Sea Salt, Caramel, and Chocolate Matzoh Toffee

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Got leftover matzoh?  Make a decadent dessert! This buttery toffee is topped with caramel and sea salt for an irresistible treat.

I gave myself an unexpected gift over the weekend.  I single tasked. 

I single tasked the activity of enjoying nature.

After a busy morning of cooking followed by a walk in the woods while my spouse photographed the daffodils [all of these flower photos are his, I was just the dog wrangler--which, lemme tell you, 3 zippy leashes is HARD!] followed by errand running--I found myself sitting in the grass next to Crystal the Composting Guinea Pig.

I'd brought out with me my copy of MELT [so I could see what I needed in addition to the Humboldt Fog cheese I picked up at the store earlier], my phone [since I hadn't even checked email yet that day], and some sun tea.

While Crystal moved methodically through the clover I quickly scanned both the cookbook and the unread emails then started to play a game on the phone.  

It was a gorgeous morning and all of a sudden it hit me.

I needed to put down the phone and just experience the warm sun on my prone body, the tickly grass underneath me, and the sound and feel of the breeze.

I lay in the grass in the warm sunshine like I haven't done in probably 30 years.  And when Crystal's maid my daughter came to let us know the cage was ready, I felt refreshed.

[I'd love to say that the feeling lasted throughout the day, but if you've ever nagged a teen to write an essay for an application that they are not motivated to write, you'll understand what an inner-peace destroying experience that can be.]

As I write this, though, I'm sitting on the porch with a Wee Oliver Picklepants in my lap.  His good eye is scanning the yard for pretty, but he's not budging from his comfy perch so all the birds that are enjoying the Spring are safe.  I've regained a bit of that peace.

Spend sometime outdoors when you can.

Single task while you're doing it.

Give yourself that gift.

Overnight Yeasted Carrot Waffles

A light and fluffy waffle tinged with shredded carrots for a Spring breakfast--start it the night before, then enjoy waffles without having to wake up enough to measure the batter ingredients.

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I promise you I am not that distractible . . . Squirrel! . . . I just have so. many. recipes to share and I want to share them all now.  Easter, Passover, Grilled Cheese month, Spring--ack!  But I don't want to post more than Monday/Wednesday/Friday.  What's a blogger to do?

When I started hashtagcarrotweek last month I fully intended to share 3 recipes, take a brief break from carrots and post some other seasonal recipes, then wrap it up with these waffles.

In the meantime my girl Julie has done WaffleWeek, so I'm awfully excited to point you over to Texan New Yorker if you're intrigued with waffles and want some more options, perhaps without yeast . . .

Me and yeast, we are friends--joining forces on pizza dough and bread.  Me and cutting butter or lard or shortening to make pie crust?  Not so much.

This is not my first rodeo throwing vegetables into a waffle.  I started with Butternut Squash Waffles, continued through Sweet Corn and Blueberry Waffles, and now carrots?  Carrots.  And not just carrots.  Yeasted Carrot Waffles. Overnight Yeasted Carrot Waffles, if like me you're perkier in the evening and can assemble the batter and let it hang out in the fridge, so that all you need to do in the morning is preheat the waffle iron while your tea is steeping.


Each time I incorporate vegetables into waffle batter I find the flavor of the vegetable subtly enhances the finished product.  The result is a waffle that is familiar enough for those who just want a waffle, dammit, without all this vegetable tomfoolery, but different enough to be a unique change of pace as well.  It is a versatile waffle.

The first time I made these was for a traditional weekend breakfast.  Subsequent editions got served with fried chicken [store bought--inches of oil are like me and cutting in butter].  All good, though.  This is a flexible, flavorful, unexpected way to incorporate Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share carrots into your family's meal.

For more recipes using carrots, please see my Carrot Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

I'm sharing more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like a good peek behind the scenes like I do, follow me on Instagram. Need a good read? I'm sharing articles of interest on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Creamy Tomato Soup with Home-Canned Tomatoes

A creamy tomato soup made with home-canned tomatoes, pesto, and roasted garlic.

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Grilled Cheese Sandwich month (season? day? week?) is coming, and before I share my fig-filled, or my tomato jam-spread, or my guacamole & corn grilled cheese creations I'd like to share the perfect accessory for all good grilled cheese sandwich meals--tomato soup.

Truth be told, I was a huge fan of the red & white can as recently as last year.  Heck, some of my favorite winter school day breakfasts as a kid were cups of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich. What changed for me was the realization that I had the key ingredient to make a deliciously flavorful tomato soup right at my fingertips--a pantry with jars of home-canned tomatoes.  I'm going to tell you about canning tomatoes when it's NOT canning season for one reason:  to lay the groundwork/plant the seed in your brain, so that when summer comes you've had time to mull over the concept. [I'm honest and upfront with my brainwashing techniques.]

