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.

Open-faced Shaved Beet Sandwiches

I don't know why I'm spending my lunches waxing rhapsodically about beets and the farmers that grow them, but here I go again.  You know that when you get beets you should eat the greens pretty quickly, but the beets themselves will hang out in your fridge for a while.  You can shred and freeze them for later use, you can roast them and put them on or in a pizza, or you can make a tasty appetizer.  What I recently learned was that you can also love them raw.  All thanks to Martha.

Even though I work at a thrift shop, I'm still pretty frugal about shopping there.  I always check the clearance section when I get to work, and rarely scan the racks (oh who am I kidding--I check out the kitchen section all. the. time).  Whenever I see good magazines in the clearance rack, I snap them up.  I mean, it's the same thing year after year;  people always want to declutter their space and find new crock pot or grill recipes.  Only the trendy colors and vegetables (talking 'bout you, kale) change.

This is why I bought a couple of old issues of Martha Stewart Living--I figured I could find an idea or two for seasonal foods.  Late one night, while reading the March 1998 issue in between an article about building your own stone wall and an article about ordering seeds and bulbs from foreign catalogs, I read about shaving raw beets and tossing them with a balsamic vinaigrette.  The next morning I dutifully carried down the March 2004 issue and prepared to follow the recipe.  (Did you notice it was a different issue?  You're doing better than me.  I thought I'd hallucinated the whole balsamic-marinated shaved beet thing. What, you don't hallucinate about shaving beets? What do you hallucinate about?)  Because I was feeling lazy, I didn't walk back upstairs to get the correct year, I just winged it.  Then I winged it again the next day since it was so good.

This is easy, this is delicious, this is raw . . . give it a try.  The worst that will happen is your kitchen will look like an abattoir.  I've got a dark counter so I have no idea how bad it really could look.

Smoked Mozzarella, Feta, Mushroom and Pickled Pepper Pesto Pizza

Pickled pepper pesto pizza. I was giggling while writing this post (writing the old fashioned way, like the oats in my soaked oat muffins) in my breakfast nook. I thought I'd have a whole weekend to write at the sled hockey tournament, but instead I was yelling encouraging the team or watching some show about moonshine preppers panning for gold in deep-earth bunkers.  It was on TV, I couldn't look away.  My daughter will be home soon to claim her breakfast nook study space, so I must download this recipe before it flies out of my brain.

And you thought I took a photo of the ingredients to show you what's in this pizza. Ha!  I mean, it's great if you find the photos useful as well.  Really.

<days later>I'm still giggling to myself typing this post up in the lobby of the rec center where my son is at wheelchair basketball practice.  People are starting to stare.  Back to the point of this post.

I was cruising past the fancy cheese counter on another milk run (who is feeding these kids?) when I saw a magical markdown sticker in the vicinity of the mozzarella balls.  This time it was smoked mozzarella, so of course I snagged it to give it a try.

Heather (of garlic oil fame, though there's so. much. more. to her) eats marvelous pizza from some place called the Magic Mushroom.  Never been there.  But when Heather described her favorite pizza pie, it sounded like I could adapt it, play with my pickled peppers and pesto, and use this smoked mozzarella.

Smoked mozzarella is different than fresh mozzarella on a pizza in one dramatic way--it doesn't color outside the lines.  When topping a pizza with fresh mozzarella, you need to be careful not to put your slices too close to the edge for fear that they will run off all over your pizza stone.

Crispy mozzarella discs pried off a hot pizza stone are totally worth the burned fingertips.

Smoked mozzarella imparts a deeper, smoky (I know, surprise, I'll never be a food writer) taste, something which pairs well with the pesto and mushrooms.  The peppers and feta really make this pizza pop.

Normally, I don't feel like I make gourmet pizzas.  I'm just cobbling together the ingredients I've got on hand, from my farm share or good deals from the grocery store.  But describing this pizza . . . well, it sounds pretty fancy and high falutin' to me.

Sweet Corn and Blueberry Waffles

Sometimes it takes my subconscious a bit of time to catch up with the rest of my brain.

The other day I was looking at a recipe round up email digest when these cornmeal waffles with a blueberry compote caught my fancy.  I thought I'd throw some of my freezer stash of blueberries into the cornmeal waffles instead of a compote on top.  Then I thought I'd toss in some frozen sweet corn that I'd also put up, because for some reason sweet corn and blueberries sounded good.

