauty.

I had both acorn and butternut squash, as well as some corn I'd put up [boil briefly aka blanch, cut off the cob, spread on a tray to freeze, and store in a bag], so I figured 2 out of 3 I'll call it Two Sisters.  I wanted to add bit more protein, however, so I chopped up a piece of smoked sausage.  Now it's more like Two Sisters--and a Brother?  I've been busy canning lately (you can see the results on my FB page) so an easy filling recipe like this is wonderful for cool nights.  And Heather's right--the leftovers are terrific!
I've revamped my Visual Recipe Index! For more ideas on what to do with your butternut squash, click here.

Green Pork, Corn and Zucchini Enchiladas (Can you can? Yes, you can!)

Ground pork sautéed with zucchini and corn makes the filling for these green salsa verde enchiladas. Home-canned sauces enjoyed all year long.

Do you can?  I've made jam over the years, but I really need to give a shout out to Marisa of Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round because a year ago, through her wonderful blog, she gave me permission to can 'just a little bit' of something without making a Big Production out of it.

Last summer, when my local grocery store was roasting fresh Hatch chilies in the parking lot and the farm share had tomatillos every single week, I decided to try my hand at canning salsa verde.  I first tried salsa verde the previous winter when I made tongue tacos from the cow in the freezer.  My family tolerated the tongue, but we all loved the salsa verde and I resolved to learn how to make it when the farm share tomatillos overwhelmed me appeared in the box.  I followed the Ball® Blue Book recipe, subbed the roasted Hatch chilies, and this was the result--six lovely jelly jars of salsa verde.

Since I had the canning pot up from the basement and hot water anyway, I figured I'd make some peach jam from peaches that had been hanging out in the freezer, awaiting a canning day and some pectin.

But what to make with it?  We haven't finished up the first cow, and most cows only have 1 tongue [not that we were pantingly eager to experience those tacos again].  We are loving enchiladas these days, so I figured an enchilada recipe would be a neat way to take my salsa verde for a test drive.  I found some ground pork marked down at the grocery store and grabbed a bag of zucchini out of the freezer.

Freezer?  Yes, I wrote this post up during the snowy winter, dreaming of temps above the single digits while sharing how I feed my family from our garden and CSA farm share all year 'round.  If you're overrun with zucchini this summer, shred some up--I love my food processor because it has a fine shred disc which is perfect for zucchini, carrots, or cheese.  I freeze bags of shredded zucchini flat in 1 cup portions.

But I digress . . .  where was I?  Oh, right. Ground pork, zucchini, and you know what else would be good stuffed into that tortilla?  Corn.  Grabbed some of that, too.  You'll notice that this enchilada recipe serves 6, but only uses 1/2 pound of meat.  We are omnivores, but I like to serve less meat and more veggies, so this is another way to stretch a pound of meat.  And tasty, too!

Baked Swai with Pesto and Ricotta

A simple sauce of prepared pesto and ricotta cheese makes a moist and  flavorful coating for fish, pasta, or roasted vegetables

If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen the photos of my first cheese-making efforts.  I got a gallon of milk marked down and made 2 balls of mozzarella with a cheese making kit I bought from Standing Stone Farms.  With the leftover whey (boy howdy there's a lot of whey) I made a bonus batch of ricotta cheese.

There was still a lot of whey leftover after making the ricotta and mozzarella, and I've been experimenting with it.  So far whey-soaked oven oatcake is a hit, and pizza crust using whey instead of water is also a winner.  Details to come.

Here's the thing, though--normally I'll use ricotta in something hearty, like my Quadruple Roasted Mock Lasagna.  This summer has been gloriously--and unusually--cool, but not cool enough for that.  I decided to use up the very last cubes of last fall's pestopalooza with the ricotta cheese, and play around.