Canning need not be 3 generations slaving away in the kitchen. But it's fun if it turns out that way :)

Putting up tomatoes is a terrific way to step into the Big Scary World of Canning.  With a tall pot, a bunch of quart-sized canning jars--I would borrow from a friend a funnel and a pair of tongs jar lifter your first time--you can have the building blocks for a variety of meals.  If you don't grow your own tomatoes you've got plenty of options for amassing a canning quantity.

You do NOT need all of these supplies to can a few quarts of crushed tomatoes!

• If you've got neighbors who are overrun with ripe tomatoes, especially neighbors who are older than you, offer to put up the whole mess and share the preserved bounty with the gardener. 
• Ask your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmer to sell you extras.  Your farmers will be delighted to have ripe tomatoes go quickly and easily to a good home.
• If you don't participate in a CSA but do frequent the farmer's market, tell a farmer that you're interested in "seconds" or "canning tomatoes", and when tomatoes are abundant you'll be doing each other a favor buying ripe and ready, perhaps slightly cosmetically damaged, tomatoes for a good price.

When I put up crushed tomatoes I follow the basic method--shared on the Pick Your Own website, on the National Center for Home Food Preservation website, on the Food In Jars blog, and in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (Amazon affiliate link) that I checked out of my local library a bunch of times before buying my own copy.

Gratuitiously long caption as I don't know how to make words appear when you hover over the photo (though I do know how to link parts of a collage to other posts):  All you need to can is a tall pot with some sort of shelf to keep the jars off the bottom; and jars, and water--lots of water; and a heat source to heat that water (and heat the tomatoes, too); tomatoes, lemon juice and salt and a sharp knife to cut the tomatoes plus a bucket to store the peels before they go to the compost, and a flat surface for them to cool, and a pantry to store your bounty. And the floating tomatoes?  I screwed up and let them get cool in between packing and processing. No problem, still good eating.

Canning crushed tomatoes is safe and easy if you follow the directions.  Just peel the tomatoes, squish the tomatoes, pack the squished tomatoes into clean jars with salt and lemon juice, and stick 'em under boiling water according to the methods I've linked to above.
Honestly, it's trickier to bake a cake--and not from scratch, I'm talking from a mix.  Did you measure the oil and water correctly? Are there shells in the batter? How do you know you've beaten it long enough?  How do you know if the pan is properly prepared?  How do you know if the top springs back enough? Sheesh! Tomatoes are acidic enough to start off, and you further make the environment hostile to undesirable stuff by adding lemon juice to each jar.  Follow the method from the sites above and you'll be successful. [/brainwashing]

Once you've got a quart of crushed tomatoes, soup is a short simmer away.  [Or a long simmer, if your spouse is unexpectedly delayed and dinner is late.]

For other recipes using tomatoes, canned or otherwise, please see my Red & Yellow Tomato Recipes Collection or my Green Tomato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

I'm sharing more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like a good peek behind the scenes like I do, follow me on Instagram. Need a good read? I'm sharing articles of interest on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Roasted Asparagus with Chicken Jelly Noodles

Roasted asparagus served over noodles in a rich creamy chicken stock gravy.

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I'm seeing asparagus all over the store now, tender thin sticks of what my spouse and I refer to as 'spargel' since we fell in love in Germany [do not picture us getting all Lady and the Tramp with asparagus, because that would be silly and untrue].  I will undoubtably buy some spargel soon, because it's nearly Spring and Spring makes me think of asparagus, even if I won't get any until our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share gets harvesting in May.  Locally, the asparagus is no where near harvest time--shoot, my daffodil leaves just peeked above ground 2 days ago.


I discovered roasting asparagus 8 years ago thanks to Alanna and last year discovered roasting asparagus for breakfast thanks to Aimée.  I'll be doing both techniques this year.  This recipe uses roasted asparagus, and on Friday I'll share a pizza using leftover roasted asparagus.  It's a terrific preparation method to have in your asparagus arsenal. [That's weird, right? Asparagus arsenal?]


This is not a vegetarian meal, but it is one without meat on the plate.  If you're looking for a light but flavorful Spring supper, read on.  After I posted how I make chicken stock I learned from Meghan at Whole Natural Life to keep on cooking down my chicken stock until it was very concentrated, and when I do that I get jars of chicken jelly.

