Squash, Mustard Greens, and Chick Pea Curry (Fast From The Farm Share)

A quick vegetarian stew of sautéed zucchini and yellow squash with mustard greens and chick peas in a prepared masala sauce.  Bring the farm share home and have supper on the table quickly.

For other recipes using Mustard Greens, please see my Mustard Greens Recipes Collection. For other recipes using Cooking Greens, please see my Recipes for Cooked Greens Collection. For other recipes using Summer Squash, please see my Summer Squash Recipes Collection. 

These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share. For other Greens recipe ideas from around the web, please follow my Greens board on Pinterest.

I've categorized fast recipes on this site as Quick Takes, and before I discovered some wonderful Wednesday link ups I used to post fast recipes on Thursdays, because Thursday is one of the days that I'm running kids around right up until suppertime.
However, I've been kicking around the phrase "Fast from the Farm Share" in my head for a while, so I'm going to share an occasional series of recipes that can get on the table quickly using ingredients from the CSA farm share (or your garden, or the farmer's market, or grocery store).

You'll notice I'm relying on a prepared sauce for this stew.  Sure, I can make my own masala (with chicken and chick peas here, or with patty pan squash and ground beef here, or with sweet potato, chicken, and chick pea here) but those are slow cooker recipes which don't fit with the fast theme.

This recipe is for those nights when you've got fresh vegetables that you need to eat and no time/desire to think about what to do with them or make some elaborate concoction.  It comes together quickly (cooking the rice takes longest, so if you've got the option, I'd set up the rice cooker before work, or have a kid start the rice cooker after school, or buy precooked rice) and tastes wonderful. And my kids snarfed up the mustard greens very quickly this way (magical naan, that is) so that's a win in my book.

Chocolate Zucchini Waffles

I never set out to make zucchini waffles.  I'm such a fan of shredded zucchini pancakes/latkes, with butter and parmesan, that I think of zucchini nearly always as a savory, not a sweet. [Heed the words!  Pay no attention to this cake or these muffins!]

When I get overwhelmed with zucchini in the summer I reflexively grab the Food Processor, slap on the 'fine shred' disc, and shred those puppies up before freezing cups of shredded squash in bags.  I've noticed I get about 1/2 cup of squash back, when it's thawed and I've squeezed all the water out, so this summer I will be packing 2 cup bags, though right now all the garden volunteers are pie pumpkins, not zucchini, so I'm not overwhelmed.  Yet.  

Just another week in Squashzilla-land.

In the dead of winter (see photo below), when even my never-say-die Swiss chard has given up, these bags of green goodness cheer me and make me want to celebrate. With chocolate.  It's good to celebrate with chocolate, right?

Try these now, or shred and freeze some zucchini to have a mini summer celebration this winter.  Either way, you're in for a treat.

Baked Eggplant Chip Pesto Pizza

Cheesy, crunchy, breaded eggplant slices on a pesto pizza crust spread with extra pesto and topped with shredded Italian and crumbled feta cheeses.

If you've been or known a picky eater, could you ever imagine that picky eater to say "this spaghetti sauce needs more cowbell some eggplant"?  

My kids were picky, or at least not game for any vegetable, when we first started getting a CSA farm share.  Ever since I figured out that I could take the farm share eggplant and puree it with other vegetables to make spaghetti sauce (my first ever posted-on-the-internet recipe, at Tasty Kitchen, is here) I haven't had eggplant the way I love to eat it--breaded and covered with cheese.  Since the kids will eat eggplant in spaghetti sauce, that's what we do with our farm share eggplant.  Period.

Until this blog happened along, which probably coincided with me thinking that, just this once, I'd like to eat eggplant as the star of its own show, not as a bit player in an ensemble.  I've been all about treating myself this summer, making foods that I want to eat, and this is another one of those.  It's my hope that you'll also benefit from my self-pampering.

This is the third time recently that I've posted a recipe-within-a-recipe, and I hope I'm not violating some sort of blogger laws or setting up some unrealistic expectations.  Just like you don't need to make pizza with your Sun Dried Tomato Pesto, nor do you need to use Kale Hummus in your Fattoush Dip, you don't need to make Baked Eggplant Chips the way I describe below in order to make Baked Eggplant Chip Pizza.  You can make them another way.  The first eggplant chip recipe I ever had was from my CSA in Virginia, Blenheim Organic Gardens, and you can find Becky's tasty eggplant chip recipe here at the Washington Post.

I wanted a breaded cheesy crunchy sort of eggplant chip, and I had a hunch, when I got a great coupon for Kraft Fresh Takes (not sponsored, I bought this because it was a good deal and I wanted to play), that instead of coating chicken or fish I could coat slices of summer vegetables.  I tried it with zucchini,  patty pan squash, and eggplant.

I got a little carried away.

With the leftover eggplant (because it's frequently about the leftovers around here) I decided to toss it onto a pizza.  This was a good call--the breaded eggplant slices retained their crunchy cheesy eggplant goodness.

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!