All of the recipes I'm sharing today involve the oven or stovetop, but when it's really hot I think it'd be great to toss freshly grilled items (chicken thighs, fish fillets, eggplant or zucchini) with this ricotta-pesto mixture and keep your kitchen cool.  It would be delicious as the dressing in a pasta salad, with cherry tomatoes, onion, cucumber, and squash.  It's probably good on a cracker.  Since I thawed my put-up pesto to make these dishes, I'm positive this idea will work with winter fare (peeled, sliced, roasted sweet potatoes or delicata squash?).

Zucchini, Corn, and Leek Pizza with Pesto and Feta (Pizza Night!)

The flavors of a summer vegetarian pizza: shredded zucchini sautéed with leeks and corn then topped with feta cheese on a roasted garlic oil-brushed pizza crust. 

Pizza in the summer should be easy.  Not that pizza in the winter should be complicated or anything, but there's something about the bounty of ripe produce coupled with spending more time outdoors doing yard work that lends itself to easy meals.  With such delicious stuff coming in the the farm share box the pizzas practically make themselves (let's be honest, I'm doing the work here) the idea of what veggies to combine in a pizza practically falls into your lap.  At least that's what happened with this pizza.  Sometimes, the ingredients choose you (Meghan is so wise).

Note:  I made this pizza in January.  It's true!  I'd love to show you a photo with the pizza and the 3 inches of snow that fell in the morning, but in fact it was wicked cold and dark so I have no 'outdoor' natural light photos.

Over the winter, while rooting around in the freezer for something else, a bag of shredded zucchini, a bag of corn kernels, and a bag of chopped leeks fell into my lap.  How did I make a pizza using zucchini and corn in the midst of winter?  Easy!  When I am overwhelmed with my crazy garden volunteers, or we get more than my family can eat in the week's CSA farm share box, I put it up.  The zucchini was shredded (love the fine shred disc on my food processor, the smaller and cheaper version of this one) then bagged, and frozen.  The corn was cooked in a cooler, cut off the cobs, frozen on a tray, and bagged.  The leeks were sliced, washed a lot, spun dry, and frozen loose on a tray before bagging.  That way, we can enjoy summer flavors all year long.  And this taste of summer was delicious after shoveling snow!

When I made this pizza, I knew that I eventually wanted to try leeks with corn on a pizza as well.  When I got leeks in my farm share I even did a little happy dance.  Tonight's pizza is very summery in nearly all respects--it's loaded with ripe-in-summer produce, tossed with pesto, flavored with a hint of garlic . . . but I think I may have used an eggnogandbutternutsquash crust.  So here's today's lesson, folks!  Always Label Random Bags of Pizza Crust In Your Freezer.  The crust tasted just fine with the toppings.  In fact, it may have been just a plain butternut squash pizza crust (is that an oxymoron?).  I'll never know, because I didn't label the bag!

If this pizza looks delicious enough for you to want to make it now, not wait until January, just make sure to squeeze the shredded zucchini until it's as dry as you can get it.  If you don't have leeks, substitute onions, shallots, or even green onions--but add them to the skillet at the very end because they burn easily.  At least in my skillets.  Now that my garden is growing some of these ingredients, I'm already planning my next "summer pizza" though this time I will know what dough to use.

Triple Chip Zucchini Spice Cake

You've heard of summer reading programs?  When my kids were younger, we did a lot of them.  One year we did programs at 3 different library systems in the DC area.  Plus the one at Barnes and Noble and also through their elementary school.  That was a busy reading summer.

You think keeping track of library books from one library is hard?  Triple it! Boy do I love borrowing ebooks from the library and reading them on my Kindle these days.

Now that the kids are older, the summer reading program has morphed into a summer reading/cooking program.  Once a week in the summer the kids are choosing a cookbook and fixing a recipe from it.  They are welcome to search through my cookbook shelves, scan food blogs (I'm doing it, they may as well join me) or try our library. So far this summer we've had cake, grilled shrimp tacos, ice cream, and grilled chicken thighs.  Now that I type that out, I can see a definite trend towards desserts and grilled meat.  No wonder the fridge is bursting with vegetables!  Good thing I'm also busy in the kitchen.