This particular batch may have been extra concentrated due to excessive time spent surfing the internet (no, I was not on Pinterest).  I'd safely say it simmered a good 4 hours.  I was checking on it, but I just let it keep on going.  The resulting stock, when chilled, is solid and spoonable.


On my FB page, Karen suggests mixing this chicken jelly with flour and frying it in butter for a decadent treat. Sounds divine to me, and I appreciate the suggestion!


If you have concentrated chicken stock and children, your kids will dub this Chicken Jelly and the name will stick.  Then, when you want an easy weeknight meal, pick up some asparagus, head over to Alanna's to learn how to roast it, and start the pasta water.

For more recipes using asparagus, please see my Asparagus Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

I'm sharing more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like a good peek behind the scenes like I do, follow me on Instagram. Need a good read? I'm sharing articles of interest on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?


Note:  This involves making a sauce starting with a roux.  My friend Sheri taught me that I need to let my butter and flour get nut brown, not just lightly tanned, for best flavor.  So I do--while watching carefully so it doesn't burn.  The stock can simmer for an extra hour, but a roux?  Heck no.  Constant vigilance!  The sauce comes together pretty quick, so I was kinda roasting/boiling/sauce making simultaneously.  This could almost be a Fast from the Farm Share dish, and I will load it under the Quick Take section of the Recipe Index by Category along the right side bar (---> if you're reading this on the website.  If you're reading this via email . . . well just picture it).

Hoisin Sesame Swai with Hoisin-Roasted Radishes

Hoisin sauce and a crunchy ginger-sesame seed blend coat this firm white-fleshed fish, served with tender roasted radishes and Asian-seasoned sautéed beet greens

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Do you ever wear matching clothing? Complete track suits?  Do you wish for Adult Garanimals with coded tags that help you decide if your top and your bottom clothing choices coordinate?

Where am I going with this?

It's not very usual for me to have all the foods matchy-matchy on the plate.  [Heck, the plates don't even match each other.] Apparently I tend to get all matchy-matchy with Swai.

Like I said the first time I posted a Swai recipe, "Swai is a white fleshed fish in the "Good Alternative" category on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch website.  Protein that is a Good Alternative, that is a great price, is good for me." That remains true today. In addition to the beef in the freezer (link to my beef recipe round up featuring 106 recipes from 66 bloggers) and the wild sockeye salmon from Seldovia Point, AK, the fish we eat the most is Swai.  It's useful in a variety of preparations, I've shared some related links below.

We often like to eat fish with rice, so I wanted to try an Asian preparation for this Swai.  I picked up this sesame seed blend at a TJMaxx/Marshall's, taking a page from Heather's shopping tips, and thought it would be good rolled around inside out sushi as a coating for fish.  From there the idea of coating the fish in hoisin sauce was a no-brainer.

Since I also had radishes from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share to play with, I opted to give them a similar coating and see how it played in Peoria the dining room. The result was surprisingly good.  Roasting brings out the sweetness from the radishes and the hoisin provides them with a nice tang.  We all enjoyed this meal, and to get the entire family to enjoy radishes is an accomplishment worthy of a Week In Review post.

On the plate you'll also see beet greens.  Specifically, Asian Beet Greens.  This bonus recipe is up on my FB page and my G+ page if you'd like to check it out.


For more recipes using radishes, please see my Radish Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

I'm sharing more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like a good peek behind the scenes like I do, follow me on Instagram. Need a good read? I'm sharing articles of interest on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

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.

Finnish Summer Soup--with Kale

Other possible post titles:  'Finish All The Kale' Finnish Summer Soup, and Kale Keskäkietto 

I hesitated to post this recipe now, because I'm not like Lydia who enjoys soup year 'round, or Karen who is addicted to soup.  I need cool weather, or at least a rainy day, to enjoy a comforting bowl of soup.  However, I've had several opportunities to enjoy this soup this Spring, so I thought I'd share and give you another kale idea since Spring 'tis the season for greens.

Because eating up each week's bag of kale from the CSA farm share doesn't come as effortlessly as eating up, say, a pint of strawberries, I need to work at it.  Throw in kids and it's a bit more effort.  This is where soup comes in.  I've found that if I puree vegetables in soup, my kids will eat them.  Even if it's green.  In the fall I put up kale (tear out the stems--feed them to the composting pigs or add them to the worm bin--blanch and freeze the leaves) and enjoy kale in hearty soups like this one.  But I'm not in a hearty soup mood when there's so much green outside.  Instead I wanted a summer soup.