Grilled Veggie Ciabatta Pizza

This was a fun, fast, and easy pizza to make--and to eat.  I'm sharing this today in part because while I find it pretty easy to throw together pizza dough most weeks due to near-constant practice, I know that making your own dough can seem very intimidating (pie crust intimidates me).
That's a big reason why I brain-dumped my Pizza Primer blog post, to demystify the whole thing.  But I don't always make my own dough--or buy a ball of pre-made dough from the store.  Some times I get pre-baked pizza crusts, like here or here.
And sometimes, I'm in the mood for pizza without all the pizza crust foolishness.  Plenty of folks rave about naan or pita pizzas--they sound great to me, if only my kids would save me some naan.  Milk and naan--they don't stick around in our house waiting to be consumed.  Reminds me--I'm thinking the Indian-spiced slow cooker patty pan and beef dish to appear on Monday? Yes? No?  Back to pizza . . . I like to experiment with different breads for our pizzas.

You know French bread pizzas?  When I make them, from a loaf of day old French or Italian bread (I still call them all French bread pizzas after Stouffer's started the trend for me) they are usually too thick and too hard to bite after baking.  I do love how easy it is to make them, though--no dough skills or extra time necessary--so I keep on trying.  When I saw take & bake ciabatta bread marked down, I initially wasn't thinking pizza, but when a recent Friday afternoon loomed and I didn't have dough made, inspiration struck.

Using the par-baked bread means that the crust is just crisp enough when the toppings are warmed and the cheese is melted.  This crust is an excellent vehicle for a wide range of toppings--but to keep it on the easy side, check your refrigerator.  You've grilled veggies this summer, right?  Got any leftovers?

I tossed my leftover veggies (zucchini, yellow squash, bell pepper, radish and red onion) with goat cheese, fresh parsley and a bit of cooked sausage and used that as one of my toppings.  Just plain cheese on the other half for those in the household who aren't embracing the grilled veggie concept.  Yet.  I'm working on them her.

I think this would make an excellent appetizer, or an excellent pizza for a party--you throw it together in minutes, shoot, it takes longer to preheat the oven--and each half can be its own blank canvas to decorate as you desire.

Nutella Zucchini Muffins

I'd like to finally welcome Matt Damon to the stage. (Seriously, click on the link for an explanation in my Molasses Date Oatmeal muffin post.  Otherwise I'll just sound weird, OK?)

I realize this is the third zucchini recipe I've posted in a row.  I'm not apologizing, because my goal is to share something new for you to do with the glut of zucchini with which you may be blessed.  However, we're taking a break from zucchini after today's Monday Muffin recipe.  Wednesday I've got a fast fresh tomato sauce, and Friday I'll have a use for any regrown celery leaves you may have--Buffalo Chicken, Spring Onions, and Celery on a Buttermilk Pesto Pizza crust.

In the dog days of summer, when the squash just keep coming in the garden and the farm share, I shred a lot of zucchini.  Some of it gets mixed in with other veggies to help stretch meat for tacos or burgers.  The rest of it gets frozen all by itself, in 1 cup portions, for more zucchini-centric recipes.  Here's one way I'm feeding my family from the farm share all year 'round.

These muffins have a texture almost like a light chocolate cake.  They are delicious as an after-school snack, warm with a bit of butter or buttery spread.  You could easily go all whole wheat for the flour if you choose.

Yes, the bag says Squashzilla.

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.

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.

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.

Zucchini-Refried Bean-Corn Enchiladas (cooking from the freezer stash)

These vegetarian enchiladas are stuffed with shredded zucchini, refried beans, and sweet corn. This hearty filling can be made with previously frozen squash, helping you to use your August zucchini crop in recipes year round.

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A zucchini recipe this week?  And it's March and there's snow all over?  The blog is about using the farm share all year long, you know.  And where I live (not much grows during the winter) that means getting creative!

Yep, that's over 7 pounds of Squashzilla one week in July.  Volunteer--I didn't plant that.

When your garden gives you this overabundance, you need to be creative.  When your garden is producing this amount and you're getting weekly boxes from the farm share, you need to think outside the box.


Unfortunately for me, when I'm surrounded with farm fresh vegetables at the height of the season, I am not always thinking clearly.  It's so easy to have a salad, or zucchini pancakes, or some simple unadorned veggies in the summertime.


Fortunately for me (and you!) my family gave me a rockin' awesome food processor for Mother's Day. I'd put an affiliate ad link in here to show you, but the only ones coming up are ridiculously expensive.  It's a simple Kitchen Aid, I think it's a 9 cup.  Beats the snot out of the Braun food chopper I was using before. Bed Bath and Beyond coupon-worthy.


Luckily, while my brain was unable to think outside the (farm share) box in the summertime, I grabbed the Fine Shred disc of my food processor and reduced all the Squashzilla to freezer bags of shredded squash.  I've added a few here and there to meals.


Today I had a hankering for enchiladas.  We so enjoyed these enchiladas, but I didn't feel like waiting to roast a squash out of the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in the corner of the breakfast nook.  I did, however, have a can of refried beans and my put up veggies in the little fruit and veg freezer.

Thinking outside of box?  Got it covered.