Just a shout out here in praise of public libraries:  when we move to a new home, like we tend to do every 3-4 years on average, one of our first stops is the local library.  We're lucky here--our library is less than 3 blocks from home and carries an amazing selection in a lovely old building. Hooray for the Wright Memorial Public Library!

It was during such a summer recipe search that the kids came across the Cake Mix Doctor® books by Anne Byrn.  I love how there's a color photo of each cake at the beginning of the book and I can honestly say we've loved every cake we've made from her books.  And this is an unsolicited/uncompensated review!    Making a Cake Mix Doctor® cake is about as easy as following the directions on the box--so, a good learning tool for my kids--but the result is so much better.

It was with this idea in mind that I set out to the library one morning.  I needed to bring a dessert, had seen this recipe, and had shredded zucchini (I put up my extra by shredding and freezing, for use year round) thawing on the counter.  Tragically, I didn't have the key ingredients (namely, I was out of all purpose flour and unsweetened chocolate).  While looking in the pantry for a box of cake flour, I came across a box of forgotten spice cake mix and remembered the Cake Mix Doctor®.  Fifteen minutes later I was on the floor in the library with 3 Cake Mix Doctor® books spread open in front of me, debating the merits of 4 different cake recipes involving shredded zucchini.

What's not to love about a library?

I ended up checking out The Cake Mix Doctor Returns! by Anne Byrn, and adapting her Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cake recipe based on what I had on hand.  The folks at work, as well as my family, agreed it was delicious.

For other recipes using zucchini, please see my Zucchini Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I've got a Pinterest board all about squash, you can follow it here. Wanna know How to Use This Blog? Click here.

Double Chocolate Raspberry Muffins--and they're Whole Grain! (Monday Muffins)

I like to eat seasonally, and locally, which usually means that I'm eating fruits and vegetables when they are at their peak flavor.  No tasteless January store tomatoes for me!  For berries, however, that means my "eat them fresh" season is very short--weeks, at best.  Most of the berries we eat have been frozen and put up in the fruit and veg freezer during the season.  We put frozen berries in fruit salads, on oatmeal, and waffles to name a few.  My spouse and daughter even like a bowl of frozen berries for a snack or dessert.  Me?  I like to bake with them.  I don't care if the berries lose their shape when they thaw in a muffin or cake batter.  They still taste fine to me!

I needed a muffin to take to a morning coffee gathering. I'd been gathering pizza ingredients out of the fruit and veg freezer when a bag of raspberries caught my eye.  Dark chocolate and raspberries go well together, so the recipe was starting to form in my mind.  My mom had emailed me to use cocoa powder in another dish, and I always listen to my mom ;) so I added a couple of tablespoons into the batter.
Then the fun began.  I used my standard soaked oatmeal muffin recipe as the base, but the first batch wasn't quite right.  I suspected the culprit was the additional bitterness of the cocoa powder, and made a second batch using a bit more brown sugar.  That tasted good.  But now I had 22 Chocolate Raspberry Soaked Oatmeal Whole Grain muffins staring at me.  Eep!  Conveniently, my daughter had recently enrolled in a home ec practical arts class, so I emailed her teacher and asked if the class could do a taste test for me.  The teacher was happy to oblige.  My daughter came home for lunch and I sent both batches of muffins off with her.  The class verdict?  Overwhelmingly in favor of the slightly sweeter muffin.

The actual data sheet, grease stains and all!

That meant that I still had no muffins for the morning coffee.  When I made my third batch of chocolate raspberry muffins for the day, I tossed in a handful of dark chocolate chips to the batter.  I liked these best, and that's why you're getting this version.