This recipe comes from a little blue cookbook I've had for a long time, Fantastically Finnish: Recipes and Traditions by Beatrice Ojakangas, though I see it was published the same year as my son, and he's only like 5 or something I think.  I'm sure my mom picked it up, along with its Scandinavian brethren, at a Christmas bazaar.  Mom gave it to me because I spent a summer working in Finland and learned to cook a few recipes there.  Whenever I'd scan through the book this soup, Kesäkietto, always caught my eye.  In the head notes, the recipe comes from Esther Louma of Duluth, MN.  As written, it's a vegetarian recipe.  Because I recently had not one but 2 chicken carcasses burning a hole in my freezer, I spent a day making a pot of chicken jelly and substituted a quart of chicken jelly for the water (see NOTE below).  Since some varmint nibbled my pea plants (and parsley, and fennel, and tomato, and dill, though I have rescued almost all of them) I could not add the peas that this recipe calls for.  Therefore, I've utterly changed the recipe but kept the spirit of it--spring vegetables gently cooked in a milk-based broth.

I recommend you make this on a rainy late Spring/early Summer day, using whatever you've got available.  The nice thing about this recipe is that it makes 4 servings--so it's great if you have fewer eaters in the house, as you won't be eating this soup for a week.

Strawberry Sour Cream Brown Sugar Soaked Oat Muffins

The winning combination of strawberries, brown sugar, and sour cream flavors these whole grain muffins, with an extra boost from soaked oats.

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Forget your shortcakes, your chocolate coatings, your balsamic glazes.  For me, the best way to enjoy a fresh local strawberry is to grab it by the leaves, dunk it into sour cream, then plunge it into brown sugar.  Then get out of the way of that strawberry as it gets into my mouth!  I don't share well sometimes.

Sadly, the local strawberry season is over in the blink of an eye, and the Certified Wildlife local varmints attempt to pilfer my backyard patch even faster.  I have learned that I must gorge myself on strawberries, sour cream, and brown sugar as soon as the berries come into my house, and if any are left over I bake with them.  If you manage to put any strawberries up, this recipe will also work with frozen berries, or slightly older, softer berries, as you're going to smash them anyway.


It's yet another variation on my Soaked Oat Muffin recipe, which I need to update to include links to some of the muffins I'm enjoying.  Like this one!  Remember that this recipe is best after the oats soak at least an hour and up to overnight.  You can even combine the oats and buttermilk in a container in your fridge for several days before use.

I wanted to share how our household generates very little waste with the strawberries, so I thought I'd pose the composting pigs in the strawberry patch with the strawberry tops.  The pigs were not informed of my plans, and ran amuck in the strawberries instead.  Did you know pigs will eat the plants, too, not just the fruit?  Now you do.  In the future, they can eat alfresco only in the clover.

For more recipes using strawberries, please see my Strawberry Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me who think that strawberries shipped in from Off taste like water, and prefer to eat strawberries that taste like . . . well, strawberries. I'm pinning lots of berry and other recipes to my Pinterest boards, follow me there. I'm sharing the progress of my own strawberry patch (can't get more local than the back yard) on my Instagram feed, follow me there. I'm sharing articles that catch my eye on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Basic Kale Pizza Dough (Pizza Night!)

The first weeks of a seasonal summer CSA farm share are like the Spanish Inquisition:  no one ever expects it, and by it I mean all the greens.  You sign up for a summer share and you're thinking tomatoes, corn,  cucumbers, zucchini.  Those crops are all heat-loving summer crops.  What is ripe in August is not what is ripe in June.  In June, because what is ready was started weeks/months before in the cool spring, so you get greens.  Arugula, beet greens, cabbage, collard greens, mustard greens, salad greens, spinach, Swiss chard, turnip greens, and kale, kale, kale. (See the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient for ideas!)

It took me a while to embrace the greens, I admit.  Oh, not the salad mix, or spinach, those are pretty easy to love.  And Swiss chard is home and mother to me as I grew up eating it from our backyard garden.  My trouble with spring greens is this:  while I like cooked greens, by May/June I'm craving light, fresh fare, not long-simmered flavorful "pots of greens" goodness.

Yes, I could put the greens up to enjoy in winter soups.  But it's not even summer yet, and I'll be getting more greens at the end of the CSA season as the weather turns to fall.  I needed to find ways to enjoy my spring greens NOW.

My current obsession is sautéed beet greens and spring onions seasoned with sherry vinegar and topped with a sunny side up egg.  On rainy days, and we've had a few, we're enjoying a Finnish summer soup with kale.  In the meantime, however, it's time for a Friday Night Pizza Night and this time, I bring you a basic kale pizza dough. [Does my use of the term basic mean that in the future there will be another type of kale pizza dough (link to Spicy Kale Pizza Dough)?  Why yes, yes it does. Clever reader, you.]
Not interested in kale on a pizza?  Try my Visual Pizza Recipe Index for other ideas!