What I didn't realize, until the day after I'd made these, was that I'd taken the flavor combo from this amazing corn, cucumber, and blueberry salad and stuck it in a waffle iron.  Without the cucumber--cucumber waffles do not sound appealing.

Corn and blueberries are amazing together.  The salad was delicious, as are these waffles.  I love fresh corn, and fresh blueberries, in the summer.  When you have them both fresh in your kitchen, I recommend making the salad.  I'm not much of a chunky waffle fan (and my son cannot stand oozing blueberries in his waffles) so I knew I wanted to chop up the frozen corn and blueberries from my freezer stash into smaller bits.  When you have both corn and blueberries frozen, I recommend making these waffles.  Besides, I tend to prefer summer salads and winter waffles.  And alliteration.  You do what you like.

Note:  these waffles are a bit softer straight out of the iron than other waffles that I've made.  Flip 'em over--they'll be sturdy enough for the buttery spread and real local maple syrup.  These freeze well and can be toasted for weekday breakfasts.  I tripled the recipe and made waffles for 7 hungry folks with 2 breakfasts worth of leftovers, but I'm sharing the recipe that serves 2-3 folks.

Green and Gold Basil Tomato Tart

A late summer tart of ripe yellow tomatoes on top of a bed of rich basil and cheese, baked in a tart shell. A decadent vegetarian dish.

Updated in 2015 with new photos!

This dish, more than any other one I make, screams SUMMER! to me.  I first tried it at a party in Hawaii, asked for the recipe on the spot, and have carried that stained sheet of paper around with me for many moves.  I've shared this dish with so many folks but I'm putting it up here too.

More photos, because I make this every year when I get yellow tomatoes!

Even though this is a summer dish to me, I also love it in the early fall, when we still have ripe tomatoes and I'm happy to turn on the oven.  If your family's favorite football team happens to wear green and gold, then making this tart for game night, using yellow tomatoes, would be extra festive.

For more recipes using ripe yellow and or red tomatoes, please see my Red & Yellow Tomato Recipes Collection (not to be confused with the Green Tomato Recipes Collection). For more recipes using up basil or other herbs, please see my Recipes Using Herbs Collection. These recipes are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, and seasonal garden abundance. Want even more tomato ideas? I've got a board devoted to tomato recipes from around the web on Pinterest. Curious how to use this blog? Click here.

Drunken Mushroom Pizza

I am not one for cute recipe names (I gravitate more to the prosaically literal titles) primarily because I'm thinking ahead. (This trait spills over into my parenting and annoys my kids who would like to, just once, get a snack from the goodies near the check out line.)

If I post a plain old ordinary "mushroom pizza" now, what if I wanted to post a different mushroom pizza in the future?  What would I call the second one?  I find it easier just to be exceedingly descriptive.

And Drunken Mushroom Pizza is exceedingly descriptive.

I made this pizza shortly before my spouse deployed, and I chose the topping for 2 reasons:  first, I knew I'd be the only mushroom eater in the house for a long stretch, and second, because I knew he'd not be drinking wine for a long stretch.  My goal was to duplicate my Skillet Mushroom Dip for Two on a pizza crust.  I poured the wine in my German wineglass (love the wine festivals, and love the German efficiency of having the measuring line so the server knows how much to fill the glass) thinking that I'd add a splash to the skillet and then drink the rest.

But I forgot and dumped the entire thing into the pan.  Whoops!  Change of plan, we'll just make a red wine reduction and get those 'shrooms drunk.  We enjoyed this pizza our last Friday night together, and I hope you enjoy it with someone you love (who also loves mushrooms).

Five Layer Mediterranean Chicken Dip

Would it be awful to suggest you make Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos just to have the leftover meat to make this appetizer?  Oh, and make Avocado Feta Dip (my variations are below) too, because that's what provides the foundation for this delicious appetizer.  If you don't eat chicken, scroll down and see the photo I took yesterday of something I think would go great instead, marinated chick peas, or skip it and just use the rest--still utterly delicious, but you'll have to call it a Four Layer Dip.

When I think of appetizers, I tend to return to my favorites time and again.  After all, they are favorites for a reason!  You can find them over there -----> in my Recipe Index By Category.  In the Appetizer category.  That was probably redundant.