Buttermilk Crust Pizza with Pepperoni and Four Cheese Topping

Do you keep buttermilk in your fridge?  I do.  Sometimes I make my own, sometimes I find it marked down at the grocery store and buy it.  Once I saw a half gallon for 15 cents (on the sell-by date).  You bet I snagged that bottle in a hot minute. 15 cents!
What do I do with all this buttermilk? I'm glad you asked.  I use it in a bunch of different muffin recipes.  The key recipe is here, and there are many more variations to the right ------> in my Recipe Index by Category.  I also use buttermilk in waffle batter such as this one.  I'm encouraging my son to pick up the skill of biscuits, so he'll be following this recipe.  And this summer, once all the bottles on the door of the fridge are used up, I am going to make this Buttermilk salad dressing.  But today, because it is Friday, I want to talk about pizza dough.
Buttermilk in dough makes a tender crust.  It's also got subtle tang that works great with sweet (ok, more like sweeter, I have yet to make a dessert pizza) and savory toppings, as you'll see today and in the future.  My recipe is from my favorite pizza book, The Best Pizza Is Made at Home (Nitty Gritty Cookbooks), by Donna Rathmell German.  I kept it basic this time, but there are more variations on tap (and currently in my fridge!  Check my FB page for the pizzas we're eating tonight using a whole wheatier Buttermilk Pesto Dough).

Generally, when I am sharing a new dough variation, I tend to keep the toppings pretty normal.  I mean I didn't want to freak you out like I did with the beet crust dough for vegans, vegetarians, or omnivores.  Today is no exception--as you can see by the title, it's a pepperoni pizza.  Like my Not So Simple Cheese Pizza, this pizza uses the wonderful Fresh Tomato Pesto I discovered when Heather put it up on In Her Chucks.  Since I spent fall and winter figuring out how to make, put up, and subsequently use many variations of that pesto, it has earned its own "how to" blog post which will be coming out next week.  Around these parts, that's before the fresh tomatoes show up--but don't run out and buy a well-traveled tomato.  Wait.  Patience is a virtue. Local tomatoes, like local strawberries and local celery, just taste better.  Life is too short to eat tasteless food.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sunflower Seeds and Coconut and Sled Hockey

I'm delighted to say that this evening I will be picking up my first CSA farm share of the season.  Soon I'll be blogging about fresh local veggies--but in the meantime, how about a cookie?

As a food blogger (a tiny squee when I type that), there are a couple of signs you are overextending your creativity and need to step away from the kitchen, sit down, and catch yourself up with what you've been doing.

The first sign is when your spouse, the chief photo downloader/cropper/color corrector (when he's not deployed), checks the camera on Thursday night and notes that you've 228 new photos since he last emptied the camera on Sunday morning.

In my defense, I'd like to point out that was before breakfast on Sunday morning.

The second is when you pull a sheet of cookies out of your oven, look at them expecting to see oats but see none, and wonder what's in them instead.  Silly blogger, you baked Monday's Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chip Oatmeal cookies on Wednesday for your spouse's work function on Thursday.  These cookies were baked on a Friday, therefore I was baking the Chocolate Chip with Sunflower and Coconut dough. (Why aren't these recipes highlighted with links to the posts?  Patience, I've got scads of notes and photos to turn into posts.  Did I mention the need to catch myself up?)

Conveniently, these cookies, along with some stretched taco meat, were for the Saturday night team dinner during a sled hockey tournament, so I had some enforced time away from my stove. (I need more, though!)

There's no farm fresh ingredient here--I'm in between egg shares at the moment though if I lived near The Tipsy Gardener I'd be all set.  Instead, since I needed a dessert, I rooted around in my freezer stash and chose a couple of add-ins which looked like a good idea.  It was.  I'd tell you the team loved them, but this is a sled hockey team and sled hockey players are like all other hockey players--they'll eat anything.  At least that's been my experience. Hockey, and this dessert, really is for everyBODY*.

Very Veggie Sloppy Joes for a Crowd

Sloppy joes are a kid-friendly meal. Add finely shredded vegetables to the beef and you'll be boosting the nutrition of this crowd favorite!