Sautéed Beet Greens and Spring Onions with Sherry Vinegar

(Subtitle:  A soul-satisfying meal)

If you just want to know how to make a fast, simple, healthy and colorful side dish using fresh beet greens and spring onions, or how to take that side dish and make it a complete meal by topping it with an egg, skip over this next bit.  As physically satisfying as this combination of foods is though, when I paused and thought about it, this meal was satisfying on a soul-ullar level as well.

I've shaken the hands that planted the beet seeds in open flats back in February, the hands that transplanted the young seedlings to cell packs, the hands that moved the tender beet plants into the fertile soil of the hoop house in April, and the hands that harvested those beets last week.  [I deliberately left out weeding, because Farmer Josh tells me that they plant the beets densely so they shade out any potentially-germinating weeds.]  I've shaken the hands that gathered the eggs, like generations have before them, on Keener Farm.  I've even scratched the ears of the dogs and cats that live on the farms where these foods grew. 

All of those experiences align in this bite of my lunch, and that makes for a much deeper connection to my food.  I like that.  If you have the opportunity (and this is the second state I've lived in where I've found this opportunity), try it some time.  See that Local Harvest gadget in the upper left corner?  Find a farmer near you by searching your zip code.

Have your meal satisfy you on multiple levels.

Fish Taco Enchiladas

My dining room table is a battlefield.

I don't mean the battle over homework, though that also occurs at the dining room table, the breakfast nook table, and the Lego table.  I also don't mean the battle for Europe, or orange train cars, or vending cart cards, or goats for women.

Though as an aside, if you want to add more board games to your Game Nights I highly recommend the Board Game Family's recommendations. My spouse, with that site's advice, kickstarted our twice weekly FGNs after years of trying and failing to get a FGN routine going. And these games we play?  Great for adults without kids, too--they are just plain fun, unless you're malicious like my daughter playing Spot It--she always wins.

No, in fact I mean the How To Fold A Burrito Properly battle.  There are 4 of us eating, and we each fold our burritos in a different way.  And of course each one of us thinks we're right.  (My spouse is.) You'll notice in my Mu Shu (ish) Chicken Burrito post that I completely sidestepped the folding debate.  I'm sidestepping it again here, this time by making enchiladas! (I'm sure this says something about my personality or birth order or whatnot, but perhaps it's just that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter to me how you fold your burrito.  Your sushi rolling is a different story.) I'm sharing this now because it is a tasty recipe and helped me to add variety in the proteins that we eat.

It just makes sense that eating a variety of foods in our diet is best, you know?  My family is fortunate that eating seasonally from our CSA farm share means that the produce in our diet (and that of the composting guinea pigs) is naturally varied.

I mean, I'm not going to the grocery store on Saturday and buying a head of lettuce, a package of tomatoes, a bag of carrots, and a bunch of bananas each and every week all year 'round.  Instead I'm yearning for tomatoes amidst the greens in May and overrun with squash and eggplant in August.  Such is the life of a CSA subscriber!  And that's the way I like it--eating from my CSA farm share appeals to me in ways I never considered when we started 8 years ago. I thought it would be similar when we got part of a cow for our freezer.  And it was, in part--we tried beef tongue tacos and ox tail stew for the first time.

What I didn't realize was that we'd end up eating more beef than we usually do, just because we have it in the house.  I have to work at eating protein sources other than beef--which is why I was tickled to see frozen Swai (aka Pangasius or Basa) fillets for $1.99/pound at the store.  Swai is a white fleshed fish in the "Good Alternative" category on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch website.  Protein that is a Good Alternative, that is a great price, is good for me.

But what to do with the Swai fillets?

I had some leftover shredded cabbage/coleslaw mix, cilantro, Greek yogurt, some of my home-canned salsa verde made with farm share tomatillos and roasted Hatch chiles from the grocery store down the street, and enchilada-size tortillas, so you can easily see why I went in the direction I did here.  While it is technically an enchilada, it's not covered with a ton of cheese and a rich sauce.  The cabbage still had a bit of crunch to it, the fish was firm, the whole dish just worked.  If you have Swai or any firm white-fleshed fish (tilapia, cod, perch and whitefish are all on the approved list of the website) try this twist on the traditional fish taco, avoid the burrito-folding battles, and add variety to your plate.

Jill's Very Veggie Pizza

I don't have a 'finished' photo of this pizza, and there's a very good reason for it.

