Chicken & Bok Choy Wild Rice Skillet Supper

Simple, hearty, homey baked skillet supper of chicken thighs and bok choy with wild rice.

Looking at my blog calendar for the month I realized I could fill it up with grill recipes for a month or more if I maintain my usual posting schedule of 3x/week. Despite my enthusiasm for my new tool [a cool kitchen in summer + gourmet pizzas at home in less than 30 minutes? Who wouldn't be enthused?] I should rein it in and offer other ways to enjoy the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share produce.

This one pot, well really one skillet, meal starts on the stove and finishes in the oven. Though it has rice and bok choy, it is decidedly NOT Asian in flavorings as I used a wild rice blend and Worcestershire sauce for the seasoning. This is a family friendly dish, and simple enough for my kids to make. Not that they did. But they could have.

We like leftover rice. I started with cooked wild rice because if I'm going to the effort of cooking 2 cups of rice for one meal, it's no big whup [?] to add in a couple more cups for a planned over leftover. My daughter uses leftover cooked rice in fried rice, both kids will help themselves to a bowl of rice with breakfast or for a snack, and anything still left when I start screaming that the fridge is too full gets wrapped up in plastic and frozen for a later snack.

For other recipes using Bok Choy, please see my Bok Choy Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. You can find more recipes using greens on my Greens Pinterest board, and I share even more recipe ideas on my FB page. To learn how to use this blog, click here.

Grilled Green Beans with Garlic Scape Pesto and Parm (side dish and appetizer)

 Fresh green beans, grilled until nicely browned, tossed with a garlic scape pesto dressing and buried under a dusting of Parmesan cheese. Use the leftovers for an appetizer wrapped in salami.

I have been all up in my grill for the past two months. Ever since my spouse assembled the monster, the grill became an never-ending source of inspiration for side dishes and planned overs aka repurposed leftovers. Now that I type it out, my farm share box is often the same sort of inspiration, albeit perishable inspiration.

I started a Grill Life List with a slip of paper, documenting all of the vegetables and meats I've grilled so far. Then I misplaced the slip of paper. I'm switching to notebooks. Speaking of, although I have not tried this system, I know a few folks who use it and it looks cool: Bullet Journal.

Today's recipe was made in that window of time after I've used up all the winter farm share stores, emptied the freezer of bulk frozen vegetables [Garlic Scape Pesto and Green Tomato Bacon Jam remain at the ready] and have to actually shop for vegetables in the store until the farm share starts. I asked my spouse what veggies he felt like eating and he wanted green beans. Green beans can give me something to work with, are good blog fodder, so I picked up a massive bag of the tender fresh ones at Costco.

I'm sharing this recipe both as YET ANOTHER NUDGE to make and freeze garlic scape pesto [my previous nudge is Grilled Garlic Scape Pesto Smashed Potatoes] but also because it fits in with my summer eating plan [more about that in the future when I have space to sit and write]. In a nutshell, though, when you're cooking, cook extra to use on nights when you don't have time/it's too hot to cook. This is not rocket science. I mean, I can come up with plenty of reasons not to cook--it's too hot, too rainy, I get home too late, I'm out of ______ (insert name of key ingredient). This reminds me of Matt Scott's Nike commercial. Point is, when I do cook I may as well cook as many things as I can, and figure out ways to use them later.

After enjoying these beans as a side dish I turned the leftovers into a savory appetizer. I wrapped 3 to 4 beans in a slice of thin salami and served the bundles alongside other leftover vegetables, cheese, and crackers. The pairing of crunchy grilled green beans with salty salami is a good one, and way too easy to make.

For more recipes using green beans, please see my Green Bean Recipes Collection. For more recipes using garlic scapes, please see my Garlic Scape Recipes Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. You can find more vegetable appetizers on my Pinterest board, Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks. Want to know how to Use This Blog? Click here.

CSA Recipe Index Revamped, and Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza with Mushroom, Artichoke, Pepper and Red Onion

A loaded vegetarian pizza with mushrooms, artichokes, yellow peppers and red onions on a garlic scape pesto-slathered crust. Plus--an expanded Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, now with recipes from all sorts of bloggers!

I had a "duh" moment the other day. My goal of making my blog a resource for people like me looking for recipe ideas for their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, farmer's market, or garden abundance would be closer if I included recipes from other bloggers in my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

I sure don't have the lock on the best recipes using farm share ingredients, with the possible exception of my Sautéed Beet Greens and Spring Onions with Egg breakfast/brunch, which I happen to think is the world's best way to enjoy beet greens.

Everyone's tastes are different, so having a central location to see a wide variety of recipe ideas for whatever ingredient you're dealing with can only help. I hope the bigger and better Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient will enable more people to have a successful farm share season and keep coming back to their chosen farmers for more. Why is my family embarking on our 10th CSA season? Fresh food tastes good!

Now, I am one person with kids at home for the summer and dogs who require a lot of attention. I'd share a video of Robert Barker and I trying to teach Simon and Vincent how to howl, with mixed success, but I can't figure out how to get it off my son's iPad and onto my laptop. Scroll down for a .gif instead.

I won't have a whizbang revamped recipe index overnight. I've paid a chunk of money [gasp, go buy something on Amazon using my link please] to the good folks at Inlinkz and I'll slowly add to it in a seasonal manner, focusing on produce that is more unique to the farm share/farmer's market. That means garlic scapes right now.

If you check out my Garlic, Garlic Scapes and Green Garlic Recipes Collection you'll find a wide variety of omnivore, gluten free, vegan and paleo recipes contributed by many bloggers. [Every link has been obtained by permission of the blogger.] I've pinned all the links to my Garlic Scapes Pinterest Board, if you like to organize recipe ideas that way. There are many recipes for Garlic Scape Pesto, sure, because that is an excellent way to put up a garlic scape crop for the year--but I've included everyone who contributed because I'm not going to be the one to test and pronounce which is The Best Garlic Scape Pesto Recipe Ever. Taste is subjective.

I have two requests:

1. If you have, or know of, additional recipes I can add to the index, please shoot me an email and tell me about them. My info is on my About page.
2. I'd like to know how the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient works for you on your device. We are a Mac family, and Luddites to boot, so I have no idea how this looks on an Android product or on Chrome or stuff like that. I can't make it better if I don't know what's not working.

I have been sharing pizza recipes, and it's a Friday--the day I traditionally fix pizzas for my family--so since I have a food blog [I almost typed I am a food blog] I will uphold tradition and stop babbling about the new direction for the recipe index and instead share a pizza. 

Keeping it short and sweet, because I've written enough already.

Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza with Mushrooms, Artichokes, Peppers and Red Onion

1 pound pizza dough of your choice

2 to 3 Tablespoons of Garlic Scape Pesto (here's my recipe)

¾ cup chopped fresh mushrooms

½ cup chopped marinated artichoke hearts

½ cup chopped bell peppers

¼ cup diced red onion

1½ cups shredded cheese (I used a blend of fontina, mozzarella, and asiago)

For baking directions, please refer to my Pizza Primer, or my 7 Tips for Making Pizza at Home posts. I'd rather show you dogs running past garlic scapes. I'm sorry I didn't get a shot of Vincent. He's too fast.