I always like to try new things, however, so this recipe came about as a combination of wanting to try something new, wanting a familiar appetizer, and the desire to use what I've already got in my fridge.  Voila!  Taking a page from the many Mexican layer dips I've enjoyed over the years, I present to you Five Layer Mediterranean Chicken Dip.  Thank you to Linda for help with the name.  I can develop the recipes, grow the celery, prepare the food, take a few photos, write the post . . . but dreaming up recipe names is HARD! (Yes, I'll take some feta with that whine.)

About five minutes after I took the first photo, this was all that was left.  I know we were hungry, but holy cow!  This appetizer is delicious.  We ate it with pita chips and carrots, but home re-grown celery, snow peas, zucchini or yellow squash slices would all be great delivery vehicles for this stuff.

Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos

If you've been enjoying some early summer salads and are looking for a change of pace, try this dish.  It's a great as salad, and as an appetizer, and works year round as an easy supper.  Since this is a year round dish, it's been in the queue for a while waiting to be published.
Last week I was participating in a G+ Food Bloggers Community Education event with +Chef Dennis Littley  and +Larry Deane, and Larry said "give your readers what they want".  That struck home with me, so since I've gotten requests for this recipe, it's bumped some fresh-from-the-CSA recipes to come out today.  How did folks know to request this?  They saw the photo on my FB page, that's how.

I intended to title this post Greek Artichoke Lemon Olive Chicken in a Slow Cooker, in the interests of being as descriptive as possible.  Then I thought about how we actually ate the resulting chicken, asked folks on FB for suggestions, and decided that Slow Cooker Greek Chicken "Taco" Meat is really a more apt title.  This dish is cooked in my crock pot, and does contain the artichoke, lemon, and olives I originally mentioned, but we use it like we use taco meat:  stretched on tortillas, over grains, or in a salad.  And the leftovers?  They make the best Greek Five Layer Dip I've ever had.  Possibly the only Greek Five Layer Dip I've ever had, too.  Try this in the summer when it's too hot to cook, or during football season for a delicious dinner/appetizer that's just familiar enough not to be weird and a delicious twist on a classic.

I may have alluded to my cold kitchen over the winter months.  Either the reference to the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in the cold (down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit!) corner of my breakfast nook, or the photos of the frost on the inside of my kitchen window, seen in my Gardening Photos album on my FB page, would get the point across.
As cold as my kitchen is in the winter, it is correspondingly hot in the summer.  I do what I can, covering the East-facing windows with heat-blocking drapes in the morning and using the oven less.  I intend to get my grill on this summer, but there is another way to cook your food without heating the kitchen--a slow cooker.
This dish started with my desire to use my slow cooker to do the cooking while I was at work, and turned into a game to see how many complimentary layers of flavor I could add to the dish.  I was inspired by these other Greek Chicken Slow Cooker dishes, seen here and here, but since I had tortillas but no pitas, I went in a taco direction.  Then I read about Avocado Feta dip, and it was a great accompaniment to the chicken.

Berry Crust Pizza with Cranberry, Chicken, Red Onion and Mozzarella (Pizza Night!)

Yes, there are also strawberries in this photo.  They go into muffins, too.

Guess what we're eating from our backyard right now?  Berries!  How cool is that?  Last year our plants were young, and we ate a handful of raspberries from them but never managed to get a strawberry.  This year we're eating handfuls daily, and I've even put up some strawberries in the freezer.  If we don't grow enough raspberries to put up,  I'll find a pick your own or some good deals and put up a mess of berries like I usually do.  Berries are so easy to freeze (on a metal tray for several hours before transferring to a zip top bag), and they keep in an operational freezer until I'm ready to use them, like in these muffins. Please note my use of the phrase 'operational freezer'.

I did not start out with the intention of making a blueberry/raspberry crust so I could make a red, white, and blue pizza.  However, I am the sort of person who blooms where she is planted--and this pizza is the logical result of that trait.
I love my daughter, really I do--you're sensing a "but" here? Good.
It all started when she was hosting her social studies castle-building group.  It was fun to see the girls working together all over the main floor of our house.  The table in the living room was the main job site and the breakfast nook table was the glue gun station.  After each construction session my daughter would unplug the glue gun, and whoever needed the microwave next would plug it back in.  Things worked well for the first few sessions, but the third--really, how long does it take to build a castle out of cardboard?  Somehow, the microwave remained plugged in, and my little fruit and vegetable freezer aka microwave stand was unplugged instead.  No one noticed for a day.  Luckily the freezer was due for a defrost before summer "putting up" season got going, and much was still frozen or able to be salvaged.  I'm in good company--when Alyssa's freezer died, she made maple dijon chicken.
I also chose to get creative,  took the bags of thawed blueberries and raspberries, dumped them into my food processor, and made a puree.  We had a bunch of smoothies, and I used a cup of it in this crust--thinking I'd make a patriotic pizza.
I had leftover cooked chicken in the fridge, and excavated a bag of cranberries during the Big Defrost, so this pizza was predestined.  If your grill master is deployed, or you're just not that into the usual red, white, and blue stuff this year--try this.  In this pizza, chicken is optional.  With the creamy fresh mozzarella, tart cranberries, and red onion you can have a meatless, yet still patriotic, pizza.