I worked at a restaurant during college, but I never created dishes from scratch.  I just followed recipes, opened cans and cartons, and spent a lot of time cleaning up with my buddy Hobart.  When I bring foods to other people, it's usually a recipe I'm comfortable with--though not always.  Never before had I made a unique dish and just hoped it would turn out OK as I delivered it to someone else.  I didn't eat this pizza:  Jill did. [And I didn't snap a quick photo of the finished pizza because I was racing to get it to her while still hot.  I like to think I've got the 'make a pizza at home' thing down, but I'm hopeless with the pizza delivery part.]

When I offered to bring supper to her family one Friday Night Pizza Night, I asked Jill to tell me exactly what kind of pizza she liked.  I know exactly what I like on a pizza and I wanted to give Jill what she wanted.  She said "oh, I love veggies."  With no "I hate mushrooms and onions" or "I'm sensitive to gluten" guidelines, I was pretty much free to do whatever I wanted.  I figured I'd play a little bit by starting with a spinach crust, but keep it not too crazy extreme.  Spinach, feta, pesto, mushroom and artichoke all play well together, so that's what I did.

Veggie-Pumped Picadillo--Tax Day Meat Stretching

A flavorful hearty main dish of ground meat and vegetables, seasoned with raisins, olives and sherry. Served over rice, this is a family-friendly way to stretch a pound of ground meat and use loads of vegetables.

My spouse eats a lot of olives during his deployments.  He tells me it's a combination of wanting to eat more vegetables yet not trusting the safety of the raw veggies available.  He returns from deployments dumping Tabasco on everything and asking me to fry eggs (only powdered "scrambled" eggs in theatre) and buy olives.  Lots of olives.

If you had asked before my spouse ever deployed to the Middle East if I liked olives, I would have told you a resounding "No!".  I'd tried but not liked black olives on a pizza, and I'd avoid green olives on a relish tray because I tarred them with the same olive branch brush.  So it surprised me, when he returned and ordered a pizza* with green olives on it, that I actually loved green olives on pizza.  In fact, I liked eating green olives off a relish tray.  I do like green olives after all.

Insert your own Dr. Seuss reference here.  I've already done a Dr Seuss-themed post. 

With my new-found love of green olives, their use in a recipe from my mom's old cookbook caught my eye.  I thought I could change it up (brown 1 pound of ground beef in 1 cup of oil?  really?) and it would be an excellent way to throw in extra put up veggies to stretch meat.  The result is sort of like "weird sloppy joes" according to my kids.  Unusual, but tasty all the same.

If you've waited until the last minute to file your taxes because you are not anticipating a refund, consider this recipe as a different way to stretch a pound of ground meat.  It works with beef, chicken, lamb, turkey, probably even venison.  Please note that this recipe calls for marinating the meat for a couple of hours before cooking.  You could do this in the morning and leave it in the fridge for the day, or throw it together in the afternoon if you are around.

Fried Rice with Greens and Chicken [Cooking with Teens: Episode One]

Yes, two rice dishes in a row.  I've broken a food blogging rule, but you only become a teenager once.

After a call to action to help fight hunger in my last post, I'd like to share something hopeful:  kids are being taught to cook with Bok Choy in school.  Is that a stretch on the hopefulness scale?

I don't think so--I sure didn't learn about Bok Choy until I was an adult. When I hear about folks who desire to improve their health by including more vegetables on their plates, part of the stumbling block is just plain not knowing about different kinds of veggies.  And, if you get a CSA farm share box, chances are excellent that it will contain items you've never seen before much less know how to incorporate into your meals (sorrel, I'm talking 'bout you).  So yeah, kids being taught about Bok Choy is a hopeful sign to me.

I am now the mom of two teenagers, so in honor of that momentous occasion I made slave-drove encouraged assisted my newest teen while she fixed supper.  In school, she'd made Chicken and Bok Choy Fried Rice, and she was forced planned to duplicate that for the family.  We only had cabbage, however, so there's the first lesson in cooking:

Use what you've got.

My girlie couldn't remember the exact specifics of the recipe, so we turned to technology--specifically the How To Cook Everything iPad app by Mark Bittman.  If you're interested in encouraging kids to cook, I recommend this app--it's $10 and I don't see a dime of that--because it's very thorough, easy to use, with clear illustrations, and has that cool techno-thing going for it that all the kids like these days.  Writing that made me feel older than being the mom of two teenagers already makes me feel, so I'll just leave it as "easy to use".

