Panade, with Swiss Chard, Onion, and Cheddar Sausage

It's amazing when a leftover ingredient gets used up in a delicious way.  After I first tried Panzanella, I found it so marvelous that, come spring, I started freezing all my Good Bread** ends for summer salads.  But I didn't have a winter equivalent for the Good Bread leftovers until my spouse sent me a Buzzfeed article that included this link.  I was intrigued.  Not about the pumpkin, but what was inside.

Panade.  Never heard of it.  I searched around the webs and found this version.  Apparently panade took the food blog world by storm a few years ago.  I can only assume it was during another deployment and I was not Creating Grand (farm fresh) Feasts, only making stuff the kids and I would eat--with very few leftovers.  Now that I'm blogging, what will I do with this next deployment?  I need suggestions.  So far I'm thinking a Farm Fresh For Fewer series.

This is a Grand Dish.  It takes a long time to bake (but a comparatively small amount of hands-on time) so I found it perfect for a Sunday supper.  Just like with panzanella in the summertime, panade takes leftover bread and turns it into a delicious new meal.  And with my Swiss chard growing like crazy in the garden, it provides me with a great way to use a readily available green.  I switched it up a bit and added some 'we're never going to eat this for breakfast so why not toss it in?' leftover cheddar sausage links to the finished dish.  Everyone went back for seconds.  If you missed this one a while back, do try this at home.

**Good bread for me is La Brea Bakery Whole Grain Loaf.  I usually buy it in a two-pack at Costco but have seen it in my local grocery stores in both Virginia and Ohio.  Any dense chewy whole grain bread is Good Bread in my book, though. If you'd like to make your own at home, I recommend my Multigrain Sourdough Bread.
For other recipes using Swiss Chard, please see my Swiss Chard Recipe Collection, part of my Visual Recipe Index.

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!

Green Eggs No Ham**

A Vegetarian Eggs Benedict with a Spinach-Hollandaise Sauce 

I have frequently shared kitchens with vegetarian roommates and friends.  While I do eat meat, I try to be sensitive to those who do not.  One happy merging of meat-eating and non-meat eating friends was a  weekly Sunday brunch of Eggs Benedict.  The meat eaters would layer ham or sausage--my preference--onto their English muffins.  The non-meat eaters would layer a slab of Monterey Jack cheese instead.  Everyone sat down to eat together.

I woke up the other morning with a hankering for Eggs Benedict, but wondering how it would be to add some of my CSA farm share spinach to the sauce Hollandaise.

I didn't have any sausage handy, having used it up on this pizza.  I also didn't have any Monterey Jack cheese.  However, I did have Icelandic School cheese. (I can hear you now, "Wait, what?  Icelandic School cheese?  Who keeps that in the fridge?"  To you I  ask--where else would you keep it?).  My kids have loved Icelandic School cheese for years, it's very mild, and my folks brought some back from a trip recently.  So I have Icelandic School cheese in my fridge, but you can use Monterey Jack if you aren't planning a trip to Iceland any time soon.