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.

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.

Fresh Tomato Pesto & Fresh Mozzarella Pizza (Pizza night!)

By May, I am eagerly anticipating the first tomatoes of the season.  I cannot wait for the taste of a summer tomato with mayo, salt and pepper and good bread. Or in a panzanella.  Tomatoes just taste SO GOOD when you haven't eaten a fresh one in ages!   By September, however, I am usually over the taste of fresh tomatoes.  I'll still save out a few from the farm share for sandwiches and burgers, but the rest of the tomatoes will get canned or slow-roasted and put up for winter.  Last fall, however, a happy coincidence changed my mind and caused this delicious pizza to come about.

This is the taste of tomatoes at their peak, and it's simply awesome.

The sauce for this pizza came from a recipe that Heather at In Her Chucks posted.  Her recipe was for Cherry Tomato Pesto, using cherry tomatoes and salted almonds.  When I got yellow tomatoes in the farm share, I decided to try it.  I didn't have almonds, but I did have some salted cashews in the freezer so I swapped for them.  I also used less oil because when I went to scrape down the food processor bowl I found the sauce consistency to my liking without the additional oil. I made so much fresh tomato pesto that it deserved its own post--here's how to make it and put it up. Since there is no cheese in this pesto, the pizza crust and sauce combo contain no animal products.  Topping your pizza with soy cheese would result in a vegan-friendly pizza.

I found fresh mozzarella marked down at the grocery store (snag it when you see it, it freezes/thaws well when you're using it for pizza) and the mental image of the bright yellow sauce with the white circles of cheese appealed to me.  Giant pepperoni slices added a final pop of color, as my kid would say, and the whole family loved this pizza.

Fresh Tomato Pesto: How to Make, Put Up, and Use It

I hate to waste food, and I'm pretty sure that you hate to waste food, too.

As I get to know the people who grow my food, I also hate to waste their time and the literal fruits of their labors.  When I decided to start a blog, I did so because I'd had success figuring out ways to take the farm share produce (that came into my house between May and November) and feed it to my family during the off season as well.

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I know you like to eat tasty food (you're reading a food blog, so this is a guess, I'm not stalking you or anything) but it's just common sense not to enjoy composting or throwing away something you paid for that could have benefited you, your family, or hungry folks in your community had it been consumed in time.

So I need to share today a lesson in putting up a food which you may think couldn't ever be wasted:  a garden fresh tomato.

As soon as you have fresh (yours or someone's garden, CSA farm share, or farmer's market--not grocery store) tomatoes, please make this.  You'll thank me!  I've been thanking Heather! Not Simon, who photobombed the shot.

I know you're thinking "What, is she crazy?  I look forward to tomatoes from my garden all winter long!  I start them too early in the Spring because I can. not. wait. to eat fresh tomatoes!"

Sure, sure. You're saying this in May.  In June.  But what are you saying in September? October?

The fresh picked tomato has less of an appeal then.  That's the time I am canning tomatoes, slow roasting tomatoes, doing anything but simply enjoying the fresh flavor of a tomato allowed to ripen naturally and picked at its peak of flavor.

Why am I nattering on about this?  To put you in my mindset last fall when Heather posted her Cherry Tomato Pesto recipe. I had all the ingredients so I thought I'd give it a whirl (pun totally intended), but I was not expecting my reaction to my first taste of it.

It's broke da mouth good.

I was licking the bowl of the food processor when my spouse walked into the kitchen.  I sheepishly gave him a taste, and then he understood why.  Not content to make the recipe once (and in the interests of science and/or this blog), I made it multiple times, shown here.  I've used your basic red tomato, yellow taxi tomatoes, indigo rose tomatoes.  I've used cashews and almonds, and Leanne suggests it's great with macadamia nuts for a more dairy feel--without dairy.  I've used fresh basil, fresh parsley, and, when the fresh stuff ran out, I've made it with put up Arugula Pesto and Basil pesto right from the freezer.  I froze a bunch of tomato pesto in November, and thawed the final bag in April (shown above, after I learned to take a slightly better photo of it, even though the dog photobombed me).  I'll go so far as to say that you could make this pesto with any kind of tomato, nearly any kind of nut you have available, and nearly any kind of flavorful leafy green or herb you have available and it will taste great.


For other recipes using yellow or red (or orange, or purple--the variety of tomatoes in the farm share continues to astound me), please see my Tomato Recipes Collection. [I have a separate one for recipes made with Green Tomatoes]. These collections are 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?

Fresh Tomato Pesto Sauce 

(very slightly adapted from Heather's Cherry Tomato Pesto)

Ingredients

• 4 medium or 2 large tomatoes (tops to the composting pigs!)
• 1/2 cup packed basil, parsley, or arugula leaves
• 1/3 cup salted cashews, almonds, or macadamia nuts
• 1 clove garlic (or use some roasted garlic, if you like)
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions

1. Throw everything in the food processor.  Pulse a few times to chunk it up, then puree on high several seconds until smooth.  
2. Scrape down sides and puree a couple moments more to get that last pesky piece of cashew incorporated.  
3. Store in the fridge a few days, or in the freezer at least up to 6 months.
4. This makes enough for 2 pizzas plus an appetizer for a hungry spouse who walks into the kitchen while you're licking the bowl because it tastes so amazing. We enjoyed this on pita chips, tortilla chips, carrot slices, baguettes, and pasta.

I've used it on a few pizzas, too:
Not-So-Simple Cheese Pizza
Five Cheese Pizza with Indigo Rose Tomato and Almond Pesto on a Butternut Squash Crust
Broccoli Rabe, Mushroom, and Roasted Garlic with Fresh Mozzarella and Fresh Tomato Pesto
Beef, Mushroom, and Fresh Tomato Pesto FFF-boli
Buttermilk Crust Pizza with Pepperoni and Fresh Tomato Sauce


This post is bopping around to What's Cookin' Wednesday, waving "hi!" to Heather, who first shared this recipe, at What's In The Box,  the From The Farm Blog Hop the Clever Chicks Blog Hop , Tasty Tuesdays, and the Wednesday Fresh Foods Link Up, Real Food Fridays.

Chicken Adobo Summer Rolls (A repurposed leftover)

Even though I live with people who are happy to eat leftovers 90% of the time, I love recipes that transform a leftover entree into an entirely new dish.  One of these repurposed leftover ideas is to make summer rolls.  You can stick just about anything in a summer roll!
I wrote this post the second month of my blog, since the chicken adobo we repurposed was from this post, my 11th post.  I've been sitting on this recipe for months, since by the time I was ready to post we were fully into the Fall season and it would not have been appropriate. There's a lot of sat upon posts appearing this week on the blog.  Something about the beginning of June marks summer eating for me, even if we won't hit the solstice for a few more weeks.

I love summer rolls but shy away from planning to make them because I often think they require too many fresh herbs that I don't have in my garden.  (This year I've planted a stealth herb garden with mint near the downspout by the driveway, and rosemary nestled under the dogwood. I'm attempting to fool whoever has been "going out to eat" in my raised beds, decimating the first round of parsley, dill, and fennel I've planted thus far this spring.)
The basic ingredients for a summer roll, however, are shelf-stable.  Once you've stocked your pantry with rice paper wrappers and rice noodles, you're set when the right herbs, vegetables, and even protein collide in your farm share, garden, or farmer's market.

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*.

Roasted Potato Salad with Crème Fraîche Sauce

I couldn't decide which post to put up today, so I put up a poll on my FB page.  Roasted Potato Salad with Crème Fraîche beat Thai-marinated baked tofu. Stay tuned for that one.

The second year we belonged to a CSA farm share something shifted in my brain.  I embraced the concept of not knowing what I'd get in the box until CSA day.  Now I thrive on the challenge of using all the produce (by eating it fresh or putting it up for later) before the next CSA day.

This mental shift in my thinking did not come easily, and it has spilled over into the rest of my cooking. Now I keep my eyes peeled for marked-down grocery items and buy those instead of full-price ones, then figure out what to cook after I get home.  It's serendipitous when a recipe I've thought about matches an ingredient that has been marked down.

I'm very lucky to have a Danish sister-in-law.  In addition to loving my brother, raising wonderful kids, and being a talented designer (don't get me started on the hand-me-downs my daughter's gotten from her cousins) she's also a great cook and the best sous chef I've ever had.

Technically she's the only sous chef I've ever had, but she set the bar very high.  Once during a deployment I hosted Christmas and in my little kitchen, with Christine's help, we churned out an American-style Christmas breakfast (complete with overnight yeasted sticky rolls--that's the pan in the corner photo) followed by a full-on Thanksgiving dinner several hours later.  Christine chopped, stirred, and washed up like we'd been doing this together for years. And the tablescape?  Amazing!

Once, while I was visiting Copenhagen, Christine made a simple sauce for our steamed fingerling potatoes.  She combined crème fraîche, a little mayo, garlic, salt, and pepper and served a spoonful of it alongside the potatoes.  It was, obviously, memorable and every time I make it I think of her.

As the weather warms up, my family starts asking for potato salad.  What they are asking for is my Confetti Potato Salad.  However, my celery isn't ready to harvest yet*, and I don't want to buy any when I know I'll be filling my crispers in a few days with our CSA farm share.  Kicking around in my brain was the idea of taking Christine's sauce and tossing it with crispy roasted potatoes for a potato salad.  When I saw crème fraîche marked down at the store, that's exactly what I did.

This potato salad is like a Little Black Dress--it works on fine china alongside a steak or piled onto a paper plate next to a hot dog.  It's tasty hot, or simply warm, and even chilled (my daughter scarfed all the leftovers, so I'm taking her word on that one).  I roasted my potatoes, but if you have the grilling skills you could easily do this dish on the road--simply mix up the sauce at home and carry it to the event in a cooler, then when the potatoes are grilled, toss the whole thing together and serve.

Chicken/Blueberry/Hummus vs Pepper/Peppadew Pizza (Pizza Night)

Last Friday Night Pizza Night, I shared with you a poem I wrote to my pizza stone.

You probably thought I was a bit addled.  Correct!

In the interest of adding value to the post, I also shared my Roasted Garlic and Herb pizza dough, a dough that I think is not a copycat but better than Trader Joes Garlic Herb Pizza dough.

I promised this week that I'd share what I'd done with that dough, and I provided you with a teaser photo:

The pizza on the left has hummus, chicken, blueberries, goat cheese and red onion.  The pizza on the right has colorful bell peppers and Peppadew peppers.  Totally not clear to me if I need to put a ® or ™ symbol with that, so there they are if necessary.

I thought I would choose one to share today.

I try to balance meat-including pizzas with suitable-for-vegetarian pizzas, but to be perfectly frank, I've been kinda distracted lately.  My spouse is embarking on his Asian/Greater Middle East adventure du jour  d'année, my kids each had a concert to perform, and we were fortunate to have both grandmas and my dad in attendance which means I've had company for 4+ days.  So instead of writing up all about a pizza, with links all around, I've just realized that Friday's blog post should go live in 6 hours and I've not written spit!  This is not my usual M.O.. (should there be a 2 punctuation marks there?) Normally I write it all out in longhand, research where I want to link to, type it up, and days/weeks/months later, the night before it goes live, I double check everything and hit publish.  And I'm drinking tea while I write, not hard cider while I type.

Imagine my surprise when I realize that I don't have a pre-written pizza post at 8 pm on Thursday night!  I do, however, have great kids--one's walking the dog, the other is cleaning up from dinner, so I can grab my photos and dump out the contents of my brain so that you've got a pizza inspiration. Some day I'll share about the lovely man at the fancy cheese counter who gave me a sample of Peppadew peppers, thereby inspiring me to actually purchase some Peppadew peppers to have on hand for this pizza. Another time I'll share about the inspiration for this pizza, Heather's Strange But Good flatbread.  But after I finish typing this, since I've been up visiting until midnight for several nights in a row, stick a fork in me--I'm done.

If you have a hankering for pizza and do eat meat, grab some blueberries, hummus, goat cheese, chicken and red onion and make the pizza on the right.  If you're not into meat (these days), grab some bell peppers and Peppadews (Peppadews?  is that even a word?) and make the one on the left.  As always, please check out my Pizza Primer for really well-thought out not off-the-cuff-hard-cider-influenced pizza making instructions. Guess what? My folks' flight is now delayed, they are heading back here to spend the night, so perhaps Mom will proofread--she's great at that--and this post will be better tomorrow after an update.