Quadruple Roasted Vegetable Mock Florentine Mock Lasagna

I've been tweaking the blog a bit.  If you look over that way ----> you'll see a clickable Recipe Index.  Thanks to Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes for the code to make that work.  Moving the recipe index off the top bar gave me room for some essays (recipe-free ramblings, really) I wrote way back in the fall :) when I started this blog in case you just feel like reading a bit.
Let me know (comments or on my FB page) what you think!  On to the food.

This, probably more than anything else, illustrates how I feed my family from our CSA farm share all year 'round.

This dish contains 4 roasted veggies:  garlic, roasted after I harvested it and frozen in early summer, eggplant and bell peppers, marinated in a vinaigrette and roasted and frozen when I was overwhelmed with veggies in late summer, and sweet potato, roasted for another use and left over in the fridge.

The mock florentine refers to the liberal use of Swiss chard in lieu of spinach.  I used a bunch of fresh chard (stems in the sauce, leaves with the noodles) in addition to incorporating leftover Creamed Swiss Chard.  (If you're keeping track, the Leftover Score is now at 2).

The mock lasagna refers to the fact that, although I have a well-stocked pantry, I didn't have any lasagna noodles.  Yes,  I could go out and buy some, I'd rather use up what I already got.

Hence the crazy convoluted name.

I walked in the door after an afternoon wheelchair basketball exhibition game with the idea that I wanted "something good" for dinner but having no clue what that would be.  Seventy-five minutes later I was putting this dish in the oven.  It's not a 'quick take', but to go from cluelessly scratching my head in the middle of the kitchen to completed, ready-to-bake Quadruple Roasted Mock Palooza impresses me.  Then again, I'm easily impressed.

Having the roasted veggies and the prepared pesto put up, and a freezer full of potential pizza toppings, means that making this truly does illustrate my goal of feeding my family from our farm share--all year long.

Creamed Swiss Chard with Back Bacon--A Lovely Leftover to Have

When my first child was around 6 weeks old, my in-laws came to visit and meet their first grandkid.  They took us out to a steak place.  A Very Fancy steak place.  The kind of clubby, dark wood, tuxedo-shirted server place where you can't see much less hear other people in the restaurant.  The kind of place where the steak has its own price, and the side dishes each have their own price and the prices are . . . well let's just say my in-laws took us out for dinner. And the food was delicious and the company was convivial.

I will not tell you how, because he was our first, we were unbuckling the giant rear-facing carseat and lugging that giant monstrosity into the fancy steak place. (No, not the kind that snaps into/out from a base with a handle so that you can sling the sleeping baby, still buckled, over your arm like a basket.  The other kind of rear-facing car seat that can eventually be turned around and used as a front-facing car seat. We were dumb.  First kid.)   Let's just say that I felt exceedingly out of my element.  And the food was delicious and the company was convivial.

I had creamed spinach as my side because, even though I was ravenous all the time, I couldn't see paying that much money for a baked potato.  Baked potatoes I can do at home.  But creamed spinach . . . that was something I hadn't made before.  I always like to order things I don't try at home.

I love creamed spinach.  My mom used to make a cheater version with a box of frozen spinach and a can of cream of mushroom soup that was da bomb.  If creamed spinach could be da bomb to a kid.  Well, the taste memory of it is da bomb to me--it wasn't too rich like most creamed spinach I eat these days.

It surprises me that, as much as I grow Swiss chard and get Swiss chard from my farm share, therefore I've got piles of Swiss chard waiting to be used at any given time, I never thought about making creamed Swiss chard.

But for some reason--um, I'm blogging about how I feed the family from the farm share, that's the reason ;) --I decided to try my hand at creamed Swiss chard.  I got inspired by this recipe but veered off course a tiny bit to use what I had on hand.  As usual.

The recipe is pretty easy to make-I worked it so that I cooked everything in one saucepan, which kept the dishes down.  We ate it alongside a flank steak and rice because I remembered that fancy steak dinner.  We don't normally eat steak.  The interesting thing to me was what I did with the leftovers.  I'll blog about that in another post, but let me just say 'mock lasagna' and leave it at that. Well, I'll tease you at the end.

Kohlrabi Greens, Manchego, Potato and Bacon Pizza with Red Onion and Rosemary (Pizza Night!)

Today's pizza happened because I baked bacon.  It's my favorite meat, and I tend to not to cook it often because I cannot help myself around it.  Know your triggers.
I always bake bacon--it works best for me.  If I cook it in the skillet, I have too much spatter to clean up.  But baking my bacon means I can easily freeze the cooked strips, drain the baking pan into my Bacon Grease Storage Device, and be on my way to making delicious pork-flavored goodness.  Or something like that.

It wasn't enough for me to use two vegetables from the farm share (roasted garlic and new potatoes) like I'd planned for this pizza.  When I saw the pretty greens on this week's kohlrabi (I knew I needed the kohlrabi themselves for sushi) I figured they'd add a nice pop of color to the pizza.  I didn't figure on the unintended Kale Chip Side Effect.  After I sliced this pizza, I couldn't help but grab the little tufts of greens that were stuck to the slicer--they tasted just like kale chips!  My daughter did not complain about the relative dearth of green on her slices, so I think it worked out well for both of us.

This pizza uses Manchego cheese, a sheep's milk cheese from the (Man of La) Mancha region of Spain.  I got mine at Costco.  Why?  The French Green Lentil Effect.  I'm all about the Effects today.  I was looking for gruyere, but found Manchego instead.  Rachael Ray mentions Manchego now and again, so I should buy it, right?  Apparently she thinks Manchego cheese plays nicely with potatoes.  And now I do, too!  I have a lot of Manchego now, shredded and stashed in my freezer for future use.