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.

Salsa Verde, Pork Steak, and Oaxaca Cheese Pizza (Pizza Night!)

For other recipes using Hatch Chiles, please see my Hatch Chile Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This is a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, farmer's market, or garden abundance.

There really is a pizza recipe in this post. It's Friday, and you're at Farm Fresh Feasts, right?

I've always liked to play with my food and try new things, I guess my daughter gets it from me.  A while ago we got part of a cow, including the tongue and tail.  I made beef tongue tacos with the tongue and, while they were interesting, the real star of that meal was the salsa verde.

Oh salsa verde, [I lamented] where were you when I was cluelessly trying to coax something edible out of my CSA farm share tomatillos??  Ah well, at least now I knew what to do with the tomatillos!  Sorry, food bank, I'm keeping them this time--have a jar of peanut butter and a couple cans of tuna instead.

Last season I had the happy coincidence of my local grocery store roasting fresh Hatch chilies at the same time that the farm share blessed us with tomatillos (something Aubrey of Homegrown & Healthy commented on--produce that is in season at the same time generally pairs well together). I quickly canned a batch of salsa verde using the Ball canning book recipe.  I wasn't quite sure what all I would make with it--we really didn't want to experience tongue again, though I wish cattle had 4 tails each because ox tail rocks.  Try Elise's Oxtail Stew recipe, and you'll see what I mean.

When I thought about the idea of taking some leftover pork steak home from my in-laws, I lay awake dreaming up this pizza.  I figured the pork would go nicely with the salsa verde.  I just wasn't sure what type of cheese would be best.  So the pork sat in the freezer and the salsa verde sat in the pantry and both patiently waited until this week.  My family has recently become enamored of fresh mozzarella on pizza, like this or this or this.  I love to get perfectly edible food marked down, so I've added a pass by the fancy cheese area when I'm making twice daily occasional milk runs.  If there are no marked down balls of fresh mozzarella, I make a mental note when the balls on display are due to be sold by, and try and swing by the day before when they'll have the magic stickers.  Did you know you could freeze marked down fresh mozzarella, thaw and slice it, and use it on a pizza?  Now you do.

It was during one such pass that the marked down sticker on this cheese caught my eye.  It wasn't quite shaped like mozzarella, but it looked and felt similar.  I whooped(!) because I felt like I'd scored getting mozzarella marked down.  The cheese monger (a brilliant lady--she can even pronounce the name of this cheese without sounding like Ben Stiller's character trying to say Brett Favre's name in the movie There's Something About Mary or Ellen Degeneres' character reading in Finding Nemo) told me that the cheese I was whooping about was in fact not mozzarella and started to describe it's characteristics to me.  Here's what the Murray's Cheese Oaxaca label says:

"Resembles mozzarella in terms of style and make process, but flavor-wise, Oaxaca cheese deserves its own dance floor.  Of Mexican heritage but made in Waterloo, Wisconsin by our friends The Crave Brothers, it's pure white and semi-hard, with sting cheesy texture and a salty milky zing.  It's best used for the melted implementation in its country of origin:  nachos, tacos, or quesadillas, or as a substitute for queso blanco in cooking."

We agreed this pizza would go perfectly with this cheese.  If you don't have access to Oaxaca and are too shy to ask for it because you're afraid you'll mispronounce it, I think queso blanco, shredded Mexican blend, or fresh mozzarella would do fine.

The last comment I need to make before getting to the recipe is this:  next time I won't make this pizza the way I did.  I'll make it the way I wrote it up here.  I think it would be better to toss the cooked meat on at the end, like in this pizza, not in the beginning.  What can I say?  I was making 4 different pizzas, 2 to deliver to a friend, and I was way distracted.  On Friday nights I put the 'as it's happening' pizzas up on my Facebook page so you can see how crazed I sometimes frequently get in the kitchen.

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.