Lesson #4 in action.

I went through a long stretch of adulthood without eating sloppy joes.  All Lunch Lady joking aside, I have no idea why that was.  I like my joes.  That long stretch was finally broken one lunchtime when a bunch of moms gathered with their kids at my friend Miho's house.  She served a big pot of sloppy joes and all of a sudden I remembered loving them as a kid.  My kids tried them for the first time and thought they were pretty tasty.  I started making them for my family, and I'm pleased I can stretch a pound of ground meat into multiple meals.


When I signed up to bring lunch at the thrift shop, I wanted to make something that would appeal to a variety of meat eaters (I knew there were no vegetarians that day).  I also wanted something with veggies, and something that could sit in a crock pot unattended all morning while I was busy out front.  Very Veggie Sloppy Joes fit the bill.  I fixed this the afternoon before and brought my crock pot and rice cooker in to the store to provide everyone with options*.

*I am all about the options, I realize.  Even the composting pigs get a choice of sleeping compartment each night when we put the Pigloo, the Woodland Hideaway, and the SnackShack into their cage.  Two pigs, three bedrooms.  Back to the topic at hand.

My friend Cathy mentioned that her family enjoys the Pioneer Woman's sloppy joe recipe, so I used that as a jumping off point for this recipe, but added more veggies since I've put them up from my CSA farm share.  We like our first round of joes on buns, with a slice of cheese and a squirt of yellow mustard.  The leftovers get served over rice, with an optional cheese slice sandwiched between the joe and the rice.  My kids enjoy this in a thermos at school, or come home for lunch and eat it here.

Arugula Pesto Focaccia with Artichokes, Feta, Goat Cheese and Green Olives (Pizza Night!)

Foh-KAH-chee-ah.  Foke-ah-CHEE-ah.  No matter how my spouse chooses to pronounce it, you need to try this.  Now. It's that good.  And if you've got arugula going to town in the garden?  More better.

I'd noticed that every time I was out of town on a Friday night (for sled hockey tournaments) my spouse would order a focaccia pizza.  The leftovers I'd have after my return were pretty tasty, so I was eager to try it out myself.  I consulted my personal pizza resource, The Best Pizza Is Made at Home , for inspiration on the crust as well as baking directions.  I had some arugula pesto, made using the recipe out of Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables, so I decided to try that.  If you don't have asiago cheese, try Bryn's easy arugula pesto recipe instead, or the arugula pesto of your choice.
I was comfortable jumping into a flavored dough but needed to try the method on a barely-topped bread first, just to make sure I set myself up for success.  The last spectacular pizza failure, seen on my Facebook page, of my deep dish spinach pie on eggnog crust is still too fresh in my mind.  Such a great idea in theory, so bad in execution . . . ah well.  That's why I call it recipe development.  If at first you don't succeed . . .

Making focaccia this way calls for a 12 inch round deep dish pizza pan.  I don't have one.  Since I never know what size kitchen we'll be living in at our next house, I try not to collect single-purpose items (hello, asparagus steamer, I'm talking 'bout you!).  I do have a 12 inch cast iron skillet though.  That's what I used for this focaccia, and I recommend using one if you also have one.  The resulting bread was thicker than my usual pizza crust, crisp on the bottom like my cornbread, delightfully chewy on the inside, and topped with a flavorful combination suggested by my spouse from items we had on hand in the fridge/freezer.  The toppings added to the flavor of the base, but didn't overpower it.  I've said in my Pizza Primer that less is more, and it sure is true here.  You really don't want to glop on heavy toppings or sauces here.  At least, not the first time you make it.

Who knows what I'll do next time, though clever blog readers may think I've already done it with this Salmon, Goat Cheese, and Arugula Pesto pizza--though that is baked and topped differently, and even a bit different ratio of flours for the dough.  All good, though, and yes you are quite bright!