One of my goals for this summer (hey, helps to have something to look forward to) is that both kids pick up at least a meal a week, and in addition to cookbooks from the library and food blogs, the Bittman apps (we also have How To Cook Everything Vegetarian) are part of my strategy.  Guess what else, kids?  Lawn care!  You're beyond old enough and have had 2 summers w/ Dad doing the work for you.  Time to step up.

If you have Bok Choy, Chinese Cabbage, Savoy Cabbage, Napa Cabbage, Plain Old Ordinary Green Cabbage*, or what my farm shares term "Asian Greens", try this recipe.  Save the kale, mustard, collard, beet or turnip greens for other uses (see my visual Recipe Index by Ingredient for ideas).

*I have a fear of radicchio after attempting to make grilled radicchio, so you'll not see it on this blog.

My Favorite Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Cheddar, Pickled Turnips, Shredded Vegetables, and Hummus

Grilled cheese with hummus, shredded carrots & radishes, pickled turnips and lettuce.

When I shared a photo of a grilled cheese sandwich as the centerpiece of a lunch collage in this post on how to eat more veggies, I felt like I was teasing you. So I'm sharing a bit more about my favorite grilled cheese sandwich to inspire you, and hopefully make you hungry. I know I'm getting peckish.

Long on photos, short on words because honestly, this is just a simple grilled cheese sandwich.

Or is it?

If you're ever in the Cincinnati area and hungry, I recommend paying a visit to a Tom+Chee restaurant. They've got amazing grilled cheese sandwiches and delicious tomato soup.  My friend Holly told me about it, and whenever we can we swing by for a meal.  My favorite sandwich is the Hippy Chee.  It's got hummus, cucumber, tomato, and lettuce with your basic grilled cheese.  Tom+Chee manages to keep the bread toasty and warm, the cheese melty and hot, and the veggies cold and crisp.  It's addictive.  I'm still figuring out their technique--it involves a long spatula to fry both slices at the same time before lifting them off the heat, adding cold veggies, and mashing together--and I've found a way to incorporate my farm share veggies which delights me with the results.  Try it yourself!

Mushroom Medley with Caramelized Onion and Gorgonzola on Boboli (Pizza Night!)

I've been sharing a lot of meat-heavy recipes this week, so I thought I'd change it up a bit and share a meatless pizza.  It's inspired by a pizza I had when we got invited out for pizza by some friends.

I will never turn down a chance to share a meal with others, even if it's at a local pizza place and I already make a great pizza, exactly the way I like it, in my own home, nearly every Friday night (sled hockey/wheelchair basketball seasons and marching band season notwithstanding).

Do I sound like a Pizza Snob?  I hope not.  I really love food, especially when someone else makes it for me.  I do think that I make each pizza for my family with more love and care than the machines at the frozen pizza factory or the under-appreciated minimum wage workers at the local delivery place.  You can see it in the finicky way I separate and space my toppings, if not from the farm fresh and wholesome ingredients.

I'm so glad my friend Rose Ann invited the kids and I to join her family out for pizza at Pie-tanza.  I got a chance to scope out some different pizza topping combinations.  My favorite was caramelized onion and gorgonzola.

I was planning to make that pizza for this post--I had caramelized onion packages in the freezer and there was fresh gorgonzola marked down.  But we'd just come in from out of town, had no dough made, and were at the grocery store on a beer/milk/eggs/pizza crust run.

At the store, a box of marked down Gourmet Medley mushrooms caught my eye.  Why not?  To the best of my knowledge I've never had oyster, cremini, or shiiiiiiitake (say it like a penguin) mushrooms on a pizza.  First time for everything.  Glad I tried it--those mushrooms took an already awesome combination over the top!

Tremendously Green Pizza (Bacon, Cabbage, Caramelized Onion, Leek and Potato Pizza on a Spinach Crust) Pizza Night!

Oh goodness, where to start?  If I was all about pink pizzas last month for Valentine's day, this month I'm into green pizzas.  Well, there's also a mushroom medley coming up, and a salmon/arugula one for Good Friday, but still . . .  here at Farm Fresh Feasts, March comes in like a green pizza.

You'd better get a fork and knife for this pizza.  The crust barely has a chance to stand up to the onslaught of ingredients.  I mean, I knew that potatoes, cabbage, onions and bacon worked well together.  Everything goes better with bacon.  But when I got leeks in the farm share I couldn't help myself.  It also seems very appropriate for a St Patty's Day pizza, what with the potatoes and cabbage and utter green-ness of the thing.  Went well with beer, too.

I'd planned to do a leek, potato, and bacon pizza.  Three toppings, the title of the post wouldn't be too long, no biggie.  Leek and potatoes go together like salmon and oranges, zucchini and nutella, peanut butter and jelly.  But when I was snuffling around in my little fruit and veg freezer (which also happens to be the Extra Pizza Items freezer) debating between garlic oil or  _____ for the 'sauce', I saw the packet of caramelized onions I'd carefully saved.  Why not a layer of caramelized onions as the sauce?
Done!

So far, we've got a layer of caramelized onions, topped with potato slices, and leeks, and bacon.  That sounds pretty tasty, no?  Then I opened the fridge and saw the bags of Chinese cabbage and spinach from the farm share.  They were not getting any younger.  I know I love a spinach crust, and it was time to inflict a spinach crust on the rest of the family.  So the spinach went into the crust.  The cabbage (and you could use any cabbage you got for this, I'd think, though red cabbage would necessarily change the title), why not add that just to push this pizza over the edge?  Done!

Really,  if you've put up the ingredients as they come to you ripe/in season/on sale, this sort of thing isn't as crazy as it sounds.  It's not like I went to the store specifically to get the ingredients for this pizza. Ha!  I think the only thing I go to the store specifically for these days is milk, beer, and grapes.  Everything else just kind of happens.  Like my life!

Chicken Spinach Artichoke Pesto Pasta (Quick Take)

A simple & fast skillet supper with sautéed chicken breast, fresh spinach, prepared pesto and marinated artichoke hearts. Six ingredients, about 20 minutes, and you've got a tasty meal.

Updated in 2015 with new photos!

If you want to prepare a special meal that appears as if you've given a lot of thought to it but in fact you just realized that tonight was The Night and need to pull something out of your ear, read on.

I had a chicken breast, a bunch of spinach from the farm share, and a lot of cans of cream of chicken soup because they were a good price so I stocked up.  Yes, I use canned soup.  I tried making my own but it didn't come out as well as this stuff.  Everything in moderation.  While looking for inspiration for dinner, I decided to read the recipe on the can. In the surprise of the century, the recipe called for mixing the can of soup with pesto to make a sauce.  Hey, you know I've got pesto in the freezer!  I could make that recipe!

Not content to merely follow the recipe, I decided to boost the veggie content with my farm share spinach and some marinated artichokes.  I think I was in a race to see how fast I could empty a giant Costco-sized jar.  I did it in about a week, between pizzas, dips, and this.  New record.

This was fast and very delicious, if you are older than 14 and love the taste of artichokes.  The kids ate everything but the artichokes.  If you were going meatless I'd sub mushrooms for the chicken and use the soup of your choice.

Rolling in the Pizza: Basic Farm Fresh Feasts-a-boli (Pizza Night!)

You knew sooner or later I'd roll the pizza over, right?

I realize that there are endless variations on how to top a pizza, and I've barely scratched the surface of crust variations, but my spouse wanted a Nic-o-boli from Nicola Pizza in Rehoboth, Delaware for his birthday.

And we now live in Ohio.

And yes, I could order a frozen partially baked dozen shipped if I had to, but heck, I make pizza every week, so I should try this, right?

I did.

Then I tried a few other variations on the theme for good measure.  But those pizzas will be up later--for now, it's time to walk you through a basic rolled-over pizza, Farm Fresh Feasts style.  You gotta crawl before you can walk, right?  God bless physical therapists!  They taught my son to walk--right after his baby sister was born. Oy!  Bad timing!

I consulted the awesome The Best Pizza is Made at Home by Donna Rathnell German for specifics on baking time/temperature, and tried to recall the flavors of the basic Nic-o-boli.

Not-So-Simple Cheese Pizza (Fresh Tomato Pesto Sauce on Spinach Crust) Pizza Night!

"It's very greeeeeeeeeen."

So says my daughter when she spied this pizza coming out of the oven.  If the people you feed don't like green in general, try this pizza.  It's the first way I got my kids to eat spinach, and remains a tasty option when I get spinach in the farm share.  Especially when it's cold and my body craves warm things, not cold green smoothies.  Seasonal eating at its best.

This pizza uses the spinach crust from my Deployment Pizza, adds a (put up, from my freezer) fresh tomato pesto from Heather at In Her Chucks, and tops it off with a creamy Philly-Italian shred blend.  Tonight's tomato pesto sauce uses red farm share tomatoes, arugula pesto, and cashews.  It's delicious--as are all the permutations of fresh tomatoes, green herbs, and salted nuts that I've tried so far.  I cannot wait until summer when each week I plan to whip up a new fresh tomato pesto for the pizza.  For now, however, I'm delighted I discovered Heather's recipe in time to put up several batches of sauce